Fatal Option

by Chris Beakey

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” she said. “She is an evil little bitch. But she’s also a popular mean-girl-I-rule-the-school kind of—”

  “Slut bitch?” Kieran was smiling now, with a gleam in his eyes that was somehow both hateful and comforting.

  She managed a smile back, and squeezed his hands a little tighter. “Yeah, a slutty, skanky…”

  His smile broadened. “Whorish…?”

  “BITCH!” they both shouted, a feeling of absolute wonder sweeping through her as he held her eyes. She could barely imagine what would have happened to him if anyone outside the tiny office ever heard him—a teacher—talking this way. But he knew he could be completely candid with her.

  “Maybe you’ll get lucky,” he said. “Maybe she’ll just die.”

  She rolled her eyes, but felt an uncomfortable prickling of the skin on her forearms. “Like that would ever happen.”

  Kieran shrugged, and frowned slightly. “Yeah well, you never know. Girls like that always get what’s coming to them, sooner or later.”

  She nodded, remembering her first impression of Madison. “She’s an only child, and not really a happy person. She hates her mom. Her dad left when she was a little girl. I think she’s really needy and maybe that’s why she’s so anxious to control other people.”

  “Who the fuck cares Sara?”

  She flinched again—Kieran was now glaring at her as if she had said something terrible.

  “I’m just saying I think I know why—”

  “It doesn’t matter why.”

  He looked toward his computer screen, then back at her.

  “You know, you really disappoint me sometimes.”

  She felt a sense of vertigo, as if she had been knocked down, then been lifted up, and then knocked down again. She still could not determine what she had said to make him so angry. “What do you mean?”

  “It doesn’t matter why Madison or any of these other little bitches at this school are the way they are Sara. They don’t give a fuck about you and you shouldn’t give a fuck about them.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest as his expression suddenly softened. “You’re different Sara. I’ve told you that so many times.”

  She gazed back at him, feeling dizzy and depleted, hating herself for making him mad and even more for the disappointment she had caused. “I know you’ve said that.”

  “So are you saying you want to be like the rest of these people?”

  He was frowning again, challenging her.

  “No.” She sat up a little straighter, gave him a resolute look.

  “I mean I don’t really care that I don’t fit in anymore. I like the way I am.”

  “Well you should. You never would have gotten hurt today if you hadn’t tried to protect your brother. You rushed to help him without thinking of yourself.”

  She nodded, remembering…he was right about the not thinking part; right about the sudden impulse to rescue Kenneth from something that she had known was going to happen. Even if he hadn’t been there, it felt as if Kieran had somehow experienced it all. From the first moment she had actually talked with him, she had had an inkling that he could see things; that he knew things.

  Especially about her.

  “It’s like we discussed this morning, in our email exchange,” he said. “You’re there for him, because you feel responsible for him, like you have to protect him from what’s out there. The meanness. The stupidity. The waste. You carry the burden without completely understanding it. I mean, really…”

  He smiled, an inkling of cheer coming back to his eyes.

  “Don’t most sisters and brothers hate each other?”

  He nodded toward the photo on the desk. It showed his autistic brother Aidan at age nine or maybe ten, dressed in a race car driver costume, with a small flag in one hand and a helmet in the other.

  “That’s why you’re different, Sara. You’re a caretaker. It’s one of the things that gives you your maturity, and your ability to be completely disconnected to all of this.”

  Now his expression captivated her with its kindness as he absently ran his fingertips over the narrow braided bracelet he wore on his right wrist. Aidan had a matching version, “so he always knows I’m thinking about him,” Kieran had told her.

  Another sign of what a good, kind person he is, she thought.

  “Oh, Kieran.” She whispered his name as if she were calling out to him in a dream. She loved saying it; loved being hidden away with him in this basement room, sequestered from the rest of the school. Her eyes had locked onto him the first few times she had seen him in the hallways between classes, but on recent days she had started looking at the crowds around him, noticing the way his presence registered on the faces of other girls, as if the air itself became supercharged with a feeling of dark magic whenever he was nearby. He was a teacher but he was also one of the most beautiful men they could imagine, and she knew that many must have fantasized about his life away from school.

  But he was with her in this secret moment, right now.

  He slid his hand gently up her forearm, and softly kneaded the base of her throat with his thumb. The gentle touch lulled her against the quickening beat of her heart. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back for the kiss that she knew was coming.

  He touched her mouth with his fingertips instead, his work-toughened skin brusque against her soft lips.

  “Are you feeling better now?”

  She opened her eyes. He laughed slightly, and she laughed in response, a simple acknowledgment of how good it felt to be touched.

  And loved.

  “We’ve been talking about extra help for Aidan,” Kieran said. “Homework. He’s got a lot of it this weekend, so if you want to come over tonight. . .”

  For a moment he looked just a bit shy, uncertain. She felt a surprising rush of power, and control. She gave him a toying smile, showing him that she knew what was involved here, what was at stake.

  “Yeah I guess Friday night’s as good a time to do homework as any,” she said.

