Bloody Sunrise: An electrifying psychological thriller

by Gregg Bell

  Denny shut the door and stared at his friend. “What are you doing here?”

  “Oh great.” Brig nodded. “I come all the way over on a vacation day when I should be partying and you greet me with a baseball bat and ‘What are you doing here?’”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just under a lot of stress. I was just talking to Orson.”

  Brig held up a palm. “Hold that thought because I’ve got something really important to tell you. My friend at CPD got ahold of the complete forensic report.”

  Denny took a step back. “Are you kidding me?”

  Brig walked to him and took him by the shoulders. “You’re gonna want to sit down for this one, Den. It’s really funky.”

  Denny took one. He took two. He took three deep breaths. “Just tell me.”

  “All right. Okay.” Brig let him go. “Rashida had no semen in her body, nor were any traces of it found in the house.”

  Denny thought of his accusing Orson of raping her. He exhaled. “That’s a shocker.”

  “I thought so too. But there’s more.”

  Denny braced himself. “What?”

  “She had no trace of semen in her body, but she did have a date rape drug, something called Rohypnol, in her system.”

  Denny put a hand to his mouth. “That makes no sense—someone gave her a date rape drug, handcuffed her and didn’t rape her?”

  “I told you it was funky. But yeah, that’s what it was.”

  * * *

  Brig left Denny’s apartment, off to party, Denny figured, and Denny drove straight to Aunt Elizabeth’s office. When he walked in, Gabriela just barely acknowledged him. As far as Denny could tell that meant she liked him because she was disappointed in his being cold to her the last time he was there. But he was at the stage where not even a beautiful woman could divert his attention from the rage building inside him against Rashida’s killer.

  Aunt Elizabeth was busy. No surprise there. Denny had to sit for a half hour in the waiting area near the newly icy Gabriela. Finally Aunt Elizabeth summoned him.

  He told her everything this time. About Brig’s revelation of the forensic report. Of Orson’s denials and veiled threat. He even—screw it—told her about his missing handcuffs and the cab company records indicating he’d left from Rashida’s the night of the murder. Again, he felt she thought he did it. He fell back in his chair. “My God, you really think I killed her, don’t you?”

  “Dennis.” The irritation in her voice said it all.

  “Hey.” He shrugged. “What can I say? That’s the way it feels.”

  “Dennis,” she said again and she sent him a quick nod. “Grow up. In this situation I am your attorney, not your aunt. And that’s how you need to think about it too. And as your attorney my job is not to coddle your feelings but to keep you out of jail.”

  “Whatever, it just feels bad you think I did it.”

  “I never said that.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I could feel it. And maybe I did kill her—I don’t know.”

  The woman’s deep blue eyes filled with concern. “Whether you killed her or not, you’re entitled to a defense.”

  “Aunt Elizabeth, if I knew I killed her, I’d turn myself in and ask for the electric chair.” He could hear the tears in his own voice. “That’s if I didn’t kill myself first.” He leveled a look at her. “I loved Rashida with all my heart. I still love her. She was my wife and a part of me feels like she’ll be my wife forever.”

  His aunt sighed. “Okay. Okay, Dennis. But at this point, we need to keep things in perspective. All right, you don’t know if you killed her or not, but the fact of the matter is neither you, nor the private investigator have been able to concretely establish where you were and what you were doing at the time of the murder. This does make you a suspect. Perhaps not a prime suspect, because if the police had substantial evidence against you, you would already have been arrested. Still, you are at grave and imminent risk.” She stood and planted her hands on the desk. “And at this stage, all your running around and trying to sort this out is putting you at even greater risk. So you need to knock it off, Dennis, all of it. Just chill and let things play out of their own accord. Protect yourself.”

