His mind was made up. His shift was just about done anyway. Later, he would search the bag for some information about the girl. Maybe he’d get lucky and find some way to contact her, some way to get the bag back to her. But first, he needed a good drink.
~12~
The trip to Richmond, Virginia wasn’t nearly as agonizing as Eliza and Jake thought it would be. In fact, banded together in their common cause, the two new allies actually engaged in amicable conversation as they exchanged thoughts and plans. It was as if embarking on this vigilante mission had allowed them both to shed their embittered dispositions and uncover their suppressed personalities, at least temporarily. The two of them had even joked a little. Perhaps it had something to do with their renewed hope. They were on their way to get a crazed killer off the streets.
During the first couple hours of the trip, they had listened to more news stories about the man found murdered in the bathroom at the bus terminal. He was a dubious character with ties to unscrupulous white supremist groups. He had been in and out of jail for several racially-motivated hate crimes. He was surely no loss to society.
Jake and Eliza continued to keep their ears open for possible leads on Hillary as they talked. The hours were passing surprisingly fast. After nearly four hours of driving, they decided it was time for a quick stop. They re-fueled the vehicle, used the restrooms and grabbed some fast-food sandwiches to go. They were back in the car twenty minutes later.
Jake had offered to drive and Eliza was grateful. She’d had a restless night and was feeling run-down. Given the hangover Jake had started his day with, she didn’t know how he had the capacity to concentrate on the road, but he seemed alert and focused. They had just discussed possible ways to find out where Hillary might have gone after leaving the bus terminal. They would speak to employees at the ticket counter and restaurant, anyone who might be able to help. They knew that tracking her wouldn’t be easy but somehow they both felt confident that they would find her.
Eliza looked over at her new partner. She hadn’t before taken notice of just how handsome he was. Sure, she had seen that he was a good-looking man, but maybe his true attractiveness had been hidden underneath that mask of hostility. Now, chipped away, he was a vision of masculine beauty...almost an Adonis in all of his splendid glory.
Jake caught her staring and smiled. She blushed and looked away.
“What?” He asked playfully. “Don’t let the stubble fool you...I’m really a woman.”
Eliza frowned. Would he be overcome with doom and gloom all over again?
“Now Jake, you—”
“Nothing to worry about, Eliza, it’s just a joke. I’m dealing with it,” he assured her. “I know my lousy attitude isn’t going to change anything, right? I may as well make the best of it.”
“Wow, it’s like an alien abducted that other Jake Bentley and left you in his place.”
“You want him back?”
“No,” she said with a smile as she shook her head emphatically. “You know, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you....”
“You want to see it?”
“See what?”
“My new vagina,” Jake said soberly.
“What? No! Of course not.”
There was a slight pause. The silence was deafening.
“What does it look like anyway?” Eliza asked coyly.
Jake just had to laugh aloud.
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” he joked. He had absolutely no real interest in seeing her private parts.
Eliza chuckled along artificially. She detected a trace of indignation within his voice and behind his sparkling eyes. She knew she had to walk on eggshells. She didn’t mean for this topic to come up.
“It’s okay, Eliza, I’m not going to go off the deep end. I can handle it, really. Lighten up.”
“Okay, but first I have a serious question for you.”
“Oh ohs, are you going to burst my cheerful bubble? Because I worked really hard to crack a smile, you know.”
“And I truly appreciate it,” Eliza said, cracking a smile of her own. “I actually wanted to pick your professional brain.”
“Look, Eliza, I really don’t think I’m in the proper mindset to counsel you. I mean, I would if—”
“No, it’s not about me. I just wanted your opinion about baby killers in general. You know, what makes them tick and all. Do you think it’s nature or nurture?”
“Wow, now that’s a profound question, Eliza...I don’t know if my brain can handle that one right now.”
“Because of the hangover?”
“Because of Hillary.”
Eliza wrinkled her forehead, perplexed by Jake’s statement. When he failed to elaborate further, she persisted.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “What does Hillary have to do with it?”
Jake sighed heavily.
“Okay...I guess if we’re in this together, we need to trust one another. I’m about to tell you something that’s been kept top secret. This is off-record, Eliza, do you understand me? I don’t want this information leaking out.”
“I won’t tell anyone, I swear,” Eliza answered honestly.
Jake nodded then sighed again. Eliza could see that whatever it was, it was difficult for him to discuss. She watched him intently as he decided where to begin.
“Hillary was Patrick’s—Dr. Patrick Morrison’s—personal experiment. I don’t know exactly how he ended up with her, Pat was very secretive about it so I didn’t ask and he didn’t tell. I do know the army is involved somehow. Again, I don’t have any names or information. He just told me that a soldier brought her to him one day and asked him to use her in clinical trials for a new drug he had been working on. Anyway, you don’t need to know all of that....”
“Wait, I want to know everything. Why shouldn’t I know? I might have valuable input too, you know.”
“I’m not implying otherwise, I’m just saying—oh, hell, whatever. I’ll bore you with the details, if you want.”
“Yes, thank you,” Eliza replied smugly.
