Unlikely Angel

by Ashley Smith

  But he didn’t answer. He just stood there looking really big in that black suit with his chest showing. In the light from my closet, his face looked blank; I couldn’t read any emotion in his eyes. The curtain and that extension cord lay at his feet, and he was still holding the roll of masking tape.

  I walked toward him, seeing his red jacket thrown on a small bench I had set against the wall in the hallway. And as I crossed into the bedroom, I went back to my old line: “Please don’t hurt me,” I pleaded.

  “Sit on the bed,” he told me. He motioned toward the foot of the bed. All right, God, here we go. I’m in your hands here. My big, white down comforter made the mattress look like a cloud.

  I sat down right on the edge, and suddenly, facing him with my arms behind my back, I became extremely conscious of what I was wearing. Without my sweater, I was not well covered at all. Not even close to well covered. My jeans, bought when I was a little heavier—I called them my “fat jeans”—were hanging low on my hips, and my white thong underwear was showing. My white tank top—there really was very little to it; it was more like a camisole with a built in bra—was not even long enough to cover my waist. Originally I had been wearing these clothes in the privacy of my home to unpack boxes. But now I was afraid. What is he thinking, looking at me like this? Am I getting this guy worked up?

  “Stick out your legs,” he said. Okay, I’m doing it. He left that gun in there on the counter. I know my legs are strong and I could kick the crap out of him if I had to. I remembered all those days of weight training for basketball season in the Lakeside High School gym in Augusta with my Uncle David. Leg strength was critical to my game, he told me, and I spent all kinds of time on that squat machine.

  I stuck my legs straight out in front of me now like Brian Nichols said, squeezing my thighs together. He pulled the strip of masking tape off the roll and, bending down over my legs, started the end of the tape on one of my thighs about midway up from my knees. Then he began to work the roll over and under my legs.

  So he’s taping my legs together? Okay. At least he’s not going to rape me right now. I looked down at the extension cord lying to his right on the beige carpet. That cord was what scared me.

  He was really close to my body now. His head was maybe a foot from my chest; his upper body was right over my legs; and his hands, working the roll of tape down my legs, were just inches from my knees. I could feel my legs begin to droop toward the floor a little. He kept working the roll, wrapping the tape around my shins, and finally stopped about midway to my ankles.

  As he tore off the tape, I looked at the extension cord again. What can I do? My arms aren’t free. My legs aren’t free. My knees won’t bend. I can bend at the hips though. I could swing my legs from the hips.

  Dropping the roll of tape on the floor, he reached for the cord. Okay. He’s got that cord now. I inhaled deeply, trying to get ready. He stood up and shook the cord out, holding it in one hand and untangling it with the other. Then he bent over me again.

  What’s he doing? He moved for my legs. Thank you, God. Grasping the cord with both hands, he placed it over my thighs. Then he crossed the ends underneath my legs and brought them up, crossed the ends over my legs and circled them under, working the cord down my legs that way until he got to the point where the masking tape stopped. Then he made several knots to tie off the cord.

  “Is that too tight?” he asked.

  That’s bizarre. What kind of criminal asks if he’s tying you up too tight? “No,” I answered. The cord was tight, but not cutting off all of my circulation.

  Next he reached down and picked up the curtain panel, that long piece of cream-colored fabric he’d gotten off my living room floor. He stepped toward me—so close I could feel his breath on my shoulder—and put the curtain around my back, holding both ends in front of me. He crossed the ends of the material in front of my body and then behind my body—doing that a couple of times—covering my stomach and arms and securing my arms at my sides. Finally he tied the curtain off at my side in a couple of knots. I couldn’t tell what he thought the curtain would accomplish for him, considering my hands were already taped up pretty good, but I wasn’t about to ask him.

  He stepped back and looked at me for a second, checking out the job he had just done tying me up. I tried to scoot up on the bed a little higher, pushing myself up with my feet. “Satisfied?” I wanted to ask.

  Then he said, “Hey, I really want to smoke some pot. Do you have any marijuana?”

