Life Penalty (17 page)

She felt the gun at her head and stepped wordlessly from the car. No one spoke as the men led her away from the automobile, into the high grass. No other cars drove by to witness her forced striptease, to see her laid bare against the cold earth, one gun at her temple, the other snaking its way up her leg. Perhaps they would just shoot her and spare her the pain of their tortures. She’d been tortured enough, she thought, looking past her window into the worried—even frightened—eyes of the young man at her car door. She pressed the button which automatically lowered her window.

“Police, ma’am,” he announced, pushing forward his badge. Gail gave it only a cursory glance. There was no way she could differentiate between the real thing and a fake. “Would you mind getting out of the car, ma’am.” It was a command, not a question.

Gail took a deep breath and released it slowly. Her knees were shaking as her feet touched the ground outside. The grass licked at her ankles. The air was cool, much colder than when she had begun her drive. Fall had definitely settled in, she realized, wondering how it had escaped her notice, amazed by the inexorable progression of time.

The second man went around to the passenger side of her car, peering into the back seat with a flashlight. “We’d like to take a look inside,” the first man said. Gail nodded. Was this part of the game? Get the victim to relax, make her feel secure before leading her to the slaughter? “Can I see your driver’s license ma’am?” the officer—she decided to think of them as such for the time being—asked politely, if warily. He watched closely as she opened her handbag and took out her wallet, handing it over to him. He declined, pulling his body noticeably back. “Take it out of the wallet,” he told her. Gail smiled. It had been a test. She knew that policemen were required to ask you to remove your license from your wallet before handing it over. If this man had done otherwise, she would have known he was not who he claimed to be. But he obviously knew his part well. She watched him as he studied her license.

“Everything’s fine in here,” the other officer said. “Would you mind opening your trunk, please?” he asked, and Gail reached inside the car and pulled the keys out of the ignition, then handed them to the young man beside her. He, in turn, threw them over the hood of the car to the other policeman, who walked to the trunk and opened it up. It was empty except for the spare tire.

The first man now returned to his own car and phoned in her driver’s license number for verification. He came back a few minutes later, seemingly satisfied, his gun now safely in its holster. “Mind telling us just what the hell you’re doing out on this highway alone at this hour?” he demanded with an equal mixture of curiosity and anger.

“I had a fight with my husband,” Gail lied, saying the first thing that came into her mind. She was still not sure these men were who they claimed to be. She pictured Jack’s face, wondered if he was home yet from the meeting. Would they call him? Tell him where she’d been? “I needed to get out for a while and calm down.”

“On this highway?” the second man demanded incredulously. She saw that he was the older of the two and swarthy where the younger man was fair.

“It seemed as good as any,” Gail said, not sure what else she should say.

“Don’t you read the papers?” the younger officer asked. “Don’t you know what’s been happening along this highway?”

“We’ve been away,” Gail said. “Florida. We just got back.”

“You don’t have much of a tan,” the second policeman observed, shining the flashlight in her face.

“I don’t like to sit out in the sun,” she told him. “It’s not good for you.”

“Neither is driving alone this late at night down a highway where four people have been murdered in the last two weeks.”

“I didn’t know,” Gail stammered. “We’ve been away.”

“Yeah, well, make sure that you don’t do anything stupid like this again,” the older man said. “If you want to cool off, drive around the block, not out on the highway. Better still, don’t fight with your husband. Poor guy’s probably got enough on his mind.”

Gail thought that was probably true. “Do you have any idea who’s been doing the killing?” she asked.

“We’re working on it,” came the standard response.

Gail nodded, feigning assurance. “Can I go now?” she asked timidly. She wondered if Lieutenant Cole would ever find out about tonight, what he would say to her if he did.

The younger officer handed her back her driver’s license after first rechecking her name. “Look, Mrs. Walton,” he said softly, and for a minute Gail thought he might have recognized her, “we didn’t mean to scare you, but this isn’t a television program where the good guys show up just in time to save the damsel in distress. People are getting killed out here. Innocent people are being butchered. It’s not kiddies’ day at the exhibition. You’re damn lucky it was us and not some lunatic who stopped you.” Gail nodded contritely. “We’ll follow you back till you get off the highway,” he said.

