c h a p t e r
TWENTY-ONE
With a hand pressed into her abdomen, Rachel staggered back to her house. She had retrieved her torn T-shirt and tied it around her chest. Slamming the door and bolting it behind her, she collapsed on the floor in the entry way. Grant’s parting remarks played over in her mind. “I’ll be looking for that pretty little daughter of yours.” Her eyes went to the phone, and she fought the urge to call Atwater, Lucy, anyone.
Lifting her head off the floor, she looked at the door. She distinctly remembered locking it when she left, but it had not been locked when she returned.
She limped down the hall, checked her daughter’s room and saw the window had been shattered. Someone had been inside the house. The intruder must have gained entrance through the window, then exited through the front door. She knew there was no way Grant could have broken into the house prior to the attack in the orange grove. Once he had left her, she had come straight home. Someone else had been in the house. Who? Why? It couldn’t have been a burglar, because her television and stereo had not been taken.
She went to the medicine chest in the bathroom, pulling out all the prescription bottles and reading the labels. She had to stop the pain. Seeing a label that read codeine, prescribed for a sprained ankle several years back, Rachel poured out the four remaining pills and tossed them in her mouth, flushing them down with a glass of water. For all she knew, the beating had caused internal injuries. She could not go to the hospital, though. Grant had forbidden it.
Returning to the living room, she picked up the phone. Grant had said he would know about every phone call she made. If his statement was true, he had to have a way to monitor her calls. She unscrewed the receiver, plucking out a minuscule microphone.
Someone had bugged her house.
Grant had an accomplice, a co-conspirator. She knew it had to be another cop. He would have never trusted anyone else. Were there other monitoring devices? She pulled the cushions off the sofa and tossed them on the floor. She went through the kitchen cabinets, rummaged through her bedroom drawers, checked underneath all the tables. In a large potted fern in the dining room, she discovered another small microphone sitting on top of the dirt.
Rachel had no doubt now that Grant would follow through on his threats. He had friends at his beck and call. Unlike the average criminal. Grant’s minions had guns, badges, radios, access to electronic surveillance equipment. More than anything, though, they had the power of authority. If Grant sent someone for Tracy, he could walk right into her school, flash his badge, and no one would be able to stop them from taking her off the premises.
Now that she had removed the bugs, could she call Atwater and report the assault? Would they be able to make the charges against Grant Cummings stick? There were no witnesses, no evidence other than the bruises on her body. Even if Grant was behind bars, she decided, her family would not be safe. Grant could simply call on Jimmy Townsend, Carol Hitchcock, Ratso, Sergeant Miller. They would do anything he asked of them. Were they covering for Grant right now?
Picking up the phone, Rachel called the dispatcher, telling him she needed to ask Grant something about a report. “Where is he now? Is he on a call?”
“Yeah,” the male dispatcher advised. “A burglary. Someone broke into Evans Hardware on First Street.”
“How long has Grant been on the scene?”
“For over an hour now,” the dispatcher said. “He should be clearing any minute.”
“Is Grant the only officer you dispatched?”
“No,” he said. “Carol Hitchcock rolled for backup. The reporting party thought the suspect might still be in the area.”
Carol was Grant’s alibi. The woman probably had no idea what Grant had intended to do. “Did you locate the responsible party at the hardware store?”
“No,” he said. “They must be out of town.”
Without saying goodbye, Rachel replaced the phone in the cradle. Grant was shrewd. He had covered his tracks like a pro. With no independent party present at the hardware store, Grant would have an airtight alibi should she try to press charges against him over the attack. At the time of the crime. Grant would claim he was performing his official duties. With another police officer to back up his story, no one would believe Rachel. And Carol was a woman, which would give her statements greater credibility. How could anyone believe that a female police officer would lie to cover up a savage beating committed against another female officer?
Grant’s plan had been brilliant. Once he had arranged an alibi, he had set out to destroy her. She buried her head in her hands, her body shaking in terror.
