Sarah reached out for him and Josh pulled away. He was sobbing but he wouldn’t let her see his face. It was some type of pride thing.
“Josh, I didn’t cheat on you. I’m not a sex addict. You satisfy me completely. We have a great sex life. I’m sorry if I made you feel like I wasn’t satisfied. You always make me cum. I don’t need anybody else but you. I love you and I think you’re sexy as hell.”
Josh finally turned to look at Sarah. Tears were streaming down his face. Sarah felt her heart break.
“Then explain this to me. Tell me what the hell happened.”
“I don’t know. I’m not lying to you and I’m not trying to hide anything.”
This was so natural for Sarah, comforting Josh when she ought to have been losing her mind, when she ought to have been screaming at him, punching him, and crying hysterically. But flipping out like that wasn’t like her. She had not been herself since this thing started; it felt good to be calm again. This was normal to her.
Sarah had just gone from vomiting on the carpet to kneeling down to take the soapy rag from his hand and wrapping her arms around him, laying his head on her chest and rocking him like a baby. Surprisingly, the transition felt effortless to her. Comforting him
helped take away some of the terror she was feeling. She had to be strong for Josh. He needed her.
“I’m sorry, Sarah. I know you wouldn’t cheat on me. I’m just so fucking confused. None of this makes any sense. I just don’t know what to do.”
“Let’s try to figure this out together then. Okay? Look, let’s go over what we know.”
“Okay. I’ll try.”
Trying to solve this puzzle would make them both feel like they were doing something. It would make them feel less powerless, more in control of the situation like Sarah felt after they had purchased the gun. Sarah knew that Josh needed this. He immediately became more alert, less depressed.
“Okay,” he said, turning to face her, “what do we know?”
Sarah took a death breath and hesitated for a long moment before she spoke.
“First, I saw you getting murdered by the neighbor. I remember him raping me and slitting my throat. When I woke up the next morning, you and I were alive but the bed was saturated with blood. The dreams or memories or whatever they are seem to come and go. Sometimes they’re vivid and I can remember just about every detail and sometimes I can’t remember anything. I woke up three nights ago and found that the sheets had been changed, the walls and the rug had been cleaned, my gun had been fired and all the bullets had been removed from the clip. But since we’ve been in the hotel there hasn’t been any strange things happening.”
“Except you did have a nightmare.”
“Yeah, true, I had a nightmare. But that was it. Nothing in the room had been changed. There wasn’t any
sign that anything abnormal had happened at all. No bloody mattress and no missing sheets. And the digital recorder didn’t record anything unusual.”
“But we know that someone other than me had sex with you on the night before we got here because they found another man’s semen inside you.”
Josh was staring at Sarah, studying her face, trying to gauge her reaction. It pissed her off. He still doubted her.
Sarah wanted to tell him to shut the fuck up about the semen. Just hearing him say it made her feel as if there were a cold draft wafting beneath her skin. It made her want to stab him to death just to keep him from repeating it again. She wanted to forget about it, she wanted to pretend that the detective had never called. But she needed to figure out what was happening to her. This wasn’t something she could just ignore.
“Yeah, okay. They found semen, but no signs of vaginal or rectal bruising or tearing and no drugs in my system.”
Josh stood up and began to pace the floor.
“It doesn’t add up.”
“No. It
doesn’t
make sense. But we know something is going on. So, what are the possibilities?”
“You could be sleepwalking and washing the sheets in your sleep.”
“But then where did the blood in the mattress and the semen come from?”
“You could be having sleep sex.”
“I don’t see me being able to leave the house without waking you up.”
“Well, they didn’t test me for drugs. Someone could
still be drugging me and then sneaking in and having sex with you and you could just be blocking it out.”
“That’s possible. Or I could be drugging you and then sneaking out and having sex with other men and making up all the rest of this.”
Josh looked at her. Shocked.
“Somebody had to say it. I know you’ve been thinking it. You’ve damned near said as much. We have to address every possibility. Then we can exclude them one by one. So, is it possible that I could be cheating on you and just making up all of this?”
