The
question now is whether Patty Jennings, who had swallowed him whole the night
before and thought nothing of it, would be fearful enough for her soul to do
the right thing.
CH
APTER ELEVEN
Cheryl
Dunning wasn’t sure how far she’d run, but she was sure that she couldn’t run
much farther without stopping to catch her breath, which was out of the
question since he was not far behind her.
And so she ran, her chest burning, her legs hurting, her heart
hammering, her entire being alive with the fear that this might be it for
her.
And for what?
She didn’t know.
She only knew that she had no choice but
to run
in these ridiculous boots to
save herself if she could, though doing so was increasingly looking doubtful.
She’d
run through so many twigs and branches, she could feel the blood trickling down
her face just as she could see it on her outstretched arms, which were cut and
scratched far more than they were earlier, when she woke on the forest
floor.
Parts of her forearms and
hands were splintered and bruised because she had to slam through some of the
thicker branches just to get through them.
Worse
for her, the ground was turning into a carpet of mud concealed by a deceptive
blanket of needles and leaves.
Sometimes, it sank quickly beneath her when she crashed one of her
heeled boots down onto it in an effort to propel herself forward, which told
her that she was going in the wrong direction.
She was a born Mainer who once, as a
child, hunted yearly with her father and grandfather.
She knew the early signs of oncoming
wetlands, and there was no question that she was headed straight toward them
now.
And with
me wearing high-heeled boots
, she thought in despair.
When the mud turns to slop, what
then?
There
wasn’t time to process the “what,” or what was happening to her now, or why she
was being chased, or who was behind it, or why she woke bruised and beaten on a
forest floor less than an hour before.
She was
in pure survival mode, railing on instinct while driving herself forward as
quickly as she could in an effort to keep a reasonable distance between
whomever was chasing her.
All she
saw in front of her were trees and branches.
She ducked to miss them, she swung left
and then right to escape others, and sometimes she had no choice but to plow
through them because they were too dense to skirt.
Pain
registered and it evaporated.
Twice
she stumbled and fell, but she was quick to right herself and charge forward
even faster than before so he couldn’t close the distance between them.
Each time she screamed for help, the man
behind her laughed through winded gasps.
Once, she heard him say, “Jesus ain’t going to help you, whore.
Jesus is the reason you’re running right
now.
Jesus is cleaning his house of
warts and he wants you out!”
He was
crazy.
A religious zealot.
Maine was filled with them, but nothing
that approached his level of insanity.
He planned to kill her.
So, why
doesn’t he just do it then?
Because
he wants the hunt.
She took
a sharp turn around a large rock covered with moss and leaves, and this time,
the woods opened to her.
Fewer
branches to dodge, fewer twigs to scrape her face, but the ground sank quicker
beneath her boots, which worried her because she knew what that meant.
Soon,
she’d approach an estuary or worse.
Maybe something deeper.
A
larger water source.
Something she
wouldn’t be able to run through without becoming mired in it.
And then
what?
Should
she turn right?
She glanced in that
direction and saw nothing but Autumn’s brownish hues and the pools of water on
the ground, the latter of which shimmered in the sunlight slicing through the
trees.
Going
there held no hope, so she looked left.
And what she saw when she did was something so threatening, it either
would be the end of her or, if she played it right, it could offer her a
possible way out.
CHA
PTER TWELVE
With a
profound sense of shame, embarrassment and rage, Patty Jennings went through
the graphic and disturbing photographs of her having sex with the man who
called himself “Jack” before she switched off the computer, turned away from it
in disgust, and focused her attention through the window beside her.
What had
she done?
What would this mean for
her going forward?
She
didn’t remember any of what she just looked at, which told her one thing.
He did drug her.
He must have bought her a drink and
slipped something into it.
She
hadn’t had enough to drink last night for her to forget him taking photos of
her, so there was no other explanation.
He bought her a cocktail and tainted it.
Did he do the same to Cheryl?
She didn’t know.
But at
what point did he do it?
Was it at
the bar?
Or was it when she fixed a
drink for them when they returned to her apartment?
She remembered doing that.
She remembered excusing herself to use
the bathroom so she should freshen up.
Did he put something in her drink then?
It was possible, because up until the
moment they left The Grind and entered her apartment, her memory was reasonably
clear.
Later, at home, when he
raped her, she would have remembered a camera flashing in her face.
She would have remembered the strobes of
light.
She was certain of that.
And now,
even though he had carefully concealed his own identity, everything she did
with him was on a website, with the threat that if she didn’t take her life in
the name of Jesus Christ Lord God Almighty for committing her whorish sins, the
Web address would be sent to her family and to her employer, and her life, such
as it was, would be exposed, vilified and ruined.
“When
the photographs are made public, you can consider the rest of your life a
public stoning,” he wrote.
