Perfect Trust argi-3

by M. R. Sellars

  In my mind I was screaming, “ YES!”

  Of course, they couldn’t hear me. Hell, I couldn’t even hear me.

  “First time I ever saw ‘im do this,” Ben explained, “he said, whatever ya’ do don’t touch me, or you’ll break the trance. Or somethin’ like that, anyway. Just let it go. As long as he’s not screamin’ and they’re both still breathin’, he’s prob’ly fine.”

  “No I’m not!” I screamed at them again, but to no avail. Not that I expected them to hear. But I did hope.

  One thought kept going through my mind where my friend’s explanation was concerned: “Dammit, Ben! As I remember, you didn’t listen to me then-so why are you suddenly deciding to do as I asked now?”

  *****

  The sense of absolute violation transcends even the pain.

  I know he’s been inside me, I can feel it.

  I’m still so weak, so tired that I cannot move.

  I just lay there in the cold and cry.

  Hot tears stream from the corners of my eyes, rolling across my face and finally dripping into my ears.

  I’m on my back.

  It’s dark and there’s something covering me.

  I can feel cold vinyl against my skin.

  The stench of stale cigarette smoke fills my nostrils.

  I’m still with him.

  How long has it been?

  I’ve lost all track of time.

  I feel motion.

  We are moving.

  I can hear the roughness of the mistuned car engine.

  The vibration rattles me.

  My arm slides across my chest, making tiny jumps in time with the vibrations, until finally it falls, glances from the edge of the seat, and lands in the floorboard-or more accurately, into the trash covering the floorboard.

  I can hear him in the front seat.

  He’s humming.

  He’s humming a happy, satisfied tune. He’s humming “Merry Christmas, Baby.”

  The sorry son-of-a-bitch…

  I feel the vehicle turn-left I think.

  I wonder if I can remember the turns. Isn’t that what they do in spy movies? Count the seconds traveling straight, then the turns? Make a map in their heads?

  Who am I trying to fool here? I can’t even think straight.

  I wonder where he is taking me?

  My stomach wrenches itself into a knot as fear grips me.

  He’s probably taking me somewhere, so he can kill me and dispose of my body!

  I feel the car turn again, begin to accelerate, then the forlorn squeal of thin brakes reaches my ears.

  The car lurches to a sudden halt, rocking hard on worn shocks. I bounce against the seatback like a rag doll then roll forward. My body slides from the edge of the seat and crumples into the floorboard, face down.

  I groan.

  “Don’t worry,” I hear him say. “You’re almost home.”

  Fear slices through me again. I wonder what he means by home? The bottom of a ditch? The river? A shallow grave somewhere?

  My mind races, but it isn’t winning.

  I struggle to open my eyes and find my face buried in a pile of trash. As we pass beneath a streetlight, I see that my pillow consists of fast food bags, empty cigarette cartons, and things best left unidentified.

  We travel in darkness then pass beneath another streetlamp. My roaming eye catches a glimpse of an envelope.

  Darkness falls.

  Again, for a fleeting instant, the glow of a streetlamp.

  Mister something.

  Darkness.

  I count out the thrum of the tires in my head, keeping my eye focused on the spot where the envelope lay.

  Three, two, one.

  The light floods the interior for a split second.

  An address… 75…

  Darkness, three, two, one… 34…

  Darkness, three, two, one…

  Or was that the stamp?

  Darkness, three, two, one…

  75 again…

  Darkness, three, two, one…

  34 again. Was it the stamp again? I don’t know…

  Two, one…

  Mister something again.

  Concentrate!

  Darkness, three, two, one…

  75…34 something…

  I can feel the car slowing…

  Darkness, three, two, one…

  The car quickly arcs into a turn and then bounces over a curb just as the streetlamp’s glow fills the cabin.

  The envelope shifts.

  I shift.

  I catch a final glimpse as a fast food bag falls in front of it.

  Mister and Ash something…

  Mister Ash?