If she withdrew the charges as Grant had insisted, how could she be certain he wouldn’t still come after her daughter? He had enjoyed overpowering her, brutalizing her, degrading her. She had seen the pleasure in his eyes, heard it in his voice.
She walked to the window and peered out at the street. Were Grant’s minions out there somewhere? Were they watching her even now?
Heading to the back of the house, Rachel turned on the shower, removed her clothes, and let the water pound her back and buttocks. Could she move away, disappear, take the kids some place where Grant could never find them? Susan and her husband lived in a remote area in Oregon that would be perfect. The closest city was almost an hour’s drive away. But how would she support herself? She didn’t even know if Susan would be receptive to having them stay with her for a short time. Since their mother’s death and the revelation that the girls didn’t share the same father, Rachel and Susan had drifted apart. Only Carrie had tried to keep the family together. She sent gifts at Christmas, remembered the kids’ birthdays. If she asked anyone for help, she decided, it would have to be Carrie.
“God help me,” Rachel prayed, turning her face into the hot spray. She lathered her body from head to toe with soap, wincing as she felt the extent of her bruises. The assault played over in her mind, along with the things Grant had said to her. His references to the previous rapes in the orange grove had been strange. The incidents he was referring to had occurred five years back, before she had moved into the neighborhood. Both victims had been joggers, and for the first six months she had lived there, Rachel had refused to run in the groves for this reason. Concerned also for her daughter, she had pulled the crime reports out of the archives to familiarize herself with the particulars. Grant had not been the reporting officer. If her memory served her correctly, he had not been involved in the incidents in any official capacity. The victims had described the rapist as tall and muscular, wearing dark clothing. He had leapt out of the row of orange trees and blindfolded them before they had a chance to get a look at his face. He had not ejaculated, one of the primary reasons the police had never been able to identify him.
She felt the tender spots on her abdomen, her ribs, her thighs. By tomorrow morning she would be black and blue, but with her clothes on, no one would know she had been beaten. She probed her face with her fingers. There wasn’t a mark on it. Grant’s actions had closely paralleled those of a practiced batterer. He knew just how to hurt her, where to hit her, what spots on her body to avoid. His blows had bypassed sensitive organs such as her spleen and kidneys. He had wanted to punish her, but not enough that she would require medical treatment. Had he raped those other women? Could Grant Cummings be a sex offender? Had he been hiding behind the badge for years, committing horrendous crimes and getting away with them?
She remembered an evening last summer. The temperature had been in the nineties, but Carol Hitchcock had shown up for work in her long-sleeved winter uniform. Rachel had touched her arm, and Hitchcock had screamed. She claimed she had hurt herself by bumping into a chest of drawers while rushing to get to work. Rachel suspected now that her story was a lie, that Grant had beaten her.
She turned off the shower, holding onto the nozzle for support. Her mouth tasted like cotton from the codeine tablets, and her stomach was cramping so severely that she could barely stand upright. Her reason s
uddenly evaporated, buried under a wave of uncontrollable rage. She exploded, kicking out the glass in the shower door.
Grant was a monster, a brutal animal who had to be purged from society. She had already danced with the devil. Once in a lifetime was enough. Nathan Richardson had been the essence of evil. Prior to kidnapping Rachel, the former physician had kidnapped and raped a six-year-old girl in an attack so brutal, the child had almost died. Nonetheless the parole board had released him in only seven years, setting him free so he could steal Rachel’s childhood.
Even though Richardson was dead, he had haunted her for years, chasing her through the labyrinths of her subconscious, the delicate china doll always in his hand. She saw the doll’s pink satin dress, the tiny shoes on its feet. “I know you want her,” Richardson’s voice said. “I can tell by the way you looked at her.”
She would die before she would let Grant get his hands on her daughter.
When Rachel looked into her past, there were no sun-filled days, no childish laughter, no romps in the park. Like a sponge filling with water, the kidnapping and Richardson’s violent death had swollen to such enormous proportions that they had squeezed everything else out of her mind.
