She followed the trail for several minutes until she reached a crossroads. Damn, which one did they take? She carefully examined the three options. Based on the gait of the trailing horse, she was reasonably confident that they had proceeded straight.
Heather broke into a light jog in an attempt to maintain visual contact with Layla and Katherine. She didn’t want to have to choose next time. Just as she was beginning to make up some ground, she was suddenly tackled with a bone-jarring thud. Before she knew what had happened she was being dragged screaming into the undergrowth.
The man forcefully flipped her onto her back and straddled her chest. “Remember me, princess?” he hissed as he drove his knees into her biceps and immobilized her arms.
Heather studied his face for a few moments, and then it dawned on her. “You’re that sleazy addict from the club! Have you been following me? Get the hell off me you freak! I can’t lose them,” Heather said as she began to struggle.
Javy dropped a powerful forearm down on her chest to punish her for her resistance.
While she gasped for air, he said, “I knew you’d remember me. I’m a memorable kind of guy,” he said as he paused to preen. “Name’s Javy Dolbrow, but you can just call me Dr. Feelgood... because you’re about to feel no pain.”
Heather’s eyes grew big as saucers. She was starting to piece it together.
“This really would have been a lot more fun if you had just taken that drink from me back at the club.”
When the man’s name registered against all of the reading she’d done on her father, she knew this was the third man everyone was looking for.
Heather began struggling in earnest to try and free herself again. She began screaming, begging for anyone to hear her pleas.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk, Heather. All that time with your trainer and you can’t move me? You really need to fire that guy,” he said as he began using his knife to carefully cut through the material of her jacket.
“Why are you following me? What do you want?” she screamed at him.
“You asked the question and you are the answer,” he replied and abruptly sliced her shirt open and exposed her chest to the cool damp autumn air.
“No! Not that! Get the f–,” Heather started to scream, but the assailant thwarted her efforts when he knocked the wind out of her with another quick punch in the chest.
She fought through the pain and managed to squirm an arm free. When she threw a fist toward his throat, he slashed at her forearm. Heather recoiled from the cut and screamed out in pain.
When she appeared to have given up and began gasping for air, Javy sat more upright. “This will go a lot easier for you if you just surrender to the inevitable. The more you fight, the more painful it’s gonna be.”
He looked down at her with disdain and continued, “You know, I couldn’t believe my luck when I heard you talking to your manager that night. I’d seen you in a few clubs over the years and always wanted to have you. Luckily for you, I could never get close enough to spike your drink. Either that little bitch or your phalanx of friends were always protecting and encircling you. A lot of good they are gonna do you now. It’s just you, me, and the great outdoors. Makes my job easier, actually.”
Javy then leaned in closer and whispered, “There’s no one to hear your screams.”
“You’re a lunatic psychopath! Your brother got everything he deserved from my father!” she screamed and then spat at him.
Javy punched her in the face and hissed, “I’m not insane! We were always in control. We always knew what we were doing, but that man... he drives me to do things. His very existence makes me want to hurt people. People like you, Heather.”
Through the quick onset of tears and the stinging from the blow, Heather managed to say, “Why me? I didn’t even know about him until recently.”
“Liar, liar,” he said as he punched her. “Pants on fire,” and hit her again.
“You know, you really should be more careful about who is standing nearby when you decide to go looking for your father. I’ve taken care of... Anna was it? I imagine someone will find her in the morning.”
“No! She was innocent!” she said as she began openly weeping for her friend.
Javy looked left and right and then leaned in again. “Guess what,” he cruelly whispered in her ear. “They were all innocent, Heather.”
With her assailant so close, she decided there wouldn’t be a better opportunity and quickly drove her thumb into his eye. He hollered out and recoiled from pain. Eventually, his strength was too much for her to overcome. He slowly freed his face from her hand and thumped her in the chest for good measure.
“Miserable whore!” he barked as he covered his wound. “I’m gonna enjoy guttin’ you like your father did my brother.”
Using the reprieve to catch her breath once again, she continued to resist, if only in word. Heather used the remaining resolve she could muster and hoarsely proclaimed, “You’re a sick demented bastard,” and spat at him again.
“Hmpf,” he grunted as he wiped the saliva away with the sleeve of his forearm. “I expected more from the long lost daughter of the mighty Josh Simmons.”
Behind him, he heard the distinctive ‘click-click’ from the sound of a hammer being cocked. Javy turned to see Layla and Katherine atop their mounts with their 9mm’s pointed at him.
“What did you say?”
“Oh my God! Help! It’s Javy Dolbrow! Shoot him!” Heather screamed.
No sooner had she finished her plea as a shot echoed through the forest. Birds bolted from their nest and risked flying in the rain as Javy grunted and lurched forward off of Heather, clutching his shoulder. Any remaining wildlife in the area was quickly scared further away due to his screams of pain and his writhing on the ground in agony.
Heather and Layla jumped as the shot rang out and turned in time to see the last of the smoke wafting from the barrel of Katherine’s 9mm. Neither said anything. The calmness exuding from Katherine quickly lowered their tension levels. The trio waited a few moments for Javy to tire himself out from all his screaming.