  Mister Ash what?

  The darkness remains and I can feel that the car is moving very slowly now.

  We stop.

  His voice reaches my ears again. “It’s okay, honey. You’re home now.”

  CHAPTER 23

  A sudden sense of calmness enveloped me, followed immediately by a screaming pain akin to that of a midnight leg cramp-only this leg cramp encompassed my entire body. I could feel myself double forward, then without warning I was propelled backward with explosive force.

  And then the cramp-like pain melted away, leaving behind the sickening, dull ache that usually accompanies a bad hangover. In the span of a heartbeat, I felt myself slowly sinking into a murky darkness that was deepening with each passing second.

  For some unknown reason, I had been summarily expelled from Heather Burke’s nightmare. Or it had reached its end. Or maybe I had been extracted with careful, calculated precision that just happened to be violently painful as well?

  I wasn’t sure which was the real answer, but whichever was the case, I was grateful for the relief.

  The psychic hangover was dissipating, and as I continued to sink, I began to feel warm and comfortable. Had it not been for the sharp noise that suddenly stabbed its way through my eardrums, I think I could have simply gone to sleep.

  Instead, I was once again swimming in an inky void, the atmosphere thick around me like water. I wanted to do nothing more than relax and allow the calmness of the dark to overtake me, but the echo in my ears was more than enough to indicate that such comfort wasn’t to be.

  Stark awareness seeped in to replace the drowsy feeling and poked at my grey matter with an annoying finger. It started by reminding me that I was once again Rowan Linden Gant and that I really needed to wake up.

  The sharp noise shot into my left ear once again and rattled around inside my skull without remorse. It sounded for all the world like someone with a speech impediment saying “yo-yo.” It took a moment for me to realize that the words were actually “Yo, Row.”

  A dim light in the distance seemed to beckon me, and I aimed myself toward it. Again, darkness began bleeding away, leaving in its wake first indigo, then blue, then charcoal grey. In a psychedelic explosion, color bloomed before me and settled slowly into the proper hues of reality. As if I didn’t have enough to deal with, the ethereal hangover returned and followed me into this plane of existence. Something told me that aspirin wasn’t going to help either.

  Heather Burke was seated across from me, quietly sobbing, her face buried deeply into her hands. Her shoulders heaved, and she sucked in a breath before advancing the level of her grief another octave up the scale.

  I knew exactly how she felt.

  Utter violation permeated my being. I felt disgusted, sickened, and even in a way, filthy. I felt as though something had been taken from me. And worst of all, I still felt fear.

  “You okay, Row?” Ben’s voice came from behind as he rested a large hand on my shoulder.

  I jumped involuntarily when he touched me. Logically I knew he was my friend and that I was not the victim. But the sudden encroachment upon my space only served to increase the feeling of violation.

  “Yeah,” I choked past a rising lump in my throat as I fought to shrug off feelings that didn’t belong to me. “I’m okay, but
I think we’d better get someone for Miz Burke here to talk to. We’ve… She’s got a lot to deal with.”

  *****

  “I’m not one hundred percent positive,” I told Ben and Charlee, “but I think we might be looking for someone with the last name Ash, or Ash-something. It’s also possible that his street number is seventy-five thirty-four.”

  We were all back in my friend’s van, me riding shotgun this time. We were on our way to police headquarters after having finally reached someone to look after Heather Burke. I felt terrible just leaving her after dredging up the chemically repressed memories, but we had no choice. I’d obtained information that we needed to go over and decipher. I don’t know why, but something told me that time was a commodity that we simply did not have in abundance.

  Still, before we left I gave her my home number and told her to feel free to call me if she wanted to talk about anything at all. I wasn’t exactly qualified to help her in a clinical sense, but for all intents and purposes we had shared the exact same experience. Sometimes that kind of understanding can be worth far more than the highest priced sheepskin.

  “How’d you come up with the address?” Detective McLaughlin asked.

