Chapter 2

Mindy had her blouse on, but his pronouncement stopped her cold before it was fully buttoned.

Her purse had been in the pile he’d handed her and she jammed her underthings in it. She approached Bobby and the man on the floor slowly. Kneeling, she went through the same motions Bobby had.

“We need to leave,” she whispered.

“Is he dead?” croaked Bobby.

“I think so,” she said, her own voice shaky. “What did you do?”

“I put him in a choke hold,” croaked Bobby. “I must have held it too long.”

“Okay,” panted Mindy. She had no idea what she should do. What she wanted to do was go to someplace safe.

“Should we call the police?” asked the boy who had stopped Batiste from raping her.

“How are we going to be able to explain this?” said Mindy. “He did something to me.” She saw the baton lying on the floor a few feet away, and went to pick it up. “With this,” she said. “Hypnosis, maybe. I don’t know. But I don’t have proof. No one will believe me.”

“I believe you,” whispered Bobby. “I followed you. I could tell something was wrong. I believe you.”

“Thank you,” said Mindy. For the first time since she lost control of her body, she felt a rush of warmth. This young man believed her. Without proof he accepted her word. “But nobody else will. We have to leave.”

“What about him?” asked the boy.

The revulsion that swept through her wiped out all traces of the warmth she had been feeling.

“I don’t care about him,” she said. “He was a monster. Let’s just leave.”

As soon as they were outside she felt the freezing air on the still-exposed skin between her breasts. She didn’t have her coat. It must still be at the opera house. Where was that? She realized she had no idea where they were. She stopped, and swayed as the import of what they were leaving behind them hit her hard.

“I don’t know where we are,” she moaned.

“This way,” he said, reaching for her wrist. He let go almost instantly. “Your blouse,” he said, haltingly.

“I think I’m going to lose it,” she gasped. “I might throw up.”

“Not yet,” he said. He suddenly sounded decisive, somehow. “We’re just down the road from the opera house. Keep it together until we get back to our motel. But you have to fix your blouse first.”

She stood there. Her purse hung from one hand, and the other still clutched the baton she’d picked up. Her body felt frozen again. She let her chin drop and saw that the top five buttons of her blouse were still undone. She lifted the hand with the purse, and then the hand holding the baton.

“I can’t,” she said, near panic.

His fingers reached and she watched as they fumbled with the buttons. He wasn’t wearing a coat, either. He got one done, and then another. She realized that the reversed “ladies” orientation of the buttons were causing his male fingers problems and that somehow calmed her. The pressure of his fingers, brushing the bare skin between her breasts felt wrong, but somehow welcome. He wasn’t that man. What she was feeling wasn’t because of that man. That, alone, made it welcome. She glanced back at the door they had just closed, half expecting a zombie-like creature to open it and come after them. Nothing happened and he said, “Okay.” She looked back at him, aware that her control was on razor’s edge. She stared at her student. He was just a boy, a boy in high school, but he was also her savior. He had ended her nightmare ... had prevented her rape. That man couldn’t hurt her any longer - couldn’t hurt any woman again.

She couldn’t believe she’d actually touched him to try to feel his pulse. The thought of touching him now made her feel like she might vomit. Strength didn’t quite flood back into her muscles, but she could move again.

“We need to hurry,” she said. She didn’t know why, but she knew they needed to hurry.

It wasn’t until they got to their motel, and heard the screams, that she would finally began to understand what had just happened to her.

Channel Nine news had an exclusive, and it was on a crazy story, an insane story. As implausible as it sounded, they still reported on it almost constantly for a full day. The national services had been slow to pick up the story. It was too bizarre and the fact checking was taking some time. Still, people from the big networks were beginning to show up, circling like sharks looking for their next meal.

Then the FBI breezed into town and suddenly nobody was willing to talk to reporters. So the TV simply replayed what was already “known.”

At precisely 8:34 PM, the previous night, girls and women in three different states started screaming. Most collapsed. Many babbled incoherently. The same phrase, however, began to come from the women: “He raped me.”

By 8:45, a full panic was in motion. At best guess, there were two dozen girls and women in the immediate area of the opera house who began to “witness” at once. Unknown to them, there were also over two hundred additional victims, in other towns and cities, who suddenly remembered what had been repressed - that Gabriel Batiste had raped them, or forced them to perform oral sex on him. In most cases, the women were alone, or with some loved one or acquaintance. Witnesses thought these women were having some kind of mental breakdown. Many were restrained. Most were taken to a hospital. Police were called and responded. In Wyoming there was a cluster of them, so many it caused a general panic, especially since the name of the rapist was that of a man known to be there, in the immediate area, an actual hungry beast, possibly on the prowl. Both in Wyoming and elsewhere the police were all given the same name, and all of them queried the National Crime Information Center. It was that initial rush of NCIC queries pertaining to one “Gabriel Batiste” that set off an alert in the system, bringing the situation to the attention of upper echelon investigative services.