  Denny shook his head. “Can’t do that, Aunt Elizabeth. No, I can’t live with the idea that Rashida’s killer is out there and might get away with it. And that includes myself. Whoever killed her is going to pay. That’s all there is to it.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  This is crazy, Denny was thinking as he sat in his idling car after leaving Aunt Elizabeth’s office. It was like his mind wasn’t his own anymore. It was prone to being won over by whatever other people were saying or believing. Walking in to Aunt Elizabeth’s he’d felt innocent. Walking out he felt like he’d killed Rashida. He must’ve, right? I mean, come on. He’d raged about killing her at The Wild Bull. His handcuffs were missing. He’d gotten the cab ride from her house right after the time of the murder. What else did he need to prove to himself he’d done it?

  And yet, and yet. Now that the car’s engine had run a while he turned the heater onto the high speed. And yet, he’d thought Powell killed her. That had seemed a slam dunk. The guy was into kinky sex. And surely handcuffs figured into that. But it also seemed just as clear that Orson was the murderer. Orson, the straight arrow, revealed to be a pathological liar. And Orson’d pestered Powell to get involved in the S&M stuff too. And yet the latest revelation revealed there was no semen at the crime scene, that there’d been no rape.

  Yeah, that was it. It was like his mind wasn’t his own anymore—he didn’t know what to think.

  He felt so bad after talking to Aunt Elizabeth he didn’t want to go home and be alone. So he called and Summer was at her condo. She said to come over so he drove there.

  On the way he started thinking again—it was impossible not to. He was thinking about how the one person he figured least likely to have killed Rashida was Brig. And yet Brig was a combat veteran obsessed with avenging his fallen Marines against Muslims. And Orson said he overheard Tucker congratulating Brig for killing her. Why would he have said that if it wasn’t true? Sure, Tucker denied it but would he have admitted it if he’d said it? Denny turned into Summer’s complex. And now Brig was coming up with all this inside information from his mysterious cop friend. What was up with that? It was like suddenly Brig knew everything that had happened. And yet it made no sense that Brig would be telling him all this stuff if he was the murderer. “Just crazy,” Denny said aloud as he parked between two pickups.

  He made his way up the stairs to Summer’s.

  She greeted him. The woman had it going on looks-wise. There could be no doubt about that. Still in the silk purple blouse, she looked as fresh as she had in the morning. And yet now it felt like something was missing somehow.

  She made him dinner but even as she prepared the food and chatted about her day, he wasn’t feeling the connection he’d had with her before. In fact, even though he looked for it, he couldn’t feel any connection with her at all. Which was surely all him because he was so confused but still it was unsettling.

  They ate. The food excellent as usual. A beautiful blonde. Successful. She catered to him like he was a king. And yet he felt like he was sitting there with a stranger. He had nowhere to go, though. He could think of no one else to talk to. Nothing else to do. About Rashida’s murder or anything else. He was spent, had no plan, no hope at all. Only one thing held certain promise of relief, however pathetic that relief might be.

  “You’ve got those bottles of wine in the rack?” He looked at her with emotionless eyes—a part of him knew getting drunk at this point would be utterly self-destructive, but he had to stop the pain.

  “Yeah,” she practically sang, as if to say and why in the world are you, of all people, asking about them?

  “Go get one of them, would you? I want to try it.”

  She laughed. “Uh, Denny, you don’t drink anymore, remember?”


  “I just want a glass.”

  “No.”

  “Just get it, Summer.”

  “I said no.” She stood and put her hands on her hips. “You want to get drunk? Go do it somewhere else. And get a new girlfriend while you’re at it.”

  “I don’t want to get drunk. I just want a glass. I want to see what it tastes like.”

  She shook her head. “You think I’m buying that?” She blew out a long exhalation, walked to him and sat on his lap. “Denny, Denny, Denny...get drunk on me.” She kissed him behind his ear, gave the lobe a friendly little bite. “Come to bed.” She got up and led him to the bedroom.

  Denny didn’t complain. It wasn’t the wine but maybe it was the next best thing. But the sex this time, although certainly a distraction, felt tainted, felt like sex, not love, and when they were done, sweating and spent, even that old feeling of sex-generated love was nowhere to be found. He felt like he was lying there with a prostitute. A prostitute telling him that her fantasy of becoming his wife was finally coming true because now Rashida was ‘out of the way.’

