Confined

by Barbi Barnard

  I pressed my face into the front of his shirt and held on tightly. Just when things started to go good, something like this happened. I took a deep breath and released him. “Thank you,” I said. “For everything.”

  “It’s not a big deal. Now go make sure Emma is okay.”

  I nodded and headed out of the kitchen and away from the gruesome sight. I found Emma curled up on the end of the couch staring blankly at the television screen. She looked up when I sat down, her face wet from the tracks of her tears.

  “Who killed the pig, Mom?” she asked shakily.

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “Steve is going to call some people and get it taken care of, though, so you don’t need to be afraid or anything.”

  “What did it mean, the cop is next? Is someone gonna hurt Steve?” Hysterical tears filled her eyes and she clung to the throw pillow.

  “No,” I told her. “Come on, we’re going to Steve’s while he cleans that mess up.” It was a lie, well, for the most part. There was no way to know what lengths a person would go to, to get what they wanted. And obviously, what this person wanted was me. I didn’t know why yet, hell, I wasn’t even sure I ever wanted to know why. Whoever it was, well they were obviously screwed up in the head and had no problem watching me or breaking into my house or killing.

  The dead pig was what frightened me the most. If a human could easily kill a small animal for their own selfish amusement then they would have no problem taking a human life to get what they wanted. The dead pig upped the ante in my opinion. It was the… god what was he… a stalker?

  Sure, why not, I decided. It was the stalkers way of taking this to a new, entirely more dangerous, level.

  I hurried Emma across the lawn in case he was still out there, watching, waiting, and unlocked the front door. I don’t know what I expected when I opened the front door, but for some reason the relative calm and cleanliness surprised me. I guided Emma toward the living room and the two of us curled up on the couch with the TV playing softly in the background.

  We sat there all day, not talking about the scene in the kitchen, not the blood or the chilling words written on the wall. Instead, we watched a SpongeBob marathon, laughing as best we could as the annoying yellow sponge gallivanted around Bikini Bottom. At five, the front door opened and I jumped as Steve’s voice called to me. I glanced up as he entered the living room and sat down on the arm of the couch.

  “Everything’s cleaned up over there; you’re just going to have to make a statement in the morning. I’m also having an alarm system installed, but until then you two are staying here.”

  “Who killed that pig, Steve?” Emma asked. She looked up at him, the blanket wrapped tightly around her.

  Steve sighed and looked down at Emma. “I wish I knew, sweetie, but I promise I’ll figure it out. I’ll find out who did it and make sure they never do it again.”

  Emma started to cry. “Is someone going to hurt you?” She sobbed.

  Steve stood and crossed to the end of the couch next to her. “I’m going to be completely honest with you okay?”

  Emma nodded and wiped her eyes with the blanket.

  “Someone wants to hurt me. At least that’s what it looks like. But,” he paused, presumably trying to connect his thoughts and introduce them to words. “But it’s like this. There are people out there who, well - they aren’t always right in the head. Maybe that’s what this person’s problem is. Maybe he or she isn’t right in the head and they think something that isn’t true. I don’t know. But what I do know is this: I know how to protect myself and the people I care about and I will protect them. I will protect you and your mom. No matter what.”

  Emma nodded, seemingly pleased with Steve’s response. She lay back down on the couch, visibly more relaxed. Steve patted her shoulder and stood, motioning for me to follow him. I stood up and followed him into his tidy kitchen.

  “We found some finger prints and a few hairs, but there’s no way to know just yet who they belong to, or if they even belong to the weirdo who broke in.”

  I nodded. “Okay,” I said slowly. “How long will it take before we find out who they belong to?”

  “We’ll know in a few days. There’s something I have to go do, but before I do it, there’s something I need you to know.”

  I swallowed hard. Here it was the other shoe. It fell and slapped against the proverbial floor with a resounding echo. “Whatever it is,” I told him, “I don’t think I want to know. Are you sure you really have to tell me?”

  Steve nodded, looking down at the floor. “I do. I- shit.” Steve ran his hands through his hair. “I think I have an idea of who is making those threatening calls and who broke into your place last night.”

  I gaped at him. “You do? Who?”

  Steve ran his hands over his head. “I think it might be someone you and I- know.”

  Confused, I stared at him. Someone he and I both knew. We don’t know any of the same people, what the hell was he talking about? I thought. “Steve,” I said finding my voice. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Steve swallowed, the muscles in his neck contracting and expanding. “You had a friend in high school that I’m friends with now. I think he’s the one who’s stalking you.”

