Hiya again... thank you again to Larkinross and ladyjess for reviewing
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You woke up in a strange room. It was the morning after Thanksgiving. Your eyes squinted at the clock on the bedside table; it was only half past 6 in the morning. You noticed the warmth emanating around you. You looked behind you to see your mother's sleeping face. When you tried to move off the bed but more warmth around your stomach prevented you. You looked down carefully and saw your mother's pale hand entwined with a tanned and masculine one. You drifted back to your dream world. It would be a dream you would treasure for eternity. You believed you were on your way to the beach, a beach bathed in a golden son and miles of deep blue sea, the place of your dream of dreams.
Grandmother picked you up from school that day and you saw him. Richard DeLucca and his eyes you saw it; a tawny yellow gleam. Seeing Richard DeLucca seeing you. On the street. Staring at you, face tight as if his skin had shrunk and he looked younger and thinner. Since the disappearance of Gary Stevenson and Dean Roberts, Richard DeLucca and James Harlow were the only remaining defendants who had not changed their plea to 'guilty.' The others were negotiating deals with their prosecutors but since Harlow and DeLucca were still pleading 'not guilty', there would be a trial.
DeLucca was walking with another guy. Both of them wearing reversed baseball caps, t-shirts and jeans. DeLucca's yellow eyes moving on you, his face tight with anger. He was forbidden to approach you. He was forbidden to speak with you. Yet it was unmistakably, the message he sent to you. For some reason, when being interviewed by the police and the social services woman, you had been unable to explain how you had gotten from your mother's side to the public bathroom. You hadn't realised you had stopped moving until your Grandmother pulled at your hand.
It was like a flicker film being played in your head only you could feel things. You saw DeLucca taking a huge interest in you, not your mother. He had begun to lift up your dress, telling you he was a doctor and that he needed to examine you. You remember a smothering feeling and screaming, lots of screaming. You remembered then him falling in to and someone shouting "GET YOUR HANDS OFF HER, YOU SICK BASTARD. WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING!" A fight started between them and you remember a heaving and jerking sensation. That's how you got there, you were dragged and you were strangled because you were being pulled by your dress. You were shoved in the toilet and so sure it was DeLucca. It was William Amos and whispered to you fast, "Listen stay here and be a good girl and you won't get hurt okay. And don't come out until there is no more shouting. I am really sorry…I didn't want it to be like this."
In a sweet, twisted way, you knew that William Amos was your hero; he had saved you from something worse.
His yellow eyes were still staring at you. Christ, you were so happy that you didn't know how he was wishing how he had killed you! Slammed you in to the pond and drown you when he had his chance. Broken you with his fists and stomping feet. And screwed you too. When he had the chance.
So scared, trembling so. Grandmother drove you home; you had not wanted to tell her what you had thought of. There was not much of your life as an eight year old you told your Grandmother. You told your mother even less. But you were terrified of DeLucca; you seemed to know that he would kill you. And so you tried to tell your Grandmother about him, crying hysterically in the front seat of your Grandmother's car. You couldn't get out the words. You didn't even realise that you were outside a white townhouse, with your mother rushing towards the car and ripping away at the seatbelt and pulling you out and up, up in to her arms. Mother hadn't been able to do that a year ago so easily, but you weighed a lot less now. You couldn't stop the sobbing and the wailing and the screaming. It just kept coming and coming…
The night of December 12, three days before the trial, Richard DeLucca doused himself with gasoline and lit a match and left behind a shakily written not that was identified to be his handwriting:
God forgive me. I am very ashamed. This will make things right.
R.D
He had been drinking heavily that night. He was desperate, he had the craps and red ants were crawling all over his brain day and night. At the same time he knew he was innocent or doing anything to those females and everybody knew this including those females yet he was convinced the jury would not believe him, his lawyer said if he took the stand, which it was crucial that Richard DeLucca do, to present his side of things, like how his semen got inside the Sidle woman and how her blood had got splattered onto his clothes and caked up in the soles of his jogging shoes and how the prosecutor could about his "past history of abuse towards women." He knew he was dead, dead either way. He hated Gary Stevenson and Dean Roberts for leaving him and the others behind. The truth was Stevenson and the DeLucca brothers had come up, literally as well as figuratively, on the idea of ganging up on some females. But Gary and Dean were gone, Pip DeLucca went nuts and got himself shot down dead like everybody was saying, must have provoked the cop on purpose, suicide-by-cop. Pip had been high on the magical crystal meth again and he wouldn't have known his ass from his hole in the ground, pulling a blade on a guy with a gun. Jesus!
Richard DeLucca wondered why Gary and Dean had not taken him too. He'd always gotten along with those guys. If he ever saw them again, Richard had thought, he'd murder them.
He cast his doped up mind back to the other time he had been arrested when Donna had had to go to the ER, she'd testified against him and gotten an injunction. The judge had said two years and DeLucca almost blew out his previous two meals in to his pants before he had added to be served on probation. DeLucca and his mother had been practically bawling, so grateful. But this time, with the Sidle woman, Atkinson warned him not to expect probation if the jury came back guilty, the judge would give him the maximum. If the jury came back guilty.
"You only need to strike a kindred chord with one of them," Atkinson had said, "and you are home free, son!"
That night, they had all been at the high school watching the teenage cheerleaders in satin costumes swinging their asses and their breasts about. He couldn't prevent grabbing himself. He had a thing for younger girls; his buddies teased him about it. A female over twenty was a turn-off, they knew too much and made wisecracks about you're the size. A younger girl, a really younger girl like Lorena, a word he was delighted to have learned as it prevented him from sleeping at night, was a different case. No wisecracks, she would have been scared as hell and respectful. He hated that little bitch though and William Amos. She had squirmed like a crazed eel. But he would have done it, right there in the park, his little bitch until she was hisdead meat. The only guilt Richard DeLucca felt was not killing them, that way they might have never been caught. No witnesses, none of the shit he was in now would have happened and he wouldn't have to see his mother's breaking heart.
Now it was too late. The trial was starting. He could never get to girl. He had followed her a little though. He was fascinated by her; pretty and sweet faced, innocent with hair like her mother. It was a wild rush when they had passed in the street and she had noticed him. Lorena's face had gone dead white as if she was going to faint.
He thought maybe some LVPD cops might come banging on his door, looking for him; some crap about harassment of witnesses there was a law about. But no. Lorena Sidle had not told. In her heart, Lorena Sidle had a thing for Richard DeLucca, huh? DeLucca was worried about the forensics. He knew it was all real, "hard science." He had seen it on T.V; some kind of x-ray for semen, blood, hairs, clothes, fibers. He was lonely too! His friends were keeping their distance for now, even his relatives. And girls. Girl he had know since the early grades, they seemed scared of him. Even his girl cousins for Christ sake! It was insulting!
The charred and unrecognisable corpse would be discovered in the last morning of December 13 at the end of a narrow access road. It would require no medical examiner to determine that the body had been doused in gasoline and set afire. An empty gallon can was close by and a car was parked on the roadway, keys in the ignition. Jim Brass called in the license plate and was informed that the vehicle was registered to a Richard DeLucca. Brass had shouted this across to Gil, who in returndropped down his camera in despair and cursed. Kicked his SUV. He had wanted him to fry, but not like this. Greg checked out the car and found a handwritten note, framed. A professional who would be able to compare handwriting was brought in and it was confirmed that Richard DeLucca wrote the note. The photo frame, the notepaper, the car door handles, the interior of the car, the gasoline can: all were covered in Richard DeLucca's prints. On the ground close by the burnt corpse was a book of matches, also covered in his prints.
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