Chapter  4

Not even the Leap when Sam had come within seconds of being electrocuted
just as that Leap had begun, had made Al feel as helpless as he had for
the last four minutes. After telling his friend to choose his words
carefully, the Observer could only watch as Sam, battered and bloody,
was intimidated, kissed and almost fondled by the "animal" married to
the terrified woman being cared for in the Waiting Room.  Like Sam, Al
continued to hold his tongue until the brute left the house, and he
heard a car start, then drive away. Going to the bedroom's double
windows, Al managed to catch sight of the back of a red Chevy Caprice,
Tommie's husband at the wheel, disappear from sight.  But not before Al
had read, then punched in the numbers on the license plate into the
handlink.

"Gooshie," Al said aloud.  "Have Ziggy run that plate and get back to me
immediately.  I got a bad feeling about this Leap, so don't take any
guff from 'her'."

Sam, aching all over, his head pounding, still sat with his back the
wall.  Gently he dabbed at the blood trickling from his nose while he
waited, listening to the Observer.

"From the looks of your face, I'd bet your nose is broken.  Those
shiners are gonna be real beauts by tonight," Al said quietly.  "How do
you feel?"

"Like I've been beaten within an inch of my life, and just missed being
raped," Sam snapped. "How the hell do you think I feel?"  Moving
carefully, he got to his feet, putting a hand on the wall to steady
himself when he suddenly felt lightheaded.  When his head was clear
again, he turned to Al. "Besides the fact that he's my "husband", just
who is that manic?" Sam demanded, his tone soft in acquiescence to the
pounding in his head. "Who's hell have I been dropped into, Al?"

Al started punching buttons on the handlink.  "Let me see if Verbena's
had any luck calming the woman in the Waiting Room.  Believe me, Sam,
she wasn't in any state to talk coherently when she arrived. In fact,
she was still screaming that the guy..Derek was gonna kill her..."

"I know how she feels," Sam said muttered as he walked slowly across the
room to sit on the bed.

"Okay, we got something," Al said, punching in responsive codes as Ziggy
fed information into the handlink.  "It's not much, but Verbena was able
to get the woman's name, and Ziggy ran the license plate from the car.
The car is registered to a Derek Floyd Emerson. He lives, with his wife,
Tommie..you..at 2113 Corona Drive in New Orleans.  Hey..you're in the
Big Easy!" Al enthused. "This is _the_ partyingest town in the world. I
remember one time..."

At the moment though, all Sam could, or wanted, to think about was
getting some medical attention; from the way his head felt, he was about
ninety percent certain he had a concussion. And, if the gleam in the
Observer's eyes was any indication, Sam knew he was about to be regaled
with a bawdy recitation of some misadventure Al had been part of in his
younger years.

"Al!" Sam nipped the budding story sharply, then gasped at the way his
vision blurred for a second when he snapped his head up to glare at the
hologram.  "Could you please...just tell me..whatever it is you have on
whoever I am." He eyed the pillow longingly, but knew it was out of the
question until after he was examined by a doctor.

"Sorry, Sam," Al apologized. Kicking himself for wandering down memory
lane, he began punching buttons on the handlink and started reading the
information that Ziggy was providing.

"We don't have much so far, considering what your counterpart in the
Waiting Room looked like when she arrived." he began. "Okay, uh your
name is Thomasina Victoria Emerson, but everyone calls you Tommie.
You're twenty-four years old, and both your parents are dead; your
father, Albert Jefferson Hewitt Chastaing died of a massive heart attack
three weeks after your marriage seven months ago."

"Seven months ago from.....when?  What year is this?"

"Oh, it's..uh, today is April 7, 1987. Which means that you..Tommie and
Derek were married in October 1986.  October 2, 1986 to be exact."

"How did she end up married to that animal?" Sam asked as he stood up
and moved toward the open bathroom door on the opposite side of the bed.

The low glare florescent lighting in the bathroom hurt Sam's eyes as he
stood at the sink and looked at what should have been the fairly pretty
face of Thomasina Emerson.  Instead, the face that looked back at him,
framed by short, curly blonde hair was, he suspected an almost mirror
image of his own face.  Sam reached up to touch the shallow cut at
Tommie's hairline, just above her left eye, watching as the battered
young woman in the mirror mimicked his moves.  There were streaks of
partially dried blood down the left side of her face and matted in her
hair.

Tommie's eyes..[Blue], Sam thought, peering closely at Tommie's
reflection..were barely visible through the swollen, purple-black flesh
around her eyes. The horrific bruising, caused by her nose being broken,
extended halfway down her face.  Blood from her nose had run down over
her mouth, mixing with the blood from the splits on her lip.

Turning on the cold water, Sam let it run a minute while he found a
washcloth in the narrow linen cupboard behind the door.  Wringing it out
in the cool water, he began to gently wipe his face, gasping and wincing
with each touch.

"How's Tommie doing?" Sam asked when, after five minutes he was
satisfied that the bleeding from his nose and lower lip was stanched.
When Al didn't respond with a few seconds, he glanced him.  He had seen
similar expressions during other leaps, and each time it  meant he
wasn't about to be given any encouragement that the leap was about to
take a positive swing.

"Go ahead," he said wearily, knowing that whatever it was he was about
to hear was going to multiply whatever it was he was facing in this
Leap. "Drop the piano on my head.  What?"

"Remember," Al began, "that these are Ziggy's first super rough
calculations about what you're here to do."

"Yeah?" Sam didn't bother to look up as he dabbed some antiseptic cream
he'd found in the medicine cupboard on the small cut on his lower belly
where Derek had paused with the point of the switchblade.  He looked up
when Al didn't speak quickly enough.

"Ziggy says that Derek's the reason you're here."

"Then that trillion dollar bucket of bolts is out of her hybrid mind if
she thinks I'm gonna help that son of a bitch do anything," Sam snapped,
then wished he hadn't when the pounding in his head increased.

"You're not here to help him 'do' anything," Al said  carefully.
"You're here to stop him."

"From doing what?"

"Killing fifteen more women over the next twenty-seven months."

"Fifteen more wo...what is this guy?  A demented murderer?"

"A lot of people in this city believed that he was but, nothing could
ever be proved. There wasn't even circumstantial evidence that could be
linked to him in any way whatsoever."  He paused.  "There's more."

"Isn't there always?'  Feeling his knees begin to buckle, Sam grabbed
the lip of the sink then sat down on the closed lid of the toilet, then
stared at Al as he continued speaking.

"Ziggy also says that if you don't come up with something that'll link
him to the eight women who were raped and murdered over the last
seventeen months...he's going to kill you some time in the next nine
days."