Arlene Balleza felt as if she’d been hit over and over again with a sledgehammer. Every muscle in her body ached, and just to move caused pain to sizzle up her spine and pound in a tremendous headache.
She let out a low whimper as she tried to look around.
Lying on her back, feeling cold seep into her body, she opened an eye and tried to see in the shadows. Where was she? Though it was too dark to see clearly, the only light filtering through an ice-glazed window, she recognized nothing.
Grunting, she attempted to roll over. Her head roared in pain, her ribs ached, and her muscles were stiff and cold, so darned cold she could barely think. And her shoulder… Dear Jesus, had someone tried to rip it from its socket?
She blinked, her eyes focusing, and she saw that she was in a tiny room with an unlit wood stove in one corner. Above her was a single, high window, and the only piece of furniture was this cot with its thin sleeping bag.
What the heck?
There was a door, probably less than ten feet away, but in her current condition, it might as well have been a mile. She must have cracked her ribs in the accident.
Her mind was foggy, memories shuttered behind a wall of throbbing pain. Her left arm pounded from shoulder to wrist and she hoped to heck she had only bruised a muscle, that nothing was broken.
Instinctively Arlene reached for her Bible, but it was not there of course; it was back in the Mercedes. It was at this moment she realized she was naked, not a stitch of clothes on.
And her right wrist was handcuffed to a metal pole.
Squinting in the darkness, Arlene found nothing that might help her escape.
There was a mattress of sorts, old, stained and above a stench of rot, decay, and death.
With an effort, she reached down to touch it, and it was real. She also realized for the first time that her teeth were chattering. But nothing else, that she could see.
Just then, she heard barely audible voices. She could not discern from where they came. It was too dark to see much else in the cold room.
Someone had brought her here.
Someone could be lurking in the darkness.
She squeezed her eyes closed and concentrated, past the pain, to the memories that skulked in the dark corners of her mind. She’d been driving… Yes. She’d been on her way to give that no good loser of a husband, Steve, a ride… And then?
She could not remember.
Closing her eyes, she tried to recall something; anything… Was there the sound of a gunshot? Loud. Echoing. Reverberating through the icy canyon?
Oh, dear God… Her car…her Mercedes…spinning out of control, metal groaning, the windshield shattering… She relived those terrifying moments when her Mercedes had plunged over the steep embankment of the ridge, turning crazily as it propelled its way into the dark canyon below.
Shivering, she refused to call out. She concentrated on the memory. The twisted metal, glass all about, snow and ice blowing in the car, her face cut, her shoulder hurt, the seatbelt wouldn’t release… Her hands drawn as she had waited, crushed under the roof.
And then…and then…and then what?
She scrunched her eyes tighter, trying to recall how she’d ended up here, lying naked and broken on a mattress in a darkened room. The memory teased at her mind and then she heard it, a sound from the other side of the room.
More muffled voices.
It was not the voices that sent a chill up her spine, her busted nose was beginning to clear a little, and as it did the smell assaulted her. A smell she recognized all too well.
Arlene began to cry. She wasn’t going to get out of this place; she had a feeling of pure dread. A feeling that she knew meant she was going to die soon.
* * * *
On the same night that he had captured Arlene Balleza, his real estate agent, Frank Marsden piled into his car and drove around, looking for a candidate.
“I can’t fuck that old broad,” he said to himself. “It’d be like fucking my grandmother.” The thought made him shiver. “Disgusting.”
It didn’t take him long before he saw a face and body he had to have.
Standing on the corner, waiting for a customer, was a small, dark, twenty-three-year-old woman named Deborah Horning. Marsden knew her as “Debbie”. The two had done business before, then Debbie had left the area. Frank Marsden was delighted she had returned.
He had picked her up some time the year before. At that time he had agreed to pay her forty bucks for oral sex and she had climbed into his car and driven with him to a secluded back lot behind a local store. When t m hey got there, Frank Marsden had been unable to “get it up.” Embarrassed and angered, he paid her ten dollars and let her out.
Tonight, however, the situation was out of the ordinary.
He negotiated a fifty-dollar price with her, and the two of them drove to the house on South Douty Street. When they got there, Marsden led Debbie into the basement via his outdoor entrance. At the base of the stairs when he turned on the light, Debbie, who had nearly gagged at the stench, was shocked to see an older woman lying naked on a mattress and two other women handcuffed with duct tape over their mouths in a corner. Before she could scream, Marsden choked her, cuffed her, took her to the floor and began to rape her repeatedly.