THREE TIMES A LADY Read online

  So, Jewish or not, Annabeth Preston had absolutely no qualms whatsoever about going forward with the extremely dangerous procedure. And why in the hell would she have any qualms about it? What did she have to lose at this point? Another child? Probably not one of her biggest concerns, considering her history. Only Nicholas’s special bris – which translated to ‘covenant of circumcision’ from the Hebrew – had gone quite a bit further than simple removal of his foreskin. Quite a bit further, indeed.

  In some early cultures, castration was performed on soldiers who’d lost in battle. The winners did it to symbolise their complete victory over their defeated foes. To take away their very manhood and ensure they could never retrieve it again.

  For her part, Annabeth Preston had symbolised her victory over Nicholas with a sharp scalpel, no anesthesia and with a delighted smile planted firmly on her pretty lips.

  After strapping Nicholas down by his wrists and ankles with thick leather restraints to the huge wooden table in the middle of their kitchen, she’d stood over him with the sharp surgical instrument balanced unsteadily in her delicate hand. ‘Try not to move, son,’ she’d said. ‘If you move, I might mess it up. And if you scream, I’ll make sure I mess it up on purpose.’

  Nicholas had tried his very best to keep silent – had tried with every last ounce of energy he’d possessed – but when the sharp metal blade had sliced into the tender skin at the top of his genitalia he had no choice but to scream. He screamed loud and long and hard, screamed until his throat felt like it had been crammed full of razor blades, screamed until he had no voice left with which to scream.

  But Annabeth Preston had only watched him silently the entire time, not even the slightest trace of emotion crossing her beautiful face. Not even the slightest indication that his animalistic howls had affected her eardrums in the least little bit.

  When Nicholas had finally stopped his screaming – much too exhausted to make another sound and feeling a pain in his penis like none he’d ever experienced before – his mother tutted. ‘Now, now, son,’ she’d said soothingly. ‘I warned you, didn’t I? I was just going to take your foreskin and testicles, but now I suppose I’ll have to take off the whole sinful thing. I wish you hadn’t made me do this. But you did.’

  With that, she discarded the scalpel in favour of a wickedly sharp meat cleaver that was hanging over their kitchen table along with a variety of other knives. As the longtime wife of a butcher, she knew exactly what to do.

  Undoing the leather restraints on Nicholas’s ankles, she turned his limp body over on one side before pulling the shaft of his penis taut against the wooden surface of the table. In one swift movement, she lifted up her right arm before bringing down her gloved hand again in a blindingly fast chopping motion. It took less than a second for the meat cleaver to slice effortlessly through flesh and veins and arteries and make resounding contact with wood.

  Nicholas didn’t remember screaming again at that point. Everything had gone pitch-black. He supposed the trauma of the entire ordeal must have signaled his brain to flood with endorphins, nature’s very own painkillers: a way for his body to deny the horrific trauma to which it had just been subjected.

  Total removal of the male genitalia didn’t come without its inherent risks, though. Far from it. The danger of death due to bleeding or infection was much greater than with simple removal of the testicles. But like everything else in her extremely well planned-out life, Annabeth Preston had prepared for that possibility too.

  Blood spurting forth like an exploding geyser from between Nicholas’s quivering thighs and every last cell in his body screaming out in agony, Annabeth Preston had moved to the stove and held the flat side of the meat cleaver against a burner glowing bright red. The world around Nicholas blurred, swimming in and out of focus until everything appeared to him as though he were viewing it through a thick sheet of rain-spattered opaque glass.

  Returning to the table, Annabeth Preston had then pressed the hot metal against her son’s wound to cauterise it. The sound of sizzling flesh had filled Nicholas’s ears. The smell of cooking meat had wafted up into his nostrils, mixing in with the scent of his mother’s expensive perfume. Chanel No. 5, of course. Nothing but the very best for her.

  ‘What do you say, son?’ she’d asked.

  Somehow – despite the unspeakable horror to which he’d just been subjected – Nicholas had managed to mumble his reply right before he’d passed out for good.

  ‘Thank you, Mother,’ he’d said.

  And once again – strange as it might have sounded to any of the so-called normal people out there in the world – the really sick thing about the whole thing was that he’d actually meant it.