Josh blushed, then shook his head, dismissing the notion.
“It wouldn’t make sense. You were the one who insisted on the rape kit and they would have never found the semen if you hadn’t. Why would you do that if you were cheating on me? I mean really, I wouldn’t even know about any of this if you hadn’t told me about it. It wouldn’t make sense for you to bring all this up if you were fucking around on me.”
Sarah was relieved. She slapped Josh on the arm.
“Then why the fuck did you say all that shit about me being a nympho and not being satisfied with you? Why’d you make me think you didn’t trust me?”
Josh shrugged.
“I’m sorry. That was just my insecurities talking. The thought of another man having sex with you is just driving me crazy. I want to fucking kill somebody.”
Josh was pacing the floor, clenching and unclenching his fingers, looking for something to break that he wouldn’t have to pay for. He settled on punching the pillow.
“Someone could still be drugging us both. They
could be using something rare that they don’t test for. We can’t rule that out.”
“A new date-rape drug?”
Sarah nodded.
“Could be, I mean it’s possible. I still think we’re missing something though. We need to think waaaaay outside the box.”
“Okay, let’s do it. Let’s not rule anything out yet even what we know is impossible. What if everything you remember is true?”
“You mean that I’ve been raped and murdered two or three nights in a row? That you were murdered too? How would that be possible?”
“We’re not thinking about what’s possible yet. We’re just laying everything out right now. We can start ruling things out later.”
“Okay, so then we’ve both been murdered.”
“But we both woke up, alive.”
“So somehow we healed. Either we healed on our own or someone healed us.”
Sarah shivered.
“Okay, that’s just fucking creepy. What else?”
“Hypnotism? Some sort of subliminal suggestion or mind control of some sort? Someone could be attacking you and maybe knocking me unconscious somehow and then hypnotizing us both so we don’t remember, maybe making you think you’ve been murdered just to freak you out more.”
“Even weirder. What else?”
“I don’t know. Can you think of anything?”
“Well, we’ve covered sleep fucking, infidelity, drugs, spontaneous regeneration, and hypnotism. I think that about covers it. So what do we do now?”
“We need to prove that you’re being attacked. Catch the fucker redhanded.”
“Well, we could always go back to The Spy Shop and buy that nanny cam. If we can get him on camera, then we’ll have our proof.”
“You’re right, that’s probably the only way. Do you have any money left from the slot machine?”
Sarah picked up her purse and began shuffling through a stack of bills. They were mostly twenties and fifties with only a few hundreds left.
“About nine hundred dollars.”
“We spent sixteen hundred dollars last night?”
“Well, we spent about four hundred on food and then I bought you that shirt from Armani Exchange and those pants from Hugo Boss and then I bought a skirt from Calvin Klein…”
Josh shook his head and laughed.
“Okay, it doesn’t matter. It was your money. I guess that means we can either buy the camera or the alarm but with the money we already spent on the gun, we can’t do both. I haven’t put anything in the bank for next month’s mortgage yet.”
Sarah didn’t hesitate.
“Let’s get the camera.”
“Are you sure? What if we see something…terrible?”
Sarah thought for a moment. An alarm would just chase the rapist away. Then she’d never know what was happening, who was causing all of this, or if she was crazy. She had to see it to believe it. But even more, she wanted Josh to see it. She wanted him to see with his own eyes that she wasn’t crazy, wasn’t lying, wasn’t cheating. It made her skin crawl to imagine watching
herself getting raped on camera. Her stomach did a little flip as she tried to picture it in her mind. She shuddered and turned back to Josh.
“We need to catch this fucker. We need evidence.”
“If we set up a silent alarm and link it to an armed security response, then we might still catch him redhanded.”
“Might. He might still get away before security could get there. They might get there too soon before he can do anything and he could get off with simple breaking and entering. If I had it my way we’d have both. Catch him on camera and then apprehend his ass coming out the front door. But we can’t afford that. Given our options, the camera makes the most sense.”
Josh nodded.
“Okay. We’ll get the camera. When is that detective coming?”
