Page 265 of Ashes of Sin and Stardust

Chapter 56

The next afternoon, Sam Bronson and another detective came by the house. Alice wanted to give a follow-up statement and push them on Peter Woodrow’s arrest. Sam confirmed he had gone down to the archives to find her old statement. While the report and photos existed, no follow-up had ever been done, and the report had been tucked away in the archives without being processed. Sam made copies, including the photos, in case the report disappeared. I put one copy in Alice’s room, and one in my office.

When I saw the marks, the cuts, her tattered hair, and pale skin purple with bruises, my blood pressure shot up and my vision went red. In the photos, her eyes looked distant. The police notes mentioned that “the victim is in and out of focus, dissociated and unable to make complete sentences or answer questions coherently. She sometimes appears manic, and sometimes appears apathetic.”

I sat with her while she described as much as she could remember of the situation, looking remarkably put together and coherent while she did so. Sam was patient, letting her talk and then asking follow-up questions as delicately as he could.

When they were finished, Sam and his partner stood and collected their things. “I’m going to bring this to Joel’s precinct,” he said, nodding to his partner. “We are hoping if his buddies aren’t able to catch it, we can move forward with prosecution.”

“He’s a defense lawyer,” Alice said. “He will fight you. He will plead guilty, he will lawyer up, and he will negotiate a plea bargain in his favor. He will also try to pay his way out. You know what he does, right?” she said, cocking her head and pursing her lips in that clever bratty cute way she did. “He works at a hospital, and defends doctors who have killed people due to negligence. He scams victim’s families out of payouts and protects the doctors who don’t deserve it. He keeps a fucking notebook record of all the cases, like they’re badges of honor.”

“When did you discover that,” I couldn’t help but ask.

“Pretty early... it guaranteed that I’d never fall in love with him.” She shrugged like it was no big deal.

She’d chosen a jerk on purpose so she could keep herself emotionally distant from him. “I’m seriously considering just calling Lindsay on this one,” I muttered.

Sam grimaced. “Let’s avoid murder for now and do our best to get justice.”

“Is there anything I can do,” Alice asked.

“There is, actually. If you know any other girls who have been abused or assaulted by him outside of Rachel Martinez, have them contact me directly.”

“Oh. I can do that, alright.”

I didn’t think much of Alice’s statement, assuming she would text her friends or make a twitter post or something. Several days later, a video of Alice popped up on my Facebook feed.

Alice had made a new TikTok video that went viral within the online kink community. Not only was the video all over the aforementioned platform, it had also been shared pretty much everywhere else.

On my phone screen, Alice sat in her room with her makeup done, her hair all tossed around and curled, and a cute crop top that showed off her cleavage and the art on her belly. “I’m not going to name names, because I don’t want to go to prison for slander, but we need to talk about a certain fake dom who is currentlynotin prison for rape, kidnapping, and assault when he absolutely should be.”

In the next three minutes, Alice proceeded to quickly and succinctly brief over her experience with Woodrow in as lighthearted and sarcastic a manner as possible, fixing her hair and reapplying her lip gloss the whole time she spoke about him. She implied who he was by describing him, mentioning some of his favorite places to hang out, and a catchphrase he apparently said all the time. She ended the video with simply, “so yeah, I hate corrupt cops and fake doms. If you see the asshole, kick him in the balls for me. If you know who this guy is, let’s talk, because apparently the police don’t want to do anything unless we find more victims.”

Her method was sarcastic and aggressive, but it worked. Sure enough, several other girls came forward from surrounding areas, and Alice put all of them in touch with Sam. A day after that, Peter Woodrow was brought down to the police station.

The police in the neighboring precinct took the case as there were more victims in that area than ours, and they held him for forty-eight hours. Unfortunately, there was no physical evidence of his assaulting the girls. He had alibis for every single count of reported abuse that would take months to follow up on, especially since the case was so old. The police got a warrant to search his house and found nothing; in fact, his playroom/dungeon had been disassembled, and all that remained was a half-empty storage room. His kink gear and furniture were gone. The safe Alice had mentioned was empty. He did, as Alice said he would, get a lawyer and refuse to say a word. He was released and was warned to stay within fifty miles of his home address.

Sam reported this, and Alice started to practically vibrate as she heard. On impulse, I knotted my hands in her hair and squeezed, hoping to refocus her and center her a little, and it worked. She breathed out, her eyes focusing on something I couldn’t see, as if she were letting the tension evaporate from her body.

Sam suspected that due to the investigative efforts over the past few months, Woodrow had packed up and hidden his kink gear. Though having it in his house wouldn’t necessarily incriminate him, not having it would certainly make it harder to prosecute him.

“Now what,” Alice said, stamping her foot in frustration.

“Now, we let the detectives do their job and follow up with the alibis. It is very likely this case will still go to court. I suspect the only reason he wasn’t arrested immediately was because of the lack of physical evidence, and the fact that it never moved forward with the other precinct.”

That night when Sam left, Alice turned to me and said, “I’m going to need you to help me out with this, Sir.”

Well damn. She asked.It wasn’t nicely, or at all what I was used to, but I’d take it.

Alice was a weird mixedbag of emotions over those few days. It was our final week in DC. The restaurant opened and the numbers were even better than we had hoped. Sophie came up for a few days to film an episode of her cooking show in the new restaurant, and she and Alice had spent an afternoon doing whatever little girls did when they locked themselves in a room together.

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