Final Cut

by T. S. Worthington

  Bill noticed that Teri was watching him. Her eyes were soft and focused right on him. The way she looked at him often made his heart feel like it was melting right in his chest. When he used to hear people talk that way or saw something like that in a movie Bill used to laugh his head off at it, but now it was starting to make sense to him and he realized on how much he had allowed himself to miss out on.

  But did he miss out on things because of something to do with him? Or was it just circumstances beyond his control? It was something he was going to have to think about. Since he met Teri he had experienced hope and feelings that he had never experienced before. It was new and exciting, but he still wanted to take things slowly. He was just that kind of guy and he hoped that she understood that.

  Bill realized that he was staring without smiling so he cracked a smile through his lips and watched as her sweet lips parted to reveal a smile back to him.

  The evening finished up with a few rounds of cards and some more chit chat anything and everything. It was a nice relaxing evening, but of course for Bill there was no such thing anymore. He was finding it easier to put Daisy Fox to the back of his mind, but she was always there like a haunting shadow that would always remind him of what happened to her. The pain of her death would always overshadow any little bit of joy Bill would ever be able to find in life until it was solved. He knew that, but he had all but given up trying to find out what happened.

  He had the blood spatter evidence, but that did not clear him of any wrongdoing necessarily. If he was looking at it rationally it did, but the cops did not look at things rationally. They were all worried about how it would look for the Chief’s step son to be indicted on murder charges. As shocking as it would be for the community it might very well bury Frank and it would dismiss all of the hard work he had done over the years to keep the community safe.

  Bill would not be able to live with himself if he destroyed his family and his family’s good name that way. Even though he was innocent. He knew that he did not kill that girl.

  He was hoping that after the blood spatter there would be something else turning up to help him in the investigation so that he could uncover clear cut hard proof that says Daisy Fox was killed in this house on this day and time and this person did it. Right now he only had half of the equation. He didn’t even have a body or a lead to where the body might be buried.

  Bill had spent countless hours and sleepless nights watching those videos and searching for something in there that would lead him straight to the whereabouts of Daisy Fox’s body, or what remained of it. Bill was sure that she had been dismembered and possible set on fire or boiled in acid so that nothing remained but a bunch of ashes on the ground. There was no evidence and nothing tying anyone to the crime of that young lady’s murder.

  Bill tried to keep his mind on the good conversation and the fun times with his lady and his family, but as always he felt almost guilty for enjoying anything with this hanging around his neck. He just wanted to be free of it all and he didn’t see any way out.

  He had run through all of the different elements in his head so many times he felt like his head was swimming. As he sat right there among people who cared about him more than anyone else in the world he wanted to tell someone. He was so tired of dealing with this thing alone. It had broken him and all but shattered his hope of returning to a normal life. How could he ever really be with Teri and give her the kind of love and attention that she deserved when he was dealing with this damn thing?

  With all of the evidence he had of what happened to Daisy Fox he still was not close to figuring out why. Was this the work of some serial killer or was it too personal for that? If it was the work of a multiple murderer then the other victims would have been going missing, but so far he had not heard of anyone else being reported missing since Daisy.

  So therefore he was being set up for this one murder and he just did not understand why. It had to be something to do with the accident. Maybe someone had decided that he was never coming out of the coma so he would be a perfect stooge and they never had to worry about the off chance that they might be caught one day.

  But this person was going to do this again. From the video they obviously enjoyed it too much. That was why they made a tape of it. If someone just wanted someone dead they didn’t toy with them for hours and torture them until they were a shattered wreck of a human being. They just went ahead and killed them.

  Even if they had known this victim it was way beyond personal now. It was just a matter of time before they moved to the next step. They were not going to be able to give up that thrill of the pain they inflicted and the way they had just snuffed out another life. Killing was like a drug to these people and they were never going to stop until they were caught again.

  Oh, they probably thought that it was a onetime thing against some twat who deserved it, but what were they doing now with the urge nagging at them and nagging at them to kill again. They would eventually make a mistake. They always did.

  But what if they didn’t do any of this? What if he was thinking of these people all wrong based on some books that he’d read? Then they were not going to do anything but sit and live out their peaceful lives knowing they got away with cold blooded disgusting murder.

  That was the thing that kept him up nights. That was the thing that was really keeping Bill from sleeping the way he wanted to.

  He had to tell someone. He had to get someone else to weigh in on this.

  Chapter 11

  “CONFESSIONS”

  Bill waited silently in the comfortable arm chair for Dr. Linda Wild to say something. He had just finished telling her everything. He told her about the ears he’d discovered and the DVD’s and he told her all about the blood spatter on the walls.

  She waited patiently until he was done for the most part without interrupting him, which was a bit shocking, but Bill appreciated being able to tell the whole story. Getting everything out in the open off his chest was the most amazing feeling he could have ever described to anyone. It felt like he was constantly struggling to keep his head above the water and something was pulling him down harder and harder. Eventually he knew that he was going to fall and drown. That was all there was to it. He could not keep going on like this without going completely insane.

