by Karen Woods
“Al, if this is a confession, I have to inform you that you have the rights to remain silent and to have an attorney present for this conversation. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law.”
The last thing that I needed was to have to extradite her to California. Geoff simply wouldn’t like that at all. And neither would I.
Chapter 3
ALICIA
Now, I could feel the tension coming from him. Suddenly, he was no longer just Phil. Now, he was once more all policeman, a peculiar subspecies of Homo Sapiens Sapiens with whom I had one too many dealings in the past.
I shook my head negatively. “It’s not a confession. I’ve been through all that legal mess in California, Phil. The deaths were ruled justifiable homicides. I acted in self-defense. There are no charges pending against me in any court . . . so, you can stop worrying about having to slap me in irons.”
Phil laughed nervously. The look in his eye told me that I had gauged his thoughts fairly accurately. “That would have been difficult to explain to Geoff.”
“Wouldn’t it have just?” I asked.
“Does Geoff know about this?” Phil asked.
“Of course, Geoff knows all about my notorious past. I wouldn’t have agreed to marry him without telling him. That simply wouldn’t have been fair to him. He needed to know what he might have been getting into with this relationship.”
“Deaths?”
How he could put so much restrained curiosity into one word, I would never know.
“Two men . . . I killed two men. Twelve years ago.”
I could almost see the wheels turning in his head.
“I see.”
I wasn’t at all sure that he did.
“The man making the calls, you are certain that he is the brother of the deceased?”
“I’m positive of the voice. I’ll never forget that voice, not as long as I live. Lord, I’ve heard it in my nightmares so often in the last twelve years that I’ll never forget it.”
“Why would the brother still be after you?”
“What’s there to say? The brother swore vengeance on me. Based on my experience with the man, I have no reason to believe that a dozen years time would do anything except make him hate me that much more intensely. It’s like a festering wound with him. He’s not quite sane where I am concerned. I’m not certain that the man is sane, in any regard.”
Phil waited silently for me to continue. But, I could tell that he thought that I was being melodramatic. I wasn’t. I meant every word that I said.
“I just never thought that he would find me. I’ve done everything that I could do to make it difficult to find me. I’ve changed my name, changed my appearance, changed my occupation, and changed the area of the country in which I live. I have personally stayed as far out of the public eye as possible, without becoming a hermit. The company name might be a household word, but my name and face have not become so. I’ve tried to stay personally as much out of the spotlight as I could.”
“Calm down, Al.”
“I am as calm as I am going to get.”
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” he asked.
I laughed with a sound that was nearly a sob. “No, ah, I think that my nerves are on edge quite well enough, thank you.”
“Continue, Al. Make me understand.”
“I don’t regret having killed. Don’t take anything that I say to be meaning that, at all. Both men were scum. I mean, they made their living by exploiting young girls in the vilest ways known . . .”
He just sat there waiting for me to continue. I wished that he would say something, anything. But, preferably something like, “It’s okay, Al. You don’t have to say anything more.” Yet, I knew that he wasn’t going to do anything except wait for me to finish the explanation.
“Some of those girls were runaways who were barely into their teens, but many were even younger. The men were trying to remove one of the girls from the shelter. The two of them . . .”
I shook my head as I gulped for air. “The two of them . . .” I lowered my eyes. I couldn’t stand the curiosity in his eyes, even though it was masked with professionalism. I had been the subject of far too much curiosity about certain events in my life. I abhor being the target of curious stares, whispers, and gossip. That had been one of the reasons that I had left my life behind me in LA and had made a totally fresh start. The other reason was that I didn’t want anyone to be able to find me.
Phil looked at me as I twisted my handkerchief and fought for control. I felt his eyes looking at me. But, I couldn’t bring myself to look up at him. I didn’t want to see the curiosity or the revulsion or the pity that usually accompanied a person’s realization of who I was.
“It really doesn’t matter now,” I dismissed with a sigh.
I’ve never been a person who feels comfortable displaying my emotions that openly. No, that’s a lie. There was a time when I was very young, before I learned that people could use your emotions to control you, when I was very comfortable by displaying my emotions. But, that time has been gone for thirty years, or more.
“I think that it does matter, Al. It’s still hurting you. Anything that still hurts you that badly has to continue to matter,” he said.
“No!” I felt my lips quivering. And I hated it. I knew that my eyes were probably bright with the tears I was struggling not to shed as I looked up at Phil. I knew that I was behaving badly, but my control was stretched almost to the breaking point.
“That was a very long time ago. All I want to do is to leave it in the past. I thought that I had left it there . . . but, I guess that you never can leave the past behind. Can you?” I asked.
Phil just looked at me while I composed myself. The starkness of my tone had not hidden the pain I still felt.
I sighed, then spoke in a more controlled, almost analytical, tone. “No, if I have to be honest, I knew that I hadn’t left it in the past. The truth is that the events still haunt me. And probably always will haunt me . . .”
“The exterior scars are always the quickest to heal.”
