by J. Lea
“You kidnapped me!”
“No!” he defends himself. “I didn’t kidnap you. I borrowed you. I have great plans for us.” He leans in and lifts his hand. I back away from him. His eyes bulge out. “Did you think I was going to hurt you?” he asks. I don’t respond. I have no idea what his intentions with me are and what’s going to happen next. “No, no, no,” Ronnie shakes his head. “Don’t be afraid of me.” He runs the back of his hand down my cheek to my throat and I get a whiff of the already familiar smell of cigarettes and something sickly sweet - his aftershave! “I would never hurt you. I love you.”
“If you really loved me, you wouldn’t be doing this,” I say quietly.
“I’m doing this for us.”
“No, you’re doing this for yourself. Why? Why did you follow and harass me?”
“That sounds so much like the movies. Let’s say I was preparing you for this moment.”
“What moment?” I demand.
“Patience, angel. You’ll know soon enough.”
“When… When did you set up cameras all over my house?” I ask him.
“You’re kidding me, right? I was over there almost every other day. I helped you take care of Leo. God knows he wasn’t capable of that himself. And you still stuck by his side. I needed to make sure you were safe with him. That’s the reason I put cameras in your house.”
“Leo never hurt me, unlike you,” I yell.
Ronnie takes a deep breath, then exhales slowly, as if trying to keep his temper under control. “Please, don’t be afraid of me. You know me!” His voice is hopeful and he reaches for my hand again.
“No, I don’t really know you at all. If I knew what you were like, I’d never get close to you.” I pause. “Are you going to kill me?”
He doesn’t respond to my question, just leans his forehead against mine, and I jerk my head to the side. “I’ve dreamed about this for so long. About this exact moment. When we’re finally together, alone. Leo was such an idiot, a scum who didn’t deserve you. He never appreciated you like I do. I knew his drinking bothered you and I was certain you’d leave him if his drinking habit got worse. So, I helped him develop his habit. He just needed a little encouragement. He told me how mad you were every time he came home drunk, but he loved alcohol more, so it didn’t take much convincing for me to get him wasted. Every time I drove him home and deposited him on your couch, drunk out of his mind, I saw how miserable you were. I didn’t like seeing you that way but I was there for you, right by your side, encouraging you, and it didn’t take long before you dumped his ass.”
“You didn’t have to kill him.”
“Kill is such an ugly expression, isn’t it? Let’s say he was a guinea pig. He helped me learn some things.”
“What things?” I ask carefully.
“It’s not important at the moment. You’ll know soon enough.”
“Why were you pretending to be him?”
“I didn’t. You alone came to that conclusion.”
“No, you used his cell phone to call me.”
“Technically speaking, it wasn’t his number. I needed a scapegoat so I could execute my plan the way I envisioned it,” he shrugs. “Hungry?” he asks, walking over to the kitchen.
I gather all my strengths and, as fast as my broken ribs would allow me, I get to the front door and start banging on it with my right fist. “Is anyone out there? Please, help me!” Tears spill down my face.
“No one can hear you, my love. We’re all alone here,” Ronnie shouts from the kitchen.
I try one last time, and realizing my attempts are indeed futile, I collapse on the floor crying into my hands.
Ronnie walks to me, squatting down and asks, “How do you feel? Still in pain?” his voice is calm. He reaches over to check but I shove his hand away.
“Leave me alone! Don’t you dare touch me!” I yell.
“I need to check your ribs. I didn’t realize you hurt them in the accident. I also need to change the bandage on your head.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Come on, don’t be rude. I took care of you,” he points to my bandaged forehead.
“No, you didn’t. Why are you doing this to me? I thought you were my friend.”
“Don’t you understand? I never wanted to be just your friend!” He slams his fist into the door and gets to his feet. “I want to be yours. Body, heart and soul. I want you to look at me the way you looked at Leo when you started dating, and how you look at that fucking detective. I was willing to do anything for you, I helped you, and you barely noticed me. You wouldn’t even have dinner with me!”
I vaguely remember one time when Ronnie was helping me get Leo undressed and in bed. He asked me if I wanted to go grab something to eat and chat but I didn’t want to leave Leo alone in case he got sick. Besides, I was tired and not in the mood to go out of the house. I never realized Ronnie’s invitation to dinner meant anything more than a meal between friends.
“I’m sorry if I hurt you. I didn’t mean to. I had no idea you felt this way about me. Please, just let me go, and I’ll be willing to forget all this ever happened.”
“You know now how much I love you. And finally, I have you all to myself. We have eternity together.” He’s standing above me, his feet apart, and looking down at me with victory.
“Eternity? What do you mean by that?”
“We’ll be joined in eternity. Soon.” His eyes get distant, as if he’s gone into another world completely.
I use the moment of his distraction to kick him, hitting his knee. He curses loudly, gripping his knee, before he falls to the floor beside me. I scramble to my feet, tears of pain stinging my eyes, and I run to the kitchen where I look around for anything I may use for a weapon to incapacitate him and find a way to escape. I try to open the drawers, but they’re all closed, to my surprise. What the hell? In the end, I grab the pan he used for making pancakes and hold it in front of me when I see Ronnie approaching.
