Redrum: The Art of Deception Read online

  REDRUM

  The Art of Deception

  By: A’nyo Lee

  REDRUM

  “The Art of Deception”

  By: A’nyo Lee

  Cover design by: Esquire Productions

  Logo design by: A’nyo Jynnings

  Photography by: Esquire Productions

  Edited by:

  © 2015 A’nyo Lee

  All rights reserved. This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. This book may not be copied or reprinted for commercial gain or profit. The use of short quotations or occasional page copying for personal or group study is permitted and encouraged. Permission will be granted upon request to Esquire Productions.

  For Worldwide Distribution

  Printed in the United States of America

  Published by Esquire Productions Marketing & Publishing, LLC

  Utilizing Microsoft Publishing Software.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 11/2

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 1

  The wide open wind suddenly decided to die down toward the cooling February third evening, then stopped completely.

  Drake was standing on the second floor balcony, overseeing the view. Some days he could see a glimpse of the lake between the buildings across the way. Right now it was too dark. Sometimes he set his telescope and looked into the lighted windows of the other houses and apartments, just for pure entertainment. But Drake always started to feel as if someone was onto him and then he would stop.

  Tonight, the stars were very clear and bright, as if they were speaking directly to him.

  Life can’t be any greater than this, he thought to himself.

  Suddenly Drake noticed a van drive by gradually, but paid it really no mind, he shivered and went back inside. The door to the balcony was hard to close and needed some adjustment. He added it to the to-do list he kept on a pad of paper in his home office.

  Drake walked into the living room, pausing in the doorway for a brief moment, to smile and appreciate the view of his wife as she slept peacefully one the sofa. Since it was Sunday, the house was immaculately clean. It gave him a feeling of satisfaction.

  He walked into his office and sat down at his desk and pulled out the thick journal he kept in one of the lower drawers. As usual, he began by re-reading his entry from the night before.

  Saturday the second of February,

  Just enjoyed a great day with my beautiful wife Lila, and my intelligent, son Shawn. Before our family picnic, we went to Shawn’s basketball game. Even though he didn’t lead the team in points, he led the team in three pointers and rebound. I am so proud of him even more, because he gave it his all. I love him and my wife so much; they are the air that I breathe.

  Lila put all of her love in to us, especial Shawn. Even though she’s not Shawn’s biological mother, she’s still his mother at heart.

  I love my life; I can’t see life getting much better than this.

  Good night.

  Drake removed the lid of the ink pot and carefully dipped the nib in the ink that sat in the corner of his desk by his wife’s picture. It had been his grandmother’s pen, one his father had saved for him when she passed. He never used any other pen for writing his daily poetry to his wife or writing in his nightly journal.

  Drake could hear the peaceful silence, roaming throughout the house. The wind died away as he was writing. The sky was clear. He made a note about balcony door. And the fun he and Lila had doing Zumba and meditating in the backyard that afternoon.

  Drake hesitated, then wrote, Remember to buy a gift for your anniversary on Tuesday.

  He pressed the blotting paper over the few lines he had just written, wiped off the pen, and replaced the lid of the ink pot.

  Before shutting his ` journal, he glanced over at the black and white hour glass clock that stood next to him on his desk. It was twenty-two minutes past eleven. He walked out into the hallway, and made his way to the living room. In one swoop, picked his wife up into his arms and carried her into the bedroom and put her to bed.

  Drake walked back down stars and into the hallway, put on leather jacket, and put on a old pair of running shoes. He stuck a hand in his pocket to make sure he still had his wallet and his keys.

  Once he was down on the street, he stood in the shadows for a while as he ran and looked around. There was no one there, just as he had expected.

  Drake started walking down to the left, as he usually did, crossing the highway to Howe’ in the Hills, and heading down town toward the department stores and the red brick building that housed the Tax Authorities. He increased his speed until he found his usual smooth evening rhythm. He walked quickly in the daytime to get his heart rate up, but the evening walks had a different purpose. This was when he tried to empty his mind, preparing for sleep and the day to come.

  Outside one of the department stores, he passed a middle- age petite woman with a giant poodle. He almost always bumped into her on his evening run. A sky blue and white car drove by at high speed, music blaring, followed by a white van.

  Drake shook his head and thought to himself, they have no idea if what’s in store for their hearing in a few years, he thought. All these kids who drive around permanently damaging their hearing with their obnoxious music. They don’t know any better. They know as little as that little woman out late, walking her dog.

  Drake stopped and took a look up at the night sky and took a breath.

  Nothing is truly comprehensible, he thought. My own life is as incomprehensible as the fact that the light I now see from the stars has been traveling for eons. The only source of meaning is my wife and son and my course of action. My wife is a great woman and partner but yet I chose to cheat on her and be unloyal, how can I lie to her every time I tell her that I love her? If I truly loved her I would get my act together. I need to get my act together.

  Drake continued on his way, pushing himself pass his breaking point and increasing his speed because his thoughts were making him depressed but at the same time excited.