  He smiled, and pressed his fingertips to the base of her throat again, a gentle touch that instantly made her envision the two of them. Making love.

  When it became too much she glanced at his computer again. Underneath the BREAKING NEWS banner on the TV station Web page that filled the screen was a photo of an ambulance in front of a familiar looking apartment building.

  Kieran reached over and touched her face, drawing her away from the screen, so she was looking into his eyes once more.

  “Aidan will be really glad to see you, Sara.”

  He leaned close, and whispered into her ear.

  “I can’t wait to see his face when you walk through the door.”

  Frederick County Sheriff’s Detective John Caruso cursed under his breath at the sight of the WTLA TV news truck emblazoned with its “Channel 9 for Breaking News!” banner and its thirty-foot antenna reaching up into the sky. The truck had appeared at the murder scene roughly ten minutes after deputies had been dispatched by the 911 call from a neighbor, and was already broadcasting by the time he and Detective Joseph Niles arrived.

  Caruso walked quickly past the reporter, who was in the middle of her stand-up beside the truck, with the low-slung buildings of the apartment complex as a backdrop. Yesterday’s conversation with Stephen Porter’s insurance company came to his mind the moment he stepped into the first floor unit, giving him the uncanny feeling that there had to be a connection, one step removed, to what he saw in the bedroom.

  The woman, identified as Cherilynn Jenkins by the 911 call, was face-up on the tangled sheets, a heavy cloth protruding from her open mouth. Her lifeless eyes were half-open. Her neck had an off-kilter angle and was covered with blue-black bruises that indicated a prolonged struggle before death. Her
nightgown had been ripped open, exposing bright red marks at the top of her breasts.

  Taser burns.

  The realization factored into the way Caruso viewed other elements of the room: the gray dirt tracked into the beige carpet. The open window, which explained the cold air. The view beyond the window, of old-growth forest beyond the apartment complex’s small back lot.

  He took a moment to envision how it might have happened. The woman could have been in a deep sleep as the intruder raised the window and stepped inside. The heavy cloth had probably been wadded into a tight ball, then shoved down her throat an instant before she awakened, her airway clogged as the attacker shot her with the stun gun, then hit her in the face, then yanked the blankets and bedspread down; her head whipping back and forth as he wrapped both hands around her long, white neck—

  “Yo, Caruso, you okay?”

  He felt a heavy hand on his shoulder, steadying him from the dizziness brought on by the rush of blood from his face, then turned and gave Detective Joseph Niles a short nod.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  But still the vision lingered as he continued gazing at the blue-black bruises on the woman’s neck, the cloth that held her mouth open, and the tousled spread and sheets at the foot of the bed.

  “Okay then.” Niles dropped his hand and took a step back. Niles was six-foot-three and built like a heavyweight boxer. At six inches shorter, Caruso felt uncomfortably dwarfed in the tight space of the room.

  The air was cold enough to reveal the faint vapor of his breath as he pointed toward the window.

  “Looks like a logical exit point,” Caruso said. “You should take a look at the ground outside.”

  “Sure thing boss.”

  Caruso tensed. Niles had been on the job for less than a year but had come to it after a decade of experience in Washington, D.C., and had suggested more than once that he would have been happy to work cases on his own. Despite his crushing workload, Caruso had rebuffed him, and had made it clear that he wanted to stay in charge.

  “I appreciate it, Joseph.” He responded with a carefully moderated tone of voice, as if he was oblivious to the tension between them, and turned to watch as the crime scene technicians shot photos of the room, which was small and crowded with heavy antiques that were too big for the space, most notably the bed, which was queen-sized and anchored by a large, intricately designed brass headboard.

  The computer appeared to be untouched. The CPU was tucked underneath a large oak desk, the flat screen monitor on top.

  He moved toward the window, which was surrounded by heavy, burgundy-colored velvet drapes, and watched as Niles inspected the frozen ground for footprints. Niles moved slowly, carefully, as he walked away from the building and toward the edge of the woods in back of it. The woods were thick even in the dead of winter with the absence of underbrush and canopy, and it was easy to imagine the killer disappearing into them, and making his way to a vehicle that might have been parked on the rural road that Caruso guessed was about two hundred yards beyond. A dark and easy cover for a getaway.

  He stayed at the window as he thought through the obvious similarities to the murder of another young woman five months before. Danica Morris had also been beaten and strangled, her body left at the edge of the woods, not far from her car, which had been disabled at the side of Rolling Road. The time of death had been between 7 and 8 p.m., according to the autopsy, occurring shortly before Lori Porter drove her car into Brighton Gorge less than a mile away.

  A low cough from Paul Ralston, the medical examiner, took Caruso’s attention away from the memory.

  “What’s up Paul?”

  Ralston had on his latex gloves and was lightly touching the victim’s shoulders and upper arms. The half-open velvet drapes darkened the room somewhat, but Caruso was reluctant to open them any further until he was sure the photographer had gotten enough shots of the scene as they had found it. Ralston used his pen-sized flashlight like a pointer, directing Caruso’s attention to the undersides of the victim’s upper arms.