“She said she was going to talk to the neighbor first. See if he’d give a voluntary DNA sample.”
Josh turned to look at her.
“You think he will?”
“I don’t know. Would you? I mean, after I slapped him and threatened to kick his ass?”
Josh shook his head.
“I’d tell you to screw yourself.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“It would make him look guilty though.”
“Yeah, but that’s not the same as actually being guilty.”
Sarah looked around. Her mind was working overtime. She wanted an answer now. The idea of going back to that house without knowing if she was still in danger was starting to make her panic.
“Maybe we could steal a DNA sample from him somehow.”
Josh shook his head.
“And where would we get it tested? Do you have a DNA lab I don’t know about? We don’t even have the sample they took at the hospital to compare it to and the police won’t test it because it would be inadmissible.”
“Maybe we could ask that detective to give us the sample she took from me and we could take it to one of those paternity-testing places?”
“We could certainly ask but she’d be crazy to give it to us.”
Sarah’s brow furrowed.
“Why do you say that? Why shouldn’t she give it to us?”
“Because she knows we’d need to get a sample from him in order to compare it to, which means we’d have to either steal a sample or coerce one out of him and probably by force. And then what happens if it’s a match and I kill the guy? She’d be an accessory to murder.”
Sarah looked at Josh, shocked.
“Would you? Would you kill him? I mean…if it turns out that he is the guy doing all of this?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I’d do.”
Sarah rushed into his arms and hugged him tight.
“I don’t want you to go to jail. I don’t want to be without you. Promise me you’ll let the police handle it no matter what we find.”
Josh turned his head. His body tensed.
“I can’t promise you that.”
The knock on Dale’s door was hardly a shock. He had been expecting to hear from his neighbor again. He knew he should stay away from her but he couldn’t help himself. She was just so beautiful—and she remembered. He was sure of it, could see it in her eyes. She remembered, and yet she wasn’t afraid. She had even come over to confront him. Had even
threatened
him. It was something new and exciting to Dale, a murder victim who remembered her own murder, and actually had the nerve to confront the man who had raped and mutilated her. Dale had an erection just thinking about it. He was having a hard time keeping himself from masturbating, but didn’t want to waste his potency on his hand. He wanted to save every ounce of it for Sarah.
Someone knocked again. Dale took his time walking to the door, trying to think of things to relax his erection so whoever was on the other side wouldn’t see that his cock was hard. Dale looked through the peephole and was surprised to see a black woman standing outside his door with a young Mexican police detective at her side, his gold shield clipped to his belt next to his holster. He was in shirtsleeves despite the weather, which had turned unusually cold for September. Dale didn’t recognize the woman. She wasn’t bad
looking despite her obvious age, but Dale couldn’t remember doing any black chicks lately. He hadn’t done anyone but the neighbor since he’d moved in. Since meeting Sarah, Dale had discovered the joys of monogamy. Besides, the black chick wasn’t his type. Her hips and thighs were too big and her breasts would have smothered him.
On closer look, the black woman was obviously a detective as well. She wore a gray blouse, gray pleated pants, and ugly black loafers. Definitely a cop. Dale began to sweat.
What were the cops doing here?
Had he left behind some evidence? Were they about to put him in jail? Dale knew he was too frail for prison. Those big, angry convicts would rape him every night and there’d be nothing he could do about it. The detective banged on the door again while Dale’s eye was pressed to the peephole, startling him.
“Shit! What do you want?”
“Mr. McCarthy? Dale McCarthy?”
“Yes?” Dale had a moment were he considered running. He looked at the back door and then calculated his chances of reaching it before the two detectives kicked in the front door. He wondered if he could elude the cops long enough to make it out of town and then maybe out of the country.
“I’m Detective Trina Lassiter and this is my partner, Detective Michael Torres. We need to speak to you a moment.”
“About what?”
“You know what it’s about.”
Dale felt as if his entire world had just imploded. They knew. They’d come to arrest him. His face would be on television. Everyone would call him a pervert, a sadist, a murderer.