Black Rose

by Kris Thompson

  “What do you mean ‘what he did to us’?” Kandace demanded. “Lee, he did it to you, too. He deserves to suffer just as much for what he did to you. It’s not your—”

  “Yes, it is,” I yelled. “I was ready to go. I made my peace, and was ready to take him down with me.” I don’t know why I started to walk away, but I had to. Standing there reminded me of my failure. “I want to know why,” I screamed. “Why did it have to be them? I was stronger than them. I was more of a threat. I made sure of it, and yet he took them. He ripped them out of this world like they were nothing, and I want to know why!”

  I couldn’t hold it back anymore; I let the tears flow freely. “I had his life in the palm of my hands, twice, and yet I’m still that weak little girl stuck in the basement.” I fell to my knees and gripped my hair tight in my hands. “I had him, down there. I could have bashed his face in, or snapped his neck, but I was weak!” My voice caused the girls to jump. “And then when I had the chance again, I blew it.” I was sobbing now. I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling like my body was going to explode at any moment. “It should have been me.” I whimpered, leaning forward and resting my forehead on the cold ground.

  I heard footsteps coming toward me and felt the grass shift. Too tired to protest, I didn’t flinch when I felt a hand glide over my hair. “We all feel that way, Lee,” Sara replied. One by one, I felt each girl come around me and rest their hands on my back.

  “I just don’t know what to do,” I cried into the ground.

  “We do what we need to do to make sure he can’t do this again,” Anna answered.

  “And we speak for the ones who didn’t make it,” Emma added.

  “And we make sure that when he gets to jail, he shares a cell with the biggest, baddest inmate in that fucking place,” Kandace said, causing us all to giggle.

  We all sat together, crying for what felt like hours, before anyone spoke.

  “Do you think any of us will be normal again?” Sara asked.

  “We have to try,” I answered, sitting up and looking around at the girls. “We owe it to the others not to let him destroy us, but I can’t do it alone. I don’t know how to.”

  “Then we’ll figure it out together.” Anna smiled, stroking my hair.

  We all nodded in silence at her words, but I wasn’t sure if I believed what she was saying, or even what I had said. It felt impossible at the moment to think I would ever be normal again.

  “We should start heading back.” Emma sighed. “The guys are probably freaking out.”

  “Then let’s get this over with.” Kandace smiled, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a small bottle of alcohol for each of us. We turned and faced the graves of our fallen sisters.

  “To Ruth.” I choked back a sob as I downed my drink.

  “To Linda,” Sara said firmly as she and Emma drank theirs.

  “To Nina.” Kandace smiled, taking the shot quickly and letting out a sigh.

  We all looked at Anna as she opened her shot and dumped it into the grass. “To all of us.”

  We stood up and said our last goodbyes to our sisters. I felt different looking at their pictures. I couldn’t explain it, and I didn’t even want to try. Whatever I was feeling was better than what I had felt before, and I was okay with that.

  “I’m still going to live up to my promise,” I whispered, unsure if I was saying it to myself or to them.

  I looked down when I felt a hand grasp mine, and smiled when I saw that it was Emma’s.

  “And I’m going to help,” she said.

  “Me, too,” Anna said, coming up and wrapping her arm around my other side. One by one the girls came forward and declared their promise to help me. We were making our peace, our promise, and standing there together as one, I had never felt stronger.

  Chapter17

  Six Months Later

  —Richard

  I sat in my car, shaking, wishing that this damn cigarette would calm my fucking nerves. I had thought I could handle this. I’d felt ready.

  When Noah called to say that David Reed had been released from the hospital and was going to be interviewed by Agent Chase, and that he could get us into the viewing room, I knew I had to go. I had to know. I needed to hear from him why Reed wanted her. Why my girl? Why my Lee?

  With a knock on my window, I looked over and saw Noah standing outside my door. I quickly got out and waited for him to put out his cigarette.

