Catie Disabato - The Ghost Network

Ali asked Nix to confess Molly’s endgame. If she didn’t, Ali warned, something violent would happen to her. Nix told Ali she didn’t know what Ali was talking about. Ali asked Nix to tell her where she had hidden Molly Metropolis’s notebook. Nix refused to answer. So, Peaches pulled a Swiss Army knife out of her pocket and cut Nix’s left pinkie and ring finger at the root, nearly severing the digits from her hand.

“For a second, I didn’t feel anything. Then it hurt so much I couldn’t stop screaming,” Nix said. “I could feel my heartbeat in my hand and with every pulse more blood came out. I was so scared, and Peaches, she was laughing at me.”

Casares had been an EMT before interning at SDFC and joining the New Society. He crudely anaesthetized Nix and sewed her fingers back together. He bandaged the cut on her chin. He gave her a Vicodin and made her a bed with pillows and couch cushions in the bathtub. Nix fell asleep or passed out. Casares spent several hours in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet, reading The Clash of Kings , making sure Nix didn’t start bleeding again, while Peaches slept in the bed in the next room.

In the early morning, around 5 a.m., Peaches walked into the bathroom, waking Nix in the process. She took Casares into the bedroom. Nix heard the two of them have sex. They didn’t make an effort to keep quiet and at one point, Peaches moved them from the bed to the wall the bedroom and bathroom shared. She made sure Nix could hear the sound of each and every thrust.

I saw Nix happy once during our interviews, while she was describing her escape.

“Can you tell me what happened that afternoon?” I asked.

Nix giggled. “I’m such a bad ass.”

Ali and Peaches left Nix alone during her second day of captivity at the Michiana house. She listened through the wall to the change of guards and peeked through the door when they opened it to give her food and clean clothes. She determined that she had a rotating set of guards, only one at any given time, armed with a small pistol that they passed to each other when their shift ended, like relay runners passing a baton. She saw one reading when Casares opened the door to give her lunch. She heard one take a phone call from his mother in the middle of the afternoon.

The next day, recalling how effective Taer had been with the dictionary during the break-in, Nix armed herself with the heavy porcelain lid from the back of the toilet. She waited until Casares brought her lunch, a little after noon. When he opened the door, she swung the toilet lid at his face, knocking him out cold and breaking his jaw and three of his teeth. The force of the blow reverberated through the toilet lid back into Nix’s arms, which went slightly numb with shock. Her hurt fingers throbbed. She let go of the lid with her left hand, but didn’t drop her weapon.

The guard, a nineteen-year-old girl named Andrea Stone, fumbled with the safety on the gun. Nix ran out of the bathroom and swung the lid at Stone as well, hitting her on the side of the head, though using only one arm, she couldn’t hit Stone with full force — lucky for her. Nix might’ve caused brain damage if she had hit Stone as hard as she could. Stone fell to the ground, bleeding and stunned. Nix dropped the toilet lid, grabbed the gun, and ran to the stairs, making a beeline for the front door. Peaches was waiting for her in the foyer.

Peaches stood in front of the door, her arms spread out like a human shield. From the top of the staircase, Nix pointed the gun at Peaches and told her to move. When Peaches refused, Nix aimed for the stomach and fired; she missed, but hit Peaches in the shoulder. The bullet went all the way through her muscle and the wood door, finally stopping somewhere in the asphalt street. Peaches collapsed, while the young members of the New Society screamed and crowded around her, blocking the front door. Nix pointed her gun at everyone to keep them away and ran to the back of the house, through the kitchen, looking for another door. She burst out of the house.

Nix ran. She didn’t have shoes or a coat but she ran anyway, as far and as fast as she could, into the maze of streets surrounding the New Society’s Michiana house. She threw the gun into a bush. It took her an hour to find her way out of the lakeside area, but none of the New Society members pursued her. She was lucky she was kidnapped in April; if there had been snow on the ground, her feet would have frozen before she could find her way to the main road.

Nix went into the first business she saw, a diner, and told the waitress she had escaped from an abusive boyfriend and needed to call her sister in Chicago. She couldn’t remember Taer’s cell phone number off the top of her head and had to look it up in her e-mail account using the waitress’s iPhone.

Half an hour later, Berliner and Taer arrived at the Michiana diner, where Nix was drinking coffee, eating pie, and listening to the waitress’s own harrowing tales of bad men. Taer almost couldn’t look at Nix, with the ominous bandages on her chin and around her fingers, the fresh bruises on her elbows from banging into the side of the tub while she slept, the bruises forming on the inside of her fingers where she’d gripped the toilet lid. ‡As the Civil War histo rian Fredrick Doyle wrote, “Young soldiers don’t truly believe in the cruelty of war until they see their first casualty.” §In a burst of public emotion, Taer sobbed. She cried so deeply she choked, while Nix hugged her.

Taer pulled herself together. She awkwardly pulled off her puffy coat and handed it to Nix. Nix was moved by both the crying and the gesture. She took the coat from Taer. Even though it didn’t fit her properly, Nix put it on.

Berliner drove Nix to the nearest hospital, a small emergency-care facility called Franciscan ExpressCare. An attending physician redid Casares’s sutures and prescribed more Vicodin. On the long drive back to Chicago, Taer sat with Nix in the backseat. She put Nix’s head in her lap and ran her fingers through her hair, lightly massaging her scalp and gently working out all the tangles and knots. They didn’t speak. Nix wouldn’t discuss her own experience of the kidnapping while she was still fleeing from it.

Back at the New Situationist headquarters, Taer ran Nix a bath. She helped her undress, then sat next to the tub with her fingertips in the water while Nix soaked and cried a little. After the bath water went cold, they went to bed together and slept.

Nix refused to get out of bed the next day. She curled up in a ball, under a heavy comforter. Though she wouldn’t let Taer get into the cocoon with her, Taer could see she was shuddering from the way the comforter shook. Nix refused to consume anything except water and more Vicodin for her aching fingers. Taking Vicodin on an empty stomach made her nauseated. Berliner visited the bedroom of the apartment Taer and Nix had claimed and spoke softly to Nix about the strength of the steel door.

“But they know where we are,” Nix said.

Berliner assured her that Ali, Peaches, and their New Society couldn’t get through the door. Nix didn’t speak to him again that day.

Taer stayed with Nix all morning and afternoon, writing in her journal, reading about the Situationists, and begging Nix to eat the Kraft Easy Mac she had found in Berliner’s room.

Nix didn’t move or respond until early evening; she was suddenly starving. Taer made her the microwavable macaroni and cheese, which tasted like plastic. Nix threw it all up, perhaps because of the Vicodin, or anxiety, or her body rejecting the chemical mess that flavored the Easy Mac. Taer held her hair as she vomited, then wrapped her arms around Nix’s shoulders while she sat on the bathroom floor, shaking.

Meanwhile, Berliner took the rental car with Michigan plates out for one last spin. He stopped at a Walgreen’s and cobbled together a gift basket of Virginia Slims, M&Ms, and seven different shades of red nail polish. Then he drove to the Dwight Correctional Center. On the way, he received a call from Davis’s father, informing him of her suicide. By the time Berliner reached the wide plastic table where he met Kraus during visitation hours, he was already shaking and crying. He buried his head in the crook of one arm and sobbed into the table, with his other arm stretched toward Kraus. The guards permitted her to hold his hand, so she comforted him that way.