Not Dead Yet (16 page)

“Tell them I’m a law student, shadowing you for a few weeks to learn about the real world of practicing law,” Jack replied.

“A few weeks?” Theia blurted.  “You think this will go on that long?  It better not - I’d have a complete nervous breakdown.  Besides, you look a bit old for a law student.”

“Face reality, we can’t control how long this will take,” Jack answered.  “In the meantime, I’m your bosom buddy.”

“I don’t think any of us should be alone,” Theia suggested to Lu and Colleen, to take her mind off of being close to Jack and what that could lead to.

“Oh my God!  You’re right,” Colleen said, turning pale.

“Donald gets off on hurting people,” Jack explained.  “When he realizes we’re coming after him, he’ll come after us.  While we’re hunting him, he’ll be hunting us.  We can’t let our guard down even for a moment.”

“Hey Colleen,” Lu said, “how about you stay over at my place for a while?”

“I guess I could do that.  I sure don’t want to be at my place now.  That bastard knows where I live,” Colleen shuddered. “But he don’t know where you live,” she looked at Lu, “yet.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

After calling the detective, Jack and Theia swung by her apartment to pack. The cats led them on a merry chase.

“How do they find so many places to hide?” Jack complained.

“Just make sure you don’t grab the calico.  She bites,” Theia warned.

“Well, how am I supposed to catch her?”

“You won’t – I will,” Theia answered.

“Will she bite you?”

“Probably, but she tends to draw more blood on strangers than on me.”

Finally, the beasts were caught and packed into carriers, the calico drooling and hissing.

“Does she have rabies?” Jack asked.

“No, why?” Theia asked.

“She’s drooling.”

“You idiot!  Cats do that when they’re mad or scared.  Let’s haul ass over to your place before she pees all over the carrier,” Theia warned.

“Bladder problem?” Jack asked.

“No, attitude problem.”

“Great.”

Theia got settled in at Jack’s.  He showed her where he kept the food, dishes, wine and beer.  “You need to know that I’m not the world’s best host.  Please help yourself, and I mean that,” he said.  “I don’t want to have to worry about whether you’re hungry or thirsty, so do us both a favor and make yourself at home.”

“Fine, but I’m still not sleeping on the sofa, Mr. Welcome Wagon.”

Her phone rang.

“Hello? Yes, this is Theia.”  She paused. “You didn’t?  Okay, thanks for letting me know. That was the detective,” she explained to Jack. “They checked out both places – his sister’s and his parents’ – and found no sign of Donald or Rose.  Big fat goose egg.” She slumped down to the sofa, pulling her legs up and wrapping her arms around her legs. She was exhausted from the emotional yoyo she had been riding. “So now what do we do?”  Theia asked Jack, her eyes wide with worry.  “We can’t just give up.”

She laid the side of her head against her knees and closed her eyes.  The exhaustion and stress were catching up with her.

“I don’t know, but we don’t have to figure it out this minute.  Why don’t you take a break?” Jack suggested.  He brought her a blanket and a glass of wine and turned on the classic movie channel.  The movie, The Thin Man, was starting.  Just what the doctor ordered, he thought.  She needed a momentary distraction and lost herself in the film.  It was the first time in years she had felt safe and comfortable alone with a man.  She fell asleep halfway through the movie and her second glass of pinot grigio. Jack swung her feet up onto the sofa and put a pillow under her head. 

In the morning, he found her already awake.  “You made coffee! Thank you,” he beamed at her.  “I’ll grab the paper.”

He opened the door, ran back to the kitchen and grabbed oven mitts.  Using the mitts, he brought in a plastic computer jump drive on top of a bloody newspaper.  Jack and Theia stared at the jump drive and newspaper as if they were about to explode.

Heart racing, Theia managed to squeak, “What should we do?” 

“I’ll call the police.”

They stared at the newspaper and jump drive while he called the detective.

“We’d better get dressed before the cops get here,” he suggested.

“What?” she asked, still mesmerized. “Oh, right, yeah, thanks.” Theia darted into the bathroom and came out less than five minutes later, dressed and groomed.