Once he’d finally collected himself, Javy wincing in pain said, “Looks like the gig is up.”
He clutched his shoulder and made a show of trying to steady himself as he attempted to stand. Without warning he lunged forward he grabbed Heather by her hair and pulled her toward him making a human shield.
He slowly began stroking her as he held his blood caked weapon at her throat.
“What do you think you’re doing, Javy?” Katherine asked. “You’ve brought a knife to a gunfight. Give it up and let her go.”
“Oh, no no. I can’t do that. I need her so ‘Mr. High and Mighty’ will grant me an audience. Heather here is your long lost sister so I’m going to deliver her corpse to your father, then we’ll be even.”
Javy paused and turned his face toward Heather’s hair and inhaled deeply. He was starting to become excited.
“Hmmm,” he said as her scent began activating the internal mechanisms that were inherent to his various appetites.
Catching himself before the urges became too strong, he continued. “Did you know she showed up at your house and your greedy bitch mother turned her away? Daddy doesn’t know a thing about her existence. Isn’t that about right, Heather?”
Layla had been observing Javy the entire time. His appearance was disheveled and he was extremely pale and malnourished. In a lot of ways, he looked like their mother when she was at her worst.
“You’re high. Aren’t you, Javy?” Layla asked.
“Well, I might have scored a little bit of the good stuff on my way out here. So what!” he yelled. “It wasn’t too good for your whore mother,” he said and started giggling. The distraction of the conversation was enough for him to loosen his arm bar around Heather. It was an opportunity Layla wasn’t going to waste.
A second shot echoed through what was left of the autumn canopy and Javy quickly found himself on the forest floor again. The sc
reaming began anew with Javy attempting to clutch his other shoulder. Heather quickly distanced herself further from the wounded lunatic this time.
As she extracted herself from the underbrush, and began covering her chest with the tattered clothing, Katherine caught sight of the damage Javy had inflicted. Shocking herself with the volume of her voice she practically yelled, “Heather, your face!”
“I’ll be all right. This idiot jumped me and punched me a few times is all,” she replied as she picked up Javy’s knife.
The three studied the scrawny gaunt man for a while until Layla broke the silence.
“I’m curious, Javy. How many people have you and your demented half-brother killed? I mean before daddy planted him six feet down,” Layla asked inquisitively.
With the drugs knocking down barriers and inhibitions in Javy’s mind, he couldn’t help but be forthright and candid in his response. “Let’s just say that there’s a trail of shallow graves from New York to LA. There’s three fresh ones in Vegas if you’re interested. I don’t know, mid teens, easy. I think I’ll definitely be in the twenties when I’m done with you and your family. Here’s the real question though. Including you two, how many have we drugged and kept as toys to use as we desire? Well then that number is easily double, maybe even triple.”
“Javy, before you start spouting off about your numerous conquests, you should keep in mind that we are all armed. All three of us would be well within our rights to lodge a bullet in your skull.”
Katherine paused for a few quick moments before continuing in a mocking tone, “You had to drug and kidnap women and girls to get laid. How pathetic is that? Were you not loved as a child? Did your mommy not hold you enough? Or did daddy love you too much?”
Undeterred and waving off her mockery, Javy slowly got to his feet, clutching his wounded shoulders and said, “I told my brother we should have just killed the two of you after we had our bit of fun, but no. He had to listen to that greedy heroin addicted mother of yours.”
Layla quickly dismounted her horse and strode toward Javy with purpose. He smiled at her as she approached. “What did you say about our mother?”
Before Javy had a chance to answer, Heather finished her examination of the bloodstained knife she had been holding and blurted out, “Is this Anna’s blood? Oh my God! You really killed Anna!”
Javy giggled his response, “I yam what I yam and that’s all that I yam, toot toot!”
“This guys a raving lunatic,” Katherine observed as Heather began stepping toward the agitated Javy with the knife in her hand. “Will the State still execute this freak even if he manages to pull off some sort of insanity deal?”
Javy, ignoring the pain of his wounds, began skipping and dancing around in a circle screaming, “Commutation! Commutation! You can’t kill the insane! Commutation! Woo!”
When Javy completed his latest lap, Heather planted the sole of her size eight combat boot right into Javy’s chest. Javy was thrust backwards from the blow and landed flat on his back gasping for air.
“That’ll shut him up for a while,” Heather said with no emotion in her voice. She then turned to the pair and asked, “What are you guys gonna do with this little nut job?”
Katherine answered first and said, “I vote we show him what Dad did to his brother.”
“That’s too good for him... and so’s a bullet to the head,” Layla replied in a subdued tone. It was then that Layla spotted debris from a Forestry Service cleanup effort on the riding trail and said, “Open your pack, Katherine. Get out the climbing rope and tie a noose. Heather, grab one of those pieces of wood.”
“Wait. What?” Heather began to say, “We should call the police or something,” clearly becoming agitated.
Layla stepped toward Heather and quietly said, “You’re an actress, now act.”
Nodding her understanding, but not belying her unease with the situation, Heather walked to the pile and began extricating the log. “How did you guys know I was following you?” she asked.
