Nothing to Report (4 page)

“We have two Rottweiler. They are friendly. Not to worry, ok?” she offered as if reading our minds.

“Does your husband have any guns in the house?” asked Frank.

“No. He have no gun in house. That I am sure,” she said.

Frank and I were curious as to why she had called the police. Searching for one of the many puzzle pieces, Frank asked, “Did he hit you?”

“No. It is not for me. I call for my daughter,” she explained.

“Your daughter?” Frank asked with surprise. “Where is she? How old is she?”

Lt. A. glanced at Charlie with a brief smile, his eyes bright with the memories.

“Frank came out with so many questions all at once. He was good at that.”

“My daughter is in attic. She is fourteen-year old and she come home from school with bad report card. My husband punish her.”

The woman fell silent as she began to cry again.

“What did your husband do? Did he lock her in? Is her room in the attic?” inquired Frank.

“Yes, he lock her in attic and she is screaming,” sobbed the mother.

“Why didn’t you go and unlock the door?” asked Frank.

“Then he would surely kill us both,” she answered. Although her tone was matter-of-fact, her eyes dropped to the floor.

“This was the first time this woman even hinted that the man in the basement with the dogs was could be violent,” Lt. A. said as he glanced at Charlie.

“What is your husband’s name?” asked Frank.

“His name is
Rejic,” the woman responded.

“And what is your daughter’s name?” asked Frank.

“Her name is Barbara.”

“The American name was typical of immigrants trying to blend into the culture,” Lt A explained. “The parents who immigrated to this country usually kept their names and had a tough time with the language barrier. Those same parents most often gave their children American names so they would be easily accepted by other kids.”

Lt. A. described how he and his partner Frank made their way up to the attic, guided by the mother who was now visibly trembling. The stairs were very narrow and dimly lit with only one bare bulb at the base of the stairs. Each step creaked and felt as if they might collapse under the weight of both men, who were both laden down with sticks and lead.

As they approached the top landing the mother turned on a light switch and soon the hallway was illuminated by a single bulb which sat in a wall fixture that was missing its glass enclosure.

As they neared the attic door, both officers heard moans coming from the other side. Although they were alarmed, it was not the screams the mother had described earlier.

“Open the door!” Frank demanded.

“I have no key. My husband, he have key,” the mother stammered.

“Oh, Christ! What do you want us to do? Break in the door when your husband has the fucking key?” Frank yelled.

“Frank was the type of individual who had an extremely high boiling point, Charlie,” Lt. A. explained. “It usually took a lot for him to lose his temper, but at that moment, he was furious!”

“What do you want us to do?” Frank asked again. “We can break it down or we can go down to the basement and drag his ass up here. But if he starts any shit with us, I swear he’ll go to St. Vincent’s Hospital first before we lock him up and take him to jail! Do you understand that?”

The woman nodded. “I give permission to break door,” came
her meek response.

“Okay, stand back,” Frank ordered.

Lt. A. took another swig of his coffee and looked at Charlie as he explained what he’d seen that night.

“It was an old wooden door and very likely the original one that came with the house. In spite of this, it looked sturdier than the pieces of crap that builders put in new houses today.

“Frank took out his memo book and made an entry attesting to the fact that she had given her permission for us to kick the door in. He asked her to sign it and she did. Frank and I both knew there was no sense in the department getting sued later.

“When the formalities had been taken care of, Frank kicked the door once. Thankfully that was all it took. It flew off its hinges and landed several feet inside the darkened attic.”

Lt. A. shook his head with the memory and his eyes clouded over with sadness.

“Neither Frank nor I expected to see what we did when we entered the eerie, grave-like darkness of the secret laden chamber. It had an old, damp musty smell that most attics acquire after so many years, yet this one was somehow different.”

Charlie was all ears as he maneuvered through the quiet streets. When the lieutenant fell silent, Charlie glanced at him but the man in the seat beside him was staring into the distant past.

“The initial odor that viciously attacked our nostrils the instant the door was off its hinges was one of human excrement,” the lieutenant said quietly. “Not long after that, the woman who accompanied us into the room began to scream.”

Lt. A. took another drink of his coffee and ran a trembling hand through his dark hair. He sighed quietly then continued.

Hanging from the huge, blackened, middle rafter by a rope, which was tied around her bleeding ankles, was the crying woman’s daughter, Barbara. She was completely naked, her clothes in a rumpled pile several feet away. Human feces covered her back and hair, which was heavily matted from a combination of excrement and urine. It didn’t take long for the stench to flood into our noses, attacking us without mercy. Small, liquid piles of feces littered the ground directly below the young girl’s head, which hovered about two feet above the urine-soaked floor.

The nearly unrecognizable girl was moaning softly. She sounded like a dime store mama’s doll but only much, much weaker. As I stood there watching her, I realized this young girl who had made the monumental error of bringing home a bad report card was completely unaware that her salvation for such a grievous sin was almost at hand. It was almost surreal.

She was actually quite beautiful in a weird, disgusting way. She had huge, bulbous breasts, but even though she was hanging upside down like a pig after slaughter, her breasts did not sag from the gravity being exerted upon them. The way they protruded through the air was amazing and truly inexplicable. Both nipples were hard and erect and looked like a pair of very wide, thick buttons. She had one of the largest pubic hair areas that either Frank or I had ever set our eyes on. Although we had both heard stories about how Eastern European women from the Slavic countries never shaved under their arms, neither of us were prepared for the massive bush jutting out from the region just inches below this young girl’s belly button.