  What? He’s just tied me up and now he’s asking me for drugs? That’s totally insane. I was just stunned, blown away. I mean, I had told him about being in jail. I’d mentioned that one possession charge. I guessed he thought there was a good chance I would have drugs in the house. But come on! I’m this guy’s hostage here. I’m freakin’ tied up and he wants to get high?

  “No,” I answered.

  Suddenly I had an idea—something that I thought might win me some favor with Brian Nichols and just get him away from me, or at least get him focused on something else. Maybe with this I could really get him to see me as someone here to cooperate, someone on his side. I had to get him to let me out of this apartment. I was supposed to see Paige in the morning. The words came out the minute I thought them.

  “No,” I said. “Sorry, I don’t have any pot. But I’ve got something else.”

  “Well, what is it?” He clasped his hands together and looked me in the eye, raising his eyebrows.

  I glanced at the floor, then went ahead and threw it out there as if I were offering him a choice of soft drinks. “I’ve got some ice.”

  7 answering straight

  I shuddered at those words. “I’ve got some ice.” Did I just say that? Ashley, what are you doing? What were you thinking? You idiot! I can’t give this guy ice. He’s just killed three people. What if it makes him as crazy and paranoid as it makes me? I’ve got to get out of this. God, help me find a way out. That was a huge, huge mistake. What did I just do?

  “Ice?” he asked. “What’s ice?”

  He doesn’t know? He’s been in jail and doesn’t know? His question gave me a little hope. Maybe he would be afraid of the stuff. Maybe he wouldn’t want it.

  “It’s meth,” I said, looking down at the extension cord twisted around my legs.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard about that,” he said. “Do you smoke it?”

  “You don’t have to.” I was still looking down.

  I remembered being at a friend’s house right when I started dating John. Mack had been gone about a year and a half. I had just moved out of our house because I couldn’t pay the rent anymore. Paige was already living with Aunt Kim. I had only been using ice for a couple of months, but I was into it full force. “Where’s my line?” was the first question of my day. And that was assuming I went to bed. Usually I stayed up on ice three or four days at a time. I lived that way for an entire year.

  “I’m not having a girlfriend who smokes,” John said to me. We were sitting in a room with some guys who were smoking the drug right then. They were using a glass bong with Kool-Aid or some kind of flavored drink at the bottom instead of water to make the stuff taste better.

  “Look,” I told John, “we’re going to do ice either way. What difference does it make if I snort it or smoke it? Besides, you’re smoking.”

  “It makes a difference,” he said. “My girlfriend’s not smoking.” He didn’t want his girlfriend to be thought of as a “crackhead.”

  I really was not up for getting into all of this with Brian Nichols right now—I didn’t want to explain the different ways you could do ice. Can’t we just move on? How can I change the subject? But I was the one who had put the whole ice thing out there. I had offered it. So I was just going to have to answer his questions straight.

  “You don’t have to smoke it,” I continued. “You can hot rail it or snort it.”

  I wondered if Brian Nichols even knew what hot railing was. Not that it mattered. I didn’t have an
y hot railing tools anymore. I had given that method up after my recovery program last year. And I was thanking God for it now. The last thing I needed was Brian Nichols hot railing in my house and flipping out on me.

  I started hot railing ice around the time I was seeing John. If he wasn’t going to let me smoke, then at least I could hot rail and get the same effect. I would put the ice into a thin glass tube about three inches long and heat the bottom with a butane lighter until the tiny crystals turned to smoke. Then I would put the tube up my nose and inhale, and the drug would go straight to my brain.

  I would feel the lift in seconds. Suddenly I was alert and exploding with energy, ready to start getting things done. The first time I ever tried the drug I was like, “Wow! This is great! I’ve been depressed all this time over Mack, and now I feel alive again—like I’m really somebody!” But then the paranoia would set in. I thought surveillance cameras were hidden in my house. I thought the police had set up a secret monitoring station in the dark blue van parked across the street. I thought terrorists were sending signals to each other through the airconditioning vents. I would just lose my mind—it was all so real to me.

