Dangerous Consequences

by Lisa Renee Johnson

  He felt like a burglar roaming around Austyn’s apartment, although he had no intention of stealing anything. He was trying to understand what she wanted from him, which was the million-dollar question, and as a psychologist he knew the answer would never appear in a private investigator’s folder. Holsey had done exactly what he needed him to do—lead him to Austyn. The rest was up to him. Donathan moved toward the kitchen. When he opened the first cabinet he half-expected to find an array of poisons, but by the time he’d finished his tour, he didn’t know any more about Austyn than he had before he entered the drab apartment. He found nothing of interest. Nothing to sharpen his gut instinct that something wasn’t right about this woman. The alphabetical arrangement of spices in the kitchen said she valued order. There were no pictures or other keepsakes and her furnishings were minimal, which told him she wasn’t a sentimental woman. Before he could complete his assessment, a row of specimen jars neatly lining a bookshelf caught his attention.

  As Donathan moved closer to further inspect the contents of the jars, a deep misgiving overcame him for a moment and he almost fled the apartment. He took a deep breath to settle his nerves. He was in this apartment to find out the truth, and as it turned out, the truth was staring him right in the face.

  The bookshelf was lined with thick textbooks, which a closer look revealed to be medical books, like the ones Sydney referenced from time to time. Was Austyn a doctor?

  He tossed that thought around in his mind. The books didn’t suggest a psychotic woman, but they did paint the picture of a woman with some medical knowledge who could slip a man a date-rape drug and know exactly what she was doing. But then again, any gold-digging woman could do the same thing without having any medical knowledge.

  He picked up one eight-ounce jar and then another to inspect the contents, and frowned at the oval-shaped masses floating around in the clear liquid. Each jar was labeled with dates going back as far as six months.

  He noticed a piece of newspaper peeking out from one of the drawers attached to the unit, which was definitely out of place when everything else was neat and orderly. Donathan opened the drawer and found a stack of old newspaper clippings, mostly from Los Angeles, but on top of the stack were clips from the East Bay Times with dates that coincided with the most recent dates listed on two of the jars’ labels.

  Lost in thought, Donathan paged through each of the newspaper items, searching for the common theme.

  “Damn,” he muttered. He couldn’t believe Austyn Greene was responsible for this horror. He was so deep in thought he didn’t hear a thing but instinctively swatted at the tiny pinch that felt like a mosquito bite on the back of his neck. Before the numbing sensations invaded his body, he made eye contact with Austyn as his knees buckled, folding his long, lean frame to the floor. He fell into a light slumber atop the sea of newspaper articles that had slipped from his grasp.

  When he awoke, he didn’t know how long he’d been out, but Austyn was looming above him, her eyes dark and full of desperation, and she was wielding a scalpel. He commanded himself to get up, his fear driving adrenaline through him, but his limbs didn’t respond. He couldn’t move.

  “What the fuck are you doing in my apartment?” she hissed before she sat down on his chest and placed the tip of the shiny blade against the bulging cord in his neck. Donathan’s breath caught and he held his lungs full of air, afraid to exhale.

  She nicked his skin and seemed fascinated with the tiny red bubble that surfaced and trickled down his neck. He could feel the pressure of her free hand roaming around his waistband and pockets. She fished out the contents, his keys and her key, and placed them at Donathan’s side, and then she began undressing him like you would a sleeping child. After removing his arms from the sleeves, she pulled the cashmere sweater up and over his head.

  “I’m not here to hurt you,” he said as if reading her mind. Why was she taking his clothes off? Was she planning on removing his testicles and placing them in a jar like she’d done to those other men he’d read about in those articles? It was clear she was out of touch with reality. If he could stay awake long enough, he needed to get her talking, slow her down a bit. His life depended on it.

  “What did you give me?”

  “Shut the fuck up!” she demanded as she removed his shoes and added them to the pile she’d started with his sweater. He smiled at her.

  “You think this shit is funny?” she asked as beads of sweat dripped down her face.

  “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “Why are you in my apartment?”

  “I wanted to get to know you better.”

  “You think you can just tell me anything, huh? Like I’m some goddamned idiot.” She unbuttoned his jeans. She placed the blade beside him, grabbed his pants at both ankles, and tugged hard, backing away from him. She widened her distance and pulled the jeans with her. “I saw you going through my fucking things. Were you following me?”

  “You’re playing with my life, Austyn. I had no choice.”

  “Playing? So you think this is a game?”

  “The question is, do you?” he asked, watching her pick up the newspaper sections he’d dropped to the floor. Her hands trembled as she carefully organized them, as if she was putting them back in date order.

  “So how long have you been a doctor?”

  Her body stiffened and she grew still but recovered before she moved past him into a section of the room behind him. Obviously, he’d hit a nerve. Still sprawled on the floor and unable to move his body, he turned his head to follow her but couldn’t see where she went or what she was doing. When she came back into view, carrying a tiny black case, she picked up the scalpel from his side and pointed the tip at the bridge of his nose.

  “Stop looking at me.”

