Life Penalty (28 page)

“And the guilty?”

Mike shrugged helplessly. “What can I say?” Gail nodded. “I wish there was something I could do. I’d shoot the guy for you myself if I could.”

“We have to find him first,” Gail said.

“They will,” Mike told her, unconsciously altering the pronoun. He stood up. “I’d better go. My client will be wondering what the hell happened to me.” He put a dollar bill on the table under his empty coffee cup. “Is there anything you want me to tell Laura?”

Gail felt the invisible presence of her former friend, the words of an old song from her high school days running through her mind. Tell Laura I love her, the plaintive voice rang out in the recesses of her memory. Tell Laura I miss her.

The words stumbled to her lips. “Tell Laura …” she began, one word swallowing the other. She shook her head, then looked back down at her coffee.

Mike waited for her to look up again, and when she didn’t, he proceeded with hurried determination out of the small diner. Gail heard the front door open and close but she didn’t look up, and she didn’t see which direction he took.

After a few minutes she became aware of the uncomfortable sensation that someone was watching her. She raised her eyes from the table.

He was standing at the front counter, and as soon as Gail looked up, he turned away, apparently concentrating on his cup of coffee. Gail recognized him immediately, his casual clothes carelessly arranged over his squat frame, his dark curls falling low over his forehead.

There could no longer be any question—whoever the man was, he was definitely following her. The only question that remained now was why.

G
ail spent her fortieth birthday cleaning every room in the house.

It was Saturday morning and Jack had planned to spend the day with her, but his receptionist had called first thing in the morning with an emergency, and so he had kissed her goodbye while she was still in bed, and gone to work. Gail debated whether to drive into Newark, but the roads were bad with the recent first snowfall of the season, and she wasn’t sure how long Jack would be gone, so she decided to stay home.

She showered and dressed and stood for a long time staring past her blue bedroom curtain at the snow which had been falling continuously since the previous afternoon. It had made driving home from the rooming house very difficult. She’d narrowly missed several accidents. People seemed to forget how to drive the minute there was the slightest precipitation. Drive defensively, she’d heard the radio announcer warn. Watch out for the other guy.

Cindy would have loved this snow, Gail thought, pulling away from the pale blue curtain. In seven weeks, as unbelievable as it seemed, it would be Christmas—Gail’s first Christmas in over six years without her.

A sudden childhood memory caught her by surprise, and she found herself smiling at the image of her father,
his body clad in striped pajamas, his face pinched tightly with exasperation, trying to force their errant Christmas tree into an upright position. The tree was overladen with ornaments, and the stand her father had purchased earlier was proving inadequate. Try as he might, sing to it as sweetly as he could, swear as loudly as he did, he still couldn’t make the stubborn tree stand straight. After almost an hour, her father, his body scratched and sore from the tree’s branches, his face bathed in sweat, his bare feet cut by the tiny, bright chips of the many broken bulbs and gaily decorated balls that now lined the floor, had ordered his near hysterical wife to “hold the goddamn tree” while he went to find a hammer and nails, and returned to nail the tree right into the floor! “Let’s see if it falls over now,” he proclaimed triumphantly as his wife and two daughters looked on in amazement.

How old could she have been then? Ten? Twelve? The memory was still so clear. Now she was forty. Somewhere in between, thirty years had passed.

Somewhere in that time she had grown up and borne two daughters of her own, just like her mother before her.

And then there was one, she thought, a sudden chill shooting through her body, the image of two men before her eyes. One was not very tall, with a headful of black unruly curls; the other had light brown hair and wore a yellow windbreaker.

She had not seen the dark-haired man since the afternoon in the restaurant earlier in the week, although several times she had felt his presence. She had not seen Nick Rogers at all.

(“Are you sure you don’t know a man named Nick Rogers?” she had asked the landlady again, describing him for the wary woman. “On the third floor maybe,” she had continued. “That might not be his name.” Gail had
described him again to no avail. “Who is it, Irene?” the fat man had bellowed from inside their room, and Irene had unceremoniously closed the door in her face.)

