Blind Side, page 4
“Okay, you wash the rest. Let me see what I can do for some clothes for the night, and I have some soup you can eat for dinner. I will make you some cheesy toast to go with it,” he told the boy. “Don’t stay in too long.”
The boy looked at him and gave a smile. His tiny teeth were covered in plaque and tartar, but he was smiling. At least he felt safe. That was more than could be said for Slow and The Doctor, who picked up the clothing from the floor, disgusted by the smell. He frowned as he took the clothes to the fireplace and threw them inside.
“Great move, Einstein,” Slow said. “You do know I have a washer and dryer. What is the kid going to do now for underwear?”
“I would rather that child free ball it than to put that stuff back on his body. I can smell the bad memories attached to every piece of those clothes,” The Doctor said.
He and Slow watched the ratted clothing burn, worried and concerned about what to do next. The smell of the burning clothing made Lizzie sit up in bed. She called out for the boy, who climbed from the tub and ran to her side wrapped only in a towel. Miguelito snuggled close to her, almost nestled against her like a baby bird.
Slow went to look for a tee shirt for the kid, who didn’t want to leave her side. Lizzie’s arm draped over his shoulder, then she planted a light kiss to the top of his head. She knew love. She knew how to provide comfort. She’d saved this boy and made a point of leaving breadcrumbs to help another. There was a story there, and both men wanted to know what had happened to Lizzie.
“You smell better,” she told this child and drifted off to sleep.
Chapter Four- Border
December 2012- Augusta, Georgia
It was the smell. The increase of her heartbeat signaled her brain that the bad smell was equal to a bad memory and she should probably run—from whom or from what she was uncertain—but before making any sudden movements, her eyes scanned the room. Optimism kicked in and she prayed her eyes could aid her brain in connecting the senses to reveal the cause of the sudden feeling of dread. What was that smell?
She slowly removed the large, brimmed hat that had shielded her eyes, allowing the long tresses to fall to her shoulders. Intuition suggested she run her fingers through the mass that had recently been dyed Beyoncé blond, knowing that every male head in the room would turn. True to form, behind the shades, she could allow her eyes to contact each face yet not give away any acknowledgment of familiarity. None of the faces looked familiar, but there it was again: that fucking smell!
Lizzie smiled. The smell was equated to one of Trey McCallister’s friends, one of those fucking bastards that had treated her like a high-priced hooker. Leaning her head to the right, she tossed the curls that had fallen across her face backward while using a perfectly manicured finger to place the wayward strands behind her ear lobe. Still, there was no recognition of any of the faces in the room.
The practiced walk that made women hate her and men want her, switched on, and she floated across the floor on the way to the bar. She had only been to the Augusta Country Club once and knew this was the best time of year to come back to the city to find the next recipient of her vengeance. The annual golf tournaments were in full swing and the city was abuzz with new faces, rich men, powerful women, and corporate schmoes with the company credit card. If all went well this week, she could bank some dollars, get a new car, and kill a man in one fell swoop.
She leaned against the bar, and the barkeep asked what her pleasure was. She wanted to tell him rich men with low IQs, but that would make her stand out even more. Smiling, revealing a perfect set of unbleached pearly whites, she pretended to be ditzy while asking for something fruity with an umbrella. Her head nearly snapped around as the scent returned.
There it was again, that goddamn smell.
Three ladies had just walked up to the bar. She did not recognize either of them, but the smell was stronger. It was an unusual scent for a fragrance which is why it stood out. It was an expensive perfume that few possessed if, in fact, it was still even produced. It was earthy, with a hint of some odd fruit, slightly cloying, but dripping of good breeding. It wasn’t the insipid redhead the blonde one had called “Carol.”