  Eventually I got to the point where I was hot railing every four hours or so—usually a nickel size amount of the drug that would last most people an entire day. I did it at my house or at friends’ houses. For months I would spend several nights a week hot railing at the house of the woman who got us the drugs—it was a small, run down place on a hill above a two lane road outside of town. We called it “the crack house.” I would come home not having slept and as crazy as ever, thinking people could read my mind, and I would ask myself, “Why? Why are you doing this to yourself? You’ll never be fit to be Paige’s mother like this.”

  My roommate, who didn’t use ice, was so freaked out by how much of it I was doing that she took my hot railing tools one afternoon when I was gone and threw them away. “You can’t stop me!” I yelled when I got home and discovered the bag of tools wasn’t at the top of my closet. “I’ll just go out and get more!” I was strung out, paranoid, and miserable, but I thought I would rather die than quit doing that drug—and I almost did.

  Brian Nichols began to nod. “That’ll be good,” he said. “That sounds like what I need.”

  I was still looking at my taped up legs. Okay, God, I’m in your hands on this one. I guess I’ll just have to pay the price for whatever happens.

  “But first,” he went on, putting his hands to the buttons of his blazer, “I’m going to take a shower and relax.” He unbuttoned the blazer and took it off, hanging it on the left-hand post at the foot of my four-poster bed. Well, at least that gives me a little more time.

  Glancing up at him without a shirt on, I thought, “This guy is huge. I guess they really do work out in jail.” He looked like a line backer. He didn’t have an ounce of fat that I could see; he was cut everywhere. I looked away as he turned back to me.

  “Can you stand up?” he asked.

  I pushed up on my feet, wobbling a little, and tried to get my balance. “Yep.”

  “Can you walk?”

  Of course I can’t walk. I’m tied up. “No,” I answered.

  Suddenly he stepped right up to me. He put a hand on my back and one under my thighs, then squatted down and lifted me. My body stiffened. I was in this man’s arms. He didn’t have a shirt on. I had the curtain wrapped around my arms and waist, but I could feel his biceps and abs tighten up through the material. At least I knew that if he wanted drugs, he wasn’t going to kill me in the next few minutes. But I was really wishing I could walk.

  He carried me back across the hall into the bathroom and lowered me onto the vanity stool. I propped myself against the stool’s scrolling metal back, using my feet to balance, and waited. Was I going to have to watch him take a shower? I really didn’t want to see this man naked.

  Holding onto the counter, he bent over, reached into his sneaker, and came up holding that small, black handgun. He set it on the counter alongside the other larger gun, my cigarettes, and the bottle of raspberry soda. Then, out of his pants he pulled a third hand-gun, also pretty small, and a small canister of pepper spray about the length of a cigarette lighter.

  “Do you know what this is?” he asked, holding out the canister.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It looks like pepper spray or something.” Why was he asking? Was he trying to scare me? I could just imagine him spraying it in my face as I sat here. I’d had a girl spray me with that stuff once—she was jealous that I was dating her ex boyfriend—and it felt like a fire had exploded in my eyes.

  Brian Nichols set the canister on the counter with that third gun; now I was looking at a row of black guns lined up all of two feet away from me. I didn’t like the guns lying there, but at least they weren’t being pointed at me. He must not have worried about leaving them out with me being tied up.

  “Where do you keep the towels?” he asked, reaching into his pants pocket and pulling out a wad of bills. He set the money right there with the guns. I wonder where he got that.

  Using my head to gesture toward the linen cabinet, I said, “Right there in that tall cabinet to the right of the door.” I really don’t want to sit here and have to watch him do this. I don’t want him getting any ideas about raping me.

  He opened the cabinet and pulled out a white bath towel, hand towel, and washcloth. Setting the stack on the counter near his red baseball hat, he grabbed the hand towel and turned toward me.

  “I’m going to put this over your head so you don’t have to watch.”

