Chapter 1

Tuesday, October 19, 8:04 a.m.

“Well, well...” Deputy Susan Henderson quietly said when she saw the name Amanda Prescott on their schedule.

“See someone you know?” asked her partner for the day, Deputy Louisa Lopez.

“Our third session. She’s an arrogant woman I interviewed a couple weeks ago. She believes her husband’s six-figure salary means that she shouldn’t have to obey the same laws as us peasants.

“Mostly I just let her talk and it looks like she talked herself into serious charges. She and her husband beat their teenage daughter so badly she wound up in the hospital. You’d better do the honors for this one, just to ensure she won’t have grounds for a complaint.”

Susan and Louisa were deputy sheriffs who administered corporal punishment to adult offenders under their county’s Alternative Corrections System. The ACS had been a plank in the conservative party’s national platform and it was a prominent issue in the conservative gubernatorial candidate’s campaign six years earlier. The state’s legislature voted the program into law just a month after his inauguration.

But the ACS didn’t go into effect until five years later. Legal challenges to the law reached the U.S. Supreme Court -- twice. The first time, the Court ruled that it was constitutional for adults to voluntarily choose corporal punishment administered by the government as an alternative to a criminal trial.

The second journey to the Supreme Court took much longer. Proposed procedures, such as the implement to be used and the number of strokes permissible were submitted, rejected, adjusted and re-submitted to the lower federal courts several times before the Supreme Court finally declared that they did not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment”.

Ironically, the conservative governor was no longer in office when his signature initiative went into effect. He lost his bid for re-election when “family values” voters turned away from him after (accurate) reports surfaced five weeks before the election that he’d climbed naked into a hot tub with his 17-year-old stepdaughter and her 16-year-old female friend.

The new, center-left governor’s inclination had been to put ACS permanently on “hold”. But a member of his party’s legislative leadership explained how the ACS actually advanced their party’s goal of “judicial reform”. He argued it could decrease the documented disparity where poor and dark-skinned defendants were sent to prison much more often than wealthy and white defendants who committed the same crimes. He also suggested that prosecutors would face less pushback for attempting to prosecute professionals like doctors, lawyers and CPAs, who would lose their licenses after being convicted of a felony.

A more honest assessment, but one that never was spoken aloud, was that elected officials who supervised the police and prosecutors would feel less pressure from political donors such as hospitals, law practices and accounting firms to let their lawbreaking moneymakers off.

The one aspect of ACS almost everyone liked was how quickly the system worked.

Susan had met the woman scheduled for their third session, Amanda Prescott, only 26 days earlier.

Thursday, September 23, 10:23 a.m.

Deputy Sheriff Henderson was dispatched to the county’s hospital after the Emergency Room staff notified Child Protective Services about a suspected case of child abuse.

County Child Protective Services regularly requested that she be assigned to their cases. With her wholesome good looks and her blonde hair worn in a ponytail, she looked more like a college student than a 30-year-old military vet. Her polite and friendly manner helped her gain the trust of both children and adults.

Susan had been a deputy only three years, but she already held the rank of corporal and was on a fast track toward making sergeant. In fact, she already had enough years of service to take the sergeants’ exam. Five years in the Air Force Security Forces (formerly known as Military Police) counted toward seniority and her Criminal Justice degree counted as one additional year.

But she planned to wait another year to reduce the perception that her promotion was because of her gender instead of her abilities.

Susan notified the dispatcher that she’d arrived at the hospital, and then locked her gun belt and tactical vest in the trunk of her patrol car. Both were required for all deputies when they were on patrol duty. But removing them was permitted – provided they were safely secured – when the deputy wanted to be less intimidating while interviewing a witness in a controlled location.

She was met at the Emergency Room’s admitting counter by Tiana Clarke, a CPS advocate she’d worked with before. The slender woman was wearing what Susan called (in her head) a lady’s “law suit,” a gray, pinstripe skirt and jacket. A burgundy blouse nicely complimented the African-American woman’s light brown skin and close-cropped, “natural” hair.

“I’m glad you were available, Deputy Henderson,” she said, greeting her with a smile and a handshake. “You’re the perfect person to do the interviews for this case.”

