Double usage
Page 1
DOUBLE USAGE
Christine Bols
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Table of Contents
PROLOGUE 1999
THE PRESENT
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
PROLOGUE 1999
He sits on the metal bed, arms around his knees, head down. It is cold and damp. The noises coming from upstairs sound familiar and yet there is something sinister in the air. He shivers and doesn’t know if it is day or night. How long has he been here already? A week? A month? Longer? He has no idea. He doesn’t even remember when she locked him in the basement. At first he thought it was another one of her games, but soon he realized that it wasn’t. He can still hear the click in the keyhole, then just silence and darkness.
He jumps up as the door at the top of the stairs opens. The blinding light of the fluorescent lamps hurts his eyes. As she comes down the stairs, he smells the stale odor of cabbage and sausage and braces himself. She is smiling when she puts the plate down beside him on the floor. He retches, but while she sits beside him, he slowly begins to eat, taking his time, chewing and swallowing very slowly, but he knows that he can’t escape his fate. She is so strong that with just one blow she could throw him against the opposite wall. She had done it once when he refused to eat. He forces the last bite down his throat, puts his plate on the floor and waits for what is about to come.
‘Good boy,’ she says, ‘and now you are going to do your dear mom one more favor, isn’t that right?’ She laughs loudly and pulls her sweater over her head. Huge milky-white breasts pop up. They look like immense balloons. Then she pulls off her skirt, silk stockings and panties, and sits totally naked beside him. It is always the same ritual, and each time he feels the same disgust for her body. Reluctantly he pulls off his pants and underwear, sits on her lap and sucks on her nipples like a baby while she kneads his penis between her fingers. Sometimes she hurts him, but once he ejaculated, and when he saw his seed between her fingers, dripping and glistening, he felt deeply ashamed. His mother, however, had watched delighted, and had buried his face even deeper between her breasts, to a point that he almost suffocated. Suddenly she pushes him away, lies down on the bed and spreads her legs. She looks at him expectantly, with a dark glow in her eyes, while he, reluctantly, kneels before her and slowly lowers his head between her legs. The nauseating smell of almond fills his nostrils. He hates that smell and holds his breath while his tongue goes deep into her. She guides his head with her hands, emitting loud groans. ‘Oh, this feels so good my boy,’ she says panting, ‘nobody does it better than you...come...almost there...’ He sees how she orgasms, shaking and moaning. He turns his head away, away from the repulsive woman he calls mother. He stares at the fork on the empty plate. A plan grows in his mind. Only for two seconds he hesitates.
In a jet the blood spurts against the wall as he stabs the fork deep in her neck, again and again. Her eyes open wide, almost coming out of their sockets, and for an instant she stares at him, surprised and in disbelief. She rasps and her body shakes in convulsion. After what seems an eternity, she finally lies still. Motionless. Her arms hang lifelessly beside her body, her head hangs sideways and her long dark hair covers her face like a veil. He is still bending over her body, not believing what he has done, but feeling the flow of adrenaline. Then he masturbates over her bloody belly and never has felt as good as in that moment.
THE PRESENT
It rains. The street is deserted. As he parks his car next to a high hedge with brown spots, he observes the house. He leaves the engine running for a while and looks around. His plan is well prepared. There will be no-one in the house and yet the adrenaline flows through his body. He takes a ladder and a bucket out of the trunk of his van. Determined, he walks towards the front door, rings the bell and waits exactly one minute. Then, slowly, he walks to the back and stops in front of a massive, wooden door. One of the neighbors calls his barking dog. He smiles. A Yale lock, nothing easier than that. Storage room, kitchen, living room. He immediately sees the computer. After three attempts, he finds the password. That man is so predictable. He grins. In two minutes he has the files downloaded onto a USB flash drive. He puts the ladder and bucket back in his van, drives home, parks his car in the garage and pulls the ‘McKenzie Cleaning Company’ sticker off its side. Mission accomplished.
CHAPTER 1
Up until two months ago, Tim had been an inveterate smoker. He was fourteen when he secretly smoked his first cigarette. He didn’t like the taste of it back then, but it made him look tough, and that was quite important at that age. Those were the years when Marlboro was very popular and now and then he used his allowance to buy a packet for just one dollar from one of the rascals in Redding. At that time, one packet had been enough for a week, however by the time he turned fifteen, he smoked about eight cigarettes a day, and even more during school vacations. His older brother Sean often threatened to tell their parents about his vice. Each threat had almost cost him as much as the price of a packet of the fags. Because of the milk cow he had become to Sean, his parents had never found out till he was eighteen. That was when he had stopped hiding and had openly lit a cigarette. He still remembered his father’s disappointment and unavoidable anger and his mother’s heartache. Their son had gone down the wrong track. Little did they know he had gone down that track years ago already.
