Deadly Goals

by Wilt Browning

  “His name’s Ian,” she had written. “He’s a pitcher on the baseball team and he’s such a nice man. He’s good to me and we enjoy being together…”

  Pernell had read enough. In a jealous rage, he jammed the unfinished letter back into the drawer, slamming it shut.

  Susan and Ellen had left the room only briefly. The visit had been going well, Susan thought, but she returned to the room to find that Pernell’s mood had changed. She saw the anger in his face as soon as she stepped inside the room. Reaching past her, he slammed the door, barring Ellen from her own room, and without speaking, he began slapping Susan until she fell to the floor screaming.

  “Why are you doing this, Pernell?” she wailed. “Why are you hurting me again?”

  Susan’s friends in nearby rooms heard the commotion, and Ellen finally pushed her way into the room.

  “Are you all right, Susan?” Ellen called.

  Screaming, Susan ran past Ellen and down the hall, with Pernell close behind. Doors sprang open up and down the hall as startled students emerged to see what was going on. Pernell caught Susan from behind, sweeping her from her feet as she continued to scream.

  Terri rushed to Susan’s aid, but Pernell pushed her against the wall, while he secured Susan under one strong arm.

  “We’re leaving,” he said, sweeping Susan off the floor, “and if anybody tries to stop me, I’ll kill her.”

  Susan’s frightened friends stood back as Pernell carried her to the maroon 1981 Datsun 240 SX she had given him several years earlier. A minor traffic accident had left the fender of his gold Fiero crumpled and he had left it in Benson.

  “We’re going to see that boyfriend of yours,” Pernell said as he pushed Susan into the car. “Where is he?”

  For a moment, Susan didn’t speak.

  “I said, where is he?” Pernell demanded.

  “He’s at a baseball game,” she said weakly.

  “What baseball game?”

  “I think they’re playing at Miami Dade,” she said, fear in her voice.

  He sped away from the St. Thomas campus and into early evening traffic. Back in the dormitory, Andrea was dialing the number for the Metro-Dade Police Department. Moments later she was telling detective Cynthia Griglen what she and a half dozen fellow Sullivan residents had just witnessed.

  Griglen sought to calm Andrea so that she could be sure what had happened.

  “Who was abducted?” she asked.

  “Susan. Susan Demos.”

  “Do you know who took her?”

  “Yes, ma’am. His name’s Pernell Jefferson. He used to be her boyfriend.”

  “What does he do?” Griglen continued rapidly jotting down the responses.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “I think he’s a football player.”

  Griglen noted the occupation. Seven months after he had walked out of the Browns training camp, Pernell once more was being called a football player by the Metro-Dade Police Department.

  On the north campus of Miami Dade College, Pernell pulled into a parking lot near the baseball field.

  “Okay,” he told Susan, “go get Ian. But listen to me. If you make one false move, I do have a gun and I’ll kill him. Do you understand?”

  Susan only nodded. As she walked slowly toward the baseball field, trying to determine what to do to keep Ian from a confrontation with Pernell, no solution to her dilemma would come. She found Ian watching the game from the bullpen. He had not been scheduled to pitch on this Friday, and he was enjoying the game and the warmth of the spring sun.

  “Ian,” Susan called in a low voice from beyond the chain-link fence against which he had been resting. He turned and immediately saw Susan’s fear.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked urgently.

  “I’m in trouble. My former boyfriend’s waiting in a car. He wants to talk to you.”

  He went to a nearby gate and followed Susan to the parking lot, his spiked shoes clicking on the pavement. Pernell was still in the driver’s seat, smiling strangely as they approached the car.

  “Hi, Ian,” he said, “I’m Pernell Jefferson.”

  Ian didn’t acknowledge the greeting, instead turning to Susan and asking, “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she lied.

  “Ian, I want to ask you something,” Jefferson said. “Are you dating Susan?”

