Chubby Chaser (23 page)

After Sara’s punishment ended and after she had her car returned to her, she resurrected her visits to her father’s shooting range. During her first time back, her shots were extremely off the mark. She wished she had accepted her father’s offer: a respite from her punishment to attend their annual turkey hunt the weekend before Thanksgiving (she hadn’t used a gun in almost a month; if she was going to kill Jason, she needed practice, and what better way to get it than with a sentient target with self-preservation instincts?). She had started menstruating that weekend, though, and hadn’t been in the mood to go anywhere. But on the bright side, at least she no longer had to worry about having Jason’s bastard. She would’ve never thought that bleeding and bloating and cramping could ever be positives.

Sara also started tailing Jason, now that she was free to do as she pleased again, so she could get his schedule down pat. Wherever he went, she followed. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Jason stayed at school until seven for football practice. After that he usually headed home, making it there around eight, although he sometimes stopped by someone else’s house, usually a girl’s, or Larry’s. On Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, he didn’t have such a regimented schedule: the only certain thing was that he played a football game on Saturday afternoons. The rest of the time, he took her to either the mall, the movies, a house party, a restaurant, or a guy’s or a girl’s house (he was more often than not at a girl’s house; he was quite the slut). One Sunday she followed Jason out of town to the Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, where he attended a football game instead of playing one. There were also days where he simply stayed in, but they were few and far between, much like Jason’s brain cells.

Sara brought a digital camera with her on her excursions. She used it to take photos of Jason. She would then come home, and print the photos out to use for target practice at the shooting range. Filling the glossy 8” x 11” version of Jason full of holes gave her such a feeling of exhilaration that she couldn’t wait until she was a better shot, so she could do the same to the real thing.

“This project you’re working on for school must be a huge part of your grade,” her father said in passing one night after she came home from stalking Jason.
Working on a school project
was the lie she had told him to explain why she wasn’t around as much and wasn’t doing as much as she used to do around the house. “What’s it about?”

Sara thought for a moment and then said, “The extinction of a popular kingdom.”

“Will I get a chance to see it before you turn it in? I’d sure like to, with all the effort you’re putting into it.”

“Count on it.” She smiled sweetly and then retired to her room.

Two weeks before Christmas break, Sara had become an excellent markswoman again and had formulated a plan: Jason would be home after dark on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, because he had football practice. She would hide in the park across the street from his house. She would shoot him with one of her father’s guns after he pulled up in his driveway and before he had the chance to enter his house. She would wear all black and travel on foot, so no one would see her car or make out its license plate. She would carry out her plan the following Monday.

Sara stopped by Planned Parenthood after school: it had been over a month since her attack, and she wanted to make sure she was still STD free. She didn’t want Jason to have any hold on her life after she rid herself of him next week. She had done some research on the Internet and discovered that she could get tested at Planned Parenthood for only fifty dollars, and they didn’t require parental consent.

She sat in the crowded waiting room for two hours before a nurse finally called her name. The nurse took her to an examination room covered with posters about pregnancy and STDs, and had her change out of her clothes, underwear included, and into a hospital gown. The nurse tried to weigh her, but Sara refused (she didn’t know her weight, and she wanted to keep it that way); she did, however, allow the nurse to check her blood pressure, respiratory rate, and temperature with no fuss (she had recently found she could tolerate human contact if she knew it was coming and had time to steel herself for it).

Twenty minutes later, the physician’s assistant came in, carrying a clipboard. She was a petite Asian woman who didn’t look more than twenty-five.

“Hi. Sara, is it?” she said, consulting her clipboard.

“Yes.”

“I’m PA Nguyen. I’ll be doing your examination today.” She put her hand out. Sara took it, and they shook hands. “Are you currently sexually active?” PA Nguyen asked.

“Oh no. I was . . . raped”—she grimaced; she was never going to feel comfortable saying that word—“about a month ago, and I just want to make sure that I didn’t catch anything.” She nervously tucked her hair behind her ear and chortled. “I’ve had no other sex before or after that.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ll make this as quick and as painless as possible.”

