Brooklyn Bounce

by Andrew G. Nelson

  “It does,” Susan admitted. “But it’s just a twisted lie,”

  “Well, my bubble burst at fourteen when the cocksucker walked out the door and left me with my bitch of a mother.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, I found out later he hooked up with a woman with a young daughter. Always felt like I got too old for him and he moved on. So when I got old enough I tried to find him. I probably would have done what you did, but the prick was already dead. Word was that his new wife had found out he’d been tapping her daughter and went to the cops. When they showed up he was swinging from a rope in the garage, so I never got the satisfaction you did.”

  “I’m sorry,” Susan said.

  Alex shrugged her shoulders. “It is what it is.”

  “It’s not right.”

  “I know,” Alex replied. “I find drinking helps.”

  “Does it ever go away?”

  “No, never, you just learn to cope, but it’s always there. I still have this reoccurring nightmare where he’s on top of me, taking me and his hands around my throat. I can’t breathe and I’m trying to get him to stop, but he won’t. He just laughs as I’m dying and just before everything goes black I wake up screaming.”

  Susan picked up the glass of water and took a sip. She knew exactly what Alex was talking about. She’d struggled with similar dreams, even after she’d killed her father.

  “But you know what the really messed up thing is?” Alex asked. “In a way I miss it.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure the shrinks would have a field day with me, but the truth is I miss the feeling of being that special to someone.”

  “Like you’re so incredible that even a grown man would risk anything to be with you?”

  “Exactly,” Alex said. “I mean I knew it was wrong, but I still laid there knowing he wanted me so bad that he would risk anything and then it was all ripped from me. As sick as it might sound, I’ve spent my whole life searching for that feeling again and I’m afraid that it doesn’t exist.”

  “I know what you mean,” Susan replied, “and we’re not sick.”

  “Isn’t it?” Alex asked, noting how Susan had included herself.

  “No, we we’re the victims,” she argued, “we didn’t ask for this to happen to us so it isn’t fair that we get blamed for trying to find happiness.”

  “The world would probably argue that.”

  “Fuck the world,” Susan said angrily. “Where was the world when we were being abused?”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Yeah, go ahead.”

  “Just between you and me, how did it feel to kill Paige?”

  “Why do you want to know?” Susan asked, becoming suspicious.

  “For crying out loud, I already know you killed her, Susan,” Alex replied. “It’s not like I’m gonna hold that over your head. I only ask because I’ve had thoughts about it; you know, exacting my revenge on the girl who took my place.”

  A shock look came over Susan’s face.

  “You’ve thought about killing her?”

  “I mean, it’s hard not to,” Alex replied, “but it’s not exactly something you can just bring up in a casual conversation. Plus, how often do you get a chance to talk to someone who actually did it?”

  Susan paused for a moment, as she contemplated the question. Ironically, it wasn’t something she had ever really given much thought about. Paige had betrayed her and she’d killed her. She had a reason and had imagined that it would bring her some level of satisfaction, but the truth was that it hadn’t.

  “Hollow,” she said after a moment.

  “Really?” Alex asked.

  “Yeah,” Susan said thoughtfully. “I thought I would get more out of it, but the truth is I didn’t. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there was a perverse thrill leading up to it. She’d been on my list, but I didn’t expect her to come back to his place. I caught her by surprise. It was so cute how terrified she was. I told her that I was just going to tie her up and leave her there. I gave her something to hold onto, but it was brief. As soon as I started to unload on her, about betraying me and screwing my father, I think she knew that she had fucked up by trusting me.”

  “Did it make you feel good?” Alex asked.

  “In a way I kind of got off watching her beg me to just let her go. I tormented her for a while longer and then I slit her throat. I thought I would get a feeling of satisfaction from it, but the moment was fleeting, like Christmas morning. Then she was dead and it was suddenly very quiet. It felt weird. I still had the anger, but I had no one to direct it at.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  “All of them got what was coming to them, but I was never able to get any satisfaction from it. Honestly, the best part of it all was hunting them.”

  “What was the real story with your mom?” Alex asked. “I never really fully bought into what you wrote.”

  “Ah, mommy dearest,” Susan said with a sardonic smile. “Penobscot’s perfect little house wife. Interestingly enough, I always felt a sense of empathy toward her while daddy was fucking me. I imagined it had to suck being so clueless. At least I did until I found out that she was out screwing around on him. Then I actually began to blame her for what was happening to me. I figured that if she had just been taking care of shit at home then he wouldn’t have needed to get it from me.”

  “I remembered my mother being so nice and then after he left us she became a royal bitch,” Alex said. “I couldn’t take a goddamn breath without her criticizing me. I always felt she wigged out, but later I wondered if she knew what he was doing and then, after he left her, she just blamed me.”

  “Guess we do have a lot in common,” Susan said grudgingly.

  “Look, you got played a shitty hand,” Alex said. “We both did. If my dad hadn’t taken the chicken shit way out I might have found myself in your shoes.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “If I had a choice I would say just cut me loose, Susan,” Alex said. “I’ll walk out the front door and forget I ever saw you. Give you enough time to get far away from here.”

