by Riley Moreno
“When it’s done,” she started. “Will you take me away?”
He pressed his fingers under her chin and gently lifted her face to hers.
“Is that what you want?”
Julie nodded through her tears.
“Yes. Let’s just go anywhere and be normal. Anywhere but…”
Anywhere but the woods, she could never go back there. Every forest seemed like a prison just waiting to claim her. The trees were not a shield. They were confining bars that meant to close her off from the world. Julie wanted to hide in open air and feel the wind in her face and his arms around her.
And maybe, someday, she could really love him again.
“Anywhere you want, Juliet. We’ll go there when this is all over.”
She slipped back to the pillows, and Ethan followed, keeping her close. His breath poured over her hair, and Julie started to feel somewhat happier as she thought ahead. Let it be the beach. Let it be a place of open sand and sea where they could live a simple life and forget everything bad.
“Can I tell you something?” Julie whispered.
“Tell me anything,” he said as he caressed her hair.
Julie took a deep breath.
“I’m scared, Ethan.”
“I know. Juliet, you can always change---”
“No. There’s no going back. I gave my word, my word to Kim. I… I’m going to do this for her.”
He kissed her head and stroked her hair.
“Okay. Then I’m in it with you every step of the way.”
Exhausted, they fell asleep in each other’s arms. Julie dreamed of a pier that stretched towards the sea. She waited at the edge and drank in the air. The wind rushed through her hair as a small cry shattered the silence.
“Mommy!”
In her dream, she saw a little boy that looked just like Ethan rushing towards her, and she scooped him up in her arms. The boy was a miracle. Because she had survived and finally given herself to this man that she truly loved. Ethan walked towards her with sandaled feet and a smile. In her mind, Julie took the boy’s hand in hers and walked towards him. She was almost in his arms when he turned away. Julie tried to bring his eyes back to hers, but when she turned him around, it was not Ethan.
It was Carter McCord.
“You have a big mouth, cunt.”
Julie gasped and reached for the child, but she could not feel his tiny hand. As her eyes whipped around, she finally saw the little boy reaching for her across the shoulders of a form with long red hair. It glanced back, and she saw that it was Kim, and her lost friend kicked off her shoes with a smirk.
“You don’t deserve this, Jules.”
And she slipped off the pier and fell into the ocean’s current. Julie rushed to the edge and felt her hand grazing the waves as her possible child was lost. She kept reaching as crueler hands pressed her body into the slabs of wood and tore her clothes from her body.
“Hold still,” Carter hissed into her ear. “Let’s just have some fun.”
He started to penetrate her, and Julie looked into the rolling surf as she screamed Ethan’s name.
“I’m right here, Juliet. I’m right here.”
She had to blink to believe his words, but when she knew it was him, she clasped him closer and cried into his chest.
“I thought I lost you. I can’t lose you!”
Ethan shushed her and stroked her back. Julie struggled to fight the dream, the nightmare, and as it faded, as she focused on Ethan’s arms around her body, she relaxed, and he ran his fingers through her hair.
“You’ll never lose me. I promise.”
She shivered against him.
“You want to tell me what the dream was about?”
Julie could not tell him all of it. It would hurt his heart too much if he knew she dreamt of a child that they were destined to lose. And Kim? Her ghost had to be nagging at her brain because of what she now had to say to the world. So she just lingered in his arms and said choked on the name Carter McCord.
“I won’t let him hurt you again,” Ethan said. “I… Juliet?”
She looked into his warm eyes and saw him smile.
“If you can’t do it…”
Julie was not sure if she could, but still she vowed to try.
“Just don’t let me fall,” she pleaded.
“Never happening.”
10
“I don’t fucking believe this.”
Morales stood just behind the prosecution’s table and glared along with Leo Barber. There they were the bastard scum and his brand new son-in-law, smirking behind their fresh shaves in their three-piece suits. Their women sat with handkerchiefs clutched in their perfectly manicured hands. The cop had no doubt that they would put on quite as show of crying and carrying on as the defense attorneys plead the case that these men were guilty of nothing more than a little fun and that the missing Kimberly Beyer was not gone because of anything that they had done.
The “defense” attorneys.
“Leo?”
Morales’ whisper drew Leo around, and she pulled him to a corner of the courtroom.
“Vivian Porter, for real?”
Leo grimaced and straightened his tie.
“Last minute addition, these fucks are playing to win.”
Morales narrowed her eyes at the woman’s mocha skin and the red braids that were tucked behind the collar of the thousand dollars Chanel suit that hugged her curves in all the right places. She was a stunning, statuesque woman with a reputation for getting what she wanted when face-to-face with judge and jury. Morales had seen her in action, and she knew that the lawyer was like a dog whose teeth, once tinged with blood, would attack again and again until her opponent was nothing but a mangled carcass at her feet. Sure she was vicious, but the court record documented her efforts in service of battered wives who could not take another beating and plunged a carving knife into sleeping spouses. Or she plead the cases of women who embezzled because they were not given as much as their male counterparts. She was known for dramatic pauses and wild gestures every time she took center stage and addressed a judge, a jury, a witness.
