SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

MARCH 1985

Diane, Sarah, Carolyn, Mary, Sarah, Emily, Linda, Norwegian baby, Air Force baby, Marianne, Maryland baby, Prince George baby, Sarah Brown, Agatha White Buffalo, Cuban Donna, Cincinnati baby, Savannah baby, Martha, the other Knoxville baby, Pamela, Mary-Anne, Bobbie, Jo, cowgirl, Angela, pipefitting baby, Macon baby, Carver Village baby, Carver Village baby, Plant City baby, Charleston baby, Clearwater baby, Evelyn, Julia, Cleveland baby, Hilda, Leila, Brenda, billboard baby, Chattanooga Choo Choo baby, Gulfport baby, Jackson ladyboy baby, Tennessee baby, Linda Sue, Atlanta baby, Anna, Rosie, Fredonia, Ohio baby, Nawlins baby, Little Woods baby, Dorothy, Patricia, Melinda, Atlanta stripper baby, college baby, Mary Jo, Fort Myers baby, Tampa Bay baby, Savannah baby, Kentucky Vegas baby, San Berdu baby, Memphis blues baby, Laurie, Tonya…

Pick the ones no one will notice are gone. Don’t leave a witness. Don’t get caught. If one of the above fails, demand a lawyer. There is no such thing as a jury of your peers. You have no peers. It’s not your fault. You were born this way. They asked for it.

Samuel Little sat at the defense table in a courtroom that smelled faintly of wood rot and disinfectant. He tumbled back through the previous eight months in his mind while they droned on.

A smart man learns from his mistakes. The other two, the what’s her name Melinda and the freaky-deaky Patricia, had inconvenienced him, and now this. He’d rotted in one shithole jail cell after another for over a year on the last one, waiting for the world to confirm that no one cared about them in the first place.

Melinda LaPree: failure to indict by grand jury.

Patricia Mount: acquitted by a jury of his peers after less than half an hour of deliberation.

Those other two lying whores couldn’t even keep from peeing themselves.

No convictions and he’d had to do the bogus waiting time. He was the victim of an unfair system. All that stuff and nonsense about hair, eyewitnesses. A hair could get caught up in a breeze and blow clear across the state. All the eyewitnesses within a ten-mile radius of Sam were hopheads and whores, like the bitch yapping on the stand.

REMPEL: How old are you, Miss Barros?

BARROS: Twenty-two.

REMPEL: Have you ever been married?

BARROS: Yes, I have.

REMPEL: Did you become separated in 1984?

BARROS: Yes, I did.

Oh right. This was the one who whined for her mommy. Laurie Barros was her name. That was the thanks he got for leaving her alive, even if it had been an accident. It was up to God, not him.

REMPEL: How are you employed?

BARROS: I’m currently working at San Diego Medical Foundation, and I am a claims examiner.

REMPEL: Is that like an insurance company, commercial insurance, or something?

BARROS: Yes, it is. It’s medical, major medical, basic health insurance.

Snore. When would they get to the part about Sam already? Wasn’t it his trial?

REMPEL: Now I want to direct your attention to September 27, 1984. At this time were you separated from your husband?

BARROS: Yes, I was.

Was it already 1984? Where had the time gone. Lost behind him on the 90, the 75, the 10, the 20, the 40…

Jean sat behind him in her one good dress. He’d be out by Friday and make all this mess up to her. They’d go to LA. Sam winked. Jean kept her head bowed, humble as a pastor’s wife, Bible in her lap.

He’d done her wrong. He’d done a lot of them wrong. Take his old girlfriend Ninah. Jean had been staying in LA for a while in ’74 and had sent word to him in the workhouse in Trenton to get his ass to LA immediately, with Ninah or without her. Sam had made it to LA and checked Ninah into the Cecil Hotel downtown before heading straight out to see Jean.

Jean had a party waiting for him. She kissed his face a thousand times, treated him like a king, didn’t take her eyes off him for two weeks. He almost forgot about Ninah. When he went back for her, no one could remember seeing her in the first place. Years later, Ninah’s mother’s mother told him the poor wretch had gone batshit crazy. She’d flown out to LA and found Ninah rocking in the corner, talking nonsense about dead girls. Ninah was in Midgeville now, the local loony bin.

The next time they’d passed through Macon, he’d taken a detour, sauntered into Midgeville, and checked Ninah out then and there. Once he bundled her into the car, he noticed she was altered, touched or something.

Maybe she’d been listening when they’d been driving out of Omaha that night and the news story had come on the radio, about the Indian girl he’d left naked, head down, in a fifty-five-gallon barrel behind some dismal hide plant that smelled like the mouth of hell. He’d always thought she was just staring out the window.

