Free Her Last Scream by J. A. Kerley

we retreat to the conference room?” she said.
    Once inside, Sal glanced through the windows into the department, jumped up to close the door, like she was worried about eavesdropping. She sat for a three-count, then bounced up to close the blinds.
    “Should I activate the cone of silence?” I said.
    Sal ignored me, re-sitting and leaning across the table so her whisper would reach Harry’s and my ears. “I know how Lainie Krebbs got to Denver, guys. It’ll probably never be verified. At least, I hope not in the press.”
    “Cryptic, Sal,” I said. “How’d she make the escape?”
    “Lainie Krebbs took a train.”
    “We checked trains, Sal,” I said. “There aren’t any routes between Mobile and Denver.”
    “I’m not talking about a railroad you can see, guys. I’m talking about one you can’t.”
    Harry looked at me, I looked at him. Then we both stared at Sal, waiting for her to make sense.

15
     
    “An underground railroad?” Harry said, after Sal’s brief overview. “You mean like Harriet Tubman created? A secret network of safe houses to help slaves escape their owners?”
    “A updated version, Harry. A system that helps women like Lainie Krebbs escape abusive relationships.”
    I frowned. “This network is reached through the Mobile Women’s Services Center?”
    “Most women’s centers offer safety, temporary shelter, education, counseling, even legal services. A select few go further, becoming nodes in a secret transportation system.”
    “Spiriting women away for ever?”
    “When a woman’s life is in immediate and extreme danger. When there’s no other choice.”
    “Calling the cops?” Harry said. “Is that a choice?”
    “For a woman in this situation, a call to the cops can be like stepping on to her own personal death row, except the executioner will be the man in her life.”
    Sal had hit on a major problem in law enforcement: a woman reports her significant other is threatening or hurting her. He says she’s lying. Even if the cops slap the asshole in jail, he gets out ravenous for revenge. It’s a Catch-22 situation: the only way to protect a woman is to put her abuser away for years. The only way to do that is if he injures or kills her.
    “ We can’t help you right now, ma’am … come back when you’re dead. ”
    Harry said, “It seems a tough task, Sal, making someone gone for good.”
    “Think of an amateur-run Witness Protection Program, Harry. Secrecy, safe houses, transfers at night … A woman escapes a step at a time, a hundred miles here, two hundred there. Until she’s where she needs to be.”
    “Who determines the destination?” I asked, fascinated.
    “Sometimes the woman will have a friend or relative in an area, someone unknown to the abuser. Often the area is chosen just because it’s far away. When the escaping woman arrives, a support system helps with a legal name change – the first step in identity re-creation. Employment is next. And so forth, until the woman has a new life.”
    “What about children? Seems like a lot of room for legal problems. A woman leaving with a babe in arms … the product of her and hubby?”
    Sal shook her head. “The folks at the centers work hard to mediate such situations. To keep the union together without violence. Sometimes it works, sometimes it goes horribly awry.”
    We didn’t have to look far for an example. Last fall a Mobile’s man’s wife had filed for divorce. Distraught and angry, he barricaded himself in his house with wife and four kids, murdering them before committing suicide. Then there was the man living with his girlfriend and baby in Dothan, Alabama. When she decided to get her GED, he set fire to the house with girlfriend and baby inside.
    Some people don’t take to mediation.
    Harry pushed his chair away from the table. “Let’s have a tête-à-tête with the folks at the center. You explained we’d be around, right, Sal?”
    Sal cleared her throat. “No one wants to talk to