  “You ready for this?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “But I need to know why, so I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

  Noah and I were ushered into a dark, empty room once we made it inside. There was a large glass window, which allowed us to see into the interview room where Reed was being led. Noah reassured me that David wouldn’t be able to see us, but I wasn’t stupid. Even though he didn’t know who was on the other side of the glass, it still didn’t stop him from looking at it and smiling after he was secured to the table.

  I felt a moment of pride when I saw the damage that Lee had caused to his face. Both his upper and lower lip looked to have been sliced open; they were marred by a long, ragged scar that hadn’t quite healed right. He also had a bandage that went from just below his chin to his upper chest and disappeared below his jumpsuit.

  “Why have they waited so long to do this interview?”

  “That bullet did a lot of damage to him, on top of the injuries he received from Lee,” Noah replied. “Chase wanted to make sure that Reed was off the pain meds, and coherent, before doing this. They want him at full strength so his lawyer can’t claim needing a continuance to heal. He was also under the influence of some heavy narcotics, and we wanted to make sure he was considered stable before questioning him.”

  Agent Chase entered the interrogation room and threw a file across the table toward Reed. Photos came spilling out in front of him, and I inched closer to the glass to get a better look. It was a file that held photos of the girls, alive and dead. Some of them were even crime scene photos taken of the girls after they were found in the forest.

  Reed gingerly held out his finger and placed it on top of one of the pictures, turning it, and dragging it toward himself. He looked down at it and smiled. “She had promise. Too bad someone had to go and mess with her head. She’d still be alive.”

  The mere sound of his voice disgusted me, but I couldn’t help but smile at the obvious lisp he had courtesy of the scar Lee gave him.

  “You want to elaborate on that? Tell me what happened to Ruth-Ann Summers,” Agent Chase said calmly.

  “No.” Reed smiled, pushing the photo away.

  Agent Chase calmly took the head shots of the girls—the ones they showed on the news and in newspapers—and lined them up next to each other. “You had great taste in women, David,” Chase said. “Each one very beautiful, and talented in some way.”

  “They are, aren’t they?” Reed said with pride.

  “Out of curiosity, who was your favorite?” Chase asked.

  “All of them,” Reed answered quickly.

  With a slight tilt of his head, Chase chuckled. “Really? All of them?”

  “They each had special qualities.” He grinned, placing his cuffed hands in his lap. “They all fed a desire I needed fulfilled.”

  Chase only nodded and slid a photograph out of the lineup toward Reed. “What need did Kandace fill?”

  “My excitement,” he answered, his lips causing him to trip over his words.

  “Excitement? Huh,” Chase murmured, scratching his head. “I wouldn’t have guessed that. You see, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Kandace, and I must say I wouldn’t expect someone so mouthy to—”

  “That’s what makes her exciting, though.” Reed smiled. “To unlock that door and not know what she was going to do or say.” He ran his tongue over his bottom lip and I couldn’t help but shiver. “Very exciting,” he purred.

  “And Ruth?” Chase asked, pushing her photo toward Reed aga
in. “Was she exciting?”

  “No.” Reed sighed, shaking his head. “Ruth was innocence. Innocence in its purest form.” He raised his hands from over his head and placed them on top of Ruth’s picture. “To touch something so soft, so precious. Having her mouth around me was like slipping into a warm bath.”

  I nearly vomited. He was talking about these girls like they were lovers. I wanted to break through the glass and rip his fucking head off.

  “So you enjoyed having sex with them? It wasn’t about pain?” Chase asked. I couldn’t understand how Chase seemed so calm, so collected. It was baffling.

  Reed sighed again and pulled two photos toward him, lightly stroking them. “I wanted to give them pleasure. I wanted them to feel my love for them. They were exquisite.” He lined up the four photos, and as I looked closer, I saw that they were the pictures of Kandace, Linda, Ruth, and Nina.

  “So why did you murder them?” Chase asked, pointing to the three at the end.