And the cameras, especially the cameras.
“How can she...?”
Morales’ voice trailed off, and she tried to make sense of Vivian Porter swimming with the slime. Not every client she represented was a victim of circumstance. Two years ago, a Lisa Olson stood accused of molesting her fifteen-year-old student. Morales got the sense that the kid was being straight when he told his story, but Vivian Porter turned the kid into the aggressor, and the teacher got off and went on to write a book about how she had been raped when she was just trying to do her job. The cop never bought the story much less the book, but it fit Vivian’s MO. She was never one to shy away from a chance to prove that the justice system was horribly biased when it came to the fairer sex.
So why the hell was she defending these two rapists and murderers?
“A pay day?” Leo asked. “Chance to grab some headlines, who the fuck knows?”
Morales saw the worry in Leo’s eyes as Vivian laughed with Carter and pinched his cheek. The sound and the sight made Morales’ skin crawl, but seeing Leo so worried scared her even more.
“Leo?”
He took her hand and lowered his head closer to hers.
“She’s gonna come through for us, right?”
Morales was slow to answer. Since the day in his office, all of her conversations with Julie were cordial but cold. The girl was agreeing to the plan, but she did so with dead eyes that rarely made contact with the cop’s. Whenever they met in person, Ethan Graff was always at her side, holding her hand tightly and there was no mistaking the rage just boiling under his surface. Morales had to worry about the moment when Julie would finally have to testify. Ethan Graff would be there with a tight jaw, maybe bruised, maybe not, and Morales feared that he would leap over the aisle and fight any defender, man or woman, who dared to make her remember their version of events.
“Connie?”
Morales nodded and patted Leo’s arm as Vivian Porter approached them with a slick smile.
“Mr. Barber,” she said in a voice like honey as she extended her hand. Leo took it with a sniff and gave it just one quick shake.
“Ms. Porter.”
Vivian left his fingers and studied Morales.
“And you’re Consuelo Morales,” she said.
Morales did not like the sound of her name on the woman’s tongue. She wanted to grab her by the throat and demand to know how she could sit beside the monsters. But she had to keep her cool. One loose cannon was enough for Leo to worry about.
Still…
“I know of you too, Ms. Porter, didn’t think I’d see you on their side.”
Vivian looked back at her clients with a strange smirk. Carter McCord sat like the angel he was not as his wife smoothed a fallen eyelash away from his cheek. Balancing it on her finger, she whispered something into Carter’s ear, and his mouth curled into a smile. He blew on her hand and made a wish.
It can’t come true. She’ll never feel safe again if…
“Let’s just say there’s more to the story.”
With that, Vivian turned back to her table, and Morales felt like she had been punched in the gut as she grabbed Leo’s arm.
“What the hell does that mean?” she demanded.
“I don’t---”
“Julie doesn’t need any surprises. Was there something we missed?”
It did not seem possible. Her investigation was beyond thorough. Maybe they needed Julie’s testimony to connect the dots into the picture they wanted, but that would be enough.
Wouldn’t it?
“Leo?”
The room started to hush as the judge was about to be announced, and he quickly shook his head.
“We’re golden, Connie. I got this.”
Judge Theresa Warner assumed her place behind the bench and pounded her gavel.
“Is the state prepared?” she asked.
Leo shot Morales a quick smile and stood to attention.
“Leopold Barber, your honor.”
Warner nodded for him to proceed, and Leo studied the jury of five men and seven women carefully. He made a point to meet each person’s eyes, and then he cracked his knuckles with a smile.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I want to start by thanking you. I know your time is precious. I know that many of you must have families that you’re already missing in the service of these proceedings. And I sympathize with that.”
Right off the bat he was bringing them in close to get them on his side.
“But sometimes… sometimes we have to put our own troubles aside. Lights?”
The room went dark, and he clicked his mouse towards the monitor.
“This is one of those times.”
Leo stayed silent as he started his presentation. The first slide showed Kim bound and blindfolded. Another click of his mouse, and everyone saw her eyes. There was a sweating back on top of her, but there was nowhere else to look but Kim’s tormented stare. It was as if she was pleading with anyone who might see the picture to save her from the rape, and Morales shivered in her seat and blinked back her own tears at the sight of the streaks on Kim’s face.
“Awful,” Leo said in a low whisper as he sadly shook his head. He cast a quick glance back at the jury. Like Morales, he saw their sickened faces.
“But this wasn’t who she really was.”
Morales looked over her shoulder. She had not seen Amanda Beyer creep into the courtroom at the last possible moment. But here she was, and when Leo moved to the next slide of the girl, bright-eyed and smiling at a picnic, she heard the girl’s mother weep for all that she had lost.
“This was Kimberly Beyer,” Leo continued. “She was a bright and shining star looking forward to the future.”
He stayed with the image of Kim smiling and waited while it washed over the jurors. Morales saw them relaxing into this version of Kim.
But the Leo pulled the rug out from under them.
“This, ladies and gentlemen, was her future.”
The entire courtroom erupted at the sight of Kim strung up to the tips of her toes. Her naked body was bruised, and her eyes were still pleading for someone to save her.
