Stalking Sapphire

by Mia Thompson

  He took a peanut from the wooden bowl in front of him, still in its shell, and tossed it across the room. It hit the man point-blank in the eye and he screamed. Aston ducked down till he knew it was safe to come back up and found the bartender staring at him.

  “Is that your girl or something?”

  “No. I’m just watching her.”

  The bartender raised his eyebrows as he polished a beer glass with a ketchup-stained rag. “To each his own, I guess.”

  “Not like that. I’m a cop.”

  “O-kay,” the bartender said, not believing him.

  “I’m a cop. I’m not a perv. I’m a cop. Go stand somewhere else.”

  * * * * *

  They received their shots from the waitress and Sapphire took hers before Marco’s had even left the tray.

  “What’s up with you?” he asked, dabbing his eye with a napkin from the flying peanut.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You seem…distant. It’s okay, Mary. I mean, if you’d rather not sit with me.”

  “Hey, my name is Mary, and Mary wants to be here,” Sapphire said, hoping it would make sense to him.

  “All right?” He looked at her, with honest worry in his eyes, and she felt bad.

  “Did you grow up in L.A.?” Sapphire asked, giving it more of an effort.

  “My mother and I lived all over California,” He stared into his drink.

  “Why?”

  Marco’s demeanor suddenly changed and he became uncomfortable. He drew his finger around the edge of the glass, creating a high-pitched tone. Over and over again. “Before I was nine, my mother had a steady job, a beautiful home, and she and my father had a good, solid marriage. We were a family and I remember everything being very…happy.” Marco scooted a little closer to her and she could feel his body heat against her leg. “One day, my mother caught my father cheating. Turned out he had mistresses all over town. Young women, half my mother’s age.”

  “Oh,” Sapphire said, for lack of another word.

  “My mother had a mental breakdown after leaving my dad. And then her and I just moved from place to place.” After a pause Marco looked up at her and smiled. “Well, anyway. Want to get out of here. Like I said, I live just a few blocks away, off Wilshire.”

  When Marco ran his fingers through his hair again, Sapphire glimpsed a black tattoo on the underarm of his triceps. As the tattoo disappeared back under his t-shirt, her eyes moved from his triceps to his biceps, and then she looked away. She was, against her will, starting to feel attracted to Marco. Or perhaps she wanted to be? With him, the straining claws of Sapphire Dubois’ life seemed more distant. Like another life. As good as Sapphire had created her, Mary did not have any living flaws. Mary’s life was simple. Manageable.

  She wished she could stay Mary for a while until the storm passed. What was to say she couldn’t? Nobody knew where she was and now that Julia was not there, would anyone care? Perhaps she could remain Mary forever. She looked at Marco and smiled. “Let’s take your car. Mine’s a piece of crap and the heater is broken,” she said and slammed down her second shot.

  Marco smiled at her and grabbed his jacket. “Just let me use the bathroom and then we’ll leave.”

  Sapphire walked over to the door and waited. Somebody behind her opened the door and a cool breeze hit the back of her neck. A chill went down her spine and goose bumps stood up on her arms.

  A hand was placed over her mouth and an arm wrapped around her neck and pulled her out the door.

  She was dragged around the corner to the dark alley out back before she managed to elbow her assailant in the ribs and follow up with a throat chop. She turned around as his grip loosened and Aston fell down on the ground.

  “Aston? What the hell!”

  Aston coughed and drew in air. He looked up at her angrily, slamming his hand onto the concrete trying to breathe.

  “What the hell, you!” He finally said between the gasps and stood back up. “How’d you know how to do that?”

  “I think it’s a little sad that you don’t know how to block that. Do they teach you nothing at the academy?”

  Two days ago, she would have panicked that she just showed an officer she had training. But not that night. She was slightly buzzed from the drinks and she didn’t care.

  “What are you doing here, and why did you drag me out like that?” she asked.

  Aston suddenly looked guilty, then angry, then strangely calm. “I didn’t want you to risk going home with one of your little sex buddies tonight; there’s still someone after you. And he could be watching you so I wanted you to leave without causing a scene.”

  “One of my what?” Sapphire stared at him.

  “The jig is up.”

  “The jig? Really, Aston. The jig?”

  “Cut the crap. I know what you do, why you climb out at night.”

  Sapphire doubted it, so she went ahead and held out her hands in question, telling him to lay it on her.

  “It’s a fetish; I’m sure it has a name, but I don’t know what it is. Upper class people go slumming for lesser men, more dangerous men. Kind of like you did with me.”

  Do not laugh, whatever you do, do not laugh, Sapphire thought, knowing that when opportunity knocks on the door it is not the time to laugh so hard you drop on the ground. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

  “I won’t. It’s not really anybody’s business but mine.”

  Sapphire must have looked surprised because Aston got slightly panicked. “As detective of your case, that is. I will need a list of all the men you have slept with ASAP.”

  “It’s going to be a loooong list,” Sapphire said, enjoying the look on Aston’s face that followed. They stood there for a few seconds, and then Sapphire motioned back toward the bar.

  “I better get inside. I’m kind of with someone.” She turned around and started walking toward the door.