  He felt it now. The power and the control over his life slowly returning as he spoke word after word about what he had been through. He wished he had decided to do this sooner, but he knew that he would have resisted the process and held something back if he’d done it too soon. It had to be now.

  A few nights ago when he and Teri had dinner with his parents Bill found himself about ready to crumble and fall to pieces as he was talking with Frank out on the porch while the women were busy cleaning up. Frank knew something was going on with Bill and he just didn’t want to hide it anymore. But of course he could not bring himself to tell Frank exactly what was going on.

  He explained to Frank how he had been trying so hard to go to sleep at night, but the stress of everything was crashing down on him and he found himself so worried that he couldn’t get through it all and that he was going to be seen as weak and as a failure by everyone. This was not exactly false information he was feeding his stepfather, but it was not the whole story either.

  Frank suggested that he speak to a therapist. Bill rolled his eyes and was reluctant. His high school guidance counselor wanted him to speak to a therapist about his anger issues, but he had resolved the issue on his own. Bill pretty much thought that counselors were a waste of time and they really didn’t help anyone; if you got better it was because you helped yourself. That was all.

  But then Frank reminded him that a shrink was not allowed to tell anyone anything. In fact if some of the criminal population would go to a shrink before they committed their next crime then it would make his job a lot easier to deal with.

  That was when it clicked for him. The shrink was not allowed to tell anyone anything th
at a client told them in confidence, unless they led the shrink to believe that they were going to commit a crime in the near future. Then the psychologist would be legally obligated to contact the authorities.

  Bill took several deep breaths as Dr. Wild finished up her notes. He noticed that she was rather attractive to be a shrink, but there was something in her demeanor that gave off the impression that if a man approached her in a romantic way he would probably be maimed somehow.

  “Wow, that is quite a story,” Dr. Wild said.

  Bill almost laughed at the way she said that, as if the words were out of her mouth before she gave them permission to exit.

  “You don’t believe me? You think I’m crazy?” Bill asked. He had to admit the way he had just blurted all of this stuff out and even the way he was acting right then could be described as a little crazy. He was just so damn happy though. For the first time since he had come back home he had not felt totally haunted and completely out of synch with the rest of the world.

  “It’s not that I don’t believe you,” The Dr. began. “It is just a bit much to absorb all in one sitting. Is that something you have trouble with? Do you take too many things, too many problems and ball them all up into one giant problem that seems too big to handle?”

  “Yes, I do that sometimes. But in this case it all found me. I was just trying to adjust to being back home and looking forward to getting on with my life when this thing just appeared out of nowhere.”

  “Now, backtrack a bit. Tell me how you felt when you first came home. Was it scary? Were you somehow feeling that you weren’t going to be ok on your own? That it was too soon?”

  Bill smiled at the Wild. He held her gaze and realized for the first time how much she actually looked a bit like Nancy. She could have been Nancy’s sexier older sister. Absolutely.

  “I wasn’t scared at all. Truth. I was ready to go home. I knew there would be challenges ahead for me and I was going to have to face many of them head on all by myself, but I was not scared. No I was not afraid of life.”

  “Ok, that is good to know,” Wild said writing something down in her notebook. “So, when you awoke that first night on the couch and you were a bit disoriented, you made your way down the hall to get a blanket. Isn’t that correct?”

  “Yes. I needed a blanket. It was a bit chilly that night.”

  Bill was suddenly feeling foolish. The doctor was trying to lure him into a comfortable place where she could try to trick him into saying that he never really saw any pair of human ears falling out of his closet. But that was fine. He didn’t need the doctor to believe him. He just needed her to listen.

  “Ok, and you grabbed the blanket and then what happened?”

  “I already told you this,” Bill said.

  “I would just like to double check my notes,” Wild said.

  Bill laughed. “Doc, you aren’t going to get into my head to try and make me say that I did not see things that I did see. I saw that video. I saw that girl getting slaughtered and no one was there to do anything.”

  “And you are positive that this was in no way a dream?”

  “NO! Dammit! Doc, what are you trying to do here?”

  “Why did you come here? Why did you tell me all this?” Dr. Wild asked.

  “I had to tell someone. I had to tell someone who couldn’t lock me up for a murder I didn’t commit. I had to tell someone in case the same person comes after me. I had to tell someone to keep from losing my fucking mind! That is why I am here.”

  Bill was aware that he was now shouting. He didn’t think the office was sound proof and he expected some security guys to come running in the place any second. But no one came. Bill had stood up to pound his point home and he now sat back down slowly.

  Dr. Wild seemed a bit on edge and he was sorry that he was making her that way. Unloading all of the things that had been weighing on his mind so heavily the past few weeks had a cathartic purging effect on him and he honestly felt like he was starting to reemerge and find his true self again. It was all an insane trip, but he did not expect the Dr. to understand that.

