WALKING WITH ACHILLES
Chapter 18
It was rare for Al to be so startled that he couldn't move immediately, especially where his best friend was concerned. Now was one of those moments, and he stood frozen in the Imaging Chamber, watching a remorseless killer with a deadly sharp switchblade at Sam's throat. Moving slowly, Al stepped through the Imaging Chamber door, not hearing it close behind him as his gaze immediately locked with Sam's. One wrong move, even a sneeze, any added pressure at all and the tip of that switchblade would open Sam's carotid artery in less than the space of a heartbeat. If that happened, there would be nothing Al could do but stand there and watch his best friend in the world bleed to death.
"No!" he spat the denial, watching the angry, revenge-driven Derek forcing Sam further down the muddy path toward the bank of the little bayou some forty or fifty feet from the hedge. "Not on my watch," he finished his vow fervently. Mashing buttons on the handlink, Al ordered, his tone as sharp as his determination, "Ziggy, keep me centered on Sam!" The words were hardly past his lips when he suddenly found himself standing some six feet from the edge of the Petit Lis Bayou. Glancing around to orient himself to the new location, Al spared a quick look up at the darkly overcast sky and the lofty, rustling treetops swaying and pitching overhead. Shifting his gaze toward the bayou, he squinted slightly, scanning the surface of the water being thickly peppered by the heavy rain, as well as the skittering rivulets driven by the wind stirred up by the storm fleeing across its top. All of that was noted then forgotten as Al caught sight of something in his peripheral vision, turning quickly to see Derek and Sam emerge from the short path of shadows leading down from the ninth hole of the golf course. Like iron shavings compelled by the nearness of a magnetic, so quickly did the leaper and observer's gaze find one another for an instant--but it was enough.
With one hand clamped tightly on Tommie's left arm and the other holding the switchblade at his wife's back, Derek forced her down the path. When she slipped a bit, he jerked at her arm, tightening his grip to the point that she whimpered at the vise-like pressure as he enabled her keep her footing. That lasted only until they were within a few feet of the water's edge where he abruptly shoved his wife to her knees in the mud. With effortless ease he applied pressure to the release lever on the side of the switchblade, causing the blade to disappear within the body of the instrument again then slipped it into his pocket. For a second, Derek glared down into his wife's clearly scared face, his eyes flitting to her bound hands secured to her trembling body. Cuffing the side of her head sharply in warning, Derek turned to stalk carefully down to the water's edge.
The instant Derek's back was turned, Al hurried to Sam, leaning down a bit toward his friend, looking pointedly at the leaper's bound hands. "Sam, what the hell is happening?" he demanded, keeping his voice somewhat low.
"Shhhh!" Sam hissed softly, his tone clearly desperate for the hologram to comply.
Al's eyebrows curved downward in a frown at being shushed. Darting a glance toward Derek who was just standing at the water's edge and looking out over it, he turned back to Sam just as the leaper whispered, "Because he knows you were in the house this morning."
"WH…." Al almost shouted, just managing to drop the volume of his reaction. "Sam, what do you mean he knows I was in the house?" Seeing the way Sam's gaze kept darting in the direction of the water, he demanded, albeit, in a whisper, "Talk to me before slime ball comes back."
Just having the hologram of his friend near him again helped Sam hang onto the determination not to capitulate to Derek's intimidation. Shaking his head a bit to clear the rain running into his eyes, he turned his head toward Al, tilting it slightly to look up at him. "I talked with the police…"
"How'd that go?"
Sam gave a quick sigh and let his breath out softly. "By the time I left there, I got the idea that the detective I talked to figured that I…Tommie wasn't quite all there," he answered in a sort of stage whisper. "After that I went to Tommie's job." Sam darted another glance toward Derek, who hadn't moved from where he stood at the water's edge, then again looked up at the hologram. As he looked at Al, he couldn't stop the shivering driven primarily by fear, but now added to by the clammy chill of his sodden clothes and the incessant rain keeping them soaked. The cold, however didn't have a chance to deter the leaper, and the fear, while strong, was slowly beginning to lose its grip as Sam started to speak, hesitating only for a second to get his chattering teeth under control before going on.
"After we finished at the second house," Sam whispered hurriedly, "when we went out to get in the van, Derek was waiting for me." His chin quivered and he gritted his teeth a moment to stop them chattering. "H..he laid it on thick for the other team members, saying he'd was worried about Tommie. That he wa..wanted to take her home and take good care of her. Then, on the way here, he was yelling about Tommie two-timing him with, as he put it, 'a man older than Tommie's…father.'" He saw the immediate understanding in Al's eyes. "When he said that, something you said during some other leap came back to me – about how little kids, animals and the mentally absent being able to see you. And…" he now indicated his bound wrists, "here I am. Uh oh," he murmured softly, his instincts shifting back into high gear as his gaze strayed back toward the water. Fear again set in, trying to reclaim supremacy over the leaper's mind, when Sam saw that while he was talking to Al, Derek had waded out about knee deep into the water, and was now bent over, his arms immersed up to his biceps, apparently searching for something beneath the surface. "What's he doing?"