  “To save them,” Reed said softly.

  “Save them from what?”

  Reed just smiled and shrugged.

  “And you only chose these girls? Why not the others?”

  “I was going to prepare Kandace that night, but I was rudely interrupted,” he growled.

  Chase pulled back all the photos, but then lined four others in their stead. They were photos of Anna, Sara, Emma, and Lee. “So tell me, if these women weren’t for saving, what was their purpose?”

  Reed looked down at the photos with a menacing face. He quickly reached over to Emma’s picture, lifted it, and flipped it to face Chase. “She was nothing to me. She was Tom’s.” He tossed the photo on the floor and shook his head. “I would have never looked twice at that girl.”

  “I was given the impression you fancied her?” Chase asked.

  “Sure, I would have fucked her, but she was too weak,” Reed answered in a very matter-of-fact manner.

  “And the others? What was their part in all this?” Chase pushed the three leftover pictures forward a little more.

  Reed took another picture and flipped it over, holding it up. It was Anna. “She was about pain. She was my muse for getting out my frustrations.” I could feel my anger grow by the second. He looked so smug as he continued talking. “She’d make a great submissive; never talking back, always following orders. Well, until the end.”

  He threw the photo on the floor and it landed next to Emma’s.

  “And this one . . .” He chuckled, reaching for Sara’s picture next. “She was about suffering, and man, did I make her suffer. She was like my guinea pig for ideas I wanted to try with the others.”

  I heard a growl behind me and looked over to see Noah start to pace. We were thinking the same thing—Reed was saving Lee for last.

  Chase seemed to pause for a bit and then reached for Lee’s picture, but Reed beat him to it by tossing Sara’s picture on the floor and snatching Lee’s. He stared at it for a long time and then smiled.

  “I love this girl,” he whispered.

  “Really?” Chase leaned back in his chair.

  “Lilly is the rarest type of woman,” he purred, rubbing his thumb over the picture.

  Noah came up to the glass so fast that it rattled a little. He was breathing hard, and looked like he was about to scream.

  “You love the woman who got you caught, who permanently disfigured you, and is the reason you’ll live the rest of your life in jail?”

  Reed just shrugged.

  “What was Lee to you?” Chase asked.

  “Her strength.” He smiled. “I wanted to destroy it the second I saw it in her.”

  “Then why did you only rape her once?” Chase pried.

  “She wasn’t for that. She was a spontaneous choice, compared to these others. I didn’t know how strong and willful she was until I had her. Once I saw it, I wanted to destroy that. The more she fought back, the harder I hit.” He shook his head and chuckled. “Man, she could take a hit. A lot better than any of the other girls.” Reed looked up at the glass and for a moment I could have sworn he could see Noah and me. “But when I was inside her, thrusting into that beautifully bruised body, it was heaven.”

  It was my turn to growl at that point.

  “Does it bother you?” Reed yelled, still looking at the mirror, at us. “Knowing I know your sister better than you? Knowing that I will have a piece of her that you will never touch?” An eerie smile swept across his face. “And although she’ll never admit it, a small part of her, deep down, loved every second of it.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Noah screamed, flying out of the room, and reaching for the door that went to the interrogation room. I ran after him and grasped his arm as he tried to open the door. Another officer nearby helped me pull him away as Agent Chase exited the room.

  “I’ll fucking kill him. I swear to God I will,” Noah screamed.

  “Get him out of here,” Chase yelled, and the officer took Noah away.

  I stood there in silence as Agent Chase talked to another agent. He seemed very deep in conversation, so I took the opportunity to slip into Reed’s room unnoticed.

  He sneered as I shut the door behind me. “Don’t you think you’re a little too old to be playing cops and robbers, Richard?”

  “It’s good to know I don’t have to go through mundane introductions and pleasantries with you,” I replied, locking the door.