  CHAPTER 7

  The heartbreaking story of Sara Whitestone’s brutal rape over an altar at St Anthony’s Catholic Church in the late-1950s – as told to Nathan Stiedowe while he held a sharp knife pressed against Sara’s throat – crushed Dana’s spirit. For his part, however, Nathan Stiedowe didn’t seem quite so moved. Quite the contrary, as a matter of fact.

  Crushing Sara’s slender shoulders beneath his knees with all his weight, he stared down hard into her eyes. ‘That’s a real touching story, Mom. Really it is. Still, I’m afraid it’s not quite good enough. Time to pay the piper, cunt. But first I think I’ll give you an idea of what it was like for me growing up. How does that sound to you?’

  Roughly flipping Sara onto her stomach, he yanked down her satin panties around her knees and slapped her hard on her bare buttocks, a stinging blow that turned her backside red. ‘“For this you know – no fornicator, unclean person nor covetous man who is an idolater has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God!” Ephesians, chapter 5, verse 5.’

  He slapped her again, even harder this time.

  ‘“Let the people turn from their wicked deeds! Let them banish from their minds the very thought of doing wrong! Let them turn to the Lord that He may have mercy on them! Yes, turn to our God, for He will abundantly pardon!” Book of Isaiah, chapter 55, verse 7.’

  The monster flipped Sara back over and pinned her shoulders beneath his weight again. Running the sharp knife lightly over her throat left a superficial but very painful cut in its wake. Even in the darkness, Dana could easily make out the stark contrast between the bright red blood and the pale white skin at her mother’s throat.

  Just then, Sara Whitestone’s panicked blue eyes widened in horror at the sight of something over Nathan Stiedowe’s left shoulder. The monster turned and followed her gaze to the doorway of the bedroom. Dana did the same. Two feet away and wearing his footy-pyjamas, Bradley held a teddy bear in one tiny hand and shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other as though he needed to go to the bathroom.

  ‘Mommy, what’s happening?’ the little boy asked, his small voice quiet and shy. ‘You’re scaring me. Who’s that man on top of you? Where’s my daddy?’

  Nathan Stiedowe locked gazes with the little boy, freezing Bradley like an ice sculpture in his paralysing stare. He never took his eyes off the boy as he whipped the sharp blade across Sara Whitestone’s neck again, this time cutting all the way to the bone.

  Jolted out of his stupor, the little boy screamed so loudly that it nearly drowned out the watery gurgling sounds that Sara Whitestone was making as she choked to death on her own blood. Springing off the bed in a black flash of movement, the monster leapt toward the doorway, passing directly through Dana’s body again. The little boy’s enormous blue eyes widened in terror as Nathan Stiedowe yanked the sharp knife high overhead. Bright red droplets of Sara Whitestone’s freshly drawn blood slid down the glinting blade and plopped onto Bradley’s tiny upturned face.

  That’s when the front door slammed open with a violent bang.

  ‘Sara? James? What the hell’s going on in here? It’s Ralph Wilson from next door. Nancy and I heard screaming and called the police. Is everything all right?’

  Nathan Stiedowe froze in his tracks. Then he reacted in another bli
nding flash of movement. Undisguised hatred flashing across his handsome face, he bolted past the now-catatonic little boy and dashed into Dana’s bedroom before pulling himself up through the window and dashing across the yard, disappearing into the darkness. From the corner of her right eye, Dana watched a dark circle of urine spread slowly across the front of Bradley’s pyjama bottoms. The accusing glare in his traumatised eyes was impossible to misinterpret.

  How could you let this happen to me again? the little boy’s look asked her. You were supposed to protect me. Now because of you I have to die in that plane crash.

  CHAPTER 8

  Dana bolted upright out of her coma and ripped blindly at the thick plastic tube shoved down her throat.

  She gagged hard while the cylinder took for ever to slide up her esophagus, lubricated with stomach acid and some kind of sticky white paste they’d been feeding her. A high-pitched alarm filled the room with frantic beeping, followed immediately by a stampede of medical personnel storming into the room.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ a woman yelled. ‘Get a sedative!’

