Vigilare (3 page)

The woman’s eyes flicker back and forth from the road to the man in the rearview mirror. Her mind races a mile a minute.
Drive into a tree. Speed up. Cause attention to yourself. Do something!

The man chuckles. “Don’t even think about doing something stupid. All that crap you women read about ‘fighting the good fight, don’t let him take you to a secluded area, make a scene.’ It’s bullshit. The only way you get out of this alive is do what I tell you. You got it?” He rams the revolver further into her skull behind her ear. “You got it!”

She nods her head, holding back a sob.

After a long, torturous drive, the car pulls up to a remote body of water. The man jumps out of the car, wrestling the woman out of the driver’s seat. “Help me! Please somebody help me!” she yells.

“You can scream all you want to now, baby. Ain’t nobody around for miles.” He grabs a handful of her hair, pulling her in the direction of the water, wielding the pistol in his other hand. “I lied. All that shit they tell you women—turns out it is true. You should’ve made a scene when you had your chance.”

“Why are you doing this!” the woman cries.

“It’s the only thing you uptight sluts respond to.” He spins her around facing him, grabbing the collar of her blouse, he runs the barrel end of the pistol over the silk material covering her chest. She winces and pushes against him with the contact. “Night after night. Bar after bar. I tried buying you bitches drinks. Asking you out on dates. A guy gets tired of asking. Eventually, I started taking. Sorry baby, you’re not my first,” he jeers, forcing her hand to the front of his pants, stroking it over his zipper.

Overcome with disgust and rage, the woman bangs her forehead into his face, causing him to release her shirt collar, instinctively tending to his bloody nose. She makes a run for the water. He fires the revolver in her direction.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
She falls to the sand lying on the outer edge of the lake. He makes his way to her, rolling her over onto her back. He scans her body for blood, bulletholes, something...without a trace.

He straddles her, shaking her seemingly unconscious body, “Why’d you fall down? Are you hit? Goddammit!”

She opens her eyes and lets out a deviously provoking chuckle. “You’re a horrible shot.”

“You think it’s funny? I’m some kinda clown to you? Bitch!” He holds his revolver to her temple.

“Click,” she exaggerates the sound of an empty gun with a smile. “Unless yours magically holds seven, you’re out of ammo
Wyatt Earp
.”

He throws the gun into the sand, pulls her torso up off the ground by her blouse and slams his forehead into her face. She groans with the impact. “How’s that feel, funny girl? Not so funny is it!” He lets her head and upper body fall back into the sand.

Her vision is temporarily inhibited by stars of the entoptic sort, surely a side-effect of her throbbing nose, from which blood begins to trickle. Her upper lip tingles at every contact point of the viscous substance.
Ga-gung...ga-gung...ga-gung
, her heartbeat quickens, gaining in strength as if it is supplying a body at least twice the size of hers. With each inhale, her back arches allowing her chest and ribcage the expansion needed to accommodate the massive amount of air her lungs suddenly seem to require. She opens her eyes, scared and startled, breathing laboriously through pursed lips, attempting to slow her rapid breathing rate. The look on the man’s face begins to match her own as his eyes make contact with hers, emerald green and sparkling. He tries to look away, she attempts to close her eyes, but the connection has been made. His visions are now hers. She sees the first woman he raped (a college freshman—he slipped Rohipnol in her drink, and left her on the front yard of her sorority house). And the last. He raped her right here on the sand. Held her head underwater, until she quit fighting.

With the last image, the stare is released. They begin to grapple, exchanging positions of domination in the sand, their bodies encroaching on the water.

“What kinda freak are you? You been to the Halloween store or something?” he teases through ragged breaths. The man holds her down, submerging her face under water, which splashes and bubbles as she struggles against him.

His hands losing their grasp on her neck, he digs in with his fingernails, drawing blood. The first drop of the red sticky substance released to the air sends a jolt of adrenaline through her system, shocking in its effect. She lies still momentarily, her body absorbing the impact, then releasing with a surge of supernatural strength as she physically overpowers the man who easily outweighs her. Gasping for air as she comes up out of the water, she locks her legs around his back and neck forming a triangle hold. Her eyes flickering down over his.