“So one day Pat calls me, says he needs to meet with me. He insists that I meet him at his house right away. When I arrive, he’s acting all nervous and jumpy. I can’t make heads or tails of his strange behavior. Finally, he sits me down in his office and tells me that he has Hillary Greyson in the other room of his house. Again, I didn’t know what to think—that the man lost his mind…that he was playing some sort of a weird joke. I don’t know. I was speechless. He could tell I didn’t believe me. So he led me to the room. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was a young blonde girl asleep on a bed in his spare room. She did look like Hillary, but of course, I was skeptical. Again, my mind is conjuring up all sorts of wild guesses as to why this man has a teen-aged girl in his home. He pulls me away from there and we return to his office where he starts rambling on about an army lieutenant who captured her in the woods and delivered her to him. He said the goal was to experiment on her, to test his new drug on her. He said he’d had her in his house for the past couple of weeks and that he had been administering the drug with some success. The problem was, the drug seemed to have an effect on Hillary’s memory. Each time she awoke, she could not recall who she was or anything about her past. Pat wanted me to work with her.”
“You mean, to evaluate her?”
“Yes, to evaluate her and to help her re-gain her memory. You see, the effectiveness of the drug could not be ascertained if she couldn’t recall and confront her violent past. I was extremely hesitant, really I was. But I admit I was also fascinated. It was a once-in-a-lifetime case study. So I agreed and Hillary became my patient.”
“Oh my God,” Eliza said in astonishment. “What was it like?”
“Well, ‘frustrating’ is probably the best word to describe the initial sessions, followed by ‘terrifying.’”
“What was she like?”
“At first she was scared. She was a young girl with no memory. She wa
s distrustful and fearful, understandably so. I would ask a series of questions that she could not answer. We weren’t getting anywhere. So I suggested to Pat that he wean her off the meds, start fresh. He hated the idea but really, it was the only way, so he agreed. That first meeting with her, wow, what a difference. I could see the rage on her face the moment I entered the room. She was tied down to the bed because she had gotten violent with both Monica—that’s...or rather, that was, Pat’s wife—as well as Pat himself. She nearly escaped. In the process, she punctured Pat’s eye...blinded it. Anyway, after a string of obscenities and threats, she calmed down a bit. I was persistent. I didn’t feed into her anger. Instead I tried to diffuse it with compassion and empathy. I have my skill, you know, not to toot my own horn, but I’m very good at what I do. I got through to her. She began opening up to me.”
“What did she tell you?”
Eliza was on the edge of her seat. She hung on every word as Jake spoke.
“She told me about her father, Michael. He began molesting her when she was just thirteen. She had kept the abuse to herself for over a year before she finally broke down and told her mother.”
“Oh my God, how horrible.”
“Yes, but it got worse. Her mother didn’t believe her. She did nothing to protect Hillary from him. So she reached her breaking point. Her mind created an alter-ego, a voice she called ‘the voice of reason.’ The voice told her that she could stop the abuse by killing her father. And she did.”
“I don’t know what to say. She’s a monster, no doubt, but I feel bad for what she had to go through. I can understand her killing her incestuous father, but why her other family members? Okay, well, I guess her mother sort of deserved it too. But why did she kill her little brother? Why her sister? Why her friends and God, why those poor little babies?
“She was so consumed by this persona she crafted. It had saved her life. It was her friend. She was filled with anger and hatred. Even after killing her father, her pain didn’t just dissipate. Killing became her outlet and she lashed out at anyone and everyone she perceived as responsible for her pain. For instance, her sister Caleigh was a year and a half younger. She resented Caleigh because her father didn’t molest her. Her life remained intact and normal, while Hillary’s had been ruined. Somehow she blamed Caleigh for this. That was her justification for killing her sister. She killed her brother so that he couldn’t grow up to become a vile child molester like their father. She killed her former friend—Jackie, I think it was—because the girl had said some cruel things about her when she had stopped going to school. She killed Jackie’s, no it was Jax, that’s what it was...she killed Jax’s baby sisters just to cause Jax pain and suffering before she burned the poor girl in her closet. She tried to kill a couple of schoolmates who had insulted her. She was successful in killing one of them while the other escaped and told the police about her. She brutally attacked her mother, but for some reason, which she never revealed...she let her live.”
“I’m stunned,” Eliza said in awe. “That’s unbelievable.”
“Remember, never speak a word of this to anyone. I’m placing my trust in you, Eliza. I’m not quite sure why. Maybe I’m just that desperate.”
“Maybe you’re just that human. You can’t keep something like that bottled up and all to yourself. I can’t believe you knew her...you spoke to her.”
“You know what, I felt sorry for her. She was a young girl who suffered a terrible travesty. I can understand why she snapped, really. But in answer to your question, nature or nurture, it’s a really tough call in her case. On one hand, she was clearly a product of a depraved, abusive environment so that would indicate nurture. But to react so viciously, to become so hostile and psychotic, I would have to say that’s more nature than nurture. In my opinion, she had the ingredients for immorality tucked away in her brain and her father’s debauchery stirred them up, generating a potent stew of evil.”
“What was Dr. Morrison’s drug supposed to do?”
“It was supposed to suppress rage. Guess it didn’t work so well, huh?”