Sam's reminder about a comment the Observer had made countless leaps ago, though it took a moment, brought quickly back to Al a couple of the leaps that had contributed to that saying. Almost immediately, Al remembered another leap when the man Sam had been sent to help, had at one point, looked him right in the eye and demanded to know who he was. It was that last memory that started Al's fingers flying over the buttons as he issued a command to Ziggy to make any necessary 'fine tuning' adjustments to his brainwave patterns to prevent Derek Emerson from getting another glimpse of him.
As he waited for Ziggy's confirmation that she had accomplished the task, he thought back to the moment or so he'd spent in the Emersons' bedroom checking on Derek while Sam waited at the foot of the stairs that morning. It gave Al a case of cold goosebumps all over his body to realize that he had been not just seen, but seen and heard. 'If only I'd looked closer at him, I might have seen that he wasn't asleep, and Sam might not be in this situation' he silently castigated himself. However, he wasn't allowed to dwell on an endless looping of 'if only'. His attention was jerked back to the moment, the sound of Sam's warily uttered, "Uh oh," causing him to straighten up and turn quickly to follow Sam's line of sight. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled even more intensely upon seeing where Derek Emerson was. Sparing a look at the handlink, he pressed a familiar sequence of buttons, his voice low, his tone intense as he ordered, "Ziggy, put me as close as you can to Derek Emerson…off to one side…and not too close." Instantly, the Observer found himself relocated to a position that made him look like he was standing on the surface of the rain-agitated water two or three feet to the left of Derek Emerson.
'What the hell are you doing?' he wondered as he watched the other man's activity. Moving a step closer, Al leaned a bit toward Derek, narrowing and sharpening his focus, trying to peer down into the opaque water. Then he felt a streak of icy cold run down his spine when he heard a soft, "There you are," and a moment later the woman-hating serial killer straightened up, one fist twined tightly in a mass of long, wet blonde hair. The body of the woman to which the hair was still attached rose slowly up, breaking the surface of the water with a little splash. Al could have sworn he felt his skin literally crawling when Derek tugged on the corpse's hair; the action made the body roll slightly in the water in Al's direction, seemingly causing her dead eyes to look into the Observer's own dark eyes. As Derek turned in the opposite direction from where Al stood watching him, and returned to the shore, hauling behind him the water-logged body of Allison Kent, Al had Ziggy reposition him beside Sam. For several seconds, he and the leaper silently watched as Derek bent down, grabbed the body under its arms to drag it halfway out of the water then drop it again in the mud.
"Al, who is that?" Sam whispered, his gaze fixed on the macabre sight just a few feet from him. He vigorously shoved away the scene that flashed through his mind - himself lying cold and lifeless in the mud at the feet of a cold-blooded killer.
The muscles along Al's jaws tightened a moment before he said bluntly, "That was Allison Kent. At least she's still intact."
"Intact?" Sam questioned but even that was forgotten when he saw Derek turn away from the body on the ground and start back toward him. Even through the rain and gloomy overcast, there was no mistaking the fury burning in the man's eyes as he walked up to Sam. As Derek drew nearer, Sam looked up into his eyes and tried to reason with him.
"Derek, please…d..don't d..d..do this," he began, his teeth chattering lightly.
Derek's steps slowed, stopping only when he stood directly in front of his kneeling wife. Fury boiled inside him as he looked down at her, scanning Tommie's bruised and frightened face, terror plain in her eyes as she pleaded, but her pleading only stirred up the heat of the bitterness and resentment simmering inside him. As it had for each of his previous victims, and now with his wife, it just confirmed to Derek the two-faced fickleness of women, and he drew back one hand and slapped Tommie's face hard.
"I thought you were different, Tommie!" he shouted down at the woman on her knees. "But no! You're just like all those other air-kissing, 'I've got money so I'm better than you' rich bitches I have to deal with! You string a guy along until you get what you want and when you get tired of him, you toss him aside and go looking for fresh meat. Well not this time, Tommie!" Derek shouted. Deep rumbles of thunder seemed to echo his fury. "Not this time!"
When Derek started slapping him as if bent on trying to remove his head from his shoulders, all Sam could do was duck his head in an attempt to protect himself as much possible. He tried a couple of times to get a word in edgewise, to try and counter the accusations, but it wasn't until Derek paused to catch a breath that Sam got a fleeting chance to speak. Knowing he was risking, at the very least, a punch in the face, Sam cautiously raised his head and tipped his head back just enough to peer up through the steady heavy downpour at the man standing over him. He licked his lips then dared to challenge the blame with which he…Tommie was being charged, saying, "You're wrong, Derek. I would never…."
"YOU LYING WHORE!" Derek roared. The heat of his fury rose up like a ball of flame from a ruptured gas main, and he resumed raining heavy, teeth-rattling slaps and punches against his wife's head and every part of her body within reach. When she ducked her head in an effort to protect herself, Derek screamed, "I SAW him, Tommie! I HEARD him! " Just uttering the damning accusations were enough to further inflame his outrage, and Derek grabbed a handful of his wife's hair and jerked her head back viciously, bending her back until she cried out. He shook her head violently then with his other hand snatched the switchblade out of his pocket again, pressed the lever to expose the blade then put the razor sharp point to the pulse throbbing wildly in the side of her neck as he continued to accuse her.
