Blood on the Threshold

by Karin Richmond

  Catherine’s cheerleading chum was shocked by her friend’s scream. It being the days before cell phones, she had to run to the neighbor’s next door to call the police. The pay phone line was still open, the receiver—now smattered with Catherine’s blood—dangling in the booth. “Thank God I told Kelly where I was calling from,” Catherine thought as she slumped to the ground. The cashier was clueless, of course, because he had not actually seen anything and she had been lost from his line of sight. Leroy was long gone.

  But not long gone from the police. The small town peace officers knew their citizens well, almost by name. And Leroy was a known small-time grass dealer. Didn’t have a record—yet—but they kept an eye on him up through his last years of high school and beyond. When they got to the crime scene, Catherine was conscious but near a state of shock. An ambulance was radioed in. When she told the officers who had done it, each man knew where to start looking.

  The police caught Leroy after a brief frantic scramble and placed him in the local jail. He was charged with assault with a deadly weapon, but his public defender succeeded in getting the charge dropped to a misdemeanor assault in a plea bargain negotiation. This was his first time to be actually inside a cell and, unbeknownst to him, the beginning of a long life of incarceration.

  As Leroy would tell fellow inmates a few months hence, memories of that night in Crockett were running through his mind as he stood in the back pantry area of the hotel kitchen. He couldn’t believe his luck in being handed this ideal setting in which to replay his vengeance against uppity white women—especially that bitch who ruined his life in Crockett. He had carefully checked the hotel guest list and found two promising possibilities. Both of the names on the registry were for a single-occupancy room, and both signatures appeared to be Anglo-Saxon surnames. “Maybe I’ll get lucky,” he said to himself, “and the one I pick will be as pretty and titty and leggy as my Lady Catherine.”

  His plan couldn’t have been simpler. He would carry an industrial-sized Tabasco bottle in one hand and a black plastic garbage bag under his other arm. Both items were easily available to him as a room service employee, and they would neither be missed nor recalled as out of the ordinary should someone see him walking the hotel halls. He was wearing his white coat upon which his black plastic nametag was pinned. Leroy certainly looked the part of a hotel employee doing his job on an otherwise quiet Tuesday night.

  Stepping off the elevator on the eighth floor, he glanced both right and left down the hallway. His nostrils flared as he prepared himself for the hunt. Turning right, he silently approached the first room and fantasized about the woman he’d find there—alone. His muscles tightened. His adrenaline started to pump. He felt for the familiar knife concealed in his pocket, the steady companion that gave him comfort and courage. He knocked firmly on the door.

  A young blonde woman answered within a breath’s time. She had obviously just stepped out of the shower because her hair was wrapped in a white towel. Her guest robe was perfumed and soft to the touch. He knew just how soft and smooth because he pulled them hot from the hotel dryers every day. She looked quizzically at the room service employee. From the bathroom, her girlfriend called to her, “Who is it, Kate?”

  Startled, Leroy quickly mumbled an apology, ducked his head, and got out of there fast. It was about eleven thirty.

  A few quick steps back to the elevator and a short ride to the sixteenth floor. Checking the note he’d written on his palm, he confirmed the room number of his second option. The elevator door opened with a dull chime and again, checking both to the left and to the right, Leroy stepped into the hallway. His nostrils flared as he sharply sucked in the scents of the hallway. Stale food. Lingering perfume. Sweat. Air freshener he installed yesterday. The coast seemed clear. Turning to the right he began muttering to boost his confidence. “Okay, I’m feeling lucky. Feeling lucky, lucky, lucky. Yeah, man, the next bitch I find will be all alone in her room. All alone, man. Yeah, yeah, she’s gonna be putty in my hands.”

  7

  BLOOD ON THE BED

  It was approaching midnight. The line was silent for a moment as Ted, the front desk clerk, recovered from my gentle admonishment about my pink blouse. He confessed that I’d caught him idly chatting with Chuck, the hotel’s handsome bartender and—like Ted—an affable young man. It was a slow Tuesday night for both of them and they were looking forward to kicking back when they got off at midnight. Ted rebounded quickly and teased me, remarking, “Why do you have to wear that certain blouse anyway? You must have a dozen, at least!”