  A man with a deep baritone voice overruled the order at once. His harsh tone left no doubt at all as to exactly who was in charge here. ‘Are you fucking crazy, Jean? She just came out of a coma, for Christ’s sake. The last thing in the world we want to do right now is put her back to sleep.’

  Dana coughed painfully. The lining of her throat felt raped, like she’d just swallowed ten gallons of high-grade gasoline. Gradually, she became aware of a catheter between her legs, of more plastic tubes attached to her arms. She ripped at those, too, but the large man who’d just barked out his stern command that she should not be injected with any sleep-inducing drugs pushed her gently back down into the bed. ‘Easy, Agent Whitestone,’ the man said, resting his huge hands lightly on her shoulders. ‘Easy, now. Everything’s OK. You’re OK.’

  Dana’s vision sharpened like powerful binoculars abruptly coming into focus, hurting her eyeballs and searing a jumble of confusing images into her unprepared brain. She glanced to her left and saw snow falling lightly outside the window, collecting briefly on the glass before melting away. More confusion clouded her mind. She tried to speak but a hoarse croak came out instead.

  The man in charge – Dr Aloysius Spinks, according to his nametag, a large African-American with a shiny bald head – poured her a glass of water from the plastic pitcher on the bedside table and held it up to her lips. Dana drank in deeply before coughing again.

  ‘The little boy,’ Dana managed finally, forcing out the words even though it hurt like hell to talk. ‘Did the little boy make it?’

  Spinks frowned and motioned to a nurse. The woman left the room in a scuffling of feet before Spinks looked back at Dana. ‘What little boy, Agent Whitestone?’

  ‘From the plane,’ Dana said. Tears of frustration pooled in her eyes. Her skull throbbed like it had never throbbed before. A powerful storm of nausea boiled away deep inside her gut and threatened to explode from her gullet in a disgusting rainbow of projectile-vomit. ‘The little boy who was sitting directly in front of me. I was sitting in seat 32b. The little boy was sitting right in front of me with his mother. Did he survive the crash?’

  Spinks lifted his right arm and adjusted the wire-framed glasses on his face. As he did so, ripples of sinew danced just beneath the surface of his skin like minnows darting through a shallow pond, letting Dana know that the good doctor had most likely played football in college. Probably linebacker. ‘I don’t know, Agent Whitestone,’ Spinks admitted, shaking his head slightly. ‘Most of the passengers made it, but a few perished in the crash. Six, I believe, didn’t make it. One child died. What was the little boy’s name? I’ll have someone look into it right away.’

  The accusing look that had flashed across the little boy’s blood-sprinkled face in Dana’s horrific nightmare bolted back into her mind. Now because of you I have to die in that plane crash.

  Dana wretched hard, nearly throwing up again. Her temples ached as though powerful drills were boring through the bone on either side of her head.

  Spinks held up the glass to her lips again and Dana finished off the remaining water. It helped. ‘Bradley Taylor Thomas,’ Dana whispered, swallowing back the acrid mixture of blood and bile she tasted in her mouth and remembering how the little boy’s mother had used his full name while admonishing him to not talk to strangers. ‘His name is Bradley Thomas Taylor. Four years old. Blonde hair. Blue eyes.’

  Spinks waved to an orderly standing near the doorway. ‘Get on it right away. Check back with me as soon as you find out anything.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  When the orderly had left the room, Dana’s scrambled brain finally started working again. Her heart flipped over inside her chest as the stunning realisation hit her with all the subtlety of an aluminum baseball bat slamming into a plate-glass window. She’d boarded the plane out in Los Angeles on 12 May. It had been sunny outside then, bright, warm. The snow falling outside her window now indicated that a substantial chunk of time had passed since that day and this one. Not even Cleveland’s weather was that bad.

  More nausea boiled in her stomach. ‘How long have I been out of it?’ she asked weakly. ‘What’s today’s date?’

