Loves Redemption (36 page)

Clearly surprised at her answer, she noticed his posture relaxed naturally, and although

his voice remained soft and high, the glazed look started to fade from his eyes.

“You know I’m really sorry about Allison.” He spoke as though they had already been

discussing her sister. His words instantly confirmed everything, and it was all she could do to maintain a neutral expression and not jump up and strangle him.

Putting on a cloak of nonchalance she asked with casual curiosity, “and why is that

lieutenant?”

“Please call me Jaime,” he smilingly invited before continuing.

“Thank you. I will,” Maya smiled back as though they were two old friends.

“Those idiots were right when they said she was drunk. She was in the back of his car

passed out when he picked me up. I had him drive to an area
I
chose and he parked the car. He started on me right away, it wasn’t easy to convince him that it would be better outside.” He mentioned the victim found with Allison, with remembered disgust. “But in the end for a piece of ass they all follow.” Jaime philosophically shrugged his shoulders.

“What happened? How did Ally get involved? Did she wake up and witness what you

did?” Maya didn’t try and disguise the sadness in her voice.

He reached across the small space that separated them and gently ran his hand down her

face, only to drop it when she recoiled from his touch.

His face hardened as he continued. “Had she kept her drunk ass in the car she would have

lived to whore another day. How ’bout that?”

Maya didn’t want to anger him. She knew Mark was on his way and she needed to keep

him talking as long as possible, so she changed the subject. “What’s your connection with

James? What role does he play in all of this?”

For a moment he only stared at her, his face twisting in a parody of a smile before he

answered. “So you know about Mr. Smith? Umm. Well he definitely served
his
purpose. In more ways than one, he served his purpose.” Jaime mimicked her earlier wink.

“However, once again, most men, including fags, will do anything for a piece of ass.

James came in handy several times for me. I met him at a bar where he was moaning about how he couldn’t finish graduate school and he didn’t have a job, yada yada yada, and I saw an

opportunity to ‘help.’ You see we’re not so different, we both like to help those in need.” A maddening look of conciliation graced his lean face.

Maya didn’t know if he really believed that or not, so she was quiet when he paused, not

wanting to give him the wrong feedback.

When she said nothing, he continued. “I helped him get a job,
and
I helped him get back into school. But I told him nothing came free,” he said, stringing the last word out in a sing songy voice. “One day soon I would need his help. We were ‘friends’ for a while as I began to formulate my plans, and then I called in my favor. He had no idea what I was doing when he

would help me park my car and drop me off in some different location.”

“He didn’t think that it was odd? The way you were dressed?” She ventured a guess.

“Oh that? Nooo.” He giggled lightly. “I often played ‘dress-up’ for him. I imagine he got

a real kick out of seeing the ‘Lieutenant’ all dolled-up. I would even let him take pictures of us, it gave him a sense of power,
leverage
over me. Or so his sorry ass thought,” Jaime told her, and laughed out loud at the idea.

“You had no plans to keep him around did you?”

Jaime’s laughter came to an abrupt end. “Well aren’t you the smart one.” A look of

hatred entered his eyes before quickly leaving, replaced with one of his irritating small smiles.

“No, I didn’t. Why not let the fool think whatever he wanted. I knew
I
held the power, not him, and
I
was calling the shots,” he answered emphatically, anger tightening his features.

“He didn’t have a clue when I had him deliver the flowers to you. Although, I think he was a bit jealous, thinking my interest in you was not so platonic.” Jaime giggled again.

“James was the one who brought the flowers in to me after all. How did he bring in the

last package? One of the ladies said she accepted them from the postman.” Maya tried to refocus his attention.

“Oh that.” With a negligible wave of his hand he continued, “that wasn’t at all hard to

accomplish. He didn’t make that delivery, your friendly mail carrier did. Do you know how easy it is to give a government employee a few dollars to perform a small service? Not such a difficult task at all.”

