Chained Guilt (Hidden Guilt (Detective Series) Book 1) (34 page)

We pulled up to Stacy’s isolated house outside of town, and I was out of the car and racing toward the door before he turned off the engine. Hilary and Captain Wilcrest followed close behind.

I didn’t wait, but kicked open the door.

“Miranda!” I yelled as I ran through the house and into the kitchen. There, I saw the door leading down to the basement.

“Miranda!” I yelled as I kicked that door open, too.

I paused only for an instant at the top of the stairs.

“David! We’re down here!”

The captain and I exchanged a glance.
De Luca!

I ran down the stairs and into the basement. Finally! Finally I saw my Miranda again. She was slumped on a filthy mattress, handcuffed to a chain bolted to the wall. I saw Detective De Luca beside her, restrained in the same manner.

With a choked cry catching in my throat, I approached the mattress, and then sagged to my knees. I reached for my wife and wrapped her gently in my arms. She was nothing but skin and bones, surely near death, but she was alive. She returned my embrace with all the strength she could muster. Tears of joy spilled down my cheeks, and in the next instant, Hilary was there too, crying and wrapping her arms around both of us.

“I found you,” I said, cradling Miranda’s face in my hands. I couldn’t stop saying it. “I found you. I found you!”

Wilcrest stepped over to De Luca as the house came alive with police officers and paramedics. Soon, the handcuffs were removed from both women, but I barely noticed the commotion as I held my Miranda in my arms again. She wept into my shoulder, whispering words of love for me and Hilary.

“Good to see you again, Detective,” Wilcrest said to De Luca.

“Hey, David,” De Luca said.

I glanced at her and noticed her grin.

“I told you she was no good for you, didn’t I? You should have listened. Italians always know!”

I smiled at her through my tears, glad she was safe as well.

“How did you know . . .? Why didn’t you tell me you’d found . . .?” I shook my head, unable to put the pieces together or form a coherent question. I knew I’d find out all the details later. Having Miranda in my arms was enough for now.

“Is Karen okay?” Miranda asked. “That bitch told me she was poisoning her!”

It all made sense now, why Karen had been getting sick. I felt my stomach turn. Stacy had fooled me through and through. I’d put my kids in so much danger . . . and for what? Love? Hardly. I felt so stupid.

As cops and medical crew crowded into the basement, I looked around the room. Stacy had done this. Stacy had abducted my wife and kept her down here for months while I . . . It made my stomach churn. I wanted to kill her, but my daughter had been forced to do it for me. I reluctantly relinquished my wife to the paramedics, then turned and retched. Hilary placed a comforting hand on my back, and I felt like screaming in anguish.

“Stacy did this . . .” I muttered, disbelieving.

Then I noticed the speakers and realized Miranda had been forced to listen to everything that had occurred between Stacy and me. I swore and turned to her. The paramedics had inserted an IV into her arm and attached leads in order to monitor her heartbeat on the portable EKG machine they’d brought down with them. I watched as an ambulance crew carried a gurney down the narrow staircase.

“Miranda.” I choked out the words. “I’m so sorry.”

“Stop,” she said, resting her hand on my arm. “You didn’t know. You thought I was dead.”

I watched, my arm wrapped tightly around Hilary, as the paramedics lifted my wife onto the gurney. Detective De Luca stood nearby, slapping away the ministrations of another medic.

“You guys ready to get out of here?” Wilcrest said.

“More than anything in the world,” Miranda said.

Hilary and I rode in the ambulance with Miranda. I held her hand and refused to let go. Hilary wept quietly, her hand never leaving her mother’s arm.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” Miranda whispered.

The siren wailed as I stared down at her, my heart bursting with love and gratitude. What a fool I had been.

We pulled up to the hospital. Hilary and I climbed out and followed her gurney into the emergency bay.

“I want to see Karen,” Miranda insisted.

The emergency room doctor quickly approached, prepared to whisk Miranda into one of the trauma bays.

“I want to see Karen!”

At that moment, I was willing to give my wife anything she wanted. I turned to Hilary.               “You stay here. I’ll go get Karen,” I said.

Hilary nodded. I hurried to the elevator, waited impatiently for it to open, and pushed the button for the pediatric ward.

“I need to take my daughter down to see her mother!” I yelled as I ran toward the nurse’s station.

“Detective Porter?” the nurse said, moving around the edge of the counter. “What’s wrong?”

“My wife is downstairs,” I explained. “She wants to see Karen.”

The nurse frowned. “But we released Karen to Stacy about twenty minutes ago.”

I froze. “What did you say?”

“Stacy came up, not looking too well, mind you, but said you wanted her discharged.”

I shook my head. No! This couldn’t be happening. Stacy was dead.

”No,” I mumbled. “That’s not possible.”

“What do you mean?” the nurse asked. “You didn’t want your wife—”

“Stacy is not my wife!” My voice rose as panic washed over me. “My wife is downstairs! I want Karen! Now!”

“Calm down, Detective. Please.” 

The nurse hurried behind the desk and called for security.

“Stacy didn’t look well, but she said you wanted Karen discharged. Something about trying a different hospital.” She glanced down at a paper on her desk. “See? She brought your signed request for release. I wanted to wait for the doctor to see her this afternoon, but Stacy was quite insistent—“

I felt my blood pounding through my veins. This couldn’t be. Stacy was dead! Hilary had killed her and—

“She left you a note, Detective.”

She handed me the note. I couldn’t believe how much of a fool I’d been. Ignoring everything I’d learned about being a detective – all of my training. Ignoring all the signs that should have been so obvious. I’d been so caught up in her outward beauty I hadn’t noticed how ugly she was inside. I opened the note and read the single line. I felt my knees weaken.