  “You shouldn’t be on dates.”

  Sapphire stopped and turned. “Why?”

  “It’s not safe with someone after you. Get in the car.”

  Sapphire tilted her head. “Aston. Fuck off.”

  “I bet you ten thousand dollars you’ll be in my car in thirty seconds.”

  “First of all, you don’t have ten thousand dollars. Second, didn’t you just try that?” she said, patronizing.

  “Last time I wasn’t prepared. Now I am.”

  They stared at each other, waiting to see who would make the first move.

  Seventy-one seconds later, Sapphire sat in the passenger seat of Aston’s car with her arms crossed over her chest. Aston started the car and backed out.

  “Oh, don’t be such a sore loser; I’ve had years of training,” Aston said and lit up a cigarette.

  She wasn’t a sore loser; she had lost on purpose. She didn’t dare let her full skills loose on him. To keep up the act, Sapphire decided not to speak to him until they got back to Beverly Hills. She looked over her shoulder at the bar behind them getting smaller and smaller by the second. She felt bad for Marco, who was probably wondering where in the hell she had gone. She didn’t want to text or call him with Aston two inches away, so it would have to wait.

  “So,” Aston said, glancing at her. “That guy you were with…what’s so special about him? He looked like a dickwad to me.”

  “What are you, jealous?” Sapphire mocked, breaking her vow of silence.

  A pitiful I’m-offended-laugh came out of Aston’s mouth, followed by two more just like it. “Tssss, jealous,” Aston repeated. “He looked like a dickwad, that’s all. If you looked up dickwad in the dictionary, his face would be the primary example. It’s textbook.”

  “Maybe I just have a tendency to go for dickwads,” she said meaningfully.

  “Yeah, apparently,” Aston scoffed then must have remembered that they slept together because he frowned.

  Sapphire leaned her head against the window and looked at his police radio.

  “It’s raining again,” Aston said a
nd looked up at the drops hitting the windshield. “They say there’s a storm coming.”

  “Really? You want to chitchat about the weather?”

  “No. I guess not.”

  Sapphire reached out and pushed a button on the radio.

  “Unit three-four-eight to Kinko’s: Elm Drive,” a voice called out.

  Aston shot her an annoyed glance and shut it off just as the windshield was hit with a larger spatter of rain. He blasted the heat, and Sapphire found herself getting more and more tired. Every time the car passed a street lamp the tiny spots of water on the windshield lit up like glistening diamonds. Sapphire watched it, hypnotized.

  Suddenly she heard a click. Aston turned on his recorder and set it down on the dashboard. “You can start giving me the names of your…sexual encounters,” he said.

  Sapphire yawned. “Well, first there was Aaron Albright,” she said. “Billy…Barf.”

  “Barf?”

  “Ricky Ricardo.”

  Aston pushed stop on the recorder and looked at her. “You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’m doing this to help you, you know.”

  She leaned her head back and could feel her eyelids get heavier by the second.

  “Thomas…” she said without thinking. Her imaginary list had gone over to her real list. Perhaps Aston was onto something. Perhaps a list of her previous encounters wasn’t a bad idea. What had happened to Richard Martin for example? She had been so busy that she had forgotten to follow up on his trial to see how it went.

  “Thomas? Thomas what?” Aston asked.

  Thomas Broker was her first. She could feel Aston’s eyes on her, though hers were closed. As she thought of her first, she allowed the sweet feeling of sleep to consume her.

  * * * * *

  He let the drizzle of the cool evening hit his face as he stood outside waiting for God’s voice to speak to him.

  “Finish it. Finish it now.”

  He got in his car and made his way toward Glendale, where the girl would be waiting for him. Tonight would be the night she would die. Tonight would be the night she was forgiven.

  * * * * *​

  Shelly’s dark mind burst out of the deep hole and up toward awareness.

  Her eyelids were so heavy that she couldn’t bear to open them, but her mind slowly started to puzzle pieces together. What was it she was supposed to do?

  Whatever it was, she had a feeling she was supposed to do it fast, or she wouldn’t be able to do it at all. It was a horrible thing knowing that there was something very important you had to do but not remembering what?

  She needed water really badly. Could that be it?

  Somewhere in the distance a car pulled in, its wheels struggling against gravel. A sound she recognized, but she wasn’t sure why. They didn’t have gravel in front of their house, did they? They had a paved beige driveway like everybody else on the block.

  Why was she feeling this unbearable amount of stress? Was there a test she needed to study for? Or did she have a deadline on an essay?

  Shelly could feel time running out, but she was so tired and there was this comfortable darkness that was tugging at her telling her to just give in and let everything else be.

  She almost did, until a repetitive sound brought her back.

  Drip. Drip. Drip. Her tongue was thick, her gums dry, and that sound was so tempting.

  Shelly fought her way through her mind’s dense fog and put all the strength she owned to force her eyes open.

  When she did, everything came crashing into her: him, the basement…the rope! She was almost done.

  Quickly, Shelly grabbed a hold of the rope and started rubbing it against the chair. As fast and hard as she could, she let the rope slide up and down against the jagged wood.

