Beverly Barton 3 Book Bundle

by Beverly Barton

  “Good. I’ve invited the new preacher. He’s not married. And I’ve also invited Helen and her son Raymond. Raymond’s divorce is final, you know. Helen and I agree that it’s high time he started dating again.”

  “Good night, Mom. See you Sunday.”

  “Yes, dear, good night.”

  Bernie hung up the phone. When she told Robyn that their mother expected them for Sunday dinner, and that she was providing each of them with a potential husband, Robyn would throw a hissy fit. But in the end, she, like Bernie, would go to dinner and endure yet another matchmaking scheme concocted by a desperate grandmother wannabe.

  Jim Norton unlocked the front door of his rental duplex on Washington Street. While driving through town, he’d noticed that a great many of the streets in Adams Landing were named for presidents. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe. Before entering the house, he reached inside and felt for a light switch, which he quickly found. He had rented this place, sight unseen, fully furnished and move-in ready. He stepped inside, dropped his suitcase to the carpeted floor, then closed and locked the door behind himself.

  Scanning the living room, he noted the place looked like most furnished rentals. Clean and neat. Furniture, drapes, and carpets slightly worn. Not a home, just a place for a guy to hang his hat. He hadn’t had a real home in a long time. Not since he and Mary Lee divorced. He could have bought a house or even rented a nicer place and furnished it himself, but what was the point? While working as a lieutenant on the Memphis police force, he hadn’t spent much time at home. Slept and bathed there. And occasionally ate there. If he’d been given joint custody of Kevin, he probably would have bought a house, but Mary Lee had been given full custody and he’d gotten squat. Just visitation rights—and those visits were under Mary Lee’s supervision.

  He’d driven straight from Memphis this evening, across northern Mississippi and northern Alabama, taking Highway 72 all the way. Adams County was a small county nestled in the northeastern corner of Alabama, a stone’s throw from both the Tennessee and Georgia state lines, and the Tennessee River divided the county seat, Adams Landing, from its nearest neighbor, Pine Bluff.

  Jim’s neck was stiff and his bad knees hurt like hell. He’d made only one pit stop on his journey from his past to his future. His bleak future. Not that his future on the Memphis force had looked all that bright—not since he’d fallen from grace and an air of suspicion had surrounded him ever since.

  Jim left his suitcase there by the front door as he walked through the duplex, turning lights on and off as he went from the living room into the small efficiency kitchen. Then he backtracked and went into first one bedroom and then another. The bath was small, but clean, with a shower/tub combination. He’d rented a two-bedroom place despite the added expense because he wanted Kevin to have his own room when he came to visit.

  Leaving the bathroom light on, Jim went over to the bed and sat down. He should at least brush his teeth before turning in, but he thought maybe, just this once, he’d forgo his usual routine. After removing his shoes and socks and stripping down to his briefs, Jim flipped back the covers and crawled into bed.

  He lay there for several minutes, thinking he’d go right to sleep. But the longer he lay there, the more he realized that until he took something for the pain in his knees, he’d never go to sleep. He had two choices. Both were in his suitcase: either whiskey or the pain-killers the doctor had given him. He chose the prescription medicine. After bringing his suitcase into the bedroom and digging through his shave kit for the plastic bottle, he took one pill and went back to bed. He gazed up at the shadows flickering across the white popcorn ceiling. He had left the bathroom light on and closed the door almost shut. He hated the darkness, especially when he was in a strange place.

  He wished the pill would take effect soon. Not just to relieve the pain, but to knock him out. Otherwise, he’d think too much. Thinking about Mary Lee and Kevin and why he was here in this one-horse town was a useless exercise in torment.

  He’d met and fallen madly in love with Mary Lee at the University of Tennessee; then they’d married right after he graduated. There had been some good years. They’d been happy. For a while. Kevin’s birth had been the greatest day of Jim’s life. He’d never known you could love someone the way he loved his son. Back then, Jim had thought he had the world by the tail. Despite knee injuries destroying his dream of playing pro football, he had found a new and satisfying career as a Memphis police officer. He’d made detective fairly young and life had been good. Until his cockiness and stupid arrogance had cost his partner his life. After that, everything fell apart, including his marriage. When he’d found Mary Lee in bed with another man, he had wanted to kill them both. And he almost had. Almost.