The
two
of us will be good together. – Love Stacy

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Prologue

Motel 6 – Houston, Texas I-45 N 2:33 a.m.

John Blake thrashed in pain as his right hand fell to the floor and blood painted the walls of the room a deep mahogany. As he lay in agony, tied up in the motel bed, he could tell now that he had been drugged. His head rang and the room spun. His arm throbbed where his hand had once been. Many thoughts raced through his mind. What would his wife think? His children? What kind of legacy would he be leaving behind? What a fucking mess he had gotten himself into. And somehow, deep down, he knew this would be his last night, his last hoorah. He felt sick in the deepest pit of his stomach.

“You bitch!” he yelled as the woman ripped the tape off his mouth. But he knew it had fallen on deaf ears.

“Aww, John, do we have to call names? You told me you wanted a bad girl, didn’t you? Hey, I’m talking to you! Look at me!” she said, yanking his head around. “Listen, I have a job to finish here. Let’s just get through this, can we? I need to bandage that nub of yours so you don’t bleed out on me before I’m finished.”

“Fuck you!” he said, spitting on the floor beside her feet.

“You sure wanted to, now didn’t you? Maybe, just maybe, if you had elected to stay home with that beautiful wife of yours . . . what’s her name? Patricia? You wouldn’t be staring at your hand here on the floor. Hey! Wake up! Don’t you go passing out on me. I want you to feel this—all of it. Isn’t that what you told me fifteen minutes ago? Fucking prick.”

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“Are you kidding me, John? Why were you trying to do me? That’s the real question, or at least it should be. You don’t deserve that family you have, the job, the life . . . any of it. I mean, instead of being at home tonight, you’re out trying to fuck women who aren’t your wife.”

“Who made you the morals police? You’re a fucking stripper,” he said, looking at her in disgust.

“Now, now, John. Name calling again? I’m a whole lot more than that, don’t you think? Hold that thought.”

She reached over, grabbed the tennis ball from the table, and shoved it back into Blake’s mouth. Then she duct taped it in place. Next, she picked up the hacksaw and went to work on his left hand. Blake squirmed, kicked, and seized in pain, tears rolling down his face until the job was done. But his agony didn’t make her stop; she actually enjoyed it more when he showed her how much it hurt. Before tonight, she hadn’t realized how much she would enjoy such gruesome entertainment, but it gave her a high. Goosebumps ran down her arm. With the hand gone, she took out a lighter and burned the wound to stop the bleeding. The smell of warm blood and burning flesh turned her stomach a little, but it had to be done. Hopefully she’d get used to the smell over time.

“John! Hey, John, can you hear me?”

He struggled to open his eyes as she slapped his face. His body twitched uncontrollably.

“Okay, now that I’ve got your attention . . . I know this is going to be hard, but I want you to try. You’re a big boy. I’ve got faith in you. 2003 bachelor party for your brother. You called an escort service to hire dancers? Hey! Wake the fuck up!” She rapped on his face again with her hand.

He slowly raised his head and opened his eyes again.

“It was for my brother Carl. Yes, I remember.” He barely sputtered out the words.

“We told you no sex. You remember that? You don’t have to answer. You remember taking a girl to a room for a private dance? Told her you’d give her $1,000?”

“Maybe. I mean, I don’t know. I was probably hammered out of my mind.”

“Oh yeah, you were. All of you were, as a matter of fact. You remember drugging that girl and raping her?”

“What?”             

“Oh, don’t act so innocent, like that’s beneath you or something. I’m sure I wasn’t the first girl you raped, you piece of shit, but you won’t be raping anyone else!”

She went over to her purse and came back with a pair of gardening snips. She slowly opened and closed them a few times to gratify herself.

“Now, John, what do you think I’m going to do with these?” she said with a huge grin on her face.

John started to yell, but she shoved the ball back into his mouth again and taped it shut. She reached down and grabbed his limp penis. She put the metal blades of the tool against it, but then she had an idea. She wanted to toy with him a little. She began jerking him off. At first nothing happened, but she kept tugging.

“John, you aren’t playing nicely. Come on! Can’t this little thing get hard for me? Aren’t you attracted to me, John?
Goddamn you’re hot, baby. I wanna fuck your brains out!
What happened to all that?”

Just then, she felt his penis stiffen a little. She looked at his face and could see pain and disgust as she pulled and pulled.

“Ahhh! There we go. Get it nice and big for me, baby,” she taunted.

As John’s erection grew, she stopped tugging, grabbed the snips, and cut off his penis—all the way to his testicles. She watched as he flailed in pain.

“You won’t be needing that anymore.”

She waited a few minutes to let him mull everything over.

“Okay. Okay. Maybe I remember, but what the fuck did you think I was paying you $1,000 for, huh? A goddamned lap dance?”

“John, I don’t know what you were paying for, but I told you no sex—more than once, if memory serves. Well, that is before my memories stopped that night.”

“Do you want money? Is that what this is about?”

“You’re pathetic. After all this, you really think I want your fucking money? No, John, I want you to meet your maker tonight. That’s what this is about. That’s really all I want. You know what it’s like to be raped, John? Do you? You even called your little brother in to get a little. I’ll see him in a few weeks, by the way. This is about karma. This is about revenge. This is about justice.”

“Listen, let’s be rational here. I mean, I can give you enough money to change your life.”

“Can you give me enough money to buy back that night you took from me, John? Do you have enough money to erase my memories? Do you have that much money? Of course you don’t.”