Ms. Clarke led Deputy Henderson to a small room behind the admissions counter. The room was set aside for families who likely would receive bad news about their loved ones. It was the only place in the busy ER area where they could talk privately.

“The victim’s name is Elizabeth Prescott,” she began after the two settled on the black, vinyl-covered couch. “She’s 16 years old. She has severe bruising on her buttocks and the backs of her legs. You can clearly see marks that look like they’re from a two-inch belt.

“She is a junior at Northwest High School. Her physical education teacher became suspicious because it’s only three weeks into the school year and the girl already had three notes from her mother excusing her from gym. That’s a red flag for abuse that teachers are taught to look for.

“Her teacher told her she could sit out the class, but she had to dress in her gym clothes. The teacher waited a few minutes and then went in the locker room. She saw the bruises and could see that Elizabeth was having trouble bending over. Elizabeth was swaying and seemed dizzy when she tried to stand upright. So the teacher had the school office call for an ambulance.

“Fortunately, P.E. is Elizabeth’s second class. Otherwise she might still be trying to tough it out. The attending physician said the bruising is serious enough that it’s dangerous for her. The condition is called ‘muscle compartment syndrome’.”

“That happened to me once,” Susan interjected. “I played softball in high school and took a line drive off my thigh. For a week it hurt like hell to walk and when I touched it, the lump felt like someone had stuck a hockey puck under the skin. It took three weeks for it to go away.”

Tiana nodded and continued, “The way the doctor explained it is that if a muscle is bruised severely it swells. There’s limited space for each individual muscle, especially in the arms and legs, so if a muscle swells too much it compresses blood vessels and cuts off oxygen to muscle and nerve cells. He said cells in the body begin dying within minutes when they’re deprived of oxygen and the muscles and nerves can be permanently damaged.

“They’re putting her in a hyperbaric chamber. That’s a sealed tube where they can increase the oxygen level to get as much oxygen as possible into the patient’s bloodstream.

“If that doesn’t work, the doctor says they’ll have to operate and cut open the connective tissue that surrounds the muscles to relieve the pressure. As you can imagine, that will leave terrible scarring.

“I’ve already received notice from Judge Bryant appointing me as Elizabeth’s legal advocate.”

“Really? That was fast,” Susan interrupted.

“The county’s new CPS director has instructed everyone in the agency, from top to bottom, that the safety of the children is their primary concern. Her rule is, when in doubt request an advocate,” Tiana said.

A child advocate is a specially-certified lawyer appointed by a judge when there is reasonable suspicion that the child’s parent or guardian was responsible for their child’s abuse or that they allowed it to happen. The advocate has the power to act as the child’s legal counsel and authorize medical care.

“I took pictures of the back of her hips and legs with a regular camera and our alternate-spectrum LED camera,” Tiana said. “I sent the images, along with a summary of what the attending physician told me to the on-call judge.”

Sitting county court judges rotate serving as the “on-call judge,” who is available at all hours to issue writs like warrants and protection orders.

Tiana took a small laptop computer from her oversized purse and started it up. After a pause she manipulated the touchpad and turned the device so Susan could see the screen.

It showed an image a girl’s bruised and swollen legs and buttocks. The skin was a mottling of lighter and darker shades of red with blotches and lines of deep burgundy.

“Damn!” Susan muttered.

Tiana used the touchpad again and another photo appeared. This time the image was a ghostly green. The bruising was much more clearly defined, appearing in lighter and darker shades of yellowish-brown. Dozens of parallel lines, apparently from the edges of a belt or strap, could be seen crisscrossing her legs and buttocks.

“I counted more than twenty distinct blows from a belt. There are many, many more, but they overlap so much that we’ll need a medical imaging specialist to give us a total,” Tiana said.

“I know the judicial assistant who works for the on-call judges,” she added. “She told me that Judge Bryant took just five minutes to review the material before issuing the order assigning me as the girl’s advocate. She said the judge was cursing under his breath the entire time.”

“So what do you need me to do?” Susan asked?

