14. Chapter 14 - Hadley
Chapter 14 - Hadley
The Grave
A gent Harvey wasted no time and started asking the questions as soon as she was settled. “When did you first meet Peter Daniels?”
I took a deep breath and began. “When I was sixteen. He volunteered at a youth shelter I stayed in occasionally.”
“And what was your relationship with him, then?”
“Nothing. He mentored some kids who stayed there. I never stuck around long enough to interact with him. He tried a couple of times, wanted me to know that living on the street wasn’t the only option I had, but I wasn’t receptive and only stayed one night at a time every couple of months when I was in between places.”
I knew over sharing could be dangerous, but I was trying to give them the complete answer.
“When was the last time you saw him before this time? ”
“I stopped going to the shelter when I turned eighteen, so before that.”
“How did your paths cross this time?” she asked.
What a nonchalant way of putting it. “He recently hired Jenks and Sawyer Law Firm, Tim’s firm, where I worked, to represent him for a case. Maybe three months ago. He was working with one of the junior associates, so I didn’t have any interaction with him other than in passing through the building.”
“What had he hired the firm for?” She asked. I noticed the way her right eye twitched slightly as she asked it. I held her stare for a minute, staying silent because even I knew she couldn’t ask that before she looked over at Tim.
“What a rookie cop question, Agent Harvey. At least try to make yourself look like you’re not fishing for information we both know you don’t have access to. Hadley wasn’t privy to that knowledge as my paralegal, and even if she was, it’s confidential under the legal representation clause. You’ll have to subpoena the firm if you want to know that.” Tim answered for me.
She huffed and held her head up as she straightened her spine and adjusted her jacket, “Did you two have any conversations while working at the firm? ”
“He stopped me once in the lobby. A month ago, he said he recognized me as one of his girls from the shelter.” I threw air quotes up at his name for me, “Like he’d had some sort of relationship with me back then. He asked me how I was doing, I told him I didn’t remember him and that I was late for court and left. I didn’t like the vibe I got off of him, so I told Tim and he told security to monitor him.”
“What vibe was that?” She asked pensively. She leaned back and crossed her arms across her chest. Almost like she was showing me she was judging me and didn’t believe my version of it.
“Like we were close; like we were old pals when, in reality, I had never said more than ten words to the man before.”
“Okay, let’s fast forward. How did you come to be in his home here in Utah?”
Instantly, images and memories from his home flooded my system. My pulse picked up, and I fought to control my emotions, even as I felt the red flush of anger creep up my face.
“I was at The Port Authority in the city, waiting to board a bus for Florida, where I was moving to. It was the middle of the night, my trip was a red eye, I went to use the bathroom in the main terminal, but it was closed for cleaning. So I went to use a secondary one by the main drop-off area.” I paused then. Trying to articulate my words through the panic, I felt just talking about him. “By the time I saw him, it was already too late. I was at the sink washing my hands when he ran up behind me and smashed my face into the mirror. I fought back, clawing at him, kicking and elbowing anything I could get a hold of, but I couldn’t get his grip out of my hair. He threw me to the ground and sat on my back with his knee between my shoulder blades and put a cloth over my nose and mouth. Then everything went black.”
Panic swelled in my heart.
Deep breath Hadley, just breathe.
It was like I could hear Kip in my head, coaching me to stay calm.
“Then what?” She asked.
I swallowed the bile threatened to rise in my throat, “I woke up tied down in the back of an SUV. All the seats were gone and there was a mattress on the floor. He stopped at a rest stop, and I woke up, it was nighttime again. He said we’d made good time.” I said bitterly. “Like we were on a road trip. ”
“Do you know what rest stop? Was there anyone around?”
“I don’t know, I was tied down in the back. I couldn’t see anything out of the windows other than the sky.”
“What happened at the rest stop?” Her tone changed slightly as she asked the question. She uncrossed her arms and leaned her elbows on the table, leaning closer. “Did he go anywhere? Take you out of the car?”
I dropped my gaze to my hands in my lap and picked at that stray thread on my sleeve again. I didn’t answer out loud, just shook my head no.
“So what happened?” She asked again.
I looked over to the mirror on the wall, trying to see through it at all, trying to see if Kip still stood behind the reflective surface.
“Hadley. What happened when he stopped at the rest stop?” She asked again, more forcefully.
I turned my head back around and looked her in the eye. “He raped me.” I could hear the blood rushing through my ears and could feel the way my chest got painfully tight as I said the words out loud.