"I SAW HIM, TOMMIE! He was in our bedroom…OUR BEDROOM...this morning standing at the foot of the bed! I'm laying there, injured and you send your lover upstairs to…what? Make sure that I was still out of it so I wouldn't interrupt you while you were screwing him downstairs?"
"No, Derek!" Sam gasped then sucked in his breath at the feel of the razor sharp blade pressing against the carotid artery in the left side of his neck. Though soaked to the skin, at that moment, Sam's mouth was drier than an Alabama cotton field in mid-July.
"I heard the two of you talking at the bottom of the stairs!"
Then another darker, more provoking thought occurred to him and with a furious roar Derek let loose more backhanded slaps around his wife's head and face even as she attempted to avoid the hits. "No!" he screamed. "You're worse than they are, Tommie! You're just like my mother! You're just as stubborn and thoughtless and selfish a bitch as she was! You denied me, Tommie. You denied me, just like she did. You, and all those other bitches like you, denied me the chance to get back the lifestyle that should have been mine." Pausing to catch a breath, Derek stood over the bound woman visibly shaking on the ground in front of him. Even the chill of the rain and wind wasn't enough to cool his rage. Panting lightly, he added, his tone icy in comparison to his temper, "But that's about to end."
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Like countless other hair-raising times in past leaps, Al wished he could switch places with Sam and handle the situation for him. Now, as with all of those other times, Al could only school himself to keep his cool and his wits about him. In spite of wanting to yell, to encourage Sam to try and fight back, he remained quiet because at this moment, Derek Emerson was the human equivalent of the nitroglycerin to which Al had likened him a few hours before to Verbena. The least little thing, even something so small as Sam flicking his gaze toward the Observer could have dire, possibly even fatal, consequences. So, standing there, ostensibly within arm's reach of his friend, the Observer just bit his tongue at the sight of the switchblade at Sam's throat again, praying for GTFW to give him just the smallest chance to gain his friend's attention for a few seconds.
It was a small sound, like a twig crackling underfoot that snagged the Observer's attention away from Sam. As Derek Emerson continued to rant, Al turned his head to look in the direction from which the sound had come. He scanned the area but saw nothing and turned back, but he didn't get fully turned toward Sam again when…
...crack...crack...
This time Al didn't wonder. He knew what he'd heard, and had Ziggy pinpoint and center him on whatever had snapped those twigs. Yet again he had to bite his tongue to keep from yelling, this time though out of gratitude, when he found himself standing to one side of a man with his weapon draw and ready as he peered cautiously around the broad tree trunk behind which he was hiding. Al didn't need to see a badge to figure out that the man was a cop, likely a detective since he was wearing a regular suit instead of a uniform.
"Thank God," Al whispered fervently under his breath after a moment then frowned slightly when he saw the man turn his head to glance in the direction beyond the Observer. Turning, Al looked around, quickly spotting another figure – a woman – also with her gun drawn and ready, who acknowledged the eye contact with her partner with a couple of quick nods. But for as glad as he was that GTFW had decided to help Sam, there was one small matter that could still see this situation end in his friend's death. The Observer's mind raced as he scanned the distance between the tree where the detective was hiding to where Sam was on his knees and at Derek's mercy. The solution clicked into place in his thoughts and Al didn't hesitate to put it into motion.
"Ziggy, put me next to Sam," Al called out. The words were barely out of his mouth when he found himself once again beside his friend still at the mercy of Derek Emerson's murderous, revenge-bent rage.
For several more seconds, he didn't utter a sound, watching and waiting until Derek at last removed the blade from Sam's neck before he made any sound at all and then, speaking just loud enough for Sam to hear him clearly.
"Sam, don't look at me, just listen," Al instructed, enunciating each word precisely. "There's a cop behind one of the trees about thirty feet behind you to the right. I don't who he is or how he got to be here; what's important is that he's here. But the sticky part, is that if he tries to rush in here to save you, Derek will see him and... and he'll probably cut your throat before the guy gets halfway to you." He paused just long enough to lick his lips quickly then went on. "If you can manage to fall over and maybe wiggle around so that when slime ball goes to get you up again, he's turned around...facing the water... then that cop just might have a chance to jump Derek."
If Al hadn't been positive that there was no way that Derek Emerson could hear him, he would have sworn that that's what had happened when Derek straightened up for a moment, switchblade still in hand and glaring down at Sam then reached his free hand toward his friend. "Now, Sam, now!" he yelled.