“I’ll introduce you to Elizabeth, and you can take her statement. Then you interview the mother when she gets here.”

“And if I just shoot the mother?” Susan asked facetiously -- mostly.

“In that case, I’m pretty sure that Judge Bryant will make sure the shooting is found to be justified,” Tiana replied with a sugar-won’t-melt-in-my-mouth smile.

The ER admitting nurse told the two women that the hyperbaric chamber was located in the hospital’s rehabilitation center and gave them directions. Like at most hospitals, the Emergency Room was located at the back, away from day-to-day traffic. The rehabilitation center served both in-patients and discharged patients returning for treatments, so it was near the main entrance on the opposite side of the building.

They found the hyperbaric chamber in a back room in the rehab center that contained several other pieces of large therapeutic equipment. Each apparatus had curtains that could isolate it from the rest of the room.

The hyperbaric chamber was the only device currently in use. It was a blue cylinder, eight feet long and 30 inches diameter, made from vinyl-coated canvas. A zippered opening in the top allowed a patient to enter and be sealed inside. An air pump hummed on the far end.

Tiana smiled and waved through a clear vinyl window on the side of the tube at a pretty, Hispanic-looking girl lying on her stomach.

“Doctor Morris, this is Deputy Susan Henderson,” Ms. Clarke said to the harried-looking, sandy-haired man in his 30s. “She’ll be taking a statement from Elizabeth.”

“How is Elizabeth doing, Doctor?” Susan asked as she shook his hand.

“Right now there’s limited blood flow to her lower legs,” he answered. “We’re monitoring with blood pressure cuffs on both ankles. The blood pressure at her ankles is about half normal for a teen. Elizabeth says she has tingling sensations in her calves, which indicates that nerves in her legs are being pinched by the swelling.

“We administered an injection of corticosteroids to reduce the swelling, but it’s too soon to see an effect. The oxygen therapy is to minimize necrosis -- death of tissue cells -- until the anti-inflammatories begin to work.”

“How do I talk to her?”

The doctor pointed at a flat, black box on the top of the tube.

“That’s an intercom,” he said. “You can speak to Elizabeth and hear her through that. She’s wearing a headset with a microphone. So just hit the red switch and you can have a conversation.”

“Anything else I should know? Any time limits or anything like that?” Deputy Henderson asked.

“No. Don’t get her too excited, but I’m sure you already know that. She’ll be in there for another hour. So if you have time to continue talking to her after you get what you need, that would be nice for her.

Tiana brought over two bright yellow, plastic chairs and set them in front of the side window. Susan sat and turned on the intercom.

“Hi, Elizabeth. My name is Susan. Is Elizabeth what you prefer to be called?”

“My parents say I shouldn’t use a nickname or shorter version of my name,” the girl responded.

“Then ‘Elizabeth’ it is,” replied Susan with false cheer. “What grade are you in?”

“I’m in 11th grade.”

“Are there any classes you really like?” Susan asked, trying to establish some sort of rapport.

“I do well in trigonometry, but it’s not really fun. We’re studying World War II in Social Studies, but I get more out of reading about it on my own than from listening to the teacher. We’re reading “Great Expectations” in English class. I’ve already finished it, but the story is kind of weird. None of the characters act like normal people.”

“I had to read that book in college,” Susan said. “What I got out of it is that almost every character in the book, especially the upper-class characters, are behaving the way other people think they should act instead of in a way that would make them happy.”

The girl looked thoughtful for a moment and said, “Yeah, I guess that makes sense. All the coincidences and secret identities make the story pretty unrealistic though.”

“When it was released, it wasn’t considered ‘great literature,’” Susan said while smiling and making finger quotes. “It was popular entertainment and a new chapter was published every two weeks in a magazine. So Dickens put in a lot of cliffhangers to keep people interested.

“If you think about it, is it any less realistic than no one recognizing Superman when he puts on a pair of glasses?” she asked with a grin.

“Our teacher didn’t tell us any of that,” Elizabeth said with a sigh. “It makes much more sense after what you’ve told me.”

