by David Archer
When Mary was gone, Cassie sat back and took a deep breath. There was a small wipe-off board on the wall beside her desk, and she picked up a marker and put another check on it. There were twenty-seven check marks, and each one represented a woman or family that Cassie had helped to escape from abuse.
“That’s another one, Abby,” she whispered to the photograph on her desk. “We saved another one.”
The deputies who had arrested Lex Stuart that night had run right into the burning cabin after shoving him into the back of a car. They were joined seconds later by a pair of paramedics, and between the four of them they managed to drag both the women out, chairs and all. The fire had been melting the zip strips, but it had also been searing their flesh onto the wood, so it was necessary to carry them out in the chairs. They were still on fire when they got out of the cabin, but another deputy had arrived and had a fire extinguisher in his hands. He put out the fire so the paramedics could start doing anything they could to save their lives.
Stuart had done a better job of dousing Abby, and she died six hours later as they were trying to stabilize her. Cassie had terrible burns over most of the left side of her body, including her neck and head, but she clung to life with a determination that amazed all of her doctors. Over the next few weeks, she endured numerous surgeries to remove damaged skin and graft on new tissue, but most of that was on her neck and the side of her face. Her left side, arm, and leg were too badly burned for anything but synthetic skin grafts, and they had been forced to cut off her engagement ring. Her ring finger and pinky on her left hand had become fused when the doctors decided it was the only way to avoid amputation.
In the aftermath of it all, the St. Louis Police Department determined that Mike, Stuart, and two other officers had been involved in extreme sexual fantasies that included rape and murder. The investigation eventually uncovered evidence linking them to the murders of four prostitutes, and it was determined that much of that evidence had already been in the possession of the police but had been deliberately covered up. The single surviving videocassette, the one that had been left in Abby’s portable TV, positively identified the four officers and resulted in an arrest warrant traveling halfway around the world for the one who had left the force and joined the Army.
Six other officers were arrested for covering up the crimes, and it had become quite a scandal. Cassie had been shocked as all the details came out, and spent many nights crying alone in her room as she thought of the women Mike had killed, and dealt with the fact that she was nearly one of them.
Detectives Bergman and Jacobs visited Cassie in the hospital several times, bringing her up to date on the investigation. They told her that had it not been for her courage and Abby’s quick thinking, Mike and the others would have gotten away with it forever. Cassie, as soon as she was able, told them everything, and her description of Mike on the night he had first played his fantasy rape scene with her triggered a memory for Shirley Jacobs. There had been a serial rapist in the area for a couple of years, but the description victims had given had never led to a suspect, and there was never any DNA evidence. They had already searched his house, but after hearing about the black sweat suit and padding, they went back again.
That suit perfectly matched the description rape victims had given to the police, and it was sent to the lab for testing. On the fibers inside, they found residual traces of petroleum jelly and latex, leading to the conclusion that Mike had coated himself with the jelly and used condoms during the actual rapes. Similar costumes, including the padding and a stocking mask, were put on several policemen. Included among them was Detective Jansen, who was exactly the same size and build as Mike, and a lineup was arranged. Almost all of the victims immediately pointed to Jansen and swore that he was the rapist.
Cassie’s parents had hired an attorney to represent her interests, and he filed a lawsuit against the city. Rather than have the story dragged out for years, the city had offered Cassie and Abby’s family a settlement amounting to over eight million dollars, and they accepted. Abby’s family decided to donate the majority of their share of that money to programs for abused women, while Cassie, following Brenda’s advice, put hers into long-term investments that would give her a stable annual income of more than three hundred thousand dollars.
She had decided to complete her bachelor’s degree and so she had returned to school the following year. Since graduating in the spring, she had decided that she wanted to relocate and chose Tulsa, Oklahoma, as her new home city. It was still close enough to visit her parents when she wanted to, but far enough away that people didn’t stare when they heard her name.
With plenty of income, she decided she didn’t want to go to work at a regular job. Instead, she had looked up programs for battered women and approached St. Mary’s as a volunteer. After hearing her story, Marsha had welcomed her with open arms and credited her with saving numerous lives in just her first three months with the Outreach.
FIFTEEN
Cassie crawled out of bed and made her way to the bathroom. She took care of morning necessities and then got into the shower, enjoying the tepid water—hot water tended to make her ache, so she kept the water temperature moderate. When she was finished, she dried off with a big, fluffy towel and then opened the bathroom door to let her cat come inside.
Critter, which was the cat’s name, meowed at her scoldingly from atop the lid of the toilet as she brushed her hair and applied the minimal makeup she wore. “I know, I know,” Cassie said. “I just like a few minutes in the shower by myself, is that all right?”
The cat uttered another criticism but followed Cassie dutifully when she left the bathroom to get dressed for the day, and then to the kitchen. Cassie sighed as she opened another can of cat food. Owning a cat, she had concluded, was just about the same as having a boyfriend. Both situations were just about equal on the “pain in the ass” scale, in her humble opinion.