I
’
ll
make this as quick and as painless as possible
. PA Nguyen was the third person to say that to her since this whole ordeal had begun. Sara wondered whether the saying was in some manual, and everyone had to say it to sex-crime victims the way retail workers had to say,
Thank you
,
have a nice day
,
please come again
,
to customers.

“Thank you,” Sara said.

Nguyen washed her hands and pulled a pair of latex gloves from the box on the counter. “First, I need an oral swab.”

She approached Sara, carrying a cotton swab and a petri dish she had taken from the cabinet above the sink. Sara opened her mouth to receive the cotton swab, bracing herself for physical contact. Nguyen took several swipes against the inside of her cheek, and then the process was over.

Nguyen placed the petri dish on a tray, labeled it, and then walked back over to the sink to wash her hands and change her gloves. “Now I have to examine your genitals. I’ll have to touch them. Is that okay? You can say no at anytime.”

Sara wanted to say no, but she said yes. She didn’t want to wake up one morning and find warts or sores all over her body. If Jason had given her something, she wanted to know. She started when she felt a cotton swab graze her labia; she had fallen so deeply in thought that Nyguen was able to catch her off guard.

“Sorry,” Nguyen said.

“It’s okay.”

She winced as a cotton swab slid inside her. It made her mind travel back to when she’d had her rape examination.

“Your genitals have some pretty serious abrasions.”

“That’s not because of the assault. That’s because of something else.” Sara pulled her gown down and clambered out of the stirrups. She had forgotten how damaged her skin had become since she had begun her new shower regimen, having acclimated to the stinging sensations.

Nguyen gave her a look of sympathy and a warm smile. She was probably only patronizing Sara, the way Nurse Linda and Officer Barrett had at the hospital and the way Detective Cassidy had at the police station.

“Are we finished with this part of the examination?” Sara’s eyes darted nervously around the room. She had gotten better at making eye contact with people, but it was weird to do so with someone who had only moments ago been inside her.

“Have you had any warts, bumps, or sores show up since your attack?”

Sara shook her head no.

“Any itching or pain?

She shook her head again to indicate no.

“What about any unusual discharges?”

Another negative head shake.

“Then we can move on.” She took another petri dish over to the tray, labeled it, and then headed back over to the sink to wash her hands and change her gloves again.

“Okay, now we need to get a blood sample.”

Nguyen had Sara sit in a chair by the door and make a fist. The needle pierced her skin, and the syringe attached to it began to fill up. Nguyen placed the container of Sara’s blood on the tray after it was full and labeled it.

Ngyuen washed her hands and changed her gloves once more. She reached into the cabinet and removed a small plastic container. She turned to Sara and handed it to her. “Fill this, please. The last thing that we need to get is a urine sample. There’s a bathroom on the other side of that door.” She pointed at a door on the other side of the room.

Sara knew this was coming, and she had drunk plenty of water in preparation for it, although some of the water had already left her body while she had been waiting for her appointment. She crossed the room and went into the bathroom. She squatted over the toilet, positioning the cup underneath her, and began to urinate. She set the cup on top of the toilet after she finished and then moved over to the sink to wash her hands. She flushed the toilet with a piece of tissue and then grabbed two sheets of paper towel: one to wipe any spillage off the container (
so gross
!) and the other to hold the container with.

Nguyen took the container from her when she came back out, attached a label to it, and set it on the tray. “There. All done.” She removed her gloves and washed her hands for the last time. “We should have your results for you in a couple of weeks. I’ll leave you to get dressed.” She grabbed the tray and walked out.

For the rest of the week, Sara was back to her old self: she started focusing on her art and schoolwork again, and she was thinking about getting back into tutoring as well.

But the following week, when the big day came, she was as big of a wreck as she had been after the rape: She tried to focus in school, but couldn’t concentrate during any of her classes. She stopped by the shooting range for one last practice session before she carried out her endgame, but her shoulders tensed up and her hands shuddered, resulting in her shots landing all over the place. When she made it home from the shooting range, there was a bill from the hospital for the rape examination. She put it in the shredder, so her father wouldn’t get a chance to see it, and then she put the shreds in a trash bag and threw it in the trash container—just in case her father was the next one to empty the shredder and was still able to make out the bill (she knew she was being paranoid, but she couldn’t help it).

