The Haunts of Cruelty

by R. G. Ryan

  Cassie was different now from the way she’d been in the old days. Of course he had kept her so strung out on drugs back then it was fair to concede that he hadn’t really known her at all. But what he had known he had liked—and he had liked her a lot. No, that wasn’t true. He had fallen completely and irreversibly in love with her, or at least love to the extent that he was able to comprehend it, which, given his track record was to say not at all.

  He remembered the first time he had met her. She was utterly stunning. But the kicker was that she didn’t even know it—a quality he’d found so tantalizing that she became a preoccupation, which soon developed into an obsession.

  The one thing he had learned about obsession was…that once you were good and hooked, you were hooked for good.

  And he had definitely been hooked.

  It was this propensity toward obsession that had kept him from serious relationships throughout his entire life. He’d meet a pretty girl and form an infatuation. The girl would initially respond with interest because, well, he wasn’t exactly hideous to look at—at least he hadn’t been. But as soon as they caught a glimpse of who he really was, as soon as they felt the first slithering tentacles of obsession reaching out to ensnare them, they couldn’t get away fast enough! How those derisive, scathing and humiliating names still rang in his ears. Sticks and stones nothing! To be called the names some of those women had shrieked at him had wounded him deeply, to the extent that he feared his psyche was damaged beyond repair.

  Not that it mattered much, given what he was planning.

  Then again, did he really want to recover? It was, after all, that deep pool of hurt and rage that drove him to do the things he did. Dangerous things; things that no “normal” person would even consider, let alone plan and carry out.

  “You just can’t stop yourself, can you, Paulie?” he said out loud to his reflection.

  It wasn’t that he couldn’t. He didn’t want to. People were born with different needs, different…proclivities. Simply put, he had been born with a strong need to possess women in order to have a sense of fulfillment. And if experience had taught him anything, it was that possessing another human being against their will often demanded extreme measures. Did that make him a deviate…perhaps even, a monster? Probably. Did he care? Not in the slightest.

  It was this need for possession that had first caused him to turn to drugs—not for himself, of course. He’d never do something so foolish…at least not at the time. The drugs were for his girls. Funny, he never had to talk any of them into their first drug experience. Quite the contrary, they had all embraced drugs willingly, almost eagerly…even Cassie. And in the end, she had become the most profoundly addicted of them all. Of course, he had made sure that would be the final outcome. He remembered standing by her bedside—her eyes looking up at him with such longing. Oh, not for him, of course, but for the syringe filled with heroin he had held tantalizingly in his hand. He would make her beg him for it; promise to do anything he wanted for it, even going so far as to say that she belonged to him body and soul.

  It wasn’t true, of course. But, he loved hearing it.

  He stretched his neck to observe a particularly deep bruise.

  “I will have my revenge on you, Moriarity! Cassie, poor thing, will die in the process, but, oh well, it can’t be helped.”

  But could he really do that? Could he really end the life of the one woman in the world who had managed to capture his heart? The one woman who, even in the midst of the worst of it, had always treated him kindly and had, on more than one occasion, shown concern for him?

  He shook his head violently as if to eject the troubling thoughts.

  “Paulie, my man, you’re going to be all right…you always land on your feet.”

  The fact that he was talking to himself in the mirror—a practice that seemed to be growing in frequency—didn’t bother him. For when he talked, he felt as if someone were listening and responding back with good advice.

  It was hard to explain, along with the sensation at odd moments that there were two people inhabiting his brain.

  It had all started the day Cassie had been taken from him all those years ago. His devastation had been so profound—and the beating he’d suffered at the hands of that bully Moriarity, so severe—that to survive he had to become…something more than he had always been. What was that stupid phrase people had quoted to death? Ah, yes, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll only get what you’ve always got.” Stupid! But, it had caused him to open the door, so to speak, to a part of himself that he had kept locked away in the deepest recesses of his mind, even though that Paul Morgan terrified him.

  After Moriarity had snatched Cassie away from him, he had taken great pains to eradicate every trace that she had even existed.

  As part of his own personal rehab program, he and Eddie had moved from Seattle to San Diego County. And over the past four years, he had worked very hard to establish himself as a freelance photographer. He had always been good with a camera. “A real natural,” is how one of his instructors had described him. His hard work had paid off earning him the respect of several local, as well as statewide magazines that routinely utilized his services.

  He had been watching a random entertainment show on television one evening when suddenly Cassie’s picture had popped up on the screen showing her standing next to Charleston Hawthorne, the novelist. Once he had gotten over the shock of seeing her face right there on his TV, he heard the reporter announcing Cassie’s engagement to the famous man. His shock increased as the reporter informed the viewers that the couple planned to reside at Hawthorne’s home in Carlsbad—literally in his own backyard.

  It was almost as if the gods of fortune, smiling upon him at last, had dropped her right into his lap. However, in spite of her engagement to a national celebrity, he learned very quickly that there simply wasn’t an easy way to go about finding one young woman in a metropolitan area whose population base was north of 2.4 million people. To be so close and yet so far, pushed him inexorably toward desperation.