From the restless way he was crossing and recrossing his legs Maya knew he was

growing agitated. She didn’t want to reenergize his true reason for visiting, so she asked him a personal question, her language and voice friendly and causal as though they were two friends chatting.

“You know when I was a child, actually throughout my childhood and adolescence,” she

amended her statement, “I was always treated as though I were an inconvenience, as though my mere presence was repugnant to my foster mother.”

As she started speaking, the honesty of her words caught him, and he eased back into his

chair, all signs of agitation evaporating as though it never were. His attention remained raptly on her.

“I never felt as though I fit in. I was always lonely and set apart from my peers. I had the responsibility of raising my foster sister.”

Although Maya referred to Allison, she knew she couldn’t say her name and keep it

together in front of the man who’d killed her. “I never knew what it was like to be an average kid. I cooked, cleaned, and cared for my sister and there wasn’t much room for anything else.

My dad was black and my mother was white. My foster mother would say all types of hateful

things about my dual heritage. She would call me names an animal shouldn’t be called, let alone a child. It was beyond hateful.”

“I grew up with my Aunt Meg.” Eyes straight ahead, with no discernible expression,

Jaime related to Maya his childhood, a childhood fraught with neglect, humiliation, and abuse. “I was small because I didn’t eat the healthy amount of food as a child. The doctors said I was malnourished. I just knew I was hungry all the time,” he told her in a voice devoid of emotion.

“It didn’t help that my aunt spent as little money on me as possible. She’d get my clothes

from thrift stores, church basements, wherever she could get them. Sometimes they were clothes for boys, and sometimes not. She didn’t care. The kids at school would call me fag, queer,

whatever, because I was so small, and because of the clothes I wore.”

“Sometimes children can be as hurtful as any adult. Or worst.”

“Yes,” he agreed simply, “they can. Like you, I was a product of a racial mix.” He made

eye contact with her at this point, a small sad smile playing around his mouth.

“My father was Hispanic, and my mother was white. He didn’t claim me. According to

Aunt Meg, he didn’t believe I was his. He was a prominent man in the community, with a family of his own, and would ‘visit’ my mother occasionally. When she told him she was pregnant, he refused to believe I was his, since he wasn’t her only ‘visitor.’”

“Is that why you killed them, Jaime?”

“Those men? Those men who wanted to get their rocks off and leave? Without a care in

the world about a life they were destroying? Those fucking pillars of society?” His voice rose, becoming more and more strident with each question.

Standing up he nearly toppled the chair over and advanced toward Maya before coming

to a halt. He moved quickly across to the other end of the room.

Once he’d gotten himself back under control, visibly taking deep breaths, he squint his

eyes and pursed his lips looking steadily at Maya, as he lightly stroked his chin with his thumb and forefinger.

Under his unerring gaze she kept herself still, displaying none of the fear and uncertainty churning in her belly. She knew he was teetering on the edge of full mental breakdown, and one false move from her, could push him completely over edge.

“Partly. I guess that was part of the reason why I made them pay,” he finally agreed after

taking deep breaths.

“Aunt Meg followed in her big sister’s footsteps in her ‘career choice’ so to speak. She

also shared my mother’s lousy taste in men. My first sexual experience was performed at the hands of Aunt Meg’s sometimes live in boyfriend Rick. I was only fourteen and it wasn’t

consensual,” he said with blunt honesty, and a far-away look in his eyes.

“Rick decided it was time for me to earn my keep, and he turned me out. He thought it

was funny. Always making jokes about keeping it all in the family. Aunt Meg was too damn

weak to break away even though she knew what was going on.”

Maya was horrified by Jaime’s story. Unable to stop the tears from falling, she made no

attempt to wipe them away as he told her of his subsequent rape by a schoolmate.

“That was the last time. That was the last time anyone, especially a man, hurt or

humiliated me.
I
started taking control. I left Meg as soon as I finished high school. And I took classes in law enforcement. I also took self-defense and martial arts. No one was going to hurt me again. No one damn it,” he said fiercely, no longer looking at her. His eyes focused on some long ago image, his face looking tortured as tears streamed, unnoticed.

