“Luke Chapman,” I said. “Had his father had sex with Janie?”

He thought. “I don’t recall his saying so . . . no, I don’t think so, ’cause when the others were going on about it, he looked a little uneasy.”

Multigenerational rape. Michael Larner’s assault on Allison Gwynn had been more than a passing fancy. Garvey Cossack Sr. had harbored similar tastes and I was willing to bet Slumlord Coury played in that league, too.

Like father, like . . .

Bowie Ingalls had primed his only child by abusing her, then trafficking in her flesh. I thought about Milo’s description of Janie’s nearly empty room. A place she didn’t—wouldn’t think of as home.

Ingalls had been evil and calculating but stupid. Showing up at the meeting with his blackmail targets, drunk and overconfident.

I said, “What happened when they finished bragging?”

“Coury made some crack about, ‘Honor thy father.’ Went after Janie—just grabbed her and threw her over his shoulder. The others followed.”

“She resist?”

“Not much. Like I said, she was pretty much out of it. I took Aimee and got out of there. Not because I was a good man. But all that talk about ganging up on a girl, taking sloppy seconds from their daddies made me feel . . . uncomfortable. Also, Aimee had to go to the bathroom, had been pulling at my arm for a while, complaining she needed to go. But finding a bathroom wasn’t so easy in that place, every toilet was being used for getting high or having sex or throwing up or doing what a toilet’s for. So, I took her out of the house, over to the backyard, all the way in back, to the bushes and trees, told her to go in there, I’d keep watch.”

He shrugged. The movement caused him pain, and he winced. “I know it sounds crude, but we’d done that before, Aimee and me. I’d be driving her somewhere far from the city—we used to like to go up into the mountains, out in the San Gabriels or over in the West Valley near Thousand Oaks, or up on Mullholland Highway or Rambla Pacifica, top of Malibu. Anywhere we could find empty space and just enjoy the quiet. And no matter how many times I’d tell her to go to the bathroom before we set out, wouldn’t you believe she’d have to go where there was no facilities?”