by Jonas Saul
But what about Sarah? He had left her there. Where was she now? Where was Barry?
Before Detective Lang entered the small room to talk to him, Greg had already decided to say nothing until he had a lawyer present. The chance of saying something wrong and incriminating Sarah in the process terrified him. After all that she had done by putting Lesley first, he just wouldn’t do it.
He had time. Lesley was the hospital recuperating. There was nothing to gain by cooperating right away and getting released. He could relax, get his head together and talk through a lawyer.
Lang entered slowly, closed the door and sat across from Greg.
“Can I get you a tea? A coffee?”
Greg shook his head. It made him nervous to defy the police. But he reminded himself that it was his right to have counsel present.
A thought struck him: no one had read me my rights.
“Do you need a bathroom?” Lang asked.
Greg shook his head again.
“Then we’ll begin.”
“Lawyer first.”
The detective glanced up at him. “You haven’t been charged with anything. Are you sure you want to lawyer up? I just want to talk.”
“If you just want to talk, take me to a local bar. Buy me a drink. We’ll talk. Bring me down here like you did, then I want a lawyer.” He spoke fast before he changed his mind.
“Fair enough.”
Lang moved for the door.
“Before long, I’ll have someone bring a phone in.”
“Phone book too.”
“You don’t have a lawyer?”
“There’s some in the phone book. I’ll have one soon enough.”
Lang stepped into the corridor and shut the door.
Chapter 21
Sarah stood back against the wall and took in the scene. She let the handsaw drop from her fingers. It clattered to the floor by her feet.
Barry had stopped screaming. He whimpered softly, his chin resting on his chest.
Blood covered the wooden block. A considerable amount of blood had spilled on the floor, but not enough to be life-threatening. What was left of his baby finger was on the floor. She wasn’t going to ice it. They wouldn’t reattach it. Barry would have to live the rest of his life with nine digits and a stump. It would serve as a reminder for what he had done to Lesley and all the girls before her.
Sarah wrapped the stump in gauze, with a wad of paper towels around that. His hand was buried in a mound of white towel, stained red.
Not on any level did she take pleasure from what she had done. But when she saw Barry in that room, drugging Lesley, probably enough to kill her, just so he could perform his demented debauchery on her, something changed in Sarah. Castration came to mind. She wanted to cut him bad, hurt him, make him bleed. He was a cop. He was supposed to protect and serve. Instead he was abusing his position in the most grotesque way.
Just like the cop who used to babysit Sarah when she wasn’t even a teenager yet.
If Barry didn’t tell her what she wanted to know, if he didn’t open up and tell her everything Vivian had sent her here to find out, she would do a lot worse than removing one small finger.
She pushed off the wall and went upstairs without a word. He didn’t say anything as she left, just kept whimpering, his head bowed.
At the front window, she checked outside. Nothing was amiss. No cop cars, no visitors, no Deborah.
At the back of the house, she looked through all the windows.
Nothing.
The police would be involved by now. Nate or those two girls would’ve called. They would’ve grabbed Greg at the hospital when he took Lesley in. But no one knew where Sarah lived. The house was in the landlord’s name. The phone, the Internet, and even the electricity bill, all came in their name. The only thing linking Sarah to the outside world was the car rental. But there was no Enterprise Rental Car sticker on it.
She had to assume that a description of the Jeep would be circulated by the end of the day.
Her time in the Jeep was limited. She needed to get enough food to last a couple of days before everyone and their neighbor were looking for her vehicle.
But before that, talking to Barry while he was reeling from the loss of his finger, might produce the results she wanted.
When all the lights were off, she grabbed a glass of water and headed back downstairs. She wanted to stay hydrated for the long night ahead.
She pulled a chair out of storage and sat down behind the bright light that shone on Barry, keeping herself off camera, in the dark.
“Talk,” she said. “Tell me about your life. Tell me all the bad things you’ve been up to. List it all. I want names, dates, places. Everything you can think of. When you’re done, and I’m satisfied, I will untie you and allow you to leave. You can see to that finger of yours. Get it properly dressed.” She sipped from her water. “If you tell the truth, there will be no more violence. I don’t bluff. If I say you can go, I mean it. So talk.”
There was enough play in his bound wrists that he could hold the paper towels tight around his bleeding finger to staunch the flow.
“Talk,” Sarah said again. “Do it now. I won’t keep asking.”
“There’s nothing …” he said, pain straining his voice. “Nothing to say.”
“Oh. Okay. I see. Which finger gets lopped off next?” She leaned forward in her chair. “When I’m done with fingers, maybe I will castrate you. A man can live without a penis, you know. Women had been doing it for years.”
His face was blanched, red orbs for eyes. “Why are you doing this?”
