Life Penalty (13 page)

“We could do that too.”

Neither said anything for several long seconds.

“You can’t replace one child with another,” Gail said carefully.

“I know that.”

“I don’t think I’m ready to talk about this yet,” Gail whispered.

Jack patted her shoulder. “I’m going up to bed.”

He stood up and held out his hand. “Come with me.” There was a question in his voice.

Gail looked into his eyes. “I’m not ready for that yet either,” she said quietly. “Please don’t be angry.”

“Why would I be angry? I’m a very patient man.”

“I love you,” Gail told him, thinking he deserved better.

“I know you do. Don’t stay up too late.”

Gail watched him leave the room, wondering how her ex-husband, Mark, would have handled such a tragedy. Most likely, he would have suffered through a month full of stiff drinks and then disappeared. Their marriage never would have survived the strain. He would have hopped into his metallic sports car and driven off into the sunset, buried himself and his memories in liquor and women. Certainly, he would never have displayed the compassion and understanding that Jack Walton just had.

She pictured Jack up in the bedroom, taking off his clothes, his strong body exposed and strangely vulnerable. They hadn’t made love since the tragedy.

Sex had been one of the wonderful surprises about Jack. While sex with Mark had been probably the best thing about him, Mark looked as though that was the way things were supposed to be. He carried his sex appeal like
a portfolio, and anything less than a superb performance in bed would have been a profound disappointment, a form of false advertising. Gail was aware that many good-looking men were less than sensational in bed, too preoccupied with their own bodies to give much attention to their partners, but Mark had not been like that. He really appreciated a woman’s body. Unfortunately, Gail came to realize, he appreciated
any
woman’s body, and after a while this came to alter her perception of their lovemaking. With Jack, Gail had expected a competent lover. She assumed he would be as workmanlike as his appearance, forceful yet caring, but not terribly original or demanding. She was only partly right. As a lover, Jack Walton was a constant well of surprises. He was indeed forceful and caring. He was also, as befitted the occasion, passive and shy, aggressive and abandoned, playful and gentle. After almost nine years of marriage, they had still made love often and eagerly.

But that was before the afternoon of April 30. Before some stranger lurking behind a clump of bushes had, with his own perverse desires, robbed her of any desires of her own.

Gail waited until she heard Eddie’s car pull up outside and knew Jennifer was home safe before she folded up her papers and went upstairs to bed.

Jack was already asleep when Gail crawled in beside him. She stared through the darkness at his face until she was able to make out his features clearly, her eyes focusing on the soft curves of his barely parted lips.

He was so strong, she thought. So caring. He was trying so hard. She knew that despite his assurances to the contrary, she was disappointing him, letting him down.

Gail lay her head on the pillow next to his, staring up at the ceiling, thinking that her husband would be better off without her.

S
he was asleep when she heard the noise.

There was someone at the front door. But the bell had not rung; she knew that no one had knocked. It was a different sound, and it took her a few minutes to realize that it was the sound of glass breaking. She sat up in bed and realized immediately that Jack was not beside her, that it was morning and that she seemed to be the only one in the house. She glanced quickly at the clock by the side of the bed. It was ten o’clock.

Her mind raced through the subsequent ramifications. Carol’s bus had been scheduled to leave for New York at eight forty-five. Jack was going to drive her to the bus stop. Jennifer was starting to work for her dad at nine o’clock sharp. That meant she had missed them all.

Had she really slept so soundly?

Had they tried to rouse her and failed? She’d been very tired, it was true, her mind weighted down with the information of her recent research, and Jennifer hadn’t arrived home until almost 2
A.M.
She’d have to speak to Jennifer about that. Two o’clock was too late to be coming home even during summer holidays.

Gail got out of bed and walked to the window, pulling back the blue curtain and looking into the backyard. Her senses felt dulled. She seemed to walk as if in slow motion,
every action exaggerated and heavy. Her sister had left without saying goodbye, she puzzled, hearing the sound of more glass breaking.

