CHAPTER
16
PINE WIPED THE WATER OFF HER face with the hand towel in the Atkinses’ bathroom. She looked at her reflection in the mirror over the sink. She almost didn’t recognize the reflection staring back at her. She seemed transformed into something hollower than she had been before knocking on the Atkinses’ door, as though a core part of her had been ripped away. She drew a long breath and tried to settle her nerves. She had had to abruptly leave the room and come here after Wanda Atkins had told them about Mercy being tortured with needles.
She went over to the window and looked out. A hawk was lazily flapping its wings as it made its way across the sky. She heard the sounds of children playing from another yard. A truck rumbled by. There was a car horn. And the blustery noise of a motorcycle starting up somewhere. A white-haired woman was taking laundry off the backyard clothesline next door. All normal, all regular.
And none of it had anything to do with how she was feeling, which was anything but normal. It was all ragged and piercing and traumatizing.
And it’s nothing compared to what Mercy endured.
She shivered once, squared her shoulders firmly, though she in fact felt no spine in her body or soul, and returned to the front room to find both Atkins and Blum staring anxiously at her.
Pine retook her seat after saying, “Sorry about that. I just had to take . . . a moment. I’ve . . . I’ve gotten personally involved in this case.” She did not want to reveal to Atkins her familial connection to Mercy for a number of reasons.
Atkins said slowly, “Yes, well, I can understand that, sure.” She glanced apprehensively between Pine and Blum.
Pine cleared her throat and said, “And did you think to take Mercy from her after you saw what Desiree was doing to her?”
“We were certainly stunned. But then Joe explained it away.”
“How could he possibly do that?” said Pine between clenched teeth.
Atkins kneaded her thighs with her hands in her agitation. “He . . . he said that Mercy had terrible pains and that what Desiree was doing was sort of like that, oh what do you call it when they stick the pins in you?”
“Acupuncture?” suggested Blum.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Acupuncture doesn’t make you scream in pain,” pointed out Pine, her cold gaze square on the other woman. “The needles they use aren’t anything like regular needles.”
“Well, I believed my son,” said Atkins defensively as she looked away.
“And did you know about them moving her from the house to the prison in the woods?”
Atkins winced at this. “They . . . they told us she was uncontrollable. That she would hurt herself and others. They had to take precautions. It was to keep her safe, too,” she added.
Pine drew out the photo again. “So this girl standing right next to you was uncontrollable and would hurt herself and others?”
“Joe said they had given her something to calm her down that day.”
“Well, Joe seemed to have an answer for everything. Did you go out to the prison cell?”
Atkins looked up at her. “I did.”
“Why?”
She spread her arms and said in a near wail, “Because . . . I felt so sorry for her. I brought her food and books and I talked to her about things, read to her, did numbers with her. I’m no teacher or anything, but I did what I could. I . . . I just wanted her to have a friend.”
“But you never told the authorities about what Desiree was doing to her?” interjected Blum. “That she was being held prisoner?”