Lt. A. took another drink of his coffee, now getting cold, and grimaced before he went on.

I found a chair in one of the attic’s corners. It was old but sturdy enough to accomplish the rescue at hand.

As we looked around the rest of the attic, Frank and I slowly realized it resembled a medieval torture chamber. There were chains, whips, ropes and leg irons scattered throughout the room. Barbara’s mother found another light switch and soon there was enough light for the three of us to cut down the bound young woman. As Frank grabbed the girl’s body in an attempt to steady her, I stepped up on the chair and cut the rope which bound her ankles together. The sobbing mother cradled her daughter as if she was a newborn infant and we gently lowered the girl to the dingy, wet floor. Barbara’s mother quickly covered her with an old, dusty quilt she had found in an old chest of drawers, probably left behind from a previous family years before.

The mother began speaking in her native tongue and it was easy to guess that she was cursing her husband. We listened to her for a minute or two then Frank quietly explained that he was going to go down to the floor below and use the phone to call for an ambulance. Thankfully, the mother quietly acquiesced. After a nod to me, Frank quickly descended the steps, found a phone and called 911 to request that a bus respond immediately.

While Frank was calling for the ambulance, I tried to explain to Barbara’s mother that her husband was going to have to be placed under arrest. This might be hard to believe, but after everything this poor family had been through, the mother was reluctant to press charges against her husband.

Lt. A. paused as he looked out the window for nearly a minute before he added, “This is when I realized that the monster below really ruled the house with fear.”

He described how he found it necessary to explain that they were still going to place Barbara’s father under arrest, even though her mother was reluctant to press charges. They knew they could arrest the man based upon their own observations of the abused girl and that, coupled with the wife’s previous statements, would be prima facie.

Frank came back into the attic after completing his call to 911.

“Well are we ready partner?” he asked.

“Let’s get that mother fucker,” I answered.

We began the walk down to the basement, leaving the mother to tend to her daughter who, thankfully, was quietly speaking now. As we approached the cellar stairs we withdrew our service revolvers from our holsters and quietly began the descent to the room below. It wasn’t long before we began to hear the dogs barking.

“
Rejic! Rejic! Are you there?” asked Frank.

“Lock those dogs up now if you don’t want them to get shot,” I ordered.

We immediately heard a man calling the dogs and in less than a minute, a door slammed shut. The barks were more muffled now and we assumed Rejic had put the dogs in another room. As we made our way down the rest of the stairs, we saw a male figure standing in the rear of the cellar.

Looking around, it was obvious that this room was a man’s domain; there was nothing feminine about it. It was dirty and cluttered, with vodka bottles, old pizza boxes and overflowing ash trays strewn all around. No part of this room had seen a dust rag or mop in a long time.

Although there was a small work shop area on one end of the room, it was clear that neither this man nor any other had built or repaired anything there in years. A calendar from the previous year hung on the wall near the door.

As far as the man himself was concerned, he seemed small and diminutive. He appeared to be the type that was probably wimpy around other men but mistreated smaller men and all women. He was wearing a clean dress shirt and jeans, likely thanks to the woman upstairs who probably toiled day and night for the bastard. He had about three or four days’ worth of growth on his face, which was certainly not an uncommon sight on foreigners.

“Turn around and put your hands on top of your head. Do you understand what I’m saying?” Frank asked in a serious, resounding tone.

At first the man in the cellar was unsure on his feet and almost tumbled backwards, but after several seconds he regained his stance and followed Frank’s directions. Rejic turned around and quickly placed both of his hands squarely on the top of his head.

Frank and I quickly approached
Rejic and, while I covered him, Frank holstered his revolver and cuffed the man’s hands behind his back. Thankfully, Rejic offered absolutely no resistance at all.

The lieutenant glanced at Charlie and nodded.

“As you can imagine, both Frank and I silently hoped the prick would have resisted or even tried to get away. We both wanted an excuse to beat the shit out of him for what he had done to his daughter. Unfortunately, it didn’t go down that way.

Frank gave him a quick toss but didn’t come up with any weapons or contraband. Glaring at the man, Frank then sat him down in a chair before bringing him upstairs.

“How could you do such a thing to your daughter?” I asked.

“She bring home bad school,” the father replied in broken English.

“Well, if she doesn’t do well in school, you get her some fucking help. You don’t torture her like a stuck pig. Are you fucking crazy? That’s your little girl!” screamed Frank.

“Don’t you know that you’re going to go to jail now?” I asked, even though I knew this question was futile. How could you talk sense into a man who had just stripped his daughter, tied her up by the ankles and hung her up to dry just like a bundle of helpless grapes in a wine cellar? This was more than child abuse. It was also felony assault and possibly even sexual abuse or worse. He may have even raped his own daughter for all we knew!

Rejic
gave us no answers. Instead, we would have to wait for the final medical report once it was obtained from the hospital.

The ambulance arrived and both mother and daughter were transported to St. Vincent’s emergency room over on Bard Avenue. Without a word, Frank and I took our prisoner to the 120
th
for processing in central booking.