The woman’s eyes widened.
“You-you have a video? I want to see it. Can I see it? What’s on it?”
“It shows Dale breaking into their house, clubbing Sarah and Josh in the head with a hammer, raping them both, and then stabbing them both to death. Then he apparently resuscitated them both or resurrected them.”
“Both of you?”
Dorothy looked at Josh, who looked away.
“How? I mean, how did he bring them back to life? How does he do it?”
“He breathed into their mouths like he was doing pulmonary resuscitation, mouth-to-mouth, and they both just healed up. Their wounds went away and they were alive again.”
“You have that on tape? All of it?”
“Yes. It’s all on tape.”
“But he got away. He’s still out there?”
“Yes.”
“So, why are you here then? He’s not here is he?”
Dorothy looked around. Her eyes widened in panic and she tried to lift herself from her chair. Harry put his hand on her shoulder and eased her back into her chair.
“No. He’s not here. I just wanted you to know that I was wrong and that I’m sorry and I’m going to make it right. I’m going to catch him. I’m going to finally put a stop to this.”
“Can I ask you a question, Dorothy?”
Dorothy looked down at Sarah, who was still crouched beside her chair.
“Yes?”
“What did he do to you?”
“I don’t remember. I can’t remember hardly any of it. I would wake up with these pictures in my head, these terrible images of being raped, being stabbed, being skinned alive. Then they would just go away and I wouldn’t be able to remember anything. I would walk around all day feeling violated and wounded but not knowing why. I was terrified, especially when I would see Dale at work. Then I started keeping a dream diary. I would write down everything I could remember as soon as I woke up. Some of the things were…they were just unimaginable. I would have never thought anyone capable…it was inhuman some of the things I dreamed. Then one night I put a tape recorder under my bed and I caught it all on tape. It was just the audio but I had written it down that morning too. I wrote that he had skinned me alive and that’s what I heard on the tape. I heard myself screaming, I heard the sound of flesh and skin tearing. And I heard him laughing.”
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