“Well, high school teachers have to teach a broader range of their subjects, and they can’t be experts on everything. My class was taught by a professor whose specialty was Victorian literature. But don’t complain too much. I had to read “The Old Man and the Sea” in high school. Hemingway wrote beautifully, but it still was a whole book about a man trying to catch a fish,” Susan said, making an exaggerated eye roll.

“Okay. Let me get the serious stuff out of the way,” Susan said. “I’m recording this. No one but the people I work with will see it, so is that all right?”

“I guess so.”

“Can you tell me what happened yesterday?” Susan gently asked.

“The same thing that happens every couple of weeks,” the girl said bitterly. “My sister Patricia decided to get her jollies by seeing how much trouble she could get me into. I was making dinner. I guess she was watching for my mother to get home because she pushed over a lamp in the sitting room when she heard her key in the garage door.

“Normal people call it a ‘living room’ but my mother insists we call it the ‘sitting room’.

“Anyway, like an idiot I ran into the room to see what the noise was. When Patricia smirked at me and started singing, ‘You’re gonna get it,’ I stopped thinking and pushed her.

“She flopped and started screaming in pain like a Brazilian soccer player just as my mother came into the room.”

Susan laughed and stopped herself. “Sorry. But that was a funny and clever image you created. I played soccer in high school and still follow it. Do you play?”

“No,” Elizabeth answered. “I’m not allowed to. My parents say I should focus on school and ‘helping’ around the house.” Susan could hear quotation marks around the word “helping”.

“So I clean the house and make dinner when I get home from school. On weekends while my father is playing golf and my mother is taking my sister to horse riding lessons or shopping or wherever, I do the laundry and vacuum and dust. Once in a while I get a chance to watch soccer if no one’s there. If they’re home I use whatever time I have left over to study. I get in trouble if I don’t do well in school.”

“Trouble?” Susan asked.

Elizabeth turned her head away and said, “If I get a ‘B’ on my report card I get a spanking. If I get a ‘C’ I get the paddle.”

“Are spankings common in your house?” Susan asked.

“For me,” Elizabeth spat. “Princess Patricia is never spanked and hardly ever yelled at. The only thing Patricia does that makes them mad is if she acts ‘common’.” Again, Susan could hear the quotation marks in Elizabeth’s voice.

“The thing is, it wasn’t always this way,” Elizabeth continued. “The Prescotts treated me like a daughter after they adopted me from Guatemala. They even flew down to pick me up and bring me to the U.S. My birth mother was killed when I was four and I was picked up by an American adoption agency.

“I looked the paperwork for my adoption. I told my father it was for a school assignment and he gave it to me. The adoption agency’s website shows nothing but beautiful children. They charge, like, $30 thousand for an adoption, not counting the cost of the parents flying down there.

“But It got me here,” Elizabeth said, shrugging as best she could while lying face down.

“I’ve overheard them talking over the years when they didn’t know I was listening and put things together,” She continued. “They adopted me because they wanted the image of a family more than they actually wanted kids. They’d been trying to have a baby but couldn’t. Two years after I was adopted, my mother became pregnant after all.

“After Patricia came along and they started treating me more like a servant than a daughter and ignoring me as long as I got my chores done right.

“I heard them talking about sending me back before their ‘real’ daughter was born. But they decided it would cause too many embarrassing questions.

“Anyway, when Patricia was born I was demoted from daughter to maid. Patricia would get wonderful toys at Christmas and I got school clothes. Patricia gets all sorts of praise and I get ignored, if I’m lucky.

“But it’s only for another 467 days,” Elizabeth said cheerfully. “I have my classes planned out so I can graduate in three and a half years. My birthday’s in November so I’ll be 18 and the day after the semester ends I’ll join the army and they’ll be out of my life forever.”

“I have two brothers and a sister and my parents weren’t rich,” Susan said. “So I joined the Air Force after high school to help me pay for college. Do you know what kind of career you want?”

“I don’t know. I can’t even watch TV like other kids unless no one else is around. Patricia has a TV in her room, but if I’m watching the TV downstairs she’ll come in and change the channel to something she wants. I don’t dare say anything.

“So I don’t really know what’s out there.”