  I stuck out my chin and hoped my mock defiance came through the phone when I replied, “But they’re all home and I need this one, now!” I actually did have another blouse in my suitcase, but the soft pink silk one was the one that showed me off to best advantage, I thought.

  Ted told me to hold on, he’d need to go check in a room behind the front desk for my blouse. He’d be right back. I overheard Chuck ask Ted what was up. When he found out who the person was on the other end of the line, the bartender teased, “Oh wow, if you find the blouse, let me take it up myself, Ted! Maybe I can get a tip or two!” Chuck hung tight at the desk, waiting to resume the pleasant midnight banter with Ted when he returned from his searching. The reception area remained quiet, and the receiver lay off the hook, on the counter, just inches away from where Chuck stood.

  I held the handset loosely near my ear, and paced the floor. I wriggled the phone cord between my fingers and waited for Ted to return with good news about my blouse.

  I heard a firm knock on my door. “Yes! There’s my blouse,” I thought. “What else could it be?” I tossed the phone handset on the bed, almost tripping over my shoes in my haste to get to my door. I opened it slightly to see who it was. (This was before peepholes were installed in that particular property.) I saw a uniformed black hotel employee who had a hotel name badge on his jacket. He held a garbage liner in one hand.

  Now I am not racist as a rule, but something made me recoil inside. “Do you have my blouse?” I asked in a hesitant voice. I peered through the narrow opening hoping to catch a glimpse of my familiar pink blouse.

  “No, no, I don’t have any blouse, m’am, but did you order some Tabasco sauce?”

  I looked at the large bottle of hot sauce, then glanced back to find this wary look in this strange man’s eyes. My instincts were screaming at me to retreat into the safety of my hotel room. My eyes darted up and down the open slit of the hotel door. My breathing became short and my fear jolted me to slam the door shut. Too late.

  This man, this stranger, pushed the door open, held it with his sturdy black leather shoe, and looked inside—checking for other guests, I presumed. Acting quickly, he swung the hot sauce bottle toward my face, connecting with my eyes and nose. The horrific impact sent my nose to the floor along with shards of broken glass from the bottle, now turned into a heinous weapon. The pepper chemicals burned both of my eyes, especially the left one, as he struck hard once again from left to right. It was a searing pain. He shoved me to the floor with brutal intent and kicked the door closed. I lost control. I was terrified and disoriented. I realized I was going to be raped and killed. The door was shut, my eyes were sightless, and an intense burning sensation was seeping into my skull.

  I screamed as loud as my lungs allowed. As I learned from Chuck later on, he stared at the receiver in disbelief as that scream from my room upstairs came through the telephone wire.

  I pushed myself up with my forearms. “What are you doing this to me for? Why are you doing this?” I scrambled to my knees and, my hands already cut and bleeding, swept them gingerly over the carpet around me. I felt the jagged neck of the hot sauce bottle, grabbed it tight, and lunged upward toward my assailant. I could barely see shadows and light, but my thrust struck his forearm. My quick response with that errant piece of glass drew blood.

  In the days that followed, I learned that, next door to my room, a newly arrived banker had been settling in for the
night. It was almost midnight, and he was tired from the meeting and greeting required of an incoming president. Martin Daniel had slipped off his wingtip leather shoes and was easing his slacks onto the hanging butler when he heard a door slam hard and a blood-curdling scream. He thought he heard “RAPE!” but could not be sure. What he was certain was that something terribly wrong was going on within earshot.

  Standing there in his boxer shorts, he did not take the second to pull on his pants, but he did put on his leather shoes and tie them tight before heading out his hotel door. Later he explained that he thought he “might have to kick a door down,” so he needed his shoes.

  Chuck, apparently, wasted no time either. After realizing that the scream was no prank, he yelled to Ted, “What room is that girl in? She may be in trouble!”

  “Room 1605,” Ted gasped.

