Final Cut (7 page)

“What is it like being a rehabilitation nurse?” Bill asked. He was actually very interested in finding out exactly how she had arrived at that career choice.

“Well, I had initially wanted to be a doctor, but I decided that I was more cut out for nursing, especially rehab. I love working one on one with people and seeing their progress grow day by day. If I was a doctor I would not really be able to do that or see that. Being a doctor just makes everything so impersonal I feel. I love what I do now, even though it has a lot less prestige and of course a lot less money.”

“That’s beautiful. I never would have thought you would go into a career like this or that you would be so awesome at it. From what I remember you were always a great athlete and a bit of a tomboy who cared more about practicing your jump shot than you did studying for tomorrow’s Algebra test.”

“Well, everybody changes. Apparently I grew up when you weren’t looking.”

“Yes, I’ll say you definitely did.”

Teri blushed as she nibbled on her fries. “You know I was hesitant to tell Buzz that we were going out tonight,” she said.

“Why?”

“Well, he has always been so overprotective and insane when a man is interested in me. He has been like that since I had my first date at fifteen.”

“Yea, that sounds like old Buzz. What a great guy though. And he is a good brother,” Bill said. He had actually not even considered what Buzz might think about him dating his sister. He wasn’t exactly sure he cared, but he figured that his best friend would not think much of it. It was him, right?

“He is all those things, but he is also jealous and controlling at times. He refuses to believe that I am a grown woman who is capable of making my own decisions in my love life. As far as he is concerned I don’t have a love life and that is the way it should be.”

“Oh, I’m sure you are exaggerating,” Bill said.

“I’m really not,” Teri smiled.

“Do you think he would have a problem with you dating me?” Bill asked.

Teri thought for a moment and then smiled and shook her head. “Nah, I doubt it.”

“Good, because I am having a blast with you,” Bill said.

Teri smiled and ran her tongue seductively over her lips. Bill felt himself getting very excited. He could tell that the video was going to be waiting for a long time before he got to it and that was just fine with him.

***

Bill watched Teri drive away from his house with a mixture of dread and a total satisfaction sweeping over him. She was amazing. After dinner they had gone back to his place and watched a little TV, but it was not long before they were making out and not long after that before they were naked on the couch. Teri understood that Bill was going to have trouble getting up the stairs and it might kill the passion of the moment to wait for him to have a triumphant moment.

But the couch had worked out well and Bill had even surprised himself at how much room and creative use of the space he’d come up with by using the couch. He realized that he had never had sex on a couch before. It was interesting to say the least.

Teri was incredible. The way she moved and felt when they were making love was the single most intense moment of his life. He hated to think it but it was far eclipsing what he thought he had with Nancy—at least physically. But if things kept going the way they were then Bill was certain that in his case lightning really was striking twice and he was one lucky man.

But before he started jumping up and down he had a screening to do. He had put it off long enough and now there were no more excuses. He had to watch the DVD’s.

Bill opened the DVD player and popped in the first disk. He let it load and sat down on the couch. He could still smell Teri’s sweet scent in the air which made it all seem even stranger. It was like mixing two different elements together that could become explosive in the wrong hands.

The DVD started playing and Bill’s worst nightmares came true.

He was looking at a film of a young woman tied to a chair. She was an attractive blonde girl with makeup running down her face from the tears she was crying nonstop. Her mouth was gagged and her hands and feet were bound to a chair tightly with slender, strong rope.

The person filming was obviously holding the camera with one hand and the other hand they were antagonizing and terrorizing this poor woman. Bill could see a dowel rod in the other hand of this person and they just started to whack the woman in the back of the neck with hard thrusts. Down, down, down. Slap, slap, slap. The sounds echoed in the room off the dank, concrete wall as the girl tried to scream. The camera was shaking and jerking with each impact as it became obvious the maniac was trying to put more strength behind each strike.

