by Allen, Sara
By unspoken agreement, the twelve teams of three spread out, seeking the entrances and securing them. Jones and Doug went in through a downstairs doorway, listening and searching as they went. They passed a few rooms on the lower floor, all equally empty and devoid of life. They had agreed that they would maintain radio silence until the whole building was secured, not wanting to alert anyone to their presence before the time was right. But Jones had a feeling that she wasn’t there. He couldn’t pinpoint how he knew; he just knew. If his assumptions were right, he was going to lose his mind.
The teams worked quickly, securing each floor and giving an unspoken signal when the lower levels were complete. There were three floors of nothing but empty rooms and built up dirt and debris in the corners of equally abandoned spaces. Now, they were finally on the last floor, the top floor. There was one door, locked as far as they could tell. There was nothing to indicate that anyone was on the other side, but they had an officer check the room with thermal imaging. Nothing showed up; no body heat, nothing to indicate that anybody was inside, and nothing showing that if there had been someone there, that that someone was alive.
Jones ground his teeth at the delay, but he knew that it was necessary to, not only protect themselves and avoid injury, but also so they’d know if there was anyone inside who needed their help or wanted to hurt them.
The all clear was given and they counted down from three before the door was knocked off its hinges. They stormed the room, each person checking a corner and making sure the place was secure. The room was empty, besides the body on the chaise. Without a doubt, the body was a woman’s.
Her throat had been cut, her head hanging back unnaturally on the chaise. Her arms and legs were evidence of the last struggles of her dying body, as it fought against the knowledge that there was no escape from the death that had been enforced on it. Her eyes were turned up into her head, a small portion of her dark irises showing past her upper lids.
What shocked Jones the most was the resemblance she had to Val. He stood stock still over the unfortunate woman, breathing through his teeth, trying to stave off the rising bile that threatened to spill. He heard gagging from behind him but paid no one any attention.
The likeness she had to Val caused Jones to step back in denial. Who would do this? What kind of sick animal would do this to a woman, any woman?
“Come on, man. It’s not her. It ain’t her, okay?” Doug reassured him.
He knew it wasn’t her. The lips were wrong. The hair was different. The shape of her silently screaming face was off. But the overall resemblance was still there. Then he realized what it was that had him stuck; she was wearing Val’s clothes, the clothes that she’d put on that morning. Val’s shoes adorned her feet, and Val’s purse lay a few feet away covered in the woman’s blood, the contents spilled across the floor.
Jones heard chatter in the background. Someone was calling for a coroner and cleanup. They had to get as much evidence as they could from the crime scene before the trail went cold. He had to find Val before the sick bastard, who had inflicted this torture on an innocent woman, did the same thing to Val.
Jones knew that if this bastard had hurt one hair on her head, he didn’t even want to think about it. He could lose his badge over it, but he would cause damage; severe, lasting, painful damage. Death for scum like that would be too easy. They had messed with the wrong woman, they had touched someone he cared about, someone he viewed as his own, someone who meant the world to him, and they would have to pay big before Jones was completely satisfied.
****
Val felt herself floating, rising and surfacing out of the mire that her body was trapped in. She had no idea where she was; she only knew that it was dark and something smelled like standing water. She groaned and rolled over, trying to feel out where she was and, more importantly, who was with her. Fear gripped her stomach when she remembered how she had ended up flat on her back in an unknown location, and she winced with the pain behind her eyes. She felt heavy and uncoordinated, like a marionette with its strings cut.
“Open your eyes, Val. I know you’re awake!” a voice she’d hoped never to hear again told her.
She heard a click and then light blazed, scorching her eyes and making her blink in confusion. Val tried not to move her head around too much. It felt too big for her neck to hold up, and she needed something to take the foul taste out of her mouth.
“Water…” Val croaked.
She heard heavy footsteps marching around the small space. She couldn’t open her eyes properly to examine the area, and her mind was working overtime.
“Drink!” she was ordered as a thin metal cup was pushed up against her lips. She gulped instinctively, the water sloshing over the sides of the container and soaking her tongue as much as the rest of her face.
The cup left her lips and then she heard scraping, like someone pulling out a chair or piece of furniture, and a grunt as if someone took a seat.
“W-why?” Val stammered.
“Why? You really need to ask that, Val?”
“D… Damon?” she croaked. She knew it was him, knew that only he would do some stupid shit like this, for no other reason than to prove that he could. It was a childish game to play with people’s lives the way he was doing, and she didn’t want any part in his crap.
“Yeah, you thought you could get away from me, didn’t you, bitch?” he griped, smugly.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Val said.
“The fuck you don’t!” he replied, “You thought that cop bastard could protect you, didn’t you? He ain’t worth shit!” Damon continued derisively.
“Please, Damon, take me back; no harm done. I can tell them that you just wanted to talk. I can tell…”
“Shut the fuck up!” he shouted at her, “You ain’t goin’ nowhere! You belong to me. I fucking told you that!”
“I don’t belong to anyone,” Val whispered. Fear had gripped her soul, and she had no idea how she was going to get out of this. She closed her eyes, not wanting to see the madness spread across his face. He was raging, and she didn’t intend to antagonize him with a look.