“How did you do that?”  Jack asked, pulling a t-shirt over his head as he strolled out of his bedroom.  Despite herself, Theia enjoyed seeing the brief flash of skin.  If she was not careful, she was going to fall in lust with this guy.  “No woman I’ve ever known can get ready that quickly.”

“Bathrooms are boring. I don’t have the patience to stand in front of the mirror for an hour doing my hair and makeup, so I do the essentials and get out of there.”  In reality, she felt nervous and vulnerable in bathrooms, but she would never admit that.  Foster had attacked her when she was on the toilet during one of the break-ins.  He had stuffed a hand towel in her mouth to muffle her screams.

There was a sharp knock on the door.  Jack greeted  the detective and showed him the newspaper and jump drive.

“Where did you find these items?”  Detective McCarthy asked.

“Just outside the door,” Jack said.  “About a minute before I called you.  I didn’t want to get my fingerprints on them, but I also didn’t want to leave them outside where they might disappear, so I picked them up with oven mitts.”

“Good work.”  The detective pulled on gloves, examined and photographed the items and the doorstep.  He powered up the laptop he had brought, and popped in the jump drive.

The jump drive contained a badly filmed video of Rose, beaten to a bloody pulp and lying on a dirty wooden floor with her arms and legs at very wrong angles.  He must have broken each one separately.  She was either unconscious or dead. 

A man’s voice said, ”Thought you’d want to see what your little stunt of going to the cops did to Rose. She had to be punished for your disobedience. I told you not to go to the police, bitch!  Now look at what you made me do to her.  Stay the fuck away from the cops!”  A man’s scuffed work boot appeared at the bottom of the picture.  He kicked Rose’s foot and laughed, then the video ended.

Theia ran to the bathroom and puked her guts out.  The video reminded her on the South American torture death videos Foster used to watch.  The only features lacking were the screams of agony.  Although she had only seen a few minutes of Foster’s videos, they were still powerful in her memory. 

“I’ll have to take these in as evidence,” McCarthy said, carefully putting the newspaper and jump drive into a bag.  “We’ll try to figure out from the video where he’s holding her, well, what’s left of her.  We might be able to see more on our equipment.”

“It looks like she’s lying on a floor, but the building doesn’t look residential,” Jack said.  “Were there any sheds or outbuildings at the parents’ house?”

“I don’t know, I wasn’t at that location. I was at the one in town, at his sister’s house.  The parents’ property is outside our jurisdiction, so we coordinated with local law enforcement, who did the actual site visit.  I’ll call and ask them.  There wasn’t anything at the sister’s house with a floor like that.  She okay?” he asked, jerking his head in the direction of the bathroom.

“Yeah, she will be,” Jack said.  “She’s stronger than she thinks.”

“Good thing.  Well, call me if anything else turns up.”  He gave Jack his card and left.

“You need anything?” Jack opened the door to the bathroom, where Theia was kneeling on the floor, her head over the toilet.

“Stay out,” Theia snapped.

“Jeez, you don’t have to bite my head off,” Jack said, remaining outside the bathroom.

There was silence for a moment.

“I’m sorry. I just don’t like people to see me like this.  Let me get cleaned up and brush my teeth.”

A few moments later, Theia walked back into the room.  “Sorry.  I was embarrassed, being weak like that.  I hate weakness in myself.”  She was actually embarrassed that her memories had triggered such a strong physical reaction.  Would she have thrown up if she did not remember the torture videos? 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jack responded.  “Most people would throw up after seeing that gruesome video.”

“You didn’t,” Theia pointed out.

“I nearly did,” Jack admitted.  “And I don’t even know her.  If I knew her, I would have been shoving you aside for the toilet.  We better tell Colleen about the video.”

He called both Colleen and Lu, but got no answer so he had to leave a message.  “I don’t know where you guys are, but call me.  It’s important.”

“Do you think Rose’s even alive?” Theia asked. 