  He felt a growing sense of impatience. He had waited so long for this. But not yet, the moment was not quite here, and to him impatience was a weakness he would not permit himself too.

  Running faster and faster, he turned and started back home. As he walked past the Tax Authority once more, he decided to go to the ATM cash machine in the plaza. He put his hand over his pocket where he kept his wallet as he gaze kept forward. He wasn’t going to make too big of a withdrawal, just enough to get a few items from the vending machine in the morning and get an account balance and make sure that all was as it should be.

  He stopped in the light by the ATM machine and took out his debt card. The woman with the over-sized poodle was long gone. a heavily loaded truck drove past on rout nineteen =, probably on its way to one of the in pound yards to be worked on, by the sound of it, the muffler was damaged.

  He fed his card into the slot, punched in his code, and selected the button for fast cash twenty dollars and checked his account balance. The machine returned his card and he slipped it back into h
is wallet along with the cash. He listened to the whirring and clicking and smiled. If they only knew, he thought. If people only knew what the creeps of the night have in store for them.

  The white slip of paper with his account balance slid out of the slot. He felt around for his glasses before he realized he had left them in his other jacket. He felt a twinge of irritation at this oversight.

  Drake walked over to the place under the street lamp where the light was strongest and studied the slip of paper.

  There was Friday’s withdrawal as well as the cash he had taken out the day before. His balance was 29,675. Everything was in order.

  What happened next came without warning.

  As soon as he turned around and looked back at the ATM, he seen a woman walking up to it, then suddenly

  It was as if she’d been kicked by a horse. The pain looked sudden and violent.

  The woman fell forward with her card clutched in her right hand. Drake rushed over as her head hit the asphalt, she had a final moment of clarity. Drake could see in her eyes as he placed her into his arms, that her last thought was that she didn’t understand what just had happening to her.

  As he called 911, all he could do was watch darkness envelope her from all sides.

  It was just past midnight on Monday morning, the fourth of February. Calm quickly returned to the streets as Drake waited for help, but he could already see in the woman’s eyes, that it was already too late. Life had left her, and left him holding onto this memory.

  Chapter 11/2

  The next morning, was a little warmer, as if spring had came Central Florida, early.

  The Tavares police station is part of a triangle: the library’s one leg, the PD’s the second, and a multilevel parking garage stretches across the back to make up the third. You have to enter the station from inside the triangle, on the second-floor level. Eliminates drive byes.

  The public gets in by a pedestrian bridge that juts out from the second floor of the parking structure. It joins the curved eastern wall of the station and runs along it like an exterior balcony, a ramp, with the public door to the PD two-thirds of the way up the incline. The ramp continues its rise to the end of the building, and then drops down some steps and bridges back in a great looping circle through the middle of the triangle to end up right back where it started on the second floor of the parking structure.

  It was quiet in the Detective Bureau, up on the third floor, not a lot happening, and Drake was feeling pretty restless. He’d left his suspect unattended for about twenty minutes as he returned and the phone rang.

  It was a thing that had been sitting here, black and quiet like a holstered gun, unlisted, unknown to anybody, used only for local outgoing calls, and when it was triggered it had the soft, muted sound of a silenced automatic. The first ring was a warning round. The second time would be death calling.

  Suddenly his cell phone ring and Drake picked up, “Hello,”

  “Our babies gone,” Lila said, “He’s been kidnapped,”

  “He’s been kidnapped?” Drake said.

  “Kidnapped, Shawn is gone,” she said. “Someone’s stolen our son,”

  “What the hell are you talking about, stolen?” Drake replied.

  “His friend said that a man and a woman grabbed him and threw him in their van and pulled off.

  Drake’s cell phone slipped from out of his hands, and fell onto the floor, as he fell to his knees with tears in his eyes.

  Drake could see a lot of things. He could see that he’d made a major mistake in not going to pick his school up from baseball practice. Nobody needed to hurry me in here to ask questions about theories. Drake knew at this point that time wasn’t on his side. But then Drake soon realized that it was all just a bad dream. A cruel reminder of what had happen to his son four long years ago.

  Chapter 2

  Ahhhhh! Drake woke up from out of his sleep sweating and in a frantic panic. His body sat up in a fury.

  Drake didn’t know exactly what woke him, bad dreams, the noise from the house settling or his wife moving oddly in her sleep.

  It’s terrifying to wake from out of your sleep like that, because you can’t see, can’t breathe, your body just won’t move. You can only lie like a frozen target, every muscle tensed up on standby. It was seven years after his son’s horrific murder, and no one had been charged for it.

  “What’s wrong my love?” Lila asked as she rolled over and caressed her husband’s lower back.

  “Nothing honey, just a bad dream.”Drake responded as he placed his left hand upon his forehead.

  Drake blinks slowly within the darkness, warily and kind of shaken.

  Lila slowly lifted herself up and scramble into Drake’s lap, taking him by surprise, as she took his head in her hands.

