He cut a piece of the cake and poured a glass of champagne.
Ron seated himself on one of the chairs at the dining room table. In silence, he ate the cake and sipped the champagne.
He’d worked hard to get where he was, earning every achievement, every penny his writing had brought him. It felt good. Sure there were times when he’d wondered if it was ever going to happen, but it finally had. Now, it felt good to reap the rewards. The hard work wasn’t over though. He knew that. Each story he told, each book he wrote, required research. That meant more women in the basement. And every woman that came into his basement was a lot of work. Fortunately, it was work he enjoyed. After all, if he didn’t enjoy it, Bethany wouldn’t be down there now. She wasn’t research for a story. She was just for his entertainment.
Thinking of Bethany turned his thoughts to Nicole. He didn’t know if Bethany could take her place. Could anyone ever take the place of his beloved Nicole? He doubted it. But it sure would be nice to have a companion again.
Halfway through the slice of cake, he sunk into the precious memories he had of Nicole. He could easily recall her face, staring at him shyly from across the kitchen table. Many times he’d caught her stealing glances at him, shy and bashful looks given on the sly. He had been certain that she had affectionate and passionate feelings for him, just as he had for her. Their love burned hot. He could feel it from across the table, the heat radiating back and forth between them like an intense fire that couldn’t be extinguished.
He could still recall the smell of her hair, the sweetness of her breath, and he could feel the fullness of her lips as the pressed against his. He could almost feel her skin, delicate and soft. The memory of her body tensing and her back arching as she climaxed beneath him sprang into his mind. It was something he thought of often, and just like every other time he remembered the experience, he became excited.
By the time he’d finished his cake and champagne, he had a throbbing erection and was eager to do something about it.
He put the plate and glass in the sink and headed down to the basement.
8
The line outside the bookstore was impressively long. I would’ve never believed that so many people would flock to buy the book and obtain the autograph of a murderer. But then again, a lot of convicted serial killers sold their work from behind bars, so there were people in the world willing to own a madman’s art. At least the people waiting in line outside the bookstore didn’t know they were buying the work of a killer.
I sat in my car, parked across the street from the front entrance of the store. Though I’d been sitting there for two and a half hours, I’d yet to catch a glimpse of Ron.
My palms were sweaty, and my armpits were quickly become equally moist. In spite of taking an extra Xanax before leaving the motel, my nerves were shot.
To top that off, I needed to pee. It seemed stopping at a drive-thru for a large Pepsi wasn’t such a wise decision. Lesson learned.
The whole point of crawling out of the motel room and fighting the traffic to come downtown to the bookstore was to work up the courage to go inside and look at Ron, to see him in person without letting him see me. Self-prescribed confrontational therapy. But there I sat, in my car, unable to bring myself to do as much as reach for the door handle.
Even though I was unable to conjure up the nerve to go inside, I considered the day a success. I’d actually made it to the bookstore, which is more than I would’ve been able to do before my stint at Alpine Grove. So there was that.
But even though I’d made progress and had taken initiative toward getting well, I was still disappointed in myself. Damn it, I wanted—no, I needed to move on, to forget that Ron Redwine existed, walking the same streets and breathing the same air that I was. If I was going to piece my life back together, I had to do this.
For the next hour, I did my best to talk myself into moving my ass, to opening the door and stepping out of the car, to crossing the street and stepping inside the store. Yet I continued to sit behind the wheel without moving a muscle.
Cursing myself, I kept my eyes trained on the front door, never looking away for more than a second or two at a time.
As the minutes ticked by, I became so captivated by the front door of the store that I was unaware of anything else. Traffic whirred past, but I didn’t see or hear it. The line of people waiting to meet Ron dwindled down one person at a time until it no longer existed, but I didn’t notice. I’d fallen into a trance, hypnotized by the shiny metal frame of the glass the door, a metal frame that reflected the sunlight like the blade of a knife reflected the light of a bare dim bulb.
I was so transfixed on the door that minutes would pass without my eyes blinking and without me even noticing. When my lids finally did blink closed, it felt as though the insides of my eyelids were lined with sandpaper.
For a couple of seconds, I didn’t realize that Ron had come outside. I saw the door open, was aware on some level that someone had emerged from the building, but it wasn’t until I noticed the shoes that I snapped out of my reverie and looked up at the man who’d ruined my life.
He looked exactly the way I remembered him. His hair was graying at the temple and he’d gained what looked to be about twenty or thirty pounds, but there was no mistaking that this was in fact the man who’d ruined my life. This was Ron.
It was odd to see him out in the world, interacting with other people as if he were just another person on the street. Had I not known him, had I not been held captive in his basement and tormented by him for months as he murdered numerous women only feet away from me, I would’ve been able to see him as others saw him, as a tall, handsome man who was clean-cut and well-dressed. An intelligent man who’d found great success as a writer. A man who was articulate and polite, friendly to everyone. A man who was quick to flash a smile.
But I did know him. I’d seen him drenched in the blood of his victims. I’d watched as he raped a corpse before hacking it to bits and carrying it out of his house in trash bags. I’d seen him beat the hell out of a woman who tried to escape his clutches. I’d seen him mutilate a young woman before causing her to miscarry her unborn child.
