What Doesn’t Kill Her Page 2

  “Over there,” the intruder said, pointing with the knife. “In front of the couch.”

  Jordan dragged her mother over to the sofa and rested her on the floor there.

  “No. Sit her up.”

  Jordan glanced back at the intruder, who lifted an eyebrow and the knife.

  She did as she’d been told, and when her mother was seated on the floor with her back to the sofa, Jordan instinctively reached up to brush her mother’s hair into place.

  “Now him,” the intruder said, pointing the knife toward her father, over by the fireplace.

  Darker-skinned than her mother, Jordan’s father had been a successful insurance executive until this terrible night. Now, white shirt stained scarlet, vicious cut running from his left ear down across his cheek, Peter Rivera was the broken husk of a man.

  Dad proved more difficult to move—half again as heavy as Mom. The living room’s white carpeting had patchy blotches of crimson and pink, and the tooth of the carpet made it even harder to move her father’s deadweight than on the wooden floor upstairs. At least her father’s eyes were closed, peacefully unaware of these posthumous indignities.

  As Jordan struggled with her task, she heard the intruder stride over and she expected him to grab her by the hair again; but instead he grabbed a lifeless arm and helped her drag her father over next to Mom. She successfully arranged Dad into a sitting position against the sofa, as well. Her parents’ heads tilted toward each other, touching, a parody of a loving posture.

  She knew what was coming next. Without a word from her taskmaster, she turned and faced her fallen brother, Jimmy, over by Dad’s recliner. Taller than her, Jimmy shared Jordan’s same delicate bone structure. He’d always been a skinny kid who got picked on for his gangly clumsiness, let alone his sexual orientation.

  Only a year ago, right before his high school graduation, Jimmy’s biggest concern had been coming out to their parents. Jordan had known her brother was gay for years, but their folks seemed clueless.

  But when Jimmy had finally screwed up the courage to tell them, Mom’s only response had been “Of course you are, sweetheart. We’ve known that for years.” Not a trace of judgment, much less sarcasm in her voice.

  Then Jimmy had said, “Please pass the potatoes,” and the moment brother and sister had been dreading came and went without incident.

  “Come on!” the intruder said. “Get moving.”

  Now he was in a hurry?

  As she dragged her dear dead brother across the room, the enormity of what she was facing—the last few minutes of her life—finally settled in on her, and like even the bravest prisoner ever ushered to execution, she found herself shaking again.

  The intruder helped her prop her brother up next to her mother and she thought about trying to fight back again, but her face stung with the mirror-shard wounds, her neck ached from his jarring slap, and she decided he had heaped enough pain on her already. All she wanted now was for this to be over. Someone someday would catch this monster, and stop him. But not her. Not tonight.

  “All right,” he said, almost smiling, nodding, obviously pleased. He gestured with the knife again. “Now sit down next to your brother.”

  “What?”

  “Sit with him.”

  She did it.

  She joined her family, knowing she would soon be joining them in a more profound way and they would all be in Heaven together. Oddly, her sudden sense of calm was accompanied by an accelerated shivering.

  She never would kiss Mark Pryor, though, would she?

  The intruder leaned down over her, and Jordan’s eyes fixed upon the knife. Then she decided she didn’t want to see it coming, and closed her eyes.

  But instead of the blade slashing across her throat or driving deep into her chest, she felt the intruder’s touch, almost gentle as he lightly brushed her hair away from her bloody forehead. His fingertips were warm, soft, not rough as she’d anticipated. She kept her eyes closed tight even as she braced against the blow that would be coming any second now.

  “Relax,” he said. “I’m not going to kill you.”

  Her eyes sprang open, and a sudden fury rose up through her fear and resignation. “I should believe you? You murdered my family!”

  He shrugged. “That doesn’t make me a liar.”

  As if to demonstrate his goodwill, he moved away from her, settling on his haunches. But the knife was still firmly grasped in a gloved hand.

  “Why would you kill them,” she asked, tears struggling to get out, “and not me?”

