That was what made their hearts hammer under their chests. They were feeling anxiety and the next step was an anxiety episode. That’s what Emily was going through, at least. Audrey realized about it right away and caressed her hair as if she were a child. She didn’t say a word, but her eyes said everything.
They were going from resignation and patience to fear. A troubling and justified fear. Though they had no power whatsoever they knew their intuition was telling them that something was about to happen. Ready girls?
No. Of course, they were not ready.
57
The doctor received her in his office. His name was Ethan Cunningan and had some thick glasses in front of his eyes. He was brunette, and his hair was so long that it nearly touched his shoulders. He was skinny, and his hands were long and thin. He kindly asked Andrew to wait outside while he was putting some latex gloves on as if he was getting ready to explore Clarice’s pussy with his fingers. She was shaking on the hard stretcher.
“When I’m done with the examination, I’ll tell you all you need to know,” Ethan said with a stupid smile under his glasses.
Andrew looked at him from the corner of his eyes and opened door number three. It reminded him of Grayson. It was also door number three but not at King Dom’s Hospital.
“Please make a thorough examination but don’t cross any line,” Andrew warned before slamming the door shut.
Back in the waiting room, he had seen several benches that appeared to be supported by the wall. Andrew sat on the one closest to the door and his huge ass nearly occupied two seats. They were iron-like. He suddenly felt a stabbing pain in his thighs and another in his anus, as if all of a sudden, he suffered from a serious case of hemorrhoids. He made a gesture with his face that the police officer noticed. It was Luke, the fattest of them all. He was staring at him with his eternal idiotic smile and with eyes shining like a rebel child.
“That doctor doesn’t know shit. The other day he looked at a pimple in my ass and said it was infected because of my farts. Can you believe that shit?” Luke’s smile was wider than ever. He had never seen him like that, even though he had known him for years.
Andrew felt that both Luke’s presence and the air contaminated with formol, alcohol, and medicine gave him an asphyxiating sensation. Therefore, he thought a cigarette would come in handy. However, there were two things against him: smoking was not allowed inside the facilities, and, he didn’t smoke. He had tried after turning eighteen, but it made him feel nauseated along with an endless cough.
“If that were the case, I’d have dozens of pimples up my ass,” Andrew said without even smiling. He was still serious.
Luke made every inch of a smile disappear from his swollen face.
Inside the examination room, Doctor Ethan asked Clarice to take off her panties.
Andrew’s headaches came back to life again.
He was receiving information.
Once again, he saw the face of the third woman with her eyes closed, even though it was such a vague image that he couldn’t quite recognize who it was. Just like it happened with the second one.
This time, however, he suspected who she was.
58
Around three p.m. that Thursday, Kevin, with his hand on the phone’s microphone, informed him about an important call. It could even contribute to the investigation, but he wanted to speak to the boss, Landon. He had told him to put the call through. Kevin took his hand away from the earpiece and pressed 1 for call forwarding. In Landon’s office, the phone started ringing and Landon wondered why the phone service provider couldn’t change the ringtone like they could do with a cellphone.
Just like someone who’s not expecting a call, Landon, with his back resting against the door frame and chewing a toothpick, turned around and slammed the door shut making the class click like a wineglass shattering against the floor. He walked around his messy desk and his hand picked up the phone as he slowly sat down.
“This is Castle Lake Hill’s Sheriff, Landon Miller.” His eyes shone like those of a naughty kitten. It was as if he thought that the person calling didn’t know who was talking to.
“This is Sheriff Jeff Brandon, from Fowler Beach Police Office, Long Island. I have some interesting information to share with you.” The deep voice explained through the phone’s tiny earpiece.
“Go ahead.” He just occurred to mention that single sentence after hearing that voice that made him forget everything. Was he hesitating? Were there any police officers in Long Island? Landon was not even going to think about it.
“Two of my agents arrested an insignificant petty thief trying to steal a black Buick right by Fowler´s Beach. This is something normal at this point. However, it’s not something common for us to find the owner’s documents. I personally wanted to get in touch with this woman and, to my surprise, her mother told me she had been reported missing and dead for nearly four years. I went back to the vehicle and found that it was in perfect conditions. There was no way in hell it had been abandoned there for four years. I would dare say it had been there for only a day. Do you know anything about this?
Landon got nervous. He didn’t know what the Sheriff was talking about but his fingers started tapping the desk.
“You forgot to mention the woman’s name, Sir...”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” There was a brief pause and he continued. “The vehicle’s owner is Madelyne Brewster.”
A chill went down his spine and his heartbeat was increasing, poking his chest from within. Landon was fascinated and excited at the same time. As he was spreading out on his chair, he bit the toothpick. It all showed that he liked being a step ahead of Andrew.
“I know who she is. Precisely this morning we’ve had contact with her.” Landon was about to smile to the wall with his gaze lost in his family portrait. However, he refrained; he realized that what was happening then was something really serious. A step forward in the investigation.
“With her?”
It was Landon who now was silent. He could hear his men murmuring and the prisoners who had been arrested that day.
