The Sins of Lincoln (2 page)

“Give me the abbreviated version. She was gang raped?”

“No doubt about that. Beaten pretty badly too. The strange thing is, she doesn’t look like a girl you’d normally see in a place like this.”

“How so?”

“The way she was dressed. High-class, for sure. No one here had ever seen her before. And other things, like the hairstyle. Not to mention that she’s got all her teeth. Well, she had all of them, anyway. Sorry, don’t mean to be so crude. At any rate, they all say ‘city’ to me. Definitely not a biker babe.”

“And that’s what you’re telling me that I’m not going to believe?”

“No. It’s the fight that ensued when a lone subject went in to stop them.”

“What about it?”

“Dan, let me put it this way. You had four biker gang members at the emergency room, right?”
“Yeah, and one was DOA.”

“Well, there’s three more DOA’s here.”

“What? No one told me there were three more bodies here.”

“Yeah, and I wouldn’t call them ‘dead on arrivals’, I’d call them more like ‘killed in action.’”

“I don’t follow. What’s the difference.”

“The difference is that our hero here, if that’s what you want to call him, makes Rambo look like a sissy. He’s ex-military for sure. From the way he mowed through these guys, I’d say he’s special ops, maybe Navy SEALs or Army Delta Force. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah. The three dead guys in here? They all look like someone smashed their heads in with a sledge hammer. But the security camera shows he used no weapons, other than his hands and feet, anyway. All their necks are broken too.”

The two detectives watched and re-watched the surveillance video. The man in question who had moved to stop the attack on Jane Doe was a hard-body. He looked like something out of the movie Terminator; a muscular mass of lean male flesh covering bones of steel. It didn’t appear as though he had an ounce of body-fat on him.

“My God,” said Dan Riggs. “It’s not that he just went in to stop these guys from raping her. He went in there with the express purpose to kill them all. Like he snapped or something. We’ll need to build a psychological profile on this guy. I’d bet our guy comes from a bad home, you know, somewhere where the father beat the mother, all that shit. He’s got a fierce sense of loyalty to women, that’s for sure.”

“Kind of rare these days.”

“No kidding,” replied Riggs.

“You’re right, though. Once he saw what they were doing to her, he wasn’t going to let any of them escape.”

“The victim, Jane Doe, we need to find an identity for her. She might not make it. They’re desperate to find any family members. No one here’s ever seen her before? Maybe you’re right. Maybe she didn’t frequent shit-holes like this.”

“But what would make a girl like that come in here in the first place? I mean, it’s not safe, obviously. It’s a dump. Why risk it?”

Riggs answered, “I don’t know. But then again, we’ve seen this kind of behavior before, right? You know, sometimes a perfectly normal woman gets a thing in her head and decides she wants a biker dude. I don’t know, it’s the danger or something that turns them on.”

A few hours later, as Riggs and the other officers gathered evidence at the crime scene, Rigg’s cellphone rang.

“Lieutanant Riggs.”

“Detective, this is Dr. Ken Brantley at Mercy General. We spoke earlier this evening?”

“Yes, Dr. Brantley. Did my suspect make it into your emergency room?”

“No. We didn’t see anyone that even remotely looked like they’d just annihilated four biker gang members.”

“Seven.”

“Seven?”

“Yeah, there are three other DOA’s down here at the biker bar. Anyway, what can I do for you?”

“I wanted to update you on Jane Doe. She’s out of surgery. Lost her spleen, severe concussion. Several bones are crushed in her facial area. And yes, she was raped. All of the bikers have been genitally swabbed to collect evidence, and from the looks of it, I’d say these are definitely your guys. Your forensic lab will have to confirm it, obviously.”

“And how’s Jane Doe? Is she going to survive? Is she conscious?”

“It’s too soon to tell. No, she’s not conscious though. And she won’t be for quite a while. She’s been placed in a medically induced coma. They didn’t want the brain to swell, so they’ll keep her sedated for a while to see if she can pull through. She seems like a fighter though. She’ll make it.”

