Sarai Walker - Dietland

The star of the sixth video was a film director of Eastern European origin who was accused of raping a thirteen-year-old extra during the filming of a remake of Lolita a decade earlier. It was consensual sex, the film director had said; in his culture, standards were different. “The girl was a Lolita,” the producer of Lolita had told the police, in defense of his director friend. Over the years, the acclaimed film director was dogged by protests and controversy, but no charges were ever brought, and he went on to win two Academy Awards. After a business lunch at the Chateau Marmont, he vanished.

Six other men with similar profiles were also targeted by the kidnappers, including a county attorney from Texas who’d refused to press charges against a teenage boy who’d molested a little girl because, as he told the girl’s mother, “boys will be boys.” Another target was Hal Jizz, the creator of the pornographic websites RevengeHer, where men retaliated by sharing intimate photos and videos of ex-wives and girlfriends, and VietCunt, which enabled Internet users in North America to access women and girls in Vietnam, who performed whatever actions the user requested via webcam. Someone in Ohio could pay to see a fourteen-year-old girl molested by an old man.

The media dubbed the twelve kidnapped men the “Dirty Dozen.” The director of the FBI appeared on television to plead for their release: “We urge members of the public to come forward with any information that might lead to the rescue of these twelve men,” he said, sounding official, but it was clear his heart wasn’t in it.

The friends and family of the Dirty Dozen stayed mostly clear of the media. The mother of Hal Jizz, when confronted outside Saturday-night bingo at her local American Legion, said she had “no comment” on her son’s kidnapping. When asked if she was proud of her son, the old woman, her hair wiry and gray like a scouring pad, took a drag on her cigarette and turned to the reporter, her black eyes penetrating the camera, “What do you think?” she said. In the parking lot of the Van Nuys accounting firm where he worked by day, employees ran from their cars to the building with file folders held over their faces, trying to outrun reporters.

The FBI director appeared on television again. “These twelve men have not been convicted of anything,” he said, but many commentators thought that was the point. “Kidnapping is a serious crime. If you have any information, please come forward. It’s not easy to transport and hide twelve grown men. Someone out there must know something.”

But no one did, apparently. A week later a skydiving plane went missing from an airfield in Nevada. The twelve men were dropped from the plane into the desert. The coroner estimated that the men, alive and without parachutes, fell from an altitude of at least 10,000 feet. By the time anyone noticed the plane had been stolen, it had crashed into the Sierra Nevada and animals were feasting on the men’s remains. There were no bodies in the plane. Investigators surmised that the kidnappers had parachuted out of it before the crash.

On her cable news show, Cheryl Crane-Murphy said, “As a committed Christian, it pains me to admit that I feel nothing but glee at the death of these pigs. God forgive me.”

The New Baptist Plan, Task Four:

Blind Dates

Nearly a week had passed since the makeover. The bruise on my lip had faded, but the black lines on my body hadn’t. I wasn’t bathing or dressing or eating. I reclined on the sofa, wrapped in a sheet, tortured by shocks and by nausea. The television news was filled with reports of the Dirty Dozen. I watched the scene unfold in the Nevada desert, where the police had erected tents around the bodies to keep the wild animals away.

“Is this the work of Jennifer?” Cheryl Crane-Murphy asked. She was on TV all day now, as if she were covering a war.

The FBI director said, “We have no evidence to suggest this crime is linked to the others, but all avenues of inquiry remain open.”

The news coverage zigzagged across the country. A high-ranking government official in Nevada, who was immersed in a scandal concerning his extramarital affair with a young female intern, spoke to the media: “This is the largest manhunt in Nevada state history,” he said in front of the cameras, drinking from a glass of water every few seconds, his hands unsteady.

“Misbehaving men are feeling the heat,” Cheryl Crane-Murphy commented to her viewers.

“If the perpetrators of this crime are still within the borders of the state, we will find them,” the official said. “I realize these men were not particularly popular figures, but as my father always said, ‘Hate the sin, love the sinner.’” If I hadn’t been feeling so lethargic, I would have groaned.

The coverage then moved to the home of RevengeHer and VietCunt creator Hal Jizz, who had become a familiar face. There’d been a candlelight vigil outside his house. On the front lawn of the Jizz household in the Inland Empire, the votive candles in their glassy red holders had looked like fireflies. A woman named Monika T. was being interviewed. “I went to Hal’s house last night to remind people of the values this country was founded upon,” she said.

“Tying up a girl and [bleep]ing in her face while screaming that she’s a dirty [bleep]ing whore?” Cheryl Crane-Murphy asked.

“It’s called freedom of speech, Cheryl. It’s in the Constitution,” Monika T. said.

In Los Angeles, the mother of Luz Ayala, the girl who’d jumped in front of the train, was about to appear in a televised press conference. Soledad Ayala had been blamed for her daughter’s rape, for being away in Afghanistan when it happened. She stepped forward to the podium now. Her head was ringed with a black braid, secured tightly in the way of military women, with no wayward strands, no hint of whimsy. She wore an ankle-length dark blue dress and no makeup or jewelry, her only adornment a badge on her chest that bore her daughter’s smiling face.

“It’s been a month since Luz’s suicide,” Soledad began. “I admit I’ve taken comfort in the deaths of two of my daughter’s rapists, knowing they won’t be able to attack anyone else. I’m not ashamed of this.” She was looking down at a piece of paper, eyes hidden behind her lids, head tilted gently to the side, displaying the muted solemnity of a Madonna. “I’ve come here today at the request of the FBI. We don’t know if you’re a real person, Jennifer, but I would like to speak to you as if you are, woman to woman. I served as a medic in Afghanistan and I saw death, too much death. When you take a life, you lose part of yourself. I don’t want this to happen to you. Tell us, Jennifer: When will the violence end? You want change, we can all see that, but let’s find a way to work together.” Soledad’s voice cracked at the end. With her statement finished, the insect sound of the clicking cameras intensified. She waved away reporters’ questions and disappeared into a group of dark-suited federal agents.

“That woman is the epitome of bravery,” said Cheryl Crane-Murphy, dabbing a tissue at her crusty lower lids. “She served her country honorably in Afghanistan, and while she was gone, a pack of wild animals ripped her daughter apart.”

I switched off the television, having seen enough for one afternoon. Luz was even younger than most of Kitty’s girls, the girls I had been deleting. I wondered if something so terrible had ever happened to one of them.

For a moment it was silent in my apartment, but then the phone began ringing. I knew it was Verena or Marlowe and didn’t answer it. Since the makeover, they’d left many messages for me, but I had no intention of talking to them. I wished that I had never gone to Verena’s house and had never gotten involved with her and the so-called New Baptist Plan. As with the original Baptist Plan, by the end of it I was fat and unhappy. I’d been replaying everything that’d happened during the makeover with Marlowe, and what happened after—the visit to the plastic surgeon, the man’s fist coming at me. At night when I was trying to fall asleep I saw his fist.