  He had walked out of his house that day and filed for a divorce two weeks later. Forgiveness wasn’t a word in his vocabulary, because as far as he was concerned, some sins were unforgivable.

  For the past seven years, Mary Lee had made his life as miserable as possible, at first trying to turn Kevin against him, then later jerking him around about his visitation rights. So it hadn’t actually come as a great surprise to him when, after remarrying six months ago, she’d told him that she was moving with her new husband to Huntsville. Kevin’s stepdad had recently been transferred to the Rocket City.

  “You can drive to Huntsville a couple of times a year to see Kevin,” Mary Lee had said. “And he can come stay with you a week every summer.”

  “No way in hell!”

  He had known that going back to court wouldn’t do any good. Despite being a whore, Mary Lee wasn’t a bad mother. And Jim had proved by his actions years ago that he wasn’t such a good father. So he’d realized he had only one choice if he wanted to see his son on a regular basis. He had to move closer to Huntsville. It had taken him six months to find a job—the right job. One that paid him enough to live on and stay current with his child support payments. Being a chief deputy in Podunk was a demotion from being a lieutenant on the Memphis police force, and his yearly salary dropped by over twenty thousand. But he figured he’d do okay since the cost of living here was slightly less than in the big city.

  The only thing that mattered to Jim was that he’d now be living less than an hour away from his son.

  Stephanie wondered when he would return. Without a calendar or a clock, she had no way of knowing what day it was or what time. It could be twelve noon or twelve midnight. There were no windows in this room and the only light was a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, too high for her to reach without a ladder. Those first few days after he had abducted her, she had tried everything to escape, but soon realized that there was no way out except the way she’d come in, the single door at the top of the stairs through which he had dragged her. A week ago? Two weeks ago? To her, it seemed a lifetime ago.

  He didn’t keep her shackled any longer. She was free to roam about in the twelve-by-twelve room, which she felt certain was a partial basement, either under a house or a building of some kind. In the corner, surrounded by a four-foot cinder block stall, was a shower, commode, and sink, as if someone had once planned to turn this area into a spare bedroom and bath. The block walls had been painted yellow, which over time had faded to a dirty cream.

  The smell of mildew and mustiness permeated the entire room and everything in it, which wasn’t much. A metal bed, a chair, and a desk. He made her sit at the desk to eat when he brought her food, which he did almost every day. At first she had refused to eat; but then he had punished her, telling her that he would not allow her to starve herself to death.

  The first time he raped her, she’d fought him; but she soon learned that the harder she fought, the more severe the punishment. He never tortured her to the point where she passed out. At least not yet. Just enough to derive pleasure from her screams. Sometimes he would rape her with a bottle or a wooden phallus before climbing on top of her. And he liked to bite her. She had his teeth prints all over her body, as well as dozens of s
mall burns from where he’d pressed lighted cigarettes on her skin. Most of the burns were on her buttocks and breasts.

  He had raped her so many times, tortured her so often, that there was nothing else in her mind, no room to remember her life before this madman had kidnapped her. It wasn’t that she had given up easily or that she hadn’t hoped and prayed to escape. She had climbed those stairs leading to the outside world numerous times, beaten on the door and cried for help. But there was no help for her. No hope of being rescued. There was nothing ahead for her except more of the same.

  She wanted to die. Longed to die. It was the only way she would ever be free of him. But there was nothing in this room she could use to aid herself in committing suicide, so all she could do was hope that he would tire of her soon and kill her.

  The lock on the door clicked. Stephanie’s body tensed and her mind screamed silently as she stood there, frozen to the spot, knowing the monster would open the door and come down the steps.