“And doc, what about the bikers? What’s their condition? They looked pretty bad.”

“No kidding. I spoke to the orthopedic surgeon. He said he’d only ever seen joint breakages that bad in car accidents. Never as the result of a fight. He’s never seen anything like that. It would take an awful lot of skill and rage to smash a knee or elbow joint to hard that it snapped backwards.”

“Yeah, I watched it happen on a surveillance tape. It looks like something out of the movies. Thanks for calling, doc. Let me know how our girl is doing. And doc?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to nail these sons of bitches that raped her. Thanks for all your help.”

CHAPTER SIX

One Week Later

“So she’s lucid now?” said a male nurse in the intensive care unit, staring at Jane Doe.

“Yes, they pulled her off the drip this morning,” said another nurse. “She started regaining consciousness around 2:00 a.m.”

“And is she talking?”

“Yes, but only in fits and starts. She keeps saying ‘he saved me, he saved me’. That’s all we’ve gotten out of her so far, anyway.”

“Who? You mean the guy on the news they keep calling ‘The Terminator’?”

“Hell, I don’t know. I guess so.” Both nurses heard mumbling sounds coming from the patient. “Shhh. She’s saying something.” They leaned in to listen.

“He visits me, you know,” said Jane Doe, her eyes still closed. “He visits me.” A smile peeled across her bruised face. “Here in the hospital. He comes to visit me.”

The two nurses looked at each in confusion. “Who does? Who visits you,” said the female nurse.

“He saved me. Those men, they were hurting me. But he saved me. He came in and tore them off of me.”

“The man that saved you comes and visits you here in the hospital?” The nurses exchanged glances of disbelief.

“He visits me here. Late at night. You’ll see. He doesn’t want me to tell anybody though.” She giggled as a devious little grin painted across her young face.

As the patient dozed back off into a pharmaceutically-induced sleep, the female nurse said, “She’s out of it, alright. Ain’t nobody visiting her late at night. Must be the drugs talking.”

An hour and a half later several other nurses were in the middle of a shift change. A physician entered the floor. He was draped in blue-green surgical scrubs including a cap on his head and booties over his shoes. He breezed past the patient rooms and stopped at a nurses station with his head buried in a clipboard. Without uttering a word, he leaned over one of the hospital desktop computers and pulled up the chart on Jane Doe.

“Can I help you, doctor?” said an attractive, young blond nurse just starting her shift.

“Just checking in on our girl,” said the physician, pointing through the glass window towards Jane Doe.

With that he rose and walked into Jane Doe’s room. He squeezed her hand. His was warm, firm, and reassuring.

“I knew you’d come,” whispered Jane Doe.

“How are you feeling?”

“Stronger. Much stronger.”

“Good. I’m glad. But, this is the last time I’m going to visit you.”

“But...”

“No buts. The risk-reward ratio isn’t high enough,” he said. “When you’re out, when you’re at home. I’ll come to you. I’ll come to you and we’ll start. It’s going to take a lot of work, but if you listen to me and learn what I teach you, nothing bad will ever happen to you again.”

After the doctor disappeared down the stairwell, the blond nurse said to another, “Who is that physician? I’ve never seen him before.”

“What physician?”

“The one that visits Jane Doe sometimes. I’ve never seen him before.”

“Girl,” said the other, “you just want to meet him, don’t you? I can see you, yes I can. I can see you and you want to get to know him just a little bit better, don’t you.”

“Oh stop.” It was a playful response. “Did you see his eyes? I could get lost in those eyes. And his hands. They look so...firm. It’s like he’s all covered up, but you can just tell, can’t you?”

“Tell what?”

“Oh, come on. Like you don’t notice his body. I bet he’s a sculpted piece of man under there.”

