The Hooker, the Handyman and What the Parrot Saw

by Patricia Harman

  He threw his empty glass on the carpet and she bent down to pick it up but he reached for her hair, grabbed a handful and pushed her onto her knees.

  “Why am I angry?”

  “Because I’m late. I, I broke the rules.”

  “Wrong!” He hit the couch again with the belt. It was even louder now that she was on the floor and she flinched instinctively.

  Charlie’s mind raced. “Because I, I . . .” Crack! The belt hit the couch again and she started to cry.“I don’t know what to say!”

  He knelt next to her and got right in her face, “Because I was scared something had happened to you Charlotte! Do you have any idea what I have been through for the last seventy-eight minutes?”

  Charlie looked up at him bewildered. “I’m so sorry. I should have called you to tell you I would be late. It was so thoughtless,” she offered through her tears. His eyes flared again and his tightened jaw flexed.

  “To ask you . . . to ask you if I could be late, Sir.”

  He let go of her hair and started to put his belt back through the loops in his jeans. Oh thank God, she sighed as she crumbled into a heap on the floor wiping her eyes.

  “Do you think this is over?” he asked in a tone that made her shiver.

  “Pull your jeans down. Now!” He sat on the couch and slapped his hand on his lap. “Now I said!”

  She slid down her jeans and laid herself across his knee and he immediately began spanking her but this was different than before. This wasn’t the gentle pretend spankings he had issued before. It was hard. This spanking was intended not to administer discipline, but to inflict pain. At first Charlie tightened herself against his blows but then she focused.

  Focus Charlie.

  She focused as he had taught her to do through all those nights of homework and distraction. The blows kept coming, each more forceful than the last, but somehow they stung less. Charlie felt her juices starting to flow. She felt a build-up coming from deep inside her. She had no idea what was happening but she knew she didn’t want it to stop. She could hear her own voice. She was both whimpering and moaning. A scream caught in her throat as he picked up the pace, pushing her over the edge. She felt her body disengage from itself as he wrapped both arms around her to keep her from falling to the floor.

  “Let it go, baby.” She could hear his voice in the distance as her body convulsed over and over. She couldn’t see. She could hear. She wasn’t even sure where she was. It felt like she was flying and then she collapsed.

  He pulled her upright into his lap and held her tight.

  “Sir, I don’t know what…” she slurred.

  “Shhhh. It’s okay,” he said, holding her tight. Her limbs were like Jell-O. She could not command them to respond. He held her, breathing heavily, and said nothing until she had almost nodded off in his arms.

  She was startled when he started to speak.

  “Do you know what that was? That was your first orgasm. You know what this means, don’t you?” he asked stroking her hair.

  She didn’t answer and she didn’t want to hear his answer. She clenched her eyes tightly willing him not to say it.

  “It means our playtime is over, little girl.”

  Oh my God. No. Please no.

  “If you come like that again in front of me, I am going to devour you and ruin my life in the process.”

  Charlie’s eyes filled and her lower lip quivered.

  “Don’t baby. I have a family and this is getting out of hand. I was really scared something had happened to you tonight. I’ve allowed myself to get too close. You are a beautiful and amazing young woman. The guy who gets you is going to be so lucky.” He hugged her tight. “You are doing so great and I am so proud of you. I want you to keep doing well, but we have to stop this. Do you understand?” She shook her head ‘no’ as the tears fell.

  “Charlotte, all I can think about anymore is taking your virginity, and I can’t do that. I won’t do that.” She didn’t see any reason to tell him that Kip had beaten him to the punch.

  “But, I think I love you Mr. Daley,” she said quietly.

  He laughed, not meaning to hurt her feelings but hurting them just the same.

  “Oh my beautiful little girl, in a year you won’t even remember my name. It will be okay,” he promised. “Now, let’s get you straightened up here,” he said as he helped her get dressed. He lifted her chin and wiped her eyes. “Hey, no more crying.” She pressed her lips together and made herself stop, for him. “That’s my good girl,” he said and she closed her eyes, savoring it.