No one would believe her anyway. He gave her a tenner and dropped her at the movie theater, told her to get them a couple of tickets. It wasn’t without sadness that he left her there. He even circled the block for one last look at her, clutching the matinee tickets, craning her neck around for him. Poor crazy-ass ho. Someone would notice her eventually.

He prayed to God that if he got off this one last time, he’d treat Jean right and make up for every hurt he caused Ninah and the rest of them. He’d change his ways. He already felt like a better man just thinking about it.

REMPEL: And were you downtown on that evening?

BARROS: Yes.

REMPEL: Did you drive down there?

BARROS: Yes, I did.

REMPEL: Park your car?

BARROS: Yes.

REMPEL: Approximately where did you park your car, if you recall?

BARROS: Tenth Avenue and “C” Street.

REMPEL: Did you get out of your car?

BARROS: Yes, I did.

REMPEL: Did you commence walking?

BARROS: Yes.

REMPEL: And before anything else happened, about how far did you get?

BARROS: Tenth and “B.” Close to “A” Street.

REMPEL: Were you headed toward some buildings or something there?

BARROS: Going north, toward Ash Street.

REMPEL: Getting towards that location, could you tell us what the lighting was like in that area?

BARROS: It was very dark.

REMPEL: Okay, and as you go to that location, what happened?

BARROS: I was approached from behind and grabbed around the—waist, the neck, and the chin area and pulled—dragged into a car.

REMPEL: How far was the car from you?

BARROS: It was about 25 feet. 20 to 25.

REMPEL: Was the door open or closed?

BARROS: It was open.

REMPEL: Did you struggle?

BARROS: Yes, I did.

REMPEL: Were you able to scream?

BARROS: I didn’t dare.

REMPEL: Why was that?

BARROS: I guess I was so taken and shocked. I didn’t know if I should scream or not—there was nobody around to hear me—for fear I would have been hurt worse. I had a good knowledge that I was going to be hurt, beaten.

SPENCER: Your honor, objection.

Good man. Object! They always made it so easy. Same with the bitch from Missouri. They had just been playing around. No one believed her either. Did three months for that.

THE COURT: The question was, why did she not scream. For that purpose, I’ll allow her answer to come in.

REMPEL: Now, when you got in the car, was the door of the car open or closed?

BARROS: It was open.

REMPEL: What happened when you got in the car?

BARROS: I was nudged into the—from the driver’s side, into the middle position of the seat.

REMPEL: Were there any keys in the car?

BARROS: Yes, they were in the ignition.

REMPEL: And what happened next?

BARROS: He took off driving. I was still cuffed around the neck.

REMPEL: Describe for us how it was that he was holding you while he was driving.

BARROS: It was in a headlock-type position, with his hand over my mouth and neck. Like this, over my mouth, so that I could not speak, and—

Lies. Wasn’t no headlock. It was a billfold of twenties.

REMPEL: It was a headlock, then, with his arms going around behind your—the back of your neck and then around your face.

BARROS: Yes.

REMPEL: Was this with his right arm?

BARROS: Yes, it was.

REMPEL: Did he do all the driving with his left?

BARROS: Yes.

REMPEL: And was this an automatic transmission car?

BARROS: Yes, it was.

REMPEL: What happened when he had to shift?

BARROS: He stuck his hand through the steering wheel to shift it, like that.

REMPEL: Now, describe where you went.

BARROS: Took off toward Market Street driving east, ’til we got to a location of 3600 block of Market Street, drove up a gravel dirt road, up on—which was an incline, up to a deserted area, which appeared to be an illegal dump site.

REMPEL: Have you since gone back to that area?

BARROS: Yes, I have.

Yes, yes, yes, he remembered now. She’d been dressed like something out of a music video from that new MTV nonsense, in a black dress with white polka dots, a red belt, big white plastic jewelry Jean could have sold to the youngsters. She’d worn shiny white heels he’d tossed straight off when he’d slid her stockings down. His penis started getting erect thinking about it. He was almost looking forward to the next part of her testimony. What was she on about? It was a lover’s lane. Of course it was dark.

REMPEL: After he stopped the car, what happened next?

BARROS: He turned it off. He got out of his car door, out of the car, in a quick fashion, and pushed the driver’s seat forward to jump into the back seat, and still had me cuffed. He had to release me for a minute to open the door and get into the back seat, but then he grabbed me through the console in the front seat, just kind of threw me right into the back seat, and from there he proceeded to try and kiss me. I fought him off and when I did that, immediately he clamped right down on my—clamped right down on my neck and started choking me.

REMPEL: Okay, describe what this person did to choke you.

