Criminal

who managed the apartment complex. Then countless others who had raped her, beat her, fucked her, left her on the side of the road for dead.
    Stockholm syndrome.
    That’s what the woman doctor on CBS Radio called it. Walter Cronkite introduced her as a noted authority. She worked with victims of cults and mind-control experiments. She seemed to know what she was talking about, but maybe she was just making excuses, because what she was saying didn’t entirely track.
    At least not to Lucy.
    Not to the girl who slept in her own excrement. Not to the girl who couldn’t move her arms or legs. Not to the girl who couldn’t open her mouth unless it was cut open for her. Couldn’t blink without the razor sharp edge of his pocketknife slicing through the tiny stitches of thread.
    The second Lucy saw an opening, the minute she saw even the sliver of a chance, she would escape. She would run to her freedom. She would crawl on her hands and knees back home. She would find her parents. She would find Henry. She would go to the cops. She would rip her body from this mattress and find a way to get home.
    Patty Hearst was a stupid bitch. She was in a closet, but no one held her down. She had a chance. She had ample opportunity. She’d stood with a rifle in that bank, yelling SLA bullshit, when she could’ve just run out the door and asked for help.
    If Lucy had a rifle, she’d use it to shoot the man in the head. She’d pound in his skull with the stock. She’d rape him with the long barrel. She’d laugh when the blood poured from his mouth and his eyeballs popped out.
    And then she’d find that woman doctor from the radio and tell her that she was dead wrong. Patty Hearst wasn’t helpless. She could’ve gotten away. She could’ve bolted at any time.
    But then the doctor might point out that Lucy had something Patty Hearst did not.
    Lucy wasn’t alone anymore. She didn’t need Bobby or Fred or Juice or her father or even Henry ever again. She no longer marked time by the feel of warm sunlight rising or falling across her face or the seasonal change in temperature. She marked her passage not in days, but in weeks and months and the cresting swell of her belly.
    It would happen any day now.
    Lucy was going to have a baby.

eighteen
    July 14, 1975
    MONDAY
    Captain Bubba Keller was one of Duke’s poker buddies, which meant that he likely had his white robe pressed at the dry cleaner where Deena Coolidge’s mother had died. Keller’s wife would be the one dropping off his laundry. He probably had no idea who cleaned it.
    Amanda had never given much thought to her father’s Klan affiliation. The Klan still controlled the Atlanta Police Department when men like Duke Wagner and Bubba Keller joined. Membership was compulsory, the same as paying dues to the Fraternal Order of Police. Neither man had likely objected. They were both of German descent. They had both joined the Navy in hopes of being sent to the Pacific rather than having to fight in the European theater. They both wore their hair in tight military cuts. Their pants were always creased. Their ties were always straight. They took charge of things. They opened doors for ladies. They protected the innocent. They punished the guilty. They understood right and wrong.
    That is to say, they were right and everyone else was wrong.
    Back in the late sixties, Police Chief Herbert Jenkins had drummed the Klan out of the force, but most of the men with whom Duke played poker still honored the former affiliation. As far as Amanda could tell, membership consisted solely of sitting around and grousing about how much things had changed for the worse. All they could talk about was the good old days—how much better things had been before the coloreds ruined everything.
    What they didn’t acknowledge was that the things that made it bad for them made it better for everyone else. Over the last few days, Amanda had found herself thinking that injustice was never more tragic than when you found it knocking at your own door.
    She tried to keep this in perspective as she walked into the Atlanta Jail. Captain Bubba Keller took pride in his post, though the Decatur Street building was despicable, worse than anything you’d find in Attica. Bats hung from the ceiling. The roof had gaping holes. The concrete floor was crumbling. During the winter, prisoners were allowed to sleep in the hallways rather than risk freezing to death inside their cells. Last year, a man had been rushed