by Rod Kackley
And then, as slowly as possible, making it painfully obvious what he was doing was his idea, and his alone; Jimmy Mack sat down.
“Well, thanks for coming in,” Joy said. “You know what we are doing?”
“Yes,” Jimmy Mack nodded and smiled.
“You can help us find out what has been happening to these women?”
“Absolutely,” Jimmy Mack said. His giant white eyebrows came together between his eyes as he put both ham-like hands, with index fingers the same length as the pinkies, and said,
“I have always known what’s been happening in the forest. I know what has been happening to those women and who has been doing it.”
Fifteen
If he hadn’t been so into figuring out who was out to get him — paranoid much, Mr. Sheldon, some in his class would giggle — Tim might have worried about what people thought of the scratches on his face as he was waiting in line for his morning coffee at The Reading Room.
The Janice Is Missing posters were everywhere Tim looked. They were on the windows of the liquor store he and Paul decided it would be best not to go into last night. They were on telephone poles all over the city. He was sure they would be posted at the high school, too.
Paul had tried to calm him down over a couple of beers at the Lamplighter Inn, but Tim had been so worried and yes, guilty, that his night with Janice was not a pleasure for either of them.
He always tried to mix pleasure with the pain he dealt out, knowing that is what Janice wanted, but Tim just couldn’t do it last night.
Tim was scared to death, quite honestly. And he was pissed that Janice had not seen this coming. She had been the smartest kid in school, four-point-fucking-oh since first grade, and she couldn’t know this would happen.
And now she was a college graduate for Christ sake!
Tim asked her again and again how she could have been so stupid as he lashed her naked body with his doubled-over leather belt.
He left her crying on the dirty, dungeon floor without even trying to fuck her. That was the last thing on Tim’s mind. The punishment wasn’t a time for pleasure for little Janice. But, Tim decided it was time for real punishment. They had chatted about it online. She knew it was a possibility, and it was even something Janice told him online that she needed.
“Well, tonight, she found out,” Tim muttered to his reflection in the bathroom mirror as he cleaned up the scratches on his face, neck, shoulders and hands. Some of the blood stains were his. She fought back, I have to give her credit for that, Tim thought as he winched from the sting of hot water and soap.
But most of the blood stains, especially what had soaked into his hands and forearms, were hers. Tim cursed Janice as he rubbed the strong soap he had into his skin trying to get the blood off before he went to sleep.
In the morning, he felt better. He didn’t need to see the TV news report or hear the radio news report on WSIR about the “woman in St. Isidore.” Tim knew that story only too well, he realized with a sigh and a shrug.
The other times when the TV and newspaper people had gone into the park's forest after police had found nude girls swinging at the end of ropes strung by Tim and Paul; well it had left Tim breathless.
He would call Paul to make sure his best friend was watching, and the two of them would jack off together over the phone. The best times came when they snuggled naked in bed watching the 11 p.m. news anchors tell the stories of their murders, or on a Sunday morning when they read aloud the stories of their exploits.
Tim had a different feeling today because the girl the town was searching for, was alive and well. And even worse, she a living witness of all things, in his fucking basement.
An error in judgment, but nothing that could not be correct with a tree and a good, strong rope, Tim thought as he smiled to himself.
“I bet I can figure out who's doing the social media stuff. They gotta be doing it over at the Reading Room or maybe Fred's,” Tim had told Paul at the Lamplighter. “Once we cut the head off of that snake, everything will quite down.”
So Tim wasn’t feeling too bad. Not as bad as he was twelve hours ago, at any rate.
Tim even left some warm food in the basement for Janice. They were leftovers, to be sure, but at least, the eggs and sausage weren’t cold.
She had to appreciate that, Tim thought, looking down at her naked body. He pulled the blanket over her and walked backed up the dozen wooden stairs to the first floor of his wood-frame early twentieth century home.
She’d better fucking appreciate that.
Sixteen
Allie McGuire seemed like the leader of this ‘lets find Janice’ effort, Tim decided. He and Paul had to take care of her first.
“If you cut off the head, the rest of the snake will die,” he reminded Paul.
“I think that is supposed to be the other way around. Kill the body and the head will die.”
“Whatever.”
“I’m just saying...”
“And I am just saying, she goes first.”
“Got it.”
“Good.”
Tim was seething with anger. He could taste the sweet revenge that was only a couple of hours away while he was nursing a cup of bad, black coffee at the Reading Room. There were Allie, Darlene, and Chandra, sitting in a beautiful little triangle, three young women all in their twenties, still living at home, having coffee just like the grown-ups.
Bitches, smiling so sweetly. Tim couldn’t help but laugh and even snort a little thinking about Paul waiting in the parking lot behind the gas station.
He was in his squad car parked behind the garage. No one could see him from the parking lot, but thanks to his binoculars, Paul could see everything he wanted. And what he knew he would be able to see was Allie, Darlene, and Chandra busting an after-class joint in Allie’s car.