  “She’ll kill me,” Susan said.

  “I got bad news for you, babe. Chances are pretty good that it’s eventually going to happen anyway.”

  Susan stared at Alex, thinking about what she was suggesting.

  “My fight is not with you, Susan. I know you’re resourceful so just walk out that door with me. I’ll go right and you go left. Just disappear and I’ll deal with Tatiana.”

  “I don’t know,” she said hesitantly.

  “Then just think about,” Alex said. “In the meantime I really have to pee.”

  “You know I can’t,” Susan said.

  “Listen, either you help me out here or you’re gonna be left cleaning it up,” Alex replied. “Fuck, we’ve done this before and it’s not like I’m not tied up.”

  Susan struggled with her options. In the past she and Tatiana had always moved Alex together, but it was also true that she was always tied up.

  “You’re not going to do anything stupid?”

  “You have a friggin’ knife and it’s not like I’m in any position to out run you here,” Alex said. “Plus I’ve given you something to think about and I’m betting that you are a smart girl.”

  Susan took a deep breath and grudgingly got up from the chair.

  As Alex watched, the woman began to adjust the ropes just like they had done before. It was an intricate process whereby loops around both of her wrists drew her hands closer together as her arms were released from the bedframe. When she was done, Alex’s hands were clasped firmly in front of her and secured to a rope around her waist. Then her ankles were hobbled before the remaining ropes were removed.

  Susan helped her up and cautiously led her over to the small bathroom. Alex turned around in the constrained space and silently waited. Susan reached around, grabbing the edge of the waist band of the leggings and slo
wly pulled them down.

  At first Alex thought about making some smart ass remark, but she resisted the urge. She’d planted a seed in the young woman’s head, one that she knew she was struggling with and didn’t want to screw that up. So she left Susan alone with her thoughts.

  When she was done she stood up and waited as Susan pulled the leggings back up. There was a brief moment, when Susan was still slightly bent over, that Alex dropped down and then exploded forward, knocking Susan backward into the bedroom. As they fell, Alex grabbed hold of the woman, pulling her tight against her. When they crashed to the ground Alex head butted her, knocking the fight out of her for the briefest of moments, but it was short lived. Alex fought to gain control over her, but Susan recovered quickly and they began thrashing about on the floor.

  In the ensuing struggle the chair and table next to the bed were knocked violently to the floor. Susan’s glass shattered on the ground, but more importantly the pocket knife now lay a mere three feet from Alex.

  She fought valiantly to make her way over to it, but once Susan had fully recovered from the suddenness of the attack she quickly regained control of Alex.

  “You goddamn bitch,” Susan screamed, as she grabbed Alex by the hair and forcibly dragged her back to the bed.

  Alex continued to thrash about the bed, until Susan delivered a devastating blow to her stomach, causing her eyes to go wide and knocking the wind out of her. A moment later the woman had managed to secure Alex back to the bed.

  She set the chair back up and sat down; breathing hard.

  “I should fucking kill you right now,” Susan said angrily.

  “Hey, I had to try,” Alex said with a smile.

  Susan reached up and wiped away some blood from her cheek; were a piece of broken glass had scratched her.

  “Hey, maybe Tatiana will even kiss your boo-boo when she gets back. You know, when you try and explain how you almost let her precious toy get away.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Sorry, Susan, if you weren’t good enough for your own daddy I’m certainly not interested.”

  “You played me, didn’t you?”

  “You didn’t think I’d ever let someone put their hands on me and live to tell, did you? Christ, for claiming to be such a little badass you are really fucking naïve.”

  “God, I really hope she makes you suffer before she kills you,” Susan said, as she got up and began picking the glass up off of the floor.

  “Or I was telling you the truth after all and it’s really your days that are numbered and not mine. Either way I wouldn’t let myself get too comfortable.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Susan said, as she leaned over and rammed the gag back into Alex’s mouth, then pulled the hood back over her head.

  A moment later she stormed out of the room, slamming the door shut behind her.

  Alex laid motionless in the bed, her eyes closed, as she brought her emotions back under control. Relieving old memories, especially those, was not something she enjoyed doing. In a way, it was rather odd that the only human being she had ever shared them with was someone who wanted to kill her. It took a while to get things wrapped up neatly in her head and stored back away in bad memory box; the one which she kept in the deep, dark recesses of her brain. All the while she took solace in the comforting cool feeling of the glass shard that she now held firmly in her right fist.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  “Hey, babe,” Vanessa Miller said, when Hutch answered the phone. “Can you talk?”

  “Yeah,” he replied, as he looked out into the squad room where Maguire and Antonucci were having coffee. “I’m alone right now.”

  “I am so sorry about before,” she said. “I just thought you were calling for a little Sunday morning fun.”

  “I know,” he replied sheepishly. “I lost track of what day it was. I didn’t even think about it till it was too late.”

  “Did anyone hear me?”

  “No, not really, I don’t think,” he said. “Besides, it doesn’t matter. I mean we’re adults.”

