“Yeah, she’s tough. I like that in a girl.”
I snapped my head around from the mirror I was staring in while fussing with my tie and gave Ray a sideways glance.
“Really?”
Pursing his eyebrows together I saw a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.
“I know what you’re thinking. That I’m too old for her.”
“Not at all.” I said shaking my head. Sure Ray was older than Diamond but she wasn’t just some damsel in distress who needed to be saved. She was a street smart, independent woman who got blindsided by a bad guy. Ray was probably the only guy who could match wits with a woman like her. Both of them were down to earth, call-it-as-they-see-it kind of people. And although Diamond was a beautiful brunette with manicured nails and stylish clothes, I could see her rolling up her sleeves to gut a fish if she had to. It was that grit that kept her alive long enough for Ray to get to her.
“Natasha said she isn’t answering her phone. Can you get to her place and see if anything is going on? I’ve got to get to Natasha.”
“Yes. Tell me where.” That was all Ray said. He didn’t waste any time. He didn’t ask a lot of questions. He just said yes. There weren’t too many men left whom you could rely on with one hundred percent certainty that they’d come through. I knew as soon as I hung up the phone that he was already running to his car to get to that address I had given him.
He called me from the hospital.
“I didn’t know what else to do, Marty.” He said nervously. “I was afraid she was going to die before I could get her to the emergency room.”
Speeding in his beat up pick-up truck Ray had gotten to Diamond’s apartment and tried rin
ging the buzzer. There was no answer. He could have just left, figuring she wasn’t home, had maybe stepped out and just didn’t bother to answer her phone or maybe forgot it, lost it, who knew? But Ray wasn’t like that. Without visual confirmation that she was not in her apartment he wasn’t leaving. He tried ringing all the buzzers for the other residents of the building. He knocked on the heavy glass door. Finally, a person came up to the door, producing a key.
It was a young fellow, Ray had said.
“He looked red-blooded enough that I figured the chances of him having noticed a single female in the building was pretty good.
“I’m sorry to bother you. Do you know Diamond Everett? She lives in this building and she’s not answering her phone.”
At first the guy looked at Ray as if he were some kind of pervert with a weird fetish of cornering men in vestibules and asking them about women who lived there.
“I don’t know her.” The guy said, turning the key in the lock. He tried to squeeze in quickly but Ray wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
“I tell you what, Marty. If I wasn’t on such a time sensitive mission I would have punched that punk in the face.” Ray said when he was telling me what happened after we all met at the hospital. “But when I pushed my way inside and began scouring the mailboxes for her address I obviously scared him to death.
“I’m calling the police!” the guy shouted as he bound up the stairwell.
“Good! I’ll need them! I shouted back, finally finding Diamond’s apartment number and heading up the stairs myself.”
I’ll never forget the look on Ray’s face when he told me what happened next.
“Marty, have you ever gotten to a place and everything looked fine, everything looked in place but an invisible something reached in your chest and squeezed? That was how I felt when I got to her door. It was like the whole hallway was constructed like a soundproof booth. All I could hear was my own breathing. And when knocked on the door it reverberated through my body and echoed down the hallway.”
Ray listened for a few seconds, pressing his ear against the door only to hear more silence over the pulsing blood in his ears. There was no answer.
“Diamond? Diamond Everett! Are you in there? Anyone home?”
It was then that Ray heard the sound. It wasn’t loud. In fact, it was barely a whisper. Scratching. Just the littlest sound of something scratching against another seemed to be right there with Ray in the hallway.
Bending down he looked underneath the tiny crack under the door and saw long black hair. There she was just a few feet from the door.
“I didn’t know what else to do but I took a step back and brought my boot against the door. Thankfully the deadbolt had not been relocked or I’d still be there trying to kick the mother open. As it was, even if Mr. Hewett hadn’t confiscated the keys and gotten into the apartment, a swift kick filled with rage and hatred from Mr. Hewett would have shot it off the hinges.
“The door flew open pulling splinters from the door jam with it.” He said, almost as if he were embarrassed by his achievement. When I stepped inside the little apartment my heart broke.” His eyes welled with tears. “Marty, I know he’s your brother and you are my boss, but…”
“But I’m also your friend, Ray. If you didn’t work for me I’d hope we’d still be friends. And you certainly don’t have to hold back where my brother is concerned.”
Ray wasn’t the kind of guy to break down and share his emotions. But I saw the pain and fear in his eyes. He was wondering what I had been wondering for years: What could have happened to my brother that he was this evil? What made him turn out this way? Why was he so cruel and cruel for sport?