  “When he was taking her home he had her on the back seat of his car,” I explained. “At some point when he hit the brakes suddenly, she rolled off into the floorboards. He’s a bit of a slob, so she ended up on top of a lot of trash, and it just happened that one of the things that was staring her in the face was an envelope.”

  “And she read the address from it?”

  “Actually, she more or less tried to. How conscious the effort was, I can’t be sure. It seemed like it was, but she was still under the influence of the drugs. She was at a severe disadvantage. At any rate it ended up as a latent memory that I was able to pick up. Unfortunately due to the darkness and shifting from the motion of the vehicle, she only made out a small part of it.”

  “Sheesh, Storm was right,” she exclaimed. “You are spooky.”

  “Ya’ get used to ‘im after awhile, Chuck,” Ben offered and then turned his attention to me. “Do ya’ know for a fact that it was his name and address she was lookin’ at?”

  “No, not for a fact,” I admitted.

  “So the envelope coulda just been some trash that wasn’t even his mail?”

  “I suppose, but it’s worth looking into, right?”

  “Yeah, we’ll check it out, but ya’ gotta figure there’s gonna be a hell of a lotta Ash’s and Ash-whatever’s in the phone book.”

  “Shouldn’t the address help pin it down?” I submitted.

  “Maybe,” he answered, “if it really is the address. Bein’ on an envelope it could be a piece of a zip code or somethin’.”

  “Plus, we don’t know if he actually lives in Saint Louis,” Charlee added. “We know he gets around, so he could live outside of the metro area in another county, or even in Illinois.”

  “I thought I actually had something,” I said in a dejected tone.

  “You might,” she returned, “but we can’t chase it as if it were our only clue.”

  “Ya’know, eggs, basket, all that shit,” Ben expressed. “So what else did’ya come up with?”

  “He’s dressing them up and taking photographs of them.”

  “You already said that much before the mumbo-jumbo,” Ben returned.

  “I said maybe,” I reminded him. “What I’m telling you now is that it’s not a maybe. He’s definitely dressing them up in order to take the pictures.”

  “Like how?” McLaughlin asked.

  “Well, I only remember a couple of the outfits, but one was lingerie. A garter belt and stockings is what I saw for certain. The other was a party dress or something of that sort.”

  “So the guy’s got a kink for prettyin’ up ‘is victims,” Ben offered.

  “It’s more than that.” I shook my head. “He does something with their hair. I’m not sure what, but from the sensation I’m thinking he may put a wig on them.”

  “So the asshole really is playing with dolls then,” he harrumphed.

  “In a way, yes,” I acknowledged. “He even put something in her eyes, and I’m betting they were contact lenses. Maybe tinted or something. He’s doing all this with a specific purpose in mind…”

  “What? Is he trying to make the ‘perfect woman’?” Charlee asked in a disgusted tone.

  “Maybe. But it really feels like something more. Helen would be more qualified to judge on this than I would, but he kept flip-flopping. Like a bipolar disorder stuck in overdrive. One minute it would be like he was worshipping her. He’d say things like ‘She’s almost perfect,’ then he would suddenly shift into an abusive mode and scream at her, saying things like ‘You’re not her.’”

  “Any idea who ‘her’ is?” Ben asked.

  “No clue.” I shook my head again. “Except that she’s probably who he is dressing them up to look like. But I can’t even tell you what that is. I never actually saw how he had Burke made up. Just bits and pieces of the outfits, although he mentioned something about makeup.”

  “You mentioned somethin’ about that earlier, right Chuck?”

  “Yeah. So far all the victims have had smeared makeup on their faces that they don’t recall putting on in the first place,” she answered then offered thoughtfully, “You know, all of the victims have pretty much resembled one another. More than just their size and hair. I mean, not dead ringers or anything, but close enough that at a distance they could be mistaken for one another…”

  “‘Specially if he did a makeover on ‘em?” Ben added the question more as a comment.

