Broken Seed

by R J Machado De Quevedo

  “No, I don’t think they ever did. No one ever took a good look at him. There was a follow-up article about my father a few months after Vi died. Some heartbreaking crap about how tragic it was that he had lost both his wife and daughter to violence. We had cards and gifts sent to the house for months. I felt sick every time I saw a card in the mail. My father would open them, toss the cards without reading them, and take the cash or checks. He got a few cards with pictures and invitations from those stupid, needy women who thought they could be his cure to loneliness and sorrow. I think he even went out of town to meet a few of them. He started taking a lot more long haul trucking jobs after that, too. I was always so glad when he’d leave.”

  I felt a surge of panic at the thought, Oh God.

  “Oh God, Liz! What if he hurt those women and others he ran into on his jobs? What if he kept raping and killing after Vi and my mom were gone? Oh…God,” I broke off unable to speak.

  “Melanie,” Elisabeth breathed, following my chain of thought to the same horrible conclusion.

  I was shaking. My hands were trembling with horror at the thought. Somehow, saying the words out loud, I knew they were probably true. My father was evil. He had enjoyed it so much he had raped them while he killed them. It had excited him. He got release from the thrill of the kill. I knew in that moment he had done it again. Twice hadn’t been enough.

  “Jill.” I whispered.

  “What about her?” Elisabeth asked in a small horrified voice.

  “She said he had raped and beat her really bad. Maybe he had intended to kill her? She could testify against him! Maybe she has some evidence somewhere, something she kept from the night he raped her. Something with his DNA on it? She could help us keep him locked up!” I said compulsively.

  “Melanie, are you listening to yourself? You want to go find Jill and ask her for help? Are you serious? She wants to get her hands on you herself. She could pretend to play along and turn on you, and they’d have you. No. I don’t think Jill would help you—ever. She could have come forward or after him with her goons at any time to make him pay for what he did to her. She could have already gotten him arrested by now if she intended to.” Elisabeth was shaking her head, her face holding disdain and resolution.

  I felt disappointment strike me hard. She was right. Jill would never help me. She had her own plans for me that did not include helping me keep my father locked up. She only had eyes for me. I shuddered.

  “You’re probably right. I don’t know what I was thinking.” I hung my head, depressed.

  “But he’s getting out of prison tomorrow, Liz. What can we do?” I said, remembering the awful pressing news.

  “How do you know that?” Elisabeth asked me, taken aback.

  Oh, right. I hadn’t told her this yet. Poor Elisabeth. She was taking on more than any best friend should ever have to endure. Someday, she might get fed up with me and kick me out. Or worse yet, run screaming. I sighed and shrugged a tenuous motion.

  “He called me today. Several times, in fact. I left the messages on the machine so you could hear them,” I said in a weak voice but with the bitterness cutting through.

  “What? Why didn’t you tell me!” Elisabeth said, anger seeping into her voice.

  “He just called me today, Liz. Calm down. There wasn’t anything I could do anyway. Besides, I had too much to tell you. I still have a lot to tell you!” I said defensively.

  “Ah!” Elisabeth threw her hands up in the air in exasperation.

  “What, Liz? I’ve had a full couple of days to recount. I was getting there. In fact, I thought I just got there. Telling it all in order was the best way for me to do it,” I said, a little hurt.

  “I know. I know. This is bad. We don’t have much time to try to get a stay to his release. It’s too late now to do anything tonight anyway.” She shook her head.

  “I’m sorry, Melanie. I’m a little freaked out finding out he’s getting out tomorrow so suddenly and calling you! How?” she said with her arms held out palms up in a beseeching gesture.

  “Do you want to hear the messages? They may explain some of the how but not really.” I asked, my own defensiveness defused by her obvious concern. She was scared for me. Fear could make anyone sound snappy sometimes.

  “Yes! Yes, I want to hear them,” she said, nodding her head.

