They needed to know every detail Cassandra could remember.

The police said that whoever had done this would kidnap another victim. Unless Cassandra could face her fear and help them, her attacker would never be found.

In bed, in the sunlight from a window, Cassandra lay propped up on pillows and watched birds soar back and forth in the blue sky.

Her fingers wrapped big in white bandages, her chest padded with bandages, her pencil-hand only moved to draw the birds, flying back and forth. A sketch pad propped against her knees.

Mrs. Clark said, “Cassandra, honey? You need to tell the police everything.”

If it would help, a hypnotist would come to the hospital. The caseworkers would bring anatomically detailed dolls to use in the interview.

And Cassandra still watched the birds. Sketching them.

Mrs. Clark said, “Cassandra?” and put her hand over one of Cassandra's white-wrapped hands.

And Cassandra looked at her mother and said, “It won't happen again.” Looking back at the birds, Cassandra said, “At least not to me . . .”

She said, “I was a victim of myself.”

Outside, in the parking lot, the television news crews were setting up their satellite feeds, each van aligning the broadcast dish on its roof. Ready for the toss from the studio anchor. The on-location talent, holding a microphone and inserting an IFD in her ear.

For three months, the town where they lived had stapled posters to telephone poles. Each poster showing a photo of Cassandra Clark in her head-cheerleader uniform, smiling and shaking her blond hair. For three months, the police had questioned kids at the high school. Detectives had interviewed people who worked at the bus station, the train station, the airport. The local television and radio stations ran public-service announcements that gave her weight as 110 pounds, height five foot six, green eyes, and shoulder-length hair.

Search-and-rescue dogs sniffed her cheerleading skirt and followed a scent trail as far as a bus-stop bench.

State troopers in powerboats dragged every pond and lake and river within a day's drive.

Psychics phoned to say the girl was safe. She had eloped and gotten married. Or she was dead and buried. Or she was sold into white slavery and smuggled out of the country to live in the harem of some oil magnate. Or she'd had a sex change and would be coming home as a boy, soon. Or the girl was trapped in a castle or some kind of palace, locked inside with a group of strangers, all of them cutting themselves. That psychic wrote two words on a sheet of paper and sent them to Mrs. Clark. Folded inside the paper, the shaky pencil lines said:

Writers' Retreat

After three months, all the yellow ribbons that people had tied to their car antennas were faded to almost white. Flags of surrender.

Nobody paid much attention to the psychics, there were so many of them.

For every Jane Doe the police found, burned or rotted or mutilated beyond identification, Mrs. Clark held her breath until dental records or DNA testing showed she wasn't Cassandra.

By the third month, Cassandra Clark was smiling and shaking her hair on the side of milk cartons. By then, the candlelight prayer vigils had stopped. The reward fund at the local bank branch was the only part of the case still drawing any interest.

Then—a miracle—and she was limping naked along the highway.

In her hospital bed, her skin looked purple with bruises. Her head was shaved bald. The plastic band around her wrist, it said: C. Clark.

The county medical examiner swabbed her for penis cells—which he said are long-shaped, unlike the round-shaped vaginal cells. They swabbed her for semen. The team of detectives vacuumed her scalp and hands and feet for foreign skin cells. They found fibers of blue velvet, red silk, black mohair. They swabbed the inside of her mouth and cultured the DNA in petri dishes.

Police counselors came and sat at her bedside, saying how important it was that Cassandra talk out all her pain. That she speak her bitterness.

The television and radio crews, the newspaper and magazine reporters sat in the parking lot, shooting their stories with her hospital window in the background. Some stepping back to film crews filming crews filming crews filming her window. To show what a circus this had become, as if that was the final truth.

When the nurse brought sleeping pills, Cassandra shook her head no. Just by shutting her eyes, she fell asleep.

After Cassandra wouldn't talk, the police fell on Mrs. Clark, telling her about the total cost to the taxpayer for their investigation. The detectives shook their heads and said how angry and betrayed they felt, working this hard, caring this much about a girl who didn't give a rat's ass about the pain and hardship she was causing her family, her community, and her government. She had everyone weeping and praying. Everyone hated the monster who'd tortured her, and they all wanted to see him caught and put on trial. After all their searching and effort, they deserved that much. They deserved to see her on the stand, weeping while she described how the monster had cut off her fingers. Carved her chest. Shoved a wood stake up her starving ass.

And Cassandra Clark just looked at the detectives lined up alongside her bed. All their faces, all their hate and rage focused on her because she wouldn't hand over another target. A bona-fide real demon. The devil they needed so bad.

The district attorney threatened to sue Cassandra for obstruction of justice.

Her mother, Mrs. Clark, among those glaring faces.

Cassandra smiled and told them, “Can't you see, you're addicted to conflict.” She says, “This is my happy ending.” Looking back to the window, to the birds flying past, she says, “I feel terrific.”

Still in the hospital, she asked for a goldfish in a bowl. After that, she lay propped up in bed, watching it swim around and around, sketching it. The same way her mother watched program after television program every night.

The last time Mrs. Clark went to visit, Cassandra looked away from the fish only long enough to say, “I'm not like you anymore.” She said, “I don't need to brag about my pain . . .”

And after that, Tess Clark didn't visit.

19

In her dressing room, Miss America is screaming.

In bed, her skirts pulled up and her stockings down, Miss America screams, “Don't let that witch take my baby . . .”

Kneeling next to the bed, toweling the sweat from America's forehead, the Countess Foresight says, “It's not a baby. Not yet.”

And Miss America screams, again, but not in words.

In the hallway outside the dressing-room doorway, you can smell blood and shit. It's the first bowel movement any of us has had in days, maybe weeks.

It's Cora Reynolds. A cat reduced to a flavor. To crap.

“She's there, waiting,” Miss America says, panting, biting her fist. Pain pulling her knees up to her chest. Cramps turning her onto her side, curled in the mess of sheets and blankets.

“She's waiting for the baby,” Miss America says. Tears turning her pillow dark gray.

“It's not a baby,” the Countess Foresight says. She wrings water from a rag and leans over to wipe away sweat. She says, “Let me tell you a story.”

Wiping Miss America's face with water, she says, “Did you know? Marilyn Monroe had two miscarriages?”

And for a moment, Miss America is quiet, listening.

From our own rooms, putting pen to paper, we're all listening. Our ears and tape recorders tilted toward the heating ducts.

From the hallway outside the door, in her Red Cross nurse uniform, Director Denial shouts, “Should we start boiling water?”

And, kneeling beside the bed, the Countess Foresight says, “Please.”

Again from the hallway, Director Denial's head and white nurse-hat leans in through the open doorway, and she says, “Chef Assassin wants to know . . . how soon should he put in the carrots?”