Chapter 1
“Something”
Spring 1995 - Chicago, Illinois
(Ó 2007)
(Ó 2007)
“What?” He asked himself in a indistinct whisper, coming out of his trance. He stopped dead in his tracks, he heard “something.” Was it the drums? Was it the wind chimes? Was it both? Or … was there “something” else? But “something” is making him stop, to stop and sense everything around him. He stood there, frozen from all his movements.
“Something.” “Something” is wrong, he can feel it. “Something” has made him stop walking, “something” that is recognizable, “something” he has experienced before. “Something” from his past, a déjà vu. He raises his right hand to his ear, with the index and middle finger together, the ring and small finger together and his ear between the middle of the “V” shape, rubbing the back of it. Whatever “it” is, “it” has made him stop as he was walking through the back alleyways, a walk he had to do so that he could be alone, and to not be seen.
It was early evening, and he was behind some of the apartment and condominium buildings of downtown Chicago, exactly where, he doesn’t really know. Whatever is wrong, the “something” has brought him out of the daze he’s been in for the past few hours. He often went on these “stealth marches” when his emotions would mix, and turn into the rage. He would sometimes walk for miles, and often not know where he would end up. It started again tonight in his apartment. It would always begin when the sadness would come, next by the depression, followed by the loneliness, the longing for, and then by the blame. The memories would flood his mind, and he would feel the rage building inside himself. He knew then that he had to go and walk, and run, to stop the anger.
Now, the “something” had come back, the “something“, which now had made come to a complete halt. He was now stationary, tuning in to his senses. Then, his warrior instincts took him over. “Something” was wrong and he now fully aware of it. He closed his eyes to listen, to separate all noises and put them in their place. The distant traffic, the slight breeze coming from the lake, the sound of the “L” trains, and that hum in the background that always seems to be there in Chicago.
He tuned into his sense of smell and touch, keeping all the usual things in their own separate area, scanning all around him for whatever was out of place.
There! Just up ahead, coming from another alleyway, a slight noise that didn’t belong, a noise different from all the rest. He then moved swiftly and quietly to the entrance, standing on the side, and slowly peered around to look, and keep himself from being detected.
His eyes darted quickly in all directions, up, down, and side to side of the alley when … there! About thirty feet forward and to the right, on his side of a large garbage dumpster against the brick of the building. Two men, who were facing one another. The man whose face he could see was on his hands and knees, the other was lying in a prone position. The one lying down had his pants down around to his knees, and on either side of his hips were the legs of a girl. He looked to the man on his hands and knees and saw that he was looking downward. He followed his stare to see that he was helping the other to hold her down. He saw her face for an instant, blood coming from her nose and mouth.
“She’s just a child”, he said to himself in his mind.
Now, other people would have either shown their apathy and walked away, or run up immediately screaming at the two assailants while screaming for help. Not him though, his instincts and his experience instantly took over his entire being. In his mind, he knew the real damage has been already done, and you cannot change that … but you can stop them.
The numerous times that he has had to do this before, to let two or three more die, in order to save the other twenty or more. His knowledge of these situations came flooding back him and all that he had been taught began to flow through his mind. To put together a plan of attack.
First, look over your terrain; find the best attack route, and your escape route. Second, plan to use the weapons at your immediate disposal, if no weapons are available, find what to use that is around you. If there is nothing around you, then YOU ARE the weapon.
Third, focus in on your target and your enemy and plan how to neutralize them. Lastly, check the whereabouts and direction of your escape route, so that when the all has been neutralized and the mission has been accomplished, you immediately take it.
Check for all you advantages, and then look at your disadvantages. Plan on the course of action for any disadvantage, or counterattack that may occur.. Plan, make your strategy, double check, and check again.
Now, with all your plans in place, get yourself at the ready, focus in on your target, now, . . .initiate, . . . engage . . . and … STRIKE!
* * *
Billy Freeman and Raul Ortega, both twenty-six years of age, were partners in the illegal narcotics trade. Both of them had been so together since high school, but they never could get above what everyone would refer to as “low-level drug dealers”.
