Shards Page 15

  I saw the look in his eyes.

  I knew what was coming.

  I ran for the stairs, but he was right behind me, and as soon as I made it down, he was able to grab me by the hair. Holding my hair, he pounded my ribs. “You little whore!”

  I fought back as hard as I could, but I couldn’t get away. He kept throwing blows at my breasts, my stomach, my ribs. I pushed and kicked and bit as viciously as I could.

  He kicked me in the stomach, and I fell to the ground at the foot of the stairs, trying to breathe. He flipped me over onto my stomach. “Open your mouth,” he barked.

  I had no idea what he was going to do.

  When I opened my mouth, he pushed my face down so hard that I was biting the corner of the stair. What he did next—

  Oh God, some things I just can’t find the words for. As I bit the step, he brought his foot down on the back of my head. I could feel the corner of my lips cracking. This is it, I thought, he’s going to kill me. He’s going to break my neck.

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.

  He pushed his foot down harder on my head until I felt I would pass out. As all air to my lungs was cut off, I made a gurgling, choking noise that seemed to satisfy him and he took his foot away. Gasping for air, I brought my hand to my mouth, expecting to find my mouth torn open.

  I knew heading for the door right away was the wrong thing to do. I wasn’t sure I could outrun him in bare feet, and even if I could, I didn’t know the area well, didn’t even know where to run. Would the neighbors help me? Would they call the cops for me? Even if they did, would the cops believe me, or just think we were two junkies fighting, so there was no need to arrest anyone here?

  Mostly, as I lay spread out on the stairs, weeping, trying to figure out what to do, I was just pissed that he had won. I had been in so many fights as a cop, but I had always come out on top. The meth had now weakened me to the point of near defenselessness.

  “He doesn’t love you, you know,” the dealer said calmly.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “If he loved you, he’d be with you. But who’s with you? Me. I’m the one who loves you.”

  Keawe. He knew I had talked to Keawe. But how? He never could have heard from downstairs.

  I thought of the security cameras in the front of the house, all the colored lightbulbs in his shop. I had brushed these off as his weird tweaker projects, but what if he was filming me, recording me?

  Maybe there were cameras, hidden cameras. Wildly, my eyes roamed around, but then he was there and we were hotlining—pure rich meth, the meth I had always wanted.

  I stopped looking for cameras, for tape recorders, for anything, and I thought, This is okay. He knows all the shit I’ve done, he knows about the cancer lies and being a dirty cop. Wow, he must really love me if he’s going to stay with me after knowing all that.

  A beating now and then’s not so bad.

  19

  Once I began to suspect there were cameras in the house, I started to keep track of the dealer’s movements at all times. He would never really let me in the computer room—he had three computers, plus a monitor for the outside security cameras—and I knew there was something in that room that he didn’t want me to see. He always turned on the screen saver before he let me in the room.

  I began to notice him going into the closet off the third bedroom all the time, and when I asked about it, he told me it led to the attic above the shop where he was doing some repairs. Some days the cat would follow him, and once he came down muttering, “Shit! Damn cat had kittens up there.”

  The next day, when he was in the shop, I crept into the attic. I didn’t see the kittens, but I did see cables everywhere, many more than you would need for cable TV. Once I saw them, I guessed what they were, but to be sure I followed one of the cables through the attic floor. After pacing it out, I went downstairs to see that it led to a camera in the recessed light above the living room.

  I went upstairs to the bedroom and checked the recessed lighting there. Another camera: that must have been how he made the sex tape. He was filming everything.

  Everything.

  I charged into the shop. “What the hell are you doing with all those cameras?” I asked him.

  “So what?” he said, not even looking up from his worktable.

  “I need my privacy.”

  “What kind of privacy does a whore like you need?” he asks.

  “I am not a whore!”

  “The hell you aren’t,” he said. “I’m spending all my money supporting you. I can’t even make my truck payments this month, you’re costing me so much money.”

  I knew this wasn’t true. He wasn’t having money problems—he made plenty from his carpentry and a ton from dealing. Plus he ran a couple of Home Depot scams that I didn’t really understand. I had seen him with wads of cash.

  “You need to earn your rent,” he said. “You’re going to have to start earning it.”

  “Oh yeah? I think I already am earning it.”

  His eyes went almost entirely black. I could feel his rage. But instead of attacking me he started laughing.

  His laughter was terrifying.

  I ran for the stairs. He pushed me from behind. On the ground, I started crawling and made it to the top of the stairway when he kicked me in the stomach. Falling from my hands and knees onto my back, I tried to breathe. He had knocked the wind out of me.

  He grabbed me by the hair and began to drag me while I struggled to breathe.

  Suddenly he let go of me and in the calmest, most terrifying voice he said, “Catch your breath, honey. I’m sorry.”

  I caught my breath, probably within a few seconds, and I thought the fight was over, but when I tried to sit up, he grabbed me by the hair once again. He was trying to drag me into the bedroom, but I grabbed the railing on the stairs. He hit me in the ear and then let go. Using both hands now, he continued dragging me by the hair. I could hear the hair ripping out, almost like a rubber band snapping.