BARROS: He took his hand, his right hand, and just clamped right down on this portion of my neck and started applying pressure so that my air, my breath, was completely cut off. I could not breathe and he threw me into a lying position on the seat.

The lawyer puppet asked the whore to identify Sam, and she pointed. He didn’t meet her gaze. The whole thing was making his dick too hard. The moment she pointed, he knew in his very soul that he loved her and always had and she was his forever, drawing breath or not.

Why was it everyone who loved him he couldn’t love, and everyone he loved he needed to kill? How can sex and hate and love and death get twisted up inside a person?

REMPEL: After the defendant commenced choking you in the back seat of that vehicle, describe what happened next.

BARROS: He let up after about two minutes of doing this and I had the chance to speak. I asked him not to hurt me, that I was willing to cooperate with whatever his intentions were. I just didn’t want him to hurt me. And he proceeded to reply that he wouldn’t, and he said, “Trust me, I’m not going to hurt you.” He says, “I love you.” And that’s when he started taking my nylons off and my underwear. They got stuck in my shoes, and so he just ripped them off, and took the nylons—and took the nylons and flipped me over onto my knees and tied my hands together very tight.

Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. If he had, it was only because she freaked on it.

REMPEL: Okay. After the defendant had you on your knees there in the car in the back seat and he tied your hands behind you, what did the defendant do next?

BARROS: He flipped me back over on my back and I was laying on my hands. He kind of just put a lot of pressure on me from laying on me and started choking me again.

REMPEL: As he choked you, did he say anything to you?

BARROS: Yeah. He said, “Swallow for me. I love when you swallow.”

REMPEL: When he was saying that: “Swallow, swallow for me,” was his hand actually on your neck at the time he would say that?

BARROS: Yes, it was.

REMPEL: What is the next act he performed?

BARROS: Pardon?

REMPEL: What is the next thing he did?

BARROS: He let go of my neck and took his pants down, and then lifted me from my lower back, since I was on my back, and he held me up so he could start rubbing against me with his genital area, and then I guess he was trying to perform sexual intercourse. He wasn’t able to. His penis was flaccid…

REMPEL: Now, did he ever perform any other sex acts on you?

BARROS: …He performed oral copulation on me.

REMPEL: Is this while you were in the same position?

BARROS: Yes.

REMPEL: Was this against your will?

BARROS: It certainly was.

REMPEL: Were you still tied up?

BARROS: Yes, I was.

REMPEL: Approximately how long, just roughly, was it that he performed oral copulation?

BARROS: Four minutes.

REMPEL: Is that just an estimate on your part?

BARROS: Yes.

REMPEL: Now, what else did he do or say at that time, as you recall? What else was happening after he did that?

BARROS: He just came back over behind my neck and started choking me again, playing a little game and applying a lot of pressure on my neck, and then easing up for a moment for me, enough so I wouldn’t pass out, and then applying a lot of pressure again. And this just kept going on.

Over and over again, she described it. How he took her breath, then gave it back.

Sam scissored his thighs to feel the equivalent of the retinal afterimage of a tingle. Like when you rub your eyes and see spots. Wasn’t quite as good as the real thing, but reliving it was better than nothing. Doing it with an audience had its own special charm.

REMPEL: Did you fight as hard as you could at that point?

BARROS: Yes, I did. There wasn’t a lot of energy that I could do so. It was a very, very short period of time and then I just gave up…

REMPEL: Did the defendant give any reason why he continued choking you after he had done the sex acts which you’ve described?

BARROS: None whatsoever, other than the fact that he liked seeing me swallow and having total control of my life, whether I breathed from one moment to the next.

Coached bullshit. The thing about choking people out—their mind is the first thing that goes. They start talking nonsense, eyes rolling around. They’re half-awake, half-asleep once you start taking their breath away. In all his years, maybe only one or two of them ever even regained the sense enough to beg.

She didn’t remember, but he did. The last time he’d choked her out, he had pressed his lips to hers and said, “Take my breath.”

She described stumbling down the road, calling some whore of a friend. She hadn’t called the cops, just sat in a bathtub crying—handed him a hall pass.

The green police officers on the stand sounded like boy scouts vying for their next badge. The next whore was drunk as a skunk on the stand.

Got lazy. He’d make sure they were good and dead from now on.

In the end, he sat back and watched his lawyer take every last one of them apart. He pled to lesser charges: assault with a deadly weapon and false imprisonment. A four-year sentence.

If he were smarter, he’d have done it like Manson: all those girls serving and worshipping and killing for him. But then again, Charlie had never felt the ear-ringing, mind-scrambling, toe-curling climax of death. More importantly, Sam would rather be free than famous. He would be exactly that in about eighteen months if he played his cards right.