Life Penalty (11 page)

“That was four years ago. Danny’s failed twice in school since then and he still has nightmares almost every night. His teachers have warned me he’s going to fail again this year the way things are going. I can’t hold a job. Oh God, it just gets worse and worse. What am I telling you for? You all know. You’re the only ones who
do
know.”

Her eyes searched those of the others, who blinked
back tears in silent understanding. Gail held her breath, afraid to release it. Why was she here? Why had Jack been so insistent that they come? She wanted to leave. She had to get out of this room, away from these people.

“About a week after they found Charlotte’s body,” the woman continued, “the police arrested two boys. Juveniles. Both under eighteen. They confessed. There was no particular reason for what they did, they told the police. They just wanted to see what it would feel like to watch somebody die. They picked Charlotte. They saw her standing at the bus stop, and they shoved her into this car they’d stolen earlier and drove off with her to that field.” The woman looked helplessly around the room. “They were juveniles, you understand, so they don’t actually go to jail. They go to a reformatory for a little while. One boy’s out already. The other one still has another few months left on his sentence. But I’m sure he’ll be out in time for summer camp, and of course, being a juvenile, his record will be wiped clean.” She looked at the floor. “I don’t know what I expected. I guess I still had some sort of faith in the justice system. The fact that my daughter’s killers were caught at all gave me reason to believe that justice might somehow be served. Now, of course, I know better. I know there is no such thing as justice, that the right of my daughter to a long and happy life pales in comparison to the rights of her killers, that a good lawyer can make mincemeat out of already weak laws, all in the name of justice. Can somebody please tell me one thing?” the woman asked, her eyes moving from face to face, although it was clear her question was purely rhetorical. “Can somebody please tell me why there seem to be so many brilliant defense lawyers and so few competent prosecuting attorneys?” She swallowed audibly. “How long,” she continued, and this time her voice begged for answers, “before I can vomit up this bile of hate that’s slowly choking me to death?”

Gail felt the final question aimed directly at her. She turned to Jack. She wanted to leave. Why had he brought her here? Couldn’t he see how desperately she wanted to get out?

“Jack,” Gail whispered, but Jack was lost in thoughts of his own. Gail touched his arm, trying to indicate her desire to leave without disturbing the rest of the group, ten other people whose lives had all been touched, been irreparably shattered by random acts of violence over which they had no control. How many other meetings like this one were taking place around the country? How many other lives had been altered in similarly gruesome circumstances?

“I brought some pictures of Charlotte,” the woman continued, reaching into her purse and pulling out several photographs, passing them around. “The first one is Charlotte when she was a baby. I don’t know why I brought that one,” she giggled self-consciously, “except to show you what a pretty baby she was. The other two are Charlotte when she was fifteen, that last one taken just three weeks before she died. She had such pretty long blond hair. She loved long hair. Couldn’t even get her to trim it half an inch.” She paused, watching as the photographs were passed from hand to hand, her eyes stopping directly on Gail’s at the same moment that the pictures reached her. Gail glanced down at the photographs of the chubby and proud infant, of the smiling, fair-haired girl that was no longer. She quickly passed the photos over to Jack, trying to grab his attention as she did so, to tell him that she had to get out, that she couldn’t stand to be here any longer.

How could he sit here? How could any of them sit here? she wondered, looking at the ten other people who huddled together in the tight circle of grief.

The meeting was being held in the pleasant West Orange home of Lloyd and Sandra Michener. They had
organized the group three years previously, six months after their own daughter had been stabbed to death on her way home from a movie. Despite Laura’s information about what went on at these get-togethers—they were run along the same lines as Alcoholics Anonymous, she had told Gail—Gail had nonetheless been taken aback by the degree of honesty that she encountered.

“This is Gail and Jack Walton,” Lloyd Michener bad said, introducing them to the others. “Their six-year-old daughter, Cindy, was murdered seven weeks ago.” No gentle euphemisms, no attempt to hide or soften the facts. The people in this room were clearly past gentle euphemisms.

