Monday, September 3, 2007

Work in Progress: Test Case

My name is Karen Deerborne. I am a prosecuting attorney, and as such, I am used to establishing things. I tell you this because I want to be clear: I am not a promiscuous woman. I am not a risk-taker. I have never been picked up by a stranger in a bar, and until last night, I had never had anonymous sex.

* * *

The digital clock on my desk flashed as 11:59 pm turned into 12:00 am. Exhausted and feeling the weight of the previous day settling on my shoulders, I closed the file I’d been reviewing, turned off my desk lamp, and left my office carrying nothing but my purse. Walking down the hallway, I mentally planned the next few hours of my life: home, quick shower, sleep until 4:00 am, shower again, dress, eat, be back in the office by 5:30. It was going to be another in a string of very long days that had turned into several very long weeks.

My mind raced around the events of the last few days: a mysterious man had been entering the homes of single women, catching them unaware, blindfolding them, and forcing them to undress and masturbate for him. He had done the victim’s no additional harm, and while each of the women expressed shame at the idea of being forced into such an intimate act while being observed by a stranger, they all noted their “attacker” had been polite and kind. The newspapers had dubbed the man Mr. Perfect after one female journalist commented about it being the perfect crime: the victim and the suspect each getting what they wanted, and proclaiming that if Mr. Perfect kept it up, Arlingtown would be filled with the happiest, most satisfied women on the planet.

Reaching the end of the hallway, I made a left turn, punched the elevator’s down button, and waited for the car to arrive on my floor. Moments later, the doors slide open, and I entered the ornate box while willing myself to let go of everything work-related as one-by-one the floors to the ground ticked by. The ride down thirty-six floors doesn’t take very long, but as I felt the elevator slow, my internal counter alerted me to an unplanned stop. Looking up at the numbers above the door, I saw the 26 light up, felt the slowing movement turn to a dead stop, and waited for the doors to open.

Expecting Charlie, the building’s janitor, I was taken aback when a man in a suit was waiting at the other side of the doors. The man seemed as startled as I was, and I immediately read his hesitation. Moving over, I tried to make clear to him I wasn’t a woman frightened by an unknown man getting into an elevator in the middle of the night. Of course, I was, but I didn’t need the man standing in front of me to know it. Moments after the man stepped in, the car’s doors slide silently closed, and with the touch of the lobby button, we were on the move.

The odd silence of elevators descended around us, and the relaxation I had tried to find before the man’s appearance had gone into hiding.

“Late night, for both of us, I guess.”

He spoke with a deeply melodic voice, and when I met his eyes to respond, I felt a sudden tingle run through me.

“So it seems.”

I waited for his next polite statement, but instead of speaking, he simply looked at me. Ordinarily, a gaze like his would bother me, yet his eyes and his stare seemed harmless—inviting even.

No comments: