Rising Darkness (11 page)

“I’m ok. It takes a lot more than some psychotic broad with a really big, sharp, knife to get me down. Where is Elena?”

“She went out last night. I texted her what happened and where we are, but she could be hiking in the middle of the Grand Canyon for all we know. She will turn up when she does.”

Joe shook his head. He hoped that his little faux pas with his attempt at a breakthrough between them was not going to cause problems between him and Elena now. It had been stupid of him to try that. He had thought he was doing something good, but when he saw it was backfiring he should have just backed off. He had been kicking himself in the nuts since then.

Joe had to admire Alex’s strength. Even in as much pain as he was in and with as much fear as he must have felt with the whole situation he was still cracking jokes and not allowing his humor or his personality to suffer. Joe was not sure that he would have been that strong in that position.

“When will your forensics friend know about the test results?” Joe asked. He felt weird asking the question at a time like this, but he felt that he had to do it to keep himself from crying right then. He was starting to feel like a giant wussy, but there was just too much carnage in his life recently for him to get a solid grip on anything. He had been walking on ice and egg shells for over a week now. Every time he closed his eyes he saw his wife’s sweet, but strange face. It was devoid of life and it didn’t even remotely look like her anymore. He felt somewhat nauseous almost all of the time and he didn’t know what he could do to take that feeling away. The only thing that helped at all was spending time with his family and his best friend. That was one of the things about searching for justice for Tracy that he had enjoyed most; he was able to spend time with his best friend. And his girls had come home. But still he would not have traded twenty lifetimes of that for a second without Tracy being here. He missed her deeply every single second of every day.

“Sheila said that she would call me as soon as she found out. I can text her if you like. I just got to find my phone,” Alex said. He started to try to move but Kirsten stopped him immediately.

“No, you stay still. We will find your phone. I think it’s over here.”

She opened up the drawer and handed him his cell phone.

“It’s ok, you don’t’ have to worry about that now,” Joe said. “It was dumb of me to even suggest that.”

“Are you kidding? All of this has something to do with those results today,” Alex replied.

The doctor came in just then and gave Alex a quick check over. He looked in Alex’s eyes and his wounds. Then he asked Alex some basic cognitive questions about the day it was and what his full name was. Satisfied with the answer the doctor started to leave the room, but not before telling Kirsten and Joe that they had to wrap it up because Alex needed intense rest to recover properly.

They said their goodbyes and left the hospital. Alex said he would text or call as soon as he heard from the lab.

****

Joe was asleep in his study when the phone rang and woke him up. He had been dreaming about his wedding day with Tracy. She had looked so amazing walking down the aisle to greet him. He remembered every detail so vividly that it was permanently entrenched in his mind. She was there and she was with him. She loved him. And that love… that amazing woman was walking towards him with the most angelic smile that he had ever seen. She was so beautiful. He just wanted to hold her and protect her forever.

He had failed on one account. He had decided that he was going to be a much better husband and father this time around. His dad duties had doubled and he had accepted them gladly after Tori died, but now he was determined not to let anything change on that front. He was just adding the husband part and he was going to do it right this time.

Joe had cried himself to sleep many nights after Tori died about all of the things that he did wrong. Her death had been ruled an accident, but he always thought that she either intentionally killed herself or she wound up having an accident but she decided not to fight to survive. He had essentially killed his wife. Elena was right.

He could still remember her scattering the flowers on the carpet as Tracy came down the aisle towards him. Elena had been the flower girl and she seemed happy. But as time wore on she began to remember her mother more and she began to miss the things that her mother should have been there for.

But Tracy had been there. Elena had tried like mad not to form a strong bond with Tracy, no matter how much work Tracy put into it. Elena had become very good at pretending over the years and Joe felt that he had messed up shortly after Tori’s death. He just didn’t realize how much it had traumatized Elena because she was so small.

Tracy and Joe had been so in love right from the start. He truly felt that he had found his soul mate. He thought the same thing about Tori, but when he really looked back on it and compared what he had with each woman he realized that the deep seated and often obsessive love and need for his partner was not there with Tori. He had loved her dearly, but they had really been very different people who seemed to fit together somehow. That was a very attractive thing to have in his life at that time and Tori had agreed.

But when he started to see Tracy, the whole world just opened up for him. He missed his wife so much. He knew that he would never love like that again. He was not sure if he ever even wanted to date again, let alone get married, but he was certain that he would never find anything remotely as sweet as what he had with Tracy.

And now she was gone.

Joe woke up with tears rolling down his face. He had been doing that a lot lately. He had never cried in his sleep before and he was not even aware it was really possible. He kept trying to remember and think if he had heard of the phenomenon on some old television show, but he just could not remember anything about it. He just wanted to sleep for days and days and he wanted every second of that sleep to be uninterrupted. He didn’t think that was too much to ask for.

He reached for his phone and knocked it off the stand onto the floor. He struggled to grab it off the floor but the whole room felt like it was still spinning, as if he was still struggling to wake up from his dream that he had been enjoying. He thought he was enjoying it, but he was still vaguely aware of how much he was actually crying.

After a few seconds of bobbling around for the phone Joe picked it up and answered. He was pleasantly surprised to hear his buddy Alex’s voice on the other end of the line. He was wondering how against the rules it was for him to be using the phone right then when he was supposed to be having a massive amount of rest due to being almost stabbed to death. The man was a machine.

“Hey, Joe. Are you sitting down?” Alex asked. His voice was soft, but serious.

“Yea,” Joe said as he rolled himself back up onto his chair. He was starting to think that he had better start jogging every day and lay off the booze.

“We got the test results back on the DNA.”

“Great. What is the verdict? Is it John’s?”

Alex paused a few moments.

