Now or Never (46 page)

The baby lying peacefully on the fleecy blanket was so sweet and pretty in the pink baby clothes that were already too small. Her heart plummeted as she finally faced the truth.

At about eleven o’clock Angela began to cry. Mary
walked around and around with her in her arms, patting her back, shushing her, telling her she loved her, until at last she dozed off again. She put her in the crib and went to the little cupboard she called a kitchen and fixed a cup of tea. Then she sat down and began to scan the newspaper for jobs.

It was two weeks before Christmas, the column was short, and nobody was hiring. Her pay and the week’s severance were still on the table where she had flung it. She calculated quickly that by the time she had paid her rent and the baby-sitter and bought a few other necessities, she would have about twenty-three dollars. And she would have to buy baby food and new baby clothes.

She thought of welfare and shuddered, burning with remembered humiliation. Her mother had inflicted that on her, and now she was repeating the pattern and inflicting it on her own daughter. She was trapped in the same old downward spiral—and so was her daughter. They would never get out, never survive. She was looking into the bottomless pit of their future.

Glancing at the newspaper again, her eye was caught by a picture of a small child, a pretty little girl. Mary read the article quickly, then she read it again. Slowly this time.

The child was the daughter of a wealthy Seattle couple, and she had been born with a heart defect. They had fought desperately to save her, flying in expert doctors from Texas and London to try to help. Time and time again, their hopes had been raised that she would be miraculously made well. But a few days ago the child had died. The mother said she would never get over it, that every time she went into the empty nursery, it broke her heart all over again.

Mary didn’t give herself any time to think about what she was doing. She put the rent she owed in an envelope for the landlord and said she was sorry, but she could not afford to stay on. Then she packed up her few things and
her baby, put them in the ancient Chevy, and drove through the cold night to Seattle.

She knew where they lived from the newspaper article and found their house easily—a beautiful place overlooking Lake Washington. She sat in the car in the dark, holding her baby, waiting.

When the sky began to turn gray, she gave the baby a bottle, changed her diaper, and wrapped her in her fleecy blankets. She folded a quilt around her for extra warmth, then held her tightly, watching the house for signs of life. The sky was turning pink when a light went on upstairs, and she knew that the family was waking up.

She wrote a note and pinned it to the baby’s blanket. She looked lovingly at her little daughter, she kissed her tenderly and held her close for the last time. Then she walked silently up the drive and laid her on the wide stone steps.

She hesitated, thinking about the note. It said, “I know you need her and can take good care of her. Please love her.” She was sure she was doing the right thing; it was the only thing left.

Still, she hesitated. Her heart was in the pit of her stomach as she looked down at her baby. She loved her so much, but if she kept her, they would both go under, in Golden or its equivalent. Her beautiful daughter deserved better than that.

Mary raced back down the drive, into the car, and away.

They never traced her, though she was sure they tried. She left the state and got herself a new job many hundreds of miles away. It was a year before she dared to return to Seattle and take up her studies at the university again. She did not cry for her baby. The hurt was too deep for that, and she buried the memory in her mind, the way she had buried all the other bad things that had happened.

“I
KEPT MY VOW
,” Mal said wistfully to Harry. “I never went back to that house. I never saw her. The first years were the worst. I can’t explain what it means to lose a child like that, to know she is alive and so close, I could almost touch her.

“But she is their daughter. They needed her as much as she needed them. They gave her their hearts and their love and shared their lives with her. And no one ever knew the truth about her real father.” She looked beseechingly at Harry, as if seeking his approval. “I had no choice. It was the only way she could be free.”

Her eyes were dark with anguish. Harry understood the struggle she had gone through, dealing with the guilt and the despair, always wondering if she had done the right thing. Mal had endured all those years alone and unloved, and she had paid a terrible price.

He drew her into his arms and held her close, rocking her. She clutched him, trembling. She could not cry; her tears had been shed long ago, torrents of them, until there were none left. She felt his fingers touch her closed lids, then his lips, barely stirring her long lashes in a gentle kiss. He traced the contours of her face, the cheekbones, her soft trembling mouth. Her eyes were still closed. She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t bear to see his pity.