It was as if Grant Cummings and Nathan Richardson had merged into one person. She returned to the morning on the beach, Grant’s face looming over her, the stale odor of beer on his breath, his coarse hands roaming over her body. “You know you want me,” he had said. “You’ve wanted me since the first day you saw me.”
Nathan Richardson had used Rachel like a shield to fend off the sharpshooter’s bullets. Grant had used the Hillmont boy in exactly the same fashion. She rubbed her forearms, thinking that she wouldn’t mind Grant’s brain splattered all over her skin the way Richardson’s had been.
She stepped out of the shower, walking across the shattered slivers of glass. Even though her feet were cut, she felt no pain. She had moved beyond pain. Rage was driving her now, pushing her along with a frightening momentum.
With her towel, she rubbed a spot in the steamy mirror and looked long and hard at her tormented image. “Respect, huh?” she said. Imagining it was Grant’s face instead of her own, she picked up a bar of soap and hurled it at the mirror.
Rachel dressed in a pair of jeans and a cotton shirt. Returning to the bathroom, she picked through the bottles of pills scattered on the floor, finally finding what she wanted. Morphine. Joe’s doctor had prescribed it for him in the final months. Only one pill was left. She swallowed it without water.
Heading to the kitchen, she made a pot of coffee, then went to sit on the living room sofa in the dark. The night passed in agonizing slowness. Several times her eyes closed. As soon as she fell asleep, she felt Grant’s fists pounding her body and bolted upright, her clothes soaked in perspiration.
Every hour or so, Rachel would walk to the kitchen, glance at the clock on the wall, refill her coffee mug and then return to the living room to continue her vigil. If she didn’t contact Nick Miller as Grant had demanded and recant her story about the attempted rape on the beach, she had no doubt that he would come after Tracy. She knew Grant well. He was not the type of person who made empty threats.
c h a p t e r
TWENTY-TWO
The graveyard watch was trickling into the parking lot of the police station; the majority of the morning watch had already cleared to drive to their respective beats. Only a few stragglers were lingering inside the station, munching on donuts and gulping coffee.
Grant and Townsend arrived a few moments later, entering through the rear door to the station and heading down the corridor to the men’s locker room.
Townsend leaned back against his locker and spoke in an undertone. “Do you think you talked some sense into Rachel? I mean, this whole thing is making me a nervous wreck. I did what you said. Grant, but I’m telling you right now that I don’t feel good about it. Other than the Brentwood incident, I’ve never had a problem with Rachel, and even then it wasn’t entirely her fault.”
“It’s over,” Grant said, his face still flushed with excitement. “Rachel’s going to contact Miller today and retract her statement.”
“I hope you’re right,” Townsend said, opening his locker and removing his street clothes. “How can you be sure, though? What did you say to her to make her change her mind? Just telling her we would be monitoring her phone calls couldn’t have done it. Why would that make her back off? We’re the ones in the wrong here. Rachel doesn’t have anything to hide.”
“I said I took care of it,” Grant said. “Don’t you trust me, Jimmy? Haven’t I always taken care of things? When you need money, I always come through. I know you can’t pay me back. Have I ever asked you to pay me back?”
“You’ve asked me to do things I didn’t want to do,” Townsend told him, slamming the door to his locker. “Everyone pays you back, Grant, one way or the other.”
Grant laughed, causing a shock of sun-bleached hair to tumble onto his forehead. “Do you need a ride home? The rest of the crew got tied up on that three-car pileup on Cliff Road. If you need a ride, you better wait for me. Those guys could get stuck out there for hours.” He peeled off his uniform, wadding it into a ball and shoving it into the bottom of his gym bag. All night long he had endured the stench of Rachel’s vomit. He couldn’t wait to jump in the shower.
“I brought the car today,” Townsend said, a worried look on his face. “No one’s with the kids right now. The woman I hired doesn’t work on Friday. I’ve got to get home.”
“Can’t your parents give you a hand?”