At the mercy of a madman, in the midst of the continuing physical abuse and intimidation, and hurting and shaking from fear and cold, Sam mentally grabbed at the strand of hope in the form of Al telling him about the cop, and held on tight. With his heart thudding like a trip hammer in his chest, he watched Derek stand up then in the next moment when he reached his free hand towards him, Sam saw his chance and went for it like his life depended on it...and it did. He wasn't pretending when he reacted, crying out wildly, "OH GOD! DEREK! PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!" When Derek cursed and grabbed at him, Sam deliberately threw himself backwards and began kicking and scrabbling with his feet and legs, struggling to roll over in the mud so he was facing the path and the trees lining it, behind one of which was a man, a police officer who was, quite likely, his only hope of escaping becoming another one of Derek Emerson's victims. Hearing Derek's cursing escalate to screaming, Sam, having managed to get rolled over, now on his belly in the mud and ignoring the pain in his bound hands and wrists enduring his own weight upon them, looked toward the trees, but he saw nothing. But Al had said the man was there and he was going to hang onto that, do everything he possibly could until...
'...until he can get his hands on this maniac,' Sam's own instinct to survive and trust in his friend refused to let his thoughts focus on anything but hanging onto that strand of hope.
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With a roar of rage, Derek got out of the way of his wife's frantically kicking feet. Moving around so he was facing her, he used the side of one of his boots to cuff Tommie against one side of her head. When she cried out and stopped struggling for a moment, Derek moved with the swiftness of a falcon plummeting to capture its prey in mid-flight, grabbing a handful of his wife's hair and pulling her head back so he could see her face somewhat, then shook her head. "Stop, Tommie!" he shouted. As he did so, Derek spared a few seconds to glance around to get his bearings, his gaze going immediately to the body of his latest victim where it lay at the water's edge of the little bayou. "Stop it, or I'll snap your neck right here and now and then dump your useless, whoring body in the bayou for alligator bait right along side Allison!"
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Under cover of the heavy downpour and accompanying constant deep rumbles of thunder, upon reaching the opening through which he had seen the two figures disappear. Boo Lanson hesitated just long enough to risk a cautious glance through the opening then darted as quietly as he could through the opening, keeping to the shadows. From behind each tree where he paused, Boo risked being seen, peering carefully around it to get a look at the couple now close to the edge of the little bayou who, he would be willing to bet, were Derek and Tommie Emerson. As he watched the couple, just waiting for an opportunity to make his move, the veteran detective's gut instinct told him that if his partner hadn't paid attention to her own instincts, Tommie Emerson likely would have ended up the alligator bait that her husband had just shouted at her. Only because Siena Jackson hadn't let a practical joke cloud her instincts, did Boo and she now have a chance to save Tommie Emerson from a gruesome fate.
Another flash of lightning illuminated the area and a flicker of reflected light caught Boo's attention again. This time he caught a glimpse of the point of origin of the flash. Seeing the knife in the one of the enraged man's hands kept Boo where he was. He waited hoping that luck or fate would work in Tommie Emerson's favor and give him at least a chance to rescue her. Like the vast overall majority of people in law enforcement, Boo didn't like having to draw his weapon. He liked even less having to fire it, which he'd only done twice in twelve years on the job. In spite of the rain running down his face and into his eyes, he kept his gaze focused on the scene unfolding some thirty feet from him. He didn't want to shoot Derek Emerson but he would if it came to that.
He wondered a moment later when it seemed like the Emerson woman was talking, seemingly to herself, but dismissed that when he saw Derek Emerson wade out into the water. That wondering grew when the man bent down and began feeling around beneath the water for something. The wondering vanished when he watched Derek Emerson straighten up then haul the body of a woman onto the muddy narrow shore of the bayou then return to threaten his wife again.
While primarily focused on the scene unfolding on the narrow muddy bank of the little bayou, Boo did flick his gaze around every few seconds, peering at his surroundings through the heavy rain. It was during one of those moments that his gaze was caught by a movement off to his right. Immediately he looked toward it, only relaxing minutely when a weak flicker of lightning let him catch a glimpse of a familiar, if sodden, head of red hair. Siena. They communicated from their respective hiding places with hand signals and head nods, reaching an agreement in the space of seconds. It was just as well, because it was at that moment that both detectives' attention was jerked back to the terrified woman on her knees and now begging for her life. They watched as she fell backwards, doing everything she could to escape her husband's murderous intentions.
Every muscle and sinew in Boo Lanson's body was tensed, adrenaline pouring into his bloodstream like a cataract at Niagara Falls but still he hesitated. Experience as well as instinct was what enabled Boo to let a few more seconds escape as he watched Derek Emerson's quick move to subdue his wife's struggles. "Come on," he murmured under his breath. "Just give me a chance to take him out. Just a shot..." Boo had no way of knowing that a man in holographic form had appeared at his side just as he whispered those words. Neither was he aware of that hologram disappearing from his side just as fast, reappearing beside the figure all of them saw as Tommie Emerson. Again, in anticipation of getting a clear shot at Derek Emerson, he continued sighting down the barrel of his weapon. In the next instant though, something caused him to break his intent sighting and after another moment he quickly holstered his gun. Not once as he did so did Boo Lanson's focus move so much as a centimeter from the scene on the muddy bank ahead of him.
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Once his wife quit struggling, Derek used her hair to roughly aid her in getting onto her knees again, and then pulled her head back until her throat was exposed.