The camera pulled back for a second trying to focus on the girl’s reaction to being humiliated and beaten. It was now clear that the girl was completely naked. She had been humiliated in countless ways that was for sure and she had pretty much lost her mind and her will to live at this point.

It was very disturbing to watch, but Bill knew that he had to see for himself what was happening here. He had to see if there was any point where he could see who was doing this to the girl. He didn’t see how, but maybe there was a mistake somewhere. He had to keep hoping and he had to keep wishing.

The psycho moved the camera over every single nuance of the woman’s body and Bill found himself getting more and more nauseous at the very sight of the areas of her body that were now spewing blood from who knew what kind of vile torture and degradation she had faced already. It was almost as if the killer wanted to get her good and warmed up before she was ready for the camera shots.

Bill’s entire body was breaking out in sweat and chills. He felt like he’d just been food poisoned and if he had been anywhere else he might have passed out right then. This was not something that his body was used to and it was not the kind of stress that he welcomed into his life.

The girl’s eyes suddenly went wide with terror. She was seeing something off camera that Bill could not see yet. What was he going to do to her now? Bill didn’t think he could watch, but he had to continue this. It was the only chance he had.

The camera suddenly moved to a table to the right where a wide array of tools was out on display. There were several different styles of knives there as well as a few drills, drill bits, and a saw. Bill’s heart lodged in his throat as he struggled to swallow and still keep air flowing into his lungs. He couldn’t bear to watch was going to happen next, but no matter how hard he tried, no matter how hard he screamed at himself to look away he just could not do it.

The camera turned back to focus on the girl as she began to shake violently and squirm as best she could while screaming at the top of her lungs, her voice cut off with the triple layer duct tape attached on her mouth. No one could hear her. Bill thought that over top the muffled scream he could hear the cackling of the killer. He was enjoying every bit of fear that he had caused.

He was loving every single second of this cat and mouse game. He was pausing now as he held the weapon close to her, getting it ready to cut her open. Was he going to do it slow or was he going to do this fast? That was the question roaring through Bill’s mind. He knew that he could not sit there and watch this poor woman being tortured and cut to pieces. He had to shut it off. He had to turn it off.

But he had to know. He had to know what the hell was going to happen next. This girl deserved justice. And if he could use these videos to help him bring her killer down someway then he owed it to her to do that.

Unless the killer was him. He had not allowed this insane thought to leave his mind, but it was quite possible that it was him. He could not allow his own name to be entirely cleared of the crime. He had to sit there and watch. He had no choice or otherwise he would never know the truth and the world would never know the truth.

What if it was him? What if he uncovered irrefutable evidence that said he killed this girl and possibly others? What was he prepared to do with that knowledge? Would he force himself to go to the police or would he just pretend it never happened and hope to hell that no one ever found out what he did?

He didn’t know. He knew that he was not a killer. Or at least he wasn’t anymore. If he was a monster and he had committed these crimes then he had been cured of whatever had made him that way. He was a good person now. He knew he was. But he felt that he always had been. He could remember everything about his life before the accident. It did not make sense for him to have amnesia when it came to this one specific thing.

Unless he blocked it out on purpose. Or he was a multiple personality. He had read about things like this where people killed others and were completely unaware they had done so because their mind had split into several distinct personalities to cope with hardships and trauma early in life or else they would not have been able to deal otherwise. The mind was a complicated thing and it had a myriad of defenses at its disposal to protect itself from harm.

The camera turned from the girl again and moved closer to the table of weapons. The camera panned over the collection of deadly instruments slowly until it came to the saw. There it paused and zoomed in closer. A hand grabbed the saw by the handle and lifted it off the table.

The camera quickly whipped around at the girl who was now even more terrified as the saw was now in the killer’s hand. She knew what was about to happen and that she was powerless to do anything about it. She was as good as dead and this inhuman beast was going to make sure she suffered as much as she could before she took her last breath.