In addition to the name of their tormentor, many of the women also used the word “hypnotized” in their tale of woe, once they were calm enough to speak coherently. Eight weren’t able to speak at all, once the screaming stopped. They just stared ... and whimpered.

In the future, the story would become even more bizarre, as DNA tests revealed there were almost three dozen children linked paternally to Gabriel Batiste. But that would be in the future.

Naturally, the Wyoming authorities began looking for Gabriel Batiste. Routine police inquiry revealed that Batiste had rented two rooms in different motels. One was his “official” room, the one associated with his music career and the stated reason he was in Cheyenne. The other was the one his body was found in. It puzzled the police that he would use his real name to rent that room, which prevailing theory firmly suggested was the one he used to commit crimes there, in Cheyenne. Three girls, in fact, would eventually identify that room as the one in which Batiste raped them. All three, however, said it happened before the second of February. No one, however, claimed to have been in that room on the second. No one explained how Batiste’s neck had been broken.

Mindy and Bobby could have explained that, could have provided Batiste’s rationalization that he had nothing to fear from using his own name. He was quite sure his victims wouldn’t remember either him or the room. But while the body was being found, Mindy was in the shower, trying to wash Batiste’s touch from her body, both physically and emotionally. Bobby was guarding the bathroom door, waiting for the police to burst in and arrest him for murder.

Nobody paid any attention to the music teacher and her male guardian at all. Bobby’s friends didn’t even wonder where he was. Rumors were already racing through the motel, and out into the community. Everybody paid attention to those.

Meanwhile the police found frustratingly little physical evidence in the crime scene. They did find two of Mindy’s hairs on the bed, but they didn’t know who they came from, so it was a dead end, at least unless someone came forward they could be associated with and compared to. The struggle between Bobby and Batiste had been restricted because Bobby knew how to pin him, or at least stop him from moving around. The choke hold had been instinctive and, lacking the adrenaline rushing through Bobby’s veins, would have been non-lethal. But there was a surfeit of adrenaline in Bobby’s terrified body, and that was what caused his arm to pull too hard, and snap Batiste’s neck.

Mindy hadn’t taken fresh clothes with her into the bathroom. She couldn’t bear to put the clothes back on that she’d been abducted in ... the clothes that Gabriel Batiste had made her drop on the floor as she stood, helplessly following his commands. She only dimly remembered the walk from the opera hall to the motel. It was tempting to believe that the whole thing was just some crazy nightmare, except there was actual, physical evidence of the assault. He’d pinched her left nipple and pulled it cruelly. The pain had been unimaginable, but she hadn’t been able to scream. That nipple was still tender. Her face was still red and tender, where he had slapped her.

Now she stood, shivering slightly as her damp body cooled. She didn’t even want to touch that clothing again. It would have to be thrown out. Her mind registered the solution in a misty sort of way: Bobby would help. Bobby had helped her already. She could count on him to help again. He’d get rid of the loathsome stuff.

Her mind was so centered on that, that she didn’t think about the fact that she was naked when she opened the bathroom door. Bobby, right there, jumped and turned. She watched his eyes grow huge as they jittered up and down, over her nudity. No alarm bells went off in her mind. She had bigger problems than a teenage boy, one of her students, seeing her nude. Besides, he’d already seen her nude.

“I can’t touch those,” she said, pointing at the pile of cast-off clothing on the bathroom floor.

“Okay,” he said, uncertainly. She could tell he was trying not to stare, and that fleeting warmth flowed back into her body. Their unintentional bond was strengthened.

“I need you to throw them out,” she said.

His eyes cleared and his face displayed surprise.

“Really?”

“Really,” she said, firmly. “I can’t touch them. I never want to see them again.”

“Okay,” he said.

He gathered up the blouse and skirt, balling them up. He headed for the door.

“Wait,” said Mindy. He stopped instantly. She went to her purse and, with two fingers, gingerly extracted her panties and bra. She held them out to him. “These, too.”

He swallowed, but then reached for them.

“Wait,” she said again. He looked pretty obvious, standing there holding a full set of women’s clothing. She went to the trash can and pulled the bag out of it. She held it open for him and winced as his hands got her clothing close to hers. Finally it was in, though, and she was able to tie it closed. “Okay,” she said, handing it back to him.

He went to the door and paused.

“I shouldn’t open the door with you standing there,” he said, softly. “Like that,” he added.

She looked down at her nakedness and felt a blush begin to stain her chest, moving upwards rapidly.

“Right,” she said.

She went back to the bathroom and stood inside the door as he left. As soon as he was gone, she went to the door and locked it. Then she opened her suitcase and got clean clothes out. Her hands shook as she dressed, and she almost couldn’t get her bra fastened. She stopped several times and just sat, frozen, until she wrested control back from somewhere. She was just finishing dressing when there came a tap on her door. She went to it slowly.