A Dark Mind

by T. R. Ragan

  Lizzy held her keys toward her new car and pushed a button. A beep sounded and the trunk popped open.

  “Movin’ on up, I see.”

  “I also replaced the carpet with wood flooring in the office.”

  “Nice.”

  “Faux wood, not real wood,” Lizzy said, “since I don’t want my clients thinking that they’re overpaying me.”

  Hayley shoved the few things she had in the trunk, clicked it shut, and then climbed into the passenger seat. Lizzy was already strapped in. As soon as Hayley had her seatbelt on, Lizzy merged onto the street and headed for home.

  “How bad was it?” Lizzy asked after a few quiet moments passed between them.

  “It could have been worse. I met some interesting characters.”

  Lizzy wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  “Have you seen my mom?”

  Lizzy nodded. She figured Hayley would have preferred to move in with her mom so that she could protect her, but the judicial order stated that Lizzy was her guardian, and therefore Hayley had no choice but to live with her and Jared—at least for now. “I’ve been watching your mom, just as I promised I would,” Lizzy said. “A few days ago, I followed her downtown. She went to the grocery store and then dropped an envelope in a drop box outside the post office. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She looked good.”

  “Any sign of Brian?”

  “No. According to county records, he sold his house a few months ago. I have yet to find out where he moved to.” Lizzy knew Hayley had reason to worry about Brian’s whereabouts. Because of him, Hayley had spent the past nine months in the juvenile detention center. After Hayley had cut off his penis and burned “child rapist” across his chest, Brian had promised her he would kill her mother, which was why Hayley had asked Lizzy to keep an eye on her. Brian’s penis was reattached, and the day after he left the hospital, he was brought in for questioning. Unfortunately, Hayley’s mom was strung out and unwilling to speak out against the man she believed loved her and cared about her. Despite the years of abuse she and her daughter had been subjected to, Brian was released within twenty-four hours, and there was nothing Lizzy could do about it.

  Hayley picked up her right leg and settled it on her left knee so she could examine the monitor covering her ankle.

  “Is it too tight?”

  “It’s OK. I just need to get used to it.”

  Lizzy noticed that Hayley couldn’t fit a finger beneath the plastic. “I think we should turn around and make them loosen it.”

  “No. It’s fine.” She let her foot drop to the floor and kept her gaze straight ahead.

  Hayley was still the same stubborn girl she’d always been, so Lizzy let it go. “To keep you from going stir crazy, I was hoping you would be willing to work for me from home.”

  “You know how I love paperwork.”

  Lizzy smiled at her sarcasm, glad to know Hayley still sounded like Hayley.

  “What’s my radius on this thing?” Hayley asked, gesturing toward her foot.

  “You can go anywhere within a mile of the house. Any farther than that, and the receiver transmits your new location to authorities and you could end up right back in jail.”

  Hayley exhaled. “I bet Jared’s excited about having a new roommate.”

  “He’s fine with it,” Lizzy said, which was the truth. Jared was easygoing and flexible. “He’s been traveling a lot. He’s gone right now, but he’ll be home for a few days before he has to take off again.”

  “What’s he working on?”

  “He’s meeting with the NCAVC coordinator to determine whether he can get some assistance from the Behavioral Analysis Unit on a case he’s working on here in Sacramento.”

  “A lot of psychos in the world to keep him busy, I guess.”

  “Sad, but true,” Lizzy said before changing the subject. “I’m going to take you home and then run to the grocery store. What can I get for you?”

  “I’m fine. I’ll eat whatever you have at the house.”

  “Come on,” Lizzy pressed, “there must be something you crave after all these months.”

  “I’ll never eat bologna or beans again. Other than that, I’ve got nothing.”

  “I was thinking you might want to call Tommy in a few days, since he keeps asking about you.”

  “Tommy who?”

  “The boy you met at the high school where we talked—”

  “Are you talking about the Karate Kid?”

  Lizzy chuckled. “Sure, yeah, I guess I am.”

  “Lizzy.”

  “Yes?”

  “I know you mean well, but can you just not worry about me? I mean, if we’re going to live together for a while, I’d rather you not mother-hen me. No cooking me meals, and I’d prefer to choose my own friends. From what you’ve been telling me when you visit, you’re busier than ever. I don’t want to organize a youth club or write my feelings in a journal every day. No offense. I’d rather just keep busy organizing your files, doing basic searches, reading my books, stuff like that.”

  Lizzy sighed.

  “I’ll clean my own dishes and make my bed every day. Thanks to this ankle monitor, you won’t have to give me a curfew. If you can’t find me, I’ll be in the backyard. Will that work? Do we have a deal?”

  Lizzy nodded. “Yeah, sure, we have a deal.”

  “Good. Now tell me about Jessica. Has she quit yet?”

  “Jessica? Quit? No. Jessica recently moved into her new apartment. She’s still taking classes and going for a degree in criminology.”

  “Still dating that nerd?”

  “Casey?”

  Hayley nodded.

  “No, they broke up a while ago.”

  “Probably for the best.”

  “Why is that?”