  She got up off the bed in a quick sweeping motion to stand up over me. She stood tall and straight, her body tense. She had the look and feel of a protective mother lion in her face and body. Dangerous, focused, and ready to shred the threat until it was in little pieces of bloody meat. Seeing her so intent for my sake made me feel a little calmer, a little safer. But it also made me worried. Worried my dear best friend may do something rash herself, anything to keep me safe and away from his hands. I suddenly didn’t know how far she’d go to do that.

  Oh, Jesus. Jesus, help us.

  Whisper from the Dark

  Chapter Sixteen

  E lisabeth stood looking down at and held out her hand to pull me to my feet. I was suddenly reminded of the night I met her. She had come to my rescue, bold as brass and the kindest person I had ever met. She had offered me her compassion and her friendship that night. And here she was, still standing by me.

  I took her warm hand and got up off the bed, her light pull helping me up. The strength in her hand and the power in her arm reminded me how fit she was. She was capable of defending mass attacks in martial arts, outsmarting the PhD know-it-alls, and showing more generosity and kindness than Mother Teresa. She was my friend, and I was about to make her life a lot more complicated. I felt bad about that. Guilty she was still standing by me through the unexpected trenches of my life, but grateful she was still here with me.

  I lead the way downstairs to the kitchen.

  I paused with my hand over the machine’s Play Back button. I could feel my heartbeat begin to quicken and my breath decrease to a shallow hesitation. I felt Elisabeth’s presence and warmth along with the smell of her shea butter body wash next to me like a tether to reality.

  “I really hate his voice,” I said quietly.

  “I know. Me too. But it’s all right. We’ll listen to it together,” she said.

  Elisabeth put her arm around my shoulder and waited. She didn’t try to rush me. She didn’t try to push the button for me. Though she was anxious to hear my father’s messages, she knew it was a thousand times harder for me to listen to them again than it would ever be for her. So she waited.

  I took a breath and pressed the button firmly.

  Elisabeth held her arm around me a little tighter as we listened. My breathing was getting faster as my surging adrenaline mixed with the caffeine from the coffee. I closed my eyes and resisted the urge to run to my room and hide. His voice was saturated in terrorizing memories and promises of pain.

  Lord, help me stand my ground. Take this fear far away from me. Please. Oh God. Please.

  I prayed urgently in my heart. I felt the fear grip my chest as though it was being squeezed; then, it pulled away, like being swept back by a wave of peace. I felt my body tremble and then my shoulders drop their tension. My body was calming, and my fear was less, but I still felt sick to my stomach as his voice growled on.

  I glanced up to see Elisabeth. Her face was concentrated on his voice, his every word. She would remember those words for the rest of her life. Every inflection of his voice was being recorded in her intelligent eidetic mind. I could see it in her eyes as she riffled through everything she knew about him and analyzed his choice of words, his tone of voice, the noises, and voices in the background. She would study it all. She didn’t say a word, she just listened.

  The first message ended, and the machine gave the date and time of the next message about to start, then beeped as it began. She leaned down a little as if to hear it better. She had retracted her arm from around me, and her body was braced as if about to fight. Tension filled her body, making her rigid and her face held disdain and anger.
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br />   By the time the second message was finished, she was breathing heavier, and her mouth was in a tight line. Her eyes shone with unshed tears. Not of fear or pain, but of raw pulsating rage.

  “That monster! That fu—” she said through clenched teeth. “He won’t get away with this, Melanie. So help me God.”

  Elisabeth struggled to calm herself for a moment. I watched her determination draw her up straight and close her eyes. Once she had mastered her control, she turned to look at me. Her eyes were full of fury, but she was in control of herself once more. She wasn’t dangerous to me, but I could see she could be very dangerous to him, if she wanted to be.

  “I’m so sorry you have this piece of rubbish for a father. I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am. But know this, Melanie. I will never let him hurt you again. I will not allow it. He thinks he can call you up and be so arrogant as to admit he has a smuggled in cell phone, make threats that you have to do your duty and come get him. He has the audacity to hint he will rape you and think he can get away with it! I think not!” Elisabeth roared the last.

  She stepped away from me and paced back and forth in the kitchen, her hands on her hips and her eyes focused on things only she could see.