Both of them now lying face down at the end of a dark alleyway with agonizing pain firing through their heads. Both of them laboring to keep breathing, incapable of moving, both of their bodies now dead from the shoulders down. Raul lying there with his trousers and underwear still down around his ankles. But both of them now in a state of fright, believing that they were dying right there on the blacktop.
Meanwhile, the blonde teenage girl whom they both had just raped minutes ago, was still cowering behind the dumpster and against the wall. She was shivering not from what just what happened to her, but to what she had just witnessed.
Billy was the taller of the two, around five foot ten, with a slim build. Tonight he was wearing his dirty blond hair long, and had not shaved in about two weeks. After tonight, he thought he would be changing the way he looks, as he would always do, after “hunting”.
Raul was slightly shorter, a Hispanic with a light brown complexion. He too was wearing his hair dark brown hair long with a goatee beard and sideburns. He also thought that he was going to change his appearance after tonight.
They had made good money, if you could refer to it as “good” money, but it never was anything so that they could live above what they believed to be extravagant. However, they had big plans to do so one day, but those plans had now ended a few minutes ago. They were working on establishing themselves, and making all the good connections. Over the years, they had developed narcissism about themselves; they believed that they could do just about anything, and that they were invulnerable. Because when the times did come when they had their run ins with law enforcement, they seemed always to beat the system.
Because of this belief of being untouchable, which had now been proven to be a false belief, one of the personal trends that they both together had started, when they felt like having a “good time”, was that they would go out to do what they both termed as “going hunting”.
Tonight, after making a great deal earlier in the afternoon on four bricks of cocaine and two kilos of Jamaican marijuana, Raul decided to celebrate by getting what he had referred to as “their special treat”. After their special treat their plan was to come back to Billy’s apartment and shave their beards, and cut their hair to a buzz cut. They always had changed their appearance after their “hunting trips.”
“So, bro, let’s go hunting”. He had said to Billy earlier in the evening.
Over the years, the “hunting” they referred to was to journey around the streets of Chicago to look for any particular woman. She had to be alone, and if opportunity presented itself to be just right, they would begin to follow her, to see where she was going to. They would look for situations like going to the corner grocery, or to a neighbors, or any other place close by where she would have to travel by foot. Tonight they started to follow Stephanie Morris, age fifteen, from her home. They knew that this situation was just right for them when they heard an older woman say to Stephanie, “Not to late now Stepphy,” as they sat in their car parked in the opposite direction from where she was walking.
“OK Mom!,” she answered as she left her home. She was petite, pretty, blond-haired, blue-eyed, and with a perfect milky complexion. She was wearing a white blouse, with a blue skirt, and green Notre Dame zip front parka. She was carrying a large roll of art construction paper and was going to her girlfriends home about five blocks away to work on an art project for school. She was just a sophomore.
Stephanie had been taught by her parents to always be aware of her surroundings. Tonight she saw a man begin to follow her about a block from her girlfriends’ home right as she left a couple hours later, so she began to walk faster. She thought she was doing the right thing, but what she didn’t know was that this was all planned. She was being watched when she walked to her girlfriends. Billy and Raul watched her as she went into her girlfriends home and began to make their plan. They now knew the route that Stephanie would take when she would go back home. So they drove down the street that she just finished walking, and found the long, dark alley that would be perfect for them. It was almost halfway from her home.
The man behind her, saw her as she left from her home some blocks away, and waited for her to leave. He was purposely making her walk faster in the direction she was going, while her attention was on the him while behind her, the other man, his partner was hiding in the alley just up ahead on her side of the street, and was waiting to intercept her.
When she just started to pass the alley entrance, Billy Freeman grabbed her, one arm around her waist; the other hand covered her mouth. He carried her down the length of the long, dark alleyway and pulled her behind a large garbage dumpster next to a brick brownstone building and held her down. A moment later, from the other end of the alley Raul appeared, and walked up to where Billy was holding Stephanie.
Raul looked down at the young girl. He saw the terror in her eyes, but that only made him more aroused, it was part of the pleasure that he enjoyed the most.
“Nice,” he said, “real nice”.
Then they both began tearing off her clothing, pawing at her body as they did so.