  * * *

  Denny couldn’t stay at Summer’s. She wanted him to but being with her felt sick and twisted. It was as if she was playing like they were man and wife. Okay, the sex had kept him sober but now he felt the pull of the booze again. He was miserable, getting drunk his only thought. He dressed, ran down the stairs and his Camaro’s wheels spun in the icy parking lot as he torqued out of there.

  Yes, Summer’d been acting like his wife lately. He shook his head. Now that Rashida was ‘out of the way.’ How could Summer be so cruel? How be so cruel to Rashida and so loving to him? No, it wasn’t possible. Summer was cold. So cold. And for the first time he wondered if she herself might’ve killed Rashida to clear the path to become his wife. Which was crazy, but really, was it?

  Summer was violent. He remembered her banging the lady’s head against the door when she didn’t buy the condo from her. She’d hooked up with bad-boy cop Teddy, so she certainly had plenty of access to handcuffs. And there was no semen in Rashida or at the crime scene. Oh God, he couldn’t think about it anymore. He was just going to get drunk.

  He drove to a liquor store. Screw The Wild Bull. Screw people. Screw AA. He went to throw the 90 day chip George had given him out the window but his window was frozen shut. No, he was going to get wasted, trashed, obliterated. Maybe it would even be good if he got so blasted he blacked out again. Yeah, maybe if he re-entered that zombie-like state of unconsciousness, he could figure out just what the hell he’d done the night Rashida was murdered. Blacking out would take a while and plenty of booze, but a twelve pack and a fifth of whiskey would surely get the job done. Hell, it had only taken a few beers and a couple of shots of tequila to black out that night at The Wild Bull.

  A thought zinged into his mind and he swerved the car onto the shoulder. He pushed the shifter into park and flicked on the emergency flashers. That was the thing—it had taken so little, so little time and so little alcohol, for him to black out that night at The Wild Bull. He’d blacked out before. He knew what it was like. And it had always taken hours and oceans of booze to reach that vegetative state. It was insane that he’d blacked out so quickly and with so little alcohol in his system the night Rashida was murdered.

  Another thought came to him, and he shuddered. Rashida had a date rape drug in her system. Brig had called it a specific name, something starting with an ‘r.’ He swallowed hard. Orson had been kicked out of medical school for giving a co-ed a date rape drug. Now Denny had to know more. He could search on his phone but it would be so much easier on his laptop at home. He put the Camaro in gear and gravelly snow spat from its tires as he fishtailed back up onto the road.

  He ran up the stairs to his apartment, went in and planted himself on the sofa. “Come on, come on,” he said as the laptop booted, the familiar blue screen and Microsoft melody playing. “Come on!” The computer had gotten so slow lately. “Finally!”

  He Googled ‘date rape drug,’ then selected the Wikipedia entry. He leaned close to the screen and read: A date rape drug, also referred to as a predator drug, is any drug that is an incapacitating agent which, when administered to another person, incapacitates the person...

  He straightened up. “Oh my God.” He read on. It said alcohol was the main date rape drug but that there were plenty of others. He scrolled down a bit and there it was—Rohypnol, the drug Brig said was found in Rashida’s system. His eyes raced across the screen. In one 2002 survey of 53 women who used Rohypnol recreationaly, 10% said they were physically or sexually assaulted while under its influence. If enough of the drug is taken, a person may experience a state of automatism or dissociation. After the drug wears off, users may find themselves unable to remember what happened under its influence... He looked up at the ceiling and sighed. He was trembling. What if he hadn’t blacked out? What if he’d been given this Rohypnol instead? That would explain why he’d gone unconscious so quickly with so little alcohol in his system. And all that pointed in only one direction.

  Orson.

  Orson—granted, only allegedly—used a drug like Rohypnol on someone before. Having been in medical school, he almost certainly had an awareness of and access to it. And what, just what if he’d put the drug in Denny’s beer that night at The Wild Bull? It would’ve been easy enough—when Denny went to take a leak, Orson could’ve plunked it in his beer. “Oh my God,” Denny said again and he stared off into the distance.

