Shards (19 page)

A young woman with a baby in her arms came out from the big brick house to talk to him. She didn't say anything to me, but I could see the puzzlement in her eyes. Why was there a girl in flip-flops and a tank top, clearly freezing in the cloudy Seattle summer, painting her gazebo? She was probably two or three years older than I was, married to a techie wizard, getting a gazebo built behind her mansion, and I was a meth-addicted vice cop who hadn't showered in days and had just had the shit kicked out of her by a drug dealer.

I didn't know what she was thinking about me, but all I felt for her was pity:
You have no idea what you're missing. You have no idea how fucking great this is.

•  •  •

Over the next few days, my bruises ripened to red, dark blue, black. They hurt like hell and then started to heal. The dealer bought me a couple of new tank tops. I honestly thought things were going to
be okay. Sure, he had freaked out when I first got there, but it was just because he was so jealous of Keawe. Now he couldn't have been nicer.

When I was first on patrol, I never understood why a woman wouldn't leave someone who hit her, and why she would keep her children in that situation. So many times when I had responded to a domestic abuse call and was trying to cuff the husband or boyfriend, the woman who had called 911 for help—the woman he had hit—would come at me with a blunt object. “Don't arrest him, you
haole
bitch!” she would yell. Once a cop was there actually arresting the guy, she couldn't go through with it, and the excuses started to flow.

He didn't mean it.

He's had too much to drink.

He's too high.

His work is so stressful.

The kids are driving him crazy.

Whatever these women said, they always had a reason to defend their men, and it always pissed me off. I wasn't showing them a hell of a lot of compassion, so my lieutenant sent me to a domestic violence class where I learned about the cycle of abuse. And now, with all my training, with my years as a cop, I was trapped in that same vicious cycle. I had been a “pounder” in vice—all my cases recovered more than a pound of narcotics—and I had been considered a badass. Now I had let this guy beat the crap out of me just so I could get more dope.

I tried to keep myself from thinking about MPD, but Keawe was on my mind always. I knew when I didn't turn up when I was supposed to, Keawe would worry, and sure enough, every time I turned on my cell there was a message from him. My mom was used to
not hearing from me for weeks at a time—I would tell her I had an undercover job and she would leave me alone—but Keawe was a problem. His messages sounded increasingly urgent. He seemed to think I had gone somewhere to die. As time passed—and I had no idea how much, a day, three days, a week—I started to miss him terribly. Once, when the dealer was safely working in his shop and I was upstairs folding his laundry, I called Keawe.

“Alli!” he said. “I've been so worried about you. Why haven't you returned my messages? Where are you?”

Hearing his voice, I started to cry.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “It's just that I'm so weak. I wanted to tell you I miss you. And I love you.”

“Everyone's looking for you. We were expecting you on Tuesday. Where are you?”

I couldn't take the questions, the concerns. All I wanted was the voice.

“I can't talk,” I said. “Please, just tell me—do you love me?”

“Of course I love you, babe. Everything's going to be okay. Come see me and we'll talk about things. Are you on your way back?”

I started to feel dizzy and sat on the bed next to the folded clothes. Fuck—what was I going to say to him? I babbled on about my feelings, how he was the only one for me, how I loved him more than life, saying all the same things I told the dealer, only meaning them.

“When are you coming back?” he repeated.

“I'm in LA,” I said. “I'm in a hospice and I don't think I'll be able to see you again.” I could hear how hollow my lies sounded, but Keawe didn't seem to notice. I knew I could never go back to Maui, never face my friends and colleagues and their donated sick days and their fund-raisers.

I didn't listen for his answer. I turned my cell phone off abruptly so I wouldn't hear him call back, then put it in my purse under the bed.

A little while later, the dealer appeared in the doorway.

“You done with the laundry?” he asked.

“Yeah, I just finished.”

“Let me see.”

I pointed to the folded clothes on the bed. “I could really use a hit,” I said.

He walked from the doorway to the bed in one long stride and picked up a pair of his boxer shorts. “What the hell is this?”

I tried not to laugh. “Your underwear?”

“You think I'm going to wear these?” he asked. “You think I'm going to wear them without them being ironed?”

“I didn't know,” I said. “You didn't say anything about—”

I saw the look in his eyes.

I knew what was coming.

I ran for the stairs, but he was right behind me, and as soon as I made it down, he was able to grab me by the hair. Holding my hair, he pounded my ribs. “You little whore!”

I fought back as hard as I could, but I couldn't get away. He kept throwing blows at my breasts, my stomach, my ribs. I pushed and kicked and bit as viciously as I could.

He kicked me in the stomach, and I fell to the ground at the foot of the stairs, trying to breathe. He flipped me over onto my stomach. “Open your mouth,” he barked.

I had no idea what he was going to do.

When I opened my mouth, he pushed my face down so hard that I was biting the corner of the stair. What he did next—

Oh God, some things I just can't find the words for. As I bit the
step, he brought his foot down on the back of my head. I could feel the corner of my lips cracking.
This is it
, I thought,
he's going to kill me
.
He's going to break my neck
.

I didn't say anything. I couldn't.

He pushed his foot down harder on my head until I felt I would pass out. As all air to my lungs was cut off, I made a gurgling, choking noise that seemed to satisfy him and he took his foot away. Gasping for air, I brought my hand to my mouth, expecting to find my mouth torn open.

I knew heading for the door right away was the wrong thing to do. I wasn't sure I could outrun him in bare feet, and even if I could, I didn't know the area well, didn't even know where to run. Would the neighbors help me? Would they call the cops for me? Even if they did, would the cops believe me, or just think we were two junkies fighting, so there was no need to arrest anyone here?