  I stared at him as the realization sunk in. He was talking about Curtis. Steve was friends with Curtis Duggar. All this time, all these months, he’d been friends with Curtis Duggar and never told me. My face burned as if I’d been slapped and I backed away from him.

  “JoJo, wait,” he said grabbing my wrist before I could flee the room.

  “I haven’t talked to him since you and I started getting serious. It’s been month since I’ve talked to him. I know I should have told you but-“

  “But what?” I interrupted with a hiss. “You just all of a sudden decided it was a good time to finally tell me this? If you didn’t think Curtis was the one harassing me, then you probably never would’ve told me, huh?”

  “I was going to tell you,” He said defensively, “I just didn’t know how. Here it is, a guy who pretty much fed you to the wolves is my friend now. How was I supposed to tell you that?”

  “I don’t know, but I think it’s pretty shitty you wait until something like this happens, until some crazy ass kills a pig in my kitchen to tell me you're friends with him, I’m going into the living room, please, just – just let me have a few minutes to digest this tasty little nugget.”

  Steve nodded, leaning against the counter as I walked out of the room. I stood in the hallway trying to wrap my head around the fact that my Steve is friends with someone from my past. Not only that, but he thought it was Curtis who was harassing me. I turned around and walked back into the kitchen.

  “You think Curtis Duggar is the one who broke into my house last night?” I stated.

  Steve nodded his head. “I do.”

  “Why, what proof do you have?”

  “It’s a gut feeling,” he said with a shrug.

  I tapped my foot impatiently against the floor waiting for more than, “It’s a gut feeling.”

  “What?” he said looking at me.

  “All this crap that’s happening and your only reasoning is that it’s a gut feeling? I mean, I could understand if you saw his car on our street or you found his hair or fingerprints.”

  “I went to see him after our first date. I basically told him to leave you alone and stay away from you and the calls stopped.”

  “Yeah, and now they’re starting again. Why would he stop when you told him to and then start up out of the blue again? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I know it doesn’t,” Steve said. “That’s why I have to go down to Port Angeles. I have to find out if he has an alibi for last night. If he doesn’t, then he’s going to the top of my suspect list.”

  I shook my head. “This is, excuse my French, fucking ridiculous.”

  Steve’s jaw dropped, he’d never heard me say the f-word. I shook my head again. “Well it is. W
hy wait all this time to be a total freak-a-zoid and start this crap now? I just don’t get it, you know what I mean?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Fifty millions questions why and only ‘the cop is next’ to go off of.”

  I nodded. “Promise me you’ll be careful. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “I promise,” he said, crossing the room. With the gap between us bridged, he wrapped his arms around me. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my friendship with Curtis before.”

  “It’s okay,” I said leaning my forehead against his chest, it really wasn’t though. I wanted to be mad at him, but considering everything that had just happened it seemed a little silly. I could die tonight and being mad at him would have been how I spent my last day alive. It was trivial. Yeah, it was sneaky of him not to tell me until now, but it wasn’t as if he went out and became friends with Curtis on purpose. They were friends long before he knew me, which, I guess, made it better. Not okay, but better.

  As for Curtis being my stalker, well, I didn’t buy it, but then again I didn’t take Rodger for a rapist either. If I’d learned one thing during my life, it was that people are seldom who they appear to be. And with that little nugget of information in mind, Curtis could very well be the nut job killing farm animals in my kitchen, only time would tell for sure.

  ***

  A few days after the pig incident, an alarm company came out and wired the house up nice and tight. The tech showed me how to program the panel and helped me choose a code all before showing me how to operate the system.

  The crime scene samples came back with one hit in the system: Curtis Duggar. Steve, along with the Port Angeles police, picked him up and brought him up to Mora. The night after he was arrested, Steve came over looking frustrated and tired.

  He sat down at the table looking like he wanted to punch something. “I don’t get it. If you have an alibi, then say so; don’t sit in the interrogation room for almost nine hours giving me some bullshit ass runaround.”

  I set down the plate I was drying and turned to him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Curtis,” he said exasperatedly. “Nine hours in the interrogation room and he still refuses to give me his alibi.”

  I Sat down across from him and gently put my hands on top of his. “Have you talked to anyone who knows him? Maybe his wife can tell you his alibi.”