  “Exactly,” I agreed. “They must fit the profile of the woman he is trying to re-create. Maybe it’s a former girlfriend who dumped him, or even a wife who passed away.”

  “Yeah, for starters.” Ben ran down his own huge list, “Or it could be a woman that works in ‘is office, or at the deli down the street, or the star of ‘is favorite TV show. Could be a model out of a magazine…maybe even his sister or ‘is mother…”

  “Maybe the first few, but this is definitely sexual in nature. I’d rule out siblings or matriarchal figures.”

  “What rock you been hidin’ under?” he retorted as he hooked the van through a light that was somewhere between yellow and red. “Ever hear of Oedipus? This guy’s a whack job. If he’s really fucked up, this might be ‘is way of doin’ Sis or Mom, or both for that matter.”

  “I’d rather not think about that, Ben,” I said.

  “Yeah, well it kinda comes with the territory. If it turns out ta’ be a lead, then we hafta look at the big picture, not just what we wanna see. Anyway, this is all fine and wonderful, but it doesn’t really get us any closer ta’ who this asshole is.”

  “Sorry,” I told him. “I’m just telling you what I saw.”

  “I’m not complainin’. I’m just tellin’ it like it is. I’m sure ya’ woulda said somethin’ already, but I gotta ask-I don’t suppose ya’ saw ‘is face, did’ya?”

  “No, just shadows.”

  “So that’s a dead end,” Charlee chimed in from the back.

  “Is there anything else that could help?” Ben pressed.

  I concentrated for a moment but drew a blank. I was still fighting off some severe emotional effects from the entire episode. On top of that, the nagging feeling that I was being watched had returned, and it was starting to occupy my mind to the exclusion of all else.

  “Maybe… I don’t know… It kept fading in and out, so I’m not sure I’m remembering everything.”

  “Ya’ mean like you were talkin’ earlier about feelin’ the effects of the Roofies?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” I replied with a distracted note in my voice.

  I was tilting my head down and to the side, shifting oddly in my seat while trying to get a look in the side view mirror. My concentration on the task must have completely taken over because I suddenly felt something thump my arm and I jumped.

  Be
n’s voice flooded into my head. “Hey, ground control ta’ Rowan. You wanna answer me?”

  “What?”

  “I asked ya’ what the hell you’re doin’ with the contortionist act?”

  “Are we being followed?” I answered his question with a question-something he absolutely hated.

  “Do what?”

  “I don’t know, Ben,” I shrugged. “I’ve just got this weird feeling. Like I’m being watched. I had it back at Heather Burke’s apartment too.”

  The color drained from my friend’s face. This was only the second time I’d seen him go this pale, and the first had been only a few days ago at the Yule celebration. He quickly looked into the rear view mirror then at both sides, dwelling long enough to get a good scan of the area behind us.

  “You see anything, Chuck?” he asked Detective McLaughlin.

  She made her own inspection, twisting in her seat to get a better view, then settled back facing front and said, “Nope. Nothing.”

  “So, Row…Is this like one of those Twilight Zone things?” Ben finally asked.

  “I think it might be,” I acknowledged, disturbed by the way he was suddenly acting. “Why?”

  “Do ya’ know who it is that’s watchin’ ya’?” he pressed.

  “No. Do you?” I pressed back.

  “Exactly what are you two talking about?” McLaughlin interjected.

  “No. Why would I?” Ben shot back, ignoring Charlee altogether.

  “You’re lying, Ben,” I told him. “I can tell.”

  “Hey,” Charlee spoke up again, “is someone going to tell me what’s going on?”

  We had arrived at our destination, and Ben pulled the Chevy into a space, then cranked it into park, and twisted the key off.

  “Just forget it,” he commanded as he levered his groaning door open. A cool gust of wind made a beeline for the interior of the van and dropped the temperature a few degrees.

  “Not this time, Ben,” I returned. “Something’s going on, and it involves me. I can tell.”

  “This isn’t the time, Row,” he answered sternly.

  “Well then make it the time,” I demanded.