  Listening, her eyes focused on the bottom of the wooden staircase, she heard his footsteps. Slow and steady. Not rushing. Taking his time.

  “Good evening, Stephanie,” he said, a self-satisfied smile on his face.

  “Is it evening?”

  “Yes, it’s nearly eleven o’clock.”

  He gazed at her, studying her from the top of her disheveled hair to the tips of her bare toes. Without being told, she knew what he expected, what he demanded of her. She was allowed to wear nothing except a black silk robe, and only when he wasn’t there. With numb, trembling fingers, she undid the tie belt and peeled the robe from her shoulders. It fell to her feet, puddling on the floor like a soft, black cloud.

  “My lovely Stephanie.”

  He came to her, took her by the hand and led her to the bed. Without being told, she lay down, parted her thighs and held her arms open to him.

  “Always so willing to please,” he said. “I love that about you.”

  “I love you.” She told him what she knew he wanted to hear. “I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anyone. Please, darling, make love to me.”

  He quickly shed his clothing, as always very eager. What would he do to her first? He had to inflict some type of pain before he could become aroused enough to rape her.

  But apparently not this time. When he stood over her, his eyes wild and his breathing hard, she saw that his penis was already erect.

  “Turn over,” he told her.

  Knowing what he intended and that it was useless to protest, she turned over onto her stomach. She waited for the first blow, but there was none. Instead, his hand caressed her buttocks. Tenderly. And then she felt him as he crawled on top of her. She held her breath. He rammed into her. She whimpered in pain. He rode her with a fury, coming within minutes. Still embedded inside her, he kissed her shoulder, then grasped her hair and jerked her head up off the pillow.

  He’d never done this before so she didn’t know what to expect next. Suddenly, she felt something pressing against her neck, just below her chin.

  “Do you want me to set you free, my darling?” he asked.

  And then she realized that he held a knife to her throat.

  No, please don’t kill me, a part of her begged silently. That tiny part of her consciousness that longed to live, longed to believe that there was still hope. But the terrified, tormented part of her who couldn’t bear to suffer any longer said aloud, “Yes, please. Please set me free.”

  And with one quick, deep slice of the sharp blade, he ended their relationship.

  Chapter 2

  Despite living in a new place, sleeping in a different bed, Jim had rested soundly. Thanks to prescription pain medication. It would have been easy to get addicted to the stuff years ago, and God knew he’d come shamefully close a couple of times. But if he’d fallen prey to drug addiction, he might as well have kissed his life good-bye. He was forty, with a couple of bad knees, unmarried, unattached, could barely make ends meet and had to struggle to sustain his father/son relationship with his only child. And here he was on this sunny, clear-blue-sky Thursday morning dreading starting a new job, one that anybody would see as a demotion for a guy who’d been a detective on the Memphis police force.

  He parked his seen-better-days Chevy pickup truck in the area of the courthouse parking lot designated for the Adams County Sheriff’s Department. After getting out and locking the doors, he glanced around at the other vehicles and grunted. Then he chuckled to himself. Figures, he thought. There wasn’t another vehicle as old and dilapidated as his. One particular car caught his eye as did one SUV. The car was a late-model white Mustang convertible with the top down. Whoever owned the sporty little ride must have felt confident that it wasn’t going to rain today and that nobody would dare mess with his car. He figured the owner to be young—possibly thirty or less—and single. A guy who liked the way he felt when he was behind the wheel of a car other men envied. His guess was that a guy like that usually had a pretty, bosomy gal with him, a looker he could show off the way he did his car.

  When Jim passed by the SUV, he’d noticed it because it was clean as a whistle, as if it had just been washed. He knew for a fact that it had rained in Adams Landing very recently, because of the mud puddles he’d seen driving in yesterday. Pausing for a couple of seconds, he looked inside the neat-as-a-pin black Jeep Cherokee. The carpet was clean; the seats and floorboards were void of any clutter, except for a closed black umbrella. Whoever owned this SUV was probably a neat freak, somebody who needed to control every aspect of his life, saw things in a linear way, needed his ducks in a row.