For a few months now he had considered quitting. The fact that smoking in public buildings had been banned, had made his decision easier. He hated to have to sneak to the car park every time he wanted a smoke. Smoking in the service vehicles was prohibited too, and to reinforce that decision, the ashtrays had been removed. He popped a peppermint in his mouth, knowing he needed to find a substitute for cigarettes. Candies would make him a suitable candidate for Weight Watchers in no time. Chewing on a toothpick the whole day was no option. Pathetic. For a while he considered raw carrots, but he soon dismissed that idea. It was even worse than chewing on a toothpick. Cameron, his girlfriend, encouraged him not to give up and cooked him a healthy meal every day. He appreciated what she did, although he became irritated sometimes with her exaggerated concern and interference. He slid his hand into his jacket pocket which hung over the back of his chair and felt the comforting shape of a half packet of Marlboro.
‘You can always light one up’, David mocked from the other side of the desk, ‘but you will have to do it in the car park’.
Tim put on a crooked smile. He liked his colleague, but some of his remarks were just too lame. ‘A habit of twenty years is hard to break. I should never have started’, he added with a sigh.
‘The understatement of the year’.
‘I assume you have never been tempted by that sin’, Tim said looking at David, interested in hi
s answer.
‘No, but I used to secretly drink my father’s cognac. Luckily, on few occasions I became ill after drinking it, and since then I have never touched the stuff again’.
‘Good for you’, Tim said laughing while going through a file that was on his desk. He read some of the footnotes he had written on the file. At first sight, everything led to the conclusion that it was a drug-related crime, but there was more behind it, he just didn’t know exactly what it was. He could feel his chief Sam Foster breathing down his neck, pressuring him to have that case solved and closed. He however, kept going over and over the file. It was frustrating.
With mixed feelings, he remembered his time in Los Angeles. There, the police force was ten times bigger than in Corvallis, and he missed the freedom he had working the cases. His chief in Los Angeles had always been more preoccupied with protecting his own friends and drinking, than following the cases his detectives were busy working on. Eventually, this had led to one of the biggest corruption cases ever on the West Coast, with more than seventy cops involved and Tim had been right in the middle of it. The charges ranged from unnecessary use of force, manipulation and suppression of material evidence, witness tampering to drug trafficking. After a thorough investigation, several police officers had been suspended and even fired. Although Tim had not been found guilty, he had no longer felt at ease in Los Angeles and had requested to be transferred to the quieter police department of Corvallis, Oregon. Even though he, occasionally, missed the exciting life of Los Angeles, he had no regrets about his decision. Now he had a much more peaceful life, surrounded by a much nicer natural environment and friendlier people.
The telephone rang, abruptly taking him out of his reverie. It was Deborah, the eternally cheerful receptionist, asking him to come to interrogation room one. A woman named Anna Wickmeyer wanted to report someone missing. He got out of his chair and popped another peppermint in his mouth. As he was about to leave the room, he heard David ask: ‘Is there a problem?’
‘No idea. Someone wants to report a missing person. I’ll take care of it.’
‘A pretty young lady no doubt, otherwise you would be sending me instead’, David said laughing loudly in great amusement. Tim gave him an indignant look while closing the detective’s room door behind him.
Interrogation room one was at the end of a long, narrow corridor and it was mostly used for trivial things. In the strict sense of the word it was not really an interrogation room, but more a separate space where people could report theft, neighbors’ quarrels and other similar matters. The room was in need of a serious facelift. The walls had been blue once. Now they seemed to have gotten a peculiar storm cloud color. Actually, not only the room but the whole building was in need of serious renovation. He got extremely annoyed sometimes, to see how much money the city of Corvallis pumped into renovation of churches and schools, just so they could fetch votes among the predominantly Christian population. Those who kept the city free of violence and crime had, however, to work in a dilapidated building, which has not seen a layer of paint in years, let alone a renovation.
The woman sat at the little table with her back to the door. She looked up when Tim came into the room, a shy smile on her face. She had short blonde hair, and when she stood up to shake his hand, he saw that she was tall and slender.
‘Hello,’ he said kindly. ‘I am Inspector Tim Sackley and you are Anna Wickmeyer I presume.’
‘That's right’, Anna said.
Tim noticed she was quite nervous, like a child on the first day of school. She also seemed very young.
‘Do you want some coffee?’ he asked, ‘Or rather something cool? With this temperature it is probably a good idea and the coffee here I wouldn’t offer to my worst enemy.’ He laughed loudly.
