Free In the Still of the Night by Dorothy Salisbury Davis Page B

fond of her. She’s a puppet, remember.”
    Julie, after several phone calls, reached an organizer of the antiporn rally. She promised an item in the Our Beat column and then told of the missing youngster. “It’s a long shot, but if you were handing out flyers at the street fair yesterday, I wonder if you saw her.”
    “I wasn’t there myself, but there was an incident at the fair that might have involved your young person. Let me give you the number of Sue Laughlin. You mustn’t take her literally if she makes it sound like gang rape. That’s just Sue.”
    A chorus of infant and toddler voices rang through Julie’s conversation with Sue Laughlin. “I thought the girl was older—sixteen, maybe. And she did volunteer. Anyway—shut up, Jamie. Can’t you see Mommy’s on the phone?—anyway, she was handing out our flyers when this gang of young jocks started to tease her—‘What’s pornography, Juanita?’ That sort of thing.”
    “Did they call her by name? It’s important.”
    “How would I know her name if they hadn’t? Then one of them snatched the flyers from her and they all clowned around throwing them into the air. And what did she do? She grabbed an umbrella from a concession stand and began thrashing the mischief out of them.”
    Gang rape, Julie thought.
    “They ran off and the guy selling the umbrellas tried to make her buy the one she’d taken. I was going to say something, but a woman who’d been watching the whole thing said she’d buy the umbrella.”
    “Did you know the woman?”
    “No. I don’t think she’s from the neighborhood. There were hundreds of people, you know.”
    Julie felt herself tighten up. “Did she speak to Juanita?”
    “I couldn’t say for sure. I just wasn’t paying attention after that.”
    “Could you describe the woman?”
    “A big, solid woman, well dressed but flashy, too much makeup, red hair …”
    Julie reached Detective Russo at precinct headquarters with her bits of information. Dominic Russo and she were old friends so he could say frankly that he would give it what time he could, but from her parents’ report the youngster sounded like a runaway. The case would go to Missing Persons within twenty-four hours. “We’ll give out her description at roll call and put it on the bulletin board. But you know how many kids hit the streets every day.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Most of them come home in a day or two.”
    “Some don’t ever. I’ll keep in touch, Dom.”
    “Don’t I know that,” he said.
    Julie went upstairs to see the Rodriguezes as soon as they got home. Juanita’s father was sitting in the kitchen, his head in his hands. He looked up at her when she laid her hand on his shoulder. His eyes were wet. “Why she do this to us? Why?”
    Julie, to reassure them of the girl’s resourcefulness, told them how Juanita had confronted the boys who were taunting her. Mrs. Rodriguez turned and stormed at her husband, “Men are pigs. You’re all pigs!” It ought to have been funny, Julie thought, but it wasn’t.
    Juanita sat on the bathroom stool in a silk robe that was much too big for her. She had taken a shower she hadn’t wanted and washed her hair on the woman’s command. She hadn’t wanted to take off her clothes, but she was afraid the woman might make her, and might come into the bathroom with her. She hadn’t done that. She only made Juanita hand out her jeans, jacket, and sweat shirt, her bra, panties, and socks. She hadn’t seen her sneakers since they brought her here.
    She knew now that this was a loft. The bathroom was fancy-new. So was the kitchen, which didn’t have any doors. The living room ran all the way from the studio—the room with the big bed and the statues—to what must be the front of the building. Street noises seemed to come from there, and there must be a very big window with heavy curtains covering it. Threads of light showed at the top and at the floor. A Castro convertible bed, where they must have slept,