  “His wife says she doesn’t where he was. She says they got into a fight and he left around seven thirty. She didn’t see him again until five o’clock the following evening,”

  “Ooh,” I said. “That’s bad, then, huh?”

  Steve nodded and ran his hands through his recently cut hair. “Very.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “I have to file charges against him. He’ll go to court and home if someone posts bail. If not, then he’s stuck in jail until his hearing.”

  “Do you think he did it?” I asked.

  Steve nodded. “His fingerprints were on the pig. How did they get there if he didn’t do it?”

  I shrugged. “I guess we’ll see,” I said.

  ‘I guess we will.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Steve

  Close your eyes and think about the typical cop show. Any one will do. Can you see it? There is that low-lying haze, swirling around the atmosphere giving the cops that hard, crinkly-eyed expression. They stare down at a chain smoking perp who looks properly distraught and equally innocent.

  He typically runs his hands through his hair several times during the interview, props his elbows on the edge of the table gripping his scalp all the while proclaiming his innocence. Oh and forget the ridiculously clichéd good cop, bad cop shtick.

  Yeah, it doesn’t really happen like that. First of all, there was no smoking anywhere in the building. If the Fire Marshall caught you smoking, you could count on one helluva fine. And the good cop, bad cop routine was for the birds, if even they were that damned stupid.

  “Curtis,” I said, exasperation lacing my voice. “All you have to do is tell me where you were that night.”

  We’d been going at this for almost four hours. He sat across the table from me, purple circles under his eyes, his hair a greasy matted mess on his head.

  “Steve,” he said dragging his bloodshot eyes to mine. “I didn’t break into JoJo’s house. I didn’t kill the pig and I sure as hell didn’t write on her wall in blood. You know me better than that.”

  I shrugged and returned his gaze. “I thought I knew you, but really Curtis, you can’t even answer a simple question. All I want to know is where you were Sunday night.”

  “Man, if I could tell you I would.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  He sighed and said, “It would kill my wife.”

  “Right and you going to jail is definitely going to be a spa weekend for her.”

  “Look,” he said running a hand over his face. “Whatever it is you think I did, I didn’t.”

  “We found your fingerprints at the scene,” I informed him.

  “Yeah, well, did you ever stop to think I’d been set up?”

  I snorted. “No, Curtis, I don’t think you’ve been set up. Who the hell would want to set you up? What reason would they have?”

  “How the fuck am I supposed to know?” he exploded. “You’re the goddamn cop; you figure it the fuck out!”

  “Don’t worry,” I said rising. “I plan on it.”

  I let myself out of the interrogation room and walked down the hall toward my office. Spread out on a whiteboard was all the information pertaining to the case. Names and dates and pieces of information were all laid out in sequential order, where all the pieces were waiting to be made whole. I sat down on the edge of the desk and stared at the board, my mind trying to fit all the pieces together, to figure out the answer at the center of the mystery.

  From their place at the top of the board Rodger, Tyler and Arnold’s faces all stared back at me. The events of today had to have started with the three of them and the rape. I knew for sure that Curtis was at the party that night and I knew he was aware of what happened that he even helped JoJo come up with a good reason to leave Mora and he supplied her with a place to go.

  I moved on to the next face tacked to the board, the ex-husband. They met in California, married, and subsequently divorced. He knew about the rape, he knew who did it; he had tried to track down the three culprits much to JoJo’s dismay. Sometime after that, they divorced. According to JoJo, she hasn’t heard from him since the divorce.

  Listed next, in chronological order were the dates of the calls, what the caller said, estimates of what time the calls were made. It was strange, the calls were so sporadic and all over the place. A call made in August at seven a.m. and then silence for over a month until a call in mid-September.

  The calls, whatever their intent, did not make sense. There was no pattern, no rhyme, or reason to their inconsistency. Maybe that was his plan all along; make completely erratic phone calls just because. Maybe there was no pattern maybe that was the point.

  I shook my head and focused on the latest piece of the puzzle, the tiny piglets ashen face stared back at me, it’s dark brown eyes glassy, death's mask casting a waxy glow on its pink skin. In the next photo, the dripping red phrase caught my attention. That was directed at me; it made me feel a little uneasy. Obviously, someone had an issue with my relationship with JoJo, and he wanted me to know that. But really, if there was any validity to the threat, the pig would have ended up in the kitchen a long time ago. That night was not the first night I’d slept at her house and we’d been together for a while now, so in my eyes the point of slaughtering a helpless animal was just to scare us.