“Any of your victims ask you that before you abused them?”
A tear crept down his cheek. “Is that what this is all about?”
“You tell me. Talk about your life. List all your indiscretions. I want to know everything.”
“Would you like me to repent? Say I’m sorry? I can’t go back and fix what I’ve done. On the outside, it looks bad, but some of those girls liked it. Some loved it.”
“You’re delusional. Keep talking like that and I’ll stop cutting fingers off. I’ll just cut both your hands off instead. Let’s see how many more women you rape with no fucking hands.”
“Some even asked me for more,” he pleaded.
“That’s their drug addiction talking. You get them addicted so they will beg you for more. Eases your conscience, doesn’t it?”
He looked at the ceiling, shook his head, then lowered it.
“Roll your eyes. Shake your head.” She ground her teeth. “Continue to be disrespectful and I will hurt you so bad you’ll be begging me to paralyze you so you won’t feel the pain your lower body will be dealing with.”
He raised his head, but looked to the side, avoiding her gaze. “Okay, I’ll talk.”
“Tell me about flash blooding.”
“I went to Africa a few years ago. I learned about it there. A cost effective way for more than one person to get high on only one stash of heroin.” He licked his lips. “Do you think I could get a drink?”
“No. Keep talking.”
“After injecting the heroin in the first person, I extract five CCs of blood and inject that into the other user.”
“Then what?”
“Once the girls got high, we often turned to sex. If you were at the Garden of Eden all day, you’d understand. These girls have sex for a living. They need the smack. The deal is, I offer it for free and I get a little something on the side.”
“Then it’s not really free then, is it?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I do. But don’t say it’s free when it’s not.”
“Over the last couple of years, as drugs became an addiction at the Garden, sex became mine. Do anything over and over and eventually you get desensitized to it. Regular sex just wasn’t good enough anymore. I needed something different.”
Sarah sipped from her water and waited. He had stopped talking.
“I want to hear eve
rything,” she said. “You haven’t told me nearly enough.”
“Water first. Then I will tell you more.”
She rose from her chair, walked over to him, tilted her cup and splashed the rest of water into his face. He reared back and gasped.
“What did you do that for?” he yelled.
“Wake the fuck up,” she screamed at him. “You’re in my house. This is on my terms. I set the rules. You are no longer in control.” She got closer to his face. “You’re not a cop down here. You’re a nobody who’s a hair’s breadth away from being killed. Talking is all that saves your life and you’re asking for water. How fucking stupid are you?” She slapped his face, then stood back. “Now keep talking.” She walked over to her chair and sat down. “Tell me, weren’t you ever afraid of Hepatitis C or HIV when sharing needles?”
He shook his head.
“Oh, right,” Sarah said, catching on. “You only got the girls high.” She pointed a finger at him. “You never did it yourself, did you?”
He shook his head again.
“And you used protection because, after all, these girls saw lots of men all day long. You lowered your risk of an STD.” She rubbed her chin. “What does Deborah think of your business activity?”
“She never liked it, but chose to live with it.”
“Why would any woman choose to live with that?”
“Money. Our marriage was over years ago. There’s a certain amount of hate between us. But she has a nice home, a large monthly budget, and she’s always taken care of.”
Sarah wondered how one woman would turn her head as another was being abused. Her idealistic view of humanity had decreased over the years. Things like this only made it worse. Barry and Deborah Ashford made her feel a healthy loathing for the human race. They were nothing more than animals who could reason, and even that was defective.
There had to be some good people out there? Even Anne Frank believed that while hiding from the Nazis.
Maybe Sarah needed to get back to Aaron. Spend time with him. He had to be worried about her. She hadn’t returned his calls.
“Tell me why you killed Maxine Freeman,” Sarah said.
This time he looked up and met her gaze. “I didn’t kill Maxine Freeman.”
Without a word, Sarah walked over to him and backhanded his face. His head snapped to the side.
“Don’t lie to me!” she shouted. “I warned you.” She reclaimed her seat. “They found Maxine’s body in Bear Creek, a five-minute drive from downtown Kelowna. You dropped her off at the bus depot. Supposedly, Maxine was bound for Halifax. Oh wait, didn’t you just warn Lesley the other day that if she didn’t come back to work, she could join Maxine in Halifax?”
A trickle of blood seeped out of the corner of his mouth.
“Because Maxine had gone missing, I often used that example to scare my girls back to work. That isn’t a crime. I’ll admit, it was horrible, but not a crime. And I had nothing to do with Maxine’s disappearance or death.”
“Then who did? Come on. You expect me to believe that? There’s you and drugs and flash blooding and rape and you running me off the road. I could’ve died. You drove away and left me there without checking on me. And by your own admission, you dropped Maxine off at the bus station. No one has seen her in eight months. Funny how her body was found this week. Can’t you see your perfect world is unraveling? It’s over, but I’m here for you. I’m willing to listen. Confess to me.”