Pretending to check her nails, she held out her hand as if she was admiring the diamond that adorned her ring finger. The motion caused a slight breeze and the knowledge that it was definitely one of these women. She dropped her purse and in stooping to retrieve it, pretended to lose her balance, stumbling forward into the brunette. Begging each lady’s forgiveness, she made an excuse about her Jimmy Choo’s being unbalanced. The brunette named Mary Ellen sympathized, but the blonde—the blonde who smelled like the bad memory—was not as forgiving. The bartender called her Mrs. Kutmo and her friends called her Sally.
Lizzie was soon going to call her a widow. The smell that triggered the memory belonged to Sally Kutmo’s husband, Ted.
Ted, liked to inflict pain and slap women while he forcefully performed mediocre sex acts and yanked out patches of their hair. Ted, the selfish bastard who sent her the diamond ring she was previously admiring as an “I’m so sorry,” gift while she recuperated in the hospital from the damage he had done to her rectum. The same ring that the love of her life had delivered to her saying that his dear friend Ted had indeed gone too far and felt terrible but was so caught up in his passion for her, he lost control of himself.
Ted.
Ted.
Ted was going to be dead.
Just then, Ted walked into the room as she turned and faced the door. She shook Sally’s hand, went back to her table to retrieve her hat, and made her way straight towards him. He looked as if he had seen a ghost. She showed no emotion. She displayed no signs of knowing him but breezed past him as if he were nothing more than a valet about to park her car. As she rounded the corner, she knew her heart was racing and she was scared out of her mind. Someone was trying to get her attention, and for a fear-soaked minute, she was afraid that Ted was about to be stupid, but it was Mary Ellen. Slowly turning, she was handed an invitation to a Par 3 party at the Johns Creek Golf Club. Something deep inside her hoped that Mary Ellen was a good friend because Sally was going to need a good deal of support to survive the scandal that would surround Ted’s death.
Outside, she found a secluded spot and opened the envelope. It appeared that another good friend of Ted’s was running for Mayor of Augusta and this would be his official campaign kick-off. Ted was hosting the fundraiser for Dacks. This was going to be a snag and would require a great deal more careful planning to end the lives of Scumbag Numbers Three and Four. Now, she was forced to be in Augusta for a little while, and she would have to change tactics. Right now, what was required was some rest. Planning, plotting, and plodding through the details of a murder, no matter how well deserved, could be rather taxing on the nerves.
LIZZIE SAT STRAIGHT up in the bed panting, gasping for air, and barely able to breathe. The weight of her choices pressed into her chest when she slept, making rest difficult and living even harder.
She didn’t know why. She could not explain it. She knew the moment she was found out and the questions would come, and she, well, she would have no answers. How could she answer a question that the media or some overly ambitious blonde reporter would want to know when she really could not answer the question herself?
Of course, she could say that without any hesitation, considering she could compare his abilities with those of his closest friends. He was a poor performer in all areas when she compared him with Joe, who was truly gifted in many of the arts of love. She felt a modicum of shame when she remembered the occasions she had enjoyed her time with him.
The small hotel room in the Partridge Inn almost seemed claustrophobic in comparison to the 3,000-square-foot condo she had shared with Trey in Marietta. The rental car she was using was a nag when compared to the high performance of her convertible red Jag which was now a bent-up piece of scrap. The pretty red Jag in which she had humped, licked, and allowed herself to be porked by passionless assholes so that she could drive around town and be envied by others.
In the sad center of the horror she had endured, the realism lay on her shoulders with partial blame serving as a coverall. Trey’s initial request did seem harmless and Joe was good-looking, plus, the way that Trey had been acting, she thought it was just going to be one of those swinger things. Trey would watch, and she would pretend to enjoy it. She never expected herself to enjoy it, but Joe, well Joe, again had talents. Initially, having Trey watch felt weird, but then she began to realize that he was excited by what he was seeing. She got excited knowing that he could never bring her pleasure the way that Joe had and secretly desired for him to pick up a few pointers.
