Sarah didn’t know what to say. She didn’t think anything could have been worse than what she’d seen on that tape but the tape had been silent. She couldn’t imagine what it must have sounded like. She couldn’t imagine hearing herself being skinned alive and remembering it.
“That’s terrible. My God.”
“It’s in the past now. Or at least it was until you five walked in here.”
“I’m sorry. I really am. I didn’t mean to make you relive all of that.”
“Like I said, it’s all in the past now.”
Sarah wondered if she should ask the next question. She tried to think of how to phrase it or if she should ask it all. She knew that it would worry her if she didn’t.
“Do you mind if I ask you one more question?”
Dorothy looked fearful. She was still recomposing herself from the last question. She took a long, deep breath and blew it out slowly.
“Okay, go ahead.”
Sarah picked her words carefully.
“You just…you sound so sane. I mean, you don’t sound…you don’t seem, you know, mentally disturbed. Why are you here? Why did you do this to yourself?”
Dorothy turned away. She looked down at her fingers, then drew her hands up into the sleeves of her robe and looked over at the TV, where a clip of Barack Obama was on talking about economic recovery.
“Was it because I didn’t believe you?” Harry asked. “Did you have some sort of nervous breakdown or something?”
Dorothy shook her head. Tears began to run down her face, traveling the maze of crinkled skin to the corner of her mouth.
“I didn’t want him to touch me again. I figured I would either die or look like this. Either way he’d never touch me again. I was right. I haven’t seen him since.”
Sarah stood, smiling bitterly.
“I’ve seen him. He left you and came straight to me.”
Detective Lassiter shook her head.
“No, he didn’t. There were six years between the two of you. I’m pretty sure he didn’t stop for six years.”
“No way a guy like that takes a six-year hiatus,” Torres added.
“You’re right. There are other victims out there,” Harry said. “And they probably don’t even know it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
When the detectives dropped Sarah and Josh off at the “safe house,” she had been expecting at least one of them to stay. She was quite surprised when they all left.
“Torres will be back to drive Josh to work.”
“I need to call in to make sure I’m working. I don’t have a set schedule yet.”
“Okay, just let Trina know,” Harry said.
“Um, excuse me. Trina?”
“Yes?”
“Who’s staying with us?”
Detective Lassiter looked at Harry and Torres before she answered, and Sarah knew that no one had been assigned to them. They were being left on their own.
“Unfortunately, we all have other cases we’re working on as well as this one so we can’t stay here with you but I assure you that you’re safe. We need to be out there hitting the street looking for McCarthy anyway. The sooner we catch him the sooner you can go back to your home. We can’t catch him sitting around here. Besides, he’s not the Mafia. He has no way of finding out where you’re staying unless he follows one of you back here. As long as you’re cautious, you’ll be safe,” Lassiter said.
“Okay.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll catch him,” Harry said and then, just like that, they all filed out of the apartment, leaving Sarah alone with her husband and their combined fears and anxieties.
True to the detective’s word, the Extended Vacation Suites was a brand-new sprawling motel that looked more like an apartment complex. It rented out rooms by the week and the month and there were more families and couples living there than she ever would have expected. Most of them, Sarah guessed, had probably lost their homes to foreclosure. Looking at the single moms, the single dads, the married couples with two, three, four, and five kids all crammed into these little rooms, Sarah made up her mind that she would not abandon her home.
In addition to the families there were the obvious prostitutes, the drug dealers, the gamblers, and con men, the solitary men and women living transient, secretive lives better suited to motel life than permanent residence. They made Sarah nervous but curious in a voyeuristic way. She knew she’d be spending many days peeking through the curtains to spy on her neighbors. She never thought of herself as one of those types of people but then she hadn’t lived in an apartment since college.
There were twelve buildings separated by a parking lot and landscaped courtyards. There was a gated pool just a few buildings away and a clubhouse with a modest fitness center that was just two treadmills, an exercise bike, an elliptical machine, and some free weights.
The buildings were only two stories high, stucco, painted tan with orange accents. If it wasn’t for the marquee-size neon sign at the front of the complex it would have looked like just another apartment or condominium complex. Sarah sat on the bed staring at her suitcases. It was still hard to believe everything that had happened to her in the last few days. It seemed like only yesterday that she was waking up to the smell of burned pancakes and frying bacon, eager to finish breakfast so she could have sex with her husband. Now, sex was the furthest thing from her mind and she was hiding out in a motel from a sadistic psychopath with the power to resurrect the dead. It was hard to believe and even harder to accept. She looked over at Josh, who was sitting beside her, staring at the blank TV screen with vacant eyes. She wondered if Josh would ever recover from what he had seen on that tape. She wondered if either of them would.
She stood up from the bed and began to undress. Sarah needed a shower. Her muscles felt tired and achy. She could feel the tension bound up in her sinews like coiled springs. She felt dirty. She imagined that she could still feel Dale’s sweat and semen on her. She could feel blood in her hair, on her skin. She knew it was all in her head but that did not change the fact that she felt grimy.
Standing there naked in front of Josh, she wondered if they would ever regain their sex drives. Josh was not even looking at her. He continued to stare off into space. A week ago Sarah would have been offended and probably would have given him head just to prove to herself that he still found her desirable. Today she was relieved that he wasn’t interested.
Sarah walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower. The water was hot almost immediately and Sarah stepped in. She closed the shower curtain, but then memories of all the horror movies she’d watched as a kid came flooding back, along with the very real fact that she was now being stalked by her very own psycho, and she ripped the curtain open again. Water sprayed all over the bathroom tiles as Sarah scrubbed the memory of her assault from her skin. Taking a shower with the curtain closed was yet one more thing she knew she would not be able to do again for some time.
When she walked out of the bathroom wrapped in towels, Sarah found Josh sitting on the edge of the bed with his nine-millimeter in his hand. It was cocked and Sarah could only assume that it was loaded. The way he stared at the gun, Sarah knew she had come out of the shower just in time.
“Josh? What are you doing with that gun? What were you about to do, Josh? Were you going to leave me?”
“I can’t take this. I’m sorry.” Josh raised the gun to his head and tears began to stream from his eyes.
“Don’t you fucking dare! Don’t you fucking dare, Josh! Don’t! Don’t!”
Sarah held out her hands for the gun as she rushed forward, dropping her towel and pausing just short of snatching the gun away from his head. She was afraid he would pull the trigger if she tried to take the gun from him and one of them might get hit.