That Which Destroys Me (32 page)

“Trina, where the fuck is Stella? And what the FUCK are you talking about a baby?!”

“Oh my God! She never…You never. SHIT! She went to your house last Sunday! A week ago! She went…She left our apartment a week ago, headed to your place to tell you about the baby! Did you see her? Did she show up?”

“What fucking baby!?!” I shout.

“Your fucking baby!!!”

My baby? My baby? What fucking baby?

“Wesley, we both need to calm down. I’ll say what I know, and if you can add to it, then do so. Okay?”

“Understood.”

“Stella, she woke up not yesterday, but the Sunday before. She got dressed, then told me and Eve she was going to your place to tell you she was pregnant. She said if she came back…well, it didn’t go well. And if she didn’t, then it did go well. And in a roundabout way, to let you two have your time, your happily ever after go undisturbed by me bugging her for deets. Then she left. And, Wesley…I haven’t seen her since.”

“She’s pregnant? With a baby? She’s pregnant with my baby? And she came to tell me? Oh my God, Trina, oh my fucking God, what have I done? Trina. Holy mother of God.”

I hear her calm voice slowly but sternly say, “Wesley. Did you see her on that day?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, did you speak to her?”

“I don’t—No. I didn’t. Oh my fucking God. I didn’t even speak to her when she came to tell me she was pregnant, that I was going to be a daddy, and found me in bed with Rachel. Oh my fu—“

“Okay! Whoa! Focus. We’re moving on, but don’t you DARE think that Rachel shit has gone unnoticed. I’m guessing, like the Stella I know, instead of having tea and discussing what she caught your piece of shit ass doing, she ran. Am I right?”

“Yes. Correct.”

“And what? You ran after her? Please Lord tell me you ran after her.”

“No. I didn’t”

“Right, because your dick was shoved in someone else’s pussy! Have you seen her since, Wesley?”

“No. Have you?”

Click. The phone line goes dead.

And with eighteen thousand questions, scenarios, and ‘What the fucks?’ screaming through my mind, I try calling Trina back, over and over. After the, hell I don’t even know how many calls, I dial Derrick’s number.

“Speak.”

“D, as of this morning’s email from my personal accountant, I have a little more than five hundred mil, it’s yours, ALL of it, the minute you bring my angel home. To me. Is that understood?”

“Hang—“ There’s a shitload of noise in the background, clattering, some scattering, then silence. I’m certain he just leapt from his seat and knocked over a bunch of shit. “Sorry, I had to find a pen. Okay, angel? I’m guessing we’re talking about Stella?”

“Correct.” See? I told you he knocked a bunch of shit over.

“Last time you saw her?”

“Sunday, April 20th, around ten in the morning.”

“Friends? When did they see her last?”

“D, I was the last person to see her alive.”

“Fuck. Again, friends, when did they see her last?”

“When she told them she was headed to my place. To tell me she was pregnant with my child.”

“Fuck! Okay…and how did that convo go?”

“It didn’t. She found me in bed with another woman, after she found all your files.”

“FUCK! Motherfucking bitch ass FUCKING shit goddamn hell FUCK!”

“My thoughts exactly. Look, I just hung up with her roommate, Trina. She’s the one that called trying to find Stell. I can almost guarantee that when she hung up with me, she called the cops. So…yeah, man, five hundred mil, all yours. Just get me my goddamn angel back, and do it quickly.”

Chapter 42

Monster in the Shadow

Do you have any conceivable concept of the difficulty, messiness, and wretched taste involved in resuscitating someone who’s facial bones mimic mush? In case you were wondering, it’s almost impossible, it’s a bloody mess, and quite possibly, the vilest thing to ever coat my tongue.

I told you I would kill her. I warned you that I would.

My question is, where have you fucking been? You could’ve stopped this. You saw the trajectory of my madness. So why? What caused you to idly sit aside? What caused you to do nothing to save my Beauty?

I hope you’re happy.

I hope you sleep well knowing that you fucking killed her.

For the last hour, I’ve been following every CPR algorithm by the American Heart Association I’ve learned, studied and memorized. Alternating from breather to chest compressions back and forth, over and over.

I stop to assess my gallant interventions, and instead of finding a weak thready pulse and hear her labored breath twice a minute, I feel no pulse at all - radial or carotid - while watching for two whole minutes, and not once observing her lifeless body attempt to breath.

Without even fully understanding, my role as spectator is stripped. And without any self preservation or rational thought, I dial 911.

As the dispatcher’s tone remains somewhere between assertive, calm, and disciplined, telling me to continue CPR, I hear the ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) of the paramedics is less than three minutes.

I disconnect the phone line by ripping its cord from the wall as my eyes search and locate the shadows to hide amongst before continuing CPR in vain.

There isn’t anything anyone can do. I’ve killed my Beauty, then resurrected her to only kill her again.

Breathe. Breathe. Link fingers, one hand on top of the other, palm to back, at nipple line, then shove the heel of your hand between. Thirty compressions, then two breaths. Breathe. Breathe. Link fingers. One hand on top the other, and at middle of her sternum, I resume chest compressions.