Hours later, while getting ready for the big event, she couldn’t decide which black outfit was the best to kill Jason in: her black turtleneck sweater and a black pair of jeans, her black long-sleeved crew-neck T-shirt and black cargo pants, or her black tracksuit. She decided on the tracksuit. It would be easier to move in. She also put on her black balaclava that she had bought from Harold’s for the occasion; a hooded black jacket for further camouflage; and a pair of black gloves to avoid leaving any fingerprints on the gun she planned to use.

She sneaked down to the basement to take one of her father’s guns from the case. Her hands were so unsteady that she dropped the
Glock twenty-six, nine-millimeter pistol
as she attempted to slide it into one of her jacket pockets. She froze for several seconds, afraid that her father might have heard the commotion (she had told him that she felt tired and was going to bed early). Once she felt the coast was clear, she picked the gun up off the floor, hid it in one of her jacket pockets, and then skulked out the back door. Sara looked at her phone: she had about an hour to get to the park before Jason made it home.

Sara arrived at the deserted park at seven fifty and ensconced herself behind a group of trees directly across from Jason’s house. She shivered slightly, the bitter air making her regret not taking her car. Luckily, there hadn’t been a drop of snow this year, so she’d leave no footprints when she made her getaway. She wouldn’t have minded having snow, though, if it didn’t interfere with her plans. The park, clean and beautiful, would have looked like a giant snow globe. Sara made a mental note to add a painting of a snow globe with people dying inside it from frostbite to her portfolio.

Jason still hadn’t made it home by eight thirty. Knowing him, he probably stopped by one of his bimbos’ places for a quickie. Oh well. Better to be too early than to be too late and miss her shot.

The anxiety Sara had felt about murdering Jason had died down. Now Sara didn’t feel anything, other than chilly, and foolish for her sweat earlier. She looked at her phone: it was now 8:35. She hoped Jason showed up soon; otherwise, they might find her body out here instead of his, it was so cold. At least she wasn’t sweating. She thought about playing
Call of
Duty
:
Zombies
on her phone to pass the time, but if she did that, her hands would become so cold that they’d burn.

Jason did not arrive until a few minutes past nine. Sara’s anxiety level rose back to the top once she saw him. This was it. This was the moment she had been waiting for. She yanked her hands from her pants pockets, clumsily drew her gun from her jacket pocket, aimed it at the back of Jason’s head as soon as he stepped out of his car, and reminded herself to keep her hands steady . . .

She put her quivering finger on the trigger . . .

(She considered not going through with it: it was one thing to put a bullet through a headshot; it was quite another to do it to an actual human being. If she pulled the trigger, if she killed Jason, she wouldn’t be able to fix it. She wouldn’t be able to take it back.

Then she recalled what Detective Cassidy had said to her:
Well
,
don
’
t
take this personally
,
Ms
.
Krason
,
but he looks the way he looks
,
and
you look the way you look
,
and we just
don
’
t
think a jury would believe
you
.
I
’
m sorry
.

Then she flashed back to the humiliating rape examination.

Then to the actual rape.

Then to the party, where she had found out about the bet.)

And she fired!

But her hands trembled even more than they had at the shooting range; they wavered even more than they had in the basement, and she ended up missing Jason by a country mile, inadvertently alerting him to a menacing presence.

Jason spun in every direction, looking for his hidden assassin. He dashed toward his front door.

Afraid that she would lose her only chance at justice, Sara started firing wildly in Jason’s direction. She managed to get lucky, planting two bullets in him: one in his lower back and the other in the back of his neck. He yelped like a cornered puppy as he collapsed on the steps of his porch.

Sara, in shock at what she had done, stood there, immobile, until she saw people coming to their front doors to investigate (
Silencer
!
I forgot the silencer
!). She ran away from the scene of the crime as though she were an escaped slave fleeing a plantation. She dumped her father’s gun in a small creek in the park and then headed home.