  “Do you think it’s enough to keep him in there a little longer? At least until we can try to put together a good case against him for killing my sister and mother?” I asked, watching her closely.

  She stopped and faced me. Her face was determined. “I think it just might be! I think he incriminated himself enough. It might be enough to revoke his early release. But we don’t have much time. Noon tomorrow is coming quick,” she said thickly. “I need to call my grandfather. He’ll know who to contact.”

  She turned, ran up the stairs, then came back down with her cell phone clutched in her hand. She stood beside me, facing the answering machine. She dialed her grandfather’s number by heart. She hit the Speaker button, and I heard the phone ring four times when a groggy voice answered the phone.

  “Hmm, hello?” William Becker said half asleep.

  “It’s me, Papa. It’s Elisabeth. Melanie is here with me too,” she said, glancing at the clock and cringed.

  “It’s past one o’clock in the morning, girl. What’s wrong?” he said, more alert now but still a grumble in his voice. “That Jill girl giving you two some more trouble? I was going to call you back about her—” he started to say, the concern clear in his voice despite his tiredness.

  “No, not yet. But it’s worse or just as bad. I need your help,” she said urgently.

  “Anything,” he said, his voice clearing.

  “Do you know the warden at the Folsom Prison? Maybe even the DA out here?” she asked.

  “Not personally, but Bart does. He knows them both. Why?”

  Bart was her grandfather’s best friend. And Mr. Bartholomew Mathieson just so happened to be the DA in Shasta county.

  “Melanie’s father is getting out of prison tomorrow. He left her some disturbing and threatening messages. The arrogant monster even admitted he was using a smuggled cell phone to make the calls on. We need him to stay locked up while we build a case against him for other crimes he was never convicted of,” she said, her voice calm and almost fully professional now.

  She was pulling back from her anger and was once again in full control and clarity of mind. One thing about Elisabeth, she never stayed overemotional for long. Her intellect overrode her unreliable emotions nine times out of ten. It was a good quality to have. And one I was working on.

  “What do you mean? When I looked him up, he was supposed to be in prison for at least seven more years,” he asked, all sleep gone from his voice leaving it clear and alert.

  “Early release for good behavior and no budget,” I answered with scorn.

  “I’ll play the messages so you can hear them, Papa,” Elisabeth said. “You’ll need to record them so Bart can hear them too. We need his early release revoked to keep him in there because we have cause to believe he is a serial rapist and murderer, Papa. He beat Melanie’s mother and sister to death and raped them both while they lay dying! She remembered it. She had a—flashback. It all came back to her,” Elisabeth explained.

  She looked at me apologetically while she told him this and she searched my face for any reaction that might tell her I was about to fall apart. I just stood there, biting my lower lip, hugging myself. God, I hoped he could help us.

  “Suppressed memory recall is a tricky thing in court, Lizzie. It’s almost as revered as hypnotherapy. They will pull it apart with well-spun stories of an abused child seeking revenge and making up stories to get attention. They will say anything to draw reasonable doubt into the jury’s mind. Do you have any hard evidence? Any proof of this besides her memories?” he asked, his voice was starting to sound like the chief of police he once was before he had retired. Cool, calm, and logical.

  “Nothing yet. But I believe her. I saw her face as she relived it for me, it was… heartbreaking. I know it’s true. She wouldn’t make something like that up.” Elisabeth was getting defensive, her voice was precariously close to accusatory.

  “Baby girl, I never said that. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. Don’t get harsh with me now. I was just asking if you had any other proof. She might be certain of what she saw and what happened, but hard evidence is still what drives all convictions home. You know that,” he said patiently.

  “Yeah, I know. And I also know how hard it is to prove repressed memories are real. Especially ones as old as hers from a time when she was extremely young. But despite that, there is no statute of limitations on murder! And even though there is for the sexual assault of a child, she witnessed him hurting Vivian time and time again. Psychopaths like him never just give up their appetites. He eventually tried to rape her too when she was eighteen, if you recall? She was too afraid to press charges at the time but she is well within the statute of limitations to do so now!