  Hayley shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I just didn’t like his face.”

  Maureen and Charles Baker

  Placer County

  August 2011

  Maureen awoke with a migraine. She could feel the blood vessels literally getting smaller, restricting much-needed blood and oxygen to her brain, which in turn caused other blood vessels to expand and throb. Usually too much caffeine or eating the wrong foods caused her to get a migraine, but this time it was definitely caused by stress.

  She pushed herself upward and glass cut into her palm. A few seconds passed before her mind cleared and she remembered bits and pieces of what had happened. She was inside the limousine, sprawled across the floor. There was glass everywhere.

  Charles. Where was Charles?

  Crawling to the open door, she saw two shadowy figures. She squinted, concentrated, tried to wait until her eyesight was no longer blurry, but it was no use. There was a man lying in an open field…Charles. Someone else, most likely the driver, was huddled over him. There were no buildings in the area, only cows grazing in the distance. She slid both legs out the door, careful not to cut herself further, and then held on to the doorframe until her feet hit solid ground. There was a narrow dirt road nearby, but she could not see the main road from where she stood.

  Her legs wobbled as she made her way over uneven dirt clods toward the two men. She fell to the ground. It took her a moment to get up. Her vision grew worse, hazier than before. The two people were blurry shadows. The sun was setting. It would be dark soon.

  “Oh, Mrs. Baker,” the driver said, “thank God you’ve come to.”

  At closer view, it looked as if the man was holding a razor in one hand and a clear plastic tube, narrow like the inside of a pen, in the other.

  “What’s going on?” She stepped up her pace, frantic to be by Charles’s side. “What are you doing to him?”

  Charles’s face was pale, his eyes wide with fear. His chest rose and fell more rapidly with each breath. His breathing sounded ragged and wet. His clothes were torn and there was blood everywhere.

  “I’ve called 911,” the driver said. “They’re on thei
r way.”

  Thank God. She grabbed hold of Charles’s hand and squeezed. “What happened?”

  “There were two deer,” the driver explained. “I swerved and lost control. It was an accident.”

  She looked at the razor in his hand. “What are you doing with that?”

  “As I carried your husband from the car, he told me he used to be a SEAL and that he couldn’t breathe. He said I needed to perform a tracheotomy.”

  “No,” she said. “Absolutely not. Charles,” she said as tears rolled down her cheeks, “did you say that? Is that what you need him to do?”

  A weird gurgling noise came out of his mouth, but he couldn’t seem to form any words. His eyes twitched as if he were trying to look toward the driver, pleading with her to understand what was going on. “Where’s the ambulance?” she asked. “Why aren’t they here?”

  More gurgling noises erupted. She put her ear closer to his mouth. “What are you trying to tell me, Charles?”

  “If you don’t perform a tracheotomy,” the driver interrupted, “he’s never going to make it.”

  She looked at the man with disgust. “Are you saying you want me to cut into his throat?”

  “It’s the only way. Look at him. He’s turning blue. He doesn’t have much time.”

  She shook her head. “You do it,” she said.

  “I can’t,” he said. “I thought I could, I really did, but I could never be responsible if something went wrong.”

  “I can’t do it.” She pushed curly gray hair out of her face and looked Charles over. His breathing had grown much worse, much more ragged than before. He was struggling for each breath he took.

  “He’s going to die,” the man said calmly.

  Nothing made sense. Maureen looked from one end of the field to the other. “If you swerved to miss the deer, then where’s the main road?”

  He waved a frustrated hand toward the dirt road. “It’s right there, Maureen. For God’s sake, are you going to let your husband die?”

  No sounds of an approaching ambulance could be heard. What was taking them so long? She looked at Charles. She couldn’t sit here and watch her husband die. She needed to help him. She held out her hand.

  The driver placed the razor in her palm. “You better hurry.”

  As she brought the razor to her husband’s throat, tears clouded her already hazy vision. “I can’t do this.”

  “You must. If you want to save his life, you’re going to need to find his thyroid cartilage.”

  She wiped her eyes. “His what?”

  “His Adam’s apple. Do you see his Adam’s apple?”

  “Yes.”

  “Move your finger over his neck until you feel another bulge.”

  She did as he said, but her hands were shaking. “OK, I feel it.”

  “That’s the cricoid cartilage.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Your husband told me before he lost his ability to speak. You need to make a half-inch horizontal cut between that bulge and the Adam’s apple.”

  Her hands shook even more as she lowered the razor to her husband’s throat.

  “You better hurry.”

  She looked at Charles. She couldn’t stop sobbing. His eyes were bulging. His mouth was moving but still no words came forth. And then it hit her. “He’s not moving. Why isn’t he moving?” It was as if Charles were paralyzed.

  “I’m not a doctor,” the man said, holding up his hands in surrender. “I’m merely repeating what your husband told me before you awoke.”

  “Oh, Charles,” she cried as she put her head to his chest.

  “Make the cut or he dies.”