  “I need you alive,” he said. “Now, quiet.”

  From a pocket, he produced a small digital camera, much like the one Jordan had pestered her parents for last Christmas. Which she hadn’t gotten.

  Holding the tiny camera up, he grinned, full of himself, and said, “Say cheese.”

  She lurched as the flash went off. This couldn’t be real, the killer of her family taking snapshots!

  “Sit still,” he commanded.

  This time she faced the flash blankly frozen.

  He stuffed the camera into a pants pocket.

  Then, from another pocket, he withdrew a small square foil packet. From sex ed class she knew instantly what it was… and what awaited her.…

  Death was the better option. She had barely kissed any boys. She hadn’t come anywhere near what this creature obviously had planned for her.

  She tried to get up, but he slapped her back to the floor and crawled on top of her. He pushed up her nightshirt even as she fought to keep it down. Her sightless parents, propped against the couch, looked on.

  “You’re going to help me,” he said, his voice as cool as a cemetery breeze.

  “Why don’t you just kill me, too?” she asked, wanting that, wanting that so bad.

  “I told you. I need you. You’re going to help me.”

  “Help you?”

  He smiled at her, even as he fumbled with his pants. “You’re going to tell my story.”

  “What… what.…”

  He ripped open the foil pack, his grin goofy. “You will bear witness to what happens to families who don’t follow God’s natural order.”

  Then he was heavy on top of her and Jordan couldn’t struggle anymore. He was too strong.

  “Please just kill me,” she begged.

  “No, no, no… just lay back and enjoy. You’ll live to tell my story. You’ll live to… to… tell… the world.…”

  And even as the terrible thing happened, as Jordan Rivera retreated to a private corner of herself and distanced herself from this violation, she made herself a solemn promise.

  Tell his story?

  Like hell I will.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Today

  Dr. Donna Hurst stood in the nurses’ station sporking dainty dips from a cup of peach yogurt, savoring each bite as if they were worthy of the effort. Not Donna’s favorite breakfast, but with only three weeks left before her Cozumel vacation, the tall green-eyed redhead—a youthful forty-something in white lab coat over a black silk blouse and matching slacks—was still fighting off that last tenacious ten pounds, especially around her hips.

  Getting on staff at St. Dimpna’s Center—possibly Ohio’s premier mental health facility—had been Donna’s goal since she’d become a psychologist, twenty years ago. Achieving that goal had taken twelve years of moving from one facility to another, building a reputation, losing a husband, and alienating her two kids. But here she finally was on staff at St. Dimpna’s, and that still mattered to her.

  Nibbling another spoonful, she looked through the chicken-wire-crosshatched window into the dayroom.

  Several female patients lounged there, watching TV, mingling over children’s board games, playing cards, a few staring out windows on this sunny spring day. Despite a variety of ages, ethnicities, and medical conditions, the women had in common one thing: they were battling mental illness. All casually dressed—just no belts or shoelaces.

  These were the docto
r’s patients, and she had made—to various degrees—headway with them all… with one significant exception.

  In her midtwenties—her raven ponytail and smooth features making her look much younger—Jordan Rivera sat on a sofa gazing up in silence at the wall-mounted television. She wore blue hospital scrubs, having already adopted that outfit by the time Donna arrived here two years after the girl’s admittance.

  Girl, Donna thought, catching herself. That’s how I think of her. Not woman—girl.

  Doctor and patient had spent countless hours in one-on-one sessions, and to this day the only voice Donna had ever heard in those sessions was her own. Group sessions found the girl… the young woman… equally unresponsive. There and in all situations, Jordan Rivera remained mute.

  Not medically so—nothing physically wrong with the patient’s vocal mechanism. Hers was apparently hysterical mutism, resulting from the trauma of the crimes committed against her and her family, a decade ago now.