Not that she knew much about boyfriends, anymore. Guys didn’t exactly line up to date the girl with one eye and half of Freddy Krueger’s face.
No, she thought, not Freddy Krueger. I’m Freda Krueger, his sister.
Dressed, the cat fed, she put on a pot of coffee and popped a breakfast burrito into the microwave. This was her normal morning routine, and while it didn’t exactly make her happy, she was reasonably content. At least, she felt, she was using what happened to her to make a positive difference in the world.
She glanced at the picture of herself and Abby on her refrigerator. It was one of the selfies Abby had taken with Cassie’s phone while they were drinking that last night.
“Are you proud of me, Abs?”
Of course I am, she heard Abby’s voice say in her mind. You’re making my life count for something, by doing the work I wish I could have done.
Cassie grinned. She knew it wasn’t Abby talking to her, but there was a comfort in knowing that it was what Abby would have said. Abby had always put others before herself, and she had never let danger stop her.
Her phone chimed, telling her that she had received an email. She looked and saw that it was from her mother, another fairly common morning ritual. It was all about the farm and what was happening back home. Cassie read through it and then sent a response, telling her mother about the latest case of abuse she was dealing with, a mother and her twelve-year-old daughter. The woman’s husband, stepfather to the girl, had only gotten violent once, but he had broken his wife’s arm. Friends had pushed her to the Outreach, and Cassie was trying desperately to convince her that now was the time to act, before it got worse.
She finished her breakfast and made a cup of coffee to take with her, then opened the drawer in the cabinet close to the door into the garage and took out the 9 mm automatic her father had given her. After what had happened, she had vowed to never be a victim again, and so she had taken a concealed carry course and got a permit to carry the weapon at all times. She might never need it, but she knew that it would be better to have it and not n
eed it than to need it and not have it.
She said goodbye to Critter and walked out into the garage. She had decided against an apartment when she moved to town, and bought a nice little two-bedroom ranch house with an attached garage. It was nice, and the mortgage payments she made were lower than what she would’ve paid for rent in something similar.
It was also secure, since it was located in a security-patrolled, gated community. She used the remote to open the garage door, backed out, and closed it again as she started off to work. The security guard at the gate, a woman Cassie only knew as Ms. Duncan, waved as she drove by.
The Outreach was near downtown, in a small office building of its own that had once housed attorneys. Cassie pulled into the back parking lot as she always did, but she heard her name called as soon as she opened her door.
Kendra McCoy, the woman she had just told her mother about, was getting out of her own car across the lot. Cassie stood beside her Kia and waited as the woman rushed toward her.
“Kendra,” she said, “what’s the matter?”
Kendra had tears on her cheeks. “Roger found out,” she said. “He went through my phone last night and saw where I texted my mom about leaving him, and we had a big fight. I promised him I wouldn’t leave—I would’ve said anything to get him to calm down at that moment—but then I got up this morning and he was gone. Cassie, he took Melanie. They’re both gone, and I already called the police and they said there’s nothing they can do until they’ve been gone for twenty-four hours. I tried calling Roger’s phone and Melanie’s, but neither one of them answered.”
“Okay, come on in with me,” Cassie said as she put an arm around the weeping woman, “and we’ll see what we can do.”
Cassie walked the woman straight into her own office and shut the door, then sat down and picked up her phone. The Outreach had connections with the local police, and she pushed the button that would connect her immediately to the detective the volunteers usually coordinated with.
“Detective Perkins,” Cassie heard as the line was answered. Alicia Perkins was assigned to the domestic violence desk and had once been a victim herself.
“Alicia, it’s Cassie at St. Mary’s Outreach. I’ve got a situation I need your help with.”
She put the phone on speaker so that Kendra could hear and respond to questions, and Alicia started taking notes.
“Normally,” she said after a few minutes, “we don’t do anything about missing persons for twenty-four hours, just in case it’s a matter of somebody forgetting to mention where they were going. In this case, though, I can justify putting out an Amber Alert on Melanie. Since you were already looking for shelter because of abuse, and since Roger is only Melanie’s stepfather, I’m going to mark this urgent. They shouldn’t be too hard to find. I’ve got his vehicle information and license number, so let me get this out to dispatch right now.”
“Thanks, Alicia,” Cassie said. “Call me as soon as you hear something, okay?”
“You know I will.” The line disconnected and Cassie turned off the speaker.
“You want some coffee or something?” Cassie asked Kendra, but the woman shook her head.
“No, no, I’m okay. Oh, Cassie, you don’t think he’d hurt her, do you?”
Cassie bit her bottom lip but shook her head. “I think he’d probably know that would be stupid,” she said. “From all you told me, he’s not normally a stupid man, just angry.”
Kendra nodded. “That’s what I’m worried about,” she said. “He was so mad last night, I was actually afraid. He said there was no way he was going to let me leave, no way he was going to let me take Melanie away from him. That’s why I promised him I’d stay, because I was afraid of what he might do if I didn’t.”
