Her Last Scream

by J. A. Kerley

  Kavanaugh poured with a heavy hand. They tapped glasses. “To crazy ladies everywhere,” Kavanaugh said, adding, “Thank you for talking about your experiences, Gail.”

  “officer Hargreaves said it might help find a killer. If I was dead I’d want someone to do the same for me.”

  “Let’s start with what brought you to the women’s center.”

  “I went there five times,” Gail said, her voice a husky contralto. “The first two times for short stays until my boyfriend, James, cooled down. Then, as my boyfriend went from yelling to physical abuse, longer stays.”

  “Did he know you were being sheltered by the center?”

  “James thought I was with friends. It got pretty bad because he terrorized them all looking for me.”

  “But you went back to him,” Kavanaugh said quietly, nonjudgmental. “Several times.”

  Gail nodded as if it was something she’d considered a lot. “I didn’t have a high school diploma. Or a real friend. My family only gave a shit about me when I was working some crummy job and they could borrow money I never saw again. I was fat and pimply and nearly puked when I saw myself in a mirror.”

  When Gail paused to light another smoke, Sal turned to Harry and me.

  “Self-esteem issues. Gail was probably a typical-looking girl, but could only see her life and appearance and prospects as failure in every direction. Women who allow themselves to be abused often think they deserve it, giving subconscious assent to the treatment.”

  “Things got worse between you and James,” Kavanaugh said, pulling our eyes back to the television.

  Gail downed a healthy tot of Crazy Lady. “After he knocked out two of my teeth I went to the center in Boise. They helped me see my relationship wasn’t normal, that James had a sickness. When he started threatening my life, I got a restraining order.”

  “How long did it take James to violate the order?”

  Not did he, but how long, I noted.

  “Two days. James said the order was just a piece of paper and did I believe a piece of paper could stop a knife from slicing my throat? He had been getting worse and worse, but taking out the legal order turned him crazy. He started driving past my apartment and screaming, calling my phone every two minutes. That’s when I knew I had to get away, to become another person. The people at the center almost got mean.”

  “Mean how?”

  “Saying I’d be with James forever. That I’d never change. That I wanted to commit suicide by boyfriend …”

  I looked to Sal to protest treatment seeming cruel, or at least tasteless, but she held up a hand and nodded to the television, Wait and listen.

  Gail said, “I broke down and started crying. ‘You’re WRONG!’ I started yelling ‘YOU’RE WRONG, YOU’RE WRONG. I WANT TO LIVE. I’LL DO ANYTHING TO LIVE!’”

  Kavanaugh nodded calmly. “That’s when you were accepted for the underground railroad.”

  “I had to pass a test at the center. To make sure I wouldn’t run back to James and tell him everything. He would have thrown gasoline into the center and burned it to the ground.”

  Kavanaugh stood to refill the glasses. Harry figured it out: “The abused woman has to show total commitment to the idea of No Turning Back. To make the decision that will change her life for ever.”

  Sal nodded. “It helps protect the center from violence. If the woman is gone, the only thing left for the abuser to attack is the system itself. More than a few men would see the system as a thief … personify it as a being that stole from them.”

  “Women stealing women from men,” I said. “The misogynist’s worse nightmare.”

  Harry nodded at the television, the interview set to resume. The Doc leaned toward Gail, her voice low. “Tell me what it was like in the system, Gail. Your experiences.”

  “I felt like a package, but a very important package. The first night I was picked up in an alley. A woman who called herself Alicia drove to Boise from Jackson, Wyoming, to get me. I’m not sure that was her real name – some people use fake ones. I stayed at Alicia’s place – slept on the couch – two nights before being picked up by –”

  “Excuse me, Gail, picked up how?”

  “Alicia left me at a bridge. It was midnight. We stopped on the bridge and way up ahead we saw headlights blink. I got out and Alicia drove away. It was my first transfer and I was standing there with my suitcase – you get one that you can carry – scared to death. A minute later a van picked me up. A woman, Kate, drove for two hours until we came to a house. The highways signs said we were near Fort Collins, Colorado.”

