Claudine

by Barbara Palmer

  “You find me repugnant, my dear, but surely you’ve endured others you don’t care for. I understand you’ll take anyone. You only have one measure for your partners—dollar bills.”

  He selected one of the glass dildos with wicked-looking spines and ridges that was lying on the counter. He kicked away the stool and approached her, gripping her neck and jaw with his left hand, pressing them painfully to the side. She struggled for air. It felt as though he was crushing her windpipe.

  With his right hand he shoved his fore and middle fingers into her anus. The delicate tissue burned. Maria tried furiously to shake him off but the restraints held her fast. Ferrer took his hand from her neck and, grasping the glass dildo, stuck it into her slit, roughly pushing it all the way up. Her belly, still aching from the blow, spasmed.

  “You’re a pig. A pedophile.”

  He ignored her taunts. Instead, he focused on her reaction to the molestation with the dildo; it made him hard. “It’s my desire to relive the memory of our early encounters. I was your first, Maria. Nothing matched your purity. And I shall be your last as well. Alpha and Omega, an act of perfect harmony.”

  Maria’s heart seized. She knew perfectly well what he meant. She would die in this room. One slight hope remained. She fought through her panic and tried to concentrate. “This isn’t how it was at all. You were masked so I couldn’t see your face. Just your eyes. You’re old. You’re getting senile and your memory’s failing you.”

  The flush in his face told her that her words had bruised him. She was desperate to shake him up, keep him off-kilter.

  “Well, we shall have to make do with less than perfect circumstances, won’t we?”

  She tried one more time. “I had only one hand tied to the crib, not two, and nothing on. They’d taken my clothes away from me.”

  “We can easily rectify that.” Ferrer scooped up the shears from the mat where Victor had dropped them and cut off the rest of her dress, letting it and the scissors fall back to the mat. He undid the buckle securing her right hand to the leather bond. She shook it furiously to regain some feeling.

  “It couldn’t be you want that hand free to do some damage to me?” he said. “How transparent your thoughts are.” He gripped her lower arm and squeezed. Maria clenched her teeth, tried to mentally move away from the blazing pain. A fine bone snapped. A fire roared up her arm and she screamed. She was barely able to see for the stars of pain in her eyes.

  “I am not too old to forget that we loved,” he said.

  “It was torture, not love.”

  “And one last touch.” He picked up the scissors, walked over to the counter behind the trolley, opened a drawer, extracted a roll of gauze and cut off a long length. He returned to her side and began wrapping it around her head to bind her mouth. “I fear those teeth,” he said.

  He bent his head and caught her breast in his mouth, rubbed himself up against her sex, his breath becoming jerky with his arousal.

  It took a supreme effort of will to raise her hand. Tears coursed down her face as the grating edges of broken bone sent out a volley of hurt with every move. She tried to flex her fingers and found she could. Another agonizing jolt of pain hit her as she forced her hand higher, praying that Ferrer, so intent on molesting her, would not notice. With great effort, she pinched her earring, slipped it from her earlobe and, using her index finger, loosed the tiny clasp to extend the thin gold shaft it concealed.

  When Ferrer began to force himself inside her, she urinated on him. “You bitch,” he swore, jerking his head up to glare at her. For an instant, as he tilted his head back to glare at her, his neck was fully exposed. She plunged the needle point of the gold shaft into the throbbing vein at his throat. The earring dangled absurdly from his neck.

  His brittle eyes turned black with shock. He put a hand up to his throat, took it away and stared at the smears of blood on his fingertips. “What did you do?”

  She whimpered beneath the gauze. “Paid you back.”

  She didn’t know whether the words registered in his brain, for his blood had already carried the drug to every organ, infiltrating every cell like a hidden enemy. He crumpled to the floor.