  “There’s bruising here—older bruising,” Ralston said. “You can see the yellowish tone, where they’ve partially healed.”

  Ralston pointed to her wrists. About half an inch above them were narrow red indentations ringing her lower forearms.

  “And here, these marks…you can guess what they mean.”

  Caruso nodded and looked at the brass headboard. The finish was cheap and marked with indentations, right at the spots that Caruso expected.

  “You want to take a look in her closet?” Ralston asked him.

  Caruso pulled his own pair of latex gloves from his pocket as he approached the walk-in closet, which was a surprisingly large, then gently sifted through the clothes that were hung on the rod that spanned the closet’s left side—sun dresses, cotton blouses, a skirted suit of conservative brown tweed. On the opposite rod there was a whole different set of clothing. At least a dozen pairs of faded and frayed jeans that would have hugged the woman’s tight frame. Small knit tops with spaghetti straps that would have been worn without a bra. Racy lingerie on padded hangers.

  He remembered the shelves of the living room next to the gas fireplace held photographs of the victim with her parents and friends. She had lively green eyes and a smile that radiated kindness. Wholesome, Caruso thought. The images seemed well-suited to the clothes on the left side of the closet, and brought a sense of mystery to those on the right.

  He looked down; saw a brown cardboard box at the back of the closet, behind two rows of neatly arranged shoes that ranged from low-heeled loafers to strapped sandals to a pair of high black leather boots. He stooped down and lifted the top flap of the box.

  “John, there’s a light switch to your right,” Ralston said. “Why don’t you turn it on?”

  He flipped the switch and caught a glint of metal as he pulled both flaps of the box aside, and saw a pair of handcuffs, a gray plastic vibrator, and a piece of black cloth.

  He pulled a pen from his pocket and used it to lift the black cloth, realizing that it was a hood, the kind that would be slipped over a person’s face to hide it completely, and secured with a string around the neck.

  He went back into the living room just as Niles came back in. Niles was noticeably pale, and nervously twisting his gold wedding band. His eyes were blinking quickly, anxiously, Caruso thought, as if he had had some kind of scare.

  “You all right Niles?”

  “Yeah, I’m all right.” Niles’ voice had a breathless edge.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I’m fine.” Niles paused, as if he needed to collect his thoughts, and then said in a quiet voice. “I ran into one of the neighbors in the hallway. You’ll never believe what the lady did for a living.”

  Caruso thought of the tweeds and button-down shirts hanging in her closet, and the secret sex box on the floor below.

  “Try me.”

  “She was a teacher. At Langford Secondary.”

  Stephen was troubled all day by Sara’s phone call and grew more anxious as he made his way through the heavy traffic in the wet snow, which morphed into a blizzard by the time he turned onto Route 270, the first of several highways that would guide him to the roads that made up the final stretch. Some drivers became more cautious and others ignored the hazards, which lengthened the commute to nearly two hours of slow and precarious maneuvering. He met a minor traffic jam at the shopping center that housed the gourmet grocery where he bought the ingredients for dinner, and drove the rest of the way with extra care as he listened to the newscasters filling every moment of airtime with warnings about the worsening storm.

  He sighed with relief when he finally pulled into the garage, and his mood lightened as he stepped into the house and thought of the night ahead; dinner with his kids, in the family room and warmed by the fire. He called out to them as he
entered the foyer, then heard the shower running in the bathroom that adjoined Sara’s room and got a dreary “Hey dad” from Kenneth answering from his own room.

  Feel the love, baby. He shook his head as he imagined Lori, standing beside him, grinning wryly and making light of the fact that hanging out with “the parents” was the last thing Sara and Kenneth would want to do. But as he listened to the wind and the flicking of the wet snow on the window screens he was certain that the evening could be salvaged with a nice hot meal and a cable movie on the family room’s big screen.

  He headed back into the kitchen, turning lights on as he went. He took off his tie and filled a rocks glass with ice and a hefty shot of Wild Turkey, and then heard the ring of his cell phone, which was still in the pocket of his coat in the front hall closet. He knocked back half of the bourbon as he waited for the call to go into voice mail, then took his second pull as he listened to the message, from the principal at Langford. The man’s voice was clipped and unemotional as he described the incident that sent Kenneth to the school nurse’s office. He sounded as if he was reading from a script as he directed Stephen to the “school district’s policy on school violence,” which was posted online, and requested a call on Monday to discuss the matter further.

  It was a bureaucratic response but the message was clear. Kenneth had been beaten worse than Sara had described; badly enough to warrant a call from the school’s top brass.

  “Ah Kenny…” Stephen muttered. The second floor of the house suddenly seemed very quiet, as if both of his kids had known the call was coming and wanted to avoid any discussion of what had really happened.

  God, give me strength, he thought, as Sara came down the stairs.

  Sara sensed her father’s unease as she stepped in front of the mirror in the foyer, and felt suddenly self-conscious about the curve of her breasts in the tight black top, the deep burgundy painted on her lips, and the high black boots that would lift her to eye level when Kieran O’Shea held her in his arms.