  “I love you, Lila. For being the wife and life partner that I needed in my life. I’m the one who is undeserving, and I’m just sorry that at times I can’t be the same for you. But I truly love you.” Drake said whispering into Lila’s chest.

  He wraps his arms around her and pulled his wife Lila tighter to him.

  “Oh, Lila,” he breathes as he buries his nose in her breast.

  They sat upon the center of their bed, their arms wrapped firmly around each other, one listening to the others heartbeat like a soothing piano solo piece, as the other listening to the soothing breaths of her love. Both mirroring the emotions within the soundless dark bedroom, the sweet tranquil calm rhythm of her heartbeats, quickly eased the unbarring weight that was resting upon Drakes Mind.

  Lila snuggled into his arms, resting her head upon the levels of his shoulders. As Drakes gently strokes her back.

  “You are all I have Lila, especially after my son died. And losing you too is not an option for me.”

  His voice trails off, and his body tenses as he recalls his son’s unimaginable horror.

  “My love I was there as well, right by your side where I belong, even though I didn’t birth him, he was still my son as well.

  “I can remember that,” he whispers, shuddering.

  Abruptly, Lila heart constricts as she tighten her petite arms tighter around his neck.

  “I’ll never leave you my love,” her voice low and soft with unshed tears.

  Her tears started to flow. Lila couldn’t stem them.

  Drake dashed her tears away with gently kisses upon her cheekbones,

  “I love you to life,” he murmurs, and without taking his blazing eyes from off of hers, as he slowly starts to unbutton his button up shirt that his wife’s was sleeping in.

  Tentatively Lila placed her hands on Drake’s arms to steady herself.

  Drake doesn’t complain, refusing to take his eyes from off of his wife. His arms are her safe place as her arms is his.

  After finishing unbutton the last button of Lila shirt, he pulls her shirt downward releasing it from her shoulders, and she let go of him to let the shirt fall to the floor. Drake reaches down to Lila waist side and begin kiss along her collarbone.

  “Tell me what you want me to do my queen,” his eyes smolder as his lips part during his quick shallow breaths.

  Lila smiled as she gently moaned within her husband’s ear, “Kiss me Drake, kiss me from here to here,” she whispers trailing her fingertips from the base of his ear, and slowly down to his muscle tone throat.

  Drake smoothes Lila’s hair beyond her ear and from out of the line of passionate fire and bends, leaving his sweet soft kisses, mirroring along the path oh her fingers took along his neck and then back again.

  “My king, please remove my panties,” Lila murmur, as Drake smiles as he moans against her throat pushing her body backwards, laying her body on the bed.. Drake hooked his thumbs into the waistband of her panties; he gently pulls them down her legs. Lila stepped from out of her underwear, wearing only her bra.

  Drake began gently guiding his fingertips down and around Lila’s thighs and pelvis, looking up at her expectantly as he patiently awaits her command.
r />   “What now my love,”

  She bends her head backwards as she whispered “Kiss me,”

  Refusing to take his eyes from off of his beautiful wife smiled as he replied, “Where would you like me to start kissing you.”

  Lila laugh, “Wherever you’d like Drake, how bout you start with something to drink.” As her hand slowly caressed down the curves of her body and finally resting upon her blossoming moist lips within the apex of her thighs,

  A smirk surfed across Drake’s face as he thought to himself, “Damn she’s not taking any prisoners tonight.

  Drake grinned wickedly as he watched his wife gradually closing her eyes, relaxed but at the same time beyond aroused.

  “Oh, with pleasure my love,”

  Drake bend his head down as he parted her thighs as he unleashes his tongue, his joy inspiring his expert tongue to go to work. Lila groan as she smoothed her hands on top of his head. But Drake doesn’t stop, his tongue circling her clitoris back and forth, and from side to side as his lips gently sucked upon her after every ten licks, driving his wife insane, on and on as she clinches the sheets.

  “Make love to me Drake.”

  “I am,” he murmurs, gently blowing against her clit.”

  “No my king, I want you deep inside of me.”

  Drake ignoring his wife as he continues with hast, he doesn’t stop his sweet, exquisite torture. As Lila moans got louder and louder, until she had enough of the alone pleasurable torture. Lila gripped his head with her thighs and rolled left, forcing Drake to lay on his back as she sat firmly upon his face.

  Lila moved back and forth, twisting her hips slowly in a circular motion, spreading her thighs as far apart as possible, forcing all of her juices upon the bottom of Drake’s face.

  Lila smiled looking down upon Drake and his lips and cheeks glisten with all of the evidence of her arousal, as she stopped for the moment and stood half way up, turning her body to better position herself.

  Lila than gradually squatted upon his face again in reverse, facing his pelvis and all of its glory, Lila pant as Drake continues to suck on her clitoris, as her eyes stare down at his standing glory in a frantic need, she moans as she peek back at him through the low of her lashes, as he stay focus gazing down her crack with such need and want.