  He screamed, “Earning it? You worthless cunt, you’re not earning anything.”

  I was so furious I don’t remember feeling any pain at that moment. I just wanted to get away.

  I grabbed his wrists behind my head. I was kicking and screaming to make him stop, but he kept dragging me, all the way to the bed, where he finally let go. I lay on my side on the floor, looking at him. Strands of my ripped out hair were caught in his fingers. He took that hair and shoved it in my mouth.

  I tried to spit the ripped-out strands out of my mouth.

  “Don’t you spit at me!” he screamed. He grabbed me by the throat and threw me on the bed but my legs were hanging over the edge. He was trying to pull my jeans off and couldn’t get the button. Enraged, he yanked my jeans straight down. At this point I stopped fighting. I was only crying.

  Once my jeans were down, he turned me over and pushed my face into the comforter. He started to rape me anally. I screamed from the pain. Finally he stopped and got off me. It hurt to breathe at this point.

  “Just kill me!” I screamed. “You hate me so much, just kill me.”

  He left the room, and I heard the shower running. I assumed he was getting into the shower, and I didn’t move. “Kill me now!” I yelled after him. “I want to die. All I want is to die.”

  Bent over the bed partway, with half my weight on my kneeling legs, I still felt too weak to support myself.

  I slid down to the floor, and when he came back into the room he brushed the hair out of my face.

  “Get away from me,” I said. “Just get away.”

  “You need to get in the shower,” he said.

  “I can’t. I can’t get up.”

  “Get up. I don’t want blood and shit on the carpet.”

  “I can’t,” I said weakly.

  He picked me up in the gentlest way and carried me to the shower.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay, I still love you.”

  He set me down in the shower.
He was a different man now. My caregiver.

  I felt wetness and realized I was bleeding anally. I didn’t know how much, but it scared me. And I hurt. I could barely stand the water hitting my backside, so I stood up. He got in the shower with me and washed me and hugged me until I stopped shaking.

  “You’re okay,” he said. “You’re okay.”

  “The water stings,” I said. “I want to get out.”

  “Let’s get you cleaned up first,” he said. He washed my hair and massaged my head.

  “I’ve got a headache,” I said. “I’m going to throw up.”

  He took me out of the shower and started drying me off gently. I don’t know what this says about me, but the next thing I said to him was this: “I love you, and I’m sorry.”

  He hugged me. “I’m sorry too. Do you want to lay down?”

  “No. I don’t want to move at all.”

  “Get dressed then.” He picked up my jeans then and said, “Good thing you didn’t get blood on your jeans. It’s your only pair.”

  He disappeared then, and I got dressed. It took me a long time to pull my jeans up. I could hear him calling me from the computer room. I put my shirt on carefully. Every movement felt like I was still ripping.

  I walked slowly down the hall to the computer room, where I was rarely allowed to go. This time, he invited me in.

  “Sit down,” he said. Porn was playing on his computer screen. He was sitting there naked in front of it. He loaded a bowl and we smoked a lot of meth.

  He continued watching the porn and pointed out what he liked about the girls on the screen. I let my eyes wander around the room, trying to figure out how the cameras were connected to the computer.

  Later I found all the footage, organized in different files on his main computer. He was very particular. Most of the files were names of women; some were just dates. I didn’t have time to look at all of them, but I found all the footage of me. It was more than disturbing, how much he liked to watch, what he liked to watch. He had sound clips of me, phone conversations I had with Keawe, everything. I found another file he kept on me, emails from work, emails between Keawe and me. He had all the contacts from my phone. My mom’s address. All my sister’s information. He also had my father’s phone number, which I didn’t even have.

  He had investigated me more than I had ever investigated any of my targets. On his computer I found a file called “vice.” I tried to open it, but it was password protected. I hated to think what was in that file.

  Later I would find all this, but for now we were back to playing boyfriend and girlfriend. Only the girlfriend had just been raped, and every single movement she made was recorded, broadcast, replayed, and saved in this very room.

  20

  It took days for that pain to go away. Not only did my ass hurt, my back stung from rug burns I had gotten while he dragged me across the floor. The dealer gave me painkillers—oxys—to help. This was the worst it had been, though it would get worse. Worse not because the beatings got worse, though they did. It was the feeling that I might not survive. Every day I thought about suicide, but eventually I realized I might not be the one to take my life. He might kill me first.

  I don’t have one simple answer when it comes to why I didn’t try to get away after that. Ask for help. A neighbor. Anyone. After a while, I knew that calling the cops was out of the question. He was so careful not to leave bruises on me. His ex-wife had filed a restraining order against him, and he didn’t want to draw any attention to himself. Just as he hid his drugs and paraphernalia, he also hid his abuse of me. I knew from my experience as a cop that there would be no way for me to prove what he had done. Once I found the film footage on his computer, he encrypted it.

  Stripped of my sense of self, unable to move or think without questioning the outcome, I quietly resigned myself to the idea that being with him—trapped in that house—was my fate. Nothing else really existed. The idea of dreams or any sort of future was shut out. I lived day to day, sometimes minute to minute. He had a way of igniting meth-induced rage within me while also beating me into submission. It got to the point where I wouldn’t dare touch him for fear of the consequences. I was breaking physically and already broken emotionally.

