Karin Slaughter - Kisscut

"You played with her?"

"She would baby-sit us sometimes." Lacey smiled. "She had this game we would play, where we would get all dressed up, and she would take us to the movies and let us stay dressed up."

"That sounds nice."

"She wasn't like that all the time, though." Lacey started to pick at a scab on her leg. "She was mean sometimes. I didn't like her then."

"I don't blame you," Sara told her. "Was she the one who talked about purity?"

Lacey jerked her head up. "Where did you hear that?"

Sara decided to lie. "Mark told me."

Lacey shook her head. "He wouldn't have told you about that."

"Are you sure?"

She shrugged, but Sara could see that she wasn't. "Dot-tie got mad at Jenny because she said she was obsessed with it."

"Obsessed with what?"

"What they do to little girls over there," she mumbled. "Jenny had this report in school last year about Africa, and different tribes. She said that the women were lucky because they belonged to people. To their daddies, or then-husbands, and as long as they did right they were safe."

"Do you believe that, Lacey?"

She ignored Sara's question. "Dottie was mad. Jenny wouldn't drop it. Even when Mama came over and told her to stop." She turned her head to the side. "Mama can usually make people do things that maybe they don't want to do. She's good at that."

Sara took a deep breath, trying to get her head around what the child was revealing. She asked, "So your mom and Dottie told Jenny to stop talking about the mutilation?"

"They were worried she'd get in trouble at school. They had to move before because of it. A guidance counselor came to the house. Dottie said he was gonna call the police because of what Jenny said."

"About girls being cut like that?" Sara asked, wondering at a girl obsessed with self-mutilation.

"Jenny said women over there didn't have to worry about stuff…" She paused, then, "Like, sex stuff. And like what Dottie was doing. They don't have that over there, because children are sacred. Girls are protected."

"Why would Dottie cut her, Lacey?"

"She didn't," Lacey said. "After the Christmas trip, Jenny decided to do it to herself."

Sara shook her head, not accepting this. "There's no way she could have done that to herself, sweetie."

"But, she did," Lacey insisted. "She used a razor, only she started screaming, and Dottie ran upstairs and started screaming, too."

"You were in the house?"

"I was downstairs with Mama because it was payday."

Sara knew she should not have been surprised that these women had a regular payday, but it made sense that they ran their sick little publication like a business. They had been doing this for at least thirteen years, and knew what they were doing.

"Jenny yelled so loud, like she was dying," Lacey said. "And then Mama came back downstairs and told me what Jenny had done to herself."

Sara nodded for her to continue, because that was all she could do.

"They couldn't take her to the hospital, so Mama said the best thing they could do was finish what she started…" Lacey paused. "So, they did."

"Did they anesthetize her?" Sara asked.

"Mama gave her some of her pills so she wouldn't get an infection."

"That's not what I meant," Sara told her. "Did they knock her out before they finished cutting her? Or make her go to sleep so she wouldn't feel it?"

"I think she fell asleep on her own when they started," Lacey provided. "At least, she stopped screaming after a while."

Sara chewed her bottom lip, trying to think of a response. She asked, "What made Jenny do that to herself?"

"Carson and Rory were making fun of her when we went skiing, like she would go with them, and she wouldn't."

"Go with them, meaning sex?"

She nodded. "She said she wouldn't, that they weren't clean, and they got mad at her and called her a whore, and she didn't know why, but when Cooper told her that she had before, this time she went over to their house with Mark." She shrugged. "Mark put something in her drink to make her act funny and not remember."

"Do you know what it was?"

"Something that makes you feel really bad the next day," Lacey answered. "She got sick to her stomach and had to stay home from school for two days, and Dottie said she had the flu."

Rohypnol, Sara thought. The date rape drug.

Lacey continued, "She did what she did, you know. Mark says that drugs just make you do the things you want to do anyway."

"That's not true," Sara told her. "Especially with the drug he probably gave her."

Lacey shrugged as if it didn't matter. "She liked Cooper Barrett anyway."

"Was he on the ski retreat?" Sara asked.

"Him and Rory and Carson," she said. "They slipped notes under the door at the hotel, and when we got up one morning, there was a sign over the room number that said some mean things." She looked up at Sara. "I guess they were the ones who stole stuff out of her locker at school."

"What kinds of stuff?"

"Pictures and things. They tore them up, so she had to stop keeping stuff in there except for books."

"I guess that upset her a lot."

Lacey shrugged, but Sara could tell it had bothered her.

"Why did Mark do that to her, do you think?" Sara asked. "Did Dottie ask him to take her to the party?"

Lacey nodded, and Sara put her hand to her stomach, thinking about Mark pimping out Jenny Weaver to recruit more kids for Dottie.

"Jenny was upset about them bothering her," Lacey said.

"And Dottie told Jenny just to go with them again and that would make them stop, but Jenny didn't want to. She said she wanted to be pure."

"So, that's what made her cut herself between the legs?" Sara asked.

Lacey said, "She started it, but Dottie had to finish it."

Lacey returned to the scab, and Sara watched as she picked it until it started to bleed.

Sara took a tissue out of her pocket and dabbed the blood off the girl's leg. She asked, "Did you ever see what Dottie did to Jenny that night?"

Again, she shook her head. "I wasn't allowed to talk to her anymore."

"Why?"

"Because Mama told me not to," she said, looking back down at the scab as she picked it. "Mama told me if I talked to Jenny, then she would let Dottie do me the same way." She indicated her lap. "Down there."

"Was your mother mad at Jenny, too?"

With her head down, Lacey's voice was muffled. Sara had to strain to hear her say, "Mama said Mark had been with Jenny, and that wasn't right. It made Jenny crazy, and that's why she did that to herself." She paused. "Children should only be with adults, because adults know what they're doing, and kids don't."

"Are you sure your daddy didn't know about this?"

She shook her head again, her lips pressed together in a straight line. "He would've killed Mark."

"Don't you think he would have been mad at your mother, too?" Sara decided to push her a little further. "Don't you think he would have been upset that your mother was pregnant?"

Lacey's head jerked up. "How did you know?"

"I know a lot of things," Sara told the girl.

"It was Mark's fault she got pregnant," Lacey said, and again, Sara was struck by the practiced tone. Obviously, this was something the child had been taught. "Mama told Daddy she couldn't be with him when she got sick again. That's how she knew it was Mark's."

Again, Sara took a deep breath. She doubted very seriously whether or not they would ever know who the real father of that baby was.

"Last Saturday," Sara began. "What happened?"

"Mama went up to Skatie's to find Mark, and she got sick."

"Sick how?" Sara asked.

Lacey looked back down at her leg. "She drove us up there, looking for Mark, and she got real sick and had to go to the bathroom."

Sara tried to remember how tall Grace Patterson was. She was a small woman, and Tessa could have easily mistaken her for a teenage girl.