“What was it like Jake? Living through that nightmare, I mean.”
Jake shook his head.
“I can’t,” he said softly. “I can’t talk about that. I’m sorry but I just can’t re-live that again.”
“I understand,” Eliza said, placing her hand on his shoulder. “For what it’s worth, I’m real sorry you had to go through that.”
“Just as long as we find her, Eliza...we have to find her.”
“We will, Jake. Somehow, we will. After we check into a hotel in Richmond, I’ll call a few friends and do a little fishing for info.”
Jake nodded.
“If you had to take an educated guess, where would you say she’s headed?”
“I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure that out. She’s already gone after her mother. Now she’s traveling north. I’ve been thinking that maybe she found out about the army soldier that dumped her on Pat’s doorstep. Maybe she’s going after him next.”
“What about that skinhead? Why do you think she did it?”
Jake shrugged.
“Who knows? It’s not like she’s playing with a full deck, it could be any number of reasons. Maybe the guy hit on her and she became enraged. That would be my guess.”
“Is she really that irrational that she would risk getting caught just to get back at the guy for hitting on her?”
“Assuming that’s what happened, yes, I’d say she’s highly irrational. We’re talking about Hillary here, Eliza...she’s a psychopath.”
“I know, it’s just that there seemed to be solid reasons for her killings—not justifiable, of course—but concrete and purposeful.”
“She tried to kill me, Eliza, and all I did was try to help her.”
“I know, but you’re not looking at it from her perspective. You were holding her captive.”
“No, that’s not true at all. It was Pat who—”
“Now you’re just in denial, Jake. You were working for Dr. Morrison. You were his accomplice. You think Hillary really differentiated between the two of you?”
Jake had to admit that he was just as culpable in Hillary’s imprisonment. He knew that she was being held against her will and did nothing to remedy that. Sure, he had advocated for her humane treatment and comfort. He had been genuinely concerned for her well-being. He was the one who had untied the ropes during her moment of need. He had underestimated her and inadvertently set her free to commit those unspeakable acts. He regretted that move every day since.
No, in the end, Hillary didn’t differentiate between him and Patrick. They were both enemies. They were both involved in her prolonged confinement. In her mind, they were equally responsible for the long, boring, daunting, seemingly endless days and nights she spent waiting for someone to come and rescue her. And once again, Hillary had to rely on her own wits for salvation.
He had pleaded with her to see reason. But Hillary was a monster. She had no mercy, no compassion. She took great pleasure in torturing people and watching them suffer. The more they begged for their lives, the more ecstatic she grew. Jake had witnessed it first-hand as he watched his friends suffer one agonizing injury after the next until their miserable demise. It was sheer luck that he managed to escape the same grim fate. Hillary had mistakenly believed that she had killed him. It was the only reason she stopped torturing him. Unfortunately, she had done sufficient permanent damage to make him wish that she had killed him.
Jake had little to lose now. He didn’t care if she finished the job. His last act would be to destroy the monster who had destroyed so many others.
“No,” Jake replied after a long pause. “It made absolutely no difference to Hillary that I had tried to help her. She saw me as one of the bad guys.”
“How did she escape, Jake? What happened?”
Jake took another deep breath as he prepared to tell Eliza about the worst mistake of his life.
“Pat g
ot drunk one day. When I walked in, he was...he was raping Hillary....”
Eliza’s gasp was loud and scathing.
“What?” She asked breathlessly.
“Yes, he was on her...I saw red. I pulled him off then knocked him out. I felt so horrible for her, especially after she had made allegations that he had acted inappropriately with her. I kept thinking, what if this was my daughter? I let my guard down...totally down. I untied her arms. Before I knew it, she had reached for a nearby hypothermic needle filled with a sedative. Before I could even regret my foolishness, I was out like a light. When I awoke, I was the one tied up. Pat too for that matter. We were frantic as we heard her in the office down the hall. She stabbed Pat with the syringe full of anesthesia. She threatened to do the same to me. God, I just...I should have tried to fight her. I was much bigger and much stronger. I could have tackled her to the floor. I should have tried. Maybe Pat and Monica would be alive today if I didn’t screw things up with my cowardice.”
“Jake, you can’t blame yourself. You were trying to help her, you have a good heart. You couldn’t possibly have foreseen what would happen.”
“I was careless...so, so careless. Then I panicked. I froze at that critical moment. I guess I got exactly what I deserved. I didn’t act like a man then, so why should I possess the anatomy of a man now?”
“Jake, that’s just asinine. Comments like that don’t do a bit of good, you know that.”
“I should have—”
Jake steered the car to the shoulder on the right and took a moment to deal with his latest mental breakdown. He buried his head within his hands and sobbed heavily. It was awkward for Eliza who was unsure whether she should let him have his moment or attempt to comfort him. She decided to just let him get it out of his system. She knew better than anyone how beneficial some heavy crying could be. It was like opening the valve on a pressure cooker to vent the explosive build-up of steam. A good cry could almost anesthetize a sorrowful heart.
Within a couple of minutes, Jake pulled himself together and apologized for his meltdown. He looked embarrassed as he kept his eyes off Eliza’s.
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