Chapter 21

As Diane Smith stripped — there really wasn’t much for her to take off — a physical horror was revealed. Not only were her breasts bruised and bleeding, but she had been pierced and ringed in her nipples and her clitoral hood. Moreover, the rings in her nipples appeared to be more than triple the thickness of Mother’s and were made of stainless steel rather than gold. They were almost as thick as her small nipples which were stretched laterally almost to the breaking point to hold them.

Then we began to learn the full horror of her story.

It had begun over a year earlier. She had been walking in a park and was jumped from behind. The first thing her assailant did was to remove her glasses. Then he proceeded to rape her. “There was one odd thing,” Diane reported. “His voice sounded strange — sort of a Darth Vader sound. And it’s been that way ever since. But he’s the only one—”

“Only one?” Mother interjected. “There are more?”

“Now there are three of them. Or there were this morning, and for several episodes in the recent past.” The girl again broke down in tears and cried, “This is my third teaching job in just over a year. I’ve been trying to get away, but it’s no use. This time they found me just a couple of days after I started teaching here.”

Mother and Dad exchanged knowing looks. I don’t know what they were thinking of, but my first thought was one of the rapists was someone in the administration of her first school or was connected to one of them. Any subsequent school district would check her references, and the administrators of the first school would immediately learn where she was. Moreover, it might explain the voice disguise, suggesting that she might recognize the attacker’s normal speaking voice.

“What happened this morning?” Kris asked softly.

“I got a phone call after midnight ordering to be in front of my place in ten minutes without my glasses on. They came by in a car and took me away.”

“Do you know where you went?” Kris probed.

“I have no ... Yes! Yes, I do. I heard one say that we had just crossed the state line into Connecticut.”

Kris’s eyes widened and she looked at Dad. “The Mann Act — transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes — is still in force, isn’t it, Dad?”

“It sure is. And so is the Lindbergh Act,” Dad replied. “My, my! Our felons are on their way to very long stays with room and board supplied by the taxpayers.”

“Then what happened?” Kris asked gently.

“They took me to some house. There they had a harness suspended from the ceiling they put me in. It enabled one to fuck my cunt while a second fucked my asshole and the third fucked my throat...” She suddenly looked startled and exclaimed, “Oh, my God! My language... !”

“We’ve heard the words before,” Kris said gently. “And I may have used one or two myself.”

Again Diane Smith broke down in tears. She huddled in a ball on the sofa crying her eyes out. Mom went to take her in her arms, but then stopped. She stripped off her clothing and then gently took the girl into her arms. Very gently she moved her pierced nipples over the girl’s.

Diane’s eyes widened. “You’re pierced, too!”

“Mmm hmm,” Mom murmured. Then she used her tongue stud to very gently lick the tortured girl’s nipple.

“That feels heavenly!” Diane cried. “But what is it?”

“It’s this,” Mom replied sticking out her tongue while still caressing the girl all over, displaying her tongue stud.

“Then what happened?” Kris asked.

“After they had all switched places and I had taken them all three ways, it really got bad. It’s been getting worse every time. At first, they just fucked me, but now that’s just the appetizer...” She shook her head and interrupted herself. “I should apologize for my language, I suppose, but that’s what they make me do. I’ll plead, ‘Please fuck my dirty asshole! It needs a hard cock.’ But that’s to avoid something worse...

“Worse?” Mom asked softly.

“Worse,” Diane repeated. “This morning I pleaded with them to allow me to break my wrist.”

“Why?”

“They were threatening to mutilate me. They were going to cut off my ears and nose ... And that was just for starters.”

“My God!” Kris gasped.

“Then what happened?” Mom prodded.

“I put my arm across two pieces of wood and smashed my wrist with one of those hard-rubber hammers.”

“And then they took you home?” Kris asked hopefully.

“Hah!” Diane said bitterly without a trace of humor. “Then they made me pull my tits out with the nipple rings while they beat on them with anything they could find. And I had to thank them after every stroke, too!” The girl held up her hands and it was easy to see where they had been struck in the process.

She shook her head sadly and added, “And believe me, it’s no fun trying to pull on anything with a broken wrist!”

“This all relates to your eyesight ... Or lack of it,” Mom said. “Can’t your sight be fixed? They’re doing wonderful things with lasers these days.”

“As a matter of fact, an ophthalmologist claims my sight could be 20/20, but...”

“But what?” Dad asked.