“You won they coin flip bro, you get to go first,” Raul had said to Billy, “I believe that this is untouched merchandise you lucky shit.”
Raul took over for Billy, and when his hand came off her mouth, Stephanie had inhaled to get ready to scream. Before she could, Billy’s fist came crashing into her face.
“Shut-up bitch,” Billy had whispered to her through his clenched teeth, “don’t you fuckin dare make a sound.”
Billy stood up and began to unbuckle his belt, undid the button and unzipped his fly, and let his pants drop to his knees. He dropped down and forced Stephanie’s legs apart. He then mounted and raped her.
Stephanie being a virgin had tried to scream from the pain but was met with Raul’s fist this time. Blood started to stream out of her nose.
Billy climaxed after a couple minutes, then began to change places with Raul. Stephanie started to cry and Billy once again had struck her in the face with his fist. Blood was now coming from her mouth. Raul now stood and unbuckled his pants, unzipped them and let them fall to his knees, he mounted Stephanie and he too began to rape her.
The last thing Billy remembered was Raul on top of Stephanie asking him, “You wanna go again bro?”
They never heard or saw him coming when he swiftly bore down on them.
It all had come about so rapidly. Billy was looking down at Stephanie as he pinned her arms when he was kicked dead center to his face; the force knocked his head backwards into the metal dumpster. One quarter of a second afterward Raul was kicked to the side of his face, directly to his jawbone, driving his head into the brick wall beside him.
Billy tried to get up, but the intense pain had shot through his skull, and it was unbearable. He tried to yell, but he felt his pain increase greatly when he tried to do so, and he forced himself to stop. There was a thud to both of his shoulders coming from behind him, he fell to his knees and on to his chest while holding onto his face. He then felt a tremendous strike to the middle of his back, right between his shoulder blades, directly on his spine, and he then heard the crunching sound. He felt the pain in his back for just a second, then it vanished, and he couldn’t move.
He then heard the footsteps leave him and go to Raul’s direction, and then passed out.
Stephanie watched with her head swimming as a large dark shape of a man grabbed Raul by his hair, twisting his head around violently, and wrenched him off of her. She saw as the dark shape throw Raul to the ground and onto his stomach. Raul was only half-conscious, as he lay there flat on his chest. Then she witnessed as the dark man, who was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt, raise his right foot high enough so that his knee was almost parallel with his chest, and intentionally drove the sharp end of the heel of his boot directly between Raul’s shoulder blades. The large dark man used all his strength when doing so that Raul’s arms and legs made a vicious jerk backwards, and she heard a loud crack, and Raul then lay there motionless.
The dark man then knelt next to Raul, grabbed him by the hair to pull his head back, and Stephanie heard the ever so soft, deep sound of the dark mans voice as he whispered into Raul’s ear, and then pushed Raul‘s face hard into the pavement. She couldn’t comprehend what it was he was saying, but it wasn’t much. Then the dark man walked over to Billy, shook his head as to wake him, and seemed to repeat to him the same thing.
Then the dark man walked back to the end of the alley from which he first came, the same place Raul came from when Billy had grabbed her, and dragged her back there. The dark man stopped quickly, turned to his right, and turned his head to look at her from his right shoulder; she couldn’t see his face because the hood from the black sweatshirt was covering his head. All that there was to see was a black void inside the hood. He froze, stood looking directly at her for only two seconds, then calmly walked forward and disappeared as fast as he had come.
She stayed there not moving for a few minutes shivering, the only sound that she could now here was the labored breathing of her two rapists. She began to pull her torn clothing around her and she now started to cry.
“D-d-daa-dy,” she began to whimper quietly, “dad-d-dy.”
She slowly stood up to walk to the other end of the alley. She looked down as she passed Billy who lay there still immobile, and trying his best to breath. The she continued to limp her way toward the entrance of the alley, and her crying grew louder. The closer she to the entryway, the louder she became.
When she finally made it to the sidewalk, she dropped to her knees and began to scream as loud as she could. Her crying was now loud wailing. People came to there windows to see the beaten and bloodied little girl collapsed in the street. Many people would later say that they would never forget the sight of the little girl and her heartbreaking cry.
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