“Night after night. Guy after guy,” she begins, twisting his previous monologue. “I tried being nice. Asking you schleps to change your lives.” She tightens her thigh muscles further, causing his face to turn a bright red. “A girl gets tired of asking. Eventually, I started taking.” She releases her legs, pushing his head back into the water. His muffled protests stifled by bubbles. “Sorry baby, you’re not my first.”

VANGUARD POLICE DEPARTMENT, early afternoon. Chief Robert Burns, a burly middle-aged man with a full head of thick, wavy, salt and pepper hair sits sorting through paperwork at his desk. Quite uncomfortable in his heavily starched uniform shirt his wife insists he wears, he has removed his tie, and released the top button after several
near death
experiences from contact of the tight fabric against his Adam’s Apple.

He holds the call key down on his phone, “Bonnie, did you leave those files on my desk this morning? I can’t find the damn things.”

“Sure did, Chief. Right-hand side, in front of your computer,” Bonnie’s pleasing and patient tone comes through the speaker.

Frustrated, he continues shuffling through the files haphazardly. A knock sounds from the glass pane separating his office from the main corridor. Detectives DeLuca and Gronkowski poke their heads inside the door.

He motions them in. “Bonnie…” he begins.

“Be right there, Chief,” she interrupts.

He hangs up the phone. “Well, if it isn’t my little regulators. You two mind telling me what the hell happened out there yesterday?”

“It was my fault, sir,” Gina and Tony speak in unison.

Bonnie enters the office. She is a page right out of Mad Men, redheaded and buxom, wearing a professional, yet formfitting blouse with a pencil skirt, fully in charge of her magnetic prowess. Tony, and Gina, cannot help but follow her with their eyes as she enters the room. Gina looks down at her bland navy blue uniform top, feeling uncharacteristically inferior at the moment. Without missing a beat, she reaches over and lightly taps Tony’s chin, firmly reconnecting the admirable gape to his jaw. The only person unaffected by her presence is Chief Burns, completely oblivious and happily married for the past twenty-five years.

Bonnie rifles through the files on his desk. “If it were a snake, it would have bit you.” She smiles, pulling the file from the exact place she told him it resided. She sets a brown paper bag in front of him. “Mrs. Burns left this for you. She’s so sweet.”

“Thanks Bonnie.”

Bonnie nods her head, a gentle bow of duty. “Anything else, Chief?”

“That’ll do it.”

“Detectives,” she politely recognizes them upon her exit.

“Bonnie,” Tony and Gina mumble, swiveling their necks in her direction like two awestruck teenagers. Gina subconsciously touches her hand to her hair, slicked back in a ponytail, as she watches Bonnie’s glorious wavy auburn crown bounce and flow with each step, reminiscent of a supermodel on the catwalk.

“Ahem,” Chief Burns clears his throat, causing their necks to jerk back to him in attention. “Yesterday…what happened?”

“I should’ve posted for backup until Detective DeLuca gave me her position,” Tony says.

Chief Burns clumsily removes a hoagie from the brown paper bag. “It’s been a while since I went through the academy, but if I remember correctly, alpha team—Detective DeLuca—should’ve waited for backup before entering the building.”

“She had it under control, until I showed up busting through the front door,” Tony defends.

“I should’ve waited,” Gina speaks up.

Part of the filling from the hoagie Chief Burns is desperately trying to direct to his mouth falls from the bun, dribbling down his shirt. “Dammit!”

Gronkowski and DeLuca bite the insides of their lips, attempting not to smile or laugh.

Chief wipes at the hoagie filling with a piece of paper from his desk. Gina leans forward pulling a napkin from the brown paper bag, handing it to him. He swipes it out of her hand agitatedly. “Thanks. You two are two of the best I’ve got. I can’t have you out in the street, tearing up the neighborhood. It’s bad press. I’ve got citizens complaining you ran through their backyards, tearing down their clotheslines. The flower shop on West Avenue, delivered a bill this morning for five hundred sixty-two-dollars and twenty-nine cents! And don’t think I didn’t notice the ding on the brand new squad car, DeLuca.” He slaps his hand down on his desk, then runs it through his hair frustratingly.

“The guy ran, Chief,” Gina says.

“We got our man. Isn’t that what counts?” Tony backs her.

“Maybe driving on the sidewalk was a little excessive,” she admits.

