by Ryan Horvath
“And that poor girl,” Walt whispered. “What about her?”
“She looked like she could be around your age,” Holly stated. “Do you know who she is?”
“No,” Walt immediately responded. “I don’t think she goes to the same school as me and Calvin but I suppose she could. If she was an underclassman. You know how it is by the time you get to be a senior? Everybody else kind of disappears or blends together.”
Terry clicked off his phone and dropped it on the seat between his thighs where he could get to it easily. “Girl’s name is Heather Kershin,” Terry said. “High school junior over at Northwestern High.” He paused. “Fuck! Her parents saw that video!”
Holly gasped and Walt looked stunned. Chad continued to stare at the road.
“That’s not all,” Terry said. He looked at Chad. “You know the friend I called? About the dream drugs?”
“Yeah,” Chad said.
“Dead. Someone shot him in the face not long after I talked to him,” Terry revealed.
“Fuck!” Chad spat.
“But they think they know who did all this. Heather’s DNA is all over his house,” Terry continued. “Not confirmed by the lab yet but they’re reasonably sure the hairs they found are hers.”
“Who?!” Walt and Holly spoke in unison.
“Some guy named Tim Rock,” Terry said.
The name rang a bell in Walt’s mind. “Coach Tim Rock?” Walt asked looking into Terry’s eyes through the rearview mirror.
Terry momentarily took his eyes off the speeding blacktop and met Walt’s gaze. “Yeah, as a matter of fact,” he answered. “You know him?”
“He coaches at Northwestern High,” Walt said. “Our team is in the same district. We play against them. I don’t know the guy. But I’ve seen him before.” He stopped, thought, and then furrowed his brow. “Wait a minute…,” he muttered.
“What?” Terry pressed. “What is it?”
Walt puzzled without responding and then looked at Holly. “As much as I don’t want to have to see it, I gotta watch that video again. At least part of it. You might want to look away.”
Holly nodded and turned her eyes to look at the back of Chad’s seat. She definitely had no desire to see any part of that video again.
“What are you thinking?” Chad said to Walt.
“Gimme a minute,” Walt replied. His face lit up in the glow of his phone. He found the video and hesitated before pressing play. He stabbed the play icon and the video came to life. It started with an image of Heather bound and hanging. Walt saw Calvin’s approach under the manipulation of the masked man. Just as the two unwilling puppets were about to be forced together, Walt paused the video. He studied the masked man, then his naked best friend. Another part of his mind tried to conjure up an image of Coach Tim Rock.
“Walt? What have you got?” Terry asked persistently.
“This video isn’t the best way to judge but I don’t think the guy holding the gun in Cal’s mouth is Tim Rock,” Walt ultimately said.
“Why is that?” Chad asked. He suddenly realized he hadn’t thought about a drink since they’d left Holly’s office. Sure, it had only been about twenty minutes but it was the first time since Terry banged on his door that he’d gone that long.
“Well, like I said, the camera may not be giving the best perspective… But from what I remember of the coach… well… This guy in the video is Calvin’s height. Maybe a little taller even. I think Coach Rock is half-a-head shorter than Calvin. Plus, the coach is in good shape and all, but the puppeteer here in the video is bigger in the chest and arms. I think he is, anyway. He’s wearing black so it’s hard to be sure.”
“Well, we won’t get a chance to ask the coach anything right away,” Terry said.
“Why not?” Holly asked.
“MPD busted into his house with guns blazing. But somehow, the coach gave them the slip,” Terry said. “He’s on the run.”
“Damn!” Walt spat. “Running is usually a good sign of guilt.” He looked at the image of the masked man on the screen again and tried to memorize every detail. He didn’t want to have to refer to this video again, to see the unsuspecting Heather Kurshin waiting for his best friend to unwillingly slam into her.
“How’d your guys catch wise of Tim Rock?” Chad asked Terry.
“They found his prints at my dead friend’s place,” Terry returned sounding a bit ashamed. “I shouldn’t have involved him in this.”