She froze. Someone was trying to break in.

She stood absolutely still for several long seconds, not sure what she should do. Whoever it was obviously thought that no one was home. What would they do if they found her here? In an article she’d read recently, an old woman had been killed when she had surprised a robber in her home. The killer-thief had received a sentence of five years in prison.

Gail looked toward the phone and wondered if she had time to call the police. Then her eyes shot to the silver button on the wall above the phone, the “panic button” which rang directly into the police station when pressed, signifying an emergency. She had protested when Jack had insisted on installing it along with the burglar alarm system he’d had put in just after the robbery.

“They won’t come back,” she had argued. But they obviously had.

She heard someone forcing the lock on the inside of the door and knew that whoever it was was only moments away from getting inside, that in several seconds his feet would be on the stairs. She had time to get to the button, she realized, and the sound of it would undoubtedly frighten the burglar away. She made a move toward the button and then stopped, holding her breath with the sudden realization that she didn’t want to frighten the man away. Maybe it was the same man who’d murdered Cindy.

Lieutenant Cole could have been wrong when he’d said it was unlikely that Cindy’s killer had also been the man who robbed their house. The police profile postulated that the killer had a past record of arrests for petty crimes. It was possible, she thought, catching her breath. God, anything was possible. At any rate, she was going to stand
right where she was and wait for him. She was not going to move.

Suddenly, she heard a voice coming from the hallway.

“‘Mom,” Jennifer was asking, “what’s that noise?” Gail stared at her daughter who stood staring back at her from the doorway. “What are you doing home?” she asked.

“I slept in. I was out kind of late,” she admitted sheepishly. “I called Dad. He said it was okay to start this afternoon instead.” A look of fear crept over her face. “What’s that noise, Mom?”

So, she was not alone in the house. Jennifer was there. She couldn’t stand there and wait for the man at the door. She had to protect her child.

An instant later, she heard the front door as it gave way. “Oh my God,” she muttered, grabbing Jennifer’s hand, aware now that footsteps were circling the inner hallway and moving into the downstairs rooms. “Quick,” she shouted at Jennifer, pulling her hand and running with her to the hall, not sure in which direction to turn. She started to her left, then quickly backtracked to her right, Jennifer’s feet tripping over themselves in the confusion, her hand slipping out of her mother’s, her body careening toward the floor, a loud gasp escaping her mouth.

Gail raced back and grabbed her hand, pulling Jennifer to her feet and dragging her along the hallway. Jennifer cried out in dismay. “Be quiet,” her mother admonished with growing panic as the men—there were two of them, she noted quickly, one young with light brown hair—reached the top of the stairs. Gail pushed her daughter back into her bedroom and they slammed the door behind them. “Help me,” she yelled to Jennifer, and the two women pulled first a chair, then a small table toward the door. “Press the panic button,” Gail commanded, and Jennifer rushed in its direction as Gail dragged the heavy dresser which sat across from her bed to further block the
entrance to the bedroom. Jennifer pressed the button in the same second that the men began pounding against the newly erected barricades. It sounded immediately, but the noise from the alarm did nothing to deter them. Gail grabbed Jennifer, hugging her close, then ran with her into the adjoining bathroom. Frantically, with Jennifer now starting to weep, Gail pulled the contents of one of the cupboards under the sink out onto the floor. “Get in there,” she commanded, surprised at how easily her daughter was able to fit inside. “Don’t move or make a sound.” Someone would come to help them soon, she tried to reassure her, and it was imperative that Jennifer not let anyone know where she was until she knew she was safe. Then Gail quickly piled the contents of that drawer into another before racing back into her room, to the intercom on the bedroom wall. Flipping the button which connected to the front door, she began screaming for help. Surely people would hear her screams as they walked past the house and someone would rush in to save them. She stared at the panic button—where were the police? Gail saw that the furniture was beginning to give way in front of the bedroom door, and knew that she had only a few minutes before the men on the other side would succeed in breaking through. She resumed her screams into the intercom, finally abandoning the attempt when she saw the bedroom door beginning to open.

