The Perfect Child(98)

CASE #5243

INTERVIEW:

PIPER GOLDSTEIN

Ron slid the evidence bag across the table and pointed to it. “Do you know what this is?”

“Someone’s phone,” I said.

“Becky’s phone,” he said.

“The one they recovered from the trailer?” I asked.

They’d found a phone in Becky’s bedroom in the trailer, but it had been locked and illegal to open without establishing probable cause. It was a complicated legal process, and as far as I knew, nobody had gone through the proper channels to access it.

“We want to show you some of the videos on Becky’s phone.” He turned to Luke. “Can you set up the computer?”

My curiosity got the best of me. “How’d you get into her phone?”

“We got her Fourth Amendment rights waived,” Ron said.

I nodded like I understood, but that was the first time I’d heard of someone doing that. I jiggled my leg nervously while we waited for Luke to come back with a laptop. He set it on the table in front of me, sliding into the aluminum chair next to me. A video was queued up. He hit play.

The closet in the back room of the trailer came into view. The silhouette of Janie’s body curled into a ball in the corner. I’d never forgotten the picture of the ties, but seeing them in use—tightened around her ankles and wrists, the dog chain around her neck—burned them into my memory in a way that I knew meant they’d never leave. It was dark, but there was no mistaking her face when she turned around.

“Janie, it’s time to eat,” a woman’s voice said.

Janie uncurled herself and stood slowly, head down, shoulders hunched forward like she wanted to disappear inside herself.

The woman continued. “Like I was saying, she been good lately. Earned her some time out of her ties.”

My eyes were glued to the screen. The woman shuffled toward Janie. She held her phone in one hand and unlatched her collar with the other. Janie smiled up at her lovingly. I could barely breathe. Janie held her stick-thin arms out for her next. The woman easily slipped those ties off; the picture never wavered. She took a step back, then knelt in front of Janie, the angle bringing her into frame. She placed a small bowl of dog food on the ground. Suddenly, blood sprang from the side of her neck.

“Don’t!” I screamed for them not to show me, just like I’d refused to look at the dying part in the Allison video, but it was too late. I saw it happen. The slice. The sound as the phone clattered to the concrete floor. I covered my ears so I didn’t hear the sounds of the sixteen stab wounds that I knew came next.

Luke pressed pause. Ron slowly walked to our side of the table, leaning back against it. He crossed his arms on his chest. “Disturbing stuff, huh?” he asked.

All I could do was nod. No words.

“Quite a violent attack for such a little girl.”

I swallowed the fury in my throat. “She must’ve been terrorized beyond belief to have been able to fight back with that much strength. Was that Becky’s voice?”

“It was,” Luke said.

Ron cocked his head to the side, opened his mouth like he was about to say something, then shut it quickly and turned to Luke instead. “Why don’t we show you the next part?”

“Wait.” I put my hand up. “If she was tied up, then how did she get a knife?”

Ron shrugged. “We don’t know.”

“Maybe there was someone else involved,” I said. That had been my suspicion all along. “Was there ever anyone else in the videos?”

“There’s a man’s voice in one of the videos, but we haven’t been able to identify him, and nobody has come forward,” Luke said.

“What does he say?”

“He asks one question.” He paused for effect. “‘Is this the devil child you were telling me about?’”

Hannah had called her the same thing. A chill filled my insides.

He pressed play. The videos had been cut and spliced together to form a series following Janie’s activity, all of them within the confines of the trailer, most in the back bedroom. There were scenes of Janie smearing her feces on the wall in the living room like she was finger painting and flinging it at Becky when she got upset with her. Other scenes showed Janie screaming and crying like she was being tortured even though no one was touching her. Times when Janie bashed her head against the floor until she passed out. All the neighbors had claimed not to hear anything, but there was no way that was true. Time and time again during the episodes, Becky tried to get close to her to comfort or calm her down, but Janie rejected each attempt, sometimes spitting at her, other times biting her arm.

Luke paused it again.

“There’re hundreds of video snippets just like this. Becky goes on to record all the things she did to try and control Janie. She started with starving her and using food as a reward for good behavior. She gives her plenty of old-fashioned spankings that escalate into beatings before she moves on to tying her up in the corner for time-outs. Finally, she works her way into the closet. Do you want to see the progression?”

I shook my head.

He moved the slider. This time the video swelled with Becky’s face. Her skin was pale and spotted with pockmarks, pieces of flesh that had been removed and scabs that were still healing—the telltale sign of any meth addict. Her eyes darted back and forth; her voice was hurried and pressured.