He unfastened her shirt and slipped it over her shoulders, then her skirt. His fingers followed the curve of her
neck, the swell of her breast under the pale satin chemise, in the subtlest of touches, light as a breeze. Slipping the chemise over her head, he ran his hand down the length of her body.

He inclined his head. “Beautiful,” he whispered in her ear. “You’re a beautiful woman, Mal.” His mouth sought hers, caught her soft lower lip, tasting it, then covered her in little butterfly kisses, infinitely tender.

In the bedroom, he stripped quickly, then sat next to her on the bed. He took her hands, pulled her to him. “Open your eyes, Mal darling,” he said urgently. “I want you to look at me. Look at me.”

She didn’t want to, couldn’t bear to know what she would see.

“Look at me, Mal,” he commanded. “I need you to look.”

He was holding both her hands. There was no escape. Slowly, she lifted her lids. His lean handsome face swam into nearsighted focus: his rumpled dark hair and strong stubbled jaw. His gaze was fierce, commanding her.

“Look into my eyes, Mal,” he said, gripping her hands tightly, because he did not want to lose her now.

She lifted her head, stretched her neck proudly, and set her mouth in a grim line, ready to tell him she did not need pity. All she wanted was justice. Then she looked into his beautiful gray eyes and could not look away. They held her just as close as his arms did, when he made love to her.

She was aware that his body was hard and beautiful, that his eyes were telling her something. His energy flowed into her fingertips, filled her senses, yet he had not moved, had not kissed her, did not attempt to make love to her. His eyes commanded her, drew her into him and her limbs seemed to soften until she was weightless, floating in a silvery opaque space: All she knew, all she saw was his eyes, and the tenderness in them.

He leaned toward her then and whispered in her ear. “This is love, Mal. It’s touching each other’s minds as well as bodies. I’m taking you into my head, into my heart, and I want you to do the same.”

The breath came out of her in a little gasp, and the pulse in her throat jumped as he angled his head to kiss her again—light and soft and infinitely tender. “Do you feel it, Mal? Now do you feel it?”

He was kissing her neck, letting his lips drift down the smooth curve of her shoulder, across the swell of her breast, circling the nipples, down the gentle slope of her belly. He kissed the soft inner side of her thighs, the tender female parts of her, and then he inched his way up her body again until she cried out from wanting him.

He was hard and ready, but he took her slowly, wanting her to know that he loved her, that this was what love-making should be: a man and a woman in total harmony with each other, in mind as well as body.

When he finally entered her, she cried out and wrapped her legs and arms around him, moving with him, feeling the fire in him, the pleasure and the power of it as they reached the peak of ecstasy together.

But when it was over, it was not finished. He was still inside her, still clasping her. He ran his hands over her sweat-slick body, dropped kisses on her face and neck, sucked the little gasps of air from her open mouth. “Now do you feel it? Now do you know what love is?” he murmured.

“Oh, Harry.” She was breathless with the sudden joyous feel of it. “I love you, Harry,” she said.

They lay entwined together in their own private rarefied silvery space. She had no secrets anymore. After a while he disentangled himself, went to the kitchen, and fixed her a cup of the tea she liked.

Carrying it carefully, he placed it on the night table, and she smiled her thanks.

“I should be thanking you,” he said, humbly. “No one should have to go through what you did. No one should ever have to live through those experiences, or relive them in the telling. But there’s one important question I have to ask you. Are you sure in your heart—and your gut—that it’s the same man as the one we’re looking for?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “His name is Wil Ethan.” She breathed a sigh of relief. Finally it was out.

“We’re going to need your help, Mal, if we’re to catch him before he kills again.”

This time she did not hesitate. She knew she could trust him. “I’ll help,” she agreed. Her sigh when she said it was soft, but Harry knew now exactly what those words had cost her.