She ran quickly, her heart thumping wildly, into the bathroom and locked the door. The lock could be easily picked with a bobby pin and wouldn’t hold for long, she knew. One good slam would send it flying open. She looked to the bathroom window and toyed with the idea of jumping out. Even though they were on the second floor and the fall to the ground would probably injure them severely, she decided it would be better than risking certain death at the hands of the lunatics who had now
succeeded in breaking into her bedroom. She looked around for something to hurl through the window, to shatter the glass. There was nothing. The men were at the bathroom door. They were laughing, arguing loudly and playfully with one another over who should have the honor of busting it, which woman they would have first. Gail hurried to the medicine cabinet and pulled out Jack’s straight razor, lunging back behind the door just as it burst open.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” one of the men sang in a gross parody of the children’s song. While his companion began tearing apart the bedroom, the first man—the young one with the light brown hair—strode purposefully toward the cupboard under the sink as if directed by magic. As he lowered his hand to pull open the small door, Gail lunged in his direction, her arms grabbing his head and pulling it sharply back, the straight razor slicing across his throat like a line of red ink. He fell back gurgling, his eyes filled more with surprise than pain, as the second man—and now Gail noticed that he too was young, with the same color hair as the first—came rushing to his aid.

Gail felt strong arms around her waist, lifting her into the air. Flailing about wildly, she brought one foot up, then kicked it furiously back, catching her assailant square between his legs. He bellowed sharply with the sudden, intense pain, releasing his grip on Gail’s body as she spun about and caught him with her razor as he was about to fall. The blood flew from his throat and splattered against the walls, his jugular vein severed. Gail walked between the man’s legs and kicked him there again. Then she picked up the gun that had fallen to the floor in the scuffle, and of which she had only now become aware, and held it to the man’s head. She pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession. When there was nothing left of
his face, and his light brown hair was soaked in red, she walked calmly over to the second man and shot him too. Then she dropped the gun to the floor and sank down beside it.

“Mommy,” she heard the small voice cry from underneath the sink, and she ran toward it, opening the door and preparing to pull her daughter out. Arms reached up and surrounded her neck as Gail closed her eyes with relief, cradling the small body in her lap and against her bloody nightgown. The two of them rocked gently back and forth together.

“I saved you,” Gail repeated over and over to the rhythm, looking down to see Cindy, not Jennifer, in her arms. She crushed Cindy tightly to her breast. “I saved my beautiful baby.”

Gail sat up abruptly in bed and looked toward the clock. It was a few minutes before seven. Jack lay asleep beside her. She reached over gingerly and turned off the alarm so that it wouldn’t ring.

It had all been a dream.

But a dream of a different sort, she recognized immediately. Up until now, her dreams had been inconclusive, fraught with frustration. What made them nightmares had been her inability to act. Night after night, she had confronted her daughter’s murderer and each time she had been unable to move, unable to take even the smallest of steps toward avenging her daughter’s death. She had awakened from those dreams screaming, her body bathed in a cold sweat, her head and heart racing.

Now she felt only a curious calm and the same sort of strange satisfaction she had experienced the night before when reading about the shop owner in Florida who had gunned down his two would-be robbers and the irate New Yorkers who had taken the justice system into their own hands.

Jack stirred beside her. Gail watched him balancing on the border between sleep and consciousness. Did he have such dreams? she wondered.

She looked down at the front of her nightgown. The pale pink bodice was untouched by the rude red stains of her imagination. Her hands were clean and dry.

Soon she was standing inside the bathroom, beside the tub, looking at the gaily papered walls, feeling the hard, cool tile under her toes.

Normally, she would have taken a shower. But this morning, a shower seemed too abrupt. She needed a slower, gentler awakening.

She reached over and began running the tub. A few minutes later she was soaking peacefully inside it, seeing the blood splattered artfully across the walls and lost in the dream that she had saved her little girl.