“Do something like this again and you’ll be locked in your room until the ceremony. Is this what you want?”
“Stay away!” I yell.
“Put the pan down.”
“No,” I shake my head furiously.
“I really didn’t mean to use this on you, but you leave me with no choice.” He pulls a syringe out of nowhere and, because of the paralyzing pain in my ribs, I’m not quick enough to stop him from grabbing me, pulling the pan out of my grasp, and wrapping one arm around my throat. My back is against his front, so I’m completely helpless. He places a tender kiss to the soft spot behind my ear and then I feel a stinging prick in my neck as he empties the contents of the syringe into my system. My already weak legs turn into jelly, my arms falling to my side, and my world turns to darkness.
Sixteen
Jude
“It wasn’t an accident,” the Captain announces. “Someone cut the brake lines. The cut was tiny, but big enough for the brake fluid to run out. That’s why you only noticed your brakes stopped working a while later.”
It’s been sixteen hours since April’s been taken. And not a minute has passed that I wasn’t blaming myself for it.
“Fucking hell. I knew it couldn’t be a coincidence.” I run my hand through my messy hair. “When did the fucker manage to do that?” I mutter. “I’ll be right back.” I run outside to the parking lot where I parked April’s car yesterday. I doubt it happened in Fenway Park because I’d have noticed earlier, so it must have happened later at the police station. I stop at the spot I’d parked the car, luckily empty right now. A dark stain grabs my attention. Crouching down, I run my finger across the stain, rubbing the liquid between my fingers. Dry oily substance. I smell it and hurry back inside the station.
“Captain, I found an oily substance in the parking lot. I suspect it’s the brake fluid from my car. Can we check?”
“Yes, I’ll send someone over to check.”
“I also noticed cameras there. Are they recording or are they just up th
ere for show?”
“They’re working. We’ve had some problems with vandalism so we installed them back there.”
“Could I get yesterday’s footage, around the time we were questioning the homeless man? We may notice someone suspicious lurking where they shouldn’t be. If the stalker had time to mess with us, then he must have also followed us to the station. After all, April was taken when we were leaving here. I’m certain her stalker was following her every move. He must have been following us without us knowing it.”
“Yes, I’ll send West to grab it for you. I’ll join you later. I have some mess to take care off first,” he says as he turns to leave. “I can’t rely on anyone these days,” he mutters to himself.
I don’t ask him what’s the problem, other things have priorities at the moment.
“Who the hell is this?” I’m almost glued to the screen, watching a man with a baseball cap standing beside my car. I’m watching the security tapes Officer West brought me. The man acts suspicious; he looks around himself often and, when the coast is clear, he then kneels beside the car and disappears from the cameras. I’m furious. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what he’s been doing; cutting the brakes. After a minute, he straightens up, dusts off his weird looking jumpsuit and, turning left and right, he takes off as calmly as he appeared. As if he wasn’t bothered in the least by the fact that he just put me in mortal danger. “Fuck!” I exclaim.
“West, is Captain in his office yet?” I yell out to the hall. West appears at the door of the office I’m in a few seconds later. “No, there’s an issue with one of the employees and he’s dealing with it. Can I help?” he says as he grabs his belt, pulling his pants up.
“Maybe,” I say and nod for him to join me.
The footage is paused at the image of the man in a jumpsuit.
“Have you ever seen this guy before?”
West narrows his eyes at the grainy image on the screen and leans closer. “The uniform suggests it could be one of our janitors. Why, did you find anything?”
“Janitor?” I raise my eyebrow. “You sure?”
“Yes. I see them often enough around here, fixing this or that, so I know what their uniforms look like. Try to zoom in to the name on the plate,” he tells me.
I do as he says and we both look closer. “It says J. Dawson, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Give me a sec,” West replies, and starts typing on the computer. “Yes, we have a janitor that goes by this name. James Dawson.”
You gotta be kidding me. “The guy cut my brakes.”
“Why would he do that?” West frowns.
“Christ, I don’t know,” I roll my eyes. “Perhaps so he’d get to April.”
“You think one of our janitors is connected to her disappearance?” he asks incredulously.
“The footage suggests that’s so. Can you get me the info on him and all the other janitors employed here?”
“Sure. There’s only two of them so it shouldn’t take long.”
Ten minutes later he reappears with two folders. Throwing them on the table, they slide down to me, and he sits down. “I met Captain on the way. He’ll be here any minute.”
“Good.”
I open the first folder. A colored photo of the first janitor stares back at me; it’s a man in his late forties with grey hair. I dismiss him immediately as the image of the stalker is forever burned into my brain. According to his file, he’s forty-seven, five feet nine, married with two children, a local. He’d worked at the police station for over nine years. I push the folder to the side and open the second one. James Dawson, brown eyes, thirty-one, single. He’s been employed here for less than a year, five feet eight, and unfortunately also not our guy. None of them have any priors, which makes sense considering where they work.
“They don’t match the description. None of them were at the crime scene. The man who kidnapped April has blond hair, broad shoulders, and he’s taller than five feet ten.”