“A
little
excessive? First day out and you scratch the shit out of it!” Chief Burns stands from his desk, pacing. “I asked myself, I said, ‘Chief, what do you do with two detectives who do good work, but work against each other half the time?’”

“Aw, no, Chief,” Gina retorts.

“You got it, DeLuca. Hit the hammer on the head. Meet your new partner,” Chief announces, his fists pridefully resting on his hips.

Gina and Tony share a puzzled glance, both mouthing,
Hit the hammer on the head?

“I’m starting to warm up to Marks. Come on, Chief. Gronkowski’s been teamed up with Torres for a while now, too. We can’t work together.” She gestures largely from herself to Tony and back again for effect. “Hell, you see what happens when we end up on scene together, in two separate patrol cars. You can’t seriously be thinking about teaming us up.”

“No, DeLuca, I’m not
thinking
about anything. It’s done. And here’s your first assignment.” He slaps a folder down on the desk in front of them.

“Chief…”

“Gina. It’s done.”

Tony smiles at her, a beguiling grin. “Come on, DeLuca. Might be fun. At least we won’t be fighting over who’s first in.” She smirks back at him, crossing her arms defiantly over her chest.

“We have a little problem, boys and girls.” Chief Burns opens up the file, shifting through rap sheets that match morgue pictures. “Seems we’ve got a vigilante of sorts, who’s primary targets are rapists and child molesters.”

“What’s the problem?” Gronkowski asks, in a calloused tone.

Chief exchanges an understanding, yet authoritative glance with Tony. “Thomas Boyd, Victor Peebles, Roberto Moreno, Darius Williams…and the list goes on. All of ’em convicted rapists or child molesters. Rap sheets longer than my arm. They just found another one this morning. A lake outside of town. Drowned.”

“People die all the time from accidental drowning,” Gina says.

“Now listen, you two. That’s enough with the comments. We took an oath to serve and protect…everyone.” Chief runs his thumbs around the inside of the waist of his pants, giving them a gentle tug, his neck and jaw twitching momentarily as if the admission pained him.

Tony and Gina watch him uncomfortably.

“What we do know, whoever this vigilante is, he’s no amateur. Patterns have been established. Every murder takes place on the
home ground
, if you will, of the perpetrator. Maybe a setup. For instance, this guy here.” Chief Burns points to a photo. “Elroy Dawson. Released three-months ago after serving time for child molestation. Hung around the playground of Reagan Elementary. Friggin’
Easter Bunny
baited kids with candy. Found dead, lying under the Monkey Bars at Reagan Elementary last week, bound and gagged with a mouth full of candy laced with enough Mercury to kill a moose.”

Tony chuckles. “Gotta give him some props for creativity.” He clears his throat, removing the smile from his face after receiving a disgruntled look from Chief Burns. “Just saying.”

“
Him?
” Gina asks. “Do we know it’s a he?”

“The only thing we’ve got from forensics is a few traces of blood, which are defective in their DNA. Some kind of fake, made-up blood type. It’s not natural,” Chief Burns replies.

“Covering his tracks?” Tony implies. “What is he some kind of scientist, medical professional? Who else knows enough about blood to fool forensics?”

“Any leads? Family members? Witnesses? Who and where do we start?” Gina’s wheels start turning, aloud.

Chief Burns turns to the back of the file, and points to a business card. “Dr. Ryan, the department Psychologist. She’s had every one of these men in her office at some point. Has all their records. Knows their patterns. It’s a part of the State’s mandatory rehabilitation protocol. They all have to participate once they’re on probation. She’s the only link in the string right now.”

Gina and Tony share another puzzled glance at his second ill-spoken idiom. Chief takes a bite from his hoagie, successfully keeping its contents within the bun this time. However, that doesn’t stop a smear of mayonnaise from residing at the corner of his mouth. Tony wipes at the corner of his own mouth, thinking maybe Chief will pick up on his subtle gesture. He does not. Gina picks up a napkin and timidly reaches across the desk.

“Missed a spot, Chief.” She smiles coyly.

Chief swipes at his mouth with the cuff of his shirt, foregoing the napkin. “Alright then. Get to it.”

Gina picks up the file and turns swiftly to exit the room.

“I need a report on my desk by week’s end,” Chief says, tapping his desk with his knuckles.

“I’ll have my secretary get right on that. Huh, DeLuca?” Tony pipes up, grinning.