Exiles by Cary Groner

Mina cut him off.
    “You will not take me seriously because I am a woman,” she said. She nodded toward Peter. “Maybe you will take
him
seriously, hm?”
    Bahadur looked at the girl again, then shrugged in concession. “All right,” he said reluctantly. “I only meant to be of assistance. Please come get me if I can answer any questions.”
    He strolled out of the room, head high with preposterous dignity. Peter left Mina with the girl and went to find Franz, who was in his office.
    “Ah, Mr. Bahadur,” Franz said. “The man who shoots only X’s.”
    “How many daughters does he
have
?”
    “Let me pull the charts.” Franz went to the
B
cabinet and pushed away the thick tendrils of the plant that sat atop it, then rooted until he produced a stack of manila folders. He looked through them. “God, you do ask the right questions, don’t you?”
    “Let’s hear it.”
    “Eight counting the one you’ve got now,” said Franz. “I suppose it’s possible, if his wife is strong.”
    Peter took the charts and looked through them. “Three or four of these birthdays are within six months of each other,” he pointed out.
    Franz looked at the folders and grunted. “I doubt she’s
that
strong,” he said. He threw the charts on his desk.
“Scheisse,”
he said. “He’s a
zuhälter.
”
    “A zoo what?”
    “Procurer. Whoremonger.”
    Peter leaned against the desk. “What do we do? What are the laws?”
    “They are ambiguous, unfortunately,” Franz said. “I think it is technically all right for a woman to sell herself if she chooses, but no one else may take any of the money.”
    “She’s about fifteen,” Peter said.
    Franz sighed. “Even
that’s
complicated here because girls are often considered grown up at puberty.” He pulled a pencil from his pocket and drummed the eraser against his desk. “This is probably some country girl he bought from her parents. The police don’t care much for this kind of thing, especially if Bahadur pays them off, which I assume he does.”
    “Agencies?”
    “Long backlog.”
    “Any ideas?”
    “Let me think about it.”
    Peter went back to the exam room and told Mina.
    “This is the
eighth
?” she said. “I should have noticed. Damn it.”
    “You see thirty patients a day, all week, all year,” Peter said. “He brought them in one at a time, not in a herd, and a couple of times his wife brought them. It was mostly mundane stuff, anyway, like eye infections and strep.”
    “I still should have caught it. There’s no excuse.”
    “Mina, you didn’t even see half of them. There were other initials on some of the charts.”
    She turned to him. “You noticed whose
initials
were on the charts?” she asked, looking at him a little strangely.
    He nodded.
    Mina’s voice became uncharacteristically soft. “What do you want to do?” she asked. She sounded surprisingly conciliatory. The girl leaned forward on her arms and watched them intently.
    “We probably ought to start with an exam and see if we can figure out what’s going on,” Peter said.
    Mina nodded. “She’s complaining of pain and itching,” she said. “There’s some bleeding too, but apparently it isn’t menstrual.”
    “Explain to her that I’ll need to have a look but that you’ll be right here and no one’s going to hurt her.”
    Mina spoke to the girl, who shrugged as if she couldn’t care less what happened. That little casual lift of her shoulders chilled Peter more than anything he’d heard about her so far.
    The girl’s vulva was red and swollen. She had active herpes lesions and a thick, foul-smelling discharge that suggested chlamydia, gonorrhea, or possibly some combination of both.
    “No wonder Bahadur was nervous,” Peter said. “We’re not talking about a little sore throat here.”
    “He thought you’d catch on but I wouldn’t?” Mina asked.
    “Jesus.”
    “Has she had a fever?”
    Mina spoke to the girl and said yes.
    “She must be miserable,” Peter