“Maybe I’m biased,” Susan said, “but the Air Force has a lot of jobs that can turn into civilian careers. I entered law enforcement because that’s where they assigned me after their assessment exam said I would be good at it. I’d never even considered law enforcement before that. I even was able to take college classes while I was serving. Anyway, it’s something to think about...

“I’ll leave a card and you can call me if you want to. But right now what I really need to talk about is yesterday. What happened after your mother came into the living room?” Susan asked.

“Like I said, my sister was laying on the floor pretending to cry and the lamp was broken. I learned a long time ago that if I say to my mother that I didn’t do something, even if I didn’t, she says I’m lying and I get it worse. So I didn’t say anything.

“I don’t really think the Prescotts spank me because they like causing me pain. They usually aren’t even that mad when they do. It’s more like they’re annoyed because they have to pay attention to me at all. Another thing I overheard them saying is that they think they have to do it because people where I come from are naturally violent so it’s the only thing we understand,” Elizabeth said and sighed.

“This time she was mad, though. I’d hurt her precious, perfect princess. She grabbed me by my arm and pulled me upstairs to my room. Patricia immediately stopped crying and followed to watch. My mother ordered me to take off my pants and underwear and told Patricia to hand her the wooden hairbrush that stays on the top of my dresser as ‘a reminder’.

“A few years ago I got too big for her to hold me on her lap while she spanked me. My bed is the same one I’ve had since I was eight, and it’s too low for her if I lay over the side. So I’m supposed to kneel on the bed when they punish me.

“Like I said, normally spanking me is just something she does. I get hit 20 or thirty times with the hairbrush, enough that I’m crying hard. But this time she was mad and she just kept hitting my bottom and working down the backs of my legs, much longer than ever before. I don’t know how many times.

“I’ve learned that counting just makes me focus more on the pain. That’s something I looked up -- techniques for handling pain. I had to do it in the library because they monitor my computer use. They probably think this ‘chica’ will try to hook up with a drug gang.

“Anyway, some of the techniques I read about work better than others. Relaxing my body helps a little. Focusing on another part of my body that doesn’t hurt, like my lungs as they breathe really helps. Sending my mind to a ‘happy place’ helps. For a while now my ‘happy place’ has been picturing me walking out their door for the last time and giving all of them the finger as I go,” she added with a wry smile.

“But like I said, they usually keep hitting me until I’m crying hard, so I kind of have to let the pain flow though me, but not hold onto it. Then once I’m crying I can go to my ‘happy place’.”

Elizabeth shook her head and sighed. “You probably think I’m a flake.”

“Not at all!” Susan insisted. “Part of basic training in all branches of the military includes something called ‘SERE’ -- Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. It’s training for how to avoid being captured by the enemy and how to survive if you are. What we got in ‘Basic’ was just ... well, the basics. Front line troops get more SERE training and the Special Forces who are most likely to get captured get even more.

“I’m actually really impressed that you figured out so much of it on your own. But it really makes me both sad and mad you’ve had to,” she admitted.

Susan took a deep breath and asked, “So what happened next?”

“Eventually the blows got slower and weaker until she stopped, like her arm got tired and she couldn’t swing anymore.

“I stayed in place, crying and waiting for her to tell me she was done because she starts hitting me again if I move before she says I can. Finally she said I should put on my nightshirt and wait in my room until after supper when my father would deal with me. That meant I would be getting the paddle, too.

“I saw the boxes in the trash next morning, so I know that they had dinner delivered. My mother hasn’t made a dinner in, like, two years,” Elizabeth added.

“I stayed in my room like I was told and did my homework. I had to sit on a couple pillows to work at my desk,” she said ruefully. “When my homework was done I lay on my stomach and tried reading ahead. But mostly I stared at the page and thought about how unfair everything was. That’s why I screwed up.

“I’ve done a lot of reading about psychology on my own, too. I started a when I was in seventh grade when I started wondering whether I should just kill myself.”

