“I helped a mother pick out a dress for her little girl today, Jim. She couldn’t decide between a pink or a purple one. She said her daughter loved both colors so much. We settled on the purple dress and I suggested pink socks or maybe a bow. I had to bathe and disinfect a six year old’s body, Jim. I had to ignore the bruising that was still showing on her upper thighs from being assaulted.” I want to tell Jim that you can’t always go by your gut feeling or how a person looks. Sometimes, monsters hide in plain sight. I should know.
I’m one of them.
“Jesus.” Jim’s face is white. He might have killed someone before, but at his heart, he isn’t a killer.
“Yeah, Jesus.” I stand up. “The police haven’t been able to find any trace of online chatter—how the victims are being given to their abusers. How payments are being made. They’re sure it’s being done in person, off the grid.” My butt aches from the hard wood stool. “You call me if he comes back and then I’ll call the cops. I want to have a word with him before he’s arrested.”
“If he’s been conducting this business in my damn bar, Tori, you ain’t the only one who’s going to have words with him.” His face is red, his eyes dark. Without saying anything, Jim takes the money back out of his pocket and hands it to me. I take it, confused. Jim is my friend, a father figure almost, but he doesn’t do things for free. I guess it’s part of the lifestyle. “This one’s on me, Tori.”
I slip the money back into my purse, not bothering to fish out my wallet. That would make too much of a show of it. If his patrons knew he gave out information for money, he’d be in trouble. You don’t cater to the type he does and help the police on the side. He’s a softie at heart though. His type is the reason child abusers don’t last long behind bars.
God, I wouldn’t want to be a wife beater or pedophile in jail. You don’t come back from that. Look at me, acting like I know something about police work and criminals. Terrance would be teasing me about now. Of course, I’ve helped him on enough cases now that I’m an ‘official’ consultant with the department. That always made me feel weird.
Yanking my right sleeve down properly before it could sneak up past the knife sheath again, I come back to reality. Jim’s staring off at nothing again with a grim frown on his face. I can feel death like wet paint on his fingers. They’re itching to hurt someone… in a bad way. “Jim, you hurt him and he can find a way to weasel out of charges. Lawyers are dirt bags, they won’t care how he’s made the money he’ll give them. Blink of an eye, and you’ll be the one behind bars with him swearing up and down that you knew what he was doing here.”
Jim nods slowly. “I’ll call you if he turns up, Tori. I promise.”
I can see in his eyes that he would call me, but I’m not so sure he’ll refrain from having a few ‘words’ with Don beforehand.
“Jim, I’m serious. The best thing you can do is call me and leave him alone.”
He doesn’t respond and I walk out of the bar; pushing through the door takes effort. It’s windy outside, nearing violence, and the force of the impending storm is heavy against the buildings. The clouds make it darker than it should be for late afternoon. The autumn is strange. Stranger than it once was. Hateful versions of spring showers. Days that are at once cold and then hot in the blink of an eye. I hate getting wet. A middle school teacher I once had, I forget her name now, used to joke that I was part cat. If only she knew what I actually was.
I feel the whisper of a soft touch against my palm as I walk, tilting forward against the wind so that I am not blown away. Glancing down, I find her face. So small beside me, her dark hair unmoving in the weather, because the strands are as lifeless as the rest of her body. She smiles and the expression is sad.
“I want a pink bow and socks.” It’s a forlorn sigh, getting quickly lost in the storm’s yelling.
Before I can reply, she disappears. Ribbons of ethereal shadow that seem to melt away with the first drops of rain.
My hand tingles where she’s touched and I’m plunged into something I try my damnedest to avoid. I feel the way her life ended. I feel the fear.
There are sharp pains as I am kicked, over and over again. Then there is a body pushing against me as I lay motionless on the floor. I begin to cry as the length of a man pushes inside my too-small opening. Wetness pools beneath my thighs as I feel my skin tear and bleed. And the worst part is that I don’t really understand what’s happening as the trauma of it overwhelms my senses and I sink into shock.
Maybe that’s not the worst part. Maybe it’s good that I am so innocent that the brutality of what is happening escapes me.
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Red Eye | Season 1 | Episode 1 Page 11