Present Day

It was just past 4 A.M. - still dark, but Reese couldn’t sleep. Too fidgety. She flipped the bedspread and the cool air assaulted her thinly covered flesh. In the colder months, she fantasized about flannel pajamas but never knew when night sweats would send her reeling from a dead sleep. So she stuck to flimsy men’s undershirts and pj bottoms.

 She reached for her terry cloth robe at the end of the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders. For a split second, it looked like she wasn’t alone in the bed and her heart picked up a few extra beats, but the mysterious lump was tossed pillows. Poor things never had a chance with her tossing and turning. She shuffled to the hamper where on top of the ever increasing laundry pile, she felt for yesterday’s yoga pants and t-shirt. Who was she going to offend in the wee hours of the morning? She did however opt for a fresh pair of socks and sports bra, and a fair application of deodorant.

As her brain switched from groggy fog into first gear, she remembered why she was so anxious to get up. She snatched a sweatshirt from the closet shelf and laced her sneakers.

Outside, the crunchy dew and a distant car alarm were her companions as she briskly walked the direction of Cascade Hills Park. The crisp air snapped any residual strands of sleep from her brain and it was only a couple of minutes before her body ached and screamed for an increased pace. She complied and passed through the ornate iron and brick entrance of the park within ten minutes of leaving her townhouse.

Like a light switch, her mind clicked on and began the race of worries.

Did I lock the door? Of course I locked the door. But I don’t remember locking the door. But I always lock the door. Think backwards to when I was at the door. I know I locked the door. I always lock the door.

“Knock it off,” she commanded her mind to redirect. A hypnotic command she incorporated to quiet the restless voice.

The running path glowed amber from the lights strategically placed every fifty feet. The park was dead. No other runners so early in the day. Her lips spread into a slight knowing smile. She was the only living soul assured that the park was safe again. Safe from the Asshole. It wasn’t the name the media had christened the serial rapist who had been haunting the park for months. But it was the name Reese gave him. Asshole. It fit.    

He liked his prey younger than Reese. Early to mid-twenties. Always the workout nuts who ran religiously and consistently. Each of his victims said the same thing - he smelled them during and after the horrible, demeaning deed was done. He plunged his nose deep into their neck and inhaled like he was taking his first breath or his last. He moaned and groaned as he sucked in their scent of sweat, pulling off their bras with rubber gloved hands to lick their bodies like he was casually enjoying an ice cream cone. Some of the women said they heard his guttural voice say, “you smell so good,” before taking a small spray bottle of bleach and folded cloth from his runner’s nylon pants and spritzing and cleaning them, washing away his drooling saliva.

But the Asshole wouldn’t harm another woman, and only Reese knew why. She tried to contain her excitement as she ran the same path she had every morning for nearly a month, hoping and praying she would entice him. She knew it was a long shot. She wasn’t as young as his previous four victims, the big 4-0 lurking around the shadows, but she was determined and prepared to be victim number five. Her daily runs, with a concealed knife in the sleeve of her jacket, was her secret. It was a cash purchase she made over three years ago and then tucked away just for such occasions. She bought it at a flea market some six or seven hundred miles away from home in a no-name town in Pennsylvania. Not even the agents of CSI could trace it.

Unfortunately victim five was Claire Yates, a pretty brunette with the calves of a dancer and a false sense of security. She ran in the evening when all the other victims had been accosted in the early morning. She hit the pavement hard when she went down, causing her brain functions to hover between life and death.

 At that point, Reese no longer wanted to lure the Asshole into her personal knife-wielding space. She wanted him dead immediately. She used her resources to confirm her suspicions of his identity, a resource she only utilized in missing children cases, but the Asshole had to be stopped. Despite the increased police presence in the park and the fingerprint and DNA they had extracted from the third victim’s bra when she managed to bite off a tip of his rubber glove, breaking his skin, they were nowhere near close to finding the Asshole.  Reese was.

Reese Caldwell was the R.C. of R.C. and company, a life coaching service – a trade she was quite adept at, but her true calling was more like a vigilante. In her mind, it was her purpose to find the assholes of the world and deliver them to the hands of justice or in this case, the hands of God. There were a surprising number of assholes in the world and only so much time she could devote to her cause. So she mainly stuck to lost kids, the cases where an asshole was involved, not the runaways. Not that she didn’t care about the runaways, but they were unfortunately more often than not better off missing, learning to survive on their own wits rather than returning to an abusive home. Besides she only had so much time to follow her calling, and she was compelled to find the lost little angels. They would get into her psyche and she couldn’t function properly until they were found. But she made an exception with the Asshole. Probably because his raping fields were so close to home. How could she not get involved?

And now, Asshole was stinking up his basement studio apartment. Perhaps one of his neighbors was calling 9-1-1 as she circled the park one last time.  As much as she wanted to use her knife, she opted to use his gun. The gun she found in the kitchen drawer when she first broke into his apartment.  The second time she broke in, she waited under his bed for more than two hours for his return and then his snores. It’s next to impossible to force someone to shoot himself in the head, so staging a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head was in order. Not an easy task. But manageable under the right conditions.

Reese completed her run, feeling rewarded by stomping the grounds the Asshole had terrorized for months. She ran home, playing out the day in her mind. She seldom took appointments on Sunday, but she had made an exception. She was actually excited and nervous about her new client. He was her first honest to God famous client.

She slowed her pace about half a mile from home and walked it out, imagining her muscles stretching the kinks and expelling toxic residue through her sweat. At her front door she took a second to scout around for her chipmunk buddy who lived in the rock garden under her kitchen window. He was the closest thing to a pet she had. No husband. No kids. No pets. Heck she didn’t even own her townhouse. No commitment problems there. She sighed. Too early for Chip. And definitely too early for analyzing the state of her being.

She let herself in and as soon as she shut the door, got the scare of her life.

“Geez, Luke! Can’t you warn me when you’re going to show up?”