The Lover. BEVERLY BARTON

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ dear, good night.”

      Bernie hung up the phone. When she told Robyn that their mother expected them for Sunday dinner, and that she was providing each of them with a potential husband, Robyn would throw a hissy fit. But in the end, she, like Bernie, would go to dinner and endure yet another matchmaking scheme concocted by a desperate grandmother wannabe.

      Jim Norton unlocked the front door of his rental duplex on Washington Street. While driving through town, he’d noticed that a great many of the streets in Adams Landing were named for presidents. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe. Before entering the house, he reached inside and felt for a light switch, which he quickly found. He had rented this place, sight unseen, fully furnished and move-in ready. He stepped inside, dropped his suitcase to the carpeted floor, then closed and locked the door behind himself.

      Scanning the living room, he noted the place looked like most furnished rentals. Clean and neat. Furniture, drapes, and carpets slightly worn. Not a home, just a place for a guy to hang his hat. He hadn’t had a real home in a long time. Not since he and Mary Lee divorced. He could have bought a house or even rented a nicer place and furnished it himself, but what was the point? While working as a lieutenant on the Memphis police force, he hadn’t spent much time at home. Slept and bathed there. And occasionally ate there. If he’d been given joint custody of Kevin, he probably would have bought a house, but Mary Lee had been given full custody and he’d gotten squat. Just visitation rights—and those visits were under Mary Lee’s supervision.

      He’d driven straight from Memphis this evening, across northern Mississippi and northern Alabama, taking Highway 72 all the way. Adams County was a small county nestled in the northeastern corner of Alabama, a stone’s throw from both the Tennessee and Georgia state lines, and the Tennessee River divided the county seat, Adams Landing, from its nearest neighbor, Pine Bluff.

      Jim’s neck was stiff and his bad knees hurt like hell. He’d made only one pit stop on his journey from his past to his future. His bleak future. Not that his future on the Memphis force had looked all that bright—not since he’d fallen from grace and an air of suspicion had surrounded him ever since.

      Jim left his suitcase there by the front door as he walked through the duplex, turning lights on and off as he went from the living room into the small efficiency kitchen. Then he backtracked and went into first one bedroom and then another. The bath was small, but clean, with a shower/tub combination. He’d rented a two-bedroom place despite the added expense because he wanted Kevin to have his own room when he came to visit.

      Leaving the bathroom light on, Jim went over to the bed and sat down. He should at least brush his teeth before turning in, but he thought maybe, just this once, he’d forgo his usual routine. After removing his shoes and socks and stripping down to his briefs, Jim flipped back the covers and crawled into bed.

      He lay there for several minutes, thinking he’d go right to sleep. But the longer he lay there, the more he realized that until he took something for the pain in his knees, he’d never go to sleep. He had two choices. Both were in his suitcase: either whiskey or the pain-killers the doctor had given him. He chose the prescription medicine. After bringing his suitcase into the bedroom and digging through his shave kit for the plastic bottle, he took one pill and went back to bed. He gazed up at the shadows flickering across the white popcorn ceiling. He had left the bathroom light on and closed the door almost shut. He hated the darkness, especially when he was in a strange place.

      He wished the pill would take effect soon. Not just to relieve the pain, but to knock him out. Otherwise, he’d think too much. Thinking about Mary Lee and Kevin and why he was here in this one-horse town was a useless exercise in torment.

      He’d met and fallen madly in love with Mary Lee at the University of Tennessee; then they’d married right after he graduated. There had been some good years. They’d been happy. For a while. Kevin’s birth had been the greatest day of Jim’s life. He’d never known you could love someone the way he loved his son. Back then, Jim had thought he had the world by the tail. Despite knee injuries destroying his dream of playing pro football, he had found a new and satisfying career as a Memphis police officer. He’d made detective fairly young and life had been good. Until his cockiness and stupid arrogance had cost his partner his life. After that, everything fell apart, including his marriage. When he’d found Mary Lee in bed with another man, he had wanted to kill them both. And he almost had. Almost.

      He had walked out of his house that day and filed for a divorce two weeks later. Forgiveness wasn’t a word in his vocabulary, because as far as he was concerned, some sins were unforgivable.

      For the past seven years, Mary Lee had made his life as miserable as possible, at first trying to turn Kevin against him, then later jerking him around about his visitation rights. So it hadn’t actually come as a great surprise to him when, after remarrying six months ago, she’d told him that she was moving with her new husband to Huntsville. Kevin’s stepdad had recently been transferred to the Rocket City.

      “You can drive to Huntsville a couple of times a year to see Kevin,” Mary Lee had said. “And he can come stay with you a week every summer.”

      “No way in hell!”

      He had known that going back to court wouldn’t do any good. Despite being a whore, Mary Lee wasn’t a bad mother. And Jim had proved by his actions years ago that he wasn’t such a good father. So he’d realized he had only one choice if he wanted to see his son on a regular basis. He had to move closer to Huntsville. It had taken him six months to find a job—the right job. One that paid him enough to live on and stay current with his child support payments. Being a chief deputy in Podunk was a demotion from being a lieutenant on the Memphis police force, and his yearly salary dropped by over twenty thousand. But he figured he’d do okay since the cost of living here was slightly less than in the big city.

      The only thing that mattered to Jim was that he’d now be living less than an hour away from his son.

      Stephanie wondered when he would return. Without a calendar or a clock, she had no way of knowing what day it was or what time. It could be twelve noon or twelve midnight. There were no windows in this room and the only light was a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, too high for her to reach without a ladder. Those first few days after he had abducted her, she had tried everything to escape, but soon realized that there was no way out except the way she’d come in, the single door at the top of the stairs through which he had dragged her. A week ago? Two weeks ago? To her, it seemed a lifetime ago.

      He didn’t keep her shackled any longer. She was free to roam about in the twelve-by-twelve room, which she felt certain was a partial basement, either under a house or a building of some kind. In the corner, surrounded by a four-foot cinder block stall, was a shower, commode, and sink, as if someone had once planned to turn this area into a spare bedroom and bath. The block walls had been painted yellow, which over time had faded to a dirty cream.

      The smell of mildew and mustiness permeated the entire room and everything in it, which wasn’t much. A metal bed, a chair, and a desk. He made her sit at the desk to eat when he brought her food, which he did almost every day. At first she had refused to eat; but then he had punished her, telling her that he would not allow her to starve herself to death.

      The first time he raped her, she’d fought him; but she soon learned that the harder she fought, the more severe the punishment. He never tortured her to the point where she passed out. At least not yet. Just enough to derive pleasure from her screams. Sometimes he would rape her with a bottle or a wooden phallus before climbing on top of her. And he liked to bite her. She had his teeth prints all over her body, as well as dozens of small burns from where he’d pressed lighted cigarettes on her skin. Most of the burns were on her buttocks and breasts.

      He СКАЧАТЬ