“We didn’t,” Layla answered bluntly. “I forgot my camera.”
Heather swallowed hard at the remark, realizing just how close she came to possibly becoming another victim.
“Stand it up under that limb, Heather,” Layla said and pointed in the direction of a large white oak tree.
“Done,” Katherine said matter of factly as she completed the knot.
“Good, throw it to Javy,” Layla ordered.
Katherine did as directed and the rope landed next to him on the ground.
“Put it on,” Layla commanded.
Javy stared at the rope and said, “Can’t. You bitches shot me, remember? Besides, you think stringing me up in ye olde oak tree is going to change anything? You think it’s gonna change the fact that your mother arranged the entire thing? You think it’s gonna change the fact that we –,”
“No, Javy, it won’t change any of that. Simply knowing that you’re in the ground next to your demented brother will make this a better place. Now put it on!” Layla screamed at him.
“It’s your world, boss,” he replied. “You remember that when they send your scrawny ass to prison for killing an unarmed man.”
“Oh, Javy,” Layla said softly. “Who said we were gonna kill you? You’re gonna do it for us, silly. Ya see, we’re going to string you up on that skinny little log over there, and if you just so happen to lose your balance or decide to end it on your own, well, then it’s a suicide.
“By the time someone finds what’s left of you out here you’ll be nothing more than a rotting pile of bones the animals have picked over. Oh, and if anyone ever does come calling, there will be witnesses lined up out the door ready to testify that we were home sipping hot chocolate by the fire.”
Layla paused to study his reaction. A nervous twitch in his neck started to spasm. “Sounds an awful lot like what you did when our father found us in that warehouse, doesn’t it?”
Heather, not believing what she was hearing and seeing, said, “I’m sorry, I can’t do this. I can’t go along with this. Why don’t we call the police? This isn’t right. This is murder.”
Before she realized what she was saying, Layla snapped back at Heather and said, “Ask Katherine how it feels to see someone you love getting abused. See if she can hold it together while she describes how helpless and powerless she was to stop it. Then ask her what it’s been like trying to live with that guilt all these years. Why don’t you ask me what it was like being raped by this lecherous dirt bag! The stuff they printed in the papers doesn’t even begin to tell the story.
“I was a ten year old little girl! I was ten, damn it! They stole every last bit of innocence I had!” her sister screamed.
Stopping to clear the tears from her eyes, Layla concluded solemnly with, “Sister or not, you don’t get a vote. I’m sick of playing the victim.”
Katherine looked at Layla crying uncontrollably and said to Heather, “If you knew what this animal and his brother did to us, to our family, and countless other women and girls, what he almost did to you, you’d be begging for a gun. No, he’s gonna die all right, but it’s gonna be by his own hand,” she concluded and then retrained her weapon on Javy.
Javy, in a twisted, drug induced gesture of compassion, got down on his knees, leaned over the noose, and used what little movement he had in his arms to put the noose around his neck. Katherine quickly dismounted her horse to grab the remaining rope. She handed Heather her gun and led Javy over to the tree. After throwing the rope over the limb, she grabbed the dangling rope and remounted her horse. Once she was fully situated in the saddle again, she tied the rope to the saddle horn.
“Get on the log Javy,” came the command from Heather.
Javy shook his head violently like he was trying to rid himself of the competing voices. When he finished, he said, “Well, looky there. Little kitten grew some claws. Give a bitch a gun and she starts barking orders. Next thing you know, you’ll be shooting people like you own the pl
ace, just like your sisters.”
Heather stepped forward and kick him in the gut.
With the wind knocked out of him a second time by Heather in as many minutes, it took a few minutes until was able to stand vertically again. When he finally did get up he said, “Screw you bitches. I’m not gonna do it. You’re gonna –,”
The beginning of his tirade was cut short when Layla reached out and quickly pistol-whipped him in the side of the head.
“Javy you really need to learn how to speak to women. Now get on the damn log!” she barked.
Recoiling from the blow, Javy hissed, “You can’t make me!”
“Wanna bet?” Katherine said as she began moving her horse forward drawing the line taught over the limb.
Javy was lifted off of the ground until he was stretched by his neck, legs dangling precariously. Once the momentum of his swinging slowed, Katherine eased her horse back and lowered him onto the six-inch diameter piece of wood that Heather had provided. Javy quickly gained his purchase.
Katherine untied the rope from her saddle horn and dismounted her horse once again. She then dragged the rope toward a sapling. Layla joined her at the base of the young tree and the two pulled the rope taught until he was on his tiptoes. Katherine then quickly tied the rope off.
“Okay Javy, the rest is up to you. You can kick the log out and end it yourself, or, stand there and try and get some sleep and eventually fall off. In either case, justice is served. Take your time. We’re patient people. After all, we’ve waited over a decade for this.”
Katherine turned to her sister and whispered, “Evan’s expecting us. What if Dad is already home? We can’t wait here forever.”
“We won’t have to,” Layla replied. “He’s a coward. He’ll do it himself. Besides, we’re not gonna kill him. Heather’s right. We’re not murderers. We’ll just let him think it for a while.”
When Rome Stumbles Page 30