  “Will I see you anymore? Babysit sometime maybe?” she asked nervously.

  “Charlie, why are you asking me a question you already know the answer to?”

  She nodded and let a few more tears fall. He walked her to the door and gazed down at her with sadness in his eyes, kissed her on the forehead and it was over.

  Chapter 19

  I Did It for You

  Charlie lay in her bed in her apartment, right on the brink of orgasm. She used the memory of that last spanking from Mr. Daley as the fuel she would need to climax and sleep. She writhed at the thought of the pain as his hand crashed onto her bare flesh and she came hard; her body rocking in her bed as she let go. The sunlight fought to invade her room. The curtains could have been standing open and it wouldn’t have stopped her from drifting off into a peaceful, satiated sleep. She awoke to a loud banging noise.

  Not again. Not the train.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  She sat up in bed and looked for it. It wasn’t the train. Someone was pounding on her front door. Charlie hurried to the door wrapped in her green terry cloth shorty robe and opened the door without checking to see who it was. She found Jake Adams staring at her, his mouth half open.

  “What? What’s the matter?”

  Jake stumbled to find the words, caught off guard by her bare legs and her partially opened robe. “We . . . aren’t we . . . Sarge, it’s five ’til nine.”

  “What?! Holy crap!” She motioned him in. “Please sit. Oh my God I’m so sorry,” she ran in a circle. “Do you want something to drink while I get dressed?” Jake started laughing and grabbed her by the shoulders.

  “Why are you laughing? Are you screwing with me?” she asked as she strained to look past him at the clock. Eight fifty-eight. He was not screwing with her.

  “Charlie, breathe. Go get ready. It’s okay.” She nodded and took a breath. “Charlie, breathe! Fucking suits!” Moses squawked. Jake jumped, causing her to laugh as she headed for her bedroom, pointing to the covered cage.

  It was their last night together. The stakeout schedule had only been drawn out for a week and the three days that she and Jake would cover were just about over. The thought made her miserable. She had been so adamant that he not be included in the stakeout schedule and now she couldn’t bear the thought that it was almost over. She had time for a quick rinse off in the shower but not enough time for hair and make-up. Damn it, she thought. She wanted to be perfect tonight. It’s not a date, Brown Eyes, she could hear Thompson saying and she shook her head at her silliness.

  She threw on a pair of dark jeans and a sweatshirt, no makeup, and pulled her hair back into a ponytail which she pulled through her Jimmy Buffett ball cap. She was ready to go in just ten minutes. Jake was profoundly impressed and completely swept off his feet. He loved a woman who could pull off a baseball cap.

  “Wow,” he said before he realized it was out of his mouth.

  “Wow?”

  “Um, yeah, well, you got ready so fast.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him.

  “I like you like this. No make-up, the baseball hat. It works,” he smiled wryly, and she thought her knees would buckle.

  “Oh.” She grinned at him and they stood there staring at each other, lost in the place they always found thems
elves in, not sure how to make their way back.

  “Fucking suits!” Moses squawked, and they both started laughing.

  “That is one damn annoying bird.”

  “I know,” she giggled. “That’s Moses. Come on, we’re late!”

  “Because of you!” he yelled after her, following her out the door and down the stairs.

  They marked-up on the radio hoping that no one would notice that it was nine twenty-five and they still had another fifteen minutes to travel to their spot, but they failed to mention that to dispatch.

  “10-4 Unit 57,” Jan purred over the radio.

  “Jesus, who is that?” Jake’s ears perked up and Charlie felt a flash of jealousy.

  “Jan,” she said with no further explanation.

  “Let me guess. Three hundred pounds and a face that would sink a thousand ships?” He asked with a chuckle.

  “No and no.”