“And the warrant?” Chad continued.
“They also found a judge who saw that fucking video before YouTube had the chance to yank it,” Terry answered.
“There’s something else I should tell you,” Terry went on. “Heather’s parents tell us their daughter is a phobic too. Multiple phobias brought on by something that happened to her that they’ve never been able to get out of her. The girl’s been seeing a shrink and everything but the doctor hasn’t told them shit about it.”
“Wait a minute,” Chad said and snapped to attention. He stared at Walt. “Was it a shrink Calvin was seeing? Is that who prescribed him the dream drugs?”
“Yeah,” Walt said. “I think so.”
Chad lightly began to shake his head and looked at Terry. “My wife and I were also seeing a shrink. The same one. We’re both phobics. Calvin too, and now this Heather. Did you get the name of Heather’s psychiatrist?”
“Yeah,” Terry replied with a slight nod.
“Dr. Justin Andrews,” Terry and Chad said in unison.
“Is that the name of Calvin’s doc?” Chad asked Walt.
Walt tried to recall the name of the prescriber on the bottle of dream drugs. He was sure there was no first name given for the doctor, and Andrews sure did sound familiar. He chastised himself for not being able to find a trace of any of Calvin’s pill bottles in the Vale house.
But a gasp from Holly diverted their attention to her. “Justin Andrews… the psychiatrist?”
“Yeah,” Terry said looking into her eyes through the mirror. “Let me guess. You know him too?”
“That one percent I was talking about just a little bit ago?” Holly began and nodded. “Let’s just say I’d put him in that group of seventy-three million fucked up minds. And I used to date him!” She shuddered at the thought.
“This can’t be coincidence,” Chad said. “You used to date him? What happened?”
“He was charming and I was really starting to like him until our eighth or ninth date. By that number of dates, a woman usually lets the man meet her at her house for a drink before they go out to dinner or a movie or whatever. And Justin came over that night. I left him on the living room sofa while I went into the kitchen to pour us some wine but, while I was in there, I toppled one of the glasses and it broke on the floor. I told him I just broke a glass and he offered to come in and help me but… it wasn’t like it was fancy crystal and had shattered into a million pieces. It was just a thin cheap wine glass and I told him I’d have it cleaned up in a jiffy. When I came back to the living room with the wine, he wasn’t there anymore.”
“Where’d he go?” Walt asked.
Holly blushed. She wasn’t sure she should be telling this to the young man next to her, but she remembered he was eighteen and surely must have had more than one sexual experience by this point in his life. “I found him in my bedroom. I had a basket of dirty laundry on the bed. On the top of the basket was the underwear I’d been wearing before I showered. He had it up to his face and was sniffing them. And, though he wasn’t actually in the act of… whacking himself off, I could tell… through his pants… that he wanted to.”
“What did you do?” Terry asked.
“I threw one of the glasses of wine on him and called him a bunch of nasty names,” Holly replied. “And when I could see he wasn’t ashamed or apologetic… that he seemed even more turned on… well, I do keep a little handgun at home for protection. I got it and less-than-politely escorted him out of my house. The last thing he said was that he would be
back, but that was over two years ago and I haven’t heard a peep from him.”
“Well, that’s probably going to change,” Terry supplied. “Because after we check out the coach’s place, we’re going to pay Dr. Justin Andrews a little visit.” He moved the car off of University Avenue and onto the freeway heading for northwest Minneapolis.
~~16~~
Heather slowly awakened. Her head almost immediately began hurting. The pressure from the blindfold on her eyes bordered on unbearable. She tried to stretch her arms and was still met with immovable resistance. Her feet could find no surface below her. And she was cold. The lower half of her body hadn’t been covered since she’d been brought here.
She could easily feel she’d been violated. The attack had been so sudden and unexpected and both of those things made it seem even more savage. But whoever forced himself upon her, it wasn’t her captor. She was able to tell the difference.