“You don’t have to do that,” Gail protested.

“Oh yes we do,” she was told.

“Thank you,” Gail acknowledged.

“After you,” the policeman said, and Gail climbed back into her car and started the engine. The police car stayed behind her until she was safely off the highway. She honked her horn in appreciation, which was acknowledged with a wave of a hand.

Jack was in the living room waiting for her when she walked in the front door.

“How was the movie?” he asked, his voice flat.

“Not very good,” she told him, avoiding his eyes, heading directly for the stairs.

“What did you see?”

Gail stopped on the second step, her mind a blank. “I can’t remember the title,” she said. “One of those dumb car chase films, you know the type. Cars racing down the highway. Cops and robbers.” She stopped. “How was the meeting?” She asked the question to avoid more questions from Jack.

“Good,” he answered slowly. “I’d like to talk to you about it.”

“Could it wait till morning?” she asked quickly. “It’s just that I’m so tired now …”

“Sure,” Jack said immediately, not trying to hide his disappointment.

“I’m really so exhausted,” she continued, realizing it was true.

“Good night, Gail,” he said softly.

Gail managed a weak smile. “Good night,” she told him, and went upstairs to bed.

O
n October 1, the body of a twenty-nine-year-old mother of three was discovered buried in a shallow grave just past the outskirts of Livingston. She had been raped, and shot twice through the heart. The woman was the wife of a local real estate tycoon. The newspapers were suddenly filled with photographs of the attractive young woman and her now grieving family.

“Do you think there’s any connection?” Gail asked Lieutenant Cole when she was finally able to reach him two days later.

“No,” he said firmly.

“Why not?” Gail’s voice was terse, anxious.

“Too many differences,” Lieutenant Cole explained, enumerating the details of this latest murder. “Veronica MacInnes was a grown woman; she was shot, not strangled …”

“She was raped …”

“Men who rape children rarely rape women old enough to have them.”

“But it could be …”

“Gail,” Richard Cole said steadily, “it isn’t.”

Gail lowered the phone to her chest and looked toward her kitchen door. “What happens now?” she asked, suddenly bringing the phone back to her mouth.

There was a pause. “I’m not sure I understand the question.”

‘“Do you know who killed this woman?”

“Not yet. We have—”

“I know, you have several leads.”

“Gail …”

“What happens to Cindy’s case now?”

“We’re still working on your daughter’s case.”

“Veronica MacInnes was the wife of a prominent man, a very rich man. Are you trying to tell me that you haven’t got all your men out searching for her killer?”

“That doesn’t mean we aren’t still searching for the man who murdered your daughter.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“No.”

Gail was about to argue, thought better of it and said nothing. There was no point in further discussion. She understood the facts even if Lieutenant Cole was unable to admit them, and the sad fact was that her daughter was old news. The police would concentrate their attention on a case they still had a chance to solve. The hunt for Cindy’s killer would be abandoned. Whatever undercover men were still wandering the streets of New Jersey would undoubtedly be sent elsewhere, where their time could be spent more productively.

She was about to hang up the phone when Lieutenant Cole’s voice caught her off guard. “What did you say?” she asked quickly.

“I asked you where you’ve been the past month,” he repeated.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I’ve called many times and you’re never home. I just wondered what you’ve been doing with yourself.”

Gail tried to clear her throat and wound up coughing
into the receiver. “I’ve been in and out,” she finally sputtered nervously. “Nowhere in particular.”

“‘Feeling all right?”

“Fine,” Gail answered, anxious now to get off the phone.

As she replaced the receiver, she knew she had reached yet another plateau. It was time to press forward, to act on the next phase of her plan.

She had been watching a number of rooming houses for the past several weeks, making mental notes of the various inhabitants, keeping a careful check on who went in and out.

It was time now for her to move inside, to join them.

She had been delaying such an action, hoping the police would discover something.