  “Who owned the home?”

  “Two women lived there, Bert and Lolly. They were careful about giving me space, but talking when I wanted to. Lolly always had a phone in her pocket. It rang one night and a half-hour later I’m in the back seat of a car under a blanket. We drove for hours. When I sat up I was in a park, told to go behind some trees and wait for a horn to honk three times. It was a truck with a woman at the wheel. Kathy took me to a tiny apartment above a garage. I had no idea where I was until, looking out the window, I saw a couple of service trucks with Omaha as the address of the company. I stayed there three days.”

  “You saw no one?”

  “Only Kathy. She lived with her husband.”

  The first man had entered the story. “Husband?” Kavanaugh asked. “You’re sure?”

  “Kathy had a wedding ring.”

  “Did you have any interaction with the husband?”

  “I only saw him the one time. He was mowing the lawn.”

  “From there …?”

  “The same thing eight times. Then I was in a house in Daphne, my final destination. I stayed a week while we made plans to get me a new identity, find a job.” Gail rapped her knuckles on the wood trim on the chair. “So far I’ve been safe.”

  “Were you around any men besides the husband in Omaha?”

  “The fourth hand-over was to a man named Rick. I stayed in a room in his house, out in the country. He said I didn’t have to talk if I didn’t feel like it, I could stay in the room and read or watch television. The room had its own bathroom to the side and I could live in there.”

  “Tell me about Rick.”

  “The first couple of nights I stayed in the room with the door locked tight.” She managed a self-deprecating smile. “I was pretty freaked by everything that was going on. The third night, I just wanted to be around someone, to talk about the weather and normal things. I came out of the room and Rick was on the couch laughing at Will and Grace re-runs. He seemed so … harmless. Like a puppy.”

  “Rick didn’t frighten you?”

  “I think he was gay and when I figured he wouldn’t be attracted to me in … in that way, I relaxed. He was funny and a great cook, vegetarian things. He kept telling me I had beautiful eyes. He took pictures of them.”

  I shot Harry a glance. We both leaned closer to the screen.

  “Your eyes?” Kavanaugh said.

  “It wasn’t weird or anything. Just a few pictures.”

  “Rick say anything while taking pictures?”

  “The usual stuff … smile, don’t blink, say cheese. It wasn’t a big deal and it wasn’t my face or anything.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “He showed me the pictures on the camera. Just a dozen pictures of my eyes.”

  Gail turned away to blow her nose. Sal shot us a glance. Eyes. Gail turned back and the Doc continued her gentle probing.

  “How long were you there, Gail? Rick’s place.”

  “That was the longest stay. It was a week.”

  “Why so long?”

  “He said we had to wait for someone to make time to take me, that summer was toughest because of vacations. One afternoon he told me to pack my suitcase because it was time. We drove to a truck stop in the middle of nowhere. Another car was waiting, tucked between trailers. Rick said my life would be beautiful one day and he hoped I’d keep him in my heart forever. He kissed my forehead
and I walked to the other car. When I turned around he was gone.”

  “You have no idea where Rick lived. Even after a week?”

  “No. We were in a big old wood house in the country, almost no traffic on the road. The satellite TV didn’t carry local stations. I’d figure it was in the South. The weather was warm and humid and I saw flowers blooming in Rick’s back yard.”

  “You never asked your location?”

  “He said we were somewhere in America, and it would be best if that was all I knew.”

  “You didn’t question him?”

  “Rick put his life on the line for me. No, I didn’t.”

  “You really think he put his life on the line?”

  “If James somehow managed to find me in Rick’s house, he would have killed us both.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that.”

  The Doc leaned close to Gail. “Do you think James is still looking for you?”