Heather thought, while she hung with indignity, that there was really only one person who could be doing this to her. It had to be Tim. Had to be. But at the same time, she didn’t believe he was capable of such a thing. As much as she despised him for what had happened the day he asked to tie her up, she couldn’t help but have a tiny measure of sympathy for his inability to overcome a new carnal urge. But Tim wouldn’t do this. He just didn’t have the heart. Heather hadn’t seen Tim since the day he got her pregnant. She had no idea she’d hurt him seriously or permanently; not that she could have been bothered to care. And she made it a point to avoid the gym area at school so as to not see him there. She wondered if he could hold a grudge this long. She thought it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. She was certainly still holding one.
But Tim knew nothing about her phobias.
Very few people did. Well, Heather liked to think very few people knew. Her best friend who had taken her to end her pregnancy knew. Heather speculated she could have told another friend or two. And the way high school girls like to gossip, there could be dozens of girls, and even some of the boys, who know about her quartet of irrational fears. Her parents knew Heather had phobias but they only witnessed the claustrophobia. And obviously they would never set her up for something like this.
But her doctor. Her psychiatrist. He knew all about her phobias. Heather was rather candid with him about them. But her captor derived sexual pleasure from touching her with his hateful organ. There had been no doubt about that. And she ruled out her shrink because she was all but certain he was gay by his impeccable grooming and dress, his ever so slight lisp, and the fact that beneath his incredibly tight trousers, she’d always been able to identify that he wore underwear straight men didn’t typically wear. To top that off, Dr. Andrews didn’t seem all that interested in her body even on that day it rained and she had to run to her appointment, arriving with a shirt that had become quite wet and quite see-through.
But someone could have gotten into Dr. Andrews’s files. Heather hadn’t considered that yet. His receptionist was a silver-haired woman nearing seventy, but maybe she had an obsessive son or crazy grandson who happened upon a glance of Heather while she was in the waiting room and formed a sick infatuation with her.
Heather heard a man groan in the distance behind her and her heart started to accelerate. She recognized the sound and knew it was the man, the man who had actually assaulted her. She steeled herself for the sound of his approach, convinced each footstep would sound like thunder. But instead she heard a struggling:
“Hello?”
~*~0~0~*~
“Hello?” Calvin said with a dry mouth. He blinked his eyes and could see he was in the same space he first woke up in when he had his first terrible session with Dr. Andrews. His fear of being alone started to wane as he craned his head and saw the girl who was captive here with him was still in the distance. He could tell she was awake this time.
“Hello?” he called to her again. She did not respond. Dr. Andrews had been correct. The designer drugs the doctor was pumping through Calvin’s system worked as promised and Calvin remembered every vicious detail of what he had been forced to do to that girl. He cursed in his head that he’d been unable to simply reach up and pull the trigger of the gun and end his life before he could steal that which should only be given.
“I know you must hate me,” Calvin said and tears started to fall down his cheeks. “For what I just did to you. But it wasn’t… wasn’t my fault. He’s drugging me.” He paused and closed his eyes where, painted on his eyelids, he found an image of Dr. Andrews pressed in behind Calvin as he forced him to this girl. A pair of monsters from his nightmares accompanied them. “So many drugs, I barely know which way is up and which is down.” He felt goose flesh break out on his bare skin as a draft went by. “But I couldn’t stop him from making me do it.” He sobbed. “I wish I coulda killed myself.”
The girl still said nothing and Calvin was certain she was also wishing he’d killed himself.
“You know… I know you’re hanging there… unsure how high up you are but you’re…,” Calvin started and then felt a sharp sting in his neck. A quick glance to the side and he saw his doctor had returned.
~*~0~0~*~
“That’s enough out of you!” Miedo said as he slammed the plunger of the syringe down and unloaded another dose of his special concoction into Calvin’s neck. The boy was just about to tell Heather how high she was really hanging off of the floor and Miedo wasn’t done exploiting her acrophobia. Calvin immediately silenced, and since the drug had been injected so close to both the brain and heart, he fell into his psychotic dream state with astonishing speed.