She didn’t respond right away, just leaned back into her seat slightly. Tim dropped his hand off the table and gripped my good one on my lap, squeezing the hell out of it until l looked away from her to him.
He remained silent, but his eyes were sad as I looked back into them. A single tear dropped over my lower lid and slowly rolled down my face. I swallowed and unclenched my jaw a couple of times before looking back at her.
It surprised me to see compassion on her face. “I’m sorry, Hadley.” She said softly before clearing her throat.
“He put the cloth over my mouth again and I blacked out. The next time I woke up, we were at his house, and I had an IV line in my arm. He sedated me for the trip, I guess.”
“What did he say or do when you got to his place?”
I held her stare as I went through the images in my head, “He put me in my grave.” I said evenly and then took a couple of deep breaths, remembering how hard it’d been to breathe when I realized what he’d thrown me into. “He dug it before coming to New York and taking me. Said he’d wanted to make me dig it myself, but that I probably would have used the shovel as a weapon against him. Because he could tell I’d fight back.” I looked over to the mirror again, remembering Kip’s words when we’d first met, about how he didn’t take me for the type of girl to just allow someone to beat on me. He’d been right. “I tried desperately to climb out of it, I clawed at the walls for hours trying to get out. I screamed until my voice broke.”
“Where was the grave? Did he keep you in there the entire time you were there?” She asked as she motioned to the agent behind her. He quietly left the room as she continued to look at me, waiting for my reply.
“No. He took me inside when the sun rose again.”
“What did he do when he took you inside?”
I couldn’t do the back-and-forth all day. Not at that pace. I couldn’t sit there and walk through six days, move by move of what he did to me. I’d die before I could finish.
As I locked eyes with her, I leaned forward, resting my arms on the table, and held her gaze as I explained. “I’m going to save you the trouble of acting like a parrot and asking me over and over what he did next. Throughout my time there, he consistently did the same thing every single day. He told me what a worthless, unwanted piece of trash I was. He told me repeatedly that when he was done with me, he’d rip the flesh from my bones and bury me in the grave he’d thrown me into numerous times. Then he beat me and tortured me with whatever type of sick weapon he’d choose at that moment. You name it, he used it.” I shrugged my shoulders and tried to act like it was nothing to say the words, when in reality it was everything. It took literally everything. “Whips, canes, knives, belts, baseball bats, plyers, or just his good ol’ fists and boots. Those were his favorite because he said he could feel my flesh and bones bending under them.” Leaning back, I ran my hands through my hair, frustrated as I tried to find the right words. “He’d chain me up and keep me there for hours until he wanted to play again. Then he’d beat and torture me again until I lost consciousness, or he grew tired. Or in his particularly cruel moods, he would force me into whatever sick position he wanted, and he would rape me.”
Kip would never want me after witnessing this. He was probably disgusted thinking about having me after that pig had forced himself inside of me.
My leg bounced uncontrollably under the table before I stood up and started pacing. No one said anything as I moved around, my brain exploding with questions and answers. He’d never want me, and I couldn’t even blame him. I felt like damaged goods, and they were forcing me to reveal just how damaged I was to the man I loved.
They all just watched me come unglued. My hands were clammy, and I started sweating, thinking about all the terrible things Peter Daniels did. I unzipped my jacket and took it off, folding it over the back of my chair, and tried to ignore the way they all looked when they saw the bruises, burns, and cuts still lingering on my arms.
I stopped in front of the mirror and instead of looking through it, trying to find Kip, I looked at myself in it, at what they were seeing on my skin.
More tears pooled in my eyes as I tried to come up with what to say next.
I stared at the tears in my eyes through the mirror until my vision blurred from them as I continued. “Eight times.”
There was a quiet pause in the room, no one said anything right away until Agent Harvey spoke up. “What was eight times?” She asked. She stood up and walked over to the mirror and turned to face me, leaning her shoulder on it.
“He raped me eight times in six days.” I turned my head to face her. “Don’t think that because I paraphrased it for you that I don’t remember what happened every single second of every day that he held me captive. I just can’t sit here and talk about it step by step with you when you still think I’m lying about it.” I said angrily.
Her right eye twitched again as she looked over at the others in the room before looking back at me.
“I’m trying here, Hadley. The crime scene looks bad for you, there’s more evidence proving you murdered him than there is evidence to back up what you speak of. We didn’t find any DNA from you in any room other than the living room where he was killed and in his car. We found the grave you talked about, but nothing else to support your claims. What else do you remember? Give me something solid.”
