First Offense (18 page)

Ann headed down the hall to her bedroom, passing David’s room. Although the lights were out and the room was dark, she felt a gust of damp air. He must have left his window open. It was probably raining in and soaking the top of his desk and all his papers. When the kid got home and saw it, he would go bonkers. “Serves you right,” Ann said, entering the dark room. She’d told him a dozen times to shut his window before he left the house. For security reasons. Hank had installed window locks, but her silly son kept leaving his window open.

Ann touched the desktop as she leaned forward to get the window. His desk was wet, all right, and David even had several textbooks on it. Ann would have to dry them out in the microwave and try to save the expense of replacing them. She gripped the window and was trying to pull it down when something fell with a clunk onto the top of David’s desk. It was a large shard of broken glass. Turning on the desk light, Ann saw that the entire window was shattered. Some of the pieces were scattered on the desk, some on the floor, and several large sections had slid between the desk and the window. Great, Ann thought, now she needed a new window as well as a new roof. She stuck her head through the window, careful to avoid the jagged glass. She saw nothing so she assumed the tree branch right outside had smashed into the window, whipped by the wind.

She pulled the desk out from the wall, wondering if she had a piece of cardboard somewhere in the garage large enough to tack in place until she could get glass installed. As she did, she became aware of the danger of the shattered glass on the floor. She stepped into a pair of David’s tennis shoes, already too big for her, and grabbed his textbooks. As she was leaving the room, everything suddenly went pitch-black.

Ann screamed and fled from the room, then stopped at the door and took some deep breaths, laughing at herself. “Don’t be such an idiot,” she said aloud. “It’s just a power failure.” She wasn’t used to being in the house alone, she told herself, and lately she’d become thoroughly spooked.

“Damn,” she said, feeling her way along the hallway. She couldn’t see a thing, not a blasted thing. If she could just get to the kitchen, she thought, she was certain she had some candles. Just then her shoulder collided obliquely with the wall, and she decided to maintain the contact as she inched along.

“Ann,” a man’s voice said in the dark. “Ann.”

She froze, her breath trapped in her throat, her heart leaping like a jackrabbit. Quickly she spun toward the kitchen and the voice. “Who’s there? What do you want?” Dropping the books, she tried to run and slammed her shoulder into a doorframe. She could smell wet clothes, body odor, raspy breathing. The intruder was only a few feet away from her. He had to be in the bathroom. The bathroom was between David’s room and the kitchen doorway.

A hand touched her arm, and Ann shrieked again, bolting at a dead run down the dark hallway toward the door to her bedroom. After only a few feet she tripped in the untied sneakers. Losing her balance, she crashed into the wall. The shock of pain brought her to her senses. She had to summon up her police training. If she stayed low to the ground, she would be a more difficult target. She had to assume the intruder had a weapon.

Holding her breath and telling herself not to panic, Ann started crawling. She had to get to the safe in the bedroom and get her gun.

Clothes rustled and a dark image moved around her. Suddenly Ann was slapped flush against the floor as a heavy weight dropped on her. The man was on top of her, on her back. She couldn’t breathe. He was crushing her. “Get off me,” she screamed, in full panic now. “What do you want? I don’t have any money.” Was it Jimmy Sawyer? Had he come to kill her, make certain she would never testify against him?

“Just be still. It’s all right,” the man said, his voice muffled. Ann pushed up with all her might, trying to throw him off her back. He was too big, too heavy. She felt something prickly and coarse brush her cheek, felt hot breath fill her ear cavity. “Relax, Ann,” the voice said firmly. “Don’t fight. Don’t you know who I am?”

As he spoke, his hands were moving over her buttocks, darting between her legs. Ann squirmed beneath him, kicking out with her legs, pushing up with all her might. “Get off me,” she cried. Hands forced their way under her body from the sides and pinched her nipples. Ann screamed in pain. The man was going to rape her. She was naked and had never felt so helpless and vulnerable in her life. “Stop! No! Let me up and I’ll give you what you want! Please!” A horrid thought darted into her mind: Estelle Summer. The way the assailant was positioned, he could sodomize her without even turning her over.

Again the hands squeezed her nipples, and Ann clenched her eyes shut.

Who was this man? His voice…she tried to get a fix on the voice. It was muffled, distorted, as though he was speaking through a handkerchief or stocking mask. Did she know this person? Had she heard this voice before? Was it Sawyer? Was it some other man she had sent to prison? Hadn’t Tommy always told her this would happen, that one of the men she had tricked into a confession would come after her?

Hands were still groping at her, roughly moving from her breasts down between her legs. If she couldn’t get to the gun, Ann decided in that second, she would kill this man with her bare hands. She would poke her fingers in his eyes, reach down his throat, and yank out his tongue.

“Doesn’t that feel good? Don’t you like that?” the man said seductively. “Where’s David? Tell me where he is, Ann.”

David? She heard a rushing sound inside her eardrums. How did this animal know about David?

Consumed with fury, Ann suddenly found strength she didn’t know she possessed. Adrenaline raged through her bloodstream. She would never let anyone hurt David. She would die first. “You bastard,” she snarled from deep in her throat.

In one burst, she rose up to her hands and knees and flung the man off her back. He fell sideways, slamming into the wall. A hand seized her arm, but Ann kicked out and collided with something fleshy—the man’s stomach? She didn’t know, but he was groaning as though she had kicked him in the groin.

Springing to her feet, she dashed down the hall to her bedroom. Once she passed through the door, she wheeled in the direction of the safe and smashed right into the thick steel surface with her thigh, knocking the vase of flowers to the floor. Fierce pain raced up her leg, as if she’d struck a nerve, but Ann was oblivious to it, tossing the tablecloth that covered the safe up into the air, whipping the door open.

From the hallway, Ann heard banging: the man had tried to stand and had fallen back against the wall.

Patting the bottom of the safe with her palms, Ann finally