A look of panic came over her face, but she didn’t respond to him.
“She asked for it? Is that what you’ll tell the authorities when I have you arrested?” My voice strained as I fought the urge to scream.
He stopped, his hands lingering in the air in front of him. “The authorities? Why would you call the police? I’ve used the same technique dozens of times.”
I lunged toward him, prepared to hold him back while Tina made her escape. “Technique? You’re a monster.” I motioned for Tina to leave the room. “Go now.”
She hesitated. “You’ve got this all wrong.”
I didn’t want to take my eyes off Ty, but I couldn’t be sure if Tina was serious without looking at her. “Look at the bruises on your face and arms.”
She laughed a nervous laugh. “These bruises aren’t from abuse. They’re from…”
“Don’t stick up for him,” I said.
She stepped forward, a trembling hand on my shoulder. “He didn’t hit me.”
A look of recognition came over Ty’s face. “Is that what you think this is? Gosh, no. I’d never hurt her. Those bruises are from surgery. She had rhinoplasty.”
I’d worked on a post-surgical floor. Something wasn’t right. My instincts screamed for me to ask more questions. “How did I get this wrong?” I assessed Tina’s bruises again, remembering the bruising on her arms. “But what about your arms?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but Ty answered for her, “Those are from the IVs.”
It was plausible, but not believable. “What about the other arm?”
He flashed a smile. “Same thing. The vein collapsed on the other side.”
“And you performed the surgery? Don’t they frown against performing procedures on family members?” I thought I had him, but he had an answer for me.
“It’s common in plastic surgery.”
I glanced at Tina. “You sure?”
She nodded.
“I’m sorry.” I gave up and started to walk out the back door.
“You can go through the front,” Tina said.
We locked eyes. “You okay here?”
Ty draped his arms over her shoulders, pulling her from me. “She’ll be fine. In a few days, she’ll be better than ever, won’t you?” He squeezed her closer to him.
She grimaced with pain, casting her eyes away. “I sure will.”
I didn’t say another word to them, but as soon as I walked out the door, I turned to Barney and said, “I hope I’m wrong about him.”
Chapter Five
“Oh, good, you’re home.” Diane didn’t bother with a hello when I answered the phone.
I hated to burst her bubble. “What makes you think I’m home? I have a cell phone. I could be out for a late-night jog.”
She didn’t have to say anything. Her laughter told me everything I needed to know.
“Thanks a lot,” I groaned. When she composed herself, I said, “I’m glad you called. I need to clear my head.”
“Uh oh. You didn’t go over to Tina’s house, did you?” When I didn’t respond, she said, “I knew you would. Tell me nothing happened.”
“I could, but I’d be lying.”
She gasped.
“It wasn’t that serious,” I said.
I heard Gio’s voice in the background.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He said he’s glad you’re alive,” she said. “Do you know how dangerous that was?”
I had to laugh. Now I had proof she had listened to me when I issued warnings about her actions. Too bad she never heeded those warnings. “You know who you sound like?”
“Don’t say it.” Her voice faded out.
“Hello? Are you still there?” I asked.
As if she couldn’t hear me, she said, “Hello. Hello.”
The line went dead.
“Cell phones were supposed to make communication easier,” I groaned. “Time to lock up and get some shuteye.” I glanced at Barney. He was fast asleep next to Charlie’s chair. “Looks like you beat me to it.”
As I readied myself for bed, I couldn’t shake the sense something wasn’t right. Tina and Ty said all the right things, but I wasn’t convinced any it was true.
After I set the alarm, I settled into bed. As my body floated to dreamland, a loud banging startled me awake. It was loud enough to wake Barney. The combination of his barking and the banging made my heart race.
I ran down stairs, stopping to grab the only weapon I could find on short notice—an umbrella.
“Quiet, Barney,” I said.
“Mercy, it’s me. Hurry!”
I yanked the door open, forgetting to turn off the burglar alarm. It sounded with a shrill, ear-piercing sound.
Tina was close to unrecognizable. Her face was swollen to three-times its normal size.
I pulled her in. Noah followed behind her, his eyes on something behind him.
“Come in,” I said, wishing I’d remembered the alarm.
They filed in, both shaking and crying.
The phone rang.
“That’s the alarm company. Don’t move,” I said as I reached to shut off the alarm and answer the phone.
Tina grabbed my arm. “Tell them to send the police. I think he followed us.”
She didn’t have to tell me twice. I alerted the alarm company.
The security company patched us into the police department dispatcher. Tina explained how Ty had become enraged after I left. When he walked outside to cool down, she grabbed Noah and her car keys and left.
We locked ourselves in Charlie’s office as we waited for the police to arrive. We didn’t have to wait long. Within a matter of minutes, they were at the front door.
One of the officers pulled Tina aside. The other officer spoke to me until my cell phone rang again, interrupting us. This time it was Charlie.
The officer said, “I gave Charlie a call for you.”
“Of course,” I said, staring at my shaking hands as I lifted the phone to my ear. “Hi, Charlie.”
He skipped the introductions, “Ty has been arrested. Are you okay? How about Tina and Noah?”
“Scared. How did you know they were here?” I asked.