  Spinks lifted a medical chart from Dana’s bedside table and flipped it open. A sympathetic look flooded into his warm brown eyes. ‘The date is 16 November,’ he said. ‘You were in a coma for twenty-four weeks. You sustained massive head trauma in the plane crash. Your skull was fractured. You were life-flighted to Fairview General Hospital ten minutes after they fished you out of the water and we immediately performed a series of life-saving surgical procedures on you, including a craniectomy, a craniotomy and a cranioplasty. Basically that means we relieved the pressure inside your skull caused by the bleeding and inserted temporary metal plates while your bone healed. The good news is that you’ll make a full recovery, Agent Whitestone. As a matter of fact, you’re almost there already. It’s quite remarkable, really.’

  Somehow, Dana wasn’t surprised by the news. What in the hell was there for her to be surprised about here? All things considered, serious thought should probably have been given to changing the term ‘Murphy’s Law’ to ‘Whitestone’s Law’, considering the way her life had unfolded. After all, whatever the worst possible outcome in any scenario could be, that’s the one she could usually count on. ‘So, now what?’ Dana asked as a wave of utter exhaustion washed over her body and suddenly made her want nothing more in the world than to go back to sleep again – maybe even for ever this time.

  Spinks laid down the medical chart on her bedside table and lifted her left wrist to take her pulse. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘now we’ll monitor you closely for the next several days to make sure that no additional swelling occurs in your brain. You’re something of a medical miracle, Agent Whitestone. You really are. Your recovery speed has been absolutely astounding. Before you know it, you’ll be up and about and as good as new.’

  Dana closed her eyes. If Dr Aloysius Spinks knew just how far off the mark he’d been with that statement, he’d probably blush about nine shade of purple. Wasn’t his fault that he didn’t know her horrible history, though. Still, ‘good as new’ wasn’t all that terribly good when it came to her, now was it?

  Dana opened her eyes when Spinks dropped her wrist and spoke again. ‘I’ll alert Bill Krugman that you’ve emerged from your coma,’ he said. ‘His name is listed at the top of the emergency contacts in your cellphone. Or is there someone else you’d prefer for me to call?’

  Dana shook her head. The head of the FBI – known to everyone in the Bureau simply by his title of ‘The Director’ – was the only living person left on her emergency-contacts list. The others were all dead now, most of them thanks to her. Another thing Spinks had no way of knowing. ‘No,’ Dana said, sinking her head back down into the pillow and feeling her eyelids droop. ‘That’ll be just fine.’

  Spinks’s voice filled Dana’s brain as the murky
world of dreamland dragged her off insistently into its warm embrace. She only prayed that her destination this time would be a much more pleasant place than the horrific nightmare world from which she’d just emerged. ‘Fine,’ Spinks said. ‘I’ll leave you alone to rest up now then, Agent Whitestone. Even though your recovery has been absolutely amazing, I don’t want you overdoing it.’

  Dana’s eyelids flew open again when she felt Spinks’s hand reach behind her head. She bolted up in bed. ‘What in the hell are you doing?’ she snapped.

  Spinks pursed his lips and handed her a call button attached to a length of plastic-covered wire. ‘Relax, Agent Whitestone. Just press this button if you need anything.’

  Dana’s cheeks warmed. What the fuck was wrong with her? Highly unlikely that a doctor would murder her in her hospital bed five minutes after she’d emerged from a coma. ‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘I guess I’m still feeling a little shaken up.’

  Spinks waved the apology away. ‘Don’t worry about it. Perfectly understandable. Anyway, just press the button if you need anything. I’ll be back to check up on you in a little bit. And Dana?’

  Dana looked up at the kindly medical professional, feeling more exhausted than she’d ever felt before in her entire life. ‘Yeah?’

  Spinks held her gaze. ‘You’re a very lucky woman, ma’am. Don’t you ever forget that.’

  When Spinks had exited the room, Dana let out a deep breath that deflated her chest completely and closed her eyes again, this time for good. Despite the doctor’s encouraging words, though, the plain truth of the matter was that she didn’t feel so goddamn lucky right now. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact. Then again, life was funny like that sometimes, wasn’t it?

  Sure as hell was.

  Crying shame there was no humour in it most of time.

  CHAPTER 9

  Bill Krugman hurried into Dana’s hospital room the following morning, holding his trademark briefcase in his left hand and a bouquet of colourful flowers in his right. ‘Dana,’ he said, rushing to her bedside and laying down the flowers on her table. ‘Thank God you’re finally conscious.’