“I applied to the police academy. I worked long and hard, and made rank. I did well. But

I could never quite forget. Images would appear in my mind and I couldn’t get them to leave.”

He placed his hands over his eyes, and began to rub at them stringently, as though he were trying to scrub the images away.

“Eventually I knew what I had to do. I had to make them pay. That was the only way to

make the faces go away, it was the only way I could get peace.” He reached inside his jacket and withdrew the small, pearl handled .22 and lifted it. He leisurely caressed the polished, gleaming chrome plate.

He looked at Maya with a smile on his face, before turning his attention back to the gun.

“Isn’t she beautiful? So small yet so deadly.” With a low manic chuckle, Lieutenant Jaime

Hernandez stroked the handle of the gun and pointed it directly at Maya’s head.

Time was running out. She had to do something quick before she became this pitiful

creature’s next victim. Maya tried unobtrusively to reach her bag where it lay near the chair leg.

She didn’t believe in guns and refused to take the lessons Mark wanted her to take, but she had a can of mace attached to her key chain.

The keys sat on top of her bag, and she casually reached over the small distance to

capture them, along with the mace, as Jaime stroked the small weapon.

When he glanced over as she was bringing her hand back into her lap, his eyes narrowed,

and he slowly advanced on her.

He stood less than a foot away, when shouts outside the locked door made him snap his

head in the direction the noise originated from, and Maya wasted no time. She unsnapped the leather top and stood up, knocking her chair backward as she did, and sprayed the contents

directly into his face.

Most of the spray landed in his mouth and nose, however enough reached his eyes so that

he yelled out in surprise and pain. Maya reached for the gun in his hand, and although he was in obvious pain, Jaime maintained his hold. As they struggled over the gun, it went off, and the sound of two gunshots exploded.

* * * *

“He’s down, but he’s breathing!” Jordan shouted. He bent over the second fallen guard,

this one laying on the porch.

“You two go inside, I’ll wait for the paramedics,” he said to Mark and Nicolai, when the

approaching sounds of sirens rent the air with their wailing cry.

Mark and Nicolai burst inside the house, looking around as many of the women stood

clutching their robes in fear. The sound of two gunshots polarized the men into action.

With a primal cry of denial, Mark bolted toward Maya’s office with Nicolai close on his

heels, both men drawing their weapons as they ran. The door of the anteroom, which served as Dalia’s office was closed and locked, yet was no real barrier for Mark.

With the amount of adrenaline coursing through his body, he broke the door open with

little effort, and rushed into the room. His long strides took him to Maya’s closed door, and once again, he shattered the door open.

He stood still for one heart agonizing nanosecond, transfixed for that brief moment in

time. Maya lay still on the floor beneath Lieutenant Hernandez and blood was covering both of their bodies.

“No, baby, no. God please not Maya.” He rushed forward, roughly moving the

lieutenant’s body off Maya’s, and knelt down to cradle her head in his lap, tears streaming down his face.

Mark frantically felt for her pulse and nearly fainted in relief when he felt the strong

steady beat signaling life in her small helpless body. He moved his hands gently over her body, and searched for injury. He inadvertently came into contact with her injury, and her eyes

fluttered, trying to open as a moan escaped her closed lips.

“You’re okay, baby. Oh God you’re okay, Maya.” He gently hugged her, kissing her on

the top of her head as the tears continued to flow unashamedly down his face.

* * * *

Nicolai rushed into the room followed by two paramedics, and immediately came to

stand beside them. Looking down at the hole in the center of the lieutenant’s forehead, he already knew the man’s fate, yet he squat down and felt for a pulse.

“Please get her to emergency, she has a gunshot wound above her breast,” Mark

demanded in a barely recognizable voice, his throat clogged with tears.

The paramedic reassured him, and Mark was moved aside so they could reach the small