  “In order to get ahead of the question of why she waited so long and the bias accusations that she’s just trying to get revenge, what we need is additional legal grounds for a trial.” Elisabeth sighed and she looked off through the breakfast nook into the living room as if reading from the internal pages of her mind. She probably was.

  “Back in 1990, a groundbreaking case went to trial here in California. The defendant was Kevin Templeton, a fifty-five-year-old father. He stood trial for a murder that had occurred more than twenty-five years earlier. The victim was a little eight- year-old girl named Jacqueline. She was murdered on October 22, 1964. Kevin’s own daughter, Irene, was only eight years old herself at the time the murder occurred. But her repressed memories that emerged provided the major evidence against her father. What was so groundbreaking about this case was that Irene’s memory of witnessing the murder had been repressed for more than twenty-five years! And the jury believed her. She won them over with her detailed testimony and emotional recount,” Elisabeth said with determination.

  Elisabeth looked at me then and locked her eyes with mine. She held my gaze with her solid belief we could win. And I believed her. It had been done before and it would happen again.

  “Your mind never ceases to amaze me, girl,” William Becker said with pride.

  “What say you about stopping the early release, so we can focus on getting more evidence than questionable memories?” Elisabeth said with a slight derisiveness to her voice. She never spoke to her grandfather this way. It showed how much stress this was putting on her.

  “Of course, I’ll do everything I can, Elisabeth,” he said, then sighed.

  “Thank you, Papa. Please listen to this tape and help us get his early release revoked. We need him to stay away from Melanie. I think he’ll come after her if he gets out,” Elisabeth said pointedly. She was calmer but still firm.

  “Yes, of course. Let me grab my handheld recorder,” he said.

  I heard him grunt as he got up and then, a moment later, a drawer opening and closing.

 
; “Okay, got it. Ready. Go ahead,” he said.

  Elisabeth hit the Play button, and the machine gave the date and time of each call before repeating the messages again.

  I stood quietly against the counter, waiting for them to finish. My reaction wasn’t as extreme this time, and it didn’t take as much effort to keep a hold of my peace. However, the sound of his voice still made me feel like he was invading my home as his nasty voice filled the kitchen once more like a monster whispering in the dark.

  “Holy Mary, mother of God,” Mr. Becker said. “Don’t take this wrong, but is Melanie one hundred percent sure this is her father on the phone? Can she identify him by his voice with absolute certainty?” he asked carefully.

  “Of course she can! She was terrorized by that voice her entire childhood! People don’t forget sounds and smells with deep emotional significance. And I can identify his voice too. I’ve met him, remember? I’ve heard him speak. I know the inflections and cadence of his speaking patterns. I’m a linguist, Billy. Let them try to pick apart my qualifications and the gloves come off.” She had resulted to his nickname and not Papa by the end of her speech. It meant she was truly growing angry with him. When she got to calling him William, it’d mean she was really ticked off.

  “Elisabeth, I have to ask because Bart will ask me. He can’t start an intervention like the one you’re asking without a solid witness to testify that this was, without a shadow of a doubt, the voice of Dwayne Randal Bishop. Bart will need the assurance before he can step in with less than…eleven hours before Dwayne’s scheduled release. It takes time to get a forensic voice analysis of the recording done to establish a voice print match. I don’t even think we have a spectrographic in Shasta County. So all he’ll have is my word for it until he can request the recording to be analyzed by an outside agency.” He let out a big sigh.

  “Papa, I—” Elisabeth began.

  “Do you know what it could do to his career to make a false allegation against an inmate who’s served his time without a recorded incident and was about to get released early? Especially right before an election year? I have to be able to tell him she’s certain. I don’t doubt her, and I don’t doubt you. You know that. But there is a political aspect to this war we are about to start that has real consequences, and unfortunately, it could affect the outcome. As it is, the whole state is pushing toward signing a Prison Realignment Bill, stirring the water like this could backfire on us.” His voice was flat, factual and unemotional.