Elizabeth wasn’t certain whether she was trying to shock the pretty deputy or if she just needed to reveal some of the embarrassing secrets she’d kept inside for so long. After all, she was learning about the spankings Elizabeth still received on a regular basis. That was something she’d tried hard to keep hidden from all the other kids at school. And Elizabeth had disclosed her deepest secret -- what she called her “escape plan”.

“Don’t worry,” she hastily added. “I took a test I found in a book in the library. I scored only two out of ten for being at risk for committing suicide. Apparently almost everyone wonders sometimes whether it wouldn’t be easier just to give up and end it all.

“I’m not completely sane, though,” she said with a chuckle that she intentionally morphed into a maniacal cackle. “I admit I’ve fantasized about killing my parents and my sister, usually in their sleep with a baseball bat. But from what I read, I don’t need to be locked away unless I actually try to get a baseball bat.

“So like I said, I’ve been reading about psychology. And I learned about teenagers lacking impulse control and not being able to recognize consequences because the front parts of our brains aren’t completely grown yet.

“And that’s what I happened when my father came in my room after dinner. I’d been lying there and going around and around in my head about the unfairness of everything.

“My father likes to sound all lawyerly, like he’s arguing a case in the Supreme Court, or something. But he’s never even been in a courtroom. He just does the paperwork so the company he works for can buy properties and then can sell them once they put buildings on them.

“I’m sitting on the edge of the bed in my nightshirt just like I’m supposed to and my butt is still burning. Then he comes in an asks, ‘Do you understand why you’re being punished?’” Elizabeth said, lowering the pitch of her voice to sound like her father.

“But this time I stupidly say, ‘No, sir.’

“He actually started with his usual stuff about how the punishment is for my own good and they’re only trying to make me a better person before he realized I wasn’t following the script.

“‘What did you say?’” Elizabeth continued, imitating her father.

“I told him that I hadn’t broken the lamp and that I’d pushed Patricia so lightly that it wouldn’t have killed a mosquito.

“‘Why didn’t you tell your mother this?’ he asked.

“I told him that I’d leaned years ago that saying I didn’t do something only got punished worse, even if it was true.

“‘But I don’t want to lie anymore,’ I said.

“‘Why would your mother think you were responsible for breaking the lamp?’ he asked me.

“I told him it was because she always believed that Patricia could do no wrong and I couldn’t do anything right. I told him that I was washing vegetables for dinner when I heard the noise in the sitting room. I told him the unwashed vegetables should still be on the kitchen counter and that the washed vegetables should be in a colander in the sink. I told him that I was drying my hands on a dish towel when I went into the sitting room. I pointed to it laying across the clothes hamper in the corner. And I told him how Patricia stopped crying and appeared miraculously healed as soon as my mother started pulling me upstairs.

“He stood there looking at me for quite a while. I couldn’t tell from his face what he was thinking. That’s a lawyer thing too, I guess.

“Finally he said, ‘I’m going to talk to your mother.’

“For a few minutes I thought that, just maybe, my life would get better. Then I heard my mother yelling loud enough for me to hear it upstairs. There was a pause, and then more yelling. Another pause, and it sounded like she was screeching.”

She sighed.

“I heard my father coming up the steps. I’m still sitting on my bed wearing just my nightshirt. I could see on his face that I was going to get it anyway and that he was ... just a little ... sorry about it. But he wasn’t going to stand up to my mother.

“He said, ‘We still have to address you attacking your sister. That’s never acceptable.’

“That’s when that lack of impulse control came in. I thought I was saying in my head, ‘Wimp.’ But I guess I said it out loud.

“His face got really angry and he said, ‘Get the paddle and get in position. I’ll be right back.’

“The paddle is in my room as another ‘reminder’. But it hangs in my closet so they don’t have to explain it if someone ever sees it. Since I’m so ... intimately acquainted with it, I measured it one day. It’s 23 inches long, five and a half inches wide and five-eighths of an inch thick, and it weighs 1 pound 11 ounces.

“The hairbrush really stings and turns my bottom red. The stinging usually goes away overnight and the redness fades in a day. The paddle really smacks my bottom and hurts a lot worse. I still feel it the next day and sometimes the day after if he hits me really hard with it. And it leaves bruises that sometimes take three or four days to go away.