The Best American Crime Writing by Otto Penzler Read Free Book Online Page A

stories that seemed, well, crazy. She told Kim the story about being kidnapped by a satanic cult, which forced her to drink blood and participate in infant sacrifices.
    “Treva, why are you talking like that?” Kim asked.
    But she could not tell if Treva was listening to her. That vacant look had returned to Treva’s eyes, as if she were somewhere else entirely.
    Soon after her arrival in Electra, Treva left. She never did go to college. She lived briefly in the Fort Worth area with a woman who was raising three children, and then reportedly she went to live at a YWCA. On one occasion Sharon Gentry received a collect phone call from Treva, who said she was working at a run-down motel in Arlington. She called again and said she was living on the streets. And then she disappeared.
    “We never really did look too hard for her,” said Sue. “It wasn’t that we didn’t want to see her. We figured that she wanted to get away, to get a new start. At least that’s what we hoped she was doing—that she was alive somewhere, doing her best.”
VANCOUVER, WASHINGTON—1998
    By the fall of 1998, her junior year, Brianna Stewart had become a well-known figure at Evergreen High. Most of the kids had heard the stories of her tormented childhood. They had learned that she had courageously gone to the Vancouver police to file rape charges against the security guard, who had pleaded guilty to “communicating with a minor for immoral purposes.” Whenever students would see her in her oversized overalls and her pigtails, they’d say, “Hi, Bri”—she preferred the shortened version of her name, pronounced “Bree”—and she’d shyly smile back and tell them to have a nice day.
    Brianna said her goal in life was to become a lawyer, focusing on children’s issues. She spent her free time in the library reading books about law or researching elaborate reports she would turn in to her teachers bearing the titles “Society’s Missing Youth,” “Child Abuse,” and “Adjustive Behaviors.” For an English class she wrote a poignant short story titled “Betrayed” about a girl named Jessica who has no idea where she came from. In it the police and the FBI conduct a DNA test that proves that Jessica was abducted as a child.
    The story was not unlike Brianna’s own search for her past. As she told almost anyone who would listen, she desperately needed a Social Security number that identified her as Brianna Stewart. If she could just get one, then she would be able to move on with her life—obtain a driver’s license, apply for college, find a job. The problem was that the federal government would not issue her a new Social Security number unless she could track down her birth certificate or find her real father—or at least find some evidence to show that he, and she, existed.
    What complicated the search was that Brianna was hazy about many parts of her past. The mental health professionals in Vancouver who had interviewed her believed she suffered from amnesia or some sort of post-traumatic stress syndrome. Brianna, for instance, was not even sure what her real name was. She knew only that when she was a little girl her stepfather had started calling her Brianna, which he had told her meant “Bright Eyes” in Navajo. “I probably wasn’t always Brianna Stewart,” she told a sympathetic reporter from a weekly Portland newspaper who interviewed her in 1999. “I may not know who I was before I was three.” But then she added adamantly, “I do know who I am now.”
    Numerous people were more than willing to help her. A state social worker conducted exhaustive governmental record searches looking for any evidence of Brianna, her mother, or the man she said was her stepfather. A staffer from Indian Health Services, who had been unable to get Brianna off his mind since meeting her, scoured national databases of missing children and even asked her to give blood in hopes of finding a DNA match. She reportedly asked an FBI