"Hi, Mr. Callahan," she said. "Nothing much. Have you by any chance seen my sister?"

"Annette? No, honey, I haven't," I told her. "She's not at home?"

Carol shook her head. "Daddy had to go to work today. When I got home from school I couldn't find Annette anywhere. Today's Friday. I guess she went off with those men again."

Annette is Carol's twelve year old sister, uncommonly beautiful, but with the mind of a six year old. Their father Russell told me she had a violent fever when she was six, and that fever severely damaged her brain. Russell's wife had Carol two years after she had Annette and stuck around for a couple of years after that, but she took off shortly after Annette's fever struck, Carol was two then, leaving Russell to take care for his two girls all by his lonesome. As a result of that fever Annette's body is blooming like wildflowers on the prairie in spring, but her mind is unable to deal with her environment and so she floats helplessly along like a leaf caught in a late fall breeze. They don't have a grade low enough for her in school, so on days her father works she is home all by herself.

It was on a Friday afternoon a couple of months ago when the men Carol referred to, there had been four of them, had been driving around looking for action when they noticed Annette wandering around the complex's front yard. They lured her into their car and drove off with her. Her father Russell had been home that day and had caught sight of Annette as she was getting in their car, and he ran after the car screaming at them and pounding his fist on the window. But the car's drivert put the pedal to the metal and the car pulled away with the men laughing at him and giving him the finger, or so Carol reported to me the next day. At the time I heard Russell's shouts and ran to the window just in time to see the car picking up speed as Russell was pounding on the window. From my sighting I could semi figure out what was going on, and the next day Carol came over and confirmed my speculation.

It was six hours later that they let Annette out of their car in front of the complex. I happened to be outside at the time, and went over to her. She was somewhat dishevelled. Her hair was matted, her dress had lost some of its buttons, her brassiere was gone, and she had a lot of white, sticky stuff dried on her face and leaking from her torn panties. But for the first time on that usually vacant face of hers there was a trace of a smile, and otherwise she seemed none the worse from wear. It had happened on a Friday, the last day of the work week, and after that it seems to have become somewhat of a bi-weekly occurence. The car parks out in front of the complex, the horn sounds twice, and a somewhat zombie-like Annette slips out of her apartment and into their car, and it drives away. Russell never bothered to chase it after that first day's humiliation. The men always bring her back unharmed, at least she seems unharmed physically, I guess her mental state doesn't allow give her any degree of judgement of their activities, but since leaving with them is obviously by her choice there wasn't much Russell could do to prevent her short of chaining her in the house. ......(cont)