Primary Justice

Prologue

“ONCE AGAIN,” THE MAN said, pulling the little girl along by the leash tied to his wrist and hers. “Tell me your name.”

“I don’t remember,” the girl said.

“Where do you live?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Are you from Tulsa?”

“I don’t remember.” The girl answered emotionlessly, like an automaton.

“Slower. Speak more hesitantly. It must seem as though you’re trying to remember. Who are your parents?”

“I don’t remember.”

The two emerged from the bottom of the gray stone stairwell and walked into the sunken parking garage. The rising sun was just visible in the high windows on the east side of the garage. The red corona was just beginning to filter across the skyline and cast an orange halo around the rooftops and skyscrapers of downtown Tulsa. Sunlight barely survived the passage through the dirty glass windows of the garage, though, and since the garage had little lighting of its own, the two figures remained enveloped in gray.

The two moved in concert, past an elevator shaft, across a double aisle of parked cars, toward a black sedan. The little girl, who appeared to be seven, perhaps eight, was dressed in a simple white pinafore over a blue dress, which accentuated the vivid blue of her eyes. Her face seemed unnaturally white, as if she had spent her entire life shielded from the sun. Her long black hair was pulled behind her head and tied in a French braid.

As they came near the sedan, the girl began to drag her heels. The leash connecting the two drew taut. The man turned and looked at her. He frowned but said nothing. He yanked firmly on the leash and pulled her toward him.

At that instant, a woman ran screaming out of the stairwell. She was wearing only a tattered blue bathrobe that flapped open as she ran. Her dark, unwashed hair hung limply from her head. She was barefoot. She was followed closely by another woman, an older, heavy-set woman wearing a white uniform. The large woman was also running, doing her best to catch up to the woman in the bathrobe.

The first woman ran across the garage, whimpering, her arms stretched forward. She looked frantically in all directions, then saw the man and the girl bound to him. She raced toward them. The heavyset woman could not keep pace.

The man stepped forward and pushed the little girl behind him. The woman ran without stopping and collided violently into his body, throwing the man back against the sedan. They wrestled for a moment, arms gyrating wildly, and the woman cut the man’s face with her fingernails. Angered, the man grabbed both her wrists and twisted them painfully behind her back.

The little girl began to cry. “Stop it!” she pleaded. “Stop it! You’re hurting her!” She kicked the man in the soft part of his right shin.

The man’s face was transfigured with rage. Clenching his teeth, he placed both of the woman’s wrists into his left hand and, with his right, he clutched the little girl by the neck and slammed her against the side of the sedan. The girl blinked rapidly and fell down in a limp heap on the gray stone floor.

At last the heavy-set woman caught up with them. While the man twisted both of his captive’s wrists behind her back, the other woman wrapped a thick, leather belt around her chest and upper arms. She pulled the leather belt tight. Reaching into her skirt pocket, she withdrew a syringe and, almost without looking at it, she pushed the air bubble through the tip and jabbed the needle into the struggling woman’s right arm. Almost instantaneously, the woman in the bathrobe relaxed. Her whole body seemed to weaken and become limp.

The man and the uniformed woman exchanged a quick, penetrating look. This won’t happen again, she told him, without speaking. Ever. She took hold of the leather belt and pushed the other woman toward the stairwell.

The man bent down next to the little girl’s body. He pulled open one of her eyelids, then placed his two forefingers against her neck. Fine.

Sunlight was beginning to penetrate the dirty windowpanes of the garage, and he realized that he was behind schedule. He had intended to be far away from here long before the sun rose. He opened the car door, bundled the girl into his arms, and spread her across the backseat of the sedan. He untied the leash and tossed it on the floor; then he closed the back door. Glancing quickly at his watch, he slid into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and hurriedly drove out of the parking garage.