  “Yeah, I guess I am,” he said, trying to feel his way through this conversation in which he had unexpectedly found himself. Again he turned to Susan. “Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked again, this time with more urgency.

  “Yes, Ian. I’m okay.” But this time Susan did not raise her eyes to meet his.

  Susan thought about running, but she was held by Pernell’s earlier warning that he had a gun. She worried that Ian would be killed.

  “Well, Ian,” Pernell said, “I just want you to know that Susan’s my woman and she won’t be seeing you any more.”

  Ian looked once more at Susan. He didn’t want to make the situation worse than it already was.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” he finally said with an evenness that gave Susan a moment of hope. “I’m as strong as you and I’m as big as you. I won’t see Susan for a while, but not for your sake, for hers.”

  With that, Pernell ordered Susan back into the car, revved the engine and roared away. Stunned by this eerie confrontation, Ian watched the car until it disappeared into the distance.

  He turned and began a slow, thoughtful walk back to the baseball stadium where the lights were beginning to push back the night. Suddenly, as rapidly as they had departed, Pernell and Susan were back, speeding through the parking lot and coming to a skidding stop beside him.

  “I’ve changed my mind, Ian,” Pernell said, never leaving the driver’s seat. “Susan’s nothing but a whore and a slut and I don’t want her. You can have her.”

  Then Pernell stamped the accelerator and they were gone again, leaving Ian puzzled by the strangeness of the encounter. He would remember later, when questioned by Detective Griglen, that Pernell’s car had been a Datsun, maroon in color. But even though he had twice watched the car disappear into the distance, he had not noticed the distinctive license plate—NAIA-AA.

  As Pernell turned the Datsun north on Interstate 95, he ordered Susan to remove her jewelry. After she had handed it to him, he put it into an envelope and threw it from the car.

  Moments later, he hit the brakes, skidded to a stop on the shoulder and backed up until he saw the envelope. Quickly retrieving it, he shoved it into a compartment and sped northward again, finally exiting near Fort Lauderdale. Thirty minutes later, he pulled into a faded old tourist court with an ancient neon sign that had lost most of its glow.

  For Susan, the terror had only begun.

  13.

  The Solitary Rose

  “CHECK US IN,” Pernell ordered.

  He waited in the car while Susan walked into the office. She had a splitting headache from the beating she had taken in the dormitory room, and it had grown worse from the tension of the confrontation with Ian. Her pain and the stress over what was to come were so great that she had to fight back tears as she inquired about a room. She knew that she looked terrible, frightened and frazzled, but the desk clerk asked no questions. She returned with the key to a room at the distant end of the dark, decrepit motel, a room too isolated from the rooms of other customers, she thought. Pernell pushed the key into the lock and opened the door. He pushed Susan inside ahead of him. She could hear him sliding the security latch into place behind her. Susan had never seen such a sad and squalid room, clearly a perfect place to play out a sad and squalid relationship.

  Still in a rage about Ian, Pernell began shouting insults at Susan, then slapped her repeatedly across the face before driving his fist into her midsection, causing her to double over in pain so overwhelming that she no longer could think clearly. The sickening throbbing inside her head, the spasms in her stomach had prevented her from realizing that she needed to find
a way to make herself bleed so that Pernell would stop. She thought she was going to die, and she didn’t care. She only wanted death to come quickly.

  Now Pernell took a coat hanger from a closet. Susan thought he was going to hang his clothing on it, until he whirled and began beating her with it. With one hand, he ripped off her blouse. She felt straps digging into her back as he tore at her bra.

  “Undress,” he ordered.

  Obediently, she pushed her shorts to her ankles, then her panties, nudging them from one small foot with the other, trembling at his gaze, feeling more exposed than she had ever been.

  Without taking his eyes from her, Pernell untwisted the coat hanger and thrust one jagged end under Susan’s nose.

  “Now, you’re going to make love to me for as long as I want you to,” he said in a voice more evil than she’d ever heard, “and if you disappoint me, I’ll put both your eyes out with this.”