There were Sam and Terri Ellis whose teenage son had been shot and killed during a holdup at their neighborhood 7-Eleven; Leon and Barbara Cooney whose twelve-year-old boy had been stabbed to death by an older boy in a fight during school recess over lunch money; Helen and Steve Gould whose infant daughter had been strangled by a spaced-out babysitter; and Joanne Richmond, whose seventeen-year-old daughter, Charlotte, had been raped and beaten to death in a field four years before.

Gail had silently acknowledged each one, the nervousness in the pit of her stomach building into nausea and then to panic. She had been fighting the urge to turn around and run from the moment she had stepped through the front door.

“We understand what you’re feeling right now,” Lloyd Michener had said, reading her thoughts. “Believe me, we’ve all felt exactly the same way.” He took her hands. “We want you to feel free to say anything at all to us. Our motto is ‘Judge not lest you be judged.’ There’s nothing you can say that can shock us, nothing so disgusting that we haven’t all felt it ourselves. Let us help you, Gail,” he had said, sensing, no,
feeling
, her reluctance.

He had let go of her hands and turned to Joanne
Richmond. “Joanne has offered to tell her story tonight. You don’t have to say anything,” he said, turning back to Gail. “New members don’t usually con tribute anything the first two or three times. But, of course, that’s completely up to you.”

Gail had remained silent throughout his speech, and she remained silent now that Joanne Richmond had finished her story and retrieved her photographs.

“Why don’t we take a break for a few minutes and have some coffee?” Sandra Michener suggested pleasantly.

“I want to go,” Gail told Jack.

“Gail …”

“I mean it, Jack. I have to get out of here, and I’m going to go with you or without you.”

The look in her face told Jack that she would permit no argument. “I’ll go with you,” he said reluctantly.

Gail immediately headed for the hall, and stood waiting by the front door for Jack to join her. She heard him talking to Lloyd Michener, who, once again, seemed to know what was on their minds before they did.

“This isn’t uncommon,” she overheard him telling her husband. “Often, new couples leave before a meeting’s half over. It’s very difficult to sit and listen to all the pain, especially when it strikes so close to home. Try to persuade Gail to come to our next meeting. If she won’t, then I’d strongly advise that you come without her. People are under the mistaken impression that tragedies like this bring people closer together when, in fact, the opposite is true. There’s simply too much guilt for couples to handle by themselves. We’re finding that in marriages where husbands and wives don’t get help, seventy percent end in divorce. Please try to come back. It’s important.”

If Jack answered, it was with a nod only. A few minutes later, he and Gail were in their car heading silently for home.

O
n the last morning of her self-imposed sixty-day deadline period, Gail checked in with the police. “It’s me,” she said almost guiltily when Lieutenant Cole answered the phone.

He recognized her voice immediately. “You can always call me, Gail, you know that. How did that meeting go?”

“Fine,” she answered abruptly, not wishing to talk about it. She had already been through similar discussions with Jack, Carol and Laura, all of whom were urging her to attend the next meeting. Gail was adamant that she would not.

“I understand groups like the Micheners’ are a big help to a lot of people,” Richard Cole continued.

“I’m sure they are. Tell me,” she said, cutting him off, “is there anything new today?”

“We’ve come up with a psychological profile of the killer,” he answered.

“What do you mean, ‘a psychological profile’?”

“We’ve formed a mental picture of this man based on the opinions of a number of psychiatrists. Give me a minute, let me find it for you.” Gail heard the rustling of papers. “Here it is.” He paused dramatically. “The general consensus is that the killer is a loner with a possible history of arrests for minor crimes. He’s most likely the product
of a broken home, although who isn’t these days? His mother was either too domineering or too weak.”

Either way, Gail noted to herself, it was the mother’s fault.

“He has few, if any, close attachments,” Lieutenant Cole went on, “was a poor student, and has a possible history of cruelty to animals. His father was most likely either abusive or nonexistent.”

“Basically, what you’re telling me is that the killer could be anyone,” Gail said, digesting the information.

“I think we’ve narrowed it down a bit more than that.”

“Tell me.”

“Well, even given all the either-ors, we’re looking for a young man who doesn’t relate well to other people, who’s quiet, a loner, the product of a broken home. My own theory is that he’s a drifter, lives in a rooming house somewhere in the New Jersey area, and sooner or later he’s going to say or do something to trip himself up.”