  “Really?” Jake said with a grin. Charlie pretended to ignore his comment but he could tell she was annoyed and found it completely adorable. They got to their spot by nine forty-five and settled in. “Thanks to you we have no coffee,” he complained.

  “I know. I really am sorry. I’m not a flake, I swear it. I just slept so damn good today,” she said smiling, as she remembered her descent into slumber.

  “Hmm.”

  “Hmm what?” she asked coyly, grateful that the darkness was masking her crimson cheeks.

  “Oh, nothing.”

  The target’s car was not in the driveway but pulled in at ten o’clock p.m. on the nose.

  Daniel Silver was a mousy little creep. He looked at least ten years older than his actual age.

  He was a former postal carrier, a loser, and a pervert. Shortly after landing the first decent job he had ever held, he began befriending young boys on his new mail route and quickly learned about an eight-year-old whose single mother left him alone on Thursday afternoons when there was a conflict between the time the child returned home from school and her second job. Charlie knew that there were other victims. There had to be, molesting is almost never a singular crime. Silver had taunted her with the fact that he had been doing this for years, and all she had was one lousy charge. Charlie wanted to kill him. The Daniel Silvers of the world needed to die, she had told her online friend AJ and AJ had agreed. Charlie had worked around the clock on the Silver case but she had been unable to find any other victims. She spent weeks conducting knock-and-talks on Silver’s mail route but came up empty. The hooker, the handyman, and the parrot weren’t talking.

  Charlie found that the parents of the young children had a hard time dealing with even the mention of molestation. It was a form of denial that was consistent and baffling. They didn’t want the police to speak with their children about such a horrifying subject and they didn’t want or have the training to broach the subject themselves without traumatizing their children. Some realities are just too difficult for parents to process.

  The truth is that one out of five children in America is likely to be molested by age fourteen, mostly by people they know and probably by someone to whom they are related. One out of five. Those are pretty powerful odds to dodge.

  Charlie believed there was no such thing as an overprotective parent. She vowed that if she ever had children, there would be a lot of childhood pastimes they would miss out on; youth groups, scouting, church, sleepovers, and camping. These were the hunting grounds of predators. As long as she was with her children, they could enjoy all these things, but until they were old enough to understand sexual molestation and how to defend against it she would remain vigilant. Charlie pledged to children not yet born that their eyes would never look like the eyes of the children she interviewed; eyes that haunted her dreams, asleep and awake.

  Silver gained the boy’s trust by bringing him small gifts when he delivered the mail. That progressed to asking if he could come inside the house to rest or use the bathroom. By the tenth visit into the house he started molesting the boy. The lonely boy cooperated with the initial requests of you-show-me-yours-and-I’ll-show-you-mine, then to touching with the promise of more gifts. When Silver progressed to sodomy the boy started to resist, but Silver convinced him that when the police learned that his mother had left a little kid home alone, they would take her to jail forever.

  Daniel Silver knew that the look on the faces of the boys he was raping was nothing compared to the look in their eyes when they processed that the one parent they had left would be taken away from them forever for letting this happen. It was powerful insurance against cooperation and prosecution and it crippled Charlie’s case. The boy’s mother put it together when she started finding traces of blood in the boy’s underwear and remembered coming home one day as the creepy mailman was leaving, saying that her son was kind enough to let him use the bathroom. Throughout the investigation there was nothing Charlie could say to the boy to convince him that telling the police what had happened to him would not result in his mother getting into trouble. He would only nod when asked if Daniel Silver hurt him, then he would shut down. Charlie knew the case was shaky, but she made the charge anyway, hoping Silver would try to cut a deal. Her hopes were dashed when Silver remained defiant and arrogant to the bitter end.

  Silver’s statement to Charlie that he had done this for years was insufficient in the court’s eyes to count as a confession. The case was thrown out, though he did lose his job. Now here she was, having to sit outside his house and protect his sorry ass. Maybe she and Jake should go for coffee, she thought . . . in Florida.