“Yes,” I said with a sigh. “I know.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
“Want? There’s nothing of ‘want’ here, Philip. All I want is to be left alone. But, I doubt that is going to happen any time soon. The situation is spinning out of control and I don’t really think that I can stop it.”
“I can understand the emotion. Help me understand the facts, Al. I still don’t understand why you believe that the brother is still obsessed enough to try to harm you after all these years.”
“You’d have to have lived it, Philip. I don’t think that I can explain it.”
I paused for a moment to marshal my courage. My past wasn’t something that I wanted to expose. I didn’t want anyone to see the dark underbelly of my soul. But, I had said this much. Without saying the rest would leave Phil with the impression that I was seriously unstable. I couldn’t do that. There are many unflattering epithets applied to me but ‘unstable’ has never been one of them.
I drew a deep breath then looked him straight in the eye. “Did you ever see the film, To Light a Candle’?”
“A few years back. I think that almost everyone has seen it. Why?”
It wasn’t more than a second later when I saw him make the connection. If Phil had been a cartoon character with a light bulb positioned over his head, the instant in which he came to an understanding could not have been clearer. The expression on his face passed into discovery and then into horror.
I wanted to sink into the floor.
Chapter 4
PHIL
I recalled the film. It had been the topic of conversation for quite a while. It had been based on a sensational story straight out of the headlines.
A young nun had killed two brothers in self-defense while they had been in the process of terrorizing and raping her. Then she was very nearly murdered by a third brother while she was in the hospital being tre
ated for the injuries incurred at the hands of the two dead brothers.
Finding the young Sister asleep, the third, younger, brother had overpowered, bound and gagged, then murdered the older nun who was sitting with the younger Sister. Then the younger brother had taped the younger Religious’ mouth closed and had bound her hand and foot to the bed with the same tape. Then . . . .
I didn’t even want to think about the rest of it. But the images from the film kept flooding back into my mind: images I had a difficult time applying to the woman seated in my office. Yet, I had no doubt that she was trying to tell me that she had been the young nun in question.
Taken from the headlines, and from the book the young nun had written about her experience, the film had sparked quite a controversy. The case was used in college ethics textbooks.
Al nodded tightly. “Except for changing the names, omitting some irrelevant details, and changing a few of the minor details to make it more dramatic, it was a fairly accurate account of what happened in the shelter and of the aftermath of those actions,” she told me.
Her shoulders were now rounded as though she was bearing the weight of a dozen years of memories upon them.
I had to force myself to retain some measure of objectivity when it was obvious, painfully obvious, that she needed a friend to hold her and to tell her that everything would be made right.
I wasn’t at all sure that I could tell her that things would be fine. If she was correct, she definitely had a problem.
“Must I elaborate?” she asked.
I was struck by the absolute emptiness of her eyes. It was as though she had totally withdrawn into herself to shield herself from the pain. I had seen other people react to trauma that way. In Nam, I had seen that look on the face of several men who had been through too much, who had reached their breaking points.
Twenty-nine years of law enforcement, first in the army, then in this normally quiet town where I had grown up, had forced me to grow calluses over my emotions in order to survive. But, the thought that the delicate woman whom I knew had endured that most base of human degradation at the hands of that punk and his brothers, the very thought of it filled me with nearly murderous rage. Had the surviving brother been in the room, I knew that I would have had no hesitation in putting him out of everyone’s misery.
I finally found my voice. It was harsher than normal as I tried to control the anger that I suddenly found within myself. “You think that that punk who . . .”
From the stricken expression on her face, I decided that she was close enough to breaking down. I didn’t want to add any more to the situation than I had to. “. . . hurt you twelve years ago is the one making the calls?”
“I know he is. I recognized the voice.” There was absolute conviction in her voice. She fished into her briefcase. “This is a tape of some of the harassing phone calls which I received when I was recovering from the first attack. If you’ll listen to them, you’ll hear that it is the same voice. Running a sonogram analysis, er . . . voice print, on both tapes should tell you that it is the same man in both series of calls. I’ve already rigged the equipment and run the analysis on both tapes. My equipment is not as accurate as the professional set up would be, but it is accurate enough to convince me that it is the same voice on both tapes. Here are the print outs.”
“I don’t know how to read this, Al,” I admitted as I took the pages of computer print out from her hand.
She removed the first tape from her machine and replaced it with one of the older ones. “Just listen, then.” She pressed the play button.
I listened to the voice. Al stopped and ejected the tape. The voice that came over the speaker sounded the same as the previous tape. Only a voice print identification would verify that they were indeed made by the same person. Something else about the tape bothered me, but I couldn’t quite register it clearly.
“What time did the last call come in, Al?”
“About four a.m.”
“It is now twelve forty. How did you find the time to set up equipment? Didn’t you have classes this morning?”
Al looked embarrassed. “I teach hardware classes, Phil. I just took my students into the lab this morning. We all worked as a team to rig the machinery to do the analysis. It wasn’t what was on my lesson plans. But, then, it was good experience for them. And with the extra hands, I got the job done quite a bit faster than I could have done it, myself. Of course, I didn’t tell them anything behind the reason for the equipment. And we will be using it for other things. So, it isn’t a totally self-indulgent waste.”