  He shoved her onto the soiled bed, and she curled on her side, away from him. After he’d undressed, he grabbed her shoulder, forcing her onto her back.

  “Don’t hurt me,” she said plaintively.

  “Just do everything I tell you to do,” he warned.

  For hours, it seemed, he penetrated her again and again, using his brief respites to insult her as he had done so many times before.

  “You’re nothing but a nigger,” he told her, his face in hers, then loudly demanded, “What are you?”

  “Oh, Pernell, why?”

  “What are you?” he yelled even louder.

  “I’m your nigger.”

  Spent at last, Pernell rolled to the side of the bed.

  “Now, get out of here,” he ordered.

  Susan reached to gather her clothes from the filthy, cheap carpet.

  “Leave ’em,” he said forcefully. Leaping from the bed and grabbing her by the arm, he pulled her toward the door, opened it and shoved her outside.

  “Now find your way home. See if Ian likes you like that,” he shouted.

  She heard the door lock catch behind her. Holding her arms over her bruised breasts, Susan stood at the door trying to decide what to do. Then she started toward the lights of the office, but had taken only a few steps when the door swung open and Pernell shouted, “Get back in here.”

  She considered running but hesitated. She had thought of running from Pernell many times in the past, but fear, or something more fearsome inside her, always kept her from doing it. Whatever force had held her in the past prevailed again. She dutifully returned to the room. Pernell began beating her anew as soon as she stepped inside, her reward for obedience. After she crumpled to the floor in pain she thought she couldn’t bear, Pernell fell across the bed, as if exhausted, and was soon asleep. Trying to muffle her sobbing so as not to awaken him, Susan made her way slowly to the only chair in the room and crawled into it. There she remained for the rest of the night, awake, weeping softly, bound by fear, fighting her pain. The pain seemed to be so deep inside her head that it penetrated her very soul, and it grew more intense by the hour.

  At times, she listened for sounds outside, hoping for rescue, but heard none. She wondered if her friends were searching for her. Had they called the police? Had Ian perhaps noticed Pernell’s distinctive license plate and reported it? Did anybody really care what was happening to her?

  As she listened to Pernell’s regular breathing, she looked at his dark, naked body and thought about all the money and time she had lavished on this man, about the clothing she had bought so that he would fit in at Guilford College, about the apartments she had helped furnish so he would be comfortable, about the car that she had bought for his use. She realized how wrong her judgment had been and how she hated him. Hated him for all the years she had lost. Hated him for the pain she felt in her head. Hated him for this night, especially for this night.

  “I was so ashamed,” she later recalled. “I was really ashamed of getting beaten. Only trashy people allow themselves to get beaten up. I wasn’t a trashy person with five kids and an alcoholic husband. But I was allowing myself to be treated like a trashy person.”

  A thought entered her mind that she never had dreamed she could think, a thought alien to all that she had known before she knew Pernell. A thought that ran so counter to all she had been taught growing up that for a moment she found it remarkable that it even could have occurred to her. It was a simple thought: Could she kill Pernell? Kill him as he slept. And if she did, would a judge and jury understand? And if they didn’t, could prison be worse than the hell she had known for the past five years? What was this very room but a prison, a torture chamber? Deep down, she knew she never could do that, but now she could understand those who did.

  She watched morning break through the dirty, drooping drapes, and still Pernell slept, his strong, naked body at rest on a filthy bed. After another hour or so, he stirred, raised his head and looked at her sleepily.

  “You didn’t run away,” he said in a way that told her this was not so much an observation as a reminder of his control.

  “No, I didn’t run,” she said with an evenness that surprised even her.

  “Get dressed,” he told her after he had arisen and gone to the bathroom, and as she pulled on her clothing, trying to piece together her torn blouse, he tossed her the car keys and ordered her to get him some breakfast.

