Heartbeat (19 page)

Got-damn, my parents weren’t shit. They’d been ignoring my calls ever since we had that falling out. I’ll admit, I had no business talking to them the way I had. In fact, I’d never spoken to my parents in that manner before. But the nagging was too much on top of everything else I had going on.

I threw my cell phone across the room and decided I would just pop up at their house. They called themselves Christians, yet, here they were refusing to forgive me. Ok, they were mad at me, but they still could have checked up on Destiny. The thought that they were taking their anger at me out on Destiny infuriated me. I packed her diaper bag and headed to the car. After situating her in her car seat, I headed to their house.

As I was driving, I thought back to the last time I’d spoken to my parents. They’d invited me over for dinner and seeing as though my pockets were thinner than ever, I happily obliged. I’d been dining on Ramen Noodles so long that a free meal sounded heavenly. I knew I was going to have to endure a lecture or two, but I’d deal with that in order to come home with a full stomach and some left overs.

I hadn’t been in there house for more than ten minutes before they started up with the wedding talk. At first, I gave them the same reasons I’d been giving them, but this time I couldn’t take it. It had only been a week since I found out Greg was married and here they were talking about me marrying him.

I’d kept twitching and moving in my chair because anger was making me too mad to sit still. “Ma, Greg and I won’t be getting married,” I’d told her.

She sat her water glass on the table and looked at me like I’d cussed at her. “Lake, we didn’t raise you like this!”

I wanted to tell them Greg was married but then I’d be told that I was going to hell for laying with a married man, whether I knew about it or not, so I just sat there tight lipped.

I gripped the steering wheel tight as I remembered how Daddy gyrated on my nerves.

“Lake, this is unacceptable. We just cannot allow this.” He’d looked at me with eyes full of contempt.

I crossed and uncrossed my legs while stuffing rice in my mouth.

“Do you hear me talking to you girl?” Daddy had said.

I’d kept my eyes trained on my plate because I couldn’t look up at either one of them. No, I couldn’t look at the disappointment that was definitely going to be written completely on their faces. I couldn’t bare that again. The last time I’d seen that amount of disappointment was when I told them I was pregnant and it still hurt today.

“Yes, Daddy, I hear you.”

“You wasn’t raised to be some man’s baby mama!” He’d said.

“I know,” I’d said. It hurt me that they thought that’s all I wanted to be. I’d wanted to be Greg’s wife. But Greg was already married. The secret was on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it. I could never tell my parents that.

“I’m ashamed to call you my daughter,” Mama had said. And when she said that I finally looked up at them.

I’d expected her to instantly say she didn’t mean that. I’d expected her to apologize profusely. But she just stared back at me like she meant every word. Then I looked over at Daddy, expecting him to come to my rescue, but he just sat there nodding his head, obviously, completely in agreeance with Mama.

And for that, my heart split in two. I didn’t think I had any heart left to break after finding out Greg was married, but looking at my parents who proudly admitted they regretted me, what little heart I had left shattered.

Tears ran down my face as I turned onto my parents’ street. I was still hurt but I was willing to forgive them. Why couldn’t they forgive me? After they‘d said something so deliberately hurtful to me, I’d said things to them that I cannot bring myself to repeat. After cussing them out, I’d grabbed Destiny and ran out of their house. I’d tried calling them the next day, but they ignored my call and had been ignoring me ever since. They wouldn’t be able to ignore me anymore because I was pulling into their driveway and I was going to make them forgive me like the Christians they proclaimed to be, was supposed to forgive.

I parked and grabbed Destiny out of the car. “We finna surprise Grandma and Grandpa,” I sang to her.

I knocked on the door three times but it didn’t surprise me that they didn’t answer. They were still on their bullshit. I knocked again before pulling their house key from my key chain and unlocking the door. When I walked into their house, I was surprised that both of them weren’t standing at the door looking out the peephole at me. And then a terrible stench hit my nose like a train.

“What the fuck?” I said as I tried to cover my nose while still holding Destiny. I placed her on the sofa and called out, “Mama? Daddy?”

What the hell was going on? The TV was off and the house was dark. The awful smell had me gagging as I turned the corner. I seemed to be getting closer to the culprit of the smell and it was so strong it brought tears to my eyes.

“Oh my God!” I jumped back as I entered the dining room. The dining room was covered in blood. There was so much blood that I knew whoever was hurt in this room hadn’t survived. And I didn’t have to walk further into the small room to know both of my parents were dead. I didn’t want to see them like this but my feet kept walking no matter how many times I told them to stop. My feet kept walking until I was upon both of their bodies. The smell was so horrible, but it didn’t compare to the sight of both of my parents drenched in blood. Their bodies had already begun decomposing, so they’d been dead for a while. I couldn’t tell how they’d been killed and I didn’t even want to know.