  The layperson might mistake this patient’s silence for catatonia, but of course the doctor knew better. While Jordan might sit, unmoving, for hours at a time, she didn’t display any of the rigidity of a true catatonic patient. Though catatonia could be caused by post-traumatic stress disorder, which surely made Jordan a candidate, Dr. Hurst would never classify Jordan as clinically catatonic.

  Still, in addition to not speaking, Jordan Rivera often spent her waking hours virtually immobile, as if every emotion had been silenced, stuffed into some deep, dark recess of the young woman’s mind—a private place that Donna had not yet been able to reach.

  Yet in other key respects, Jordan was a normal young woman. Since she had been admitted to St. Dimpna’s, shortly after the tragedy, Jordan had kept to herself, but she was no human slug. She stayed fit, working out as best she could in the dayroom, doing laps around the yard when allowed outside, and reading books and magazines from the selection provided to the patients, a limited variety to be sure, since all reading matter was carefully screened. No use of computers was allowed. Television channels were monitored, too, although screening their content wasn’t always possible.

  Jordan’s solitary ways were such that she rarely had problems with other patients. A significant exception involved Kara McCormick—an incident about nine months ago, in group.

  Jordan, several other patients, and newbie Kara sat in a loose circle. All but Kara were accustomed to Jordan sitting silently throughout. Toward session’s end, Donna turned to Kara, whose only comments thus far had consisted of smug grunts and snorts as other patients spoke about their issues.

  “Kara, as the newest member of the group, would you like to introduce yourself to the others?”

  A reedy blonde with pink-and-blue streaked bangs, eighteen-year-old Kara had been sexually abused by her stepfather until she had finally resorted to slitting her wrists. She still wore the gauze bandages.

  “Kara,” the girl said sullenly.

  Donna waited, but Kara stared at her bare legs as if the answers to her problems might be found on her kneecaps.

  Gently, the doctor asked, “Would you like to tell the others why you’re here?”

  Kara exploded from her chair, bisecting the circle to loom over Jordan, finger-pointing. “Why doesn’t she have to talk? Everybody else has to, what’s so special about her?”

  Before Donna could speak, Kara was leaning in at Jordan, fists balled. “Too good to speak to us? And how come you’re wearin’ scrubs? You’re no goddamn nurse! You’re just another loony tunes like the rest of us!”

  Donna knew at once Kara was deflecting the attention from herself and her own troubles.

  Jordan sat placidly, eyes on Kara. The doctor noted that not even verbal abuse brought this one out of her shell. It was almost as if Jordan didn’t hear Kara, although her eyes on the new girl’s face said otherwise.

  “Kara,” Donna began, putting some edge into her voice, “Jordan is—”

  “She’s what? Your frickin’ pet?”

  Donna was rising, to put herself between the two patients, but Kara beat her to the punch, literally—launching a tiny fist at Jordan’s blank face.

  The mute girl rose, blocking the punch with a martial arts move, then grabbed Kara in a hug, pinning the girl’s arms to her sides. The two patients were looking right at each other, Kara wild, eyes and nostrils flaring, Jordan as placid as when she’d been sitting there.

  The mute patient was not fighting back, just stopping, containing the attack, though the skill of that kung fu–style move (where had that come from?) indicated Jordan could have done the new girl damage.

  Kara was going berserk, flailing as best she could, even trying to headbutt Jordan, who continued to hug her, as calm as a monk at prayer, even if the string of epithets spewing from Kara would have made a real monk blanch.

  And still Jordan maintained her embrace.

  Donna stood frozen at the sight, not willing to enter in and turn this confrontation into something even more physical. Like the rest of the group, the doctor gaped as Jordan hugged Kara until the girl’s rage ebbed, her energy sapped, and finally Kara was reduced to tears.

  As Kara’s rage melted, Jordan released her grip. Kara did not throw a punch—she was way past that. Instead, she threw her arms around Jordan, the embrace reversed now, and the two remained that way until Kara was cried out.

  Dr. Donna Hurst had witnessed some amazing things in group sessions, but nothing to top this. And despite Jordan still remaining mute, she and Kara had developed a friendship and some means of communication all their own. Kara would talk to Jordan, and manage to find enough response in Jordan’s face to constitute a reply.