I didn’t find him handsome. I found him hideous and repulsive, disgusting even at his best.
As I watched him hold the door open for an obviously smitten young woman, I added polite to the list of things the rest of the world saw when looking at him.
No matter how hard I tried, I simply couldn’t see him that way. All I saw when I looked at him was blood and gore, anger and rage, torture and brutality. While the rest of the world saw a well put together and debonair author, I saw a sadistic madman.
The young woman who had followed Ron from the bookstore seemed to be flirting with him. She used her left hand—undoubtedly to display the absence of a wedding ring—to push a strand of her long, blond hair behind her ear while smiling broadly up at Ron, who happily smiled back.
That’s what I saw with my eyes. But in my mind, I saw him beat her as she screamed and begged for her life. I saw her blond hair turn red as it became saturated with her own blood. I saw him dismember her lifeless body after sexually assaulting her corpse. It was a shame I had to see that, and an even bigger shame that she couldn’t.
Reading their body language, I continued to watch the two have their brief but telling conversation on the sidewalk in front of the bookstore. Finally, the young woman reached out and grabbed Ron’s hand, cupping it in hers. She flipped it over until his palm was facing up. Then she produced a pen from her pocket and wrote on his skin. I didn’t need to see what she’d written to know what it was. She’d given him her phone number. If she was lucky, he’d never dial it.
Ron looked down at his hand and smiled.
The woman said something to him before turning and walking away. Aware that his eyes were following her, she twisted her hips and bounced her hair with every step, sashaying her way down the street. That was quite a show she put on for this man she didn’t know. She had no idea t
he kind of danger in which she had just placed herself.
I turned my attention back to Ron, who stood watching the woman walk away from him. The look on his face was one that I’d seen before. He wanted her, but not for the reasons she expected. She was probably looking for a one-night stand, maybe even a casual relationship in which she got the joys and bragging rights of sleeping with a somewhat famous writer. He was looking to torture and kill her, adding her name to a long list of others that had come and gone before her.
When Ron turned and walked to his car, I became aware of the pain in my hands. My fists had become so tightly clenched my fingernails had dug into the flesh of my palms. Glancing down, I relaxed my fingers and saw eight crescent-shaped indentations on each hand.
Afraid to lose sight of him, I quickly looked back at Ron, who was now getting in his vehicle, a nondescript silver SUV. There were hundreds just like it in the St. Louis area. How very clever of him. He knew better than to stand out from the crowd.
Without thinking, I started my car. When Ron pulled away from the curb, I swung out into traffic, made a quick U-turn, and followed him, taking great care to stay far enough back to avoid detection.
I wasn’t sure what compelled me to follow him. Maybe it was the fear that Ron was going to kill the flirtatious blond woman. Or maybe it was the more likely reason, which was that I had a morbid obsession with Ron. I had to know where he lived and how he filled the hours of his days. Know your enemy. That seemed to be my new motto. But if ever there was an enemy I should know, it was Ron.
Following him through the city was no problem. It was easy to blend into the dense traffic and remain hidden from his view. But once we were out of the city, it was harder to hide. The farther away from downtown St. Louis we got, the more sparse traffic became. I did the best I could, falling back to put more distance between us. However, if we kept driving, pretty soon I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the chase without being noticed.
A thought popped into my mind that made my heart pound. What if he knew I was following him? What if he’d already noticed me and was simply leading me out of the city and into the country where he could kill me and dispose of my body at his leisure? That was certainly something Ron would do.
Before I had a chance to work myself up into a full-blown panic attack, Ron’s right turn signal began to flash. I was forced to slow down as he turned off the two-lane blacktop highway and onto a gravel road.
My heart sank because I couldn’t follow him down the road, but my spirits soared again when I slowly drove past the turn off and realized that it wasn’t a road at all. It was a long gravel driveway, complete with a fancy black mailbox at the end. The box didn’t have a name on it, just the address.
As I passed by on the road, I craned my neck to see what lay at the end of the long driveway. It set back away from the road, but I could see a white, two-story house with an attached garage nestled among the trees and steeped in shadows.
I continued down the road more than a half mile to the next driveway, which was another long, gravel path that led so far back into the woods I couldn’t even see the house, and then I turned around to head back to the motel.
On my way back, I reduced my speed as I passed in order to get a better look at what was presumably Ron’s house.
Confirming my suspicions, Ron’s car was now parked in the garage, the large door rolling down behind it. This was definitely his house. And I could see why he’d picked it. It was surrounded by a dense forest, with the nearest neighbors half a mile away. The house set back far enough away from the road that no screams could be heard by anyone who happened to be walking or bicycling past. It was close enough to the city to have a broad selection of victims, while at the same time it was far enough away from the hustle and the bustle to get away with it. It was the perfect place for a murderer to do as he wished without fear of being caught.