“Oh my God, Mama! Daddy!” I bent down and turned my mother over. Her face had been obliterated. Whoever did this to her had been full of rage because they’d damn near cut off her entire face.

I jumped back and ran into the living room where I’d left Destiny and my purse. I fumbled around with the contents of my purse looking for my cell phone. I had to call the cops!

I grabbed my cell phone and saw I had twelve missed calls from Charlie. I couldn’t worry myself with her, right now. I swiped the screen to get to my dial pad.

“Put that phone down, Lake.”

I almost jumped out of my skin. I turned around and saw Denise standing there looking as deranged as ever.

“What the fuck? What the fuck are you doing here? Did you follow me?”

She shook her head and laughed at me. “Put your phone down unless you want to go to jail, tonight.”

“What are you talking about?” My hand was shaking so bad I dropped my cell phone. I wanted to bend down and grab it and call 9-11 even more now.

Denise laughed at me again and her laugh sounded like something out of a horror movie. “You are nuts, you know that?”

“I’m nuts?” I yelled. I walked toward my daughter just in case Denise tried something. “You’re the one following me and shit! I have to call the police, my parents are in there dead!”

“I didn’t follow you, Lake.”

“What are you doing here then?” I asked. I was damn near hyperventilating. Then it hit me, “You killed my parents!”

Denise laughed so hard that she bent over. “I didn’t kill your parents, Lake. You did.”

I looked at my Lieutenant as if he’d lost his mind. Although, I’d heard his order loud and clear, I still had to ask again, “You’re seriously telling me to step down?”

Lieutenant Galey hated to repeat himself, so when he did, he made sure he added a scowl. “You’re gonna haveta’, Detective.” His expression softened when he said, “You’re too close to this.”

“Lieutenant!” I threw both of my hands in the air. “She’s missing! Knowing this Darnel guy, she could already be dead.” I felt all the fight leaving me as I glared at my boss who was telling me I would have to step away from Kesha’s case. If it hadn’t been for me, this department wouldn’t have even known they had a case.

When Kesha stood me up, something didn’t sit right with me so of course I popped up at her place and she wasn’t home. I knew something wasn’t right, but then there was a piece of me that thought maybe Kesha was just blowing me off. I mean, I was doing everything in my power to show that girl I was different than the other men she’d had in her life. But she had a wall as tall as The Great Wall of China covering her heart. When she shot me a text telling me to leave her alone, I did just that.

Call it police’s intuition, but two days later, something told me to stop by her job just to check on her. And once I saw her car, I went into the pharmacy to talk to her. When her co-workers told me she was off for three days, alarm bells went blasting in my head. I remembered her telling me about her best friend who ran a popular salon in Dallas. I instantly reached out to her and when she told me she hadn’t heard from Kesha,that was it! This had Darnel all over it.

Here my Lieutenant was telling me I would have to step away from the case and that he had Stephens and Walker on the case. Don’t get me wrong, they were good police officers but they didn’t have the fanatical desire that I did, to get Darnel, and most of all save Kesha.

Her wall was high and it was going to be tough to get to her heart but I was trying. Every day I was showing her in some kind of way that I wanted to be in her life. There was something about Kesha that captivated me and I wasn’t going to stop until I had her. But if Darnel killed her, I would never get that chance. It broke something in me to know I couldn’t protect her from him, although I promised her that I would.

But talking my Lieutenant into putting me on the case was useless so I stormed out of his office. I knew I needed to calm down before I broke something, or punched a hole in something, or
someone.
I paced the floor for about five minutes before I just said fuck it, and went into Cheng’s office. He was out crime lab analyst and was extremely good at what he did. When I stormed into his office he looked at me with wide, surprised eyes.

“Detective Moore? What’s wrong?”

I closed the door behind me and took a deep breath trying to steady my anger. “Cheng, I need a huge favor.”

He returned his eyes to his computer and waved his hand in the air as if to dismiss me. “I’m sorry, Detective, but I’m already knees deep in four other cases and everyone keeps dumping theirs on me saying it’s more important than the last. Ask John, his caseload isn’t near as high as mine.”

It took everything in me not to pick this nerd up by his collar and throw him across the room. But I had to remind myself it wasn’t Cheng I was angry at. Hell, it wasn’t even Lieutenant Galey I was mad at. I was pissed off at myself more than anything. There was no way Kesha should have been vulnerable enough to fall victim to Darnel again. That was on me. That was
my
fault.

