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I reach into my pocket and turn the Taser on. I let it charge. She watches me, her lips blue from the cold outdoors, her face flushed, her body shivering uncontrollably. She’s rubbing her red, chafed feet. I take the Taser from my pocket. Aim. Fire.
She convulses. Her head hits the bars once, twice. She tries to reach out, but her hand doesn’t go anywhere. She falls to the dirt floor, paralyzed.
I look at the other female. “You spoke to her when I told you not to speak. Do not speak to her again. Not a word. I’m still deciding who is worthy of my teaching. Obey me, and you will live.”
At least for a few more days.
I walk up the stairs, turn off the light, and shut the door behind me.
FORTY-TWO
Sean had Marie Fitzgerald on a speaker phone in his office. Hans, Dillon, and Kate sat on the other side of the desk. Sean let Hans, in his calm, reasoned voice, explain the situation to Miller’s ex-wife. Sean looked at her photo from college. She’d been a pretty, sweet looking blonde.
Her first question was, “How did you find me?”
She sounded scared.
Hans said, “I promise he will never know where you are or what your name is.”
“How can I trust you?”
“I know it’s hard, and if you want you can verify my credentials with FBI Assistant Director Rick Stockton. We can wait.”
Sean wanted to shout no, we can’t wait! but refrained. Instead he said, “Marie, you know that Peter Miller is a sick, sadistic bastard, and he’s going to kill the woman I love if you don’t help us find him.”
Sean didn’t notice Kate and Dillon exchange glances, but he realized at that moment he did love Lucy. The thought of losing her made him feel hot and cold at the same time, his stomach queasy.
Marie said, “I met Peter in college. He was sweet. Old-fashioned. He opened doors and treated me like a princess. My father was a small-town pastor, a humble and godly man. And I thought Peter was the same. We both wanted children, we both wanted me to stay at home and raise them. I’m still the same small-town girl with conservative values, but I’m no longer a doormat.
“We married when we were seniors. I thought I was in love. Maybe I was, or I was in love with the idea of a perfect, attentive husband who honestly thought of every little thing I needed. Like one night I was terribly sick, and he sat up with me, wiping my face with a cold cloth to keep the fever down. He told me I was his angel.”
Hans asked, “What happened that changed him?”
“That’s the thing—nothing. He was always a—what did you say, Mr. Rogan? A sick, sadistic bastard. I just didn’t see it. For all his attention and thoughtfulness, he never let me out of his sight. I didn’t have any friends who weren’t also his friends, and the few friends we did have, I couldn’t see without him. I didn’t understand this at first.
“We moved to Wilmington after we graduated because he got a job teaching at the high school. I was so bored all day. There was only so much cooking and cleaning and baking I could do. I asked him if I could join a book club. I know what you’re thinking—why did I have to ask? But that’s how it was. He’d replaced my father in many ways. I always asked Daddy, but Daddy always said yes. He wanted me to go to college, to learn new things, to be able to take care of myself. Peter—he wanted to take care of me. He didn’t want me to have a life separate from him. That doesn’t sound right. It was more extreme. He wouldn’t allow it.
“I begged. It took me months of proving to him that the book club wouldn’t come between us. He met all the women, he probably did background checks of God-knows-what to make sure they were acceptable. Finally, I could participate. It was one night a week, Mondays.”
Sean asked, “He followed you, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” Marie said. “I didn’t know, but he’d sit outside whoever’s house we were meeting at and watch. I tried to get him to go out with the other women’s husbands—they always went to watch Monday Night Football or something at a bar. I really liked these people, but Peter refused. When I found out he was watching me, we got into our first fight. Two years after we were married, and we had never fought. Because I was so agreeable to everything, even his ridiculous rules. I just wanted to make my husband happy…but I realized Peter was nothing like my father, nothing like I thought he was.
“It took me months before I told the girls how Peter had started to scare me. And I only told them because of what he did…” her voice trailed off.
“What did he do, Marie?” Hans prompted after a moment.
“He read my copy of Sleeping with the Enemy by Nancy Price. There was a movie with Julia Roberts, but the book was so much better. And…Peter just…snapped. He pushed me down on the bed and tore the pages out one by one. One by one—methodically. Then he tore each page into tiny pieces. It took hours. I didn’t move, I couldn’t—there was something in his eyes…and I was terrified.
“I asked my club to meet me for lunch the next day when Peter was working and they convinced me to leave him. I told them everything, it all came rushing out—like I wasn’t allowed to wear makeup outside the house unless he was with me. I could only wear dresses. About his obsession…”
When she didn’t continue, Hans asked, “What obsession?”
“Peter was my first. I was a virgin, and he liked that. My parents raised me to save myself for my husband, and Peter respected that. He never even tried before our wedding night.
“But after that night, he had me shower before we had sex. And after. And when we had sex, it was very mechanical—like he was a robot going through the motions. There was no affection. One time early in our marriage, I’d had wine with dinner. I rarely drink—two glasses made me tipsy. I tried to do something different in bed, something I’d read about—and he called me a whore.” Her voice cracked and emotion filled her voice. “He told me he’d tell my Daddy how dirty I was if I ever did anything like that again. I was so ashamed, so humiliated…”
Hans said, “Marie, you know that Peter is deeply disturbed. He enjoyed psychologically torturing women.”