“My insurance company won’t pay for it,” the girl replied. “Even though my sight is something worse than 20/500, it’s correctable to 20/20 with glasses, so that’s the way it is. And there’s no way I could pay for a laser treatment myself.”

“Cameron?” Mom asked, looking at me very pointedly.

“As soon as it can be scheduled,” I promised.

I had noticed that the insides of her thighs seemed smeared with what appeared to be semen. “Is that what I think it is?” I asked her, pointing to her crotch.

“If you think it’s cum, you’re right,” she agreed. “There are two reasons it’s there: First, they told me not to wash it off. They said they would know, and given all they know about me I wouldn’t bet they wouldn’t. Second, when they finally let me go, I only had time to get to the hospital to have my wrist set and then get to school.”

“Have you eaten anything today?” Mother asked, acting motherly.

Diane just shook her head.

Kris jumped up from her chair and raced toward the kitchen.

“Cam,” Dad asked, “have the lights been installed on the helipad yet?”

“They were set up a couple of weeks ago,” I replied. Having tired of the horrors of the FDR Drive, we had switched from driving to using a chartered helicopter. And since we took in an occasional concert or show, we needed night-operations capability.

“Then whistle up a chopper. We’ve got to get this girl to Presbyterian Hospital as soon as possible.”

“Bill, don’t you know the local DA pretty well?” Mom asked.

“Well,” Dad replied with a grin, “aside from giving him his first job out of law school and then thousands in campaign contributions, we do have a nodding acquaintance. Yes.”

Then Dad asked me, “You’re in tight with Kroll Associates, aren’t you? Didn’t they help you out on that Sylvia Stewart thing?” When I agreed they had, he continued, “Get them on this right now! For starters, have them put a tap on Diane’s phone. The events last evening began with a phone call, so they’re accustomed to calling her.”

Mom, Dad and I joined Diane and Kris in the kitchen and sat around the table while Diane ate.

While she was eating, Mom asked, “When were you pierced?”

“A few weeks ago,” the girl replied. “I guess I have a high tolerance for pain ... Or at least I do now.” She paused and then continued, “Piercing my nipples with holes large enough for these rings was a real bitch!”

Mother went pale as she heard Diane’s words. “You ... you pierced... yourself?”

“It was similar to last night,” the girl replied. Then she added thoughtfully, “In fact, I guess that was the beginning of real mental torture: Forcing me to beg to do things to myself to prevent them from doing something even worse to me ... Oh, shit!”

Instantly she jumped up from the table and her eyes darted around the room. In a moment she was at the kitchen sink vomiting up everything she had just eaten. Mom and Kris rushed to stand beside her and hold her gently while her stomach was convulsing. Then she just sagged over and her head was virtually in the sink.

Very gently, Mom and Kris lifted her up. Kris helped her back to her seat while Mom ran the garbage disposer and cleaned out the sink with a hot-water spray.

Finally Diane was able to talk. “I guess I forgot that after whipping my tits, they took turns punching me in the belly and abdomen as hard as they could. I had to stand there, thank them for each punch, and tell them how good it felt to feel a fist hit my backbone from in front!”

Mom held her in her arms gently, and moved a hand over her forehead. To our surprise, her hair moved. Only then did we realize Diane was wearing a wig. Mom removed it and we saw that her hair was in a very short crewcut.

“I had to thank them for letting me shave every speck of hair from my body, too,” the girl said.

Just then we heard the sounds of an approaching chopper in its landing approach. Mom and Kris helped Diane back into her sloppy clothes and we were off.

Later, Diane was in a private room in Harkness Pavilion. There were uniformed armed guards from Kroll right outside, and an armed female agent in the room with us. We had just been joined by a forensic pathologist who had just completed his tests.

“First of all, everything we found exactly corroborates what Miss Smith has told us. For example, the break in the arm is perfectly consistent with what a hammer would do to the left wrist while being wielded by the right hand. And,” he added with a small humorless smile, “we have semen samples from three different men. They’re being analyzed right now. Their results would provide positive identification of the men involved.”

Diane stayed in the hospital recuperating for a couple of days. Then she was given the laser treatment to correct her eyesight. Never will I forget the look of joy on her face when she exclaimed, “I can see!”

Following Kroll’s advice and our own inclination, Diane returned to our house in the compound without going near her own place. Since it was close to the end of school for the summer, Mother arranged for a medical leave of absence after privately telling her fellow school-board members what had happened to her.