The previous afternoon Gail had actually gone up to the third floor and waited on the landing, but no one had gone in or come out of any of the rooms. When she had left the rooming house that afternoon to return to Tarlton Drive, the landlady had been standing at the foot of the stairs regarding her suspiciously.

Gail remained standing very still in the middle of her bedroom for what felt like a long time. The house was quiet; Jennifer was spending the weekend with Mark and Julie, having given Gail her birthday present—a pair of black leather gloves—the night before.

Gail decided that her fortieth birthday was as good a time as any to get her house in order. Jack had been complaining lately that he couldn’t find any of his winter clothes. The very least she could do for him would be to reorganize the closets.

She started with her bedroom, removing every article of clothing from each drawer and wiping and scrubbing the wood, before reorganizing and returning each item. She then moved on to the closets, pushing the light cottons to the rear, pulling the more somber winter fabrics to the forefront. Next, she got down on her knees and shuffled through the many shoes that lined the bottom of the closet, exchanging white sandals for black pumps, espadrilles for boots. Suddenly, she saw a bag scrunched into the far corner just beyond the last pair of shoes. She felt her pulse begin to quicken as her hand reached inexorably toward it.

The bag was large, its pattern familiar. Gail hadn’t seen it since the afternoon of April 30 when she had turned the corner to find police cars waiting in front of her home. Then she had dropped the bag to the sidewalk, along with several others which she now saw buried behind this one.
Her purchases, she remembered, carrying the parcels to the bed and ripping them open, bought while her youngest daughter was being, raped and strangled behind a clump of bushes in a friendly neighborhood park.

Someone must have found them and brought them to the house. Her name and address were on the bill. She pulled out each item, one at a time—some shorts and tops for Jennifer, a pretty cotton dress; two wonderful little outfits for Cindy.

And what of her own purchases? What clothes had she needed so badly? What couldn’t have waited until another day, a more suitable hour? She pulled out a blue and white cotton print dress. It was summery and bright and it filled her with loathing. She stuffed it back into the torn bag along with the gaily printed purple-and-white-striped bathing suit.

Gail pushed the torn parcels into a large green garbage bag, along with a once favorite blouse she angrily yanked from a hanger.

She attacked Jennifer’s room in a similar fashion, freshening and deodorizing, replacing the light cottons of summer and early fall with the heavy wools of winter.

What had her family been wearing these past few months? she wondered, realizing she hadn’t noticed.

Gail stopped when she came to Cindy’s room.

No one had gone into that room since the previous April. Not even the robbers had dared to step inside. Gail stood outside the closed door, her breath held tightly. Slowly, she reached out and touched the door handle. She held it without moving, swallowing hard, looking to either side to make sure that no one was watching. After a few minutes, her hand seemingly stuck to the door, she twisted the handle, standing back as the door fell open.

For a minute Gail half expected to see Cindy kneeling by her bed, Barbie dolls in hand. But the space in front of
the bed where the child used to play was empty, and the bag full of Barbies—at least ten by the last count—that was usually sprawled open, its contents spread across the floor, was neatly put away in its proper box, the lilac carpet on the floor lying smoothed and undisturbed.

Gail dropped the green garbage bags she was holding and walked over to the white canopied bed. Cindy’s room had always been done in shades of lilac and white. Originally, the walls had been white with big purple flowers and magic butterflies and birds. It had been replaced only two years ago by a slightly more sophisticated paper of white background with tiny delicate violets that Cindy had chosen herself. The lilac broadloom had remained the same. The white crib had been replaced by the canopied bed for a princess. Except that there was no longer a princess.

Gail stepped inside the room and closed the door. “Mommy, will you play Barbie with me?”

“Oh, sweetie, not now.”

“Please. Just for a few minutes.”

“Oh, all right. Just for a few minutes.”

“Okay. Sit down.”

Gail sat down on the floor beside the bed and ran her hand across the soft carpet. It still felt warm, she thought.

“You can be Western Barbie.”

“Who are you going to be?”

“I think I’ll be Angel Face Barbie.”

