Chapter 1

It had been a really rough day. The crying children and screaming parents hadn't been the worst of it. You get that at little league games and parent/teacher conferences all the time. What had made this particular day so rough was the deafening silence. It was accompanied by the kind of catatonic listlessness that could suck the love right out of you as you helplessly watched a young girl teeter on the brink between a life-long series of nightmares and fears or of taking the beginning steps in the long process of mental recovery. That is, if you can call what a woman's life becomes after being on the receiving end of a brutal sexual assault a 'recovery.' I had looked helplessly into vacant eyes that just yesterday had been full of sparkle and hope and more than a touch of mischief, now dulled without a glimmer of life or vitality.

I lay sleepless in bed with Sally, my girlfriend of about 18 months after that seemingly endless night at the hospital, of filling out medical forms, insurance forms, police forms, and so on. Everybody wanted details. I shuddered to think of all the closet perverts who would have access to the lurid details of that gruesome incident. I wondered which of those innocent records would turn up later to continue to ruin her life. Having exhausted all the sheep I could count, I masochistically reviewed the events of the past 12 or so hours as I tried to fall asleep.

Janey had tried to slip into the house unnoticed, home early from her date. She was my girlfriend's daughter and had been her 15th birthday. Sally had reluctantly agreed to let her 'baby' go on her first real date, as her rule had always been no 'couple' dates until Janey was 16 years old. This time there would be no other couple, no chaperones; just the two kids. There would be others at the party, and then, well, whatever. Sally should have listened to her fears. The date had been a disaster.

We were waiting up for Janey to get home. We, Sally, actually, had a surprise birthday gift to give her, along with a cake and a candle. I benefited from this special occasion as well, as I got to spend the night with Sally, an unusual liberty for a weekday. Even after 18 months of serious dating, Sally still held me somewhat at arm's length and I normally only saw Janey when our weekend schedules collided at the house. Janey was an active teenager in her first year of High School, popular, pretty, and vivacious. It seemed every second of her life was a flurry of activity, so she was gone much of the time. It seemed I rarely saw her.

I sometimes thought that if it weren't for Sally's strong sexual needs, and her own recognition of them, she wouldn't have let anyone - much less me - into her life at all. Don't get me wrong. She was loving, sensual, caring, and, honestly, the best lover I could ever want. Certainly, she was by far the best woman I had ever had the pleasure of loving. Nothing was out of bounds in regards to sex and things were heading towards a more permanent arrangement. At least, I sincerely hoped so.

But there was always a wall that kept me from getting too close or too comfortable; a barrier I couldn't get through, over or around. Sally, although she admitted it was there, simply wouldn't discuss it. The two weeks of gentle, but firm celibacy that were sure to follow each time I brought it up, with the threat of a permanently celibate status if I ever brought it up again, let me know in no uncertain terms that the matter was off limits. I was left with the assumption that someone, probably a man, had hurt her terribly. I was pretty sure I was in the clear, but I was definitely paying the price for the bastard's deed.

Hearing the front door open and quietly close, and the 'beep beep' of the alarm being set, we sneaked down the hall bearing our gifts, cake and a lighted candle. We sprang into the teenager's darkened bedroom with shouts of 'Surprise!' The strained melody of an off-key duet of 'Happy Birthday to You' died out as we both saw her at the same instant. Janey was curled in a tiny ball on the floor at the foot of her bed.

I caught the wrapped gift, the cake and the candle that were tossed in my general direction as Sally moved instinctively to hold her daughter. Janey was covered in blood, mostly from the stomach down, the sticky red streaks thicker on the inside of her legs. The bodice of her pretty new party dress was missing a couple of buttons, and the one sleeve I could see was torn. Her birthday dress was ruined.

I was already headed down the hall for the telephone when I heard Sally's crisp 'Call 9-1-1.' I had always admired her for her ability to stay calm in a crisis. Unlike most women I had known, she didn't fall apart. She stayed calm, took charge, assessed the situation, made the hard decisions and never doubted them. Even afterwards when most people play the 'What if' game, she wouldn't doubt the decisions she had made during a crisis. I knew, and more importantly, Janey knew, that Sally would take care of Janey now.

Several things went through my head as to what type of accident could have caused her injuries. Call me innocent, ignorant or naïve, but a traumatic rape was not even on my list of possibilities. It just didn't enter my mind. It is not something I would do under any circumstances, and I guess I just expected other civilized men to behave in a similar manner towards women. Especially the women I loved.

Sally must have known how I would react to the news she was about to break, as she waited to tell me until we were alone in one of those God- awful family rooms they have at hospitals with no windows and only one door. She had found me sitting in those horribly uncomfortable chairs designed to increase patient traffic at chiropractic offices. She stood with her back to the only exit, blocking me in the room. I looked up at her, hoping she was going to rescue me from the mindless fare of cable network news and 5 year old magazines. I had listened through three or four repetitions of the tops news stories of the day. Today's hot news was the annual governor's congress in Washington, D.C. and their concern over the recent sharp rise in missing teenagers, mostly girls, apparently runaways. From the way they reported it, it was a nationwide epidemic.