  The bartender spied one elevator resting on the lobby floor, its door open. He sprinted across the polished granite floor, jumped in, and slammed the backlit “16” button. Ted yelled after him, “I’ll call security!” but the doors had already closed and Chuck heard nothing but the gentle whirr of the rising box. He had no idea what he was about to witness.

  Behind the door of room 1605, I rallied against my killer, but I was forced back on the floor to my knees. Leroy must have anticipated finding a noisy victim because he had brought along a black garbage bag, which he stuffed deep in my mouth to muffle my screams. Apparently he was not interested in satisfying some sexual fantasy that night, despite his boasting, “At last a white woman on her knees begging me to stop!” What he must have been after, I surmised, was the rush of the kill that was fueled by both his rage and his sense of power. Pulling a knife from his black uniform trousers, he flicked it open and slammed me to the floor again. The carpet dug into my face wounds. He paused for a moment to relish his prey, then thrust the blade into my back. And again. And again. Repeatedly. I lost count. Then he heard voices outside the door. He had to because I heard them too.

  I could not comprehend exactly what was happening to me. It was all happening so fast. It was all so bewildering. I was hurt, I was blinded, and I thought—felt—something dangling from my face. I thought it must be my nose—what else could it be?—and I had to gasp for air. I swooned when Leroy pushed the bag further into my mouth and down my throat. I was completely vulnerable, about to die. I had no control over what was to happen next. I shook my head and tried to push the black plastic forward, out of my mouth, with my tongue so I could breathe and not faint. Then I felt hard slug hits on my back, so many I couldn’t count them all. “Why is he hitting me so hard? What is happening to me?” I said to myself over and over.

  My body collapsed on the floor in a blood-soaked heap. My blood and my life were oozing out of me from the open stab wounds on my back. In a way, time had slowed down to a surreal pace. Blood was splattered across the bed, the carpet, the drapes, and the upholstered furniture. I began taking stock of my life.

  And then an equally astonishing event occurred to offset the horror unfolding around me. One that would transform my life in a way I could have never foretold.

  8

  LIGHT OF THE FATHER

  I was raised a Methodist in a south Texas small town. My grandmother was the church organist for some fifty years and my grandfather was a humble, God-fearing man who owned and farmed a ranch a mile out of town, a little north of the local cotton gin. My grandparents had met in that town. My grandmother, Elaine, was an orphan. Her father contracted typhoid and her mother died in childbirth along with Elaine’s lifeless sister on the long journey to establish a new home in south Texas.

  Elaine was raised in turn by her closest immediate relatives, but her aunt supervised her day-to-day. My Great Aunt Harriet was a spinster, as unmarried women of a certain age were then known, but she had chosen to be a newspaper reporter for the local paper. Good-looking—some would say handsome—smart, and articulate, she found in Elaine the child she could rear and love in a south Texas society that would otherwise look down on an “unwed mother.”

  Elaine had a gift for music and began volunteering at the Methodist church at an early age. She met her future husband through music, as a matter of fact. As a young man, Clifford had come from Tennessee for the good hunting. “The doves were so thick you could walk through ’em,” I remember my grandfather recollecting. But man cannot live by hunting alone, so Clifford and his father decided to open the first, and what came to be the only, theater in town. It was open air and showed first-run black-and-white silent films to enthusiastic local townspeople. He hired two women to open the theater: one to take tickets and the other to play the piano to accompany the film’s moods and mayhems. Elaine played the piano and enjoyed it. She later grinned and said she thought Clifford might have liked the other girl more, but she left early and Elaine obviously had to play to the end. A budding respectful friendship produced one marriage and one child, my mom.

  Mom did not raise me to be overly religious, but since my grandmother accompanied the church choir, Mom joined and sang every Sunday. The older I got, the more hypocrisy I saw in the church members’ behavior outside those sacred walls. As many teenagers do when hormone angst hits, I fell out of church activities. But I never stopped believing in God.