“And that was the right thing to do, at that moment,” Cassie said. “You tried to defuse the situation. If he had accepted it, you could have come to me today and we would’ve gotten you out right now.”
Kendra dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “That’s what scares me so bad,” she said, “him saying he wouldn’t let me take Melanie away. It’s like he didn’t care that much if I left, as long as he had her.”
Cassie looked hard at her for a moment. “You told me you’ve never seen any signs that he was acting inappropriately toward Melanie, right?”
Kendra shook her head. “No, never,” she said. “He dotes on her—he’s always buying her things and giving her money for movies at the mall and things like that. Anything he can do to make her happy, that seems to be what he’s all about.”
Cassie’s eye narrowed. “Kendra, how does Melanie feel about him? Is she afraid of him?”
The woman shrugged. “Only when he starts yelling,” she said. “Other than that, it’s almost like she loves him more than she loves me.” Kendra suddenly shook her head. “I just made that sound worse than it is,” she said. “When I asked her if she wanted us to leave, she said she did.”
Cassie watched her for a moment. “Did you ask her why she wanted to leave?”
Kendra looked confused. “No,” she said, “I mean, she saw how Roger was treating me. I think she was worried he might really hurt me bad, you know?”
Cassie worried her bottom lip again for a few seconds. “Sometimes,” she said, “girls don’t talk about sexual abuse because they’ve been threatened, or because they’re afraid it was their own fault. Was Roger left alone with Melanie very often?”
Kendra stared at her for almost half a minute; then tears began to flow again. “Sometimes,” she said. “Oh, my God, are you trying to tell me he might have…”
“I don’t know,” Cassie said quickly. “I’m just concerned about the contradictions in the way you describe her relationship with Roger. On the one hand, you said it was almost like she loved him more, but then she said she did want to get away from him. Those could be signs that something was going on that you just weren’t aware of.”
There were several more seconds before Kendra could find her voice again. “I’d kill him,” she said at last. “I’d actually kill him.”
“That wouldn’t do Melanie any good,” Cassie replied. “This is the kind of thing you have to let the police handle. Kendra, listen to me. If you try to take any action on your own about this, all that will happen is that you’ll end up in trouble and Melanie will be on her own. She’d end up in foster care, most likely, and I don’t think that would be a good situation.”
Kendra pushed her anger back down, and the two of them sat together and waited.
It was just before ten when Alicia Perkins called again. “Cassie, we’ve got the Amber Alert out, and I’ve got every cop within a hundred miles looking for the car, but so far we got nothing. I really thought we’d spot him pretty quick, but now I’m starting to worry.”
“Okay,” Cassie said. “What’s the next step?”
“Well, the fact he hasn’t turned up on an Amber means we can class this as a stepparent abduction. That lets us bring in the state investigators, and maybe the FBI if we don’t find them pretty soon.” She lowered her voice. “Can the mother hear me?”
“She’s in the bathroom at the moment,” Cassie replied. “What?”
“I’ve done a little digging into this guy’s background,” Alicia said. “It took some work, but I found out he was charged with sexual abuse when he was sixteen. The records were sealed because he was a juvenile, but the victim was an eleven-year-old girl. I’m actually very concerned for that little girl’s safety.”
“Well, I know he’s got a violent streak,” Cassie said. “As far as I know, though, he’s never hurt Melanie before. What are you thinking?”
“Probably the same thing you are,” Alicia said. “If there’s been some abuse going on that we don’t know about, he could be prepared to go to extremes rather than give her up. In his juvenile case, he defended his actions by saying that he and the victim were in love. If he’s convinced himself that Melanie is actually involved in a romance with him…”
; “Oh, God,” Cassie muttered. “Like a suicide-pact thing? If he can’t have her, nobody can?”
“That’s what I’m afraid of, yes. Right now, he may think of her as an object of affection, but if he’s confronted by police, she’ll become a hostage instantly.”
“And this could turn into suicide by cop, couldn’t it, with Melanie caught in the crossfire? Oh, geez, there’s got to be something we can do. Any ideas?”
“Afraid not, not at this point. All I can think of right now is saying our prayers. If we don’t find him sometime soon, I’m afraid this could end up pretty bad.”
“Yeah,” Cassie said. “What should I say to her mother?”
Alicia hesitated for a second. “I think you might want to be honest,” she said. “I know that’s not what you wanted to hear.”
“I’ll deal with it.” Cassie hung up the phone and waited, and Kendra came back into the room a couple of minutes later.
“Detective Perkins just called,” Cassie said. “So far, there’s no sign of Roger or Melanie anywhere. Can you think of anyplace he might take her?”
Kendra shook her head. “I’ve tried,” she said. “They used to like to go hiking a lot, but they haven’t done that in years. I just can’t think of any particular place they might go.”
Cassie sat behind her desk and just looked at Kendra for a moment. “Kendra, did you know that Roger was accused of sexual assault when he was a teenager?”
Kendra’s face suddenly became evasive. “Well—he told me a little bit about it, but he always insisted it wasn’t true. The charges were dropped as far as I know—that’s what he said.”