He said, “I’m the chief of police. When the chief’s wife tells you someone they know might be a victim of abuse, you don’t ignore her. By the way, sneaking around in someone’s yard in the middle of the night is about the worst possible thing you could have done.”
I cringed to think about what else he knew. “Who told you?”
“I have a whole team of patrol officers and a nosy wife. It doesn’t take a genius to know you’d be up to something. I had a couple of the patrol officers look out for you. You didn’t answer me. Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes. It’s not me you have to worry about. I don’t want to discuss it now, but when you get back, we should talk about your spying campaign,” I said.
He sighed. “I’m glad everyone is safe. Tina has heavy decisions to make. If you haven’t already, ask her to stay at the house until she figures things out. I didn’t want to say anything earlier, but this isn’t the first time this has happened to her. Ty has been on our radar.”
“Wow. How did I not know?” He didn’t respond. “How long will he be in jail for this?” I asked.
“I wish I could say forever, but it will depend on the county attorney. Let’s worry about Tina and Noah. We need to make sure they know they’re not alone for now.”
I glanced over at them. Both looked shell-shocked. My heart broke for them.
Tina caught my gaze. She mouthed the words, “I’m sorry.”
I waved off her words. “You don’t have to apologize to me. I’m sorry I didn’t do something sooner. I should have known.”
Charlie waited while I spoke to her.
Tina wiped tears from her eyes, turning her attention back to the officer.
“Will you be okay tonight? Should I come home?” Charlie asked.
; I wanted him to, but it wouldn’t have been fair to him. I said, “No. We’ll be fine. I’ll see you soon and thanks for everything.”
He said, “I love you, Mercy. Get some sleep. I’ll have the patrol officers keep a close watch on the house while I’m gone. They can escort Tina home to pick up some things when she’s ready.”
We both knew sleep wasn’t going to happen for any of us, but at least I could take comfort in knowing Tina and Noah would be safe for the night. No matter what Tina decided to do, I’d be there for her every step of the way.
# # #
WHEN THE MUSIC STOPS
by James L’Etoile
“I was supposed to die tonight.”
Beth Walker tried to make herself even smaller, pressing against the arm of a lumpy, broken-down sofa. She sat in the drab living room of something the landlord called a one-bedroom “charmer.” It was a place that, until recently, she shared with her husband. Beth fumbled with a cheap disposable lighter and couldn’t hold her hands quiet enough to light her cigarette. She tossed the lighter and the unlit smoke on the coffee table.
“Why did you think you were going to die, Mrs. Walker?” detective Tim Hall asked. Hall kept his jacket on in spite of the oppressive heat in the small home. He pulled a rough wooden chair from the dining room and sat facing Beth. He adjusted his tie, loosening the knot, signaling he was going to be here for a while. Hall leaned forward and retrieved the photos of Ronnie Walker’s body that he’d placed on the coffee table between them.
Beth had barely glanced at the photos and shrank into the sofa while crime scene technicians swept through the house, pawing through her possessions, exposing her deepest secrets. Her attention drifted and Beth’s gaze was drawn to the home’s only bedroom.
“Mrs. Walker?”
“Yes?” Beth’s focus came back to the detective, but she didn’t make eye contact with the man.
“Why did you say you were supposed to die?”
“Because the music stopped,” she said.
The detective glanced at his partner, a middle-aged cop with a paunch around his middle. The second detective leaned against a wall, rolled his eyes and said, “5150.”
Hall knew his partner meant that they should write Beth Walker off as mentally ill and go dump her in a locked psychiatric unit for a seventy-two-hour evaluation.
“Tell me about the music,” Hall asked.
The other detective interrupted, “Why are you even bothering to listen to this bullshit? Let’s wrap her up, drop her off at the PHF, and be done with it.” Detective Robinson pronounced the acronym for the psychiatric health facility as “puff.”
“‘Cause it might matter, Robby,” Hall said.
“Whatever. I don’t have to listen to this delusional bullshit.” Robinson left the living room and headed toward the kitchen area.
Detective Hall turned back to Beth, his jaw a bit tighter than before.
“Thank you,” Beth said.
Hall’s brow furrowed. “For what?”
“Nobody’s wanted to hear what I’ve had to say for a long time.” She peered out from under her shoulder-length brown hair, which shielded most of her face.
“Tell me about this music. What do you hear?”
A small crease in her lip shown through, not a smile, but it was something less hollow than before. “I don’t hear music, Detective. I’m not ready for a padded room.”
“So, tell me about it.”
Beth stood and pointed to the bookshelf on one end of the living room. “May I?”
Hall nodded.
Beth raised up on her toes, stretching her five-foot-three-inch frame to reach to top shelf. A fading bruise showed on her lower back as she reached. She gathered a small wooden box in her hands, gently cradling the box, before placing it on the coffee table. Beth opened the lid and perched on the sofa again.
The wooden container was a vintage music box—the kind that featured a small figure of a ballerina, which popped upright when the lid was opened. The figurine was faded and chipped, the once elegant hands broken off at a sharp angle.
Detective Hall remained silent while Beth positioned the music box on the table. She wound the key and nothing happened.
