Sycamore Hill Pt. 02

She stretched lazily and actually let out an exaggerated yawn, feigning boredom.

"In any case, we have little choice but to act as though the police don't know anything. We certainly can't just let you go now, can we?"

"You could run..."

"And leave all that money my poor dead husband would leave to me? I don't think so, Kevin. No, I'm afraid there's no way around the fact that the police are going to find a grisly murder and you will be the one to blame. But it will be tough for you to defend yourself because you'll be dead too. The jealous husband, finding his wife with the rich, philandering businessman, shoots the lover and then turns the gun on himself." She shook her head in mock dismay. "So...very...tragic. But, it's a common story really."

I'm sure my face gave away my puzzlement as I tried to digest what she'd just said. I began to babble.

"Yea, well I think your story is full of holes. I don't own a fucking gun, so the police will wonder about that. And what the hell kind of a guy invites his friend over for a murder suicide? Or...or...or shoots the lover but doesn't plug the wife? Huh? Nobody will buy this at all..."

She groaned in mock exasperation, cutting my diatribe off.

"Oh God you are really dumb, aren't you? "I probably shouldn't really tell you this, but what the hell Kevin, what the hell." She leaned forward as if to tell a secret, smiling smugly.

"First off I think it's a pretty fucking good story. Especially since you'll be using the gun you bought at a gun show a couple of days after half of the charity staff saw your wife essentially dry hump my husband at a the party and then watched you drag her out by the arm, practically kicking and screaming."

"I didn't buy a gun..."

She laughed again.

"Well, that's not what your credit card statement shows, or the records at the gun show for that matter. They'll both say that you bought a 38." She tapped the gun with her stun baton. "This 38, in fact."

She paused as she let that sink in and then started again, gesturing toward Virgil with the baton.

"Now, we didn't plan on your friend here coming along, so he's going to run into some problems in some other part of town. Probably something like a heroin overdose. I suspect nobody will even know he's missing for a few days. There may be an odd piece of evidence here or there, but I'm quite confident that the police will put the scene together the way I've constructed it and make all the loose ends tie themselves up."

I swallowed hard, trying to think of some hole in her story.

"Come on, that won't fly. Do you really think they aren't going to notice your husband was dead for 5 or 6 hours longer than me?"

"Ah...those timelines get fuzzy if the bodies aren't discovered right away, after a few days..."

"After a few days? Lara's going to tell them she hung out for a few days before calling them? You haven't thought this through. The police aren't that stupid."

Danielle studied me with a blank, incredulous look, shaking her head in gentle disbelief as though I was some sort of remedial student that was simply not grasping the obvious. Nothing was said for a moment or two when, out of nowhere, Virgil interrupted, his voice tired and strained.

"Kevin...they're going to kill her too. They're going to find 3 bodies there. All dead by the same gun."

The truth of what he said was immediately obvious to me and I found myself looking at Danielle with even more disgust, blurting out the first thing that crossed my mind.

"My God...you're a fucking monster. " `

Evidently resolved to drop any pretense about what was actually planned, Danielle cocked her head,, looked me right in the eye and smirked.

"So, why do you care? Hmm? She shouldn't mean shit to you at this point and frankly, she doesn't mean shit to me. She's just a tool to me, like everyone else I meet. A tool to use and then discard when it ceases to be useful. "

I'm pretty sure I'd come across sociopaths at school and at work, but I'd never had one so blatantly express their contempt and general misanthropy in such explicit terms. I opened my mouth to respond, but realized there was nothing I could say that would shake Danielle up about the planned murders, so I turned to the Shave-head instead.

"So, Trevor, if Danny here uses everyone as a tool to get what she wants, how you fit in?"

He looked briefly into the rear view mirror and with the force and abruptness of a dog's bark responded.

"Shut the fuck up."

Danielle laughed and leaned forward.

"Trevor and I go way back. We've been together since I was 14 and he's the one person that means anything to me. Without him, I wouldn't have survived the boredom and banality of High School with all the disgusting little pimply boys and vacuous girls. He's the one man-the one person-that I need. So, you can talk all you want, but, really your transparent attempts to create some sort of tension between us are just pathetic. You have to remember your place; you're just another tool and have been for months."

