Night Closes In

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Nancy

“I remember staring down at the tiled floor, at the wet drops gathering there, a mixture of sweat, saliva, semen, mucus, and tears. By then, I was no longer troubled by the likelihood that I would be forced to clean that slowly growing puddle with my tongue before I was returned to my cage.”

Her face was youthful, but her startling blue eyes were ancient. She had the wise, haunted gaze that military veterans call ‘the thousand yard stare’. She had already seen many evil things in her short life. Her hands were in constant motion during the interview, massaging her shoulders, rubbing the knuckles of one hand with the fingertips of the other, caressing her knees with damp palms. I recognized this activity as self-petting behavior. It was a way to calm herself in a time of stress.

I made small talk at first, to put her at ease. I complimented her hair, which was thick and healthy, a shade of blonde that was nearly white. “Most people think that I bleach it, but it’s natural.” She smiled thinly and shrugged. “Viking DNA, I guess.”

Despite my repeated assurances that I would reveal neither her true name nor current whereabouts, she had been wary about speaking to me at all. I had contacted her through a private security firm after my background had been thoroughly investigated. They had advised me that the local police also kept an eye out for any unusual activity near her residence, and I would likely be asked to identify myself and explain my business to them before approaching her home.

I was stopped, and I was careful and polite as I produced my credentials.

She is certain that the dragnet which swept up thousands of people involved in the worldwide human trafficking trade failed to purge the network from existence, and the members who remain will be seeking revenge on the ones who betrayed them. It would be comforting for us to believe that her fear was mere paranoia, a learned helplessness inspired by the horrors of her own experience. I can offer no such reassurance to either her or my readers. The best that I can do is to take measures to prevent accidentally betraying her trust in me.

She was accompanied by two large dogs when she answered the door. They were obviously well trained, and stood silent and watchful until she signaled to them that I could safely be allowed to enter. I had already noticed the security camera aimed at the front steps. The loose fitting clothing she wore gave me reason to believe that she had a pistol concealed on her person. She was taking no chances.

She offered me a comfortable chair and a cup of tea. She washed a prescription medication down with her own tea before seating herself on the sofa across from me with a brief apology.

“For my nerves,” she said, indicating the pill bottle. “It’s hard for me to talk about this.

I blame myself for the things that happened to me,” she began, fixing her gaze on the window behind me, as though her story was written there. “I forgot how important friends and family can be to us. My therapist told me that people who burn bridges don’t even have a life preserver left to hold on to when they try to swim home.

It all began when I started going out with Brad. He was a cocky kid in a bad garage band that expected to make it big someday. When we are young, we think that life is a movie, and we are the stars. I was going to be their lead singer” She set her cup on the table beside her and curled herself into a ball on the sofa, hugging her knees, a petite young woman, fine featured, barefoot in jeans and a sweatshirt.

Mom hated him from the start, and predicted that I would come to a bad end. Parents- what do they know? I did what many young girls do in such a situation. As soon as I was eighteen, I packed my bags and headed out on the road with the band. We aimed for California, of course. The plan was to pick up gigs along the way and sing for our supper. It didn’t take long for things to fall apart. We were forced to coexist every day in cheap motels. We auditioned and were repeatedly rejected as we waited for our first big break. The guys who had better lives to live back East drifted away, and soon there was just Brad and me arguing with each other and blaming everyone else.

Finally, the morning came when I woke up alone in a strange town. Brad had left me a note and the car keys at least; before he took his guitar and his suitcase, along with most of our remaining money, and boarded a bus.

Going back home was not an option. I couldn’t face Mom’s smug look as she saw me walking through the door broke and rejected. The promised land still beckoned in the West. I believed that an intelligent, good looking woman with a great singing voice could go far there.

I couldn’t afford to spend another night in a motel. There aren’t too many ways that a girl with no job experience can make her way in the world, and I wasn’t desperate enough to try the obvious one. I thought about selling blood, but I’m scared of needles, and I have been told THC lingers in the bloodstream and shows up on the pre-test. So I sang acapella on street corners and passed the cup until I had enough cash to buy a little food and fill my gas tank before I continued on alone.”

