“Thanks for pulling that guy off me,” she said. “It wasn't the first time it's happened and probably won't be the last. I can usually take care of myself.”
“Yeah, it looked like you hammered him in the nuts. You were doing great until he maybe made a fist and maybe cold-cocked you. But you're welcome even if you don't know why.”
“I'm grateful. So…” This was when she should ask for his name. But she restrained herself.
“So, what's your name?” he asked her instead.
“Chloe. What’s yours?”
“Feyn. Feynman is my full name. But everyone calls me Feyn, F-E-Y-N.”
“It's pronounced like 'fine'?''
“Yes. Someone's idea of a joke, I guess. Blame my mother. So, where you headed?”
“Northbrook for work.”
“Insurance company?”
“Yes. Is it that obvious?”
He smiled, and her entire world lit up. Those blue eyes sparkled, and for an instant, she forgot where she was and that she was thirty-five dollars away from sleeping at some mission.
“Not obvious at all. It's just Northbrook. Everyone going there works for the Good Hands people.”
“What about you?” she asked, trying to recover from his smile.
“I work downtown. Construction.” He laughed and pulled his coat open. He was wearing coveralls. Plus, he had a white hard hat clipped to his utility belt. Surprise, surprise.
“Ironworker,” he added and pointed at the ceiling. “Up there.”
“On top of the car?”
“Higher. We hang iron in the sky.”
“You build skyscrapers.”
“Something like that. Hotel this time. One hundred stories up.”
“Well, look, thanks for taking care of the guy and—”
He stepped forward and laid a hand on her shoulder. She felt faint. “Can I bring that housewarming present by?”
“You were serious?”
He laughed. “Very serious. You need a plant in that room.”
“And you have a plant for me?”
“I grow African violets. One of my hobbies. I've got one set aside for you.”
“What—what—?”
“Hey, don't go all apeshit on me. It's just a plant. I'm not asking you out or anything.”
She managed to pull herself together. “My room could use a plant. I’ve never actually owned a plant, so it's a novelty for me.”
He removed his hand from her shoulder and gave her a sad—or maybe wise—look. “You haven't owned a plant before. And that's a shame. Well, hey, no time like the present to correct that, okay? What say I come by after work? I'll bring Charlotte then.”
Chloe’s heart fell. Charlotte, of course. There had to be another woman. Her chin hit the floor.
“Hey, don't come unglued. The plant's name is Charlotte. I name them all.”
Immediately, her face lit up, but she hated it for giving her away. God, she was so obvious. “I would love to meet Charlotte. I'm sure I can give her a good home. Come at seven.”
“Seven it is,” he said.
The train slowed to her stop. The little room rocked forward and back, and the doors whooshed open.
The conductor hopped out and put down a little stool. It was all very cute and surreal. She had just run into the most beautiful man she'd ever seen, who had smiled at her, touched her, and he was coming over to give her a plant.
What a way to start a new life!
At work, Chloe’s supervisor was a woman named Evelyn Pergola, who was kind one minute then harsh the next. So, of course, Chloe didn't know what to make of Ms. Pergola.
Her supervisor had placed her in a room filled with forty cubicles. Her cube was located on the inside wall, right next to the restroom door, so the door was constantly swinging, someone going in or coming out. It was noisy and distracting. Plus, her nose was extra-sensitive, and she could smell bathroom odors. Her note to self: Do a great job and get moved out of here. This cube was the suckiest of all.
Her typewriter was one of those with a magnetic card and a tiny screen that made her squint. Everything felt ancient, including the insurance forms she was supposed to fill out with accident info. They keyed in accident reports by hand.
All morning, Evelyn walked by every thirty minutes and asked whether Chloe needed anything, and her answer was the same each time. She smiled, shook her head, and kept typing. She was afraid they were going to find out she was a fraud and fire her.
Forget it. She kept her hands moving and tried not to be distracted by the revolving restroom door. At ten-thirty, Evelyn told her she should go to the cafeteria for a break and help herself. The company paid for all food and drinks. Nice.