  “So, what? Come to fight for your beloved Lilly’s honor? I’d thought we could be friends. Swap stories.” He laughed.

  “No.” I smiled, shaking my head and walking toward him, trying to keep my nerves in check. “I’m not here for Lee.” I could see the slight worry in his eyes as I stopped in front of him. “But I’m not here to be your friend either, only to promise you something.”

  “Promise me what?”

  I leaned forward, but just far enough that he couldn’t reach out for me. “You will get what’s coming to you.”

  Before he could say anything in response, I pulled back my fist and hit him as hard as I could in the face. His head flew back like a rag doll, and it took every ounce of self-control I had not to hit the bastard again. Lee needed me, and I’d be useless to her locked up in a cell next to this piece of shit, although that was an intriguing idea. Pulling myself together, I straightened up, walked out of the room, and all but ran out of the police station.

  I arrived back at the apartment just in time to see Adam carrying the last of Emma’s things out. Once she had been released from the hospital and the police had allowed the girls back into their homes, Emma had packed up most of her things and moved into Adam’s room. At first it bothered me, but I knew Emma needed that security, and so I pushed my brotherly emotions aside and moved in with Lee. I wanted . . . no, needed to be closer to her anyway.

  “You ready for tampons, pink crap, and leaving the toilet seat down?” I asked, taking one of the boxes out of his hands and walking with it toward his truck.

  “Are you?”

  I just laughed. We might have joked about it, but this was what we’d both wanted for a while.

  “Is Emma saying goodbye to Lee?”

  “No,” he answered, looking over at the apartment and then back at me. “Lee had a rough day. I think Emma leaving upset her, but she won’t admit it. She knows Emma needs this, so she took something to help her relax and went to sleep.”

  “Thanks, bro. I appreciate you looking out for both of them.”

  Emma had tears in her eyes when she came outside and gave me a hug, making me promise for the hundredth time that I’d call her if I needed her. I knew she felt like a bad friend for leaving Lee, but before they drove away, Adam and I both reminded her that she needed to feel safe, too.

  When I walked back into the apartment, I stopped in the hallway outside Lee’s bedroom door. Light shone from beneath it, and it killed me to know that she still needed the lights on to be able to sleep. Even with the lights on, she sometimes woke up screaming in the middle of the night
. I would rush into her room, hold her hand, and whisper my love for her until she fell back asleep. But if I even tried to get in the bed to hold her, she would all but jump out.

  I started thinking how Lee had changed, little things that made me nervous, things that I didn’t understand until I’d asked Noah about them. He told me most female rape victims felt better sleeping with their shoes on, changing the locks to the house, adding bars to windows, carrying mace, and sticking to strict schedules. It was their way of trying to feel safe and in control.

  Sometimes I couldn’t help but feel that I might not be enough for her. That even with me being here with her every night, she still might not feel safe. I just wish I knew what I could do. My instincts told me to go in her room, wrap her in my arms, and comfort her. But it would be like putting a bandage over a gaping wound. Lee needed time to heal, and all I could do was hope that one day she’d let me in again so I could help.

  —Lillian

  “So did Richard go with you to see Anna and the baby at the hospital?”

  “No.”

  “Because you asked him not to?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  My therapist, Joanna, had been recommended by the state because she specialized in helping women who had experienced traumatic situations. Everyone said that it would help, and the other girls were seeing her, too, but I hated every minute of our sessions.

  How could this person know what to say if she hadn’t gone through anything remotely similar herself?

  When I said as much to my mom, she’d tried feeding me the idea of group counseling. But I shot her suggestion down real quick. Last thing I needed was a bunch of strangers looking at me like I was some kind of freak.

  “Fine, we’ll get back to that,” she said, looking down at her notebook and writing something when I didn’t answer. I hated that fucking notebook. “So tell me, Lee, how is your relationship with Richard going?”

  She’d asked me this question at the end of almost every session, and I’d never answer it. But for some reason the words came spilling out on this day.