  Then, one day everything changed.

  The editor from a locally published architectural magazine, for whom he had done numerous shoots, called one perfect morning. It seemed that he wanted to commission him to do a photo shoot of Charleston Hawthorne’s home as part of their continuing series on celebrity homes in San Diego County. And even though he had never shot a cover before, the editor felt it was time to reward his “fine work” with this opportunity. From there it had been a simple matter of setting up an appointment to photograph the house, and then chatting up the big man himself while he worked.

  The magazine confirmed the appointment and over the course of the one-hour shoot, Morgan had casually mentioned that he had seen the piece on television about Hawthorne’s engagement, and offered his congratulations. Without prompting, over the course of their casual conversation, Hawthorne volunteered that his fiancée had a condo just a few blocks away. In reply Morgan had made up a story about having photographed a lot of the coastal apartment complexes for a couple of real estate magazines and asked where it was located. When Hawthorne enthusiastically told him, he simply responded by calmly saying that it was one of his favorites.

  So there it was, all laid out for him. The only tricky parts had been hiding out at night in the condominium complex, waiting for Cassie to come home so he could get the number of her unit, and then trying to get an idea of the rhythm of her life. Once that had been accomplished, all the pieces were in place and there was nothing left to do but plan the abduction. Thinking about it now in hindsight, one part of him couldn’t believe that he had ever had the stones to hatch such a bold, reckless scheme. But, “If you always do what you’ve always done…” etc. Thinking over the various elements of the kidnapping, he couldn’t help but marvel at how flawlessly everything had gone.

  Turning from the mirror, he walked out of the bathroom and past the two sleeping girls,
feeling a pang of regret as he stared at Cassie. Could he do it? Could he really take her life after working so hard to get her back? Perhaps he needed to sit down and think things over before committing himself to the “nuclear option” so to speak.

  He moved into the front room of the ramshackle, two-room dwelling that he had stumbled upon a few years back while searching for desert landscapes to photograph. The house was situated in a small box canyon, miles away from any paved roads and didn’t appear on any maps or county tax records. To see it, you had to be looking for it.

  In short, it was perfect!

  He pulled the glassine baggie from the front pocket of his jeans, opened it up and dumped one of the small pills into his palm. Even though he had never used drugs any time previously in his life, he’d heard rumors about this particular little wonder—about how it gave the user an almost superhuman advantage in every area. That was a good thing, because if he were going to be successful against Jake Moriarity, he was going to need all of that advantage…and more. He took a deep breath, popped the pill into his mouth and drank from the plastic water bottle swallowing the pill in one smooth motion.

  He didn’t feel anything.

  Maybe it took some time to work.

  And speaking of time, it was almost time to send Cassie’s precious uncle his first video installment. What would it be? Something tantalizing and terrifying, but not so much that it would diminish his ability to build the drama—maybe a video of him shocking her with the collar. Having discovered that he could link any cell phone via Wi-Fi through his SatPhone, the possibilities were endless, especially since he planned to use Cassie’s own cell phone to shoot the video. He laughed while imagining Moriarity’s surprise when he saw an incoming Facetime call from Cassie and answered it only to see his beloved niece being shocked into unconsciousness.

  It was exquisite.

  After insuring that the Wi-Fi signal was connected, Morgan dialed Jake’s number and started walking toward the bedroom. His excitement was so high that when he walked in and Cassie wasn’t on the bed it didn’t even strike him as being unusual.

  What did strike him felt like being kicked by a horse and sent him reeling into the old chest of drawers in the corner, where he collapsed in a semi-conscious heap, trying vainly to focus his eyes on what he knew he couldn’t be seeing.

  Chapter Eleven

  It was just after 3:30 p.m. and while the FBI chopper was screaming toward Las Vegas, my mind was screaming that this couldn’t possibly be happening to my niece. Not now. Not after all she’d already been through. Wasn’t it bad enough that she had been trafficked for sex, tortured and forced to perform deviant acts so vile that your mind recoiled from even the thought; that to this day she remained diminished and damaged emotionally from the experience…that she had HIV? I mean where does it end?

  When Paul Morgan dies, that’s where!

  But would it be enough for him to simply perish? Would that satisfy my need for revenge? Or would his death have to be more…elegant? Would I feel the need to maximize his suffering before the wretch drew his last breath?

  Yes, and yes!

  My experience as a seminarian, coupled with early religious training, left me fitted with a set of lenses through which I viewed the world with eyes of forgiveness, you know, all that Biblical stuff about turning the other cheek and how vengeance belongs to God. And I suppose I am a forgiving person, but it only goes so far.

  Forgiveness couldn’t bring Abby, my dead wife back.

  Forgiveness couldn’t heal the hurts in Cassie.

  Forgiveness couldn’t heal the deep wounds in Muriel…or in Vanessa.

  Those lenses have now been permanently replaced by a set that is more authentic to who I am and what I believe.

  You hurt me…you pay!

  You hurt somebody I love…you die!