She went down two floors and found the cafeteria. It was huge and had islands and islands of food and drinks. There was a Polynesian island, an Asian island, a Mexican island, a French island, and a natural foods island.
She picked out two hard-boiled eggs for protein because she hadn’t eaten before she hopped on the train and was starving. She didn't normally drink coffee, but that day she filled a cup half full of Folger's and the rest with half-and-half. She figured she'd be supercharged by noon and shaking from all the caffeine, but it would help keep her productive.
By noon, she had entered four fender-benders and two rear-enders into the insurance company file cabinets. She’d inhaled the eggs, and half the coffee was gone. While she was typing, she couldn't stop thinking about Feyn. Those eyes and that hair. That thin shadow of a beard and those even white teeth. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine him on his motorcycle with her holding on behind, her face pressed against his back, inhaling his scent. She came very close to lapsing into a full-blown fantasy and forgetting where she was and what she was supposed to be doing.
So she pulled herself back into reality.
Hmmm, Jonathan Marsh ran a red light and creamed the side of Angelo Betuccini's Volvo. Her company insured Jonathan and…
Then it was five o'clock, and she joined the herd in the march to the train platform. Arlington was thirty minutes west. The entire time she was on the train, she kept looking around for Feyn. It wouldn't have surprised her if he walked up behind her and tapped her on the shoulder, but no such luck.
The train rocked to a stop at Arlington Station, and she got off with everyone else. They headed for the parking lot and cars; she headed down the sidewalk. It was four blocks to her flop-tel, and she didn't want to waste any time getting there. She needed to throw all her stuff into drawers and put what she bought to wear to work in the closet.
Getting home by five-forty-five worked. Five minutes later, she was out of her work clothes and into sweats and a black T-shirt. No bra, no panties, just hiding all the goods while she tore around and dusted and cleaned. Then she stopped and looked around. Give it up, she thought. It was a motel. A room. There was nothing she could do to change it into something neat like her own apartment.
For a minute, she sat on the bed and tried not to cry. She didn't want Feyn to see her with cried-out eyes, so she pulled it together for the hundredth time that day. A few deep breaths and she was off to the shower. By the time she was dressed, it was six-thirty. In a one-half hour, the man she promised herself she wouldn't meet for a whole year would be here.
With a plant. Of her very own.
Outside her door and down two rooms was the ice machine. She took the ice bucket and filled it. She slipped two ones into the pop machine and made off with two Diet Cokes.
Back in the room, she put the Cokes on ice and tried to think what else she could do to make Feyn comfortable when he arrived.
Then it occurred to her again—it's a motel room, and it ain't going to be glamorous.
So, Diet Coke it was, nothing else.
Then she sat down on the desk chair and began the long, hard wait. It was a quarter of seven, and she could feel beads of sweat forming under her arms. That pissed her off, but why? She wasn't going to be showing her bare arms to anyo
ne, much less her pits. What he would see were her new jeans and V-neck sweater. That was what he was going to get. Period. Nobody was coming out of their clothes tonight. Wasn't gonna happen, no way, not on her watch.
A knock came at the door. As she got up and went to let him in, all promises of chastity and waiting a year were left behind on the chair where she’d been sitting.
The knob turned easily in her hand.
He held out a small potted African violet. He peeked around it.
“Please come in,” she told him.
And that was how it began.
That night, he took her to a seedy duplex in West Chicago where “a friend of mine is staying.” The purpose of their trip was to meet this friend and maybe have a party.
The friend was nothing like Feyn. He was in his forties or maybe fifties, she couldn't tell, and he opened the door wearing a blue T-shirt that barely covered his pot belly. He had a wispy beard that was getting gray and wore glasses that made his eyes look like they were behind goggles. He squinted at Chloe and looked her up and down.
“This your new girlfriend?” he asked Feyn.