“I will say that the flash blooding and sex was a mistake. I see that now.”
“No. It wasn’t a mistake. The first time it was a mistake. The second time it was a choice. You can never make the same mistake twice. You chose to continue doing it, knowing full well what you were up to. I can tell by looking at you that you’re prurient and that you’re not interested in expiation.”
“What’s prurient and expiation?”
“Prurient is having an excessive interest in sexual matters and activity, and expiation is willing to make amends. You want to be untied and released. You want me arrested and put away. Then you can carry on with your vile ways. Isn’t that right? If I go away, would you really shut down the Garden of Eden, apologize to those you’ve violated, make some kind of amends and then tell the girls to go on their merry way? I highly fucking doubt it. You even offer freebies to your fellow officers. I heard you make a deal with Colin in your driveway the other night. I know all about you.”
“How do you know that?” he asked.
“I watch and listen to everything.” She pulled out her cell phone and brought up the GPS tracking device. She angled the phone so he could see it. “That red dot. That’s your car. It’s still parked at the Garden of Eden. I’ve been tracking you, following you. Are you so fucking stupid that an amateur could learn all this but none of your colleagues could? That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing, because you and your sorry ass friends at the RCMP don’t know how to serve and protect.” She got up and paced the floor. “Let’s talk about the Geoff Mantler case? The RCMP officer who pulled over Buddy Tavares’ car in January 2011. After Mr. Tavares was already on the ground on his hands and knees, doing exactly what the officer told him to do—not resisting arrest—the Mountie kicked him in the face, using force that obviously wasn’t necessary. Geoff Mantler didn’t wait for the RCMP to dismiss him. No, he up and quit the police force.” She continued to pace, walking faster now, her energy boosted by anger. “When it finally got to court, the judge gave this ex-cop a fifty-dollar fine, fifty hours of community service and eighteen months’ probation. No jail time.” She stopped pacing. “Are you fucking kidding me? Geoff Mantler was supposed to police the community to stop violent thugs and when he became one, the very thing he was supposed to arrest, he got babied in court.”
“Are we here because you’re upset with a few cops who get caught on camera?”
“We both know a lot more happens than what’s caught on camera. Last week I read a statistic from the National Safety Council that said you’re eight times more likely to be killed by a police officer than a terrorist. Can you believe that? And we’re all paranoid about terrorism. But you fuckers …” She pointed a finger at him.
The sun was going down. She needed to clear her head and get food. Then she had to park her Jeep up the road. Once the police located it, no one could ever connect it to this house.
“I want you think on what we’ve talked about here today. When I get back, I want to hear more. We’re going to be at this all night.”
“Where are you going?” He sounded worried.
“To buy me some food.” She rubbed her stomach. “I’m hungry and thirsty.”
“What about me?”
“You get all the food and drink you want when you’ve told me everything.”
She started for the stairs.
“What if something happens to you while you’re out? I’ll die down here.”
“The perils of being an asshole. Dying alone in that chair will be a lot better than what I have planned for you.”
At the top of the stairs she took a deep breath. “How long can I do this?” she whispered to herself.
Outside, the day’s light was fleeing, shoved aside by an ominous darkness.
Under the cover of night, she pulled out of the driveway, maintained the speed limit, and drove to the nearest grocery store. While the police had a vague description of her, the exposure was minimal but necessary.
After this, she wouldn’t need to leave the house for days, and since Barry was her target all along, she was done in Kelowna. But what was Vivian referring to when she said Barry was the barnacle on the mother ship?
What mother lode of information was Barry holding back?
Something told Sarah she would find out soon enough.
Or she would torture the bastard until she killed him because she was absolutely done with anyone thinking they could get away with rape.
Chapter 22
Deborah watched as Sarah pulled out of the driveway
next door. She waited until the Jeep’s taillights disappeared down the road before she headed to Barry’s gun cabinet.
Once she got inside the cabinet, she selected his favorite weapon. She would never forget the story of how he pulled over a car at three in the morning. The two teens were headed to a party, but they’d had too much to drink and it was Barry and his partner’s job to bring them downtown to the drunk tank.
Once the driver and his passengers were in the cruiser, something caught Barry’s attention between the front seats of the teens’ car. After fumbling for a moment, his hand stuck against the center console, he pulled up a Colt revolver. He later learned it was a Walker Colt Replica. It had been modified to shoot the bullets that were in it, but she couldn’t remember the name of what kind of bullets were in what gun. All she could recall was the name of this gun because Barry had stolen it that day and talked about it to her hundreds of times. He always kept it loaded in the locked cabinet.