Mostly, as I lay spread out on the stairs, weeping, trying to figure out what to do, I was just pissed that he had won. I had been in so many fights as a cop, but I had always come out on top. The meth had now weakened me to the point of near defenselessness.

“He doesn't love you, you know,” the dealer said calmly.

“Who?” I asked.

“If he loved you, he'd be with you. But who's with you? Me. I'm the one who loves you.”

Keawe. He knew I had talked to Keawe. But how? He never could have heard from downstairs.

I thought of the security cameras in the front of the house, all the colored lightbulbs in his shop. I had brushed these off as his weird tweaker projects, but what if he was filming me, recording me?

Maybe there were cameras, hidden cameras. Wildly, my eyes
roamed around, but then he was there and we were hotlining—pure rich meth, the meth I had always wanted.

I stopped looking for cameras, for tape recorders, for anything, and I thought,
This is okay. He knows all the shit I've done, he knows about the cancer lies and being a dirty cop. Wow, he must really love me if he's going to stay with me after knowing all that.

A beating now and then's not so bad.

Once I began to suspect
there were cameras in the house, I started to keep track of the dealer's movements at all times. He would never really let me in the computer room—he had three computers, plus a monitor for the outside security cameras—and I knew there was something in that room that he didn't want me to see. He always turned on the screen saver before he let me in the room.

I began to notice him going into the closet off the third bedroom all the time, and when I asked about it, he told me it led to the attic above the shop where he was doing some repairs. Some days the cat would follow him, and once he came down muttering, “Shit! Damn cat had kittens up there.”

The next day, when he was in the shop, I crept into the attic. I didn't see the kittens, but I did see cables everywhere, many more than you would need for cable TV. Once I saw them, I guessed what they were, but to be sure I followed one of the cables through
the attic floor. After pacing it out, I went downstairs to see that it led to a camera in the recessed light above the living room.

I went upstairs to the bedroom and checked the recessed lighting there. Another camera: that must have been how he made the sex tape. He was filming everything.

Everything.

I charged into the shop. “What the hell are you doing with all those cameras?” I asked him.

“So what?” he said, not even looking up from his worktable.

“I need my privacy.”

“What kind of privacy does a whore like you need?” he asks.

“I am not a whore!”

“The hell you aren't,” he said. “I'm spending all my money supporting you. I can't even make my truck payments this month, you're costing me so much money.”

I knew this wasn't true. He wasn't having money problems—he made plenty from his carpentry and a ton from dealing. Plus he ran a couple of Home Depot scams that I didn't really understand. I had seen him with wads of cash.

“You need to earn your rent,” he said. “You're going to have to start earning it.”

“Oh yeah? I think I already
am
earning it.”

His eyes went almost entirely black. I could feel his rage. But instead of attacking me he started laughing.

His laughter was terrifying.

I ran for the stairs. He pushed me from behind. On the ground, I started crawling and made it to the top of the stairway when he kicked me in the stomach. Falling from my hands and knees onto my back, I tried to breathe. He had knocked the wind out of me.

He grabbed me by the hair and began to drag me while I struggled to breathe.

Suddenly he let go of me and in the calmest, most terrifying voice he said, “Catch your breath, honey. I'm sorry.”

I caught my breath, probably within a few seconds, and I thought the fight was over, but when I tried to sit up, he grabbed me by the hair once again. He was trying to drag me into the bedroom, but I grabbed the railing on the stairs. He hit me in the ear and then let go. Using both hands now, he continued dragging me by the hair. I could hear the hair ripping out, almost like a rubber band snapping.

He screamed, “Earning it? You worthless cunt, you're not earning anything.”

I was so furious I don't remember feeling any pain at that moment. I just wanted to get away.

I grabbed his wrists behind my head. I was kicking and screaming to make him stop, but he kept dragging me, all the way to the bed, where he finally let go. I lay on my side on the floor, looking at him. Strands of my ripped out hair were caught in his fingers. He took that hair and shoved it in my mouth.

I tried to spit the ripped-out strands out of my mouth.

“Don't you spit at me!” he screamed. He grabbed me by the throat and threw me on the bed but my legs were hanging over the edge. He was trying to pull my jeans off and couldn't get the button. Enraged, he yanked my jeans straight down. At this point I stopped fighting. I was only crying.

Once my jeans were down, he turned me over and pushed my face into the comforter. He started to rape me anally. I screamed from the pain. Finally he stopped and got off me. It hurt to breathe at this point.

“Just kill me!” I screamed. “You hate me so much, just kill me.”

He left the room, and I heard the shower running. I assumed he was getting into the shower, and I didn't move. “Kill me now!” I yelled after him. “I want to die. All I want is to die.”

Bent over the bed partway, with half my weight on my kneeling legs, I still felt too weak to support myself.

I slid down to the floor, and when he came back into the room he brushed the hair out of my face.

“Get away from me,” I said. “Just get away.”

“You need to get in the shower,” he said.

“I can't. I can't get up.”

“Get up. I don't want blood and shit on the carpet.”

“I can't,” I said weakly.

He picked me up in the gentlest way and carried me to the shower.

“It's okay,” he said. “It's okay, I still love you.”

He set me down in the shower. He was a different man now. My caregiver.

I felt wetness and realized I was bleeding anally. I didn't know how much, but it scared me. And I hurt. I could barely stand the water hitting my backside, so I stood up. He got in the shower with me and washed me and hugged me until I stopped shaking.

“You're okay,” he said. “You're okay.”

“The water stings,” I said. “I want to get out.”

“Let's get you cleaned up first,” he said. He washed my hair and massaged my head.

“I've got a headache,” I said. “I'm going to throw up.”

He took me out of the shower and started drying me off gently. I don't know what this says about me, but the next thing I said to him was this: “I love you, and I'm sorry.”

He hugged me. “I'm sorry too. Do you want to lay down?”