"There's no one around to hear you scream, Tommie," he warned her coldly, leaning down close to her face to glare at her, bringing the switchblade up before her eyes. He watched her blue eyes widen, saw her swallow hard before straightening up again. Grabbing the front of her shirt just above her left breast, Derek nicked the material then used his hand to rip and tear away the patch of material on which Tommie's name had been embroidered. He glanced at it then stepped around her.
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When he started breathing again after watching Derek cutting the front of his shirt, Sam waited until the man straightened up and was looking at the patch. He started to speak but his teeth chattered and he clamped them together a moment. Looking up again and finding Derek's malevolent gaze fixed on him, he dared to speak.
"Wh...what are you going to do with that?" he asked.
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Derek glanced first at the bit of soggy blue knit material then smiled down at his wife. He had to raise his voice a bit to be heard over the thunder rumbling through the dark sky. "This little bit of your shirt with your name on it is going into one of Allison's hands," he said. "That way, IF the cops ever find what's left of her … and you… it'll eventually lead them back to you," he said, almost casually as he studied the bit of fabric then looked down at her again. "They'll figure that when you dragged the body into the water, you disturbed a wild alligator who dragged you under, drowning you before it made a meal of you." Seeing the heavy trembling that enveloped his wife's kneeling figure at that, Derek mocked her, dangling the bit from her shirt before her eyes. "Wanna watch me give it to Allison to hang onto?"
A cruel smirk came across his face when she ducked her head. "I'll be right back, honey. Don't go no where," he continued mocking Tommie then walked down to the water's edge. There he wedged the bit of ripped cloth into Allison Kent's cold, rigid right hand.
After studying the corpse a moment, he leaned down and with the ease of experience, used the switchblade to slice off the corpse's nose then returned to his very soon to be late wife. He took a twisted pleasure in showing it to Tommie, so much so that when she didn't raise her head when he told her to do so, Derek bent down to hold the severed nose before her eyes. When Tommie shrank back as much as she could, the cruel amusement vanished from his visage. "It's a nice addition to the rest of my trophies." For a moment, he studied Allison's nose, even shifted his hand a bit causing it to tumble around on his palm. His amusement with the action dissipated with the same speed it had emerged. With care, Derek put his hand, still with severed body part in it, into his pocket and withdrew a small empty sandwich bag. Depositing Allison Kent's nose into the bag, he sealed the bag then held it up at eye level in the rain, looking at it from different angles then shoved the bag into his pants pocket. For a moment husband and wife stared into each other's eyes before he spoke, his manner calmer, his expression triumphant as he said loudly to be heard over another rumble of thunder, "That bag is plenty big enough to hold another trophy, Tommie and it's going to...right now."
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As Al heard Derek's ominous threat, the handlink chose that instant to chirp and he spared a few precious seconds of focus to retrieve the information Ziggy was transmitting to him.
"What is it, Ziggy?" he asked sharply.
"I have recalculated the probabilities for this leap," Sam's brainchild hybrid computer related. "As of this moment, there is an eighty-seven point seven percent probability that Dr. Beckett will be killed within the next two minutes and thirty-five seconds."
Hearing that, the Observer's mind processes went to Mach 3, his attention continuously shifting from his friend to Derek. Looking back up the path, he scanned the clump of trees, his focus sharpening as he saw a shadow move and then kept moving. His already racing pulse increased as he saw that the police officer had moved into the open and had begun to make his move toward Derek and Sam. Think! What can Sam do to keep this bastard focused on him? Suddenly the answer leapt into his thoughts. Moving to Sam's side, Al spoke crisply, keeping his comments concise and to the point. He didn't even flinch like Derek and Sam both did in reflexive reaction to an especially deep boom of thunder.
"Sam," he said, pitching his voice to be heard clearly over the heavy rain and thunder. "That cop I told you about is moving this way right now, buddy. But you've got keep Derek's attention focused on you if that cop's gonna have a chance to get to him before..." There was no need for him to finish the sentence.
Moving around Derek and Sam, Al leaned down, positioning himself so that the leaper could look at him without making Derek suspicious. Al took a quick breath and started with the first thing that came into his mind from his conversation with Tommie Emerson. As it turned out, it was the last thing Tommie had told him. "Sam, tell him 'no'!" he urged. Positioned as he was, the Observer had, as much as was possible with the seeming torrential downpour, an unobscured look at Sam's eyes. He clearly saw the frantic unspoken question in those green eyes: Why? and he answered immediately.
