Author's Note: This chapter contains descriptions of sexual violence. Please use discretion when reading this chapter.
Chapter Ten
Everything was different, now that she was gone. The sounds of the city that made me jump out of my skin were louder, abrasive, and ever-present. The sun's glare was oppressive, the darkness of the night a nihilistic prison. I was anxious almost every moment of the day.
All of this, and I still couldn't understand nor explain what had happened. It was incomprehensible to me that I had actually made love with Alexandra Cabot; that it was not, in fact, one of my twisted fantasies borne out of some long-repressed desire that I had refused to acknowledge. Had she really told me that I was beautiful? Had she really looked as if she were about to cry, when she thought that I had left? And if she had – why?
The repercussions of all of this were inconceivable. And yet, somehow I dared to believe that I had received from her, every moment that we had ever spent together, some type of love; undefined, tenuous, unnamed.
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Henry Lawrence Adams, age 29. Caucasian male, single. Employed as an administrative assistant at the Law Offices of Grant & Sons, specializing in divorce.
Adams had been arrested previously, on three charges of felony voyeurism. He had also been a suspect in a case of burglary, wherein some of the victim's undergarments had been stolen, other articles of lingerie cut with scissors and destroyed.
A living victim had come forward, reporting that months ago, someone fitting Adams' description had followed her from the Law Offices of Grant & Sons to a nearby park, and attacked her with a rope. The suspect had fled when the victim screamed and began to draw attention from bystanders.
The classic pattern of escalation for compulsive sexual murderers: voyeurism, sexual burglary, sexual assault, and sexual murder.
Their episodes of violence always have a strong sexual component. They associate sexual gratification with degradation, torture and death. They often pose their victims' bodies in a sexually provocative manner, or engage in necrophilia after committing murder. A common method of attack is strangulation.
I seemed to have developed, in my warped frame of mind, a type of sick sympathy for those murderers who snap because of jealousy or betrayal. The killers who act out of warped love; love gone wrong, passionate rage against the object of desire. At least, I reasoned, those people could feel something – something out of the ordinary, something overpowering that ripped them from their normal lives and into an altered state. Sometimes, they couldn't even remember or recognize what they had done.
At least those offenders had a reason. Other times, there was no reason. There was simply instinct. Compulsive, repetitive instinct, reptilian eyes and parasitic bodies, invading the host.
No mercy for the struggling creatures pinned beneath them, pleading for their lives, having done nothing, transgressed in no way. No mercy for the truly innocent. Hatred, and revulsion, for the truly innocent.
We nailed Adams on a deadly cold Friday night, on the fire escape of the apartment building where 34-year-old Maya Jeffries resided. She was in the process of filing for divorce from her husband of two years. The couple was currently separated, and Maya lived alone.
Adams followed her out of the lawyer's office at 5:20. He offered her a ride, and she refused, saying that she had her own car. He then proceeded to follow her from a distance in his vehicle, as she ran errands, made several phone calls, stopped for coffee with a friend, and then returned to her apartment.
By the time she did return, there was no daylight remaining. It was pitch black, and quiet outside the building. Adams had scaled the fire escape. He was either looking for a window, or for a way inside.
"Henry Adams."
He turned around to face me. And he was Lewis.
The placid face, and the hollow eyes. He was Lewis, striking me with the back of his hand. Lewis, standing over me, forcing alcohol down my throat, laughing as I gasped for air, hitting me again, becoming aroused as he hit me, at the sight of my blood. I could feel his erection. I could feel his hand around my neck, pushing upwards. I could feel myself choking, the whole world getting darker.
I fell backwards from the blow, my head slamming against the railing. He had begun to sprint down the steps of the fire escape. His boots banged on the metal stairs. One. Two. Three steps. The sound was intolerable.
The difference... The difference between being broken... And thinking that you might be...
My breath returned to me. I couldn't get up after he had struck me, but I extended my leg, and he tripped. He fell head first down the stairs, and I thought that if I let him fall, he might die. There was, in fact, a good chance that he would die.
I wanted him, so badly, to die.
As he fell, I caught his hands in mine. I slammed the handcuffs on his wrists. As I did so, he managed to turn his head slightly. I saw a flash of pale blue eyes.
"Henry Adams, you are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent when questioned. Anything you say..."
It was an act of mercy.