I had been brutally stunned as Sally quietly informed me that the police were sending over a specialist in sexual assaults to talk with Janey and us about the attack. Janey had been raped. She told me later that my reaction had severely frightened her. She grudgingly admitted that she had underestimated the depth and the strength of my feelings. She knew I cared about Janey and that I would be upset. She had been unprepared for my reaction. I was livid, horrified. It was extremely personal. Even more, I was in a murderous rage I couldn't and didn't want to shake off.

I now understood justifiable homicide. If I am ever honored to be selected for a jury trial of a parent who had killed or maimed the person who had injured their child, I will vote not to convict, but to award a Medal of Honor to that parent.

Funny thing, I didn't see red when I had heard what had happened to Janey. I saw nothing. I felt nothing. It was simply as if a switch had been flipped and the whole world had just stopped existing. My only thought was to avenge that innocent little girl's pain. It was the first time Sally had seen me cry, but I don't remember. I'll take her word for it.

Sally calmly continued to say that the hospital staff was surprised that most of the blood on Janey had not been her own, but apparently was the attacker's. Janey had a few ugly bruises, and had some bleeding from abrasions in and around her vaginal area. She had been brutally penetrated - their exact words - but there was no semen present. Both the OB/GYN and the emergency physician thought she would heal in time; physically, anyway.

Seeing my blank, uncomprehending stare and my tight grip on the arms of the chair, she told me what she had been able to put together of the events that had transpired on her daughter's birthday.

Janey's date, Steven, was a big hotshot football player a couple of years older than Janey. They had met because he was a star player and she was a cheerleader. As a freshman, she was the youngest girl on the squad by two years. She was smart, talented and friendly to everyone, not to mention beautiful. From the first day of school, Janey had been besieged with requests for dates, which she had graciously turned down. She knew her Mom's rule.

Although she had to refuse to go on the dates, Janey had that gracious ability to make each of her suitors feel glad just to know her, even after being turned down for a date. She somehow sensed the emotional trauma a rejection could cause a teenage male ego and she let them know that she was the one who was privileged to have been asked out. The guys she turned down liked her more after than before. She was developing quite a following for a freshman. She was levelheaded about the attention; not what you would call boy-crazy, although there were some boys that made her heart beat a just little faster when they called the house. However, all her other girlfriends were seriously infected with that peculiar teenage disease, and Janey sort of went along.

Peer pressure is a terrible force in a teen's life, and, because of her status as a cheerleader, Janey was 'expected' to date, among other things, as we were to discover shortly. When Steven asked her out for a special birthday party in her honor, she felt not only honored, but also somewhat obligated to ask her Mom for permission to go. She and her Mom had a long-standing agreement that Janey would not date 'solo' until she was 16, but her persistence wore down Sally's resistance. She was allowed to go this one time, with the explicit understanding that this was an exception, a one-time only deal.

The date had started innocently. It was a party, supposedly in her honor at the head cheerleader's home, whose parents were conveniently 'out.' The punch, later discovered to be spiked, had flowed freely. It was only because of Janey's nervousness that she had only had one glass. Steven had quite a few, as had the rest of the revelers.

Because it was a school night, curfew for Janey was 11:00 p.m. and they left the party about 9:00. Steven had driven to a popular make-out spot, deserted because it was a weekday, and had tried to kiss her. At first she was flattered, thrilled that the popular older boy she admired was paying her all this attention. However, when he made a rough grab at her breasts, bruising the tender flesh and drunkenly tearing her sleeve, she told him to stop and that she wanted to go home. Now! Janey was frightened, but not stupid, and several things about the evening just didn't add up. Suddenly realizing the whole evening had been a sham to get her alone with this boy-turned-animal added to the guilt she felt afterward.

Surprisingly, the boy had backed off right away, started the car and left the make-out area. She relaxed just a bit, thinking she may have been wrong about him and the odd events at the party. Janey always thought the best about people and she gave him the benefit of the doubt. The damage to her dress was minimal and no one would see her breasts. She was already beginning to put this evening behind her.

Janey and her Mom live out in the country a ways, close enough to be convenient, far enough away to be left alone by all but the most determined door-to-door salesmen. On the road to the house, just before the turnoff into the long driveway, there is a dark stretch of road that parallels the river. All along this stretch there are private, isolated spots where you can pull just a few feet off the road, and your car is all but hidden from passersby. Steven pulled into one of those suddenly, and turned to his surprised passenger.

He hadn't even waited for her to resist before he slapped her several times across the face. Whether the hard blows stunned her or knocked her out wasn't clear. The next thing she remembered, she was flat on her back on the ground next to the car with her party dress bunched up under her armpits. Her bra had been pulled down around her waist, the straps ripped off. The force of pulling it down had dug the straps deeply into her shoulders before the straps had snapped, bruising the tender skin.

She felt pain. Steven was mauling and biting her tits, causing terrible pains to shoot from the sensitive organs. There was a particularly sharp rock poking her in her left shoulder blade and another one right in the small of her back. With his additional 240 pounds pressing down on top of her, the rocks were really digging in.