They had, Gail laughed with bitter irony as she got behind the wheel of her car and pulled out of her driveway.

Another body.

Johnson Avenue was a narrow, uninteresting street that ran perpendicular to Broad Street. It was lined on either side by run-down brick houses, their wood trim in need of paint, their front steps cracked and uneven, covered with the leaves of autumn, which no one had bothered to rake up.

Gail chose this street over several of the others because it seemed the most nondescript. It wasn’t the best such street, nor was it the worst. She had followed several young men here, always trailing half a block behind, her face concealed inside the upturned collar of her fall coat.

Once she had caught a fleeting glimpse of herself in a store window as she turned the comer, collar up, head down, shoulders slumped, feet shuffling forward, and she had almost laughed out loud. After that she had toned down the stereotype somewhat, careful not to let herself drift into caricature, making herself as real and therefore
as invisible as the others who wandered these streets. It wasn’t difficult. In many ways she felt she was truly one of them—alone, angry, desperate. There were days she felt more at home on these avenues than on the streets around Tarlton Drive. At least here she knew the dangers. Back in Livingston, in the comfortable upper-middle-class section called Cherry Hill where she lived, there weren’t supposed to be any dangers.

The killer was somewhere in these streets, she felt sure, in one of these old, worn-out houses, hiding himself from the world. But not from her. And not for much longer.

She chose No. 17 because it appealed to her in some strange way. Looking past its chipped paint and collapsing eaves trough, Gail could almost imagine what it had looked like a long time ago—straight, sturdy and even warm. She had watched at least one slender, fair-haired youth pass through its front door, and several others whose vital statistics could be stretched to accommodate the description of the man she was seeking. Hair could be dyed, after all. Beards and mustaches could be grown. Pounds could be added. Heads could be shaved.

The sign in the front window proclaimed a vacancy.

Rooms could be rented by the day, week or month. “I’d like a room,” Gail told the woman peeking out from behind the first door downstairs.

“For how long?” the woman asked, keeping a growling Doberman at bay with her slippered foot.

“I’m not sure,” Gail answered, thinking that she would probably move on to another house in a week’s time if she should find nothing here.

“Pay by the night then. Cash in advance,” the woman told her, and Gail saw a cigarette dangling from the woman’s fingers. “Get in there, Rebecca,” she snarled at the dog, who instantly backed off. Gail thought the name Rebecca an odd one for a Doberman.

“How much?” Gail asked, wondering if the woman had chosen the dog’s name for its irony. This was certainly no Sunnybrook Farm.

“Fifteen dollars a night,” the woman said.

“Fifteen dollars a night?” Gail repeated, searching through her coat pocket for fifteen dollars. “That’s a lot.”

“‘You might find cheaper down the road,” the woman told her, “but it won’t be as nice. Fifteen dollars a night. Take it or leave it. I haven’t got all day to waste talking. My soaps are on.”

Gail wondered what soaps the woman watched but didn’t ask. “That’s fine,” Gail said, handing the lady the fifteen dollars, which she promptly counted.

“I’ll get the keys,” the woman said.

As the landlady led her up the stairs, Gail noticed stains along the otherwise blank wall that appeared to be blood. “What are these stains?” she asked.

The woman’s eyes followed Gail’s fingers to the ugly faded maroon streaks. “I have no idea,” she said, as if she could barely be bothered answering the question.

“It looks like blood.”

The woman smiled for the first time since Gail had knocked at her door. “Yeah, it could very well be.”

Gail preferred not to think how blood might have gotten there, and gave her attention to the woman’s legs as she preceded Gail up the second full flight of stairs. The woman was more than just thin; she was anorexic, her thighs the size of wrists underneath her dirty slacks. Oddly enough, her hair was immaculately coiffed, cleaned and curled, and her nails were carefully and expertly manicured and polished a bright, vibrant red.

“Are all the rooms filled now?” Gail asked when they came to a stop outside a locked door, the landlady jiggling the key in the keyhole.

“Got one more,” the woman said, pushing the door open, and handing Gail the key. “There it is. Well?”