  She straightened, used her sleeve to wipe her eyes once again, and then examined Charles’s throat. He was turning purple now. He would never make it if she didn’t do something fast. The gasping and gurgling continued as she located the area where she would need to make a small cut. She could do this. Charles often said she would have made a good army nurse. She couldn’t let him die. She would never be able to live with herself knowing that she could have saved him.

  She placed the razor on his throat again and this time began to make a cut. His skin was much thicker than she thought it would be. She swallowed hard, pushing harder and deeper, trying not to think of what she was cutting into. When that was finally done, she asked the man to hand her the tube.

  The annoying man began to crawl about in the high grass.

  “What are you doing? Hand me the tube. Now!”

  “I can’t find it. It was right here a minute ago.”

  She used her fingers to pinch the incision closed as she watched the man crawl on all fours. He appeared to be moving in slow motion, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. She didn’t want to look into Charles’s eyes and allow him to see the fear etched across her face, but she couldn’t let him die alone. And he would die if she didn’t insert a breathing tube into the hole. Now. Blood oozed from Charles’s throat, and there was nothing she could do to help him. She remembered her purse in the limo. Maybe there was something in her purse that she could use to save her husband.

  “Hold this shut,” she shouted at the man.

  He did as she said as she ran to the limo, tripping and falling along the way, but never stopping until she reached the vehicle. Frantically, she scrambled on all fours across glass, feeling no pain as pieces of bottle and window cut into her skin. She found her purse and dumped the contents onto the floor: a comb, lipstick, ID, and a pen. She took the pen apart. Ink spilled onto the seats and floor. She grabbed the brandy, unscrewed the lid, and poured alcohol into the small tube until the liquid coming through the bottom was no longer blue. Then she scrambled out of the limo and ran through the high weeds back to Charles.

  The driver was no longer holding her husband’s throat. His eyes were focused intently on her face as if he welcomed the pain he saw there when he told her Charles had died without her at his side.

  “You killed him,” he told her.

  “Charles,” she wept.

  “You cut too deep.”

  “I didn’t. There was hardly any blood.”

  She knelt down next to Charles, propped his neck in such a way that she could stick the tube into his trachea, but there was much more blood now and he was no longer breathing. She put her fingers to his wrist. No pulse. Nothing. He was dead.

  “The good news is that your husband knew the truth before he died.”

  She pulled her gaze from Charles and forced herself to look into the man’s icy blue eyes.

  “I told him about Harry Thompson.”

  Her breathing felt irregular as blood raged faster through her veins. “What are you talking about?”

  “You know…Italy…Carlton Hotel Baglioni.”

  One mistake, she thought. In fifty years of marriage, she’d made one mistake—one night with Harry Thompson. She’d never thought of Harry after that night. Only Charles. If she hadn’t taken Harry up on his offer, she would have spent the rest of her life wondering what could have been. But being with Harry for twenty-four hours had been anticlimactic in so many ways, and yet that night had taught her so much. By morning, she’d known without a doubt that Charles was the only man for her. But she wasn’t going to give this lunatic the satisfaction of knowing any of that. Charles knew she loved him. In his heart, no matter what this man might have told him, Charles knew.

  The man was insane, she realized too late.

  She curled up next to Charles, wanting to be with him, knowing that more than likely she would be soon.

  CHAPTER 8

  I would go home and watch what I done on the television. Then I would cry and cry like a baby.

  —Albert DeSalvo

  John and Rochelle

  Sacramento

  June 2007

  As John lifted his head, blood pulsed inside his ears and made a loud swooshing noise. Both of his eyes were swollen shut, but he could see murky shadows through the corner of his left eye. He t
ried to lift his hands to his face before he remembered they were tied behind his back with thick, scratchy twine. The same twine had been used to tie both of his ankles to the front legs of the heavy metal chair he was sitting on.

  He moved his head at every angle possible, trying to see where he was.

  The room was dark and had a musty smell. The floors were concrete. He was in a basement. Not moving, he listened. All was quiet. After a moment, he tried to rock the chair, but either it was too solid or he was too weak, because the chair didn’t budge.

  How long had he been here? A few hours? Twenty-four hours?

  Rochelle. Where was Rochelle?

  He remembered her screams as glass sprayed, cutting them both. A baseball bat was the last thing he had seen before everything went dark. Out of the corner of his left eye, he saw something move across the room.

  “Rochelle,” he whispered. “Is that you? Can you hear me?”

  He heard a moan and then recognized her voice when she said his name.

  She was alive.

  “Did they hurt you?” he asked.

  “I want out of here,” she said between sobs.

  What had they done to her?

  “Listen to me, Rochelle. I don’t know how many men there are upstairs, but I’m going to find a way out of here. I swear to you, I’ll get us out of here.” He paused, waited, and listened. If only he could see her. “Did they touch you? If they so much as laid one finger on you, I’ll kill them.”

  More sobbing.

  “Are you tied up?”

  This time when she moved, he heard the rattling of chains.

  Chains? What was going on? Had those punks planned this? Nothing made sense. Tears quickly gathered, blocking what little vision he had left, blinding him.

  “I want to go home,” Rochelle cried. “I just want to go home.”

  Davis