  She knew that this was a test, and as she left the motel, she actually thought about driving away and never coming back, but she knew, too, that he had found her before and he would find her again. She returned shortly with coffee and an Egg McMuffin from a nearby McDonald’s.

  After he had eaten, Pernell withdrew a ring with a small stone from his trousers pocket, a ring he had given her before but had taken back.

  “I love you,” he said, holding the ring out to her.

  For a moment, she didn’t react, then she took it, held it in her hands and looked at it, but said nothing. It was ten in the morning, Saturday, April 12.

  Now he handed her the telephone, instructing her to call her friends in the dorm and tell them exactly what he told her to say.

  Andrea Hastings was first to grab the ringing dorm phone. Susan’s friends had been up all night, frantic to hear something after reporting her abduction to the police. They had searched their brains for clues that might help lead the police to her and were angry at themselves that they could come up with nothing useful, not even the make or color of the car that Pernell had been driving.

  At first, Andrea didn’t know what to say or do as Susan recited the litany Pernell laid out for her, telling Andrea that she and her other dormmates had failed her, were no friends of hers and that she particularly never wanted anything to do with Ian again. In the background, Andrea could hear Pernell directing Susan.

  “Susan,” Andrea finally said, taking a chance that Pernell could hear only Susan’s half of the conversation, “are you okay?”

  For a moment, Susan lost control, beginning to cry, drawing an angry rebuke from Pernell.

  “No,” she said sternly, regaining control of her emotions, hoping that Pernell would not realize that the answer would provide Andrea some idea of her true situation.

  “Can you tell me where you are?” Andrea asked.

  “Of course not,” she said through her tears, trying to sound hateful for Pernell’s benefit.

  “Is Pernell there with you?” Andrea pressed.

  “What do you think?” Susan responded, pleased that she could keep a bite in her voice when she wanted so desperately to cry out for help. This was a turn in the conversation that suddenly gave her more hope than she had had in hours.

  “I think he’s there.”

  “You can count on it, Miss Hastings.”

  “I want you to know the police are looking for you.”

  “Okay, Andrea, if that’s the way you feel,” Susan said.

  “Does Pernell have a gun?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

 
; “That’s what I said,” Susan answered.

  “Ask her if anyone has any warrants out for me,” Pernell said in a loud whisper.

  “Andrea, has anyone sworn out any warrants for Pernell?” she dutifully asked. Andrea knew of no warrants, nor did she know that a statewide all-points bulletin had been issued.

  “Hang up,” Pernell suddenly ordered.

  Without saying another word, Susan placed the phone in its cradle.

  “What’d she say?” he asked.

  “She just said some police officer came and asked some questions but there are no warrants. Don’t worry. They don’t know where we are.”

  For a long time, Pernell was lost in thought. Though the car Ian had partially described sat outside in the small, dusty parking lot, police officers had passed along Highway A1A in front of the motel without slowing.

  Pernell took his time considering his options. Noon came and went. Near one, he decided on his next move. He ordered Susan to dial the number in Sullivan Hall once again.

  This time Erin Collins answered.

  “Tell them that I’m going to drop you off at the Button in Fort Lauderdale,” he said, referring to a well-known Fort Lauderdale oceanside park that takes up most of the 800 block of Highway A1A South.

  “Erin, he’s going to take me to the Button in Fort Lauderdale and let me out there,” she said.

  “Tell them no police. Do you understand?” Pernell said.

  Susan’s voice was pleading as she stressed that the presence of police might endanger her. Erin agreed.

  Pernell drove, but he seemed to have no particular destination in mind. He talked little. At one point, he stopped at a flea market, asked for somebody named Ed, and talked privately with the man for nearly 30 minutes while Susan waited in the car. Together, the two men returned to the car, still talking, until they drew near enough for Susan to hear.

  “What if they come to my house?” Susan now heard Ed say to Pernell.

  “Who?” Pernell asked.

  “The police. They’ll be looking for you.”