“What if he’s not in the New Jersey area anymore?”

Lieutenant Cole took several seconds before responding to Gail’s question. When he did, it was with a question of his own. “Do you play bridge?” he asked.

“Bridge? No.”

“My wife and I play once a week. Talk about cutthroats. Well, bridge is a game of strategy as well as luck. And when you’re playing a hand in bridge, and the only way to win that hand is if one particular player has one particular card, then you have to assume when you make your move, that that card is where you want it to be. It’s the same with finding a killer. If we assume that he’s moved to another state, we might as well give up now. Our only hope to catch this man is if he’s still in New Jersey, so we have to play the hand as if that’s where he is. Do you understand?”

“So what exactly are you doing?” Gail asked, choosing
to ignore his metaphor, asking the question she had asked at least a hundred times over the last two months.

“We’re keeping our eyes and ears open. We have men in various rooming houses throughout Essex County. We’re keeping tabs on possible suspects. We’re thinking of posting a cash reward for information that would lead to the killer’s capture.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Gail asked.

“You can get lots of rest,” the lieutenant answered with obvious concern. “Get your strength back. Keep going to the meetings and try to put your life back together.”

“I know all that.” Gail tried not to sound as impatient as she felt. She knew he was only trying to help.“

“I meant, is there anything I can
do?”

“I know what you meant. But there’s nothing.”

“I feel so helpless.”

“I know you do.”

“You
don’t
know!”

There was a worried pause. “Try to be patient, Gail. We’re doing all we can.” Gail nodded without speaking. “I’ll call you soon.”

Gail hung up the phone and walked into the den where the photo albums she had been looking through the night before were lying, still opened, on the dark green leather sofa. She sat down and lifted them into her lap, opening one up, momentarily startled, as she always was, when first confronted with the smiling reminders of her once-happy family. There were pictures of the jolly little group at Halloween, on birthdays, in Florida: Cindy, age two, sitting precariously on a large rock in the ocean during low tide, her nervous mother just out of the camera’s range; Cindy lounging on a chair beside her proud grandfather; Cindy swimming with water wings at the age of three in an otherwise empty pool, swimming unaided a year later, diving from the diving board at the age of five.

Yet for every happy time, Gail could recall a time in which she had spoken too harshly, reacted too quickly. Pictures of Cindy at the piano were particularly difficult for Gail to look at.

Despite her patience in most areas and despite her patience with her other pupils, Gail found that she turned into a virtual tyrant behind the keyboard where her youngest daughter was concerned. When Cindy balked at practicing or spent too much time in front of the piano scratching and fidgeting, Gail’s voice would grow heavy with sarcasm and shrill with annoyance until by the end of the practice period, Gail couldn’t bear the sound of her own voice for another minute and Cindy had been reduced to tears.

Now whenever Gail looked at the piano, she saw Cindy’s bright eyes filled with tears, and so she had stopped looking at the piano. She had informed the parents of her pupils that lessons were temporarily suspended. They had seemed more relieved than disappointed.

“Gail,” a voice said softly from the doorway, “don’t you think it’s time to put the albums away?”

Gail looked up to see her sister, still in her night-gown, walking into the room to sit down beside her. “I yelled at her,” Gail whimpered. “There was no need.” She shook her head in disgust.

“So you yelled at her a couple of times,” Carol said with genuine astonishment. “So you weren’t always the perfect mother. Who is? You’re a human being. You’re going to make mistakes. There are times when you’re going to yell when you shouldn’t. We’re all guilty of that.” Carol paused, looking around her helplessly. “I know I’m going to sound like our mother again, but here goes.” She forced Gail to look at her. “The important thing is that you did the best that you could, that you were the best mother you knew how to be. Christ, I sound like
you!
Can’t you
remember what you said to Jennifer? That the important thing was that she loved Cindy and that Cindy knew it? That she was the best big sister anybody could want? Why can’t you say the same thing to yourself? Why can’t you realize that you were the best mother any little girl could have? Gail, for God’s sake, how many children have the luxury these days of having their mothers at home all day? Cindy was such a lucky,
lucky
, little girl.” She broke off when she saw the look in Gail’s eyes. “All right, don’t hang me because of semantics. You know what I meant.”