They both laughed.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Search

“Alright, we’ve finally identified our victim, Jane Doe,” said Detective Riggs. “She regained consciousness after they took her off the meds to keep her in a medically induced coma. Her real name is Mavery Healy.”

His police captain looked up from a sea of paperwork and began speed talking. “Victim? What victim. We have another victim? Dammit, why wasn’t I notified? The next time I’m not notified I’m going to kick somebody’s ass.”

“Woa, woa, woa. Slow down there, Captain McJumpToConclusions. Let’s just take a breather.” Riggs was laughing. “I’m talking about the rape victim from Chopper Town, that biker bar out on old route 92, over by that restaurant supply house. The gang-rape case. Jesus, boss, you’d think you’d remember that one? It’s been on the news every day since it happened.”

“Oh, yeah. The one with the Terminator guy who annihilated all the bikers. Got it. What’s the situation on the case? Have you charged the bikers in the assault? How many were still alive after the Terminator got ahold of them? Have any leads there? Do we know his ID? Dammit, man, I want answers.”

“Geez, boss. You need a vacation. Slow down, already. Alright, the answer to your first question is yes, I’ve charged the surviving bikers with felony rape. All of them have multiple felony convictions in their past, and with the surveillance video having captured the entire event, I’d say it’s a slam dunk. They won’t see light of day outside of prison ever again. There were three survivors, by the way. Three survivors out of eight. And no, we don’t have an ID on our terminator. I don’t know boss, it’s like tracking down a ghost.”

“Oh don’t give me that crap. How hard could it be? A public bar, fingerprints, video surveillance, witnesses. What’s the big deal? Bring him in already. The district attorney wants to prosecute him.”

“Prosecute him? For what? Saving a 23-year-old woman from being murdered after they finished gang raping her?”

“Don’t hand me that vigilante-hero crap. It’s right there on the video surveillance tape. He didn’t just stop these guys from raping her. He took them apart, piece by piece. And when he’d knocked them half unconscious, he snapped their necks like they were sticks of string cheese.”

“Heat of the moment, I say. Captain, I’m being serious here. Does anyone besides you and the D.A. know about this? That they want to prosecute him?”

“No, why?”

“Because if the public finds out, we’re going to have to put on the riot gear. People will tear down the walls of this place. You ever seen an angry mob of women? It’s scary. It’ll be pandemonium.”

“The law is the law. And there won’t be any riots or protests or any of that.”

“Oh no?” continued Riggs, “The Terminator guy is so popular in the press right now, he’s got a fan club page on Facebook. Over 17,000 likes so far. The page is raising money for women’s rights. It’s at about $110,000 right now. There hasn’t been anybody in years that has garnered this much popularity.”

“Enough!” barked the captain. He pointed a sharp finger at Riggs. “If I tell you to find him and arrest him, you’ll do it.”

Lt. Riggs walked from the office and slammed the door behind him. He was nobody’s slave and he saw no justice in arresting a hero.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Four Months Later

Twenty three year old Mavery Healy, once known at the hospital only as Jane Doe, left the hospital and physical rehabilitation center four months and two days after she was attacked, and went home. Her family hovered close by at all times, and ‘Mav’ thought it was cute, but annoying. The apartment they set up for her was spartan, to say the least, but it was safe and safe was enough.

“Mom, really, you don’t have to finish those dishes. Really, I’ve got it.”

Mav’s mom turned around, wiping her hands with a dish towel. Her eyes were flushed.

“Oh mom. I’ll be fine,” said Mav. “I know you’re worried, but I’ll be alright.”

“Promise me.” Her mother was on the verge of tears again. “Promise me you’ll stay clear of bad places.”

“Mom, I was just living my life, and something bad happened. I went into that bar because, well, I don’t know. I was curious, I guess.” In reality, Mav was more than curious about bikers. “I’m not going to let it ruin the rest of my life. I’m going to live it. I’m going to live my life.” After a moment more of staring at her mother’s sad eyes, Mav said, “I promise,” though she didn’t know if she meant it.