  “I understand. Have you tried going to the police with this? They would be the ones to call if someone has been harassing you and someone has been murdered.”

  “I can’t go to them. Someone is really doing a number on me. They even had me thinking I was a killer at one point, but after I saw the brutality of that video I knew that it wasn’t me and I could never do anything like that to anyone.”

  “Ok, I can understand that. But, what is your next move?” Wild asked.

  “I’m not sure. I seem to have hit a standstill as to who was really the last person to talk to this girl before she was abducted. For all I know her best friend set her up or it was just a random psycho who decided to do something sick.”

  “Again that is why I think we need to involve the police,” Wild said.

  Bill almost yelled at her and screamed the word no, but he held his tongue. He felt his mask of sanity starting to slip. Something had happened to him when he let the reality of what he had been dealing with slip through his fingers and he found that he was still able to feel the pain of who he used to be.

  He had come here to say what he had said. The Dr. was probably right about calling the cops, but it was just too risky. They hadn’t been able to come close to solving this murder. The bastard who set him up would love it more than anything if he called the cops to explain to them all why he was not the person who killed her despite having Daisy Fox’s ears and video footage of her being tortured that no one else in the world could have but the killer.

  Bill was starting to make peace with the fact that he would probably never fully be able to let go of this, but he felt confident knowing that even if he could not obtain justice for Daisy then he could at least keep himself from going to jail. He just had to stay on his toes that was all.

  “No,” Bill said. “I just can’t do that. Some things have to be handled by yourself,” Bill said as he walked out of the office of Dr. Wild.

  Chapter 12

  “FINAL REVELATIONS”

  “So, what do you want to watch tonight?”

  The question stirred him from his thoughts, gently like the way his mother used to wake him up from school when he was a child. Bill rubbed his eyes trying to bring himself back to the real world once again. He was not sure exactly what was wrong with him, but he’d felt funny ever since visiting Dr. Wild.

  His thoughts had been preoccupied with the fact that she did not truly believe him. He didn’t think she was going to believe him fully, but he expected a bit more support than he felt he had received. This experience just added to his hostility for headshrinkers. They were all the same really.

  It was a shame because the study of psychology and the inner workings of the thought processes of people was rather fascinating to him and he had always loved reading about it, but when someone tried to put it into practice to diagnose everyone and basically just get them to talk about their problems and stop having bad thoughts then he felt like he had been completely ripped off. And he’d been ripped off yet again by Dr. Wild.

  Well, he didn’t feel totally ripped off. He went there and said what he wanted to say so that now someone else in this world knew what he was going through, even if they didn’t believe it, and he no longer felt so alone. He hated to feel this way when he was sitting beside the woman he was falling in love with.

  He had asked Teri to come over and spend the evening with him because he missed her and because he just didn’t want to be alone. Bill was tired of being alone. It was time that he had someone with him for the long haul. But was that person Teri? All signs were pointing to yes as far as he could tell.

  “I don’t care. I just want to spend time with you. It’s your choice tonight,” Bill said with a smile. He leaned over and kissed Teri softly. Her sweet tenderness felt so inviting and so relaxing. It really did feel like home.

  “Ok, I’l
l pick. Are you ok?” Teri asked.

  “Yea. I’m just really tired,” Bill replied. That wasn’t far from the truth. He felt like his eyeballs were going to catch on fire at any minute and his mind was going to follow a close second.

  “Ok, but if you need me to massage your temples or anything just let me know. Those headaches the first few months can be brutal,” Teri said.

  Ironically Bill had not suffered from any headaches. If he had been left alone then he would have been just fine. But right now he was with his lady and he was relaxing; that was all he wanted to do. That was all he wanted to think about and it was all he wanted to experience. Anything else in his life could wait.

  “My head is fine, sweetie. I’m really just tired and still can’t sleep well. The whole thing is really doing a bad number on me and I’m feeling like I might be at my wit’s end.”

  “Awww, poor baby. Just hang in there and it will get better.”

  Teri’s voice was sweet and reassuring. Bill would never get tired of that amazing, soft, and gentle voice that Teri possessed. It was so soothing and motherly. It made you feel almost like you were a little boy spending the day with his parents and then something bad happened but your mama was there and she was always going to be.

  Bill could sit and listen to Teri talk about anything for hours and just allow his body to relax to the soothing sounds of her sweet voice and her delicate and caring nature. He was starting to wonder how he had gotten so lucky to end up with such an amazing woman who loved him.

  “I know. I’m trying,” Bill replied.

  Teri scrolled through Netflix until she came to a silly sitcom about a talking horse that she liked. It was essentially an adult’s show, but it was childish and immature. Bill was not sure if he had ever seen a show that was acceptable for children and at the same time not acceptable for kids.