"When I talked with Tommie a little while ago," Al said, keeping his response concise and to the point, "she said that telling Derek 'no' is what triggers him. It's a long story, but it stems from when he and his mom were disowned by her parents. His grandparents were filthy rich, and when Derek's mother, their only child, married some guy outside the social register after Derek's dad died, they disowned her and their grandson. He was born into wealth and apparently got used to getting and having whatever he wanted that money could buy. His mom telling her father 'no' and getting cut off from all that old money was probably what started it all. It finally got to a point where he couldn't take rich women brushing him off or telling him 'no', so he started killing every woman he became involved with who told him 'no'. My guess is that he cuts their noses off so they can't ever look down their noses again." He paused then added, his tone grim,
"Sam, Tommie told me about the trophies this sonofabitch is talking about. She says they're in a box in the closet under a pile of sweaters." Al went on, not pulling any punches, "Tommie didn't come right out and say what the trophies are, but seeing what he did to Allison, over there, I'd bet the farm that they're the noses of each of the eight women he's killed so far. No...no, nine women, counting the Kramer woman...the one the cops found in the bathtub yesterday?... he's murdered nine women in the last seventeen months. No," he corrected himself again. "It's ten now, counting Allison over there." Glancing at Tommie Emerson's murderous husband, Al urged, "Sam, try to get him to talk about Allison."
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Listening to what the Observer was telling him, what Sam didn't dare do was take his eyes from the other man's face for even a second to glance at Al. All he could do was pray that Al's suggestion would be enough to keep him alive long enough for the law officer to get to Derek. Blinking rapidly against the rain running into his eyes, Sam peered up at Derek. "Wh…why did you kill her? A..Allison, I mean," Sam asked. He almost wished he hadn't when the mocking triumphant expression on Derek's face reverted suddenly to one of fury.
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Derek Emerson's expression darkened as he leaned down toward her, shouting. "Because I'm sick and tired of rich bitches like you and every other spoiled brat bitch like you, who get their jollies outta stringing me along." Releasing his hold on her arm, Derek grabbed his wife by the front of her throat and squeezed hard. While she gasped for breath, he put the blade to the side of her face at an angle that enabled her to glimpse the razor sharp edge, liking the way Tommie's eyes fixed on it as he continued to rant. "Every friggin' one of you bitches looked down your noses at me, but I put a stop to that. And now I'm gonna put an end to the two-faced, cheating, lying rich bitch I married!" The rage within Derek was rising, driving him to grab Tommie by one arm before straightening up and hauling her to her feet. As she staggered a bit getting her footing, Derek pressed the point of the switchblade against Tommie's belly, his tone dangerous as he snarled, "Move! It's time for you and Allison to get acquainted."
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"To where?" Sam dared to ask when Derek had dragged him to his feet again. In those few precious seconds, Sam risked a look towards the Observer but even Al was forgotten as Sam got a clear look towards the path. The sight of a man – the police officer dressed in a rain-drenched dark suit-- charging full bore through the heavy gray downpour of rain toward he and Derek was, as far as Sam was concerned, the best sight he had ever witnessed in his life, bar none. Suddenly, the fear that Derek Emerson had instilled in him from the first moment of this leap right up to the moment was vanquished. Fear and uncertainty were flushed from his being and mind as the leaper felt a combined surge of adrenaline, the Beckett stubbornness and the determination not to give up rushed throughout his body as Sam Beckett screamed, "NO!" at the top of his lungs.
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Experience, instincts and not a little luck all combined in the moment that Boo Lanson and Siena Jackson, both watching the couple intently, heard Tommie Emerson scream, "NO!" Neither consciously thought about their actions as each charged from his or her hiding place, Boo a moment faster than Siena, charging through the heavy downpour, praying that he would reach Derek Emerson and take him down before the raging killer had time to use the knife he held on his wife.
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Long afterwards, Al would find himself hard pressed, when looking back to this particular leap, to describe what happened next. Perhaps it was the huge mushrooming boom of thunder, rumbling and reverberating through the dark skies overhead with such intensity that he could have sworn he felt it in the Imagining Chamber. Or maybe it was the startling and unsettling feeling when suddenly the figure of Detective Boo Lanson charged through his aura. Whichever it was, the one thing he knew without doubt, was that the tension-riddled scenario rushed to a crescendo when he heard his friend scream, not in pain but in determined defiance.
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Using the advantage of Derek still hanging onto his arm, Sam took a step back then jerked his arm hard, wrenching it free. In that same moment a massive crackling crash preceded a bolt of lightning that suddenly illuminated the entire area with a brilliance that reminded him of a powerful search strobe. But Sam didn't notice any of it. What he did notice, was how, in the midst of his raging intent to murder his wife, at the instant of the sudden powerful illumination caused by the lightning, Derek jerked back slightly, hesitating for a split second, his expression plainly startled. The leaper didn't wonder why, instead taking advantage of the moment to again scream, "NO!" and unconsciously praying that it would be long enough for the police officer to reach them and prevent his, Sam Beckett's, untimely death at the hands of the serial killer who was Tommie Emerson's husband.
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Tommie's sudden and unexpected surge of strength as she wrenched free of his grasp momentarily diverted Derek's rage, but in the next split second it boiled up again and he grabbed at her, screaming curses. However, in the other half of that split second Derek Emerson froze, his rage as abruptly disrupted as if he'd slashed it with the knife in his hand, for as the flash of lightning illuminated the area through the heavy rain, suddenly he wasn't looking at his wife. Rather, he was face to face with a man of lean build and close to his own height, a gray streak in his brown hair above his left eye, his face battered. The man was glaring defiantly at him. Derek's mouth sagged open then closed and reopened confusedly as words tried to make the transition from his boggled mind to his lips. Only one word managed to complete that journey, falling uncertainly from his lips as he stared into the unknown man's angry green eyes. "Tommie?" Somewhere on the confused fringes of his thoughts, it occurred to Derek that it was like the man had just been waiting for him to utter his wife's name before he reacted.
