'I can see why it's difficult for you to talk about it, but you have to understand that the people who make kiddie porn are animals, the very worst kind of vermin. Whatever Martin Shore did to hurt you…'
Tanya Dunseth spun around and faced me, her face distorted into an ugly mask by a burst of derisive, caustic laughter. 'Martin Shore? He never hurt me, not once. Oh, he tried, but he wasn't any good at it. What Jacques liked-that was his name back then, Jacques-was that I was still so flat-chested and young-looking. He thought that meant I was a virgin. The idea of cracking a virgin on film was a real turn-on for him.'
She paused. 'I wasn't, though,' she continued. 'Hadn't been for years, but I let Jacques think I was. I always wanted to be an actress, and I told myself it was my first real acting job. When he came into the room to get me, I knew he wanted me to be scared, so I acted scared. When he wanted to hurt me, I screamed and cried and pretended like it hurt. And when he wanted me to like it? Well-I knew how to do that, too.'
Her voice drifted away and disappeared, the way a dying breeze leaves behind an unexpected silence. I felt as though her story had taken an unforeseen detour, wandered off the beaten path and left me flailing around an unfamiliar cross-roads in the dark. Tanya was telling us a story I hadn't expected to hear.
'You say Martin Shore never hurt you?'
'Never. Sometimes I had to fight to keep from laughing. Nothing poor old Jacques ever did to me for the camera was any worse than what my own father had done to me a hundred times before. Nothing that happened to me later was worse than that.'
Her father? Stunned by Tanya's words, I glanced at Ralph Ames. His face was ashen, his jawline set. The horrific similarity to Anne Corley's own story was far closer than either one of us could possibly have imagined. Or wanted to.
'That's my first conscious memory,' she added quietly, 'my father coming into my room at night. His shadow would fall across my bed, and then he'd be standing in front of the window, blocking out the moon. For years the memories ended there.'
I found myself cursed with sudden, unwanted insight. 'Is that what you meant when you said seeing Daphne brought it back? You remembered?'
'Yes,' she said.
No wonder she had spilled her drink in the Members' Lounge.
When Tanya continued, her eyes gazed off into space, her voice distant, remote. 'I remember the terrible weight of him on my body, so heavy I could barely breathe, the ugly noises he made, and the pain, the terrible pain. And I remember going to the bathroom in the dark to clean myself up. Afterward, I cried myself to sleep. Why didn't my mother ever come to me or hold me? Why did she let it happen?'
Finally, Tanya fell silent, and a long, involuntary sob shook her body. I wanted to go to her and do for her what her mother never had, put an arm around her and offer some word of comfort, but I didn't dare. For one thing, I didn't know what Tanya's reaction would be. For another, I didn't trust myself to talk. No words are enough to counter that kind of parental betrayal.
Even Ralph was stunned beyond his depth. We both sat there like lumps and waited for the wild onslaught of tears to subside.
'Is that how you ended up with Shore and Daphne?' he asked at last. 'To get away from your father?'
Tanya nodded. 'Like I said, Daphne wasn't her name then, not when I first met her in Walla Walla. She called herself Elise-Elise Morgan. She was only a few years older than I was, but she claimed to be a well-known New York model. She and Jacques went to small-town schools all over Washington and Oregon running seminars that told star-struck kids like me to forget about investing in modeling school. Not to brother. All they needed to break into modeling was a great portfolio.'
'Ah,' Ralph said in sudden comprehension. 'The old modeling-portfolio scam. Were they really selling portfolios?'
'Some of the time,' Tanya replied.
'Martin Shore was the photographer?'
'Sort of,' Tanya answered. 'I mean, he took the pictures, and they did sell some, but mostly they claimed to be running a contest. An all-expense-paid modeling shoot in Mexico was the grand prize. To me, that looked like the perfect way out of the trap. I couldn't wait to sign up. As soon as I filled out the entry form, I knew I was on my way to stardom.'
'How exactly does it work?' I asked.
Ralph explained. 'These guys go around the country, usually to small towns, and offer to turn ordinary kids into overnight modeling successes. All they have to do is pose for and buy this outrageously expensive portfolio of modeling photographs. Taken by none other than the world-famous Jacques himself. Right?'
Tanya nodded.
'Did Jacques have a last name?' I asked, trying to put together a starting place for unraveling this part of the story.
Tanya shook her head, but Ralph Ames answered for her. 'You don't understand, Beau. Topflight fashion photographers don't bother with last names, do they, Tanya?'
She allowed him a wan smile. 'I didn't find out the truth until after I won the contest.' Leaving the handrail, Tanya came back over to the table and sat down on the opposite bench.
'It turned out there was no contest. It had been a model search, and I was exactly what they were looking for; I fit the profile. They wanted a scared, desperate kid, reasonably good-looking, who would do almost anything to get away from home. It didn't take long for them to figure out that my parents wouldn't bat an eye if their underage daughter suddenly disappeared without a trace. And they wanted someone whose parents wouldn't be above taking a bribe to keep quiet about what happened.'
'Your father did that?' I asked. 'He actually sold you to them for money?'
Tanya looked me in the eye when she answered. 'Why not? It meant one less mouth to feed, and it gave him a bundle of money my mother knew nothing about, money he used to play the ponies.'
I've been in Homicide forever, seen things that would turn most people's stomachs. I thought I had lost my ability to be shocked, but it turned out I hadn't. Tanya's story appalled me, shook me in a way that seeing a mere dead body never could. It almost made me ashamed to call myself a man.
Maybe I was more susceptible right then because of what was happening with Kelly, but I couldn't abide the idea that Tanya Dunseth's own father had committed such unspeakable crimes against her; that he had sold her to the likes of Martin Shore and Daphne Lewis to do with as they wished. Although considering what he himself had been doing to her, even selling her into bondage to a kiddie-porn czar had been a favor, an inarguable improvement.
I lost track of the conversation for a time, stopped listening because I was too outraged to hear more. I wanted to hop in the Porsche, drive straight to Walla Walla, and slam a balled fist into somebody's sick, sallow face. How could a man do such a thing to his own child? How could anyone?
When I came back to the conversation, Ralph Ames was still patiently asking questions. The process seemed even more difficult for him than it was for her. From time to time, his voice cracked under the strain of it, while Tanya continued to answer his questions in a quiet, steady voice barren of any emotion.
It struck me as odd that Tanya's disclosures seemed to have a far greater impact on her two male listeners than they had on her. It was as though in revisiting those scenes from her horrific childhood, she somehow conquered the demons that lived there. She emerged from the battle with a kind of newly minted poise that was more than slightly unnerving.
'When did you meet up with Jacques and Elise?' Ralph asked.
'I was around fifteen, a sophomore in high school.'
Ralph frowned and looked at me. 'Didn't Denver Holloway say the girl in the film was younger than that?'
'It was me, all right,' Tanya said. 'I'm sure of it. I started taking birth-control pills when I was only eight. My father brought them to me. I don't know if the pills fouled up my natural development or if I was just a late bloomer. I didn't have my first period until I was fourteen. My second came a year later. My lack of boobs drove my father crazy. He was always pinching me there to see if I was growing. He kept telling me he wanted me to be a ‘real' woman. I hoped I never would be.'
'Birth-control pills for an eight-year-old?' I demanded. 'How the hell did he get away with that? Where did he get them? Didn't your mother notice?'