Gail pulled the box full of Barbie dolls toward her.

Inside the square cardboard box was what they called the Barbie bag. It was where all the Barbies slept when they were not being played with. Gail reached inside the bag and took them out one at a time.

They were all neatly dressed, their hair perfectly groomed. The first one she pulled out was known, appropriately enough, as My First Barbie, so-called because it was
supposedly suited for little hands, the easiest of all the Barbies to dress and undress. Sure, Gail thought, fingering the yellow pantsuit, silently calculating the hours she had spent sliding the miniature clothes over and off those well-developed hips. Next she took out one of the two Western Barbies. (Jack’s mother had bought one although she knew Cindy already had one just like it. It was the only one the store had, she had explained, and Gail could always exchange it.) But Cindy had loved the second Western Barbie just as she loved the first and all the others, which Gail now spread across the floor. The second Western Barbie was missing one of her boots, and Gail hunted in the bag until she found it and then thrust the tiny plastic foot inside. She slowly let her eyes travel across the open blue eyes of the dolls, smiling with recognition at the sight of Angel Face Barbie, her perfect cheeks shining red with the makeup that Cindy had applied. Gail couldn’t remember the names of the others; Cindy had known them all. To her they were as individual as children to a mother. Even the two Western Barbies were like identical twins, and she could always tell which one was which.

“Come on, play.”

“Okay. Hi, I’m Western Barbie.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Not that. You’re supposed to say, ‘I have a prettier dress than you do.’”

“Oh. All right. ‘I have a prettier dress than you do.’”

“No, yoo-hoo don’t.”

“Yes, I do-oo.”

“No, yoo-hoo don’t.”

“Yes … Cindy, how long does this go on?”

“Mommy!”

“Oh, all right. Yes, I do-oo.”

“You’re ugly.”

“That’s not a nice thing to say.”

“Mommy, that’s wrong!” Cindy’s formidable pout occupied the lower half of her face. “You’re supposed to say,
‘You’re
ugly.’”

“I don’t want to say that.”

“That’s what you’re supposed to say.”

“Says who?”

“Me.”

“Why do I have to say what you want me to say? Why can’t I say what I want?”

“Because you can’t.”

“Cindy, if I’m going to play with these silly Barbies, then at least I get to say what I want to say.”

Gail would realize how ridiculous she sounded at the same moment that Cindy’s pout would spread up to her eyes, spilling tears down her cheeks.

“They’re not silly.”

“No, you’re right. Of course you’re right. They’re not silly.” Cindy would now be cradled in her mother’s lap, Gail’s kisses dotting the child’s forehead. “I’m the silly one. Come on, let’s play.” It would require several minutes of coaxing before Cindy was ready to resume her former position. “Now, what is it I’m supposed to say?”

Gail studied the faces of the various dolls as she lifted each one up and returned them to the plastic Bloomingdale’s bag. Then she pushed herself off the floor and walked to the closet. Cindy’s dresses hung in a neat row. There were some that had to be lengthened, a few recent purchases that required shortening, others that were, pure and simple, too small. Cindy was growing up so fast. Too fast, Gail had often thought, a recollection that now sent shivers down the length of her spine.

Gail’s hand shot through the small dresses, searching for the feel of purple velvet, realizing as she came to the end of the rack that it was not there, that the police were
still holding it as evidence. She grabbed the dresses off the rack in one sweeping movement and piled them into one of the large green garbage bags she had dropped by the door. Within minutes she had emptied the closet and all the dresser drawers. She had tossed stuffed animals and other toys on top of clothes, thrown in the various games and puzzles and ultimately, pushed even the Barbie bag down on top of everything else. Then she had knotted the bags at the top and left them sitting in the middle of the room.

She rushed to her own bedroom, picked up the phone and dialed the Salvation Army. She had several bags of articles, yes, clothing and toys, she stammered, aware suddenly that they were having difficulty understanding her because she was crying and swallowing her words. When could they come and pick them up? No, next week would be too late … yes, the day after tomorrow would be fine. No, nothing was wrong. She’d see them in two days.