When someone hurries me, by…let’s say, dying, it causes my temper to shorten and my reaction to sharpen.

This is why Beauty’s sternum cracks under the heel of my hand. I lie. I tell myself that isn’t what I heard or felt. However when my second and third compression create the same crack along her sternum, I concede.

I concede that you’ve not only allowed this to occur, but facilitated it.

And now, thanks to you, I’m left leaving my Beauty alone with the paramedics as I slink to hide in the shadows.

Where I can comfortably do what I have always done best…Watch.

Chapter 43

Ghosts

I get the call that night. Derrick heard the first few pieces of information over the police scanner and called me. I’m at my house on speaker phone listening to Derrick go over what he calls ‘ironic non conclusive evidence’ while the police scanner repeats in the background. ‘911 dispatcher states caller was an adult male. Sounded panicked. 10-14C, Possible 187.’

“Okay, Wes, in the Sims foster home, there were two other kids living there with Stella.” I hear shuffling paper in the background. “Jeffery Price. I looked this kid up and he checks out. Married, two kids, he’s an accountant for some huge storage company in Baton Rouge. Now, the other kid, Preston Stone, this kids like a fucking ghost, man. An extremely well educated ghost. He has his master’s in almost every damn degree imaginable. And his doctorate in Physiology, Anatomy, and Physics. But, the thing is, he just vanishes after that. Gone. No record of a Preston Stone that I could find.”

You see, this is why Derrick is the best. Even with his head buried in information about Stella’s past, he still hears and processes other shit going on around him. Things you and I would either not even pay attention to, or brush it off as nothing, he notes and investigates.

“What does that have to do with anything, D? Put a star on the kid’s name and go to the next.”

“I said that ‘I
could
’, as in past tense. You see, where Preston Stone falls off the face of the earth in Newark, New Jersey; your boy, Jude Preston lands.”

As his words register in my mind, then begin to process, I hear the police scanner in the background.

‘Police arrived at the residence of Preston Stone after a call was placed to 911 from residence requesting help. After initial knocks, police officer Lieutenant Jones requested backup and entered residence. Finding no immediate cause for alarm during a brief walkthrough, Lt. Jones awaits for backup.’

“Wesley?” Derrick’s voice sternly asks.

“Jude fucking Preston drugged me. I don’t know what the hell for, but after that…”

“I’ll call you back.”

The line goes dead.

“
FUCK
!”

I’ve tried calling Derrick, the police, Jude, Trina and every fucking hospital in New York City over the last hour.

I still have no answers. No angel, and no answers.

I swear to Christ, I’m five seconds from losing my goddamn mind. I pour a glass of scotch and toss it back before pouring another when someone starts beating at my door.

I drop the bottle of scotch and haul ass to the door. When I open it and see Derrick, I start pelting him with questions. “The fuck, man? Shit! I’ve been losing my mind. What the hell did you find out? Is Stella with Preston, or Jude? What did the cops find? Did the scanner say?”

He won’t look me in the eye. Hell, he won’t look me in the face. “D?” I shout trying to get something out of him. Anything.

When his eyes look up at mine dread to swallows me whole and ice courses through my veins. “Wes, you’re gonna want to sit down for this. Where’s your bottle of scotch at, man?”

“NO! Fuck that shit! Tell me where Stella is! Now goddammit!”

As he walks from my foyer into the living room, he begins speaking, “Preston Stone kept diaries. You remember that movie with Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow? Seven? Remember all those diaries they found in Kevin Spacey’s apartment? Preston Stone kept diaries like that. NYPD found over eighteen hundred diaries. They have an entire group of officers dedicated to reading them. From what they’ve learned so far, Preston was morbidly obsessed with his foster sister. He calls her his Beauty. Used to sleep under her bed when they were kids, hide in the shadows and watch her all the fucking time. She knew nothing of it. In this Preston kid’s eleven year old handwriting, you read as he gloats, calling himself the master of being unseen. Apparently while he was ‘being unseen’ one night under Stella’s bed, he woke to the sounds of Mr. Sims raping young Stella.”

After walking over to the bar and pouring us each a scotch, I hand one to Derrick and we both sit.

“Now, Preston, being the sick little fucker he was, blamed Stella for being raped. Then…he plotted for over a year. And the results of his plotting were the incident which had Stella removed from the Sims residence.”

“Well, there’s my motherfucking ghost.” Those words are the only ones I can manage as I try to process what Derrick is telling me.

“Only, little boy Preston thought he’d accidently killed her. For damn near twenty years. Now they haven’t gotten any further into the diaries, so I don’t know when he came to the realization that she wasn’t dead.”

“His book, ‘Twisted Obsession’, the synopsis alone. Derrick, it parallels what’s in his diary. I haven’t read either, but I swear to Christ, it parallels.”

“Mmmm…” I see him nod from the corner of my eye. “Probably does. They didn’t find him though. They will, they have the whole goddamn state police task force looking for him now.” He sips his scotch before motioning to my glass. “I’ll pour you another,” After standing, he grabs my glass in his other hand and heads to the bar. “We’re not quite through talking.”