  Chapter Twenty

  Orson. Yes, Orson was smart enough, and now Denny knew he was twisted enough to pull all this off. Oh, there were still pieces of the puzzle missing but the majority of pieces pointed straight at Orson. The weasel. And now he was a dangerous weasel, with his threat of You’re on your own now, Denny. And the guy wanted to kill Brig. He had to be a psychopath. Acting so calm and controlled all the time. So intelligent and reasoned on the outside while deep inside he harbored sick passions. Denny bit his lip. He was going to need a gun.

  His father had a twenty-two revolver in a shoebox in his bedroom closet. Denny was sure his father hadn’t even looked at the gun in years. So he dropped in for a social visit, plucked the gun and stashed it in his parka. The twenty-two wasn’t the most powerful gun but at least it was something. Denny remembered the icy, bloody glare in Orson’s eyes behind the racquetball courts. He’d have sworn it had murder in it.

  The day was done. He should just go home and hit the sack. But the lure of getting drunk was still moving, churning in the back of his mind like a demon. He breathed in deep. And yet, he knew his only chance of finding Rashida’s killer was staying sober, and his only chance of staying sober for the rest of the night was to yet again go to the Serenity Club.

  The place would be dead this time of night. Meetings over. Just a few old-timers lingering—and desperate people that had no place else to go. People like him. He parked and slogged up the stairs.

  He felt the club’s calming presence as soon as he walked in. The glowing powder-blue triangle AA logo between the twelve steps and twelve traditions scrolls, the posters with the positive slogans, the smell of the coffee. A few grizzled old-timers, hunched over their coffees, took the time to look up and say hello. Denny wasn’t there for conversation, though. He only wanted to stay sober. He knew he’d lucked out to this point with Summer not letting him drink the wine, and the epiphany about the date rape drug keeping him from the liquor store. But he couldn’t rely on luck anymore.

  “One day at a time,” he said softly as he poured a cup of coffee. He took a Big Book from a bookshelf in the front and went to a table in the corner. He browsed its pages. The book was written ages ago but it had killer good stuff in it. He put his hands behind his head and leaned back. Finally his mind was clearing a little of the turbulent whirl of emotion gripping him. He looked at a poster that said: K.I.S.S: Keep It Simple Stupid.

  Then Detective Washington walked in.

  Washington wore an orange parka with a fur-trim
med hood and blue jeans, and he looked so different without his usual overcoat, Denny had to do a double take to make sure it was him. But it was him all right. The powerful shoulders. The piercing eyes. Okay, Denny thought. Okay. He knew what Aunt Elizabeth said about not talking to him, but he also knew that at this point he was taking huge risks while he still had the opportunity—Rashida’s killer was still out there.

  Washington hung up his coat, got coffee, said hi to the old-timers in passing and headed over.

  Denny was ripping back and forth on the inside. ‘Don’t say a word,’ on one side, and, ‘tell him everything’ on the other. But after just showing up at the Fairway Pancake House when Denny’d had breakfast with Orson, Denny was pretty damn sure Washington was stalking him.

  “Hey,” Washington said with a smile. “Mind if I join you?”

  Denny shrugged his assent.

  “So.” Washington set his coffee on the table and sat. “You’re in the program too?”

  Denny just looked at him. And looked at him.

  “Small world,” Washington said. “So how long you been sober?”

  Denny crossed his arms over his chest. “Do you mean to tell me you’re really in the program?”

  “Yep. Been sober by the grace of God three years now. Will be four, God willing, come March seventeenth.”

  No way, Denny thought. But Washington seemed sincere and who could make up something like that? That was genuine program-speak. But Washington knew he was drinking only a few days ago, so why was he asking how long he was sober? “You know I was drinking just a few days ago.”

  “Yeah, I guess I do,” Washington said with a frown, and he leaned back in his chair and looked down. “Stupid question.”

  Damn it, Denny thought, but yeah, the guy did seem sincere. “I was sober for six months before. And I plan on staying sober from now on.”

  “That’s cool. Yeah, that’s cool. Just remember it’s one day at a time, bro. That’s all any of us can stay sober for. One day at a time.” He sipped his coffee.