‘A glass of water will do’, she said without even smiling.
He left the room and returned a few minutes later. Carefully not to spill anything he put the plastic cup on the table. She took a sip.
‘So, how can I help you? I understand you want to report someone missing.’
She hesitated for an instant, as if she were gathering the courage to speak.
‘I study at the university here in town, and my fellow student Beatrice Bodini hasn’t been on campus the entire week. I'm beginning to worry a bit. In three years she has never missed a class. This is most unlike her.’
‘And you think something happened’. He looked at her and smiled calmly.
‘I don’t know what to think, but this is definitely not normal.’
‘Is Beatrice Bodini a friend of yours? Do you know her well .... her habits and such?’
‘I wouldn’t call her a real friend. Her room is right next to mine, and sometimes she pops in for a chat or to borrow my notes. She is quite a private person.’
‘Maybe she's just taking a week off’, he continued, ‘it would not be the first time a student gets fed up and wants a short break.’
‘She didn’t mention anything about that. Last Friday, when I left the campus she said: ‘See you Monday’.
‘Could it be she decided during the weekend to take a break? Would she have called you in that case?’
‘No’, she said hesitantly, ‘I don’t think so. I called her, on Wednesday I believe, but got her voice mail and she has not yet returned my call.’
‘Did she drive her own car to get to the campus?’ Sackley asked.
‘No, she takes the train to Albany from Salem and then the bus to college.’
‘And when exactly did she leave?’
Anna thought for a moment. ‘She does not leave until Saturday morning. Fridays she attends all her classes, the last one is at four and by the time it is finished, the last train to Salem is long gone. I don’t know exactly what time. Probably sometime in the morning.’
‘And you live in Springfield, I see", Tim said, looking at the form Deborah had already filled out.
‘Yes, that's right.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘does Miss Bodini have a boyfriend?’ He looked at her with interest.
‘Not that I know of. She has never mentioned a boyfriend.’
‘But you just said yourself you were not really close’, Sackley said surprised. ‘Would she have told you anything about that at all?’
‘We are indeed not very close, I mean, not real friends, but she shared some other personal stuff. Why would she not mention a boyfriend?’ Anna took a defensive attitude.
‘Like what?’ asked Sackley in a friendly tone. He saw a questioning look in her eyes and realized that she probably did not understand his question. ‘Personal things like what?’ he explained.
‘Oh I am sorry, I didn’t understand. Well, her parents were killed in a plane crash when she was ten. After that, she went to live with an aunt who died of cancer when Beatrice was eighteen. She inherited her aunt's house and she is still staying there.’
‘Then, I assume she has no brothers or sisters’, he concluded.
Anna nodded. ‘She's an only child.’
‘And what happened to her parent’s house?’
‘I have no idea. I would think it has been sold.’
Sackley thought for a moment... ‘Then she has some money I suppose.’
Anna shrugged her slender shoulders. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you know if she travels during school holidays?’
‘She told me once that last summer she had been in San Diego for a week and also three more days in New York, but that is all I know.’
‘Did she have something planned for this summer?’
‘Not really I think. She mentioned that she would like to go to Miami and the Everglades, but she certainly had no concrete plans.’
‘Well’, he said, ‘one last question: can you give me her home address, so I can send someone along to take a look? Do you happen to have a recent picture of her?’
‘You need to ask the University for her address. All I know is that she lives in Salem. And no, I do not have a picture.’
‘She is about five foot ten, slender, has medium length dark hair, tanned skin and a classical nose. She has Italian roots.’
Tim assumed she had rehearsed those words before going to the police station because they flowed too smoothly. He smiled. ‘About the Italian roots I had already guessed from her name.’ He closed his notebook, pushed back his chair and held out his hand toward her as a sign the conversation was over. ‘Leave your telephone number with Mrs. Wilkins at the reception, then I can keep you informed, but if you ask me, I think she will be back in a day or two. Don’t worry’. He smiled, exposing his white teeth. ‘Ah yes, another thing, what is she studying?’
‘The same as I’, said Anna, ‘psychology, third year.’
Sackley held the door open for her and she stepped back into the narrow corridor towards the reception area. He went the other direction, but turned his head for a moment before she disappeared around the corner. A very attractive girl.
CHAPTER 2
Through the window in her office, Lilly Fitzpatrick kept an eye on the reading room. Not that she expected any problems but with a bunch of teenagers you never knew what could happen. There were twelve of them, split up into three groups. They had to look for pictures in art books and describe them for a school essay. Kate, her colleague, kept an eye on them too, but at the same time she had to scan the barcodes on the loaned and returned books.