The Tortured Tourists
Chapter 13
Ann fished in Guiyesse's pockets until she found the key for
the shackles. By the time she'd located it, she was sure he was
dead. She felt sorry for him. Somewhere he'd been twisted,
probably as a small boy with a less than capable mother. And he'd
used his twisted mind to plot against the Fleming
If what he'd said had meant anything, this man must have bed
behind the whole thing.
She took the key and the Beretta she spotted on the floor
near the stairs where Le Boeuf had missed seeing it in his haste.
Tommy was white faced and Shaking when she got to him. He'd been
worried sick about what might have happened to them upstairs.
He took the gun from her, and the key, and rushed back
upstairs to look things over. As soon as she saw that Gerault was
still there holding his leg and moaning through whitened lips and
that Yvette was sleeping peacefully on her mattress, Ann went up
to join her children.
She could hear Tommy moving about in the living room, so she
started to go to him. Then she halted at the bathroom doorway.
Darla was just getting the bleeding stopped at the several places
where Guiyesse had bitten her natal lips.
"My God, honey! That maniac must have bitten damned near
through you! Is it stopped bleeding? We'd better get you to a
doctor right away. A bite can be dangerous."
"It's not as bad as it looks, Mother. It's several bites
bleeding a little - not one bleeding a lot. Until I douched and
started it bleeding again, I'd forgotten it. I know this towel
looks like I'm mortally wounded, but get that deathbed look off
your face. I guess his head lying on me there made it coagulate,
and then the water got it going again. But it's stopped."
Tommy appeared in the doorway, and both he and Darla blushed
darkly before he excused himself and moved down the hall. Ann
shook her head sadly at the brief scene. These two wouldn't be
comfortable around each other for a long while, if ever again.
Neither would any of the family, probably. It had been a hell of
a ghastly experience for them all.
When the Citroen rolled up out front Ann panicked. "My God,
kids! We forgot all about the pictures!
We've got to find them and burn them before anyone but your
father gets in here! Tommy, run out and tell him that. Darla,
help me look."
"I think they're right over there in that drawer, Mother,"
the girl said. "I saw Yvette putting some in there once."
She raced over to the table in question and pulled out the
single, large drawer so fast that all the curved photos spilled
onto the rug. They gathered them up, hastily and ran with them
into the bathroom. They closed and locked the door, and started
tearing them into little pieces. Frequently, they'd flush an
accumulation down the drain.
Just as they watched the last ones disappear in a swirl of
water, someone pounded on the bathroom door.
Ann opened it, as she stepped out, Fleming jumped inside and
closed the door, yelling "Emergency!"
It was several minutes later that she recalled the fact that
Darla still must have been in there.
Fleming was unlimbering and aiming as he ran to the commode.
It wasn't until the final relieving feeling that he realized his
daughter was standing at the lavatory with her dress up, daubing
at her tender parts with a bloody towel. Her eyes were wide with
wonder at the sight of the once coveted member of her father,
streaming like a fire hose in front of her eyes.
Their glances met, and both darkened and averted their gazes.
"I'm sorry, baby doll I didn't know you were in here, too."
He'd started to get an erection, as he looked at his daughter's
pinkly spread blossom, and it was difficult to shake off the last
drops, now. He did it quickly, and swore as a last drop ran down
his leg after he tucked himself away.
Darla had rushed to the door, and when she heard the sound of
the flushing water, she bolted outside. Fleming took a deep
breath and followed her out. Ann was standing there with a
strange look on her face. "What's the matter with Darla,
Charles?"
"I'm sorry, honey. I guess I shocked her. I didn't know she
was in there until it was too late. She wasn't where I could see
her when I went in. I'd been holding that back all the way into
Marseilles and back here. Didn't take time for it at the hotel,
because I didn't want to leave you here any longer than necessary.
I was about to jet spray my jockeys."
"This family is sure fouled up sexwise," Ann replied, looking
at him as if trying to read something on his face.
"Some of this family got sex-wise under pretty foul
conditions," Fleming retorted. "I hope we can get readjusted
pretty damned soon."
"I don't think it's going to be very easy or very quick," she
told him. She didn't add that she was still trying to shake out
of her own mind the way that Tommy has stirred her with his
amazing virility. Chuck hadn't stirred her up so, himself for
several months.
She damned herself for a pervert and forced herself to take a
walk in the weedy, ragged garden outside the living room. It was
a good fifteen minutes before she felt the fresh air clear her
mind. Then she watched several busy members of the Surete leading
Yvette to one of their cars. Shortly afterward, a stretcher was
carried out to the waiting ambulance Two gendarmes flanked Gerault
as he started his bloody ride to the hospital.
Tommy showed up in the frame of the open French windows. He
ran to meet her as she came toward the house.
"I hope you got rid of the photos. I couldn't get to Dad to
tell him in private, and then he went on inside. I showed the law
where the dungeon was, and I guess that kept them off you for a
while."
"We destroyed them all right. But don't mention it to your
father. When he finally remembers those photos, I want to see the
look on his face." Tommy grinned and shook his head. "That might
require a transfusion."
"The shock might just be what he needs," she said,
mysteriously. And she wondered what kind of shock it would take
to straighten her out. Tommy, she observed, as he headed blithely
back into the house on his own, seemed to be the least affected of
any of them by the incestuous entanglements they'd been trapped
into.
Suddenly, she almost felt all of her thirty-nine years for
the first time she could recall. Then she remembered that Chuck
had promised to bring them clothes. At least she needn't look as
old as she was ... if he'd also brought her overnight case. She
headed down the hall searching for him.