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As the tension and confusion of the frenzied conglomeration of action and reaction of the moment continued to multiply exponentially, through it all, Sam Beckett's eyes never strayed from the startled visage of his would be murderer. He didn't hear the Observer's own frantic shouting in an attempt to be heard over the intense spring storm, urging him to keep Derek's focus on him. He didn't see the figures of Detectives Boo Lanson and Siena Jackson as they tore toward him, converging on him and Derek from different angles. Sam was unaware of everything except two things. The first was the sight of Derek's confusion. Somewhere in the speed of light computations that was his mind seeing, assessing, resolving and reacting to the visual and emotional facts exploding all around him, the second and more important realization was that his would-be murderer's hesitation was a direct result of the supercharged electrical activity of the lightning interfering with the aura surrounding him, thereby allowing Derek Emerson to see Sam for himself. For the first time since he'd leaped into Tommie Emerson's life, Sam had the upper hand, a fact that triggered an additional surge of adrenaline into his bloodstream, and there was no way in hell he was about to relinquish it. Seeing Derek jerk back, shocked even worse when another flash of lightning again interrupted Tommie Emerson's aura that surrounded him, Sam seized the advantage with the tenacity of a confronted badger.
Though still bound, Sam balled his hands into fists as much as possible then slammed them in the middle of Derek's chest with all his might and screamed, "No, Derek! I'm not afraid of you any more. I will not go down into that water!" He had no way of knowing how the cathartic effect of venting his own fear, as well as the reclamation of his confidence in himself, was reaching across time and infusing into his host. All Sam Beckett knew as he stayed right with Derek, following when he fell back a bit, unknowingly circling a few steps that brought him parallel to the bank of the little bayou where Allison Kent's body lay, was that Derek Emerson had lost his dominating stranglehold of fear over him.
As he took another step at the man, for a few seconds, Sam was caught off-guard when Al's voice managed to pierce his intense focus, screaming, "Sam!" just as his mind processed the sound of running feet. Less than a heartbeat later a flying blur of solid movement in the person of Detective Boo Lanson plowed into Derek Emerson like a runaway freight train, sending both men tumbling and rolling down the shallow muddy bank. Sam moved a step closer toward the two men, each now struggling to gain advantage over the other. Through the grey veil of the rain, it was the sight of Derek raising his hand still clutching the switchblade that had the same reaction on him as the sight of his true appearance had had on Derek, freezing the leaper where he stood. Subconsciously Sam realized that, by the angle ofDerek's hand as he slashed it downward toward the policeman over whom he had momentary advantage, a single swipe would likely mortally wound the man, but Sam couldn't move. Even the clear sound of Al screaming, "Sam, do something! He's gonna kill him!" couldn't break through and allow him to move to the officer's aid.
He was thankful beyond understanding when there was suddenly another blur of movement as a second figure flashed past him, rushing at the men on the ground with just enough time for that person to kick the knife out of Derek Emerson hands. The sight of that person –a woman—leaping into the fray, aiding her partner in subduing Derek had its own manner of catharsis on Sam. It was only as he watched the two law officers handcuffing Derek and hauling him to his feet that Sam recognized the woman as Siena Jackson, the detective he'd been certain had written him off as just another disturbed but basically harmless nut. It was in that second that another wave of revitalizing catharsis surged through Sam. He went willingly with that surge, rushing toward the three muddy figures standing at the water's edge, not stopping until he had plowed into Derek and sent him falling backwards across Allison Kent's corpse. He felt hands on his arms restraining him but that didn't matter to Sam as something Al had told him just moments ago about Tommie Emerson's husband flashed into his mind.
Leaning down toward the fallen killer, the leaper glared at Derek and screamed, "NO, Derek! I will not take the fall for this murder, nor any of the others that you've committed." Not breaking his locked gaze on Derek's face, Sam continued, every word he was saying scrubbing away every last crumb of fear that the man laying in the arms of one of his dead victims had created in him. "Because when the police search our house and find that little box on the shelf in your closet, they're going to lock you up and throw away the key and then you'll have years to listen to lots of people telling you NO!"
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Under other circumstances, Siena Jackson wouldn't have hesitated to physically force Tommie Emerson away from her husband. However, at this moment, recalling with crystal clarity her initial reaction upon seeing this same battered and plainly frightened woman a few hours before, all Siena did was apply just enough pressure on Tommie Emerson's arm to hold her where she stood. A quick glance at her partner, now standing slightly to one side and behind Derek Emerson, a steely grip on the man's right arm, allowed her to see in Boo Lanson's eyes his agreement with her decision about dealing with Tommie. Neither did Siena try to prevent Tommie Emerson's movement as the petite, battered woman got right up in her husband's face and screamed at him, "NO, DEREK! NO, NO, NO, NO, NO! I hope you hear it every day you're in prison. And I hope to God that somebody says it to you the day you're executed! NO!"
