It was a grim spectacle that Deena saw there, in her home, the next morning; all the pictures had their glass punched out; jagged shards of glass still hinged to the frames, like broken teeth in a shattered mouth; the splintered glass vases; the stuffed chairs, gouged and slashed, their innards seeping slowly outwards onto the floor; the floor strewn with glass and stuffing; dozens of pots and pans in the kitchen, overturned, dented, handles broken off, or had been hurled against the walls with such violence as to fracture and perforate the plaster in many spots. And the furniture—the sofa and love seat, the dining room table chairs, all horribly hacked and smashed. And above that, hanging like a haze, the nauseating choking stink coming from the basement. The dehumidifier and her candles were all broken or torn asunder.
But it wasn’t the mere spectacle of destruction that shook Deena so deeply—as total and final as that was. What stunned her was the force of violence in the act. As she stood there she tried to compute in her head the amount of sheer hate a single person, acting alone, had to generate in order to wreak that much devastation. When Deena thought about it, it made her feel a little sick to her stomach and weak in the knees as she stood there in the doorway with the waves of horrendous odor pushing outwards against her.
“Surely you don’t think this was done by just one person? Could it have been a gang?” Deena asked.
Dauphin County Sheriff Lindsey Hill walked at a snail’s pace to a corner of the living room, the sound of crunching glass beneath her heels. Her back was to Deena when she reached a point and stooped over. When Sheriff Hill stood up again and started back toward Deena she was carrying a sodden jacket. She carried it by two fingers as it was quite wet and messy.
“Look familiar?” Sheriff Lindsay Hill asked.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Deena replied.
“I was afraid of that.”
“Are there any fingerprints?” Deena asked.
“Sure,” Sheriff Hill said, with a smile that was a little patronizing. “But I think we have our man in custody already.”
“Are you sure it’s him?”
Sheriff Lindsay Hill sighed. “Pretty sure, Ms. Hopping.”
“Why? Why did he do this to my house?” Deena asked.
Just then a loud belch was heard from somewhere in the back of the house and two sheriff deputies appeared with Steve Balleza from the back of the house as well. His clothes were rumpled and soiled; his eyes were dazed and ringed with red. His tousled hair appeared to have gone gray overnight.
When Steve saw Deena, he stiffened. Then he made a move toward her but was thwarted by the deputies and he stumbled. Still he had managed to come closer to Deena; just then Hill grabbed him by the shirt collar.
Suddenly, Steve Balleza, with both feet set unsteadily on the floor, swaying a bit like an ocean buoy, raised a long, hairy arm and thrust an accusatory finger in Deena Hopping’s direction.
“You know damn well why I did this!” The voice came out a hoarse, raspy whisper. “You know goddamn well why—”
“Steve,” sobbed Deena.
“You goddamn well know why!” Balleza thundered. “You messed up my house, I messed up yours. You both will pay! Hear me? You both will goddamn pay!”
When Sheriff Hill half-guided, half-pushed Deena out of the way as the two deputies escorted Steve Balleza out the front door, he was still thundering, his face the color of ashes, and still trying to turn and yell at her.
“We found him asleep in the back bedroom, I’m guessing the guest bedroom, and there is more,” Sheriff Lindsay Hill said. Deena waited for the “more”, only imagining what it was. “It appears that Mr. Balleza or someone else had sex in the room.”
Deena gasped, covering her mouth with her hands.
“There is semen and blood on the sheets and floor,” Sheriff Hill explained further. “I have CSI coming to process the scene. What I would like you to do is take a look around, trying not to damage the scene any further, and make a list of anything that is missing or damaged beyond repair. This will help your insurance as well.”
“Thank you, of course,” Deena whispered in response.
“I understand that you rent the house, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have the number for your landlord?”
“Um…he lives in the basement,” Deena said, and by the look on the sheriff’s face, revealed her surprise.
“In the basement?”
“Yes.”
“All right, I’ll go and talk to him after we take a look at the house.”
Deena nodded her acknowledgement and the two proceeded in silence around the once fashionable house, avoiding broken glass and other obstacles that had not long ago been Deena Hopping’s possessions.
* * * *
Beverly Dutwin looked like hell. For a nearly a week she had been dangling by her wrist from an overhead beam in a punishment session that began because she had tried to push aside the sheet of plywood covering the “hole”. It so happened to be the same night that Steve Balleza had trashed the house. Frank Marsden was beside himself in panic and rage. The drunken fool had nearly foiled his harem and led the police to him. In a rage, Marsden struck Beverly Dutwin, knocking her unconscious, then gagging the rest of his women to prevent them from alerting anyone above ground to their position. He then began his punishment on Beverly. He shoved live and dead cockroaches into her mouth and then held his hand over her lips until she swallowed.
But she was wearing down. For the last few days she had been vomiting and she complained of a fever. Marsden ignored her and kept the others gagged as he tried to divert the police from coming to the basement. He knew they would sooner or later, as he was the landlord of the house. Frank scolded himself for renting the house in the first place, yet he knew he needed the income to keep his plan alive.
Angela Quirino knew a crisis was coming when she looked up and saw Beverly had slumped down and showed no signs of rising. She, like the other women, had believed that perhaps their ordeal was finally coming to an end with the police walking all around the house upstairs. Realizing that Beverly’s condition or act, Angela wasn’t convinced it was real, would just make Marsden angrier, Quirino and the other women yelled silent encouragement to Beverly, hoping that Marsden’s anger would force him to slip up and alert the police.
About that time Marsden noticed their quiet screams, took one look at Beverly and ordered her to stand up. She did and he left her. Then again, it was not to be as only a few minutes later she collapsed again. This time Marsden did more than talk to her.
He unconnected her handcuffs and she dropped to the ground in a heap. Marsden angrily kicked her into the hole. “You bitches are going to ruin everything,” he grunted.
Turning his back on Beverly, he walked over to a large chest freezer, a rectangular shaped model, and opened on the top, on the other side of the room, and dished out three bowls of ice cream. He handed one to Quirino, one to Maria Pinella and kept one for himself. He sat calmly in the corner and ate his. After he was through he walked over to the hole where Beverly Dutwin had not moved and unzipped his pants and urinated on her before pulling the plywood sheet over her. He placed the usual bags of materials to hold it down and then took the empty bowls from the women.
The terrible stench was so pervasive it had not only the tenant of his house up in arms, but others in the neighborhood were also starting to complain.
As Marsden predicted, Sheriff Lindsay Hill sent one of his deputies to question him, a rookie cop. The rookie was a godsend for Frank Marsden as he told the deputy he had simply overcooked a roast he was cooking with some exotic herbs, thus creating the horrible odor. He apologized profusely and told him the smell should be cleared out in a day at the most. The rookie deputy believed him and asked Marsden to come to the station when he had a chance to discuss the ransacking of his house. Frank Marsden assured the deputy he would.
The deputy went away choking on the stench. The smell, Marsden realized, was becoming more than just a byproduct of his harem. The smell hung around: polluted the air; permeated what little clothing the women wore; and, most noticeably, virtually soaked into Marsden himself. During his sexual encounters with his captives he smelled so strongly of decaying flesh and feces it was all the women could do to keep from puking.