  So, when I lay on that Austin hotel room floor, crumpled in a blood-soaked heap, face down, barely breathing, a wondrous light glided toward me. It was a diffused shaft of light that slowly approached me. (Later, in my many scuba-diving excursions and once while swimming near pods of humpback whales, I saw the same sort of diffused tunnel light under blue water, clouded by microorganisms, and managed a smile—despite the regulator in my mouth—as I recalled this fateful moment.) An inner voice resonated within my tortured body and extended this invitation to me. “Mirabelle, you may come up now and be with us!” The voice was so clear in my mind and the message so undeniable, I understood that this was a message from God, my Father in Heaven. I also knew down deep in my soul that I did not want to pass through that entreating light, mesmerizing and warmly beckoning though it was.

  Even though I had not understood what had happened just moments beforehand, nor what the lasting physical effects might be—wouldIseeagain?wouldIbeparalyzed? wouldIlive?—I earnestly asked, “Do I have to go?”

  “Not at this time, if you choose,” replied the same clear deep voice.

  “Then, I choose not to come, not at this time.”

  “We will wait for you.” The powdery light shaft slowly receded up to a place beyond my room, beyond my blood, beyond my world.

  I slammed back into my horrific reality and again heard the voices outside the door. My instinct flashed. “I hope these are the good guys, or I am dead.” But, in that simple and straightforward manner, I had prepared myself with God.

  Both Martin and Chuck told me later that Martin saw Chuck running toward him down the hall and waved him over. “What’s going on?” asked Chuck, somewhat out of breath. Martin shrugged and said he had heard some screaming coming from behind my door. With one look and nod of agreement, both men start to shake the door handle, only to find it locked. They rattled the handle again and banged on the door. Taking turns, they yelled, “Open up! What’s going on in there? Does anyone need help?”

  My assailant and I both heard the men outside, and I could hear and sense him throwing his knife under the bed. Then he roughly pulled the black plastic bag out from my mouth. We both heard the voices demand again that the door be opened, louder each time. Then the door shuddered. Someone kicked it. Again. And again. Finally, the door came smashing down, kicked down by two unlikely rescuers who I later learned were the hotel bartender and the banker who was the guest in the adjoining room. Strangers in a very strange moment in time. But for me, heroes all the same!

  The two men described the sight before them as being worse than a murder scene in a Stephen King novel. What wasn’t blood was Tabasco sauce, but who could tell what was what? Walls, carpet, lampshades, bed sheets all spattered
with red splotches. Remarkably, the good-night chocolate still sat on the plump pillow unscathed.

  They stared at the black uniformed man who was gesturing wildly, leaning over me, a horribly wounded woman. “Lady, can I help you, lady?” The would-be heroes paused a moment to gain some perspective on what had gone on in the room. They looked at each other then turned back to the man hovering above me. “Move over there and sit down and stay down!” they both ordered my assailant in unequivocal voices.

  Right then Officer Waters, an off-duty policeman employed by the hotel for security, arrived at the scene. He had rushed from the hotel garage and was accompanied by two other hotel security assistants. Upon arriving at the threshold to the room, one of the hotel’s security men took one look and turned to throw up in the hall. Entering the room and quickly assessing the scene, Officer Waters sternly commanded the uniformed black employee, cornered and sitting down, “Don’t move!” Then the officer instructed Chuck, “Call an ambulance!”

  Waters took a deep breath and turned his attention to me, the wounded woman at his feet. “Help is on its way, young lady,” he softly said in a slow Southern drawl. He kept talking in low tones, trying to prevent me from going into shock. He asked Chuck and Martin to get some water from the bathroom to wash out my eyes. He found a portion of my nose nearby on the carpeted floor and slipped it into an evidence bag. I was moaning, and kept complaining that my back hurt, it really hurt. So Officer Waters took a chance and rolled me partially over to get a look. He could see the cuts in my dress and realized with some dread that I had been stabbed repeatedly. It was hard to tell how many times. As Chuck shared with me many months later, Officer Waters sadly shook his head and caught the eyes of both him and Martin to show them. Martin heaved, nearly vomited. Chuck said he stepped over the fallen door and stood in the hall to get some air. According to Chuck’s description, Leroy just stared calmly into space, his body limp. Perhaps he was anticipating the black vortex he was about to enter and would not escape.