She still sounded confident, but I caught just a whiff of vulnerability, of worry, when I challenged Trevor about her trustworthiness, so I decided to push some more.

"How the hell can Trevor trust you? You probably say the same crap about anybody you need when they're around. I'm sure Lara thinks you and she are true lovers or something."

Trevor glanced in the mirror again and said something under his breath, but Danielle reached back and patted his shoulder without taking her eyes off me.

"You know Kevin, you're an annoying , stupid little fuck. I'm carrying a gun here and you are trying to be provocative."

"Well, so what? I'm dead before the nights over anyway, right? What the hell difference does it make to me if I die here now or in a couple of ours? I'll guess it matters to you some though, since I doubt very much you'd want to plug me right here. "

I started to lean toward her, moving my bound hands toward her slowly but with purpose. "In fact, what, exactly is going to keep me from trying to take away..."

Keeping the gun pointed directly at me, Danielle quickly reached for something at her feet and produced a long black stick.

"Move one inch closer and I'll have to taze you." She said matter of factly, and then, casually reached over to Virgil and touched the stick to his exposed, sockless shin just above the shoe. Virgil's response reminded me of a drawing I'd seen of a soldier who was dying of tetanus, his fists clenched, his back arched severely upward and his teeth clamped into a painful appearing rictus. A moment after pulling back the Taser, Virgil collapsed back onto the bench seat, unconscious but breathing raggedly.

"Would you like another taste?"

I was speechless for a moment, watching my friend convulse, but tried to avoid looking too rattled. "Why taze him? You just like me better or something?"

"No, but I don't want to have to clean you up if you shit your pants, it would make the crime scene a little harder to explain."

"You think you've thought of everything."

"I have."

I raised my eyebrows at her arrogance.

"You know you'll miss something. This will stink like yesterday's garbage and the police will be all over this with a fine tooth comb. I'm guessing your bald boyfriend there probably has some sort of a record, even if you don't, and that combined with the amount of money involved here is going to get their investigative juices flowing."

For the first time, I saw a flicker of doubt cloud Danielle's face, but this was quickly replaced by anger and she leaned forward with the baton extended and I braced for a shock. But then she backed off and laughed.

"Don't try and think so much Kevin, you aren't good at it. Neither of us have records that are discoverable. And besides, why be suspicious of me or Trev when the killer is obvious? It will all see very, very...typical to the police, I'm quite sure of that."

"You think you can pull off the grieving widow act?"

"I can pull anything off. As you know I'm quite the actress and I'm quite convincing. People do what I want because I am what they want."

I snorted with as much contempt as I could muster. "God, what an ego."

"It's not bragging if it's true, Kevin."

She spit out my name like it was a bug that had somehow found its way into her mouth. "Take your darling little wife, for example. She went from the devoted, loving spouse to my little plaything within a matter of weeks and from there it was a hop, skip and a jump to becoming my accomplice in a plan to have my husband...eliminated. A plan that included having you take the fall. Oh, she had some guilty moments from time to time and even mentioned backing out once, but I gave her an ultimatum and she came back to me, begging for another chance, swearing she'd do anything to get back into my bed."

Danielle leaned forward, her eyes locking into mine, demanding my full attention, a malevolent grin oozing from her lips. "And you know what I did then, Kevin? I made her prove her love to me by doing something completely odious, something that, to her, was so disgusting that it took an act of supreme will and love for me to make her way through it."

I looked back at her with a blank face, trying to process what she was telling me.

"Why, don't you know Kevin? I made her have sex with you. And I made her give you her ass. Humiliating, isn't it? To know that sex with you was a sort of punishment? Some horrible ordeal to have to go through to prove her love to me."

She paused to smirk, letting out an arrogant little laugh.

"And then do you know what I did? I convinced her it was rape. I twisted her little mind to see that since she didn't want it and because she hated it, that you must have forced it on her, even though it was her idea—really, my idea—in the first place. So, by the time I was done with her, she was not only completely in love with me, but she hated you. She hated you enough to sell you down the proverbial river, just like a good little tool."