Calvin came out of that prior dosage a bit sooner than Miedo calculated so he loaded more of the greenish liquid into the syringe and shot it into the meat of Calvin’s right buttock.
He left the football player, who was visibly slipping into a doozy of a dream and went over to Heather.
“He’s a bit of a blabbermouth don’t you think?” Miedo whispered. “Fortunately, I keep the room monitored so I am able to hear what the two of you are up to. And don’t worry. I won’t keep him out for long. The two of you have another round coming. Another scene to shoot.” He reached out a hand and began gently pinching her bottom which finally got a reaction out of her, and she tried to swing away from his touch. Miedo chuckled. “I put the last scene on YouTube. It only lasted six minutes before they yanked it. But since I sent an e-mail to your school’s directory… well, enough people saw it.” He paused and went on. “Your boyfriend saw it too. He’s got a personal copy… though I think he dropped his phone on the way out of his house as the bullets were coming in. It’s too bad too, because, when the police catch him, the only porn he’s going to be seeing will be the prison kind, probably with his pretty-boy ass as the number one star.” More laughter escaped him as he intensified his pinching and moved it closer to her femininity. She bucked and bucked in resistance but he placed his hand firmly on her and held it there, savoring the heat it offered. He held it there for a full minute, feeling her tremble and relishing in her fear. Miedo glanced at the nearby digital wall clock. He’d been very tempted to subject her to a rape of his own but he had something else to attend to right now. Visitors would be arriving soon.
He pulled his hand from Heather and saw her tension visibly fall away. He checked his video and audio monitors and confirmed everything was working correctly and linked to his phone. When he was finished, he left the space where his captives were, went to his car, and drove home; the home the public at large knew of as his anyway. He let himself in the house, turned on some soft music, poured himself three fingers of Makers Mark from an elegant crystal decanter, and set the crystal on the coffee table with plenty of inviting clean glasses.
Tempting the alcoholic was next. Miedo shook back and forth in anticipation as he sipped the bourbon.
~~17~~
Tim Rock, aka Mr. Star, was certain he heard a zinging in his ear and felt his hair ruffle as a pair of bullets narrowly missed where h
e’d been standing in his bedroom. He heard cacophonous crashing sounds as the bullets impacted the walls and furniture around him.
Surrounded, as the police said, or not, Tim had a slight advantage. This was his house, after all: a one level, ultra-modern bungalow-bordering-on-rambler with a full basement and attached garage. And while it featured a number of windows to the outside, the inside featured a lot of angles. Tim used those angles to make his way out of his bedroom and toward the basement. The house was dark. Even though he’d been on a less-than-pleasant path in his life lately, Tim still cared about the environment and he never left lights on in a room he wasn’t occupying.
He darted quick and purposefully along the hallways that ran down the center of the house and fed off into various rooms. He heard the crashes and shouts of officers as they broke in through windows and doors but, he wasn’t caught yet. He couldn’t even see any of the cops and that meant none of them could see him either. Tim was fit, agile, and stealthy. Even though he felt like less of a man since the ball breaker day, he’d kept himself in shape and healthy.
The basement door, in its shiny steel coated beauty, was mere feet away from Tim. His heart raced in his chest and his breath heaved in and out. The shouting from the police grew louder and Tim was certain they’d be on him before he got to the basement door, but he wouldn’t stop… couldn’t at this point. He reached the door, threw his already outstretched hand on the knob, and heard a loud commanding voice much too close behind him shout for him to stop.
Tim ignored the command, threw open the door, ducked inside, and yanked the door closed behind him. He heard muffled shouts on the other side and then multiple bullets slammed into the steel causing Tim to crouch and shudder. Without taking a moment to see if he had sustained injury, Tim whirled back around and slammed two heavy deadbolt locks into place. That would buy him an extra minute… maybe as many as two or three if the cops had to saw into the door. In the basement, Tim would have a brief chance to breathe.