  “I know, but you were working,” she said.

  “It’s okay, don’t worry about it. Were you able to run that plate for me?”

  “Yeah,” Vanessa said. “It comes back to a 2012 Volvo S60 registered to an Annabelle Birch. No criminal record on file. The address comes back to a residence in Ithiel Falls.”

  “Where’s that?” he asked.

  “Over on the west side of the state,” she replied. “It’s about a half hour from Stowe. You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “Alex is missing,” he said quietly.

  “You’re not serious, are you?”

  “Yes, I am,” he replied. “No one has seen her since Friday night.”

  “Holy shit,” Vanessa replied. “And you think this car was involved?”

  “We don’t know, but it was in the area around the same time that they picked up a ping from her cell phone.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Listen, can you email me over a copy of that printout?”

  “Sure, you want me to run the registered owner and send you a copy of her driver’s license as well?”

  “Yeah, that would be great, Vee.”

  “No problem, just give me a few minutes and I will email them over to you.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  “If you need anything else, just call.”

  “I will,” he replied. “Hey, are we still on for next weekend?”

  “Oh hell yeah,” she said with a laugh. “I’m going through withdrawal.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that this morning.”

  “Mmmmmm, just wait till you see what I have in store for you.”

  “Promises, promises, baby.”

  “Stay focused, studly,” she said.

  “I will and I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Okay, hon,” she said. “Bye.”

  Hutch hung up the phone and pulled up the email program on his laptop and waited.

  “How are we doing?” Maguire asked from the doorway.

  “Sergeant Miller is sending us over the information. The registered owner of the vehicle is an Annabelle Birch.”

  “Does that name mean anything to you?”

  “No,” Hutch replied, as he typed the name into the computer, “No criminal record in Vermont and it looks as if we don’t have any hits on our local arrest system either.”

  “So we are back to square one,” Maguire replied.

  “For the time being it looks that way.”

  Maguire glanced down at his watch. Time was slipping away from them at a rapid pace. At some point he would have to decide whether they would stay longer or head back to New York. He could manage to be away for another day or two, but after that he had have to make an appearance back in the city. He’d only been in the commissioner’s seat for a few months and there was still a lot to learn, especially with the summer just around the corner.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the audible ping that signaled an email had come in.

  “That was quick,” Hutch said, as he clicked the button to open the program.

  “I guess this is the part where I say a little prayer.”

  “Couldn’t hurt,” Hutch said, as he clicked on the attached files.

  “What couldn’t hurt?” Antonucci asked, as he walked into the office and sat down.

  “We just got the DMV records from Vermont,” Maguire explained.

  “Anything useful?”

  “Car’s registered to Annabelle Birch, 1314 Chipmunk Drive, Ithiel Falls, Vermont,” Hutch said, as he read the registration document.

  “Chipmunk Drive?” Antonucci asked. “Who the heck names these streets?”

  “A bored government employee, apparently,” Hutch said, as he continued to scan the document. “Car is a 2012 Volvo S60, copper in color. She’s the only owner on file.”

  “Anything else?” Maguire asked.

  “Checking her license now,” Hutch replied, as he
selected the other attached document.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” he said softly, as he leaned back in the seat. “We have a big problem.”

  “What’s wrong?” Maguire asked.

  Hutch turned the computer around so that the two men could see the screen. To Maguire and Antonucci the image on the license showed the smiling face of an attractive young girl with brown hair.

  “That’s Susan Waltham,” he said. “She’s Penobscot’s very own serial killer."

  Maguire glanced back down at the image, staring into the woman’s eyes and suddenly felt a cold chill run through him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  It had taken awhile for Alex to carefully reposition the glass shard in her hand. Despite the urgency of the situation, carelessness was not an option. She knew that she would never get a second chance at this; so she made sure that she had a good hold of it at all times.

  Fortunately for her, Susan hadn’t been paying close attention when she had retied her to the bed. As a result, the length of rope, which held her right hand in place, went directly over the palm of her hand and not behind it, providing her much easier access.

  Alex couldn’t actually see where she was cutting, thanks to the hood, so she kept her eyes closed and did it by feeling; holding the glass shard tightly between her thumb and her index finger, as she imagined the strands of rope in her mind. The process itself was painstakingly slow to the point that she could literally hear each individual strand as it was being severed.

  Several times she’d had to pause, as her hand cramped up from holding the glass so tightly. When that happened she would transfer the shard back into her palm and cover it protectively with her fingers. Once the soreness had abated she would begin the whole process over again.

  It had not been without incident. On her second attempt, as she tried to negotiate the glass from fingers to her palm, the glass slipped from her grasp.

  Alex felt her heart sink, as she saw her hopes for escape immediately dashed, but then realized that she hadn’t heard it hit the floor. Then she felt a sharp pinch against her skin and knew that it had gotten caught between the rope and her wrist. With judicious concentration she managed to stretch her fingers far enough so that, with a little bit of wrist contortion, she was able to slip the shard back into her palm.