  With waning strength she managed to free her good hand. She used it to release the leather straps binding her ankles and rip off the gauze binding her mouth. Ferrer had collapsed on top of her torn dress. She kicked him over and pulled the garment away, wrapped it around her as best she could, swept her shoes up from where they’d fallen. She pulled the earring from his neck and folded it inside the crumpled gauze, then ran to get her cell phone from her bag. She frantically punched in 911 and swore when she saw there was no connection. She threw her cell phone and tablet into her bag, grabbed the shears. Not a very effective weapon but all she had. She yanked the door handle and almost cried in frustration. It was locked.

  CHAPTER 31

  Maria glanced around the room wildly. She recalled Ferrer stopping near the counter when he came in for the second time. He’d put his keys down. She rushed over and snatched them up. Her entire body quaked at the thought that Victor might walk in at any moment. She had no defense this time. When they first began working together, Andrei had given the earring to her as a final fail-safe if her life was ever in danger. The tiny spear on her earring carried only one lethal dose; it couldn’t be used again.

  She cracked the door open and braced herself, listening for the sound of Victor’s heavy tread. Nothing. A staircase spiraled up to her right, likely leading to the summerhouse. Straight ahead stretched a stone-walled passageway that she guessed went back to the main house. She chose the stairs. The wood surrounding the summerhouse would offer her good cover and protection.

  At the top of the stairs she entered a room with a slippery wooden floor. The light from the chamber downstairs was so weak here she could only just make out the round shape of the room. She worked her way around the circumference of the wall, feeling for the door. It smelled of mold and was slimy to the touch. In the silence she heard the staccato beating of her heart. Her fingers brushed a frame. She hadn’t remembered any padlock on the outside and when she groped along the vertical edge of the door, her hand touched metal. Ferrer had at least ten keys on the ring. She felt for the keyhole and began testing keys.

  Footsteps sounded in the passageway below. Victor returning. She listened to him enter the chamber where Ferrer lay, pause and rush out of the room. He halted at the bottom of the stairs. She held her breath. The ring of his footsteps sounded on the iron steps and her heart plummeted. In seconds his large body blocked the entrance to the round room, plunging the space into greater darkness. She sensed him hesitate, heard him sniff the air like a predator. As quietly as possible, and holding her breath she tried the keys again. After the third painstaking attempt, the lock snapped open. Victor lunged at the sound. Using her full body weight she threw herself against the door and forced it open. She ran outside, slammed it shut, heard the lock click back into place and stumbled toward the trees.

  Victor used his body as a battering ram to split the door. From the sound of the blows, it wouldn’t take him long. She melted into the cover of the trees. Ocean waves crashed ashore in the distance. The sound would serve as a guide to take her to the beach, where she could walk to the nearest residence.

  After she made it about fifty feet into the grove, she heard the summerhouse door burst open. She didn’t look back. The wood here was dense enough that she couldn’t avoid making noise as she pushed her way through. Maria quickly dropped down into the bracken, stifling a cry when her broken arm brushed against a mossy log. She inched underneath a fir tree; its lower branches sweeping to the ground screened her body. She lay there, breathless with fear.

  After a while, she eased herself out from underneath the fir, her stomach and arm protesting with every movement. She made her way through the wood and stopped where the grove gave way to meadow grass. On the rise of one of the hills she could see Victor’s hulking silhouette, black against the
night sky. He was using the higher elevation to try to spot her.

  After a short time his figure disappeared behind the hill. She prayed he was giving up the chase and going home. She sat down gingerly, whimpering with the pain, and searched through her bag for her phone. When the screen lit up and showed a connection, a giant sigh of relief escaped her lips.

  Without stopping to think, she called Andrei. His sleepy voice came on the line and she remembered he was in the Caribbean somewhere, much too far to help even if he was willing to.

  “It’s me,” she said, her words tumbling out. “Where are you?”

  “Home.”

  “In Brighton Beach?” Her heart leaped.

  “Yeah. It’s almost three in the morning. What’s going on?”

  “Andrei. You’ve got to come and get me. Claude Ferrer tried to murder me. We were wrong about Hock. It was Ferrer all along.” She broke down and sobbed.

  “Ferrer? Get ahold of yourself. Just calm down and listen to me. Call the police right now, Maria.”

