The Hooker, the Handyman and What the Parrot Saw
Page 27
VABlueAngel: AJ? You there?
VABlueAngel: Please AJ. Did you know that I was in the hospital? I’m guessing you knew.
VABlueAngel: I don’t want to leave it like this AJ. Can’t we at least say goodbye? Please?
AJ101-789: I’m glad you’re okay. I’ll never forget you Charlotte. Goodbye Angel.
Nothing.
She glanced back at the article. Nothing. Then a spark caught. Case Hard Steel Empire. Jake had said his grandfather had started a lock manufacturing company. She Googled the name of the company. The first reference was the sale of the company in 1982 for a whopping sixty-eight million dollars. The second was a reference to the deceased owner and CEO Mark Jacobson, killed alongside his wife by their thirteen-year-old son Adam Jacobson, as they lay sleeping. She already knew this. There was no connection here. She tried to determine how old Adam Jacobson would be now. “He was thirteen at the time of the shooting” she mumbled “so that would make him . . .” She glanced back at the article date. October 17, 1989.
The blood drained from her face and the room began to spin. October 17, 1989.
She sat down on the bar stool to steady herself and typed in the Google search line
“Earthquake, California, 1989.” Wikipedia spit it right out.
1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake
The Loma Prieta earthquake, also known as the Quake of ’89 and the World Series Earthquake, struck the San Francisco Bay Area of California on October 17, 1989, at 5:04 p.m. local time. Caused by a slip along the San Andreas Fault, the quake lasted ten-fifteen seconds and measured 6.9 on both the moment magnitude scale (surface-wave magnitude 7.1) and on the open-ended Richter Scale. The quake killed sixty-three people throughout Northern California, injured 3,757 and left some 3,000–12,000 people homeless.
The earthquake occurred during the warm up practice for the third game of the 1989 World Series, featuring both of the Bay Area’s Major League Baseball teams, the Oakland Athletics and the San Francisco Giants. Because of game-related sports coverage, this was the first major earthquake in the United States to have its initial jolt broadcast live on television.
She let out an audible sigh, unaware that she had been holding her breath. Okay. Okay. There was an earthquake. His parents died in the earthquake. There is no connection, she reassured herself. She flipped back to the AJ screen and picked up the Adam Jacobson shooting article. Her eyes went back and forth from the screen to the article and the screen to the article. She laid the article down and picked up a pen with shaking hands.
Smelling cheap cigar smoke, she looked up to see Thompson sitting on the other side of the breakfast bar. “Go ahead kid. Write it.”
“I really don’t feel well Thompson. I think I need to go back to bed.”
“You need to be institutionalized. But not tonight. Tonight you need to write it.”
AJ, she wrote.
Adam Jacobson
Jake Adams
She felt like she was stepping outside her body as under it she wrote.
AJ101-789
“Keep going,” her ghost mentor prodded. Moses sat quietly watching them.
“Write it.”
AJ101-789
“I did!” She snapped. She stared at the paper.
“Move the dash nitwit,” Thompson said through cigar clenched teeth.
AJ101-789
AJ 10-17-89
AJ October 17, 1989
Adam Jacobson October 17, 1989.
Landon Radisson
She jumped when the bedroom door opened, quickly covering the paper and pushing it back into the file and closing her laptop.
“Baby, you’re not doing your reports now?” Jake asked.
“The pain medication was upsetting my stomach so I got up to get a ginger ale.”
“That’s what I’m here for Love. I would have gotten it for you,” he said pulling her into an embrace. “Sweetheart, you’re shaking,” he said alarmed.
“I’m trying to keep from throwing up,” she said honestly.
“Back in bed now. I’m going to bring you some coke, works faster.”
She shot a glance at the front door but the thought quickly left her as he hugged her from behind and gently pushed her toward the bedroom. She went to the bedroom, closed the door, laid down, and closed her eyes tightly. Jake caught her eyeballing the front door but did not react until the bedroom door was closed. Slowly he lifted the computer screen.
“Fuck, she knows,” he said out loud.
“Fuck she knows,” squawked Moses behind his cover. Jake started to feel himself slipping away, moving somewhere else in the same space, shifting.
His eyes went dark and he pursed his lips and nodded his head. “Well aren’t we little Miss Clever,” he said, grinning under his breath. He opened the case file and saw her handwriting.
AJ
Adam Jacobson
Jacob Adams
AJ101-789
AJ 10-17-89
AJ October 17, 1989
Adam Jacobson October 17, 1989
“Very good, little girl. A little late, but very good.”
Moses lay dead in his cage. The night time cage cover would ensure that he wouldn’t be discovered until morning. Jake felt bad about killing Charlie’s bird and he knew it would upset the boy, but he didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t get Moses to stop saying “Fuck she knows.” There were only so many clues Charlie could blatantly ignore. He was already questioning his decision to keep her alive, but the boy seemed to need her and wasn’t that the whole purpose of Jake’s existence; to protect Adam? The dichotomy added to the fucking. When Adam was doing his “sweet fucking” Jake could overcome him at will when he chose, biting her, making himself bigger so when he entered her all the way it hurt her so she would gasp and whimper, rolling her over and taking her from behind—pumping her while she cried until her orgasm exploded from her and she went limp. He loved fucking her until she passed out. Even while she was passed out. He felt himself getting hard just thinking about it.
The only other possible solution was murder-suicide, because there was no way they would go on living without her. Why not give the boy a break and roll the dice? Jake thought. If he was wrong, a quick death for all of them was still an alternative, provided he wasn’t incarcerated. The thought sent a shiver through his spine. No. Never again. They would never go back. They would die first and take Charlie with them.
The boy had spent five years in a maximum-security juvenile detention facility outside L.A. Had it not been for Jake he would never have survived it. Jake had been watching over the boy ever since the rapes. Jake was the one who pulled the trigger . . . twice. Those bastards deserved to die. Their own child. He grew angry as he thought about how the boy was restrained using plastic wrap so that there wouldn’t be marks when he returned to school after a weekend of abuse. No. No one would ever be allowed to hurt the boy again. Jake would see to that.
He quietly crept back to bed. He searched for the song he needed and let it play quietly on the nightstand as he snuggled up behind Charlie, wrapping her in his arms and she sighed in her half sleepy state. You let me violate you, you let me desecrate you . . .
In the corner of the room, Mary Jane sat on a chair. Thompson stood behind her with his hand on Mary Jane’s shoulder as Mary Jane let a single tear fall.
Author Bio
Patricia Harman was born in Quantico, Virginia and was raised in nearby Stafford County and Prince William County with her six siblings. A police ride along at age 15 led her to a law enforcement career spanning four decades and culminating as a Police Chief. You can learn more about her by visiting authorpatriciaharman.com