Page 100 of The Last Straw

Love from all of us...can’t wait to see you again.

And then on the same day, Millie got a call from the police. They wanted to know if Rachel was well enough to give them a statement, and she said yes.

Millie helped her wash her hair and let it air-dry into a tumble of curls. Her bruises had faded to pale greens and shades of lavender, and her ribs had healed enough that she could sit up for short periods of time with hardly any pain. It was as ready as she was going to get. She was ready to meet the men who’d helped save her life and put Sonny behind bars.

Millie was standing on one side of Rachel’s bed, with Ray on the other, when the detectives walked in.

“Good afternoon, Rachel. I’m Detective Floyd, and this is my partner, Detective Mills. We are so happy for your continuing recovery.”

“Thank you,” Rachel said. “I understand I have you two to thank for my life...and for catching Sonny Burch.”

“I’d like to take credit for all that,” Floyd said. “But just between us...if it hadn’t been for your sister hiring Charlie Dodge and his partner, Jade Wyrick, to assist in the case, this could have had a whole other ending.”

Rachel nodded. “Yes, Millie told me about all of that. I’m just so grateful to still be alive.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Floyd said, then he and Mills shook hands with Millie and Ray and got down to business.

“We know this isn’t going to be easy,” Floyd said. “My partner will be recording this, so anytime you need to stop filming to take a break, just say so.”

Rachel nodded.

“I’m not going to ask you many questions. We just want to hear your story from the beginning to the last thing you remember. I also know this will be hard to do, but we need details of what he did to you to corroborate the injuries you had when you were found. Start off by stating your name and then begin your statement.”

Rachel swallowed, then reached for Millie’s hand.

Millie grabbed her and held on.

Rachel took a breath and then began, “My name is Rachel Dean. The day of my abduction, I had stayed late at Addison-Tunnell, the ad agency where I work, because I had a big presentation for a client the next day. I came home sometime around 8 p.m. The cleaning crew had been in my apartment that day and everything smelled good. I changed out of my work clothes, gathered up a load of laundry and started them to wash. The next thing I did was to heat up some soup for my supper. I was eating it as I read, when I began hearing voices in the back of my apartment. I went to investigate and found the television on in my bedroom. It wasn’t on when I’d come home, so it puzzled me. But when I went to get the remote, it wasn’t on the table by my bed where I kept it. It was across the room, beside the TV. Again, I thought it was strange, but shrugged it off. I was on my way to get the remote when I felt a sharp pain in my neck. I thought it was a bug bite...maybe a spider. I think I was raising my hand, like to feel for it, and then everything went black. I don’t remember anything until I woke up in that room.”

She shuddered and reached for her water.

Millie grabbed the cup and straw. “Here, honey. I’ve got it,” she said and held it while Rachel drank.

Rachel nodded her thanks, then picked up where she’d left off.

“I woke up on the floor, on a bare and filthy mattress, but I couldn’t stay awake. The drug, I guess. There was a light in the ceiling. It was always on. The room was concrete. It had an ancient toilet and sink. As the drug began to wear off, I saw more details. There were stains on the mattress, old, faded stains. They looked like blood. I had no sense of time, but each time I woke, I would get up and beat on the door, screaming for help. But no one came.”

She paused. Her voice was beginning to shake, and Ray was in shock, wondering how she would ever be Rachel again, when she picked up the story.

“He came when I was asleep. I woke up and he was on top of me. I recognized him instantly and tried to push him away, and when I did, he knocked me out. The next time I woke up we were both naked and he was inside me, holding a knife to my throat. He talked ugly, and dirty, getting off on my pain. He made little cuts all over me, then told me if I moved he would cut my throat. Then he said it wouldn’t matter, because he’d fucked dead women before. I don’t know how many times he raped me afterward.”

Millie bit her lip to keep from screaming.

“You’re doing great, Rachel. Do you need to take a break?” Floyd asked.

Tears were welling. She shook her head.

“He had brought me food. I ate it after he left, because I knew I had to stay strong enough to survive. It became routine for me to beat on the door and scream for help.” She felt her throat...remembering. “After a long while, the cut on my neck finally stopped bleeding, but it became sore and festered, and I was so cold. The next time he came he brought food and a blanket, but I was already getting sick. I had a slight fever, and so I pretended to be out of it. He tried to get me to talk, but I pretended I could barely keep my eyes open. He hit me. A lot...and cut me, using pain to try to wake me up. I still didn’t comply. He stripped me again, but I stayed motionless, letting it happen. Then he stripped, and had the knife with him when he straddled my legs.”

Rachel paused again, remembering. Then she scrubbed her hands across her face as if trying to wipe the memory away.

“He was going to use the knife on me again, and I knew it. I saw him look away for just a second, and when he did, I grabbed his erection, dug my fingernails into the flesh and twisted it hard...so hard. He dropped the knife, screaming as I dug my fingernails into his chest and raked them deep. He was screaming and bleeding and punching me, but I wouldn’t let go. He was trying to get away, but he couldn’t move for fear I would tear it off. One minute I thought I had him, and then he knocked me out. When I came to, he was still there, crying and moaning and trying to get up to get to the sink. I saw the knife and grabbed it just as he saw me. He could barely stand up, and he knew I was coming at him, so he managed to get his clothes and get out before I could catch him. The door slammed in my face, and I never saw him again.”

“Damn,” Mills whispered.

“We found you in the dark,” Floyd said. “How did that happen?”

“Oh, right,” Rachel said. “I did that. I wanted to catch him off guard when he came back. I dragged the mattress to a corner by the door, paced off the distance from it to the toilet and sink over and over until I knew how many steps it took to get there and back to the mattress, and then I threw my shoe at the bare bulb until it broke. The downside of that was I got so sick that I forgot about all of that broken glass. I woke up disoriented and walked in the glass...and of course I’m missing one shoe. It was somewhere in the room...in the dark. Stepping on the glass both startled and hurt me. I fell, so then I had glass in my knees and hands, as well. I picked out what I could feel and crawled back to the mattress, rolled up in the blanket and held the knife, waiting for him to come back. But he never did.

---