“They do it every day, there is no reason to think today will be any different,” Tim told him in a morning text message.
They had a plan. A real plan that would not be an accident. One of these girls was going to die. One of these girls would never see another sunrise.
If only they knew, Tim thought to himself as the girls spent what would be the last hour of class texting and talking for one of them.
If only they knew.
The joints that Allie had squirreled away in her half-empty cigarette pack were burning a whole in her purse. She couldn’t wait to get to the parking lot and smoke.
It was even better than smoking joints and cigarettes on the heating vent from their high school’s swimming pool a couple of years ago. Allie’s car, her first thanks to mom and dad was something close to her apartment.
Music, dope, and boys. What did her parents call it back in the seventies? “Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘N Roll” that’s it.
Now it’s sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll and ink, Allie thought as she admired the sleeve on Darlene’s arm.
Today, as every day, it was going to be Allie, Darlene, and Chandra, and of course, their pot. What a great release. The boys would come later when the girls got in the mood.
Fortunately, for the boys they were in the mood more often than not, but it was still nice to see them grovel.
Allie and the girls were smoking the second joint and laying plans for the evening when the burp of a police siren and the flash of bubble gum lights broke the mood.
“Fuck,” Allie said as she put out the roach in the palm of her hand and swallowed what was left of the smoldering joint.
“Open the windows."
Chandra and Darlene were waving their hands like mad women trying to clear the smoke away, all the while holding their breath, not willing to loose any of the smoke that they wanted to be in their lungs, then their blood streams, then their brains.
Allie’s eyes went right, left, up to the rear view and out the front window. She checked both side mirrors and saw one cop coming up on her side of the car.
It was Paul. Shit. This guy is second only to Chief Lumpy on the total-asshole-sca
le, she thought. He’s the major asshole in training.
She didn’t waste time. The window was already rolled down. She handed Office Desmond her license through the opening.
He didn’t waste any time either. With his left hand, Paul grabbed Allie’s wrist as her hand was offering the license. With his right hand, he pulled open her door so that he could drag her out of the car.
He swung her in a semi-circle, grabbed both of her wrists in his left hand, put the handcuffs on with his right and marched her to his car.
Chandra and Darlene weren’t even breathing in the back seat. The scene they were watching was totally out of their experience zone and not even close to their comfort zone.
They looked at each other. What next? Neither had an original idea. So, they simply got out of Allie’s car and started walking. What else were they going to do? She had the keys.
Neither one of them made it home for dinner that evening. Nothing was unusual there. Young women who had a friend with a car lived a life of their own even if they still lived at home while they were finishing up college and trying to get their adults lives off the ground.
“Darlene needs to be home for dinner," her grandmother groused. "This is family time.”
“Yeah!!” Darlene’s brother David shouted. “Fuck yeah!”
“Language,” his mother, father, and grandmother shouted back as one. “Language.”
“The cops arrested Allie,” said a slightly chastised David holding his smartphone and reading the text. “She has been busted.”
Seventeen
Janice opened one eye just a crack when she heard the screen door upstairs squeak open and then swing shut with a bang. She’d never been able to open the door at the top of the twenty-three stairs that would take her out of the basement. The man had never forgotten to lock it. So Janice had never seen that screen door.
However, because it sounded just like the door at the back of her grandmother’s house, Janice didn’t have a problem imagining what it must look like. Janice saw the green screen door at Nana’s house when she closed her eyes. Janice could almost smell the baked goods, might be cookies or muffins or a cake or a pie, coming out of the oven in the kitchen to the left of that door as she stood on tiptoe to see out the window over the sink.
But most of all, Janice could imagine herself opening that green screen door very quietly, very gently, and smelling the wonderful aroma, even better than Nana’s chocolate chip cookies, the scent of an early spring morning as she snuck out of the house and wiggled her bare toes in the dew-soaked grass.
If she thought really hard, Janice could see it happening for real, right now. She saw herself going up those twenty-three stairs to the basement door — easing it open, and then walking slowly and carefully to that green screen door, pushing it open, and inhaling the glorious scent of freedom.
Janice knew she was in the basement of a home in St.Isidore because of the small basement windows through which, if she stood on a few boxes, she could see the yard out front and the grass in the back of the house.
She could actually see out the front basement window all the way to the street. Janice could make out the address of the house opposite the one that became her prison, 620. So she knew she was in the 600 block of some street, somewhere in St. Isidore.
Janice would wait for as long as she could bear after hearing that screen door open and close every day, and then a car pulling away, before she would pile up the boxes to look out the windows.
It gave her such hope. It gave her such pain. She could see freedom was only a pane of glass away, but there was no way Janice could make it through the small window space even if she broke out the glass. She had tried pounding on the window and yelling when she had seen children outside.
One day, the kids almost heard Janice. But they didn’t listen to enough to stop playing and investigate.