  “Jesus, we almost missed logging this because of me” she shook her head.

  “Let it go, Sarge. The important thing is we are here now, and now we can settle in and relax. Log it in.”

  “Yea, I guess,” she said still disappointed in herself.

  “You need coffee.”

  “No, you need coffee.”

  “Do we dare?” he asked.

  “No,” she said firmly. “Suck it up.”

  “Okay, you stay, I’ll go. I can walk it, it’s not that far.”

  “Jake it’s at least a mile to Stop and Sip! Let me call a patrol unit.”

  “And blow our cover?” he said. “No way. I won’t be long.” Above her protest he was out of the car and jogging away.

  “Crap!” she said out loud. “Fucking Feds.”

  Over an hour later she jumped out of her skin when he raised the back hatch of the SUV. He closed the hatch and appeared at the side of the door, a cigar clenched in his teeth.

  “Jesus Christ Adams! That is not fucking funny. Where the hell have you been? It’s been over an hour. Don’t you answer your goddamn phone? I was just about to send a patrol unit to look for you! Put out that cigar. It smells good though. Jesus! Your hair is soaked! Where is my coffee?”

  “You’re rambling.” He handed her the double cupped coffee. “You like cigars?” he asked with an impish grin.

  “I do,” Charlie said, her eyes softening as she composed herself. “Thompson smoked them, and the smell always takes me back, but you’re not supposed to smoke on a stakeout Super Fed. Didn’t they teach you anything at Quantico?” He raised an eyebrow at her and she lowered her eyes. Damn it, how did he get her to do that?

  “Face it Sarge, this stakeout idea is a bust.” He blew a waft of smoke out of the open window and dried his hair and neck with a napkin. Charlie breathed in what she could of the smoke, and of him, loving the two smells mixed together. If women were capable of a hard-on, she’d have had one.

  “It was farther than I thought,” he admitted sheepishly.

  “No shit. I guess it is a bust, but let’s not get complacent. When you think you are in the clear, that’s when it happens,” she cautioned. Jake shrugged and put out the cigar.

  They talked all night, savoring their last stake-out hours together. They both knew that this precio
us one-on-one time was about to be over and they both wondered what they were going to do about it. At about five o’clock a.m. Jake started to nod off and she let him go. Once he was fully asleep, she got brave and reached over and stroked the little waves in his hair.

  The sun was starting to rise and Charlie was starting to drift off herself. In her half-sleepy state and with her defenses down, it hit her hard. She was falling for him. She was sure of it. She really didn’t know for sure what was happening on his end; he was so guarded, but she was definitely . . .

  “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” A blood curdling scream ripped through the morning fog.

  Charlie’s thoughts were shattered. Jake jolted awake and reached for his gun. Charlie had her gun in one hand and her radio in the other as they both bailed out of the SUV and headed toward the scream. Charlie brought the radio to her mouth.

  “Wait until we see what we have,” Jake said as they ran. Charlie ignored him and keyed the mic. “Unit 57 unknown trouble—Detail #4. Code 1.”

  Jake glared at her while they ran, angry that she called for backup. They rounded the corner to find a woman standing at the open back gate to Daniel Silver’s backyard. Charlie ran to the woman holding up her badge out in front of her, so the woman would know she was a police officer.

  “Ma’am we’re police officers. What’s wrong? What’s happening?” All the woman could do was point and cry. Charlie and Jake turned to look into the backyard of Daniel Silver, through the open gate of a six-foot fence. The yard was mostly taken up by a swimming pool. They could barely make out the writing scrawled along the back of the fence. Written in a dark paint, it read I DID IT FOR YOU. Floating face down in the pool was Daniel Silver and a dog, both lifeless. The woman continued her hysteria.

  “Ma’am please! It’s okay, come with me,” Charlie said and motioned for Jake to hold his position while she tried to drag the woman away from the scene.