I turned back and looked at Tim. He tried to hide it quickly as I turned, but I could read the grief on his face before he locked it down.
“He used a condom every single time he raped me because he said he didn’t want to leave any traces of his DNA on me to lead the cops to him if they ever found my body.” I paused again, looking back to Agent Harvey, “Because at that point, he was the monster, and I was the victim the police would be trying to get justice for. But that was before I had to save myself.” Taking another calming breath, I paused once more, attempting to gather my thoughts and speak coherently. “I remember every time he strangled me until I’d pass out when he wanted to move me without me fighting him. I remember the times he used the cane with a red handle on my kneecaps, he told me it was his favorite because the noise it made when it hit my bones made his dick hard.” As my body trembled with anger and pain, I kept my gaze locked with hers. “I remember the burn of the shackles digging into the skin at my wrists and ankles when he’d chain me up and leave me for hours while he left. I remember begging God to kill me so that I could be free of his torment after he waterboarded me and then threw me down the stairs, only to pick me back up and take me to the top to throw me down them again.”
It was evident that everyone was affected by what I said because there was a mixture of horror and pity on every face in the room. But I knew I needed to give them something they would know was the truth, undeniable proof. “But what I remember most is the way he nearly broke my back, shoving me into the closet next to the front door when Sheriff Boyd came to visit.” I watched as all eyes turned to the Sheriff, but he remained oblivious to them because his gaze was fixed on mine, overwhelmed with absolute disbelief. My heart was breaking inside of my chest, I could physically feel the pain I’d felt in his home as I told them all what he did to me. The sheriff knew when I said I’d been there for six days that he had been there in that time frame. He had been trying to figure out how he could have missed the signs of Peter holding me against my will when he had been at the house.
So I talked to him directly as I went on. “You stopped by on my third day there. He’d just pulled me out of the ground where he’d made me stay overnight, naked and bleeding, for my disobedience in fighting him as he tried to rape me the last time. I was exhausted and suffering from hypothermia, so I was nearly unconscious when he started throwing me around. You pulled in as he shut the front door behind us and he panicked. He didn’t have time to lock me back up or knock me out because you were getting out of your car and walking up the front walk. So he forced me into the closet and smashed my face in with his fist four times before telling me that if I made a sound, he would cut your throat open and hold me under it while you bled out all over me. ”
My body trembled as tears fell, “So I laid there in the closet, holding my hands over my mouth…” I shivered and my eyes fluttered closed as I cried, “praying for the strength to stay quiet while you spoke to that monster about the ice fishing derby going on that weekend and how you hoped the pike would be biting. I sobbed silently in the dark because I didn’t want your death on my conscience when he finally killed me.” I accused angrily, pointing my finger at him.
My chest shook as I tried to take a deep breath, but couldn’t. I grabbed for the wall as my knees gave out and I fell to the floor in utter exhaustion. I brought my knees up and wrapped my arms around them as I laid my head back against the wall.
Tim rushed over and fell to his knees next to me, still silent.
I was so tired, I just wanted to crawl back into Kip’s bed and hide from everyone. But I had to keep going. “The day he died is the day he tried to kill me for good. No more threats or attempts, he held the knife to my chest ready to plunge it in and get it over with. But I fought back. And when I fought back, I didn’t stop fighting until I had stabbed him so many times I couldn’t lift my arms anymore. I lived because he didn’t.” When every ounce of energy left my body all over again, I closed my eyes. “I grabbed what I could of my own things and left. He had no phone there that I could find, and I couldn’t find the keys to his truck. So I grabbed my bag and ran into the blizzard to escape him for good. And it all would have been for nothing if Kip hadn’t found me and saved me.” I fought to keep my emotions in check as I got overwhelmed with my feelings for the lumberjack.
The alpha.
“The only reason I’m alive right now is because of him. He gave me a reason to fight to stay alive when, after everything, I was ready to just let death take me. I’ve gone from being the victim, to being the criminal, to being whatever it is that I’ve become now.”
“You’ve become a survivor, Hadley.” Tim said affectionately before looking up at the agent who just stood silently watching it all unfold, “That’s enough, Agent. She’s been through enough. You have everything you need.”
“No, it’s not enough,” I said weakly. I found it hard to even lift my head off the wall.
“No, he’s right, that’s enough Hadley. We can clear you with your statement, assuming Sheriff Body here provides his statement about his visit to the house.” She said, looking over to the older gentleman who easily nodded his head yes without question.
“No,” I said, though. “That’s enough of my story. But if I don’t keep going, who’s going to tell the stories of the other girls?”