“I don’t understand your question.” This time, Landon smiled instinctively.
“I’ve checked the database and this woman shows as missing for the last four years, Mr. Landon.”
Now, his heartbeat had stopped suddenly.
“Well, yes. It’s a closed case.” Landon lied and hung up.
He saw Kevin’s smile through the crystal door as if he had been listening to the entire conversation.
Landon spat the toothpick and, as he stretched out a bit more, he rose his feet to the desk and crossed his fingers behind his head.
He stared at the ceiling just thinking.
59
Luke headed to the vending machine at the end of the hall, moving his heavy ass like two cushions. He dragged his feet through the floor that had been recently mopped and he was just thinking about the taste of the soda he would gladly guzzle.
Andrew, however, was still dealing with a terrible headache and his heart pumping on the tip of his tongue. He was still receiving information but not precisely as it had occurred in Sheriff Landon’s office. He wasn’t seeing him with his dirty boots on the desk nor Kevin’s dumb smile. He was seeing, however, the Buick being towed with some tight steel cables.
He then saw several agents with their fingers hidden behind the belts, watching as the man in towing machine worked while he dried his sweaty forehead with his greasy hand.
When he saw it, Andrew knew they had found it and that Landon was probably already aware. And, in fact, he was. He was disappointed when he saw the face of the third victim. He recognized her now. According to how he ordered the pictures on his wall, he knew it was Hannah Ackerman. It was the third on the left. What he didn’t understand is why the hell they were following the same order, why they were appearing as they had them on his wall.
The answer was clear.
The murderer was killing them in the exact same
order that he had kidnapped them. Just like that. Though not even Andrew understood the motive, he did realize later about the order.
When Luke was getting his mouth closer to the can of soda, Andrew started looking away as if hiding something.
60
Even though they were not ready, they remained there against their will, reflecting and listening to their intuition.
They were hungry and now each one of them was lying in their bed. They were there, sprawling like an old piece of cloth. Their conversation went on as if it were a therapy to deal with the fear that invaded them. They heard noises behind the wall and they were sure the sicko was performing a new task they weren’t used to hearing up until then. Since he took Ava Cox, everything was upsetting and there was nothing they could do to guess what was going on or why.
“The thing is, he could have treated us like he did yesterday, behaving like our protective mother, but during our entire stay in this place. This sicko, with deep insanity in his eyes, has changed his daily errand. How many hours has Ava Cox been out of this room? Has anyone been able to count the fucking hours? He kept on feeding us, doing our make up and getting us dressed!” Hannah stopped a bit to swallow and added. “He even bathed us with that sponge that by now must be full of mold!”
“I think he even changes the sponges.” Zoe considered rolling her eyes.
The beds were set in two rows, a row of four and another of three. They looked as if they were numbered since Ava’s bed was next to the metal door and the next one was Madelyne’s. Hannah was lying on the third bed. Clearly, they hadn’t noticed that tiny detail.
“Yeah, could be.” Hannah crackled as she touched the wrinkled sheet with her fingertips.
After a brief silence, it was Emily who asked the most important question:
“Is it possible that he’s changing us to a different room?”
They thought they had already said that, but they continued wondering about it.
The others stared at her inquisitively. Emily frowned while she was supporting her face on her open hands. A piece of sheet got tangled with her fingers.
“I don’t know but an evil mind is capable of doing anything,” Zoe said with an almost tremulous voice. Truth is, she wasn’t really concerned about something she couldn’t explain.
“Maybe he wants to see us separately now,” Audrey said. She was resting face up, on her elbows, making her neck look as if it were being supported by an inexistent cushion.
Hannah looked at her discreetly.
“Maybe that’s it, but, why is he taking so long to come through the door?” Hannah pointed at the rusty huge door with her index finger. The walls revealed the damp bricks behind the painting.
“I think that it’s because he’s setting us free one by one,” Kylie said with her eyes wide open. Her makeup was fading away from her eyelids.
“Could be. Maybe the time has come.” Hannah replied twisting her mouth in awe.
“The time for what?” Audrey’s voice sounded like the one of an inveterate smoker: husky and low-pitched. The spell that uncertainty had cast upon them, had taken over their fragile vocal cords.
“Time to set us free.” Kylie insisted, opening her eyes wider as if she had just seen a drooling rabid dog.
All the others fixed their eyes on her with curiosity, wishing it were all true.
“Now he abandons us?” Andrew was wrapped up in her thought. She realized she had said something stupid, but she didn’t know how to disguise her mistake.
“He kidnaps us for thousands of days and now you’re saying he’s abandoning us? To release us is to abandon us? Our place is out there!” Hannah pointed at the door.
“It’s the same.” Audrey had fallen in her own trap again, this time, however, she did hide it. There was a long silence that was only interrupted by the sounds behind the walls. It could be the sicko, or maybe Ava and Madelyne. They were certainly wrong about the latter.
“Maybe he’ll kill us.” Kilye’s statement felt like a bucket of cold water. The women’s make up could no longer hide their pale faces, white as snow.