She sipped her tea and shuddered. “That’s when things really started to go bad.”

My first instinct was to give her hand a reassuring squeeze before she continued, but as I leaned toward her she drew back against the couch, maintaining a safe distance between us. I leaned back as well, neutralizing the awkward moment by reaching for my own tea instead.

“I drove all day, stopping only to fill my gas tank and pick up some food for the trip. When night closed in, I found a roadside picnic area, parked well off of the road, and locked myself in in for the evening. I dined on cheese and crackers, washed down with fruit drink, and made a bed out of my spare clothing in the back seat. Just before I fell asleep, I noticed the glimmer of moonlight reflecting from the ring on my hand. It had been left to me by my Grandmother. It was gold, I realized, perhaps as much as half an ounce. If all else failed, I could pawn it for enough money to finish my journey. It would have betrayed her memory though.

A hard rapping on the window beside me brought me awake with a start. It was a policeman, shining his flashlight on me and over the rest of the car’s interior. Swallowing my panic, I rolled the window down.

“You can’t sleep here, Miss,’ he said. ‘It isn’t safe.”

His voice was soft. He didn’t seem much older than I was. It reassured me.

“I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I just needed to rest a bit. I’ll move on.”

I was hoping he would give me a few words of caution and send me on my way. Then I could find a less exposed place to park farther down the road until morning.

“I’ll need to see some Identification,’ he said.

I dug out my driver’s license and handed it to him.

“You’re a long way from home,’ he observed.

“I’m on a trip to the coast.”

“You are too old to be a runaway. Were all the motels full?”

Rather than have him pry all of the details out in pieces, I decided to tell him the whole story, dressed up just enough so he wouldn’t think I was a complete derelict.

“Maybe, you should just swallow your pride and go home,’ he suggested.

I had a funny feeling about that bit of advice, as though he was trying to warn me of some danger and give me a last chance to avoid it.

“Maybe someday,’ I said. ‘I’m not ready to do that now.”

He sighed and handed me back my license. ‘I can’t let you stay out here. If you come back to the station with me, I can put you up in one of the empty cells.”

“Am I being arrested?’ The alarm bells were starting to ring in my head.

His laugh seemed a bit forced. ‘Nothing like that, I’ll leave the cell door open. It ain’t the Ritz, but it’s warm and dry.”

He reached through the open window to unlock my car door and open it for me. A light rain began to fall, pocking on the roof of the car.

“I can’t leave my car out here.’ I protested

“I’ll have it towed in for you,’ he said ‘We’ll put it in the impound lot and you can pick it up in the morning. ‘ He winked at me ‘ No charge.”

I took a minute to gather up my stuff and roll up the window before I got out and stood shivering in the rain. He led the way to his cruiser. I started to open the back door of the patrol car.

“Sit up front with me,’ he said. ‘The back seat is for prisoners.’

He grinned down at me as he opened the front door. ‘Just don’t play with my siren.”

While I was stowing my gear on the back seat, He opened the trunk to get something.

“I have a thermos of hot chocolate here,’ He said. ‘It will warm you up.”

It would have been rude to reject the cup he offered me, steaming hot, the steel cap from the thermos bottle. I set it on the dash to cool a bit as we settled in and fastened our seat belts, then cradled it carefully in my hands to prevent spilling as he pulled out onto the highway.

He reached in front of me for the radio and spoke into the microphone. ‘Unit seven coming in, code six niner.’

I couldn’t make out the reply that crackled back an acknowledgement.

The rain was falling harder now. I watched the windshield wipers tick tock back and forth as I sipped and yawned.

“There is a lever beside you,’ he said. ‘You can recline the seat if you like.”

I adjusted my seat and took another sip.

“It’s nice,’ he said. ‘All that cold rain outside, and here we are, safe and warm inside. It sort of makes you sleepy, doesn’t it? Get comfy. We will be driving for a while.’