“You fucking belong to me!” Damon screamed at her. She heard him rise and march towards her, “You belong to me, or you belong to no one!”
She then heard a hollow click, as warm metal was pressed against her forehead. Val’s eyes shot open, looking up to see Damon’s hand clutching a dark metal object with his finger pressed up against what was obviously a trigger.
Val’s eyes widened. Was he really going to shoot her because she had left him? Would he go that far to show her that she was his and no one else’s? She didn’t understand what the hell he was trying to prove. But she belonged to no one. Val was her own woman, and no one ‘owned her.’
But that was the problem with men like Damon; they thought they owned you because you slept the night between sheets with them, allowed them a place to pleasure themselves, without giving pleasure back, and gave them parts of yourself that they didn’t deserve. She’d made the mistake of thinking he was worth it, and he had proved to her that he wasn’t worth shit; he wasn’t worth the effort to assist him in pulling his lazy ass out of the gutter.
He had apparently found other means of making himself feel like a kingpin, but he was and would always be just another waste of space; a waste of space that was currently pointing a gun at her head!
“Don’t do this, Damon. Think about what you’re about to do,” Val cautioned him. She knew she was taking a risk, but she wasn’t about to lay there silent while he took her life. He didn’t deserve that pleasure, and he didn’t deserve her.
“I can do what I want! You think this is the first time I took a life?” he told her, a manic smile spreading across his thick lips; his once handsome face turned savage and unrecognizable.
“Get that gun out of the woman’s face, man!” someone bellowed behind him, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You picked her up for this?”
&nb
sp; “Don’t tell me what to do, bro. This is my woman, and I can do what the hell I want!” Damon shouted, grinding the words out between his clenched teeth. The gun stayed pressed against Val’s forehead, sending a cold shiver down her spine. She could feel a cold sweat start to spread under her arms and pool at the base of her spine. It wasn’t the perspiration of heat, it was the cold, trickling sweat of terror.
The guy moved from behind Damon, giving Val her first glimpse of her would-be savior. “Move the damn gun, D! Do ya want to shoot her by accident?” his friend asked, shaking his head.
“Don’t tell me what to do, Miles! She belongs to me,” Damon shouted at him.
“Whatever, but I don’t want blood on my bed!” Miles told him, turning back to the door.
Damon looked back at Val. “You’re lucky he’s here, or I’d show you.” He removed the gun from her forehead, sliding it into the back of his low-slung jeans.
She’d always hated him wearing his trousers like that; it was so freaking ghetto. It said a lot about the man and his mentality, as though he was never willing to pull himself out of that foolishness. Val released a slow breath, trying not to let Damon see that he was getting to her. She had to stay calm. Maybe she could talk him out of this ridiculous hostage plan he was hell bent on following. Either way, Val had to get out of there before he did something they would both regret.
Eight
02:40 a.m. November 18, 2004
“Any news from forensics about that body we found earlier?” Doug asked, setting the coffee cup on the table next to Jones’ limp hand.
Jones grunted, not answering yes or no to the question. It had been nearly eighteen hours since Val had been taken.
“We’re going to find her. Don’t think about it or it’ll cripple you,” Doug continued.
“I shouldn’t have let her talk me into getting her a car. Otherwise, I would have been there. I would have fucking been there!”
“It’s not your fault. How could you know that someone would snatch her?” Doug asked.
“I know who took her though, Doug. I just don’t know where the fuck he is!” Jones informed him, pulling on his long, black locks.
Jones had a determined look about him, a look that said what he felt deep inside if he could get his hands on Damon. Damon was a step ahead of him. Whatever resources he had were fool proof, well organized, and he was clearly not working alone.
The desk phone rang, and Doug grabbed it before Jones had a chance to. Jones looked at him intently, as Doug listened to the speaker in silence.
“You’re sure?” Doug asked into the phone. Then he listened for a second and replied, “We’re coming down right now. You tell him because I'm not!”
Doug replaced the phone and began walking towards the door.
“Where’re we going?” Jones asked as he followed closely behind.
“Downstairs. Forensics.” Doug refused to say anymore.
****
“Speak!” Jones ordered Paterson, the police forensic officer, as they barged through the door.
“Hello to you too!” Paterson said, “Well, the victim was a missing girl from a few weeks ago. Missing persons has been searching for her for a while after her family reported her missing. They said the last person she was seen with was a Clyde Stevens. But nothing has been heard from him since then either.”
“Get to the point,” Jones ground out.
“Patience… Anyway, Clyde Stevens was identified as the victim from last week, the one who turned up in that abandoned car; the mutilated, drug-ridden body that was the assumed ritual killing. But this points to another angle.”
“And what angle is that?” Jones asked.
“I'm getting to that. The car that the body was recovered in was your girlfriend’s stolen car. Someone switched the plates, that’s why we weren’t able to match up the evidence,” Paterson confirmed.
Jones went cold with the realization that this was something that had been planned weeks, if not months, in advance. How it all connected to Val, he wasn’t sure, but his fear for her had gone up more than a notch or two. He had to find her and soon.