  Admitting to himself that he was stalling, Jim ended his vehicle inspections and headed toward the side entrance that led into the north wing of the two-story building. Like so many other towns across America, especially in the South, the Adams County courthouse stood in the middle of town, like the center of a box, with streets crisscrossing in the four corners. The white columned entrance faced Main Street. Two large, age-worn statues of Alabama Civil War generals presided over the green lawn on either side of the brick walkway leading from the city sidewalk to the front veranda. The back of the courthouse faced Adams Street, directly across from the post office, which was flanked by Long’s Hardware and Adams Landing Dry Cleaners. The side-porch entrance to the sheriff’s department faced Washington, a tree-lined street boasting the local library on the corner of Main and Washington and the county jail on the corner of Washington and Adams. An antique shop and a radio station, both housed in old Victorian painted ladies, sat side by side between the library and the jail.

  Taking a deep breath of fresh morning air, Jim squared his shoulders, opened the door and walked into a long, wood-floored hallway. The minute he entered the building, he saw the sign protruding sideways from atop the door frame of the first door on the right: SHERIFF. As he approached the office, he noted that the door stood open, as if inviting people to come inside and make themselves at home. He had no more than stepped over the threshold than an attractive young woman, in the typical brown and tan Alabama deputy uniform, walked toward him, a smile on her face and a cup of coffee in her hand. Slender and blonde. Not pretty, but cute. With short, bright pink fingernails.

  “Hi, I’m Deputy Holly Burcham.” She transferred her coffee cup from her right to her left hand and held out her right hand to Jim.

  He took her hand, shook it, and replied, “I’m Jim Norton.”

  She smiled warmly. “Thought you were.” She glanced at the wall clock. Seven-forty-two. “You’re early.”

  “I wanted to make a good impression,” he said, only halfway joking. “First day on the job and all.” He offered her a closed-mouth smile.

  “Well, come on in and get a cup of coffee and meet a few people.”

  Holly issued him not only a verbal invitation, but a physical one as well. She took his arm, smiled at him flirtatiously and hauled him over to the coffeemaker placed in a corner across from a large desk Jim assumed belonged to the sheriff’s secret
ary.

  After Jim untangled himself from Holly, he removed a Styrofoam cup from a stack on the table, poured the coffee almost to the rim and took a sip. The brew was amazingly good.

  “Lisa makes great coffee,” Holly said.

  Jim’s gaze followed Holly’s as she looked directly at the small, attractive black woman who had just sat down behind the desk. She glanced up at Jim and smiled.

  “Lisa, meet Jim Norton, our new chief deputy for the criminal investigative division,” Holly said. “Jim, this is Lisa Wiley, Bernie’s administrative assistant.”

  When Lisa smiled, Jim noted how pretty she was. Probably close to forty. Ultrashort bronze red hair. Slender, small boned, with large black eyes and flawless tan skin.

  “Welcome to Adams County,” Lisa said. “I hope you’ll like it here. I’m sure you’ll enjoy working with Bernie. She’s the best.”

  “Thanks.” Jim took another sip of coffee. “Has the sheriff come in yet?” He glanced around at the workstation where the “road deputies” did their paperwork for their shifts. There were four deputies already here, and to a man they were sizing him up. He didn’t get any specific type of vibes from the officers, neither negative nor positive. He figured most of them would wait and see if the hotshot from Memphis turned out to be a regular guy or a smart-ass.

  “Of course she’s here,” Lisa replied. “Bernie’s usually the first one in and the last one to leave. Let me tell her you’re here.”

  Lisa rose from her desk, walked to the closed half-frosted glass door and knocked, then opened the door and announced, “Sheriff Granger, Captain Norton is here.”

  Jim waited to be invited in, wanting to make sure he started this job off on the right foot. Working for a woman was a first for him, and since he wasn’t the most politically correct guy around, he wasn’t sure what would or wouldn’t offend a lady sheriff.