Morales was counting on Leo to get the job done.
“Kimberly Beyer was taken, captured. And she was forced to do things that no one should ever have to even contemplate.”
Leo clicked through slides of Kim. Kim tied to a bed with a cock jammed up her backside while she was forced to suck on someone else. Kim hung upside down, blindfolded again, while another man licked her cunt. Kim, eyes slammed shut in an effort to escape the horror, with hands all over her, a freeze frame on her bruised nipples, and her silent cry for release.
Leo clicked back to the desktop, and in the suddenly comforting light of scattered icons, he returned his eyes to the jury.
“I know, ladies and gentlemen. I’d be happier if I never had to see it either.”
Now he turned his gaze to the defense table. Carter McCord and Geoffrey Troxel made a point of keeping their eyes on their hands, but Leo demanded attention from the accused, and he slammed his fist into the defense table.
“Because it’s hard to forget.”
As Leo backed away, Morales fixed her gaze on the monsters, but they had no reaction to the truth that was their crime.
Leo turned back to the jury with a sad smile.
“It’s impossible to forget,” Leo said. “And we, all of us, we need to focus hard on the facts. You’ve seen them. I…”
Morales saw the jury cringe as Leo threatened to bring the images back to life. But Leo lowered his mouse and just shook his head.
“No. I…”
His voice wavered slightly, but Morales knew that he was playing to his captive crowd. When he was truly on the verge of outrage, he really trembled, and his voice was deeper, angrier. Like her, he had seen too much to pretend that the horror did not exist. But he kept his emotions in check when it came to work. And, on so many levels, when it came to her. When their eyes met, she remembered his promise.
And they’d be torn apart for everything they ever did to you before their dicks were sliced off and stuffed into their fucking mouths. I’d let them live, Connie. Live like that so that they’d never be able to hurt anyone again. And their sentence would be that empty place between their fucking legs and their asses raped until they wished they were dead.
In spite of how awful it sounded, her heart buzzed at the thought that he would make that happen for her. But she wished that he could do the same for Julie Edwards, a lamb soon to be sent to Vivian Porter’s slaughter at the expense of his master plan.
Leo, we can’t make her do this? She’s still so scared. Can’t you find another way?
He pressed his hand to the jury box and let out a perfectly rehearsed sigh.
“But pictures?”
He smiled provocatively at a weepy female juror. Morales was not jealous, just annoyed.
“What is it that they say?”
Leo leaned closer to the teary juror.
“A thousand words?”
The juror blinked away. Leo looked sad, concerned, but when his eyes briefly met the cop’s, he shot her a quick wink. Morales looked away, and then she saw Carter McCord clutching the quivering hand of his brand new bride. She had to wonder if Melissa McCord, nee Troxel, knew what she was in for when she uttered her vows. So her dad was a freak? No avoiding that. It was a kind of destiny. But somehow, impossibly, Geoffrey Troxel had hooked up with the worst kind of kindred spirit. And what they had done was unforgivable.
Yet Melissa held her sick husband’s hand.
Leo sighed and cracked his knuckles.
“Well we have more than pictures.”
Morales bit down on her lip. The more than pictures meant Julie. She had to be so s
cared at having to face the men who had hurt her and murdered her best friend. But maybe she could do it. Maybe she could look them in the eyes, confident that they would never harm her again.
She deserved that and so much more.
At least she had Ethan Graff to steady her where she trembled.
“And in short order, ladies and gentleman, we will show you that these men violated too many lives to count.”
Now he laid it on thick and slammed his palms to the jury box.
“And this young woman!”
He clicked his mouse, and there was Kimberly Beyer, smiling, confident, happy. The arm that curled around her waist was unmistakably Julie’s. Morales moaned at the thought, the reality, of just how much Julie wanted to hold her friend again. But these fucks made sure that that would never happen. Kimberly Beyer was in an unmarked grave. Julie would never feel the warmth of her arms again.
“This is a human being that was made to suffer and die because they are not normal men. They don’t love as you and I do.”
Leo glanced at Morales again before turning back to the jury.
“These creatures can’t love. Our witnesses will drive that point home. Ladies and gentleman…”
His voice trailed off, and he held his face in his hands. The corner of Morales’ eye turned to Vivian Porter. Her smirk was wide and sure, but then Morales saw Leo smoothing his hands down the front of his suit. He straightened his silk tie and managed kind eyes for the jury.
“Now for some cold hard facts…”
He spoke for nearly an hour, detailing the histories of the men, their fortunes, the fact that two girls vanished one June day. She could see the jurors trying to focus but also squirming in their seats at the prospect that there was no end in sight. Leo loved to hear himself talk. Sometimes it served him well; most times she just wanted him to get to the fucking point.
“I just ask you to sit tight,” Leo said. “The truth will come out”
He smiled once more then started to turn on his heel.
“Thank you, ladies and gentleman.”
Leo’s next wink did nothing to put her fears to rest. As Vivian Porter stood, she just looked too confident. She had daggers ready to plunge into Leo’s argument.
And she did not waste any time.