  Donathan closed his eyes, trying to block out Austyn’s face and the scalpel. He tried to wrap his mind around the reality of the situation. Here he was paralyzed, lying on the floor in the apartment of a woman who cut men’s nuts off and kept them in jars as souvenirs, and not a soul knew where he was. He opened his eyes slowly and shifted back into therapist mode.

  “Did those men hurt you, Austyn?”

  Tiny folds appeared in her forehead and he watched her fidget beneath his direct gaze. After what seemed like an eternity, she nodded slightly.

  “Tell me about those men,” he said. The drug she’d given him made him feel like he was floating.

  “This is all her fault, you know.”

  Good. She was talking. “Whose fault?”

  “Lois,” she said, her eyes flaring with anger at the mention of the name.

  “Who is Lois?”

  “The bitch who gave birth to me and then sold me to men so she could get high,” she spat, as if saying those words out loud would purge the filth from her being.

  Donathan had expected this type of confession, but it still shocked him just the same. He’d been a psychologist for years, and no matter how many times he’d heard stories like this one, his first response was always what kind of person would do that. Obviously, the person who did was sick, but sick or not, there was no excuse. “Your mother must be sick.”

  “Sick? That’s no fucking excuse. She’s my mother and she was supposed to protect me.” She slammed the drawer shut after placing the articles back inside.

  “Tell me what those men did to you,” Donathan said softly. It was obvious she’d been molested as a child. She’d told him that much when she came to his office. But he was in unchartered territory and knew he needed to keep her talking to buy him some time because leaving here dead or without his testicles was not an ideal outcome as far as he was concerned. Random thoughts flooded his brain. One moment he wanted to yell at the top of his lungs for help, the next he somehow forced himself to remain calm.

  “I didn’t deserve what she did to me. I was just a little girl.” Austyn dropped to her knees and started shaking. “Once they put me in foster care, I thought my nightmare was over. I kept to myself, f
ocused on school, determined to leave behind the hellhole of a life my mother had created for me. I finished college and got accepted into UCLA medical school. Everything was fine until those bastards raped me,” she sobbed.

  “Who raped you?”

  “They all did,” she mumbled, a faraway look in her eyes. “I was in my general surgery rotation. All I did was try to help out a friend, another resident assigned to cover a hospice patient. She had a family emergency and I agreed to cover for her. I was sent to an address in South Central. The five of them held me hostage for days and nobody came for me. Nobody came to save me.”

  At that moment he didn’t know what to say to her. He’d heard stories like hers on more than one occasion; for the first time he felt sorry for her.

  “Lois told me she loved me and if I did those disgusting things with those men we wouldn’t have to live on the streets. Mothers aren’t supposed to do that, and instead of fucking me, you should have just listened,” she said, slicing her hand with the scalpel, the droplets of her blood splattered onto his bare chest—a sure sign of psychosis. Then, just like that, everything she’d just told him seemed unimportant. His thoughts shifted to the immediate threat standing above him. Fully dressed, she straddled him and sat down, pelvis to pelvis.

  “Where is your mother?”

  “I don’t know,” Austyn mumbled, hypnotized by the blood she was now rubbing in a circular motion on Donathan’s chest. He was fighting to keep his eyes open.

  “I almost found her in Pittsburg yesterday, met somebody who kind of looked like her, but when I do find Lois Greene she’s going to wish she’d never been born ’cause I’m going to kill that bitch.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Like a magnet, Sydney was drawn to the North Oakland address. She needed to talk to Donathan, needed to go home, but her curiosity about Austyn Greene got the better of her.

  When she arrived at the Cavour Street address, she was surprised to see Donathan’s car parked across the street. What the hell was he doing there?

  Donathan had everyone else fooled, claiming this woman was stalking him. Less than two hours after he’d shared this epiphany, here he was at her apartment. And how ironic was it that Austyn Greene lived right around the corner from Children’s Hospital. He had the nerve to be cheating on her in plain sight.

  She noticed the small park that occupied a corner lot across the street, and it called to her. The park offered no playground or memorial, only a single park bench and winding brick pavers that framed a small S-shaped stream. She stepped out of her truck and paused at the curb to listen to the sound of running water, a sound she’d always been fond of.

  She sat down on the bench and reflected on how her life had gotten so out of control. She’d tried reaching Donathan on his cell phone a number of times as she drove there but hadn’t gotten an answer. She’d even called home on the off chance he was there. At first she’d thought he was too mad at her to take her calls, but evidently he was just too busy.

  After thinking about it, she scolded herself for how she had handled the situation earlier. Donathan definitely deserved an explanation, but she deserved one, too. Her usual MO was to run, but enough was enough. She needed to face this crisis head-on. She slipped her hands into her jacket pockets and headed toward the duplex, determined to turn over a new leaf.

  Sydney eased up the four front steps of the duplex and found the front door of the apartment slightly ajar. She almost turned away, but she stood on the porch, transfixed and trembling at what she saw through the crack of the door. A wave of fear held her captive, kept her from taking a normal breath. There was blood, so much blood. She closed her eyes to will the gruesome scene away, but when she opened them the picture remained the same: Donathan covered in blood and sprawled on the floor in an abnormal position, like he was paralyzed.

