Sarah’s brow furrowed.
“Why do you say that? Why shouldn’t she give it to us?”
“Because she knows we’d need to get a sample from him in order to compare it to, which means we’d have to either steal a sample or coerce one out of him and probably by force. And then what happens if it’s a match and I kill the guy? She’d be an accessory to murder.”
Sarah looked at Josh, shocked.
“Would you? Would you kill him? I mean…if it turns out that he is the guy doing all of this?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I’d do.”
Sarah rushed into his arms and hugged him tight.
“I don’t want you to go to jail. I don’t want to be without you. Promise me you’ll let the police handle it no matter what we find.”
Josh turned his head. His body tensed.
“I can’t promise you that.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The knock on Dale’s door was hardly a shock. He had been expecting to hear from his neighbor again. He knew he should stay away from her but he couldn’t help himself. She was just so beautiful—and she remembered. He was sure of it, could see it in her eyes. She remembered, and yet she wasn’t afraid. She had even come over to confront him. Had even threatened him. It was something new and exciting to Dale, a murder victim who remembered her own murder, and actually had the nerve to confront the man who had raped and mutilated her. Dale had an erection just thinking about it. He was having a hard time keeping himself from masturbating, but didn’t want to waste his potency on his hand. He wanted to save every ounce of it for Sarah.
Someone knocked again. Dale took his time walking to the door, trying to think of things to relax his erection so whoever was on the other side wouldn’t see that his cock was hard. Dale looked through the peephole and was surprised to see a black woman standing outside his door with a young Mexican police detective at her side, his gold shield clipped to his belt next to his holster. He was in shirtsleeves despite the weather, which had turned unusually cold for September. Dale didn’t recognize the woman. She wasn’t bad looking despite her obvious age, but Dale couldn’t remember doing any black chicks lately. He hadn’t done anyone but the neighbor since he’d moved in. Since meeting Sarah, Dale had discovered the joys of monogamy. Besides, the black chick wasn’t his type. Her hips and thighs were too big and her breasts would have smothered him.
On closer look, the black woman was obviously a detective as well. She wore a gray blouse, gray pleated pants, and ugly black loafers. Definitely a cop. Dale began to sweat. What were the cops doing here? Had he left behind some evidence? Were they about to put him in jail? Dale knew he was too frail for prison. Those big, angry convicts would rape him every night and there’d be nothing he could do about it. The detective banged on the door again while Dale’s eye was pressed to the peephole, startling him.
“Shit! What do you want?”
“Mr. McCarthy? Dale McCarthy?”
“Yes?” Dale had a moment were he considered running. He looked at the back door and then calculated his chances of reaching it before the two detectives kicked in the front door. He wondered if he could elude the cops long enough to make it out of town and then maybe out of the country.
“I’m Detective Trina Lassiter and this is my partner, Detective Michael Torres. We need to speak to you a moment.”
“About what?”
“You know what it’s about.”
Dale felt as if his entire world had just imploded. They knew. They’d come to arrest him. His face would be on television. Everyone would call him a pervert, a sadist, a murderer.
But how can I be a murderer when I haven’t killed anybody? Sarah and her husband are both still alive.
“You here about that crazy bitch across the street? She assaulted me!”
“Just open the door and we’ll talk about it. You can tell us all about how she attacked you.”
Dale could see the detective beside her chuckle.
Fuck them both, he thought. But he opened the door.
“Do you mind if we ask you a few questions? Can we come in?”
Dale didn’t answer. He stepped aside and gave them room to enter. The two detectives filed past him and immediately began looking around the room, no doubt searching for clues, as if they expected to find a bloody knife and a pair of Sarah’s torn underwear on the living room floor.
“So what’s this about?”
“Your neighbor across the street claims you broke into her house and raped her while she was sleeping.”
Dale smirked.
“She’d have to be an awfully light sleeper.”
The two detectives looked at each other. Dale caught the look between them and tried to wipe the smirk from his face.
“She thinks she may have been drugged. Do you mind if we look around your house?”
“Yup. I certainly do mind.”
Lassiter stepped closer to Dale, purposely invading his space. She was a large woman, physically intimidating. Dale knew she was trying to unravel him. Unfortunately, it was working. Dale looked away from her, at the floor, the walls, the other detective, back at the floor, anywhere but at the woman with her enormous breasts almost poking him in the chest.
“See now, Mr. McCarthy, being uncooperative like that makes you sound guilty. What would we find in here if we were to look around? A collection of Mrs. Lincoln’s underwear? Your porn collection? Maybe pictures of the neighbor you took peeking through her windows when she wasn’t looking?”
Detective Torres started wandering around the living room looking at Dale’s books, his DVDs, peeking under his couch cushions.
“Hey! I said you couldn’t search my house!”
“Oh, I’m not searching. I’m just looking at what’s in plain sight. You’re kind of a boring dude, ain’t ya?”
The detective was holding up a DVD of Splash with Daryl Hannah that Dale had bought from Wal-Mart.
“When was the last time you updated your DVD collection?”