I grit my teeth and waited for a tidal wave of humiliated anger to wash over me before responding, again, as cool and calm as I could in order to limit her satisfaction to the absolute minimum.

"You don't control nearly as much as you think you do. You certainly can't control me."

"Oh, you are so wrong. I could have done things directly you know. Seduced you, turned you into my little plaything and made you kill John yourself, just to be with me. But that would have been a little...messy. It's hard to keep men from bragging to their friends and I might have had some difficulty if it became known that I'd let you fuck me."

"You're insane if you think you could get me to..."

"What you don't think I'd be able to turn you into a little puppet after we had sex? You're not giving your libido enough credit and you're giving your sense of dignity way too much..."

"No, I don't even think you'd have gotten me in bed."

She laughed. "Oh come now, with the looks you gave me at the party? Or even earlier today when I was the femme fatale? You were dying to put an arm around me for comfort, and from there it's a breeze for a woman like me to get a man in bed. What the hell makes you think you'd be able to hold out?"

I let her question sit in the air for a minute and then answered, as casually as my rapidly beating heart allowed.

"I have a rule that I follow pretty strictly when it comes to sex..."

"A rule? Don't make me laugh. Rules of fidelity are like tiny speed bumps for me."

"Oh, it's not about fidelity." I paused for effect and she looked at me with an element of curiosity, waiting for me to finish. "It's just that I only have sex with human beings. And you don't really qualify."

Her eyes popped open in sudden, unpleasant surprise and then quickly narrowed to thin, angry, snakelike slits as she reflexively reached for the Taser and brought it towards me again. Trying to keep any advantage I simply laughed.

"What? Is the queen bitch losing her control?"

Her facial features had hardened into a permanent mask of anger and disgust and she began to spit out words as if they were made of acid.

"I'm losing control, says the chump with the gun pointed at him. Remember Kevin, I've manipulated you from day one. It took a little longer than I wanted because you are considerably more stupid than I thought. I mean, honestly, how could you not think your wife was fucking John after that party? Any real man would have started investigating then. But no, not you, you had to keep trying to...what exactly? Save your marriage?"

She laughed again, a bitter, mocking sound that hit me like fingernails on a chalkboard. "So we had to go farther. We had to literally make you read about it on her computer in order to get you to figure things out. But once you caught on, you were as predictable as we thought, taking the bait and charging out like an enraged bull. In the end you made it so very easy."

I did my best to keep a semblance of a smirk while she delivered her diatribe. "I may have taken the bait, but I can't imagine this..." I gestured to the car and Virgil. "...this is how it was supposed to go. Dragging us at gunpoint back to the scene of the crime after Mr. Clean here lets me escape through window? This was your plan?"

"Plans change, but the result will be the same." She turned her head away from me, and it was clear that our exchange was over.

A few minutes later, we pulled off on a side road for half a mile, eventually stopping amongst some dumpsters and scattered trash in an alleyway between a couple of stores at a warn out strip mall. We sat for a minute, evidently waiting for Lara, Virgil and I anxiously looking around while Danielle kept her gun on us, quietly whispering a couple of things to Shave-head.

Finally, Lara arrived in my car, parked in back of the limo and jumped out awkwardly, nearly falling down as rushed toward us. Trevor the Shave-head waited until she got to the limo and then climbed out of the driver's seat, opened the rear door to help Danielle out, taking the gun from her and keeping his eye on us the whole time. Shave-head started herding us toward our car as Lara stood next to Danielle, nervously rocking back and forth from one foot to the next to Danielle, mostly looking at her, but occasionally glancing over to Virgil and me.

I didn't know Lara anymore, didn't know her mind or understand her at all really. But it seemed pretty clear that she had very little understanding of Danielle, her plans or the eventual end game and I had to believe that if I could get her to see the truth, the plan might start to unravel. I tried to catch her eye, but it was too dark, so I called out to her, yelling out that she was making a mistake, that she was being duped. Trevor immediately brought a Taser to my neck and hissed an insistent warning that I stop making any noise at all. He shoveled Virgil into the front passenger seat of my car and pushed me into the back seat, forcing me to slide over to the driver's side. He climbed in afterwards and started talking in a low, threatening voice, the gun trained on me, the Taser at the back of Virgil's neck.