  Before long, Kara had even adopted Jordan’s uniform of light blue scrubs.

  In subsequent group and one-on-one sessions, Donna had intensified her own attempts to communicate with Jordan; but no discernible progress had been made. Today would be like the hundreds of other sessions, Jordan sitting silent, listening politely, Donna talkative, sick of her own voice by the end of the hour.

  Ditching the yogurt container, then taking a quick hit from her coffee, Donna prepared for another bout of frustration. When she opened the dayroom door, the noise level went up—patients talking to others and themselves, chairs scraping on the tile floor, the professional voices of the morning show on the TV that Jordan watched from the sofa.

  Sitting beside her patient, Donna said, “Good morning, Jordan.” She had long since stopped asking this patient, “How are you this morning?” It only emphasized the one-way nature of their conversations.

  In any case, Jordan did not acknowledge the doctor’s presence, continuing to stare at the television.

  Well, Donna thought, at least she’s engaged.…

  Following Jordan’s line of sight, Donna said, “Good Morning Cleveland, huh? Wonder if anything interesting’s happening in the Mistake on the Lake today.”

  Jordan, of course, shared no opinion on this subject. On the medium-sized flat-screen television, the host was saying something about breaking news.

  “Jordan, maybe we should—”

  The girl raised a hand.

  That gave Donna a start—this was a direct reaction. Rare from this patient.…

  On screen, a perfectly coiffed female reporter stood in what appeared to be a middle-class neighborhood, saying, “Valerie Demson for WCLE Channel Seven News, reporting from Strongsville, where last night tragedy struck. An anonymous 911 call brought police to a house down the street…” She gestured with the hand that was free of a microphone. “… just behind me… where they found a family inside their home… victims of homicide.”

  “Jordan,” Donna said, “I’m going to have to turn the channel.…”

  The nurse in the glassed-in office had the remote, and Donna cast an eye in that direction, but the desk was empty.

  The reporter was saying, “The murder victims were Arnold and Angela Sully and their teenage daughter, Brittany. Viewers may recall that Brittany Sully recei
ved national attention when she and another senior girl at Strongsville High went to the senior prom as dates. Police would not respond to speculation that a hate crime aspect may pertain to this tragedy.”

  Donna rose to go switch off the television herself.

  “We will follow this breaking story as it develops,” the reporter said. “This is Valerie Demson for WCLE Channel Seven News.”

  After hitting the switch, Donna turned to see Jordan staring at her. Approaching the patient, the doctor said, “I’m sorry, Jordan. I know it must be difficult for you to hear about that kind of unpleasantness.…”

  The young woman continued to look at her, but not blank faced—wheels obviously turning behind those dark eyes… but what was Jordan Rivera thinking?

  Raising her hand for silence was more direct communication than Jordan had made with anyone, with the possible exception of Kara, in a decade.

  Donna sat next to Jordan again. “I’m sorry I didn’t get that turned off sooner.” Wheels were turning. “Obviously, there’s no way we can monitor everything that’s aired, and we don’t want to deny everyone the simple courtesy of being able to watch—”

  Jordan’s head swiveled. Her eyes were narrow.

  Donna reared back a little—the intensity of the woman’s gaze was like a door had been opened on a blast furnace.

  Woman, she thought. Not girl. Woman.…

  “What do I have to do,” Jordan Rivera said evenly, in a low husky voice unknown to her stunned doctor, “to get the hell out of this place?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “You know what’s weird?” Kara McCormick said, grinning, running a hand nervously through her pink-and-blue bangs.

  “No,” Jordan said. “What’s weird?”

  “How your real voice sounds so much like the one I used to hear in my head.”

  “You hear voices in your head?”

  “No! I mean, the voice in my head I heard when you didn’t talk out loud.”

  “You heard me when I wasn’t talking?”

  “Kind of. That so hard to believe?”

  “No. But then, Kara?”