Perfect Victim (24 page)

Anxiety was already eating away at the facade of normalcy that Janice had struggled for so long to maintain. She had blocked out as much as she could for as long as possible, apparently living her life in a daze, as if it were a bad dream. But now new conflicts rose to the surface.

She awoke to find that K had become her closest friend.

Friendship demanded truthfulness, yet every offhand question or comment K made about slaves or the Company required some response, and no matter what Jan said, no matter how insignificant, it was a lie.

More than once, with K and alone, she sought out Pastor Dabney’s advice, asking about the roles of husbands and wives, and about Genesis, Chapter 16, the story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. Without prying, he offered what guidance he could, but what he told Jan only heightened her dilemma. The compassionate pastor gave interpretations of the Holy Book distinctly different from those of her husband.

Cameron was using the Bible against her; Jan saw that now.

But despite this new glimmer of understanding that Cameron was using fear to manipulate her, Jan was afraid to stand up to him.

She believed that if she made him angry enough he would kill her. He had it in him, of this she was absolutely certain.

Hooker meanwhile seemed increasingly committed to the idea of capturing more slaves. The thought sickened her. She’d had enough of kidnapping and lies, of snatching innocent lives off the street, of living with the fear of being found out, of struggling to shield her daughters from what was going on just beyond the walls of the room where they slept.

But what could she do? She couldn’t tell anyone. She didn’t know whom to trust…and no one would believe her anyway.

And she couldn’t go to the police because she was guilty, too.

Her daughters would be taken from her. That was the most frightening thought: She would lose her girls.

She wanted to flee, to leave her past behind forever. But she had two young children to think of, nowhere to go, and no way to support herself. She’d never even lived alone, much less supported a family.

Now Cameron had a new plan which heightened Jan’s distress.

He called it the “alternate night system,” but no matter what he called it, no matter how he tried to use the Bible to justify it, it seemed sinful and wrong. He announced to his wife and slave that under this new system, he would sleep with one of them for two nights, with the other for the next two nights, and with whichever he liked for the remaining three. He tried to pose this as a proposition, as if during “their nights” they had an option to do as they pleased, but both women knew that if they didn’t do what Cameron wished, they would be punished. With Cameron, there were no alternatives.

Jan was at an impasse. The only person she knew in a similar predicament was K.

At one point Jan confided in her that she was thinking of leaving. K didn’t want Jan to leave her alone with Cameron, she was too afraid of him — but the idea of leaving with Jan terrified her even more. “We can’t go,” K protested. “They’ll find us and torture us!”

There it was again. The lie.

By the end of July, Jan had played and replayed all her options. “I can’t take it anymore,” she told Cameron. “I want you to kill me.”

She asked him to strangle her. He had experience at this.

He’d choked Jan until she’d passed out at least half a dozen times in the past, though never at her request. Now he obliged her, placing his long fingers around her neck and squeezing hard.

It was not an unfamiliar sensation. She heard that odd crackling sound, like a TV had just been turned off, and she knew she was about to go out.

But then, with Jan still this side of unconsciousness, he relaxed his grip. He wouldn’t do it.

She was still alive. And all her questions and problems came screaming back.

The blistering month of August broke, and Jan’s anxiety boiled. She needed answers.

Her search for help moved her to approach other preachers in the area, but her questions were so oblique that she probably left them with the impression that she was struggling with problems of marital infidelity. She was advised to go home and try harder.

By chance, at the Church of the Nazarene, Jan met a couple whom she felt she could talk to — not telling the complete truth, of course, but for the first time in ten years, Jan opened up. They spoke of ethics, posing hypothetical questions to explore issues of right and wrong. Jan even asked the woman personal questions about how a husband ought to show love, for this was something Jan knew little about, Cameron being her only reference.

