The Magic In Your Touch

Chapter 10

The apartment was worse than he expected, surprising since Nate had been imagining all kinds of terrible things ever since Brandon told him about the break-in.

The minute they pulled into the parking lot, Nate saw the slurs panted on the doors and windows. The apartment was the townhouse type, with its own porch and patio.

The person who did this had broken several pieces of the porch’s railing. The screens had been ripped from the windows, and a couple of the panes were broken.

The door was hanging awkwardly on its hinges and the chairs Nate had sitting by the front door were smashed.

Brandon left Nate standing among the wreckage of the porch while he went inside to talk to his deputies. A few minutes later, he came back and led Nate into what was left of his apartment.

The furniture had been slashed with a knife; bits of fabric and stuffing littered the floor. His television and computer were both smashed to bits, as were all the dishes and glassware in his cupboard.

The pictures from the walls now lay on the floor in piles of splintered wood and broken glass. Even the glass shower doors in the downstairs bathroom had been shattered.

One of the deputies commented on the fact that no one reported hearing anything, but Nate wasn’t surprised. His place was an end unit and the apartment next to his was empty. The person who did this had done his homework.

While Brandon talked to one of his men, Nate made his way up the stairs. More broken knick-knacks littered the upstairs hall. The spare bedroom, which Nate used as an office, was a mass of strewn files and broken furniture.

In every room he’d seen so far, including the bathroom, words like “pervert” and “freak” glared at him from the once pristine, white walls. The spare room was no exception, only here the vandal had gotten a little more creative and called him an “ass-f*****g slut.”

After finding the upstairs bath in a state similar to the one downstairs, Nathan made his way to the master bedroom. All his clothes lay in piles on the floor, covered in what looked like red paint.

As he got closer, he could smell the metallic scent of blood. As a doctor, Nate was used to that scent. Now though, knowing that someone had covered his clothes in the thick mess, was enough to make the coffee he’d drunk in the car come back up.

He ran to the bathroom and was quietly ill. He was still leaned over the commode when he felt something wet and cool on the back of his neck. Brandon was holding a damp cloth to his heated skin.

“Nate? Are you gonna be O.K., sweetheart?”

Nate managed to nod. When he was certain he wasn’t going to gag again, he said, “I’m usually not such a wuss. I guess all that blood was too much for me.”

Brandon helped him up, but didn’t let go of him. “If it makes you feel any better, Sam is pretty sure it’s animal blood.”

“It does.” He shook himself. “I guess I should go back in there and see the damage.”

“Only if you want to. Sam and the boys have already dusted for fingerprints, but I doubt they’ll find anything. My guess is, the guy that did this is a professional.”

Nate reached up and removed Brandon’s hands from his shoulders. “Come on. I want to see just how bad it is.”

Nate walked back into his bedroom, with Brandon right behind him. He deliberately avoided looking at the bloody pile of clothes and focused instead on the rest of the room, or, at least, what was left of it.

All his college awards and trophies were crunched up in a pile in the corner. The dresser mirror was shattered, as was the window that overlooked the courtyard below.

His mattress had been ripped to shreds, but the worst of it all was the damage done to the quilt that Grandma Morris made for him.

He picked up the torn remnants of the log cabin quilt and cradled it to his chest. Brandon came up behind him and put his hand on Nate’s arm.

“Nate?”

“My grandmother made this quilt for me. It’s the only thing I took with me when my parents washed their hands of me.” His voice fell to a whisper. “It’s the only thing I wanted.”

Bran pulled the fabric from his hands and guided him out of the room. They were almost to the bedroom door when Nate stopped him. “Wait. Bran, did you read that message on the wall?”

“Yeah, but you don’t need to look at it. My men took pictures. That’s enough.”

“No. It was meant for me. I want to read it. Maybe I can pick up some clues about who might have done this.”

Nathan turned around and gave careful consideration to the message scrawled on the sheetrock, not in paint this time, but in blood.

“God is coming. All of Sodom will perish.” He turned and walked out, feeling sick all over again.

* * *

Rage welled up inside of Brandon as he settled Nathan into the passenger seat of the SUV. The amount of hatred it took to do something like that was almost inconceivable to him. He had just eased into the driver’s seat and closed his door when the radio sounded.

“Sheriff, you copy?”

Bran pushed the com button. “Yeah, dispatch. Go ahead.”

“Dewey just reported in from that check he did over at the doctor’s office. Looks like the office got hit, too.”

Brandon hit the stirring wheel hard enough to make the horn sound. “f**k!” He took one look at Nate’s white face and forced himself to calm down. He mashed the com button again. “Dispatch? Tell Dewey I’m on my way over now. Sheriff, out.”

By the time they were finished surveying the damage to the office, Brandon was ready to explode and Nate was dead on his feet. The office was an echo of the damage done to the apartment: more threats and slurs, scattered files, and ripped furniture.

Equipment had been smashed and medicine bottles were lying broken all over the floor. They stayed until Nate started shaking. That’s when Brandon insisted they leave.

He drove them back to the farmhouse, ushering Nate inside and letting Sasha out so she could run. She surprised him by refusing to go.

Instead, she walked over to where Nate was sitting on the couch and put her head n his lap. Brandon felt his eyes getting moist as he noticed the dejected look on Nate’s face.

“Are you hungry? I think I’ve got a can of biscuits in the refrigerator.”

“No, thanks. I’m still a little nauseous.”

“Understandable, under the circumstances.”

“Yeah. What time is it?”

“Almost eight.”

“Oh. What about Amy? And my patients?”

“I’ve got my office trying to locate Amy, but so far there’s no answer at the number you gave us for Mike’s aunt. None of the hospitals in Atlanta have a patient by that name, either. It’s possible they’re on their way back here, but we’ll just have to wait and see. As for your patients, Cindy’s referring them all to a doctor in Chicago until we can analyze the crime scene and get someone to come in and clean it up.”

“I need to call my insurance company. I have renter’s insurance on my apartment, and the office is fully covered.”

“You can do all that later. First, we need to have a talk.”

Nate sighed. “Why do I not like the sound of that?”

“Because I think you know what I’m about to say. Nate, don’t you think it’s just too much of a coincidence that on the same night you receive a blow to the head, Amy and Mike, the only friends you have in town, are called to the bedside of a sick aunt over seven hundred miles away. The very same night that your apartment is trashed and your office is vandalized.”

“You aren’t suggesting that Amy and Mike had something to do with this?” Nate looked ready to do battle, even as tired as he obviously was.

“Of course not. I believe the man who hit you set it up so that Amy and Mike would get that call and leave you with no choice but to go home to your apartment. I think he went there to kill you, Nate.”