  Gail nodded without hesitation. “If he’s alive, he’ll never stop. He’ll kill me in the worst way he can think up.”

  “Because you left him?”

  Gail thought a moment and turned sad eyes to Kavanaugh.

  “No. Because I embarrassed him.”

  Interview over. Kavanaugh and Gail stood, hugged, left the room. Sally, Harry and I waited until Doc K saw Gail to the door.

  “Great job, Doc,” I said.

  “Rick creeps me out. Taking pictures of eyes.”

  “Spooked us too.” I turned to Sal. “The week-long stay at a single safe house – is that normal?”

  “Longer than usual. But Rick was right: the runner might be in a place where only three other folks are positioned to take her without driving three hundred miles. These people aren’t like firefighters, poised to spring into action. They’re ordinary folks with ordinary lives, except two or three times a year they do something extraordinary for someone they’ve never met and will never see again.”

  “Isn’t the secrecy over the top?” Harry asked.

  Sal said, “It was more casual a couple years back, Harry. Everyone along the chain knew in advance when someone was coming, who she’d stay with, where she went next. One day a woman went through four exchanges, made it about halfway to her destination. Turns out her husband was a sociopathic planning machine who followed her every step through the system, living in his car, watching and waiting.”

  I felt a chill run down my spine. “Jesus. What happened?”

  “Remember the husband-and-wife academics in Durham? The home-invasion murder that was never solved? At least in the press.”

  I recalled the grisly crime. And how it had disappeared from view.

  “The killer was the sociopathic husband?” I asked.

  “The academic couple ran a safe house, Carson. Few know that. But crazy hubby missed a hand-over – pure luck for the abused wife. She was on the road again when her husband appeared at her former safe house. Finding he’d missed his wife, the husband decompensated and butchered the couple over a two-hour reign of horror, making them name the folks who’d picked up his wife. He was preparing to go after them. Luckily, a neighbor heard screams from the house, called the cops.”

  I recalled the ending. “The psycho blew his head off with a .45.”

  Sal nodded. “The law-enforcement people didn’t see how publicizing the network would achieve anything. Perhaps because the prosecutor and deputy chief of police were women. The system was revamped, anonymous ever since. No passing off travelers at homes, only places where people can look over their shoulders, head home when assured of not being tailed.”

  “What keeps everything running?”

  “A computer network, from what I hear. Someone gets on the computer and says they have a traveler near Dubuque trying to move east and caregivers east of Dubuque post their availability. Arrangements are made via throwaway cell phones, no home numbers.”

  “The people at the two safe houses don’t meet?”

  “Never. Everything’s compartmentalized.”

  “Like spy cells,” I noted. “No one knows what’s going on except in their own link of the chain. It’s the perfect way to keep the freaks out of the railroad. Or …” I raised an eyebrow at Harry, knowing he’d already gotten to the bottom line.

  “Or give them a private carriage that’s completely off the radar,” he said.

  “Jesus,” Sally whispered, seeing the other side of the coin. “And no one’s the wiser.”

  I nodded grimly. “It’s a killer’s dream universe, Sal. From first touch to last scream, the perp has total anonymity.”

  Chapter 16

  I called Detective Amica Cruz of the Colorado State Police. It was an hour earlier there, seven o’clock Mountain Time. She sounded tired, like it had been a long day.

  “Ms Cruz, is there a Women’s Crisis Center in Denver?”

  I heard her stifle a yawn. “Yes. Why?”

  I told her what we’d discovered from Gail. And that she might want to speak with local women’s services centers. “It’s a long shot,” I added. “But …”

  “I’m going to make a call or two, Detective Ryder,” Cruz said, her voice suddenly all business. Don’t go far.”

  Harry took his chair across from me, Sal pulled up another. My phone rang fifteen minutes later: Cruz. She said, “No woman of that description entered the local node.”

  I tried to recall if I’d used the word node in my explanation. If I hadn’t, Cruz had somehow selected the terminology used within the system. “Did you know of the existence of the railroad before this?” I asked.