“No,” he said. “My mom is crippled with arthritis, and my father’s pissed because I got Lindsey pregnant again. He says a man isn’t supposed to bring a child into the world unless he can support it. It’s not like I’m a slacker or anything. I go to work every day. My father thinks I’m a hog. He accused me the other day of spending my entire paycheck on food.”
Grant whipped his towel across Townsend’s fleshy midsection. “Your father might have a point.”
Townsend yanked the towel out of his hands and tossed it on the floor. “You don’t understand,” he said. “No one understands.” Before Grant could respond, he turned and rushed out of the room.
After Grant had showered, he wrapped a towel around his waist and padded back to his locker to put on his street clothes. Hearing something rattle behind him, he turned around, thinking it was one of the other officers. Not seeing anyone, he dropped his towel and reached for a pair of clean undershorts from his gym bag. Just as he bent over to step into them, a loud shot rang out.
A bullet seared its way into the base of Grant’s spine. His body was propelled forward into his locker. Images from his past flashed in his mind. He saw his father’s rugged face floating in front of him. “Bend over, son,” the image said. “This will teach you to respect your elders.”
Grant screamed in terror, his fingernails scraping the metal door. His heart throbbed in his ears. Blood gushed from the gunshot wound, then splashed onto the tile flooring. When he heard the crack of his father’s razor strap, he clenched his eyes closed and let the darkness take him. Almost in slow motion, his body slid down the front of the locker and crumpled onto the floor.
Hearing what appeared to be a gunshot from the squad room where they were finishing their reports, Ted Harriman and Chris Lowenberg drew their service revolvers and raced into the locker room. They saw Ratso sandwiched between the rows of lockers, kneeling over Grant.
“Call an ambulance,” Ratso shouted, his uniform soaked in perspiration. “He’s in shock. He’s losing blood fast. He stopped breathing. I had to resuscitate him.”
“What the hell happened?” Lowenberg asked, sloshing through a pool of Grant’s blood.
“Rachel Simmons shot him,” Ratso said, panting. “I tried to catch her but she got away. If I had continued chasing her. Grant would have died. She must have been hiding in here somewhere.”
Ted Harriman shoved his gun back into the ho
lster. “Did you see the actual shooting?”
“I saw Rachel with a gun in her hands,” Ratso continued, leaning over to check Grant’s pulse again. “Grant had already been shot by the time I got here. I chased her down the hall, then came back to check on Grant. She ran out the back door to the station.”
“I’ll get Sergeant Miller and have an ambulance dispatched,” Harriman said. “Check the parking lot, Lowenberg.”
“We can’t wait for the ambulance,” Ratso cried in panic. “Grant’s going to bleed to death. Help me carry him to my car.”
Harriman instructed Lowenberg to order the ambulance, then squatted down beside Ratso. When he didn’t see an entry wound on the front of Grant’s torso, he slipped his hands underneath him. “I think the bullet is lodged in his spine,” he said. “We can’t move him without a back board. I’ll go see if we have anything we can use in the squad room.”
After Harriman left the room, Ratso saw Grant’s eyelids flutter and then open. He placed a palm in the center of his chest. “You’re going to be okay, my friend,” he said. “Rachel shot you. I saw her running away.”
Grant’s lips moved but no words came out.
“Don’t worry,” Ratso continued. “By the time they get you to the hospital, Rachel will be in custody.”
As soon as Grant had been loaded into the ambulance, Sergeant Miller pulled Ratso aside in the parking lot under a large shade tree. “You saw Rachel Simmons with the gun in her hand. You’re certain? Is there any way you could have been mistaken?”
“Absolutely not,” Ratso insisted. “She looked right at me. Sergeant. She must have shot Grant only seconds before I ran in there. I heard the shot. It had to be her. No one else was in the locker room. I’m your eyewitness. The DA shouldn’t have a problem proving the case. What other reason would Rachel have had to be inside the men’s locker room? She wasn’t even on duty last night.”
Abuse of Power Page 22