  She swallowed in an effort to stop crying. “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I killed him. It’s a total disaster, Andrei. You’ve got to come.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In Newport. I can’t remember the address. It’s on the coast road. I’d have to cut off our call to check it on my e-mail and I’m afraid to. I might lose the connection again. You remember the password to my business e-mail?”

  “Of course. It hasn’t been that long.”

  “The address is on there. The invitation was for one night at his Newport estate. He gave the name of Lawrence . . . Lawrence . . . God. I can’t remember it. It wasn’t his real name.”

  “Listen to me. You’re not thinking straight. It will take me more than two hours to get there. You have to call the police.”

  “No! I want you to come. Andrei, I’m out here in the middle of the night, my arm’s broken, it hurts so much, I . . .” she moaned and cried again. “There’s another man, named Victor. He’s looking for me. He’s going to hurt me.”

  “All right. All right, I’ll get there. I’ll find the address. Are you still in that house?”

  “I’m outside. But I think I’m still on the estate.” She looked over at the neighboring home in the distance. “There’s a place right beside the one I was in on the road that runs along the ocean. It’s white; it has pillars I think and lions out front. That’s all I can recall. I’ll go there and get help.”

  “Okay. I’m leaving now.”

  “Andrei? There’s something else.”

  “What?”

  She ceased speaking for a minute, overcome by the sight of blackbirds, unaware they were simply a product of her delirium. “Andrei,” she said, “there are so many blackbirds here you wouldn’t believe it. They’re roosting in all the trees around me, making so much noise I can hardly hear. I can’t get away from them.”

  Andrei’s voice was tight, though she could tell he was trying to keep it calm. “Get to that house. Do it right now.”

  Maria left the shelter of the trees and reached a fence she couldn’t cross without using both her hands. She’d have to dip down to the beach. Her arm was hot with pain; her hand had no feeling left. Her belly ached and felt bloated where Victor had punched her. Her breaths were short, and little pains stabbed her when she inhaled. She touched her stomach. It was hard and swollen. She wondered vaguely whether she could be bleeding inside. But the worst were the birds. When she left the wood they flew off in one vast black cloud. There must be thousands of them, she thought as they hovered over her. They followed her every step with their strange chittering and clacking cries.

  She dragged herself up the last slope to the white colonial, every step of the way she felt on the point of fainting. A dense cedar hedge surrounded the house. She couldn’t see any lights. That didn’t surprise her given the late hour. She circled around the hedge to the front drive, struggled up to the door and leaned on the doorbell. Waited. No one came. She tried a few more times with the same result. She pounded on the door, weeping with frustration.

  She found the small gatehouse beside the two mammoth stone entrance pillars about thirty feet from the road. It was locked. She sank down on the damp grass beside it, sat with her back propped up against its wall. She drifted off, then snapped her head up as the flock of blackbirds settled on the ground and spread around her. The birds seemed to vanish and then magically reappear. Each time they descended near her, she squeezed her eyes shut.

  While he drove, Andrei frantically searched for the text Maria described but could find nothing on either her personal or business mail. He pushed the BMW to 130 mph on I-95, praying radar wouldn’t catch him. He called the Newport police, told them his friend was gravely injured and delirious. He gave them the description of the pillars and lions she mentioned. They said they’d send a car along Ocean Avenue but without better directions held out little hope of locating her.

  He drove the length of Ocean Avenue and had to double back again. He found her just after five thirty A.M. She’d fallen, unconscious, over her bag, one arm crooked awkwardly under her head, the strands of her hair, gold in the early dawn, hiding her face.

  Andrei left the car door open and the motor running. He lifted Maria gently and put her on the seat beside him. Her dress barely covered her, and he tucked his jacket around her. When he got behind the wheel he cradled her head and shoulders on his lap. He kept one hand on the wheel and the other on the soft part of her cheek where her skin was still warm. A breeze had sprung up. He left the window open to feel the cool air on his face and tore down the road.