“I don’t know.  I’m sure Colleen would want to find her, regardless.  We should try to find other places where he could be holding her.  Why don’t you take a nap while I poke around on the computer?  Your body’s still trying to recover from getting pummeled.  Getting some rest will help.”

“I am pretty wiped out.” She grabbed a blanket and pillow, and curled up on the sofa.  It was nice to be with someone who was kind.  She could get used to this.

Theia drifted weightlessly on floaty clouds in her dreams.  She flipped over on her back, swimming among the poofy little clouds and enjoying the warm sunny air. 

With no warning, the temperature dropped about fifty degrees.  She looked at her arms and the rest of her body.  She was no longer in the sunlight, and she could not swim or roll over.  She was strapped to a metal surgical table.

Theia struggled to move her arms, but they were restrained by wide straps.  Her legs were tightly fastened in stirrups.  She heard a door open then close, then click.  She shuddered.  Soft footsteps, probably muffled by surgical booties.  Foster came up behind her. Theia couldn’t move and couldn’t scream. What if this time wasn’t a dream?  What if Foster really had found her? 

He walked to the roller tray with surgical instruments and slowly peeled back the sterilized cloth.  She could see handles of scalpels and surgical instruments.  Their eyes met – his were intense and shiny with excitement, hers were silently pleading. 

He removed the cloth and revealed the scalpels, clamps, saws and other surgical instruments.  He chose a small scalpel, leaned over her face, and … someone grabbed and shook Theia.

“Theia! Wake up!”  Jack bellowed and pulled her up into a sitting position.  He touched her face and her eyes flew open with a scream. She looked around terrified and confused, as if she did not know where she was. She looked down at her arms and legs.  No restraints.  She looked to her side.  She saw a coffee table, not a tray of instruments.  Taking a deep breath, she looked up at Jack’s face and confirmed that he was Jack, not Foster.  Theia flung her head back in relief and exhaled through her open mouth. Jack put his arms around her and held her close as she sobbed.

She cried until she ran out of tears.  Jack still held her.  Her breathing eventually calmed to normal.  He sat on the far end of the sofa, as Theia looked as if she needed a little space, but did not want him completely out of reach. She was uncomfortable about having cried in front of him and she wanted to feel safe but was unable to let down her guard enough.

“Did I mention I have nightmares?” Theia asked, looking at him through tear-dampened eyelashes.

“I think they need to invent a new word for what you just had,” Jack said, shaking his head. “Do you get those often?”

“I used to get them every night, for several years,” Theia answered.  “Then they went down to a few times a week, then less and less until they eventually tapered off.  I still get them if something triggers a memory, and on rare occasion for no apparent reason. Did I scream?”

“Yeah, you screamed when I touched your face,” Jack said.

“You touched my face?” she asked, putting her hand up to her cheek.  “Well, no wonder.”

“Look, I have no idea what goes on inside your nightmare, or why touching your face would make you freak out, but you let out a scream that makes actresses in horror movies sound like amateurs,” Jack stated.  “I’m surprised the police haven’t tried to beat down the door.”

Theia looked mortified. 

“Don’t worry about it, I’m just messing with you. Would it help to talk?”

“No,” Theia shook her head quickly. 

He scooted over next to her, gently cradling her head against his shoulder.  His warmth made Theia feel safe.  Holding her made him feel strong.  His nature was to help people, which is why he chose his career path.  He wanted to keep her from being hurt or scared.

“I have an idea.  Maybe we can convince your subconscious that you have no reason to be afraid of him anymore, and it will stop sending you bad dreams.”

“Do you think that might work?”

“It’s worth a try.  Walk through what happened from the moment you were shot.”

“Sounds weird, but I’ll give it a whirl.  Okay, after he shot me, I was on the ground, sprawled on my side, turned away from him.  I heard the police yell to him to drop the gun.  There was a gunshot, then a bunch of gunshots.  Then silence.  I rolled over and saw him lying face down, a few feet from me, to my right.  His body went into convulsions, and blood came out of his right temple.” Theia paused and swallowed.