“Were there prints on the purse? Any evidence on the clothing?” Jones asked. The case was beginning to cause shock to inch up his spine. There was something about the case that niggled his thoughts and grit his teeth in denial.
“We’re still running tests on the DNA we found. But here’s the interesting thing; Clyde was running with a couple of guys that were identified as having links to drug crimes, money laundering, gun running, that sort of stuff. Now here’s the relationship between Val’s kidnapping this morning and that body we found…”
“What?” Jones grated out, anxious to have his theory proven valid.
“Damon Blake. That’s the link. Mr. Blake was best friends with Clyde. They did some bouncer work together. We have an unconfirmed lift of prints from Blake on the purse. It's being verified, because Blake doesn't have an adult record, and as far as we know, the only documented police fingerprints are juvenille records,” Paterson informed them.
“Blake was Val’s ex. They were living together until a month ago,” Jones supplied, “Any chance of getting hold of some CCTV footage?”
“Showing which areas?” Paterson asked.
“Are you talking about that night she was shoved around?” Doug stammered.
“I don’t know anything for sure,” Jones shot back, “Putney, the apartment complex where I live, and the street cams from around the Tate.”
“And why from around your apartment?” Paterson queried.
“Because that bastard held her up outside my apartment building a few weeks ago!”
“Interesting…” said Paterson, slowly.
“Get on with it, for fuck’s sake!” Jones barked.
“You’ll have to go upstairs to the CCTV monitoring room for that. We only deal with death down here. Sorry,” Paterson smiled at him, sarcastically.
****
05:20 a.m. November 18, 2004
Jones and Doug had signed out their guns. This situation was so dangerous that they had gone on high alert. For Jones and Doug to be carrying weapons, it was obvious that the situation had turned dire.
They had gone to the CCTV monitoring room after visiting Paterson and had seen the footage from outside the Tate and from the CCTV cameras on the streets around his apartment. The footage from the footpaths around the Tate, showed Val had been drugged and dragged to a waiting SUV. The picture unclear, but they had enough evidence to get a plate number. The car was registered to a Miles Stewart, who lived, ironically, also in Putney.
When Jones had seen the lifeless way that Val had been laying in Damon’s arms, his heart almost jumped out of his chest. He wasn’t sure if it was Damon because he’d never seen him properly that night, but Jones knew it was him.
He vowed there and then that he would make that fool pay. No one handled his woman like that. She wasn’t a sack of vegetables, for crying out loud, and the violent way he had thrown her across the back seat of the car, spoke of his assumed possessiveness over her. He would cut that shit out, today!
They were currently on their way to Stewart’s apartment. There were four cars following them, each bearing four armed officers. More were on their way. Helicopter support was on its way as well as other ground support. These murderous bastards were dangerous, and Paterson had just got back to them, confirming that the prints on Val’s purse were indeed from Damon Blake.
Stewart and Blake were more than dangerous; they were sadistic killers, considering the recent murder of Clyde Stevens and the woman from yesterday afternoon. The police now also had a lead on the four bodies from five months ago, which had similarities to the body found last month. The evidence from that case would be re-examined in light of recent events.
They pulled up around the corner from where Stewart’s apartment was, stepped out of the car, and formed a loose group around DCI Mackenzie who started giving orders. “Jones, no hero tactics, plea
se. Doug, keep an eye on him.” He cast an unsmiling eye at Doug in warning, to which Doug nodded once.
“Now these guys are dangerous and ruthless. They will not hesitate to use force, so be aware of what's going on around you. There is a woman possibly being held hostage here, so remember, they can kill her just to keep themselves safe, so be careful. The last thing we want is any more dead bodies turning up. I don’t intend to inform any more families of loved ones taken before their time! Got that? Now, go!” The DCI strapped on a bulletproof vest, as he looked at his squad, turning a cold eye on Jones specifically, in warning.
Jones and Doug were instructed to stay outside, which caused Jones to grind his teeth almost out of his head. How the hell was he supposed to stay outside when Val could be up there? Plus, that bat shit-psycho maniac could be doing anything to her! He dashed the thoughts out of his mind and tried to concentrate. He would stay where he was told, only because he was a police officer, and that was his job, but he didn’t have to like it, and there would be hell to pay if he could have been up there doing what he knew he should be doing like getting his woman out of trouble, and kicking asses.
The first wave of officers would go in and secure the entrances, and then the second wave would move into the second-floor apartment, break the door and secure the individuals inside. It was easy in theory, but so many things could go wrong. Jones didn’t want to think of what could go wrong… not when Val was involved.
Once he got her out of this, she would be lucky if she got to leave his apartment for the next fifty years!
****
Val awoke, her limbs stiff and unresponsive. Damon had tied her to the bed, and she assumed that the lack of movement had caused her arms to seize up. She tried to move her right arm, hoping to ease the pressure from the awkward position that Damon had forced her into. Val had begged him, pleaded with him, not to tie her to the bed, but he had slapped her across the face and told her to shut up. She’d looked at him murderously while he laughed in her face and tied her tighter to the bedposts.