“Look, Cheng, I know you’re busy. Trust me, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t a life and death situation.” He was typing away at his computer not paying me any attention. I took another deep breath, trying to push away the thought that I was sitting here wasting time and each second, each minute, was precious. “My girlfriend has been abducted by her psycho ex-boyfriend.”

As soon as I said it, his fingers stopped on top of the keyboard, and he looked at me. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and I knew I now had his undivided attention.

“Lieutenant Galey wants me to stand down because I’m too close to the case, but fuck that. I can’t just sit around on my ass. I need to be involved, Cheng. If anything happens to her….”

He held his hand up. “Say no more. How can I help?”

For the first time today, I smiled. “I have his cell phone information, can you tell me what tower it’s hitting off of?”

In less than an hour, Cheng had the towers’ locations and it took a little detective work for me to find out Darnel’s mother owned a shack in that same part of town. I didn’t know if he was holding Kesha there, or if he’d killed her there but I was on my way to that shack. It could have been a dead end, but I was going to find out for myself. I didn’t care about a search warrant, although I knew I needed one.

“I’m on my way Kesha,” I said to myself. I grabbed my jacket and ran out of the station.

I watched as Darnel pulled his pants back up and I felt the chicken sandwich he’d brought me almost come up. It got to the point where no matter how hungry I was, I hated to see him come with food in his hands because every time he brought me food, he violated my body. And it repulsed me that he could just have his way with me and I couldn’t do anything about it.

Bile rose and I knew I was going to throw up. He stood over me looking at me like I was trash. “I might not kill you, Kesha. I’m starting to really like this arrangement we have.”

I didn’t respond to him. In fact, I hardly ever said anything to him, now. I didn’t know how long I’d been here but I did know I wouldn’t last much longer. My will to live had almost completely diminished.

After he zipped up his pants he sat in the chair across from me and glared at me. His cell phone vibrated and it must have been a call he’d been waiting on because he started smiling before he answered it.

“Hey baby.”

It was getting harder to resist the urge to throw up.

“I’m at work right now but I’ll see if I can get off early,” he said. “Yeah, I’ma come through and beat that pussy up.” He stared at me as he said this, wanting a reaction out of me. When I didn’t give him one, he turned around in the chair like all of a sudden he needed privacy.

As soon as he turned around, I reached under the mattress for the weapon. It’d taken forever, but during the times that Darnel left me alone, I was able to get the handle off the metal bucket that he’d left for me to use the restroom in. The ends of the handle were sharp. I wasn’t sure if it was sharp enough to cut skin, but I was sure as hell going to try.

My heart sped up and adrenaline rushed through me giving me strength. I slowly pulled the handle from under the mattress. My hands were shaking so badly I thought I would drop it, but as soon as my fingers touched it, I clasped it with dear life.

“Ok, see ya tonight.” He hung up and was about to turn around to face me saying, “She don’t mean nothing to me, Kesha.”

Fuck you, Darnel…I wanted so badly to tell him but instead I stood to my feet.

He began giving me an explanation that I didn’t ask for, and I lunged at him. The element of surprise was on my side as he hadn’t expected me to attack him. Before he had the chance to grab me or throw me off him, with all the strength I possessed, I plunged the end of the handle into his neck.

“Ahhhhhh!” Both of his hands flew up to his neck.

But I didn’t stop there, I couldn’t. I was in the fight for my life. It was either him or me. With the handle still in his neck, he went flailing across the cage. I grabbed the chair he’d been sitting in and began beating him with it. It was a small metal chair but I was pushing my body to its limit, using all of my strength to ensure my hits were doing some kind of damage.

The pain in his neck debilitated him, and kept him from defending himself from my hits. I was screaming and crying out in anger. My vision went blurry from the tears and sweat that was now falling from my forehead. All I could see was Darnel raping me and beating me so I didn’t realize that he was no longer moving. I was still screaming at the top of my lungs but a voice I recognized stopped me dead in my tracks.

“Kesha?”

Harris.
My heart leaped out of my chest and I yelped. I knew he’d come for me. I’d almost given up hope, but there was a piece of me that always knew he’d be the one to find me.

He rushed over to me and I dropped the chair. I jumped in his arms and felt the strength in his arms wrapped around me.

“Oh my God, Kesha. I’m so sorry,” he said over and over.

He held me tight and pulled me out of the cage. “Is he dead?”

Seeing Harris made me forget all about Darnel who lay limp in the corner of the cage. Harris released me and went to check on Darnel. I stood in the doorway shivering with my teeth clattering together.

He bent down and checked Darnel’s pulse then he looked back up at me and said, “He’s dead.”