Jan evidently came away with new convictions. Battling with her conscience, wrestling with the wickedness within her life, she finally approached Pastor Dabney. In his large and comforting presence, she risked slightly more telling questions, though still presenting an impression more of a love triangle than of sexual slavery. The pastor told her they were living in sin and advised changes, scarcely realizing that his words were opening an irreparable crack in Cameron Hooker’s iron control over his wife.

Jan’s beleaguered spirit, wavering loyalties, confusion, and worry over the state of her soul finally reached a crescendo on Thursday, August 9, 1984. If the worst that could happen would be for Cameron to kill her, she had already faced it. She had to do something.

She arrived at King’s Lodge at about eleven-thirty A.m. and asked Mrs. Miron if she could speak with “Kay.” With the manager’s permission she went down the slope to the main building and found K at work in one of the rooms. She had arrived at the moment of truth.

Jan screwed up her courage and finally spoke the words she’d contemplated but avoided for so long: “K, I need to tell you something. Cameron lied to you about everything. The Company, the slavery contract, all that he told you about me being a slave, all that was just lies. He lied to scare you, to make you stay his slave.”

K simply crumpled. Stunned by the enormity of it, aghast that anyone could lie so constantly, so convincingly as Cameron Hooker had, she wept tears of shock and disbelief. Of bitterness.

Of rage. Over seven years! A quarter of her LIFE had been stolen from her!

Janice cried, too, saying over and over how sorry she was.

“I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me,” she said.

They probably held each other, shuddering together in the middle of calamity. But now K finally saw that she was free. The door was open. The lie was over.

The two women needed to get away from Cameron, to escape together, but how? They decided to ask the advice of Pastor Dabney.

They walked back to the motel office. When they came in the door, Doris Miron noticed instantly that they’d been crying heavily.

“I have to quit,” her favorite worker said, offering no explanation. Surprised, Mrs. Miron assumed it was some problem with the head maid, Heidi, but “Kay” looked so distressed that Mrs. Miron didn’t press her for more information. Instead, she said she was sorry she was quitting, but asked that “Kay” finish her day’s work first.

Jan called the pastor and set up an afternoon appointment and then left. K went back to making beds and cleaning bathrooms, tears streaming while she worked.

About two hours later, Jan came back to pick up K, who said her farewells and asked Mrs. Miron to please hold her next paycheck until she could send a new address. Cameron Hooker wouldn’t be collecting any more of her money.

When they arrived at the church, the pastor had a hard time understanding these two very upset women, but he learned that K had been held against her will, that the two had been subjected to strange sexual practices, and that both were terrified of Cameron.

Dabney advised them to pack up and leave immediately, suggesting they go home and stay with their parents.

But it wasn’t that simple. It was getting close to four o’clock, Cameron’s quitting time, Janice explained, and she was supposed to pick him up after work. There wouldn’t be time to get their things before then, and they were afraid of confronting him.

The pastor suggested that they pick him up from work as usual, pretend nothing had happened, and then leave the next day, after Cameron had left for work. That’s what they decided to do.

It occurred to K that Jan’s will might falter and she might confess to Cameron what she’d done, but the cards had been dealt, and now, poker-faced, she and Jan had to play their hands.

They picked up Cameron as usual. They made and ate dinner and cleaned up afterwards. If Cameron thought it was odd that Jan didn’t want to sleep with him that night, her excuse that she wasn’t feeling well must have quelled his suspicions. Jan slept on the floor with K.

The next morning Cameron left for work at five A.M., and as soon as he was out the door, Jan and K started packing. When Cathy and Dawn got up, they were sent off to Bible school, and with no kids underfoot, the two women finished the job quickly.

By noon they were done. They gathered up their belongings, picked up the girls, and fled to Jan’s parents’ home in the nearby town of Gerber.

Her parents were probably stunned to find their daughter, married now for ten years, on their doorstep with her two girls and the babysitter in tow, but they offered them a place to sleep.

Now it was up to Jan and K to figure out what to do next.