The camera became shaky as the killer approached and began to saw the girl’s right ear off the side of her head. She trembled and shook trying to break free with every muscle and ounce of fight in her body. The pained look of terror and agony melted on her face as the shock overcame her body. She was screaming through the gag until Bill thought her voice box would rupture at any second.

Bill felt sick. The room around him started to spin a little and he felt like he had to lay down or he was going to pass out. He turned the DVD player to stop and laid down on the couch while the tears began to stream out of his eyes. He could not ever remember crying. Not since he was maybe seven years old. He had cried over a whipping his father had given him over something stupid and the old man seemed to get such a rush and a chuckle out of seeing him in pain that he vowed to never show the man pain or fear ever again. Once he stopped being afraid and started to care none at all about the whippings they stopped. That was the only way to stop a sadist; it wasn’t fun if you didn’t care.

But this was too much. He had never witnessed such a brutal and bizarre action committed on another human being or any living thing for that matter. This psycho made anything his father ever did seem like a love tap. This monster had to be stopped. There was no way it could be him. He refused to believe that any part of him might actually be a monster like this. Even if he was crazy he would remember doing something like that. There was no way that anyone would ever forget they had done such a horrible thing to someone else.

What had he seen?

As he tried desperately to get the image out of his head he remembered seeing the killer pick up the saw and something lying on the table next to the saw. It was a driver’s license. The glimpse of the picture that he had seen showed it belonged to this girl. Could he have really gotten that lucky? Perhaps there was a reason that he was pushing himself so hard and it was not just to clear his own name and preserve his own sanity.

He turned the DVD player back on and rewound it back to that spot. He could clearly see when he paused the DVD player just right that it was that girl’s driver’s license and he could see her name—Daisy Fox. For some reason Bill noticed that the name seemed to suit her just right. Judging by the happy girl in the picture he could see that she was full of life and promise. It was so tragic to see a life like that so young and cut down for no reason in the prime. He wondered if it would have been just as sad to see anyone at any age in that video.

As Bill focused in closer he could clearly see the address on the driver’s license. The girl lived at 1122 Greenmont Ave, in Cutler. That was only about a half hour drive from Crestwood Falls. He had to find out more about this girl and where she’d last been seen and who she had been seen with.

He fired up the laptop and began a search for any information that he could find for Daisy Fox in Cutler, Ohio. His search instantly turned up several pages of results. Most of them from local newspapers about the mysterious disappearance and the search party that had turned up no leads. According to several new reports Daisy was last seen hanging out at Logan’s bar with a girlfriend of hers. Daisy and her friend Cara were celebrating the fact that Cara had just been dumped by her boyfriend. It was a thing that both girls did; when they ended a relationship or they were dumped by their significant others they went out drinking to celebrate—not to drown their sorrows. Cara said it was something they had secretly been doing since high school when they would raid her mom’s liquor cabinet and take a bottle of vodka down by the river banks and just hang out.

Cara said that she had to go home because she was opening the diner the next day, but Daisy had the day off and she had stayed behind to talk to a friend of hers that she had run into. Cara did not know this friend and no one else had really seen her talking to her.

Bill wondered if this mystery woman was in on it somehow. Maybe there was more than one person involved here. There was no way that a woman was operating that saw and holding the camera. From what Bill had glimpsed of the hand reaching for the saw it was definitely a man’s hand. If the woman had been there then it would have been feasible that she would have been operating the camera or at least taking turns destroying this young girl’s life.

Bill researched the stories for about an hour and most of them said the same thing and there was nothing else mentioned about Daisy. This had been five months ago and her body had never been found. Where the hell was she? Did they weigh her down and throw her in the river? If that was the case she might have been carried off downstream somewhere or she could be in the same spot, but the Ohio River was huge and you would never find a body in the thing unless you had a pretty good idea where to look and the killer could have driven her a hundred miles down the river and dumped her before anyone knew.