Still, Janice looked out every day.
She also searched the basement for weapons.
The man who was keeping her, she had not seen his face and rarely heard his voice, was not terribly big. However, he was strong. Janice found that out the hard way the first few nights when she fought back.
He was strong. He was not invincible. Janice grew more confident every day that she was going to be victorious.
Janice had started cooperating with the man’s sexual advances and trying to make him happy about four or five nights after she was kidnapped. It was so hard to keep track of the days and nights. She had tried to scratch marks in the wall to count the days but had grown tired of that.
What was the point? It was more important to cooperate. Whenever she did, the man fed Janice warm food. Sometimes he even fed her good food.
Janice was growing stronger. And she was actually working out. Janice had never been one for pushups, sit-ups, ab crunches or even pull-ups, but that is how she spent her days in her prison.
She did pushups every morning and every afternoon. Janice could do 50 in each set, something she never dreamt of being able to accomplish before this ordeal began. She did 100 sit-ups and was up to 20 pull-ups on an old iron pipe that ran a few feet below the ceiling of the basement.
Yesterday, Janice began looking for weapons. Finding a hammer was her dream. So far, she had not discovered one. But there were some pieces of brick and some stones she was hiding under an old oilcloth she had found in the corner of the basement.
Those would come in handy. Janice just had to bide her time. Janice knew that when she struck, she had to kill. There would be no second chance, and it had to be fast. It had to be done very, very quickly.
She heard children outside again this morning, probably going to school, Janice imagined. The car had been gone quite awhile. She felt safe to start working out again and started her morning routine of calisthenics and jogging in place.
After what must have been two hours, again, there was no way to tell for sure, Janice completed her morning exercise. She took a few minutes of rest, and a drink of water that was leaking out of one of the pipes, Janice set about on the most important part of her day; finding a weapon. Something that she could use to kill. Something that Janice could use to escape.
She moved on her hands and knees, searching one last time. Janice was just about ready to strike. She would look once more.
And then Janice found it. She found something that could be used as both a weapon and a tool for her escape.
Janice found a screwdriver. It was a Phillips screwdriver with a sharp point that should be perfect for stabbing the man. God, she wanted to do that. Janice gripped the screwdriver so tight her hand hurt.
She saw herself ramming it into the back of his neck as the man was on top of her. Then when he fell back, Janice would roll on top of him and drive the screwdriver into one of his eyes.
But maybe, just perhaps, there was a better plan than killing him in her dungeon.
What if she just got away and ran?
Janice climbed the twenty-three stairs to the basement door at least once a day and rattled the door knob just on the wild chance the man had left the door unlocked.
He had not.
However, Janice had discovered four screws were holding the doorknob in place, four Philips headed screws.
And now she had a Phillips screwdriver.
Eighteen
For the first time in what seemed like forever, tears of joy ran down Janice’s cheeks. She finally had it. She had the key to her freedom. This Phillips screwdriver should be enough to take off the knob on the basement door, and then the door should just swing open right?
That’s what she was thinking, and Janice was enjoying the moment so much, that she almost forget to start walking up the stairs to try it out. She was also held back by the fear that it wouldn’t work. But she had to try.
Janice was learning more about herself every day. For instance, she never imagined working out like some female U.S. Marine. The idea of killing someone and planning the murder was entirely foreign to her, but now Ja
nice had done that.
She didn't even like watching people get killed on TV or in the movies, but now Janice was ready to do it. She was prepared to kill. And amazingly it was more than just a matter of her survival.
Janice was ready to kill to make a point. The man would suffer. The man would pay. Then, Janice would
be free, truly free.
And having the resourcefulness to figure out how to escape from the hell of her basement dungeon and seemed impossible only a few days ago.
But now she was doing it.
Janice wanted to run up the stairs, but thought better of that and walked slowly on tiptoe. She was naked. There must be clothes upstairs that she could take. But right now, that was the least of Janice's concerns.
She just wanted to get out of the basement and then out of the house.
Janice had been naked so many days and nights, she had become accustomed to it, just as she had dropped her veil of modesty when customers started giving her their charge card numbers for her web shows.
She might just run nude into the backyard. That should attract someone who could help, right?
Janice took one small step after another. Five, ten, twenty, she was almost there. Janice was nearly free. Janice was almost home.
And then the car pulled into the driveway.
Fuck!
It was too soon. It was too early. The man was never back until the sun had set. What was he doing here already?
Janice ran downstairs so fast that she tripped and fell.
She scurried on hands and knees over to the worktable under which she had found the screwdriver, threw it under the table again, and ran back to where the man would expect to find her.
Janice struggled to control her breathing. She had to appear normal, or at least as normal as she could given her situation.
Janice pretended to sleep. She worked to control her breathing.
She heard the screen door thrown up so hard it screeched instead of squeaked, and it banged against the door.