Dale felt his blood pressure escalate. He knew that the detectives were trying hard to anger him and that losing his temper would only further amuse them or give them the probable cause they needed to arrest him. He tried his best to keep his voice calm and steady, but he could feel the heat in his cheeks and forehead, knew his face was probably the color of a particularly livid sunburn.
“Please, do not touch my things.”
Dale gently removed the DVD from the detective’s hands and replaced it in his DVD stand.
“Afraid we’ll find that porn collection?”
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave my house right now.”
Lassiter stepped up close to Dale again, once more invading his space.
“I can tell you don’t like us, Dale.” She pulled out a plastic ziploc bag with a Q-tip and a specimen slide inside it. “How about you let us take a swab of the inside of your cheek. Then we can test it against some DNA we took from Mrs. Lincoln and exclude you as a suspect. Then you never have to see us again.”
Dale’s face lit up. He tried his best to hide his smile, dropping his head to stare at the floor. But as quickly as he would suppress the self-satisfied grin spreading across his face, it would come bursting back wider and more exuberant than ever.
“W-where did you find the DNA?”
The detectives exchanged quick looks. Torres shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck with his hand.
“Now why would you want to know where we found the DNA?” Torres asked.
Dale looked from one detective to the other. He felt his smile returning so he averted his eyes back to the floor.
“Just curious. Did they find it inside her?”
Lassiter turned pale and Dale could tell that Detective Torres wanted to hit him.
“Excuse me?” Lassiter said.
“Where’d they find it? It must have been inside of her. It’s semen isn’t it? Someone came inside her. That’s why you want my DNA. Was it in her
ass? In her mouth? Or was it all over her tits?”
“That’s enough, Mr. McCarthy.”
“Have you seen her tits? It looks like she’s had a boob job but she hasn’t. They’re real. I can tell by the way they jiggle when she walks. They’re real and fucking perfect. Not all big and flabby like yours. Hers are firm and perky. I bet that’s where they found the semen. Because if it was me, that’s what I would have done. I’d have fucked her right between those perfect tits. Now, since I’m not going to let you swab my cheeks for DNA so you can try to frame me for something I didn’t do”—Dale turned to the female detective, no longer bothering to hide either his smile or his erection—“no matter how much I would love to have been the one who fucked that sweet cunt, you can go on and get the fuck out of my house.”
The detectives looked shocked. That made Dale’s smile widen even more. They had been trying to make him uncomfortable. But they were amateurs. Dale was a master of psychological warfare. He watched them turn and walk toward the door. The big black woman turned toward Dale one last time before she left.
“You know we’re going to catch you, right?”
Dale chuckled.
“You mean you’re going to catch the rapist, right? The one that you say attacked her in her sleep, as incredulous as that seems? But since that isn’t me, I guess I won’t be seeing you again.”
Torres stopped this time and grabbed Dale by his T-shirt, balling the front of the shirt up into his fist.
“You’ll be seeing us again, motherfucker. Believe that.”
Dale began to shiver.
“Do-don’t-don’t manhandle me! Let me go!”
The detective let him go and walked out the front door, slamming it behind him. “Fuck you very much, Detectives,” Dale muttered at their backs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sarah was just about to call downstairs for room service when the phone rang. She picked it up on the first ring.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Mrs. Lincoln?”
“Detective Lassiter?”
“My partner and I are in the lobby. Do you mind if we come up?”
“No. Come on up.”
Sarah didn’t like the sound of the detective’s voice. She sounded too serious, almost angry.
“That was Detective Lassiter. She’s on her way up.”
Josh looked anxious and excited but there was definitely worry on his face.
“Did she say anything?”
“No. But she didn’t sound too happy.”
Sarah and Josh sat on the bed waiting. It took a long time before the detectives finally knocked on the door. Sarah fidgeted the entire time. She kept looking from the bedside clock to the door and biting her nails. It felt like time had slowed to a limp.
“Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln?”
Josh got up and opened the door while Sarah remained on the bed, anxiously gnawing at her fingernails.
Josh opened the door and Detective Lassiter rushed into the room followed by a short Mexican detective.
“That guy is an asshole!”
“Who?” Sarah asked.
“Your neighbor. Dale. He’s a fucking dick! Excuse my language.”
“That’s quite all right. What did he say?”
The detective paused. She looked over at the other detective beside her.
“This is my partner, Detective Michael Torres.”
“Uh…hi. What did he say?”
The two detectives looked at each other. Sarah could tell something was wrong. Josh looked agitated as well. He could obviously sense that something wasn’t right.
“He asked us where we found the DNA. He wanted to know if whoever raped you had ejaculated on your breasts. Then he indicated that that’s what he would have done.”
“I’ll fucking kill him!”
The way Josh said it, no one in the room doubted his seriousness.
“Look, I talk to a lot of insensitive assholes and not all of them are guilty. Not every pervert is a rapist. Some people just have a twisted sense of humor.”