“This is Rodolfo,” Feyn said. “He's one of the guys who runs a huge business downtown.”
When Rodolfo held out his hand, she shook it. His palm was damp and, as she got a closer look, she saw needle tracks on the underside of the arm. Ugh! She turned away toward Feyn and put her head on his chest. “Can we just go?” she asked him.
“Come on inside,” Rodolfo said, all friendly and smiling. “We're having a party.”
Feyn stepped behind her and pushed her in the lower back. They were going inside, his push said, so she took a deep breath and stepped through the door.
Young girls were coming and going, and they all had one thing in common: their movements. They were sleepy-eyed, unsteady, and moved slowly through the living room and into the kitchen or off down the hallway that must have led to bedrooms. They moved like…what was the word she was looking for? Zombies? Yes, they looked like the zombies she saw in movies, slow, staggering steps and faces with features that all ran together.
Following one of the girls through the living room was a man not much older than Feyn, who was much cleaner than Rodolfo and thin. When he turned his head to look at the three of them by the door, Chloe locked gazes with him. He had heavy eyebrows, a wide forehead and widow’s peak, and watery blue eyes, handsome but in a devilish sort of way. And unlike the girls, he wasn’t a zombie. He walked with purpose and even winked at her before he passed into the far hallway.
“What is going on here?” she asked. She was about to turn and run out the door.
“We're printing money,” said Rodolfo, who smirked at Feyn.
She looked at Feyn for his reaction, but there was none. One of the girls brought him a glass of clear liquid and a joint. Another girl returned from the kitchen and handed Chloe a glass of the same clear liquid.
“What's he mean about printing money?” she asked Feyn. He responded with a laugh and a shrug.
“You need money, don't you?” Feyn asked. “Well, here you are. You can make more money here in a day than you can make in a month at the insurance company. I promise I won’t give you a bum steer,” he said, but his incredible eyes didn't look quite so wonderful right now. They had clouded up since they came inside Rodolfo’s place.
“Show her to the room where she'll be staying,” Rodolfo said to Feyn. “It's Madeline's old room.”
“C'mon,” Feyn said to Chloe and held out his hand.
She let him take her hand in his—she still trusted Feyn and maybe even loved him a little. She followed him down a hallway. She didn't realize it at first, but the duplex had an opening to the other side. They stepped through a door in a wall separating the two units. They turned left toward the rear of the second unit. There was a hallway lined with doors. Behind the open doors were small bedrooms barely large enough to turn around in. Suddenly, she got a clear picture of what was going on in this place, and she turned to leave.
But Feyn gripped her shoulder like a vise. “No, please check it out,” he said.
That was the moment she first felt the date rape drug they had put into her drink. She’d only had a couple of sips, mostly out of anxiety since she had hoped she could calm down and please Feyn. With the feeling that she was falling asleep on her feet, she suddenly wanted to lie down. She slumped so Feyn held her elbow down the hallway, past two more doors, and then opened the last door on the right. Like she’d thought, the rooms were barely large enough to turn around in, but that was truly the least of her worries since she tumbled into a free fall toward the kind of sleep she hadn't known since she was a child. Deep, dreamless sleep where you awoke hours later and didn’t know where you were.
When she opened her eyes, it was dark outside, and she was nude, lying on top of a chenille bedspread with dark stains. Instinctively, she moved away from the stains—or tried to—only to find her hands were shackled to the head of the bed and her ankles were shackled to the bottom. Two young men she didn't know were staring down at her, wicked smiles on their faces and glee playing in their eyes.
“God, she’s just a baby,” said the huskier of the two. “Just a baby.”
“She’s just a baby to you, but to me, she’s all grown up,” said the skinny one. “Let me ride that nag!”
When she woke up again, they were gone, and she was weeping. That was when Rodolfo came into her room. Feyn was not with him. He was alone. He bent over her and opened a small black case that looked like an eyeglass case but held a syringe with a needle. He screwed the needle onto the syringe and produced a small vial with a rubber plug. The needle penetrated the rubber and sucked out maybe an inch of yellowish liquid. He injected whatever it was into the large vein just above her inside wrist.