Patty
Jennings had no illusions about how people viewed her.
She was aware of her reputation and that
people judged her because of an event that happened six years ago, when she was
labeled the town slut.
In her
life, she’d been with five men, not the thirty or the forty or even the fifty
some claimed she’d been with.
In a
town as small as hers, her mistake was to sleep with the wrong man, her
ex-boyfriend of two years, with whom she shared her past loves just as he
shared his with her.
When she
broke up with him after he slapped her in the heat of an argument, he devised a
life for her that she’d never lived.
He told everyone he could about that life.
And the town, happy to revel in its
newfound gossip, directed its ire at its new pariah.
Some
would have moved on, but Patty, raised by strong-willed parents who supported
her because they knew her, decided she wasn’t going anywhere.
She stuck it out.
With her father’s help, she got a job at
a bank and worked hard in spite of the rumors and the disapproving looks from
her co-w
orkers.
She ignored them
because she knew herself better than anyone, with Cheryl being the
exception.
She knew she was no
saint―she had, after all, gone home with a stranger last night―but
she also knew that the people who condemned her were just as fla
wed as
she.
Life had dealt her the raw
hand of poverty, deceit and abuse, but until this morning, Patty always felt
that somehow, likely through the passing of time, that things would get
better.
Now,
that obviously wasn’t going to be the case.
She had
decisions to
make, but she wouldn’t make them alone.
She reached for the phone on her desk and called Cheryl to tell her what
had happened.
She knew she would be
in bed asleep―Cheryl loved to sleep in when she could―but this was
critical, so she listened
to the phone ring and waited.
When no one answered and it went to
Cheryl’s voicemail, she called out for Cheryl to wake up and answer the
phone.
When she didn’t, she spoke
louder, asking her to please answer and to not be angry with her, because she
was in trouble.
But
Cheryl didn’t answer.
Patty
knew that Cheryl’s phone was next to her bed.
She knew she was listening, knew she was
choosing not to answer and now she understood the full weight of how much she
had disappointed her friend last night.
She had to fix this with an apology, and there was only one way to
handle that.
In person.
She went
to the bathroom off her bedroom, turned on the shower, undressed and hoped as she
stood beneath the hot spray that Cheryl would at least answer the door when she
arrived at her apartment.
If there
ever was a time that Patty needed her, it was now.
CHAPT
ER THIRTEEN
Kenneth
Berkowitz cut through the forest, found the path he and Ted had studied
countless times since they arrived in Maine, and then started to run to the
marked area where they agreed Ted would dump Cheryl Dunning last night.
Throughout
his life, Berkowitz had been an athlete and so he ran easily and steadily, jumping
over the exposed roots of the tall pines when he needed to, but keeping his
footfalls and his breathing as quiet as possible so he could remain
stealth.
As he
ran, he thought about Patty Jennings and wondered what she would do with her
life now that the rotten truth about who she really was as a person was
threatened to be exposed.
Would she
take her own life and burn in hell, as he knew she should?
Or would she take the risk that he was
bluffing and continue on with her life of sin, thus snubbing her nose in the
face of God?
He’d
have to pay attention to the local paper to see, but if she thought for a
moment that he wouldn’t go through with his threats, she was mistaken.
Berkowitz’s
mission in life was to root out whores like Jennings and Dunning, whom they saw
at The Grind five weeks ago, asked discreet questions about them and then, when
they had enough information, including their names, they decided to target
them.
So far, with a body count of
only sixty-eight women, they’d barely made a dent in weeding out the women who
needed to be snuffed from this world.
But with Ted at his side, the notoriety they had achieved in the press
had nevertheless gone nationwide, which was perhaps more important because
their message was getting out there.
With
each whore they killed, a note was left pinned to the body with a reason why
they were killed.
In many cases,
that note was leaked to the press, which ran with it.
When that happened, he and Ted
considered it a win, because the note clearly stated that if the whores of the
world would just leave their sins behind and turn their lives over to Christ,
their mission would cease because there would be no need to continue it.
He
remembered what his father, a longtime preacher in Arkansas who moved the family
to Los Angeles for opportunities that ultimately failed, said to him once in a
moment of financial desperation:
“Son, you put your trust in Jesus Christ, and there ain’t nothin’ in
this world you can’t fix or do.
He
will protect you.
He will give you
what you ask of Him, especially if it’s sound, just and part of His plan.
I know things look dire for us now, but
because of my absolute belief in Him, we won’t be in this mess forever.”
And they
weren’t.
Within a few weeks, his
father landed a job that was enough to save their home, buy them food and keep
them off the streets.
For Kenneth,
whose mind already had begun its turn toward madness, that moment was a
powerful sign.
If Jesus Christ
would answer his father’s prayers, then certainly He would answer his if they
were “sound, just and part of His plan.”