"Ok boys, this is the way it's going to be for the ride to Sycamore Hill. Any sound out of either of you...and I mean ANY sound, and Virgil here gets a shock. A second sound, a second shock at a higher setting. If either of you push me, I'll fucking shock him to death, OK? Got it?"

We nodded mutely in response.

Danielle led Lara by the hand to my side of the car, and knocked on my window, forcing Shave-head to lean across me and roll it down. She whispered something about keeping me in line and then pulled away, motioning him to keep the window open as she smirked at me.

Danielle turned to Lara and put her hands gently on her shoulders, commanding my wife's undivided, worshipful attention. She began speaking in a soft, soothing, sexy voice, just loud enough for me to make out that she was telling her how much she loved her, wanted her, was looking forward to being with her and that their time was almost there. She added that I was still the only thing that could get in her way and that Lara shouldn't listen to anything her bitter, jealous husband had to say. All through this rather sickening one-sided conversation of unadulterated lies, Lara signaled her agreement by nodding her head, almost like a child anxious to please a doting parent.

Danielle then gently put both hands on Lara's face and slowly moved in to kiss her, Lara accepting her lips with her eyes closed and her waiting mouth partially open . Lara was noticeably trembling and her knees buckled slightly, giving her the appearance of being considerably shorter than Danielle, even though they were roughly the same height. The kiss became increasingly passionate and sexual, Lara letting out little moans each time Danielle's tongue probed into her mouth, her left hand, the one without the gun, running up and down Danielle's side.

When the kiss finally broke, Lara was left panting as though she'd just run a desperate race while Danielle turned to smirk at me once again, making it clear that the kiss was mostly a performance meant to further rub my nose in the fact of the total sexual capitulation of my wife to her. Lara kept staring lovingly, expectantly at Danielle and I could only turn my head in impotent anger and frustration.

A few minutes later we were riding silently toward Sycamore Hill, Lara driving, Trevor still pointing a gun at me and holding a Taser to the back of Virgil's neck. Other than the occasional, muted sound of a passing car, we rode in utter silence, barely daring to breathe loudly, let alone speak.

I figured the drive to Sycamore Hill would be around an hour and there had been occasions when that seemed like a long time to me. But with the bleak reality that my life would likely be snuffed out at the end of the hour, I could feel the minutes ticking by like seconds, like I'd been pushed off a cliff and I could see the ground rushing up to me. I knew I should have been thinking about a plan, any plan, to try and get out of this mess alive, but my mind kept racing from topic to topic as the panic born of a fear of dying began to set in.

I thought of my parents and how they'd handle the news that I'd been killed in some sort of jealous rage, how my mom would likely blame my dad because he'd been the one to encourage me to be aggressive and confrontational. I thought of my friends and how I'd let work, married life and social laziness get in the way of enjoying their company. I thought of my work and my hobbies, sports and music and how I really enjoyed so many things in life. And I thought of Lara and shook my head in continued disbelief at what the woman I loved had become.

A couple of miles away from Sycamore Hill it came to me that since continuing to go along with Danielle's plan would mean death, that doing anything at all was better than voluntarily lying down in my grave. As we pulled up the drive I still had no other plan than to try and get through to Lara somehow, even if it meant risking a shock from Trevor.

Lara pulled my car off the driveway and parked it in a semi-concealed area behind some bushes that were immediately adjacent to the woods I'd navigated the night before. Trevor jumped out of the car and began barking out orders like a cantankerous guard dog, pulling open the doors and hustling Virgil and me out.

He tied a length of rope around my bound wrists and handed the other end to Lara who slipped the loop around her left hand that now also held a baton. Swearing softly he went back to the car and rummaged through the back seat for a moment until he produced another similar rope. He approached Virgil and ordered him to put his hands up so that he could rope him off also, but Virgil simply remained standing without moving, looked over to me and then back to Trevor and then, without any warning whatsoever, bolted for the woods.