After stopping off at a liquor store, I went back to the motel room and performed the usual routine. I locked the door behind, wedged a chair under the knob, and checked the bathroom. It was probably unnecessary this time, since I knew Ron was at home, but there was still a slight chance that he’d gotten into the room while I was at the liquor store. Was that scenario farfetched and unlikely? Probably. But it was also possible, and I wasn’t willing to take that chance.
Satisfied that I was alone, I sat on the bed with a fresh bottle of vodka nestled between my legs, flipped on the television, and searched for something to watch.
When my fingers finally stopped clicking buttons on the remote—not because I had found something to watch, but because I was tired of looking through the same few channels—I popped the top on the bottle and drank.
The familiar and welcome burn of the alcohol warmed my throat, leaving a trail of fire all the way down into the pit of my stomach, where it would eventually turn sour. Until then, I would just sit there with my back against the headboard and my legs stretched out in front of me, waiting for it to numb my mind.
Halfway through the bottle, the news came on. Somewhere in my muddled thoughts, I considered changing the channel. I didn’t want to watch anything depressing, and you couldn’t get more depressing than the news. At one point, I thought for sure I had changed the channel, but after the commercial break, the dark-skinned news anchor with the big hair was looking at me once again.
As I listened to reports of taxpayers complaining of unfilled potholes in the streets and the terrible smells coming from the local landfill, my eyelids grew heavy. Each blink lasted longer than the one before it until finally, it was nearly impossible to keep my eyes open. At first, I fought it. As soon as I realized that my eyelids had fallen shut, I’d force them open again, only to ask myself why I was fighting to stay awake. Eventually I gave up and let them remain closed.
As I sat on the bed, caught between the waking world and that of sleep, I heard the news anchor mention the local writer and his successful book signing. Without any direction from me, my eyelids sprung open and my eyes struggled to focus on the video clip playing out on the screen.
Wide awake now, I leaned forward on the bed, squinting to better see the details of the images before me.
There was Ron, sitting on one side of a table that contained stacks of his latest book. On the other side of the table was a line of his fans, people who had no idea that the things they read about in his books had really happened.
The camera cut away to a close-up of Ron greeting his fans one by one, smiling and chatting and signing his name in the book he’d written at the cost of human lives.
He looked happy. His eyes sparkled. His smile was broad and genuine. His skin was radiant, his teeth white and perfect.
While I was holed up in a rat’s nest of a motel drinking cheap vodka straight from the bottle to try and kill the memories that haunted me—memories of things he’d done—he was laughing. While I was alone, isolated from the people I’d loved more than anything, he was surrounded by adoring fans. While I wanted nothing more than to die, he was enjoying life to the fullest.
It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fucking fair!
I threw the bottle of vodka across the room where it hit the wall, knocking a hole in the thin paneling before falling to the floor and spilling onto the stained carpet.
Furious, I fell forward on the bed and beat my fists against the mattress, pummeling it again and again until my strength failed me. Then I rolled onto my side and cried.
It was a soul-wrenching moment, lying among the smelly old blankets in that cheap motel room. Before that, I’d thought myself to be all cried out, but from somewhere down deep came a flood of tears that lasted for more than an hour, accompanied by body-rocking sobs. With no shame left and no one to see me anyway, I was free to let it all out.
And that’s exactly what I did.
The next morning, my eyes were swollen and sore from the previous night’s cry. With the curtains pulled together tightly on the windows, I couldn’t see the bright morning sunlight,
but I could feel it. I knew it was out there, announcing the arrival of yet another long and miserable day in my lonely life.
I dragged my ass out of bed and got in the shower, trying to wash away the sorrow. It was while I was washing my hair that the idea came to me. It wasn’t yet a complete idea, just a fragment that I would spend the next few days rolling around in my mind, molding and shaping it, adding to it until it became a fully formed and hopefully perfect plan.
∞
After a three-hour search across town, I’d found only two pay phones, neither of which worked. The first one I’d come to was missing the handset and two of the buttons off the keypad, while the second one had everything except a dial tone. Frustrated, I was left with no choice but to buy a cell phone. And while I was buying a cell phone, I bought a few other things I was going to need.
Back in the motel room, I dropped the shopping bags onto the bed and after performing the usual room check, I began to pull out the items, spreading them across the bed one at a time.
I opened the box that contained the laptop first. After that, I wrestled with the plastic packaging to get to the cell phone. It was one of the disposable types, the kind where you buy units of time as you needed them instead of paying a monthly bill. No contract with a company, no way to be traced. I plugged the phone and the computer into the wall to charge the batteries while I sorted through the rest of the items.
One article at a time, I pulled the clothing from the bags, removed the tags, folded them neatly, and placed them inside the new duffle bag. I then stuffed all of the tags and packaging material from the electronic devices and clothing into an empty store bag, which I would later burn.
This was the groundwork for my plan. Everything had to be ready to go come Thursday, the day I would begin to take back my life.
Three hours later, I sat in the back corner booth of a McDonald’s, nibbling on a Big Mac and fries while using the free Wi-Fi to set up my cell phone and buy a few more items I needed that couldn’t be bought in a store.
Held, Pushed, and 22918 (3 Complete Novels) Page 23