  No response. It was odd, a simple yes or no was all I was after.

  “Detective Cruz? Are you there?”

  Sal said, “Give me the phone, Carson. You and Harry take a hike for a few, right.”

  I shot Harry the eye and passed the phone to Sal. We walked out of earshot until waved back by Sally. She gave me the phone.

  “Yes,” Cruz admitted. “I’m familiar with the center. And a supporter, in most cases.”

  “But our victim down here didn’t go into the system there?” I said.

  “The only women put in the system in the last two months are a black woman in her late twenties, a thirtyish Hispanic under five-foot-three and a thirtyish Caucasian woman …”

  “That’s what we’ve got, dammit! I said she was –”

  “… with heavy tattoos over her neck and upper torso.”

  “Oh.”

  “I actually listened when you talked, Detective Ryder. You might extend me the same courtesy.”

  I apologized and hung up. I looked to Sal. “What did you say to Cruz to get her to open up?”

  “I know folks at the center here. And that I consider the center an entity that does a lot of good, but occasionally operates in a legal limbo. Detective Cruz feels the same way. She was worried about negative publicity if you started flailing in all directions.”

  “Publicity? Flailing?”

  “Telling the press your suspicions, making it appear the center had been negligent in protecting a woman. This could become a Missing-Blonde story, Carson. That’s what’s worrying Cruz.”

  The world was ablaze with economic uncertainty, nascent wars, regional massacres, and here and there the uplifting saga of hope. But the relentless maw of the twenty-four-hour news cycle seemed fixated on stories of missing young women, often blonde coeds; news organizations turning sad stories into national spectacles, an endless parade of talking-head experts analyzing and decrying every sordid aspect three times an hour. If the story stepped into the news eye, every women’s center in the country would be besieged by cameras and reporters.

  “Are you part of the women’s underground railroad system?”

  “What do you do when battered women show up here?”

  “Aren’t you afraid of angry husbands or boyfriends bombing your center?

  The truth about the case would out, I figured. But better when all the facts were known, the lurid aspects muted by reality. N
ow would only be speculation and sensationalism, good for no one but the voyeuristic parasites who reveled in tragedy.

  “So what did you tell Miz Cruz?” I asked Sal.

  “That you and Harry were on the side of the angels. You’d keep everything under your hats. I was right, wasn’t I?”

  Chapter 17

  Q: What do your wife and a condom have in common?

  A: They both spend 99% of their time in your wallet

  Professor Thalius Sinclair had left his office at the university three hours earlier, had a light supper and a Scotch. He’d been to several men-only chat rooms – picking up conversations from last night – but had shifted to his favorite. He had certain special information to convey, but only if conditions were right.

  Sinclair took another hit on the joint and glanced at the clock on the wall: 11.13 p.m. There would be few folks online, maybe just the ever-present HPDrifter.

  1 member online

  Sinclair typed in his password.

  2 members online

  PROMALE: Anyone home?

  HPDRIFTER: Welcome, brother. You’re up late.

  PROMALE: I was upset by reading a report explaining why women don’t want macho men. Masculine men. REAL MEN!

  HPDRIFTER: I read the shit. Lesbian propaganda. You can bet none of the sad little bitches inter viewed ever met a real man … just pussy-licking eunuchs. That’s what it’s come to, Promale. The FemiNazis have reduced the average American male to a groveling toadie, his lips wet with female slime.

  PROMALE: Amen, brother.

  HPDRIFTER: Change is coming, Promale. A hard light’s set to shine on the so-called “Women’s Movement”. Take heart: the REAL MAN is about to return.

  PROMALE: You operate this chat room, don’t you Drifter? Wait … I’m sorry. Don’t answer.

  HPDRIFTER: No one knows who does what. Secrecy is our salvation. Why do you ask?

  PROMALE: I want to bring up a concern. A major concern.