False Allegations

'What sense does that…?'

'Some patients suffer from a kind of moral dyslexia,' she said, brushing her hair away from her face again. 'They project the conduct of the abuser onto an innocent person. But what you need to understand is only their facts are wrong. Their emotions are true. The abuse did happen. It's just that—'

'The wrong man paid for it?'

'He paid for everything,' she said, finally lighting a cigarette.

'I'm doing a paper on it,' the black man told me. His scrawny neck was so long it couldn't support his large head—his face listed at a odd angle. It was hard to hold his eyes.

'How long have you been—'

'Almost six years,' he interrupted. 'This whole ritual abuse thing has been metastasizing for longer than that though. Despite the fact that there isn't one single documented case—not a single case authenticated by legitimate law enforcement investigation—the number of reported cases has been expanding exponentially.'

'Because…?'

'Because the accounts have been traveling through the survivor community,' he said in a strong, vibrating voice, punching a thick–bodied black Montblanc fountain pen in my direction for emphasis. 'We noticed a certain phenomenon a while back. Whenever survivors gather in groups, especially for allegedly therapeutic purposes, a 'Can you top this?' ethos emerges. One woman says she was an incest victim. The next says she was an incest victim too, but she had multiple perpetrators. The next says they took pornographic pictures. Before too long, they're up to ritualistic murder of babies and international plots.'

'You're saying they make this up?'

'They are induced to the images,' he responded, like he'd had a lot of practice answering that question. 'And seduced by the power it gives them. They don't 'make it up'—they have the images implanted by others. They know they are in terrible pain. They seek reasons for the pain. They know they're hurting more than the last speaker, so they must have suffered more. Do you understand?'

'I understand what you're saying…'

'But you find it incredible? Good! A skeptical attitude is exactly what is needed in this area. The true believers have polluted scientific knowledge. So what we did, sir, is we tested our hypothesis. We used an 'artifact' method, deliberately introducing bogus material to see if it became absorbed.'

'You sent a ringer into T–groups?' I asked him.

'That is precisely what we did,' he said, a note of triumph in his deep voice. 'We prepped and trained three talented actresses. They simply joined existing groups. Groups in which there had been no prior members who made complaints of ritualistic abuse. After a while, each actress introduced her own tale. And in every case, in each group, other members began to 'disclose' similar stories.'

'Like group hysteria?'

'Exactly like group hysteria,' he said. 'And when my paper is published, the scientific community will understand that it has been practicing some group hysteria of its own!'

The man and woman looked two–of–a–kind: same height, same weight, same no–shape. Dressed alike in those brown mail order pants guaranteed to last a lifetime, both wearing white T–shirts with FREE THE BYRDS on the chest. Another woman, a younger one, in a dark blue shirtdress stayed in the background, busying herself with affixing labels to a stack of newsletters piled up on a long folding table.

'We have a mailing list of almost four hundred,' the man said. 'But our circle of support is much, much wider.'

'Do you know them personally?' I asked.

'We have come to know them,' the woman said. 'We didn't at first—just what we read in the papers. And from the TV. It was Laureen's case first,' she told me, pointing at the young woman still working on the labels.

'How do you get your cases?' I asked, ballpoint pen poised over my reporter's pad.

'There are certain things you look for,' the man said. I had to look to make sure it was him—his voice was the same as the woman's.

'What things?'

'Media overkill, that's the first sign. Biased reporting. The Byrds were good citizens in every way. Home owners, taxpayers, church–goers…you name it. That is exactly the type of person the media targets, you know. I mean, it's not much of a story if some known degenerate is accused, is it? The feeding frenzy really started a number of years ago. In Jordan, Minnesota. That was the original case for the movement. And after that, it became an epidemic. The media isn't interested in people on welfare committing abuse. The media wants white, middle–class victims for its witch hunt. Look at McMartin, or Marilyn Kelly Michaels. If you work in a day care center, why, you're at risk, it's as simple as that. The list is amazing, just amazing.'

'And what they have in common is…?'

'That they are all innocent,' the woman said. 'But their cases are tried in the newspapers, and the public finds them guilty without any evidence.'

'And that's what happened to the Byrds?'

'Exactly!' the man said. 'But it's not going to stop there. Appeals are pending. We have a complete fact–sheet on the case. Laureen…' he called over his shoulder. But the young woman was already walking toward me, a stack of paper in her hand.

'You look the same,' she said. I knew it wasn't a compliment.

'You too,' I told her, ignoring the how the brunette wig didn't sit just right. And the crow's–feet around her eyes.

'Aren't you sweet! But I only work out–call now,' she told me, stepping back so I could come inside the studio apartment.

'Just tell me how the trick went,' I told her. 'Like I said on the phone.'

'How'd you know about him?' she asked, eyes narrowing. 'It was only that one time.'

'You pay money, you get information,' I said.

A pathological liar lies—that's what they do. But a professional liar treats truth no different from a lie—you use whatever works. So I told her I'd paid cash for what got me to her door—that kind of thing would make sense to her. No point explaining about the credit card receipts. If people weren't greedy, they'd never get caught. Businessmen have been charging whores to their businesses since forever, billing it as limo service, restaurant tabs…sometimes just 'entertainment.' If they just paid cash, nobody would ever know—but then they'd have to spend their own money. If you know what you're doing, you can follow the paper trial right into the shadows of their lives. I didn't know where Wolfe got hold of Kite's American Express receipts, but this was the only one that hadn't dead–ended.

'And you're gonna pay me?' she asked, absently rubbing at her coke–ruined nose. Only it wasn't a question.

'You know me, Penny,' I said. 'I work the same way you do. You're too high class to be grabbing front money, right?'

She sat on the unmade double bed, shifted her too–thin body inside the black silk robe. 'I thought he was a trick too, okay? But all he wanted was to talk.'

'Sex talk?'

'No. And he didn't want to wear my panties either, okay? Or have me spank him. He wanted to ask me about another trick.'

'And you told him you didn't talk about your clients, right?' I asked her, putting it together finally. If Kite had offered her cash over the phone, she would have spooked. So he came in person, like he was a customer.

'Right. But you could see he wasn't a cop. I mean, I never saw nobody ever looked like him. Like he had all the blood drained out or something. And he already knew all about the trick. Just not what we…did, okay?'

'Okay. So you told him…?'

'Yeah,' she said, sandpaper in her voice. 'I told him, okay? No big deal. It was nice just to…talk, for once. It