Joe touched her like she was a rare jewel. He never groped, poked, or seemed in a hurry even considering his sizeable gift in endowment. He never hurt her. Joe took the time to ensure that her body was prepared to receive his entry while taking the time to allow her to adjust the angles of entry. It was partially the size that turned her on. It was partway the idea of Joe being such a large black man while Trey would be cuckolded as the big man had his way with her. The first undoing was that it turned her on a little too much and Trey was never a man to keep secrets.
Joe was followed by Rob, Scooter, and then Ted. This was also the order she was going to kill them in as well. The other business partners who had jumped on her were going to get theirs as well. The business partners he convinced her she had to do to help him get the promotion. That bastard Trey even went as far as to tell her, “Just pretend it’s Big Joe all over again.”
She never saw Big Joe again until that fatal night when she spotted him entering the room with her little sister Sara. Trey had gone to Tybee and had planned to move her little sister in on his newfound business idea. She was already fuming when she discovered that he had left his job the year before. Lizzie had become furious when she learned that the 3,000-square-foot condo was actually paid for based on her efforts on her back and knees. Lizzie was full of wrath when she realized Trey had allowed her auto insurance to lapse when she was screwing his friends for big bucks. She was truly livid that she had been in trouble and these men were taking advantage of her.
“Forget that bullshit about hell having no fury like a woman...whatever the hell,” she thought out loud.
She killed Big Joe because the sex was good but he was a walking hard-on looking to stick his big rod in any tight hole he could squeeze the giant instrument into. She killed Trey because he knew that Sara was her stepsister and he was going to turn such a lovely young woman into a prostitute. She killed him because if she was going to screw for money, she did not need a middleman to share the proceeds.
She killed Big Jim because he knew Sara was his daughter. She killed that lecherous old fart because he was a sorry excuse for a father. He had failed not only with Trey, but he also failed to acknowledge Sara, and there were so many of his bastards running around Tybee Island that Lizzie was surprised the whole community wasn’t special needs from the incestuous relationships.
Extinguishing their lives was her feeble attempt to kill all that she had become to be an image of someone she no longer understood.
THE PAST SEVEN YEARS had left her jaded. The past six months had left her angry and filled with a craving for vengeance. After killing Joe, she realized that she in fact had not felt any better for taking his life. He, she at least liked. Ted, she didn’t like at all. If she could, she would unearth Rob, the lecher’s, body just so she could kill him again. Joe, she felt she had killed too quickly simply because she could not stand to hear a grown man cry.
The McAllisters, father and son, should be nothing more than picked bones by now if the rats and roaches had done their jobs. She would have paid money to watch Trey McAllister’s face as hungry rats filled the plexiglass case that held his bound father. Lizzie had situated his soon to be coffin at an angle so that it would allow Trey a clear view of his father’s tomb. He would be able to hear his father’s screams as the rats nibbled away at his father’s peanut butter-saturated genitals.
Trey’s death would come much slower.
The ants and roaches would follow the trail she had left from the outside into the crack in the plexiglass case. She smiled at the thought of him watching all the hungry insects find their way in to begin their freshly prepared dinner. As the ants and roaches followed the trail of breadcrumbs to his case, he would still sit there, hearing his father’s screams. He would sit there hearing the scuttle of the millions of ants and roaches when they began to snack on the crumbs soaked in honey that covered his feet. Big Jim McAllister would not be able to rescue his prodigy from this grave of hungry mandibles that would open and close around the agave-soaked banana that she had shoved up his over-privileged rectum. No one would rescue him. Just like no one had come to save her as Trey’s hungry, over-privileged constituents fed upon her two or three times per week. No one had saved her from the stitches that had to be applied to her rectum after Ted had his fun.
Lizzie hoped as Ted neared his death, he would now understand the fear she felt as she heard the shuffling of their John Lobb’s as they approached. The dread that coursed through her body as she could hear their jaws working as they opened and closed over different parts of her body. Anger helped her recount the shame of dragging herself to the shower to wash away their touch. She stopped squinting when she noticed her drink buyer looking at her.