“You think he was just kidding? You told him that my wife had been raped and he said that he wished that he could have cum on her tits and you think that was just some kind of fucking joke?”
“What I’m saying is that I can’t prove he did it. Yeah, I think the guy is fucking weird, disgusting, and probably guilty of something. I just can’t say that he’s guilty of raping your wife. I can’t say it for sure because she can’t.”
“But what do you think?” Sarah asked. “Do you think he did it?”
The detective opened her mouth, then hesitated. Sarah knew that the woman had been about to give the automatic response, the one she’d been trained to give, something safe and legal. The detective looked at her partner and then back at Sarah. She let out a sigh, then sat on the bed next to Sarah.
“He seems guilty to me. All of my instincts tell me that he’s a fucking creep who belongs behind bars. It’s just that my hands are tied without an eyewitness. I can’t compel him to give us a DNA sample. No one’s going to give us a warrant on what we’ve got. I can dust your house for fingerprints and then see if he has any on record to compare them to but I can’t arrest him.”
Sarah nodded, acknowledging the detective while at the same time wondering why she bothered. She certainly wasn’t agreeing with her. She was getting sick of these cops telling her that they couldn’t do shit to help her.
She smirked and wiped a tear from her eye, then picked up her suitcase and began balling up her clothes and shoving them in without folding them.
“Thank you, Detectives. We’re going home now. I guess we just have to do this ourselves.”
“Don’t do something you’ll regret. I’d hate to have to arrest either of you.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t let Josh kill that piece of shit. Not unless we catch him in our house. Then all bets are off. But one way or the other I’m going to get that evidence. I’ll make sure you have enough to arrest him.”
Detective Lassiter stood in the middle of the room not saying a thing. Sarah could feel the woman’s eyes on her back as she packed. Josh began packing as well, leaving the two detectives to just stand there and watch.
Finally, Detective Torres spoke up.
“I’ll speak to the lieutenant and see if we can get a patrol car to cruise by your place a few times at night. You know, just to check for anything suspicious. But like Detective Lassiter said, we don’t want you two doing anything that’s going to make us have to arrest you. Just stay cool and let us do our thing. If this guy’s really been breaking into your house, we’ll catch him. Believe that.”
“Thank you,” Sarah said without turning around, still hurriedly packing her suitcase.
“Are you going straight home?” asked Detective Lassiter.
“No. We have one stop to make,” Josh said. He had already thrown a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, along with his work uniform, deodorant, shaving cream, razor, and toothbrush into a duffel bag and was ready to go.
“Do you mind if we stop by later on today?” Lassiter asked. “We’ll dust your house for prints and see what we find. We’ll need to get your prints as well to compare them against any that we find.”
“That’s fine. We should be home in a couple of hours.”
“Okay. We’ll come by this afternoon.”
The two detectives turned to leave. Sarah had just zipped her suitcase shut. Detective Lassiter turned back to face Sarah. The two women made eye contact and Sarah saw the woman mouth the words, “I believe you.” Reflexively, Sarah reached out and hugged her.
“Thank you, Detective. You don’t know how much that means to me.”
“Call me Trina. I’ll see you this afternoon.”
Sarah fought back tears as she let the detective go and watched the two of them leave the hotel room. Now she and Josh would have to leave as well. It was time for them to go back to the house.
“If you want, I could take the night off.”
“You’re working tonight?”
“Yeah, I was called in to work the highlimit table.”
“That’s more money isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Much bigger tips.”
“Then you’ve got to go. We need the money. All of this is just costing a fortune. I’ve got a gun, we’re buying a security camera, and there’ll be a patrol car cruising by the house a few times a night. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m just working ten to six. I’ll be home by seven. We can take a nap when we get back to the house until I have to leave and then you can stay up until I get home if you’re nervous.”
“That’s fine. I’ll just load up on coffee. I’m thinking about changing my dissertation topic anyway so this’ll be a perfect excuse to get some work done.”
“You’re changing it again? What to this time?”
Sarah picked up her suitcase and handed it to Josh, who took it automatically and carried it out the door. That was the best thing about being married to a guy as big as Josh. She felt no need to try to prove to anyone that she was his physical equal. He was a big man so he moved all the furniture and lifted all the heavy stuff. Fuck women’s lib. Sarah waited for Josh to hold the door for her before she walked out of the hotel room.
“I have no idea what I’m going to write about. I was thinking about doing something on the psychological effects of the housing crisis and the recession on marriages. Losing your dream house to foreclosure must be devastating to a relationship. And a lot of marriages are going through a total change of dynamics since most of the jobs lost are in male-dominated industries like banking and construction. Women are taking over as breadwinners. That has to fuck with a guy’s ego, and that in turn must wreak havoc on the marital bedroom and would probably even cause an increase in domestic violence and divorce.”
What didn’t need to be said was that she was changing it this time because she just couldn’t write about sexual deviancy while she was going through her own sex-crime drama.
“That sounds pretty damn interesting. If you can write that one fast enough you could probably sell that as a book. It’s timely enough.”
The Resurrectionist Page 14