  “Okay,” I said. I can’t believe this. Is this happening? Is he actually respecting me right now? Is he just modest? I wondered if maybe he was beginning to see me for who I was—a real person with feelings and some dignity. Could this actually be going my way here?

  He stretched out his arms and draped the hand towel over my head; in front it only hung down to about my nose. From underneath, I could see his legs from the knee down. I watched him step out of his black leather sneakers and kick them over toward the door, which he left standing open. Then he walked barefoot to the shower, and I heard him turn on the water.

  As he undressed beside the tub, I saw his black suit pants drop to the floor and then a pair of white boxers. “Jail underwear,” I thought.

  I remembered going to visit Mack in the Richmond County jail when he was locked up for that DUI before I found out I was pregnant. As a visitor, I had to abide by certain rules. I couldn’t wear anything too revealing. I could only bring Mack a limited amount of cash. And any articles of clothing—tee shirts, socks, and underwear—that I brought to him had to be white. Everything had to be white and sealed up in a brand new package.

  Sitting under the towel, I noticed that if I leaned forward slightly, I could see more of the bathroom and get a better look at what Brian Nichols was doing. Just to be sure he was going to get in the shower like he said, I leaned forward now, catching a glimpse of his rear as he was getting in. Okay. I backed up immediately. Okay, I guess he’s doing what he said he would do.

  Then I heard him step into the plastic tub and the curtain rings slide over the rod—and I knew Brian Nichols was in my shower.

  8 do you believe in miracles?

  As the bathroom steamed up, I decided I would start asking Brian Nichols some personal questions in my effort to get as close to him as I could. He didn’t hurt me in that bedroom when he had the chance. He had just now respected me by covering my head with a towel. I found myself hoping, just a little, that things might get better for me, but I was also very aware the night could still go either way. I could just as easily die in this apartment as make it out of here alive; now, while I had a chance, I wanted to do whatever I could to shift the dynamic more in my favor.

  “Do you have any kids?” I asked, raising my voice a little so he could hear me over the water. I can’t believe he didn’t put that masking tape over my mouth.

  There was a pause. Then he answered in a low, flat
tone. I strained to hear him. “I just had a son born.”

  What? Just had a son? And then he goes on a killing spree? Unbelievable. I wondered what it all meant—the birth of his son, then the shooting at the courthouse, then going on the run, all of it back to back. What was happening to this guy? He was totally unraveling here. “

  Your son was just born?” I asked him. “Congratulations! That’s amazing! You’re a father. What’s his name?”

  I waited a few seconds, but he didn’t answer. So I tried again.

  He’s got a child. I can use Mack in this right here. “You know,” I said, “my husband was taken away—he died and didn’t get to raise his little girl. Don’t you want to raise your child?”

  Another pause. “I’m never going to be able to raise him,” he said, his voice muffled by the water. “I’m going to prison for the rest of my life.”

  I knew I had to turn that negative response around. I needed him to want to live—to see that there was hope if he would just stop running and hurting people. “If I could only get him to stop everything right here in this apartment,” I began to think. “Just to stop and turn himself in.” This guy can’t keep going like this, God. I don’t want anyone else to die—not me, not even him.

  “Well, you never know what can happen,” I said, lifting my voice and trying to sound upbeat. “You can still be involved in your son’s life. Do you believe in miracles?”

  No response. Just the sound of water hitting the tub. Then: “Yeah, I believe in miracles.” Thank you, God. Help me here.

  “Well, what do you think brought you here to my apartment? You know, you could’ve been killed out there, but you made it this far. You’re in here taking a shower. You’re alive—and you can still see your son. My husband doesn’t have that chance. But you do.”

  From under the towel I watched the steam drifting out the bathroom door. He didn’t answer. I listened to the water for a minute. I knew I needed to keep this going. I didn’t want him to wonder what I was doing over here—to think I was trying to untie myself or get to those guns. I’m sure he knew there was no way I could get loose, but I didn’t want anything to freak him out at this point. He said he wanted to relax. If I could just keep him calm, then maybe he would begin to trust me.