“My mother gave me this music box when I was six or seven years old. She told me to play it when I was scared. Mostly, I played it when my father beat her—to drown out the sound of everything going on down the hall. It didn’t block them out, especially when Dad would punch a hole in the wall with his fist—it just gave me someplace to go—into the music.”
“It doesn’t work?” Hall asked.
“It does—or it did, until two days ago.”
“Is this what you meant by the music stopping? I don’t understand what this has to do with—”
“My husband was more like my father than I thought. Maybe that was the attraction at first. Ronnie said all the right things, was kind, and told me about the future we’d have together. Something changed over time. I don’t know when it happened, or why, but Ronnie turned.”
“He abused you?”
Beth nodded.
“Why didn’t you leave? You saw what your mother went through. Why didn’t you take off?”
“Because I love him—loved him.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Unless you’ve been through it—it’s hard to explain.” She leaned back on the sofa and drew a soft breath. “It began like it always did. Ronnie started coming home from work late. It was the anticipation that was the worst. Not knowing who it was that was going to come walking in the door—the man I married, or the worst version of him.”
“Tell me what happened,” Hall said.
Beth closed her eyes and Hall watched her body tense. Whatever she went through left an imprint deeper than her faded bruises.
As Beth recalled how her life with Ronnie came to its violent end, she felt numb. She heard the words fall from her own lips, but they seemed foreign, separate and distant from her. She rubbed the scar on her arm. It was three weeks ago when Beth rushed to wrap a dishtowel around a gash on her arm. She remembered a clatter ringing out as Ronnie dropped the butcher knife on the floor.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to...” Ronnie said.
Beth tightened the dishtowel to stem the blood flow from the wound. The towel soaked though and she grabbed another one.
“I’ll never do that again,” he said.
Beth heard that hollow, familiar phrase and she knew in her gut that he meant it, until the next time.
Ronnie took her to the urgent care clinic as opposed to the hospital emergency room. He always said it was because they would get her “fixed-up quicker.” Beth knew it was his choice because there were no cops roaming the hallways in the clinic like they tended to do in the ER. No cops—no hard-to-answer questions.
This was the first time he’d hurt her with anything but his fists. Beth figured it was her fault. She shouldn’t have antagonized him; she didn’t back down when Ronnie grabbed the knife from the butcher block and swung it at her.
“Mrs. Walker, let’s get you checked in,” a nurse clad in light blue scrubs said.
Beth and Ronnie followed the nurse to a small patient exam room where the nurse took down all the basic information and noted her elevated heart rate, borderline blood pressure, and typed it all into a computer file.
“How did this happen?” the nurse asked.
“She slipped when she was slicing vegetables for a stew,” Ronnie said.
The nurse’s eyes shifted to Beth.
“Is that right? It must have been one nasty carrot to do that.”
Ronnie squeezed Beth’s hand as a warning and prompted her to respond with the words they had rehearsed in the truck on the way over.
“Yeah, I cut myself.”
“I’ll get this cleaned up and then get the doctor to come and take a look. I think this is going to need a few stitches.”
“Can’t you just slap on a few of those butterfly bandage th
ings?” A whiff of bourbon from Ronnie’s breath saturated the small exam room.
“I’ll let the doctor make the medical decisions, how about that?” The nurse didn’t glance at Ronnie while she cleaned the six-inch-long gash.
When the nurse left the room to get the doctor, Ronnie clamped down hard on her hand. “You gotta get your story straight.”
“Stop. My hand. You’re hurting me,” Beth said.
“You saw that bitch. She didn’t believe you.”
“I told her it was my fault, Ronnie.”
“Don’t you get it? If you blame me for this, I’ll make sure you regret it.” Still squeezing her hand, he said, “Don’t test me.”
A doctor came in the room, a smallish man who tipped the scales at a hundred and ten on a rainy day. In a soft, but tired voice, he said, “Mrs. Walker, I’m Doctor Carson. Let’s say we have a look at your arm.”
Dr. Carson gently lifted the gauze the nurse had applied.
“This is a nasty cut you’ve got here. How did you say it happened?”
Beth locked eyes with her husband’s glare.
“It was an accident. I did it.”
“Um-hum,” the doctor said.
“It was,” she repeated.
“If you say so. I’m going to need to suture this back together.”
Dr. Carson worked a dozen sutures into the wound, closing the gash on Beth’s arm. “This will leave a scar, but there’s not much I can do about that.”
Beth noted the doctor’s demeanor change after she claimed she accidentally cut herself. He was too busy or too lazy to question the circumstances of the injury. Instead, he tossed her a bottle of painkillers from the in-house pharmacy.
“See there, honey, you need to be more careful.” Ronnie said.
Ronnie pocketed the bottle of pills before they got in the truck and once he started the engine, he realized he’d gotten away with it, again. Beth leaned against the passenger door, as far away as she could get from him.
“You’d better be a good girl, or you won’t get any happy pills,” he said.
Ronnie took the bottle from his pocket, shook one of the opiate-based pills out and popped it in his mouth.
Betrayed: Powerful Stories of Kick-Ass Crime Survivors Page 11