Deciding that she really did need to move Tommie Emerson out of the way to allow her partner to get Derek Emerson away from the body still half in the water, Siena hesitated just a moment longer. As she quietly but firmly urged the young wife to move with her up the path, Detective Siena Jackson felt a sort of sense of satisfaction on behalf of the many battered women she had met and dealt with in her still young career. At the top of the path and just before stepping through the opening in the hedge and onto the green of the ninth hole, as she took a moment to remove the rope binding Tommie Emerson's wrists to her body, Siena didn't chide or admonish Tommie when the battered young woman took one small step toward reclaiming her sense of self worth and dignity as she shouted back down at her handcuffed husband, "One more thing, Derek…NO, I will not stay married to you a second longer than I have to!" before allowing herself to be guided a further, if only temporarily brief, distance from her husband.
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It was, without a doubt in his mind, the most chilling and frightening moment Al Calavicci could remember of all of Sam's leaps to date. Not even the leap during which Sam had come within seconds of being electrocuted in the electric chair came close. Only when he watched the male detective tackle Derek Emerson did Al realize how hard his heart was pounding, as well as the fact that he'd been holding his breath. He felt like someone had opened a spigot and drained every last drop of his strength as the adrenaline began to dissipate from his body.
He had tried to get Sam's attention, once it was clear that his best friend was safe from the serial killer now in custody. Then, he stopped, choosing instead to watch and listen to Sam's emotional venting at Derek. When the female detective at last guided Sam up the path and onto the green of the ninth hole of the Kent estate golf course, Al had Ziggy recenter him beside his friend. In spite of the severe bruising on Sam's face, in spite of seeing Sam trembling as he chaffed his wrists, his teeth chattering because of his sodden clothes and the rain, it was the most relaxed he had seen the leaper in the last thirty plus hours. He didn't say a word as Siena Jackson told Sam, her voice firm yet still understanding, to stay put while she went to help her partner.
"D..don't worry," Sam told Siena, his teeth chattering like castanets in spite of his best effort to control it. "I won't move from this spot until you s..s..say I c..can." He watched the detective until she disappeared back down the path before he turned his attention to the Observer.
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"You okay, Sam?" Al asked softly, smiling when Sam nodded and uttered a soft if chattered, "Uhhh…huh." He saw and understood the question that quickly appeared in Sam's eyes, and moved to answer it before the leaper could put the question into spoken form. The fact that the handlink chose that moment to squeal was as liberating for him – from the fear for his friend's life –as the leaper's words to Derek had been for him.
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Watching the way Al's fingers practically danced over the buttons on the handlink, Sam kept his voice low as he asked, "So what happens to Tommie? Is she okay now?"
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Al read the information scrolling across the handlink's small screen then met his friend's gaze, a grin blossoming across his face as he quipped, "If you'll pardon the pun… Tommie's as right as rain." He laughed aloud when Sam rolled his eyes, then continued. "Thanks to the advent of the use of DNA in criminal cases, which only really got started around 1986, Derek Emerson was eventually convicted of the murders of the ten women he killed during his seventeen month spree between November 1985 through April 1987. " Pressing another brief sequence of buttons on the handlink, Al added, "He was given a death sentence for each of the women. His last appeal was denied in September 1994, and he was executed by lethal injection in January of 1995."
Pausing, Al looked at Sam. He didn't say anything when Sam prompted him about Tommie. It heartened him no end to see the light of satisfaction appear in his friend's eyes when he finally related the major turn around in Tommie Emerson's life.
"Tommie did what you told Derek," Al started off. "She didn't let any grass grow under her feet, and by the middle of November 1987, her divorce from Derek Floyd Emerson was final. She was a star witness for the prosecution." Another sequence entered on the handlink brought up more good news. "She got some therapy to help her deal with the abusive crap Derek put her through as well as all the other stuff she was dealing with. And then the same year Derek was executed…in fact a month after he was executed…Tommie moved to Wyoming where she married a rancher. They're still together, just the two of them, and Tommie never steps foot back into Louisiana again."
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Every word Al uttered outlining the positive changes to Tommie Emerson's future, as a result of his intervention in her life, did more to warm Sam Beckett than the hot bath, warm bed and cup of tea he longed for, combined. Yet as a minute elapsed and then another and another slipped away, he looked questioningly at his Observer. Wrapping his arms around his rain-soaked body, Sam clamped his teeth together to keep them from chattering as he watched and listened as Al demanded, "Ziggy, why hasn't Sam leaped?"
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The feeling that over the years Sam had come to recognize almost from the first prickle, began a moment later. There was no time to question the Observer about the slow smile that appeared on his face that was, it was easy for Sam to assume, caused by whatever he was hearing from Ziggy. Just seeing Al give him a thumbs-up sign as the leaping effect intensified just before pulling him away was enough for Sam to know that Tommie Emerson was going to be okay.