I smiled slightly because that sounded like something that I could well imagine Al doing. In the four years that I had known her, I had never known her to sit around bemoaning anything instead of dealing with whatever was wrong head-on. I’d always assessed her as a strong, shoot from the hip, type woman.
“Organized Al.”
“Just frightened out of my skin, Phil. And working against a clock where I don’t know how much time that it might have on it. My life could very well depend on how well I use what time that I do have.”
“Al, the first thing that you need to do at this point would to change your phone number, and to make it unlisted.”
“Called General Telephone first thing this morning and put in that request. That work should be done by now. I asked them to do so immediately, and they promised to put a rush on it, for a sizable fee, of course.”
“I see . . .”
“He might not even have to come near me. If this keeps up, I just may have a fear-induced heart attack. But, if he found out my phone number, he probably has my address, too. God, Phil. I’m scared to death. I’ve ordered caller ID. But, it’s going to be a few days before that service order gets filled.”
“You can’t go on living alone. That makes you altogether too easy of a target. You need to have someone else with you.”
“No! The one thing that I can’t do is to allow Hernandez another target. To involve someone else, an innocent, and to potentially to place that person in danger, is something that I simply will not do,” she stated fiercely, spacing the last five words for emphasis. “I simply will not do it.”
“Al, be sensible.”
“I am being sensible! I’ve got enough blood on my hands as it is. I don’t need to add the blood of an innocent!”
“And Geoff doesn’t need to have to bury you,” I countered harshly, regretting the words when I saw her flinch. Then, I made a conscious effort to soften my tone. “It just about destroyed him twenty years ago when we had to bury my sister, Jan, only a week before their wedding. It took him a lot of years to get over her. He might never recover emotionally if anything happened to you . . .”
A small shudder ran though her. She bit her lip.
I wished that I could read her mind.
“Believe me, I don’t want to place that burden on Geoff, either. Especially, since there are only seven weeks to go until the wedding.”
“Think about this, hard. Your wedding is less than two months away, woman! No one would think twice about your moving in with Geoff. In fact, a few of us have wondered why you and he haven’t already done so.”
Al laughed mirthlessly. “I just bet it has been a topic of discussion.”
“No offense intended.”
“Oh, of course not,” she said. There was fire in her eyes. “I should not be at all upset to find my fiancee’s friends gossiping about us behind our backs. Tell me, did the speculations deal with the fact that we are living separately, or did they delve into whether or not Geoff and I are sl. . . .” She blushed brightly. “Nevermind. I don’t want to know.”
“No one meant to make you angry, or hurt you, Al.”
“Maybe not.” She forced herself to smile. “But, you are right about one thing, being killed just wouldn’t fit in with my plans at the moment.”
“No, it wouldn’t.”
“I have no intention of allowing that Hernandez bastard to get anywhere near me.
I have a gun and will use it, if that becomes necessary . . .” Her voice trailed off. Then she added in somewhat of an undertone, “I just hope that it doesn’t become necessary.”
“I hope that it doesn’t either. You have this gun on you?” I asked as I carefully looked at her, my eyes running over her in search for the bulge declaring her to be armed.
“I do.”
“Care to produce the weapon?”
“Must I?”
“Definitely.”
Al unbuttoned her suit coat and reached for the loaded Walther PPK she wore in a holster in the small of her back.
Double checking that the safety was on, she handed me the weapon.
Illinois doesn’t have a concealed carry permit law. Technically, she was breaking the law. I knew that I should have confiscated the weapon and put her under arrest. But, given the situation, I decided to look the other way and pretend I had no knowledge of it.
“It’s legal, Phil,” she stated quietly as she handed me a slip of paper. “Doug Webb was kind enough to make me an auxiliary deputy and to authorize the carrying of a weapon, shortly after I came to the county. But, he did so only after he and I went to the shooting range together and he could be sure that I would hit what I aimed at. I’m down at the lab at all kinds of hours. I needed to be sure I could protect myself.”
“My aren’t you full of surprises today.” I handed her back the weapon and the authorization from the county sheriff. “If Doug is comfortable with your skill level, I’m sure that you are competent.”
“I wouldn’t feel comfortable carrying it if I weren’t competent. And I don’t make a habit of drawing the weapon unless I intend to use it. I have no intention of ever being a victim of violence, again. I mean that Phil.”
I had no doubt that she meant every word of what she said. Absolutely no doubt. If she had felt any differently, I would have been surprised.
“I’ll need a description of the person you think is placing the calls.”
“Oh, I can do better than that.” She reached into her briefcase one last time. She handed me a folder. “That is a copy of his police record. It is complete with photographs, fingerprints, and his arrest history. I think that there is an active NCIC number there. He’s still wanted for the attack on me, as well as for murdering a cop, and a half dozen other offenses of varying severity.”