  She left the porch and snuck around the house to a sheer-curtained window. With waves of despair, she attempted to think clearly as she saw Donathan, wearing only his boxers, and the woman Sydney presumed to be Austyn standing over him, holding in her hand a blade more than an inch long and sharp enough to perform surgery.

  “Oh God!” Sydney muffled her scream, backed away from the window, and dialed 911.

  “Please stay on the line and your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.”

  You have got to be fucking kidding me, she thought, and hung up the phone. She looked around for any sign of help, but the block was secluded. Not one person had passed by in the fifteen minutes she’d been there. As a doctor she’d heard all the horror stories about people calling 911 from cell phones, and here she was, experiencing it firsthand. The truth was, 911 was designed for landlines, and when you called 911 from a cell phone the calls had to be routed to the right authority by the California Highway Patrol call center, which was not helpful right now.

  She looked across the street at the DMV parking lot; there were a handful of vehicles there, but thanks to the California state budget crisis, Saturday schedules were a thing of the past; she doubted the cars belonged to anyone inside the building who could help her.

  “Think, Sydney, think,” she said out loud. She needed to get inside the apartment, but she also had to make sure the police could get to where she was, especially because they’d be going off a cell site location versus being given an actual address. Then an idea came to her. She was close enough to the DMV, and with all the terror plots, maybe her location would be helpful. She dialed 911 again, ran back to her truck, and retrieved a tire iron from the trunk to use as a weapon. Moving with confidence, she placed the metal rod in the small of her back. She picked up one of the small pavers that lined the stream and headed toward the back of the property. She tossed the rock, the glass shattered, and Sydney raced back toward the front door and watched through the crack as Austyn backed up off Donathan and retreated toward the back of the apartment.

  Still on hold with 911, Sydney placed the cell phone in her pocket and entered the apartment. She rushed toward Donathan and knelt beside him.

  “Are you okay? Are you cut?” she whispered, looking for injuries.

  “She drugged me and I can’t move, but you need to get out of here.”

  “I can see that, Donathan, but I’m not leaving.”

  “Well, isn’t this touching?” Austyn chuckled, leaning against the doorjamb. “The good doctor has come to save her man.”

  Sydney felt her heart stop and then start again as she fixated on the sharp blade. With Donathan unable to move, there was nothing she could do except stand her ground.

  “Why are you doing this to my husband?” she said, not taking her eyes off the scalpel.

  “Your husband?” Austyn grinned. “Well, if he had acted like he was your husband, his ass wouldn’t be here. He should have just listened, not tried to stick his dick in me like all the rest of them.”

  Austyn’s words stung, but now was not the time for Sydney to have a meltdown about it. She didn’t have to look up to know Austyn was no longer standing in the doorway but moving closer.

  “Do you think I’m pretty, Sydney?” Austyn asked with a smirk.

  Sydney’s gaze searched Austyn’s face, as if seeing her for the first time. Austyn was pretty, just as she’d noticed in the pictures, but her expression was detached and hollow, lacking a connection to the reality around her.

  Austyn interrupted. “My mother used my looks to her advantage. Once I was placed in foster care, I thought I was free. I wouldn’t have to do those disgusting things anymore,” she said, an unstable laugh escaping her. “But it happened again and again. Those bastards even followed me to medical school, but I made them pay, just like they deserved. My plan was almost complete, but you had to come here.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re talking about. What plan?” Sydney asked, horrified by the confusing conversation and wondering what to do next. “I’m sorry about your mother and those men, but Donathan had nothing to do with that. This isn’t his fault.”


  “It is his fault. He was supposed to be different. He’s just like all the others I took care of with a tiny incision,” she said, wielding the scalpel toward a row of tiny jars lining the shelf.

  The realization washed over Sydney’s face as Austyn’s confession became real.

  “You’re a doctor,” Sydney spat out more forcefully than she intended. “You took an oath to save lives, not destroy them, and killing people isn’t going to take away your pain.”

  “What about my fucking life? Nobody took an oath to save me.”

  A voice burst from Sydney’s cell phone. “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”

  “Four-eight-three Cavour Street across from the Oakland DMV. Four-eight-three Cavour Street across from the Oakland DMV,” Sydney repeated. The sound of the 911 operator’s voice held Austyn immobile for a few moments, but Sydney watched in slow motion as recognition and deep anger crossed her face.

  “You bitch,” Austyn screamed. She swung the blade and caught Sydney square across her right palm. The shock rang through Sydney’s head, but she couldn’t surrender. She scrambled backward on the floor, removed the tire iron from the small of her back, and aimed for Austyn’s knee.

  The iron made impact, but Austyn’s dominant position allowed her to grab Sydney around the neck in a choke hold. She squeezed. Donathan tried to sit up, but the pressure of paralysis kept him down.

  “Austyn, let her go. This is about me,” Donathan pleaded.

  As sirens approached, Austyn finally released a motionless Sydney and then scrambled for the scalpel that had slid across the room during the confrontation. She got in Donathan’s face and through gritted teeth said, “I’m coming back for you.”

  Heaving with pain, she hobbled up to her feet and vanished out the back door.

  EPILOGUE