“It is not John’s.”

“What? Well who the hell does it belong to? Please tell me you have an answer and we don’t have to start this search all over again. I’m honestly not sure I have it in me to start over. I’ll just go to the chair willingly. I don’t care anymore.”

“Joe, we have a match.”

“Ok. Who?” Joe asked. He couldn’t figure out why Alex was being so weird.

“It is a partial match for you,” Alex said.

Joe felt like someone had just belted him in the stomach. He stood up and began to pace.

“What? What do you mean a partial match for me? How do you have a partial DNA match? It either is or it isn’t.”

“Well, it isn’t that cut and dry actually. What they mean by a partial is that this person is related to you.”

Joe almost dropped the phone and he clutched it tighter. He thought he might break the damn thing.

“What the hell are you saying?”

“This person is related to you and they are related to Tori. Joe, the DNA is a parental match.”

“What?”

“It’s Kirsten.”

Joe felt the pain blasting through the back of his head before the entire world went dark.

When Joe woke up the first thought that was screaming in his head was the pain. He felt like his body had been crushed by a crusher in the junk yard and most of the focus had been on the back of his head. He reached up and touched his sore head, feeling the blood there. The wound was very easy to feel; it was like someone had surgically removed a big chunk of his skin and then taken the rest and stretched it over his body so that the split there was forever there and it was going to continue to split a little more at a time.

He wanted to move, but every movement made him dizzy and it made him want to vomit all over the place. The pain was stretching now in all directions making even the simple act of breathing difficult. He wanted to just keep his eyes closed and let the world fall away from him. He needed to just relax and keep a good mental attitude so that he could focus. That was all that he needed to do.

Kirsten killed Tracy.

That thought came to the forefront of his mind quickly right then. It was enough to bolt his eyes open in a flash and for his will to ignore the pain and the nausea that was spreading throughout his body.

The last thing he remembered was that Alex had said that Kirsten was the one. It was her DNA in the van that had tried to kill him and she had dropped the necklace that she stole from Tracy’s crime scene there. It was her. It was all her. No. He would not believe it. There had to be a rational explanation. He was just going to talk to his baby girl about it and he was going to know that she was innocent. There was no way that she would ever hurt anyone, especially Tracy. She and Tracy had always had a wonderful relationship.

He refused to believe it, even as the tears rolled down his face and deep in his heart a flicker of doubt raged on. He was adamant that his daughter was innocent of all this. Alex had just made a mistake. Alex was under a great deal of stress. He wasn’t thinking straight. He had almost been butchered just hours before. The man was damn lucky to be alive. There was no way he had interpreted what the forensics department had told him and interpreted it correctly. This was wrong. He was going to prove it and then he and Alex could have a strong laugh about it all.

“Well, look who is awake.”

The voice came from his left. He opened his eyes wide, trying to see who was behind the voice, but he already knew. He could tell that it was Kirsten. But her voice sounded different. It was cold and hollow. He hardly recognized her.

A light turned on just then and he discovered that he was in the living room. And he was also tied to a chair. He had not felt the ropes that were wrapped securely around his body or the smaller ropes that were tied tightly around his wrists.

Standing in the center of the room was Kirsten. He did not hardly recognize her. She was wearing her hair up, her clothes were not the style she normally wore, and on her face was an expression of pure hatred and rage. Joe had never seen her look like this. She was wearing a torn pair of jeans with big work boots and a leather jacket draped over a plain white T. She looked more like some sort of a gang member than his little girl, the honor student.

“Kirsten what is going on?” Joe asked. His head hurt worse with every syllable he uttered no matter how quiet he tried to keep his voice. He kept wondering what she had hit him with. It had hurt like hell and he had a feeling that it might not stop hurting for days.

“What is going on? Daddy wants to know what is going on?” Kirsten mocked him as she began to laugh. She walked around the room slowly, moving circles around him. He felt frightened, truly frightened. He was scared shitless of his own daughter.

“Whatever it is I’m sure we can work this out and talk about it,” Joe said.

Kirsten laughed. “You think you can negotiate with me? After what you did?” She was screaming the last words in his ear.

“What did I do?”

“Well, let me take you down a trip on memory lane. I was a little girl and I came to find out that my own mother was now dead. She had killed herself. The adults, including you, tried to lie to me about it and say that she just went away for a bit, but lucky for me I had a big sister to help set me straight.”

“You were four years old; I was trying to protect you. I thought it was the best thing. I knew that eventually you would get old enough and learn about death. You were too young to understand at the time, honey.”

“Don’t give me that crap. I knew she was dead after Elena told me she was and I knew then what that meant. I knew she was not coming back.”

“I thought I was protecting you. Cut me loose and we can talk about this,” Joe pleaded.

“NO! I will talk and you will listen,” Kirsten said. Her head was almost touching his by now as she shouted in his ear. The pain was unbearable as it rolled throughout his head in shockwaves of stabbing agony. He wanted to grab his head and hold it to keep it from falling off his shoulders, but his hands were tied behind his back. He felt completely helpless.

His mind began to scramble. What was going to happen here? Did Kirsten just want him to listen? Was she just furious to be heard? Or was she past all that and she just wanted him to listen before she killed him. Was she a killer? Was his daughter really capable of killing a person? He could not let himself believe this. If he did it would have taken his entire world and shattered it. There was nothing left for him if he believed that. He had to maintain focus here.

“Ok, honey. Whatever you want. I’m here to listen to you,” Joe said. He had to make sure she realized that he was there to support her.

“Why did you do it?” Kirsten asked. She placed her face right in front of his. He could almost smell the mint on her breath. She
was always eating those junior mints since she was a little kid. He had almost forgotten the smell of them since she went to college.