Once again, silence invaded the room and the buzzing sound accompanied.
Maybe there were rats.
They thought they had also put that on the table.
Those damn rats.
61
“She didn’t want to take off her panties.” The coroner said.
Andrew was perplexed while Luke started laughing foolishly.
“Is that bad?” Andrew asked with his deepest voice. His eyes showed no trace of sparkle. He didn’t find it funny at all.
“I needed to verify if there were any traces of semen in her vagina,” Ethan explained to them.
“Who told you she had been raped?”
“I don’t anyone did. She’s denying it as well.”
“And she’s right.”
“I know, but it is my job to corroborate absolutely everything.”
“Even to verify her pussy looks okay, right?” Andrew got upset. Luke, in the meantime, was six feet away bursting in laughter, so much that he was about to fart. The can of coke fell off to the ground making a terrible noise and rolling towards Andrew.
Andrew didn’t even turn to see it.
His eyes were set on the coroner’s pale face. He was, in fact, feeling ridiculous in front of the detective. He realized this time that it had been nonsense to even bring up the topic of conversation.
“Well, I’m sorry, Sir...”
“Detective Andrew. Call me Detective Andrew, even if we’re old foxes.” He said in an even deeper voice.
Andrew knew Ethan very well since he had required his services on many occasions throughout his long career. Ethan wasn’t much younger than the detective, but he was around his forties and he had been practicing medicine for about fifteen years now. That’s why Andrew knew that a part of him was to be a pervert.
Now, Andrew saw him as a pervert behind his huge glasses. Luke was still laughing like a Cossack and the people bustling down the hall dampened the sound of his laughter.
Behind Ethan, with her long white gown and her latex gloves still on, Clarice appeared with her head down while she buttoned up her last button on her dress. That asshole had touched her tits and Clarice had closed her eyes, so she wouldn’t see his arousal.
“I want to go home, now,” Clarice said with a mellow but clear voice. Her eyes were dark despite... Andrew was amazed by the color of her eyes. They were pretty.
“Easy, girl. I’m taking you back to the precinct so you can go somewhere else with your caravan if you can actually be safe. You have really pretty eyes.” Andrew kept talking with a deep voice and didn’t realize he had made a flirtatious compliment. What a dirty old man. Luke had stopped laughing.
“I think I’ll stay here for a bit longer.” Claire explained and added, “I feel safe when you’re around.”
“Andrew.” He said and blushed. It had been a long time since he hadn’t blushed before. She could be his daughter, yet, he realized that between them a friendship was beginning and he started feeling like a protective father. That strange, yet at the same time nice feeling, made his stomach tickle.
Ethan arched his eyebrows and took his hand to the mouth feeling an unpleasant taste. He started to salivate.
Clarice passed by the doctor and stood right next to Andrew.
“Let’s get out of here.” He said.
They turned around and headed to Kingdom Hospital’s exit.
Andrew thought about her words ‘I want to go home.’
62
Landon had been quite entertained that morning. The clock had already marked half past four. There was someone else who wanted to talk to him. It was the warden, Colton Allen. When he heard his voice, he arched his eyebrows so much that they almost touched the rim of his hat. He was, in fact, wearing it in his office. It was so hot that the air in his office was sticky. He noticed it was an unusual spring.
“Landon?”
&nbs
p; “Yes, the very same.”
“This is warden Colton Allen...”
“I know. My assistant told me, he put you through.” Landon interrupted without worrying about his attitude.
On the other side of the phone, there was some kind of snort.
“I wanted to tell you something to help your investigation. I believe it’s pretty important. It’s about Parker Atkinson.
“I see. The guy that’s dust in the wind.”
“Yes, I signed the forms myself to make sure he went straight to the crematorium, but I think we’ve all done something wrong.” Colton’s voice was getting shaky. He had been thinking over and over and a lump in his throat kept him from speaking clearly.
“What are you trying to tell me?” Landon stretched in his chair and rose his feet to put them on his desk. His boots were now on a pile of papers, Parker Atkinson’s file along with the ones of those poor women. He wasn’t particularly organized and, even though he kept all the information in his head, he had the ability to forget almost everything. Andrew, however, was a walking computer.
“Well, that we got the wrong murderer, just like Detective Andrew said. It’s hard to accept but that’s the way it is. Luckily, Parker had no relatives, otherwise, the claims would have rained down us.”
“How can you be so sure about it?”
“Two days before he died, he confessed something to his cellmate. He told him he hadn’t done it, that he never knew those women and that by the time they disappeared he was in Florida.”
“Does that make him innocent? Do you believe that?” Landon was getting nervous.
“The thing is that it’s true. During that week, Parker was under arrest for disturbing the law and order. And... There’s something else.”
“What else?”
“He confessed he had been with some prostitutes and his samples...”
“Say it, don’t stop.” Landon interrupted, now with his sunglasses off. He had sunken eyes. “They screwed him and kept his semen, is that what you’re trying to say?”
There was a long silence on the phone while the precinct’s murmur drowned that emptiness. Finally, Colton’s voice reappeared.
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