T
HE PUBLICITY MACHINE
went into overdrive. Mallory Malone had sensational news to divulge on her program that week. They could not say what it was, except that it was deeply personal. And in a departure from her usual taped format, it would be live, and there would be no studio audience.

The staff and crew of Malmar Productions were not told what the news was, either. Even Beth was in the dark.

“Are you sure you want to go through with this? Whatever it is?” she asked Mal with a worried frown when Thursday finally crawled around. She thought Mal looked like hell—shadowy-eyed from lack of sleep, wired from too much caffeine and tense as a coiled spring.

Mal prowled the empty sound stage like a cat in a cage seeking a way out. She glanced up at Beth and saw concern in her eyes. “I have to. It’ll be okay.”

Alarmed, Beth caught her arm. “Don’t do it, Mal. Cancel—there’s still time. We have enough shows taped, we can run another one instead.”

“I have to do it.”

Mal wandered around the studio without seeing it. All she saw were the private pictures in her head.

Harry strode into the studio half an hour before the show would begin. He spotted her sitting alone in the semidarkness while the last-minute action whirled around her. Her eyes were closed and her head was tilted back as
though she were resting. But he knew from the tensely clasped hands that she was not.

He walked over to her, put his hands on her shoulders, and bent and kissed her cheek. Her eyes flew open, and she said gratefully, “Oh, Harry, you’re here.”

He sat next to her. “Everything’s set. All the incoming phone lines are tapped, including your home line, and there’s a police guard on your apartment.” After tonight, the killer was going to know that she knew. They expected him to make a move, but he didn’t tell her that.

He looked apprehensively at her; he hoped she would make it through. He kissed her lightly on the lips. “Fingers crossed, Mal,” he said, holding up his hands. “This could be the end of it.”

“Fingers crossed,” she replied.

It was time. The hot lights illuminated the simple set with its hard little sofa and the low table with the bowl of lilacs and peonies that Mal had requested. She was wearing a simple blue sweater and skirt; her blond hair was brushed back from her forehead, and she wore not a scrap of jewelry. She did not look like the famous TV personality, the forceful interrogator, the tough investigator. She looked tired, almost plain, as though a light had been turned out inside her.

She took a seat, picked up her notes, rifled nervously through them, then put them down again. In the darkness beyond the lights, she saw Harry with Beth. He lifted his hand and showed her his crossed fingers. Then the director counted off the seconds, and they were rolling.

Mal said good evening in a calm voice, looking directly into the camera. “Tonight our program is different. You will remember a few weeks ago that the families of the young women who had fallen victim to the Boston Serial Killer were generous enough to share their grief and their deepest feelings with all of us. Their steadfastness in wanting
the killer brought to justice prompted many different emotions in many of you and in myself.

“I have never spoken about what happened to me until this past week, when I could no longer live with it. I began to despise myself for keeping my own ugly little secret, when those other young women had not even been given the chance to speak out. Now I must speak try and do it for them.

“A friend said to me, ‘You are alive, and they are dead. What can you be hiding that is so important?’”

She took a deep shaky breath. “I was hiding the fact that I was a rape victim—and very nearly a murder victim.

“I want to tell you about it, to impress on you how it feels to be that person. The one who has been brutally violated and is about to die. I want to tell you about the pain and the humiliation and the shame that kept me from speaking about it until now. And about the fear. Because this man threatened me. He said that if I ever told anyone, he would find me and kill me.”

She lifted her chin proudly. “Well, William Ethan—for that was the name you told me, though now we know it was a lie. Here I am, and I’m telling America about you.”

The camera moved closer, looking deep into her eyes. “I’m telling about
the rapist and murderer you still are
. Because I believe that you are the same man who raped, mutilated, and killed Mary Ann Latimer. And Rachel Kleinfeld. And Summer Young. And Suzie Walker.”

Beth looked at Harry, her eyes wide with horror. “Is this true?” she whispered. He nodded. “Oh, my God,” she gasped. “Oh, my poor Mal, my poor, poor Mal.”