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him.
"No, no," the Detective said emphatically. "You're not in
trouble with us at all. We want to ask you some questions is
all. But, um..." He looked back up at the camera and I looked
too. "You don't have to answer if you don't want to, but we
need to you say 'yes' or 'no' out loud so the box can hear
you. Okay?"
54
Judgment
by Denise Hall
Never had any master asked me so many questions. I
liked the Detective, but I could not imagine him at Judgment.
He was too weak-willed. "Yes, sir."
"Would you like to sit down?" the Detective asked,
gesturing to the chair.
"Yes, sir." I knelt on the floor. Though his face disappeared
from view, I could see his knees and was contented.
"Oh, for God's sake!" the mean detective snapped. "This is
a waste of time. Mischief, my ass. The woman's a mental
retard or a faker or something. Her pimp or her john did that
to her and she's acting nutty to get out of trouble."
"Shut up, Jim," the other detective—a blonde, tall man
with a paunchy belly—popped a toothpick in his mouth. He
pushed away from the wall and came to me, sliding a chair up
beside me. "Come on, honey. You don't have to sit on the
floor. Sit up here where the camera can see you."
He took my arm, trying to guide me to the chair, but I
pulled back. Shaking my head, I felt my eyes filling with tears
again. My chest heaved as I panted, fighting the panic rising
inside me. The blonde detective stopped pulling my arm
instantly and the Detective quickly came around the table to
me.
He touched my tussled hair. "No, no, you don't have to be
scared. We're not going to hurt you here. You're not allowed
to sit on chairs?" At the shake of my head, he just patted my
shoulder. "That's okay, we'll all just sit on the floor. How
about that, huh?"
There was a knock at the door and Jim went to answer it.
He took the envelope a woman passed through to him.
55
Judgment
by Denise Hall
"Are those the fingerprint results?" the Detective asked.
"Nope," Jim said, a frown marring his brow. "Nothing came
up on the computer. She hasn't been arrested before."
"Of course not," the Detective said with a grin to me. "We
got us a good girl here. Isn't that right?"
I didn't know how to answer. I could think of no way to tell
him just how disobedient and full of faults I was. My Master
was constantly forced to correct me because of them.
"Look at this," Jim said, passing a sheet of paper with a
picture on it to the Detective.
"Callie McGuire. Red hair. Green eyes. Five-foot-two.
Hundred and three pounds. Sounds about right."
"We got a match?" the blonde detective asked, reaching
for the paper. He looked at the photo, then at me. "What's up
with the computer? It couldn't give us a clearer picture than
this?"
"It didn't come off the computer," Jim said. "It came off
the fax. We sent her stats back East to missing persons in
case she wasn't local. They had to do some digging to come
up with this. Look at the date, gentlemen. Our little 'Mischief'
has been missing for more than ten years."
* * * *
My introduction to the masters was hellish, there was
simply no other way to put it. They were devils and demons
every one, and to my list of mortal enemies, beneath Tane
and Boyden, I mentally added the names of Masters Shipe,
Grayson, and Deaton.
56
Judgment
by Denise Hall
Master Shipe was a brawny man of perhaps thirty-five
years. His face wore a constantly soured expression and he
sported a scraggly beard because he loathed to shave. He
was muscular, the hard lines of his arms bulging and rippling
as he propelled himself aggressively through the halls with
the aid of one crutch. Shipe had only one leg, the left being a
mere stump that ended just above the knee. And though I
later learned that he had a prosthetic, to date I have never
seen him wear it.
An inspector of sorts, Shipe's sole job was to search our
barracks, our beds, and our bodies for contraband or
imperfections. He went about this task with frightening,
single-minded purpose. His hawk eyes never missed a
wrinkled bed, a disheveled uniform, or so much as a hair out
of place. His favored implement was the switch. Wherever he
went, there was always one within easy reach of him and he
needed very little excuse to ply its sting to any unfortunate
who happened to catch his eyes. He was, in fact, in the midst
of this when Master Boyden brought me to him for a taste of
Judgment's special brand of welcome.
Six women of varying ethnic groups were lined up against
the wall of their barracks, hands flat against the stone, feet
wide apart, the skirts of their too-short uniforms flipped up to
reveal six naked, cringing bottoms in various states of woe.
Shipe was viciously at work on the third from the end, his
switch barely glimpsed as it rose and fell so rapidly upon its
still-as-stone target. The two bottoms that preceded his
current victim were red and welted, and one quite bruised
along the lower swells. The women themselves—impossible
57
Judgment
by Denise Hall
though it was for me to believe—made little sound at all. In
fact, the only thing I heard was the whip of the implement [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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