The drug roared into her like a freight train; her mind burned with harsh bright lights and screaming voices that hammered at her with insane words, accusing her of all kinds of sick things she would never do.
This went on for a week. Always a different man or men, always after her for sex. She was dying and didn't care. She could no longer stand to be alone with her thoughts, and she cried and cried until her pillow was soaked. But the next noontime, she would come to again and get another of Rodolfo’s injections.
She finally gave up and let go, accepted she was going to die on that bed, shackled and dirty and hungry and sore. And at that moment, when death was her wish for herself, she was unexpectedly greeted by a new voice. It wasn't a voice outside of her. It was a voice inside, but it sounded like a real person. The voice told her his name was Justin. He was calm and steady and comforting. He said, “Relax, girl, I’ve got this.”
“Who are you?” She asked.
“Justin, and I’m here to save you.”
“Then take over, Justin. I can’t do this anymore, and I have to sleep.”
“I’ve got this. You can sleep now.”
Justin had introduced himself and taken over for her.
He woke her up in the middle of the night, speaking calmly and lovingly.
She replied that, yes, she would like something to eat. When her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room, she searched for Justin. Then it came to her again, what she knew when she had drifted off to sleep.
There was no one else in the room.
“I’ll get food,” he said. “I’ll make them feed you.”
“And let me take a bath.”
“We can do that, too, or my name isn't Justin.”
“Thank God, you came to help me.”
“Yes, thank God, I did.”
She looked around the room once again. Justin’s voice was coming from inside her head. It was the first time she realized. What she had been put through in that room had created Justin. Where she had been one person before, now she was two. Or were there even more, now?
Two weeks later, Justin had her out of that hell. But she was out of her head, and Justin had no idea how to help. So he took her
to Cook County Hospital, and they admitted her to a psych ward. There was drug withdrawal, counseling, and time to heal and get her head back on straight. It was the kind of hospital where the doors were locked, and patients didn’t get to leave until a psychiatrist signed them out as cured, or impossibly lost, she didn’t know which. Maybe in her case, it was the latter.
Because Justin came and took her to a place of her own. A week later, she was working at Northbrook again, the Good Hands people. Talk about good hands: Justin had saved her, and she would never have to see Rodolfo or those men again.
The funny thing was, she felt like Justin had taken over her body when she’d been stuck at Rodolfo’s. He pulled Chloe out of there, or maybe it was her pulling herself out of there. Whatever.
Feyn tried to stop her, but Justin hit Feyn one time and knocked him out.
It was over.
When Chloe finished the last of her story, the jury was hanging on every word. The prosecutor said she had no cross-examination questions, so Judge McClintock gave us our lunch break.
I walked up to the witness stand and helped Chloe down. Her eyes were brimming with tears, and she was all but panting for air. Clearly, the telling had been inspired, but it had also taken a toll. She was exhausted. I didn’t have the heart to tell that, after lunch, we were going to need to hear from Maddy.
But we were.
Chapter 60: Trial
After lunch, I called Chloe back to the witness stand. It was time to invite Maddy to testify.
“Chloe, I need to ask you to do something for us.”
“All right,” she said from the witness stand.
“I need to ask you to tell Maddy to come out and talk to me.”
“Maddy is difficult. She comes whenever she feels like it. Then we can speak.”
“How about I ask Maddy myself?”
“Try it, Mr. Gresham.”
I could feel the jury sit up in their chairs. It was a long-awaited moment, a moment I had prepared them for in my opening statement when I had explained that Chloe was a multiple personality and that I’d be asking one of her alter personalities—maybe two—to come out and talk to them. The air in the room was electric with anticipation, as the spectators, too, were transfixed.
The Fifth Justice (Michael Gresham Legal Thrillers Book 10) Page 23