They talked of staying together, of trying to make a good home for the girls. Because of her genuine affection for Cathy and Dawn, this seemed attractive to K. It also appealed to her selfless side: Oddly enough, she saw Jan as so dependent that she couldn’t picture her taking care of the children and making it on her own.

They discussed going together down to Riverside and staying with K’s father or staying with Jan’s folks. But in the back of her mind, K heard a voice urging her to go: Don’t stay! it said. Jan has to make it on her own. You can’t help her anymore. Get away!

Go home!

K finally made her decision and called her father. She asked him to wire her a hundred dollars for the bus fare home.

Jack Martin, who hadn’t heard from his daughter since her whirlwind visit of March, 1981, was stunned to hear Colleen’s voice and thrilled at the prospect of seeing her again. Eager to do whatever he could to get his daughter home, he generously offered larger amounts of money: “Are you sure a hundred dollars is enough? I can send more, honey. How much do you need?” But Colleen finally convinced her bewildered dad that a hundred dollars was plenty.

The next morning, after K had her ticket in hand and was certain she would be boarding the bus for home momentarily, she phoned Cameron.

It was her declaration of independence. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m leaving, that I know you lied about everything, and you can’t keep me here anymore.”

Colleen doesn’t remember all that Cameron said, but she does recall one thing: He cried.

Now with her parents, Jan was living several miles away from Cameron but hadn’t escaped his pull. To her amazement, he didn’t threaten her or come after her with a gun, but after sulking for a few days, he begged her to come back to him. He swore that he’d change, get counseling, give up bondage, anything if she’d just come home.

Janice wavered. She worried about how she was going to support her two daughters, about the police, and about whether she’d done the right thing in setting K free. She hadn’t been very forthcoming about the real reasons she’d left Cameron, so friends and relatives, thinking this was little more than a marital spat, urged her to forgive Cameron, go back, and give their ten-year marriage another try. After a week of vacillation, she and the girls moved back.

Cameron started going to church with Jan, and she was encouraged when he even came forth for the altar call. It seemed to her that he was making a solemn vow before the Lord that he would change.

Together and separately, the Hookers also had private talks with Pastor Dabney. As Jan grew closer to the gray-haired, avuncular clergyman, she confided that her husband was “a sadist,” and that he kept an odd assortment of handcuffs, whips, books, and photos. This was so far outside the pastor’s experience he could scarcely have imagined the full scope of Hooker’s appetites.

When Cameron came in, he impressed Dabney as “mild and likeable,” but the pastor found it difficult to tell what he was really thinking. All he could do was advise him to be true to his wife and get rid of his sexual paraphenalia. Cameron said he would.

But now Hooker’s resolve seemed to falter. He refused to go to counseling. Jan went alone. She wanted to give him a chance, give him time, but now she felt a gnawing fear that he was lying to her. And, worse, that he was lying before the Lord.

One night in September Jan awoke suddenly. She instantly sensed that Cameron was wide awake beside her, his muscles taut.

She could almost smell the tension rising from his body.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered thickly.

He seemed so keyed-up it scared her. The lateness of the hour, her imagination, or perhaps an almost clairvoyant understanding of this man she’d known since the age of fifteen convinced Jan that he was about to do something terrible.

She had a flash of inspiration and clung to it: “Let’s get up and burn everything,” she suggested. The pornography. The bondage equipment the pastor had told him to get rid of. “Do you want to burn that stuff?”

“I don’t know.” He paused. “Well, I guess.”

It was only a distraction, but it worked. Cameron focused all his energy on gathering up sadomasochistic magazines, whips, leather cuffs, the gas mask, as well as the slavery contract, slides of K being hung and stretched and dunked, and things she had written. He heaped them all into the burn barrel in the backyard and struck a match.

The barrel flared, the contents crackled, and smoke spiraled upward into the clear night air.

Meanwhile, Colleen Stan had rejoined her family in Riverside, a city as different from Red Bluff as it is far away, with its palm trees, freeway loops, and the notorious smog that characterizes Southern California.