  CHAPTER 32

  Maria spent a week in intensive care at Newport Hospital. Victor’s blow broke a vein in her abdomen and caused a life-threatening hemorrhage. Her only memories during that time were of Andrei’s and Lillian’s faces. They seemed to come and go, magnify and fade, dreamlike. Once, when a doctor wearing a face mask leaned over her, she became hysterical. After transferring to the Columbia University Medical Center in New York, where her own doctor could see her, she’d improved enough to breathe on her own and take a few halting steps.

  One morning, after the nurse had finished checking Maria’s stats and doling out her medication, Jewel walked into the room. She carried a mammoth bouquet of lilacs in a vase. She placed it on the windowsill, then settled into the bedside chair uneasily. The floral scent immediately swelled through the room. “How are you doing, Marie?”

  She tried to swallow her shock. “I’ll live. So they tell me,” she said, her voice weak.

  “Well, thank heavens. I’ve been so worried about you. I thought perhaps . . . it might be better for me not to intrude. But Milne insisted.”

  “I’m glad he did. Thanks for the flowers. They’re lovely.”

  Jewel waved her hand. “Just a token. I thought they’d cheer you up.” An uncomfortable silence followed. Jewel tried to fill it. “You and I haven’t had the easiest time. I am not one to make a display of my emotions, but I wanted to tell you that when I took you into my home, I was very happy. I . . . loved my little girl.”

  Maria stared at the tears forming in Jewel’s eyes. Jewel quickly took a tissue from her purse and blotted them away, gave her head a shake and sighed. “I don’t know how things got so off track between us. I’m sorry, Marie, for the way things turned out.”

  “Me as well,” she said. “I’m happy you told me.” Jewel was sitting close enough that Maria could reach over and touch her hand. “Sometimes two different natures just collide.”

  They chatted for another ten minutes about Maria’s studies, Jewel’s charity work—safe topics. A fragile bridge had been constructed and both of them were cautious about testing it too much. Jewel did not linger and soon left her alone to rest.

  Around noon, Detective Trainor arrived. He came alone, without da Silva. He leaned against the wall and gave her a nod. “You’ve had a rough time of it,” he said.

 
; “We agree on that,” she replied hoarsely and put her hand to her neck. “I’m sorry. I can barely talk. They intubated me.”

  “I’ll go easy on you, then.”

  She detected a surprising glimmer of a smile.

  “Just nod or shake your head if you want. Can you write? Use a keyboard?”

  “Yes. Although even that tires me out.”

  “Well, do your best. You have a tablet or a laptop or something?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. As soon as possible, I want you to write as full a statement about the attack on you as you can. Every detail about what occurred in Newport. Include anything you remember Ferrer or his staff saying during your stay there. Send it to me as an e-mail attachment. When you’re back on your feet, we’ll have you come into the precinct office to witness the report and add anything more you can think of. We’re working with the Newport police and the FBI on this.” He dug into his pocket, pulled out his card and set it on the bedside table. “My e-mail address is on that.”

  “Okay. What about Victor? Did you find him?”

  He shook his head. “No sign of him. He’s probably left the state.”

  “And Alicia?”

  “She claims she knew nothing of what went on. Said she was only domestic help.”

  “She’s lying.”

  Trainor raised his big shoulders and let them drop again. “We can’t prove any differently. She wasn’t present during the attack—correct?”

  “No.”

  Trainor glanced around the room. His eyes came back to hers. “Charles Hock’s attorney urged him to cooperate with us. Hock maintains that all of this—the threats, the stalking—was just a game Ferrer created to scare you. He explained that Ferrer was obsessed with you. That when Hock told him what you do for a living, Ferrer lost it. Hock says that he doesn’t know anything about the Romanian prostitute’s murder. We don’t believe him. We found his DNA under her fingernails. We’ve confirmed he was the man who followed you to San Francisco and broke into your hotel room. Because their crimes crossed state lines, the FBI are involved. They’ve agreed to let us wrap the case up in cooperation with the Newport police.”