She raised her head and the glass of Sprite at the same time. Her planning had just commenced for the removal of one Richard James McCorkle the Third, who was now running for the seat of the Mayor of Augusta. His friends liked to call him Dacks. Those close to him called him “Big Dacks”. He was a very public figure who deserved no less than a very public death. This one required some finesse. She had time. If there was one thing she had learned in the last few months, she had acquired a solid understanding that an angry bitch had nothing but time to sit and fester.
As luck would have it, Scooter Duggins walked into the PI Grille and gave Lizzie something to do.
SCOOTER DUGGINS WAS the type of man whom every woman wanted to take home to her mother. He was an amiable fellow who moved with ease among the guys. He was always a member of a foursome or the perfect third man for a round of golf. Scooter was often the first person on your list of invitees to any party or function. Scooter Duggins was that guy.
Lizzie had secretly hoped that Scooter would find her interesting enough to want to steal her away from Trey. The Duggins were an old Savannah family deeply rooted in Georgia history and nestled their wealth in the shipping trades. It was rumored that it was a Duggins that suggested the townsfolk line their valuables up on the outskirts of the city to prevent General Sherman from burning their homes. The rumor also stated that the Duggins were the only family that had added nothing to the pile. Those statements also epitomized Scooter. He had many suggestions to help you live better, but he was never going to commit any of his own resources to help you get there.
It was Scooter who had been the first of his friends to suggest Joe try out Lizzie. It was also Scooter, who after his third helping of Lizzie pie, suggested that many of Trey’s friends would pay handsomely for a few minutes of afternoon delight with Trey’s café au lait lady. When she found out that Scooter was the one who suggested that Trey quit his job and day trade on the funds he was earning from Lizzie’s efforts, that was also the moment she decided that selfish prick was going to die.
SHE STILL HAD NOT EXPLAINED why to the critics. There was no means to explain, quantify, or even qualify the logic behind the way she had lived the past three years. There was no logic to even rationalize her thought process to be a part of his world. No woman would ever understand why she allowed herself to be compromised in such a manner and to be degraded as she had.
“Hmmmpff, it’s easier than you think!”
Lizzie said aloud as if the skeptics who were reading her story had asked the question. She knew there were many women out there who would read her diary and call her stupid for slipping so low, prostituted, and shat upon for the pleasure of a man. There were more women out there than anyone knows who are crapped upon literally and figuratively daily. Lizzie just felt she was one of the ones that managed to profit, even if in an offhanded way, from being used.
It started simply with her wanting and lusting after Joe, then desiring to be the Mrs. Scooter Duggins. It had not been enough to spend all of her teen years preparing herself for life with Trey McAllister. Once she had received the prize, she realized the futility of her efforts. Trey was not that smart; he had very little conversation, had read few books, had traveled very little, and was lousy in bed. Trey had been her first, therefore she had no comparison to what the size of a man’s penis should be or his skillset with the use of the tool. Well, that was until she spied Joe at a pool party at Ted Vanderbilt’s house.
Joe was wearing white swim trunks that left a clear impression in the mind of every lady that was poolside. Lizzie was a lady. No one could see her eyes behind the oversized Dolce & Gabbana shades. No one was able to see her watch his every move. No one knew that she was imagining what his weight would feel like as he pressed himself into her while she shifted her hips to receive all of what she saw in those swim trunks. Although she never showed him all of her teeth or even spent more than three minutes of eye contact, he knew. He knew she, like every other sexually frustrated woman sitting around that pool understood, wanted their opportunity to have a cuppa Joe. It was only a matter of time before the chance presented itself.
Three months later, the occasion arose, and with very little hesitation, she jumped at the chance. After dinner at their place on late June evening, Joe and his girlfriend Karen had a tad bit too much to drink. Karen was a beautiful woman, although a bit of a flirt. It did not matter if it was a woman or a man. She would make a move and was free with her love.