  You have probably heard it said that people are born into this world fundamentally good—a formless lump of clay upon which the pressures and experiences of life are exerted, eventually shaping and molding them into who they will eventually become. While that is partially true, my vast experience in dealing with the detritus of humankind has proven to me that evil walks this earth in human form. And it doesn’t arise out of sociological and environmental pressures. I have stared into its unhallowed gaze and been shaken to my core by what I’ve seen in those serpentine, obsidian depths.

  I recall a book that was required reading during my days as a seminarian called, “People Of The Lie,” written in 1983 by psychiatrist, M. Scott Peck. In it he said, “Evil…is the force, residing either inside or outside of human beings, that seeks to kill life or liveliness.” And then there’s a psalm written by a guy named Asaph, ca. 586 BC. “For the dark places of the earth are full of the haunts of cruelty.”

  Which is exactly where Morgan resides!

  In my opinion, Paul Morgan was born evil and from that ill-omened beginning has evolved into a walking, talking, living, breathing epitome of the term.

  And now, he had Cassie.

  As hard as I tried to keep at bay both my thoughts and images of what he was most likely subjecting her to, they kept coming in swarms. Prolonged, unrelenting swarms.

  Somewhere over Barstow my headphones crackled to life and I heard Gerald Redfern saying, “I just heard from my colleagues in Las Vegas. We have the van passing through Stateline somewhere around 6:00 a.m., but after that…nothing!”

  I asked, “No sightings in the Vegas Metroplex?”

  “Correct.”

  “So, you have any ideas on how to proceed?”

  Redfern sighed, “Not really. The term ‘needle in a haystack’ seems appropriate at this point.”

  He was right. The Mohave Desert is a forty-eight thousand square mile swath of burnt earth. While there are a few hearty souls living in its interior, it is populated mainly on the fringes. Which means that that there are thousands and thousands of square miles where you will see nothing even remotely resembling civilization. About the closest you come is the occasional ghost town or abandoned mine.

  Between Stateline and the Las Vegas valley there are dozens if not hundreds of roads that lead off into the desert, most of which you’d be crazy to attempt traversing without a 4x4. I’ve been on many of them in the past and once you get a few miles from the Interstate, you are basically in the wilderness.

  A couple of years back, Aaron and I drove south on I-15 and took the exit toward the thriving metropolis of Goodsprings.

  That’s a joke, in case you didn’t know.

  Goodsprings has fewer than three hundred residents.

  Anyway, we found a gravel road off of Hwy 161 and on a whim decided to follow it. After several miles the gravel became packed earth, which eventually gave way to a natural wash. We were in Aaron’s 4x4 pickup with two quads—i.e. all terrain vehicles—loaded into the back. When we had gone as far as we could go in the truck, we offloaded the quads and headed up the wash.

  We drove for several miles over terrain that would’ve made a mule tremble, and eventually came upon an old, abandoned mining camp. It was startling. If you want to know the truth, it was downright spooky! There it sat, untouched for God only knows how long…and then we rolled up.

  The main mineshaft had been completely covered over, but the chute through which the ore was processed and loaded onto wagons for transport via thick, canvas conveyor belts was completely in tact. We found remnants of the bunkhouse, the assay office, even the solid steel blast door from the dynamite shack. And that was just on our first visit. We went back many times and even spent the night out there on two occasions.

  And we never saw another living soul.

  In fact, the most recent sign of anybody being there before us was a shallow canyon filled with rusty cans of all description that, by our best guess, had been there since the 1920s.

  “What do you think Morgan’s up to, Jake?” Gerald asked.

  “You mean besides exacting his sick
revenge on me and Cassie?”

  “Well, yeah. I mean him grabbing her and heading for Vegas, or any metropolitan area for that matter, makes sense if his goal is just to have her once again for himself. But going off-road into the desert? I’m not seeing any logic here.”

  “Unless it’s a temporary detour to completely throw us off their trail, after which he intends to circle back around and start a new life somewhere while keeping Cassie in a forced companionship.”

  He was silent for a few seconds.

  “You think that’s what he’s after? Companionship?”

  “Well, not really. She was basically a sex slave when he had her before. The only compensation she received was a constant supply of drugs, food, minimal clothing and a roof over her head. She and Muriel—none of the girls, actually—ever got to leave the house unattended.”

  “So, do you think—and I’m sorry to have to be talking to you about this, Jake—but do you think that’s what he’s planning with her? You know, putting her back in his, what…his stable of women?”

  I had been pondering that very question.

  “Honestly? I don’t. First of all, I think Cassie would probably either find a way to kill him, or, well, kill herself before she let that happen. But also, I don’t think he has a stable of women anymore. I mean it’s only a hunch at this point, but truthfully—and this is going to sound very weird—I’d feel a whole lot better about Cassie’s chances for survival if all he intended was to pimp her out again. Because the other alternative is not good.”

  I could hear him sigh deeply through the headset.

  “Yeah, I can definitely see your point.”

  The pilot said, “We’re approximately ten minutes out, sir.”

  “Roger that. So, once we touch down, we need to get a command center going and brief the local agents on what we’re dealing with.”