  Snap! The rope unraveled and the pressure from where it had been strangling her arms disappeared; she was free.

  Water! She needed water.

  Right before she took her first step, she realized her feet were numb. Numb from sitting in the same position for what, days? Weeks?

  Slowly, she managed to get two toes to move and then eventually the rest of them. She wiggled her feet around, stressed, knowing there was no more time to spare.

  She got out of the chair that she had grown to hate and set her feet down on the concrete, finding it not only cold, but sticky. The floor around the chair was completely red, blood reaching every which way from the point of origin in the middle where she’d been sitting.

  Shelly took one step and found that her legs were not strong enough to carry her. She tumbled forward but managed to grab onto the sink with her hand before she hit the floor.

  Weak, Shelly pulled herself up and reached toward the dripping faucet. She turned the handle and a stream of cold, never-ending water blasted out through the tap. Before her mind had even given the go-ahead, Shelly’s body had already lowered her head, tilted it, and her mouth was already in the water: wonderful, thirst-quenching water.

  She drank and with every chug, she felt her body and mind get a little bit stronger. Not a lot, but perhaps strong enough to carry her out.

  Finally Shelly started her escape, stumbling like a child learning how to walk as she made her way through her prison.

  Her knees shook the entire way, and by the time she made it to the staircase, they felt like they could buckle under her at any moment. Her body was so weak that she had to pull herself up using the old rickety railing just to climb the first step. From under her, her knees shook and her feet felt as though they were attached to 40-pound cement blocks. That staircase might as well have been Mount Everest because it took her forever to get to the top, dragging one foot behind the other. When Shelly finally reached that last step, she stopped right before she touched the handle. In her mind, she’d thought that she’d be strong enough to break down the old door, but she realized there was no way. Her trembling hand couldn’t even grab the handle with full strength.

  Then the familiar sounds came back…washing over her like an ice-cold ocean wave.

  His footsteps. The jingling of the keys. He was right outside the door.

  She slid behind the door and held her breath as she heard the old familiar creak.

  He stood there, lingering at the top of the stairs as if he could feel that something was wrong. He wouldn’t be able to see that she was gone until he came down the stairs and turned the corner.

  Everything that Shelly had felt in her life before and had labeled as fear did not come close to what she felt at that moment. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. If he were to look behind the door, she would not be able to do anything to defend herself. She was paralyzed.

  “Oh, Shelly?” he called in a suspicious tone. Just as she knew his every sound when he entered, he probably knew every sound she made. Now he wasn’t hearing any of them.

  He took his first step down the staircase and slid his hand lightly along the railing. Usually, he shut the door carefully behind him. Distracted by the silence, he must have forgotten, because he left it wide open.

  Shelly stood still, trying to regain what little control she still had over her body. When he was halfway down, she knew she had to go, or she’d miss her chance to escape and surely this time he would kill her. Even if it hadn’t been his plan today, it would be now when he found out she’d tried to get away.

  Keeping her eyes on him, Shelly moved cautiously, sliding her body towards the door’s opening as quietly as possible. Sideways, she slipped out the door, still holding her breath, convinced he could hear her pulse pounding as loudly as she could.

  Tears fell down Shelly’s cheeks as she unsteadily made her way through a hallway. Around her, every window had been covered and nailed shut by plywood.

  Two wide double doors appeared in front of her, only a few feet ahead. She wished she could run, but she knew she couldn’t; if she tried she would fall. To only be able to take one small step at a time when she knew he could
fly up those stairs and come grab her at any second left her in indescribable panic.

  At a snail’s pace, she passed a room to her right. A dusty old cross with Jesus was hanging at the front of the room. Old pews that no one had sat in for years. Cobwebs and religious artifacts hung from every wall. It was clear that she was in an old abandoned church.

  A loud noise rose from behind her just as she reached the door handle and yanked it open with all the energy she had left. Behind her, she heard the creaky sounds of the stairs and she knew she had no choice but to run. She took off into the parking lot, pleading for her legs to carry her.

  Not a person in sight. Not a house. Nothing.

  Shelly heard cars somewhere close but couldn’t see them. With fear and adrenaline pumping through her, Shelly ran as fast as she could, one leg slowly starting to work and the other limping after.

  She found the road and ran out to the middle of it. A small white car in the distance was heading in her direction and she waved her arms at her savior.

  That’s when she knew she wasn’t alone.

  “Heeee…,” she tried to scream.

  He wrapped his arm around her neck, grabbed her by the mouth, and dragged her back inside.

  Chapter 16

  She woke up in a haze. Aston had opened the car door and let the cold in. Sapphire sat up and yawned as she shuddered from the cool wind.

  “Just getting a pack of smokes. Be back in a second,” he said and shut the door.

  Sapphire looked around; they were halfway to Beverly Hills at a gas station off the freeway. She turned his police radio back on but heard nothing. Sapphire watched as Aston went inside and saw him through the glass as he waited for his pack of cigarettes. His eyes searched around his environment, stopping at Sapphire. He gave her a little smile, then looked self-conscious and turned back to the counter to stare down intensely at it.