  Over time, I figured out the details of his camera system. He had them hidden in every room—even the bathrooms, especially the bathrooms—so he always knew where I went. If I went from one room to another, a colored light in his shop would alert him. If I opened the front door, he would get a text message on his cell phone. His tweaker thing was technology—microphones, cameras, sensors—and for an addict, he was brilliant.

  I was a virtual prisoner in that house, watched all the time. If he left the house to work or do a deal, he would bring in Tiffany or one of his drug groupies to babysit me.

  Around this time, the dealer moved the kittens from the attic into the guest bedroom on the second floor, just at the top of the stairs. Of course I begged him to let me have a kitten, but once he knew I wanted one, he used that against me.

  I don’t remember at what point he started abusing them to get to me, but he locked the kittens inside the room and kept the mother out. He let all the kittens cry while the mom went crazy outside the door.

  “Would you let her in?” I screamed at him. “Please let her in.”

  “Goddamned cats,” was all he would say.

  I only saw the kittens once or twice and was not allowed to hold or touch them. He didn’t hold them either, and separated from their mother, with no human interaction and very little food, they soon became feral. They never stopped crying. They made horrible sounds. I had never had an experience with feral cats before, but they were vicious. I could hear them clawing at the rug, the wall, the door. Eventually the entire stairway began to smell from all the feces in the room. I became terrified of that room, and of those cats. Day and night, their screaming tormented me.

  • • •

  Many times afterward, I tried to go back and reconstruct the timeline of my life in that house. How long was I there? How many days or weeks or months? How much time passed between beatings?

  I didn’t know. I could sometimes remember on what day of the week something occurred—a Tuesday, for example, definitely a Tuesday—but had no idea which Tuesday, in which month, even in which year. The dealer kept me so high that I barely knew where I was most of the time. I knew time was passing in that house but I had no idea how much.

  Nor did I know that everyone was looking for me.

  When I didn’t show up in Maui as expected, the department started to worry. Keawe became suspicious after our phone conversation and believed something was very wrong.

  Thinking that my mother and father were dead, Keawe tracked down my sister. By this point, Carol had realized she wasn’t getting any phone calls and had reset the call forwarding on her phone. Keawe’s call went right to her.

  “This is Officer Davis,” Keawe told Carol. “One of Alli’s beat partners. I’m worried about her. We were expecting her in Maui five days ago and she didn’t show.”

  “She didn’t?” Carol asked. “I haven’t talked to her, but I know she got on a plane to Maui a few days ago.”

  “I spoke to her briefly,” Keawe said, “but she didn’t sound good, and she won’t return any of my messages. I know she’s in LA, but I don’t know where.”

  “LA? What in the world is she doing there? Have you talked to my mom yet?”

  “Your mom?” Keawe asked, uncertainly.

  “Yes. Our mom.”

  “Alli told me your mother was dead.”

  “What?”

  Carol didn’t waste time on the phone with Keawe. She immediately called my mom, and the two began a frantic search, calling and emailing everyone they could think of who might know where I was. Carol was still in occasional contact with our father, and she emailed him and his wife, Claire, in Florida. Claire did a Google search and came across an online flyer advertising one of the fund-raisers Erin had organized
to raise money for my cancer treatment. Claire emailed the flyer to my sister with two words: “What’s up?”

  Panicked, Carol called Keawe. “How could you keep this horrific secret from us?” she demanded. “How could you not have enough respect to alert the family to this nightmare?”

  Keawe was shocked that the family didn’t know about my cancer.

  “How could she not tell you?” he said. “She has stage four ovarian cancer. And lymphoma.”

  “Are you sure?” Carol asked.

  “Of course. She’s very ill. Too ill to travel very far.”

  At the dealer’s house, I hadn’t been answering calls, but I did listen to my messages sometimes, just to hear my family’s and friends’ voices. After she spoke to Keawe, Carol left me a message.

  “What is going on, Alli?” the message said. “You have cancer! I’m so scared that you’re alone and hurting. We’re devastated, and we love you. You need to talk to us. Please. Call me as soon as you get this message. We need to hear from you.” At the end, her voice broke, and she whispered, “God, do you really have cancer?”

  I didn’t call Carol back, but I did manage to call my mom.

  “Alli!” she said. “Thank God. We can’t believe what we’re hearing. Cancer?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “I do have cancer. I just don’t want anyone to see me like this. I’ve got lymphoma.” I explained to her that I was in a hospice in LA and was expecting to die soon.

  My mom began sobbing and tried to ask me a hundred questions. Down the hall, the cats wailed and hissed.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said. “I’m sorry. I love you all.” I hung up the phone.

  I had nothing to say to my mom. I did feel like I was dying, not from cancer, but from meth. I had already accepted that I would never see my family again. I just didn’t want them to know what had become of me. My crazy meth brain convinced me that my mother would buy this, would understand I was about to die and quietly leave the matter alone. That’s how worthless I felt. I sat on the carpeted floor next to the bed and listened to myself cry almost as loudly as the cats.