“West told me you’ve been looking for me.” Captain steps into the office.
“This guy cut my brakes.” I tap my finger on the screen. “The footage is clear enough to nail him.” Captain frowns. “West said he’s wearing the same uniform as your janitors, but I can eliminate both as the kidnappers. The guy who kidnapped April was blonde.”
“Great,” Captain Reeves sighs. “Just perfect,” he shakes his head, throwing his hands in the air. West and I look at each other and, before I can ask him what’s wrong, he says, “A few weeks ago, Dawson reported his uniform’s missing. We didn’t pay much attention to it, got him a new one, and that was it.”
“Could this Dawson have anything to do with April’s disappearance? Could he have willingly given our stalker his uniform and reported it missing so he wouldn’t be blamed?”
“God knows, anything’s possible,” Captain Reeves scratches his scalp.
I turn to West. “Remember that time when I came to the station because Captain supposedly called me to come over?”
“Yes,” he nods. “But it wasn’t the Captain calling, right?”
“That’s right. It was the stalker. Perhaps he also used the janitor’s uniform that time to call me from Captain’s office? If he was dressed as a janitor, surely he blended in well.”
“Son of a bitch!” Captain Reeves hisses. “Someone go get Dawson here. We need to interrogate him thoroughly.”
Fifteen minutes later, Captain Reeves and I are sitting in the interrogation room when James Dawson walks in, surprised to see us. The policemen who brought him in closes the door behind him. As luck would have it, he’s just started his shift so we didn’t have to wait for him long.
“Mister Dawson, please sit down,” Captain says seriously.
“Is something wrong?” Dawson seems afraid.
“We’re going to be asking the questions.” He slides a photo of the parking lot from the footage. “Is this your uniform?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” Dawson gives him a confused look. “It looks like it. Why?”
“I’m going to ask you to take a look at this video.” I play the clip. My gaze is focused on his face, his expressions and his reaction. When he sees that the man in the video climbs out from under my car, his eyes widen, and starts shaking his head.
“That wasn’t me,” he starts defending himself. “First, I have no knowledge of cars. I have no idea what he was doing under the car.”
“The man cut the brake line,” I explain.
“No, no, no, you’re not gonna pin this on me. Wasn’t me,” he exclaims firmly. “I’d have no reason to do this!”
“Calm down, Mister Dawson,” Captain Reeves tries to soothe him. “Nobody is accusing you of anything. We’re just having a conversation.”
“But you insinuated it. I had nothing to do with this. Perhaps it’s connected to the disappearance of my uniform. I reported that!”
“You never lent it to anyone?” Captain asks calmly.
“Why would I do that? Of course not.” He seems offended we think so.
“Do you know this woman?” I show a picture of April to Dawson.
He leans forward and takes a good look, but I see no recognition in his eyes. “No, should I?”
“She was kidnapped yesterday evening.”
Dawson jumps to his feet so quickly his chair lands on the floor, slamming his hands on the table. “Whoa. Hold on. You think I did it?!”
“Sit down,” Captain retorts with authority. “As I said before, no one is accusing you of anything, we’re just looking for clues.”
“Well, look for them elsewhere, I had nothing to do with it! Someone’s walking around wearing my old uniform, pretending to be me, breaking laws. How could I not be upset? You should be looking for this guy and not harassing me, for God’s sake!”
An hour later, after a thorough interrogation, we set him free.
“What do you think?” Captain asks me.
“I believe he’s telling the truth. His facial expre
ssions, speech tone, eyes, his gesticulation, it all points to him telling the truth.”
“I think so, too,” Reeves nods. “We can rule him out.”
“Shit. I really hoped we had a lead.”
I pull out my phone and call my dad to update him on everything that’s happened in the last two days. As expected, he’s concerned. He offers to send my brothers down here to help. I assure him I have all the help I could get here at the station and that I’ll let him know if I need extra backup. Even Steph sounded worried for me when I called to ask for her help in finding the man who took April. I sent her the footage of the incident on the parking lot and gave her a detailed description of the man from the scene of the accident. If anyone’s capable of finding a perpetrator with so little data, it’s Steph. I trust in her capabilities; she can find a needle in a sea of haystacks.
I’m killing myself with worry over April. We still don’t have any trace of her and she’s out there, injured, completely helpless and in the hands of a psychopath. I let her down. I should’ve protected her like I promised I would. And I failed epically.
April
I don’t know how long I’ve slept after he incapacitated me with something. All I know is that I woke extremely dehydrated and with a terrible headache, as if I was recovering from a heavy night of drinking. I don’t remember the last time I ate and I don’t even feel hunger, but the pain in my side is still ever present. I want to get out of here. I need to know what happened to Jude and if he’s okay. Wholeheartedly I’m praying Ronnie hasn’t hurt him, and being in the dark tears me to pieces. I wish I could somehow contact him and tell him where I am. Where the hell did Ronnie hide the bracelet?
“Where are my things?” I ask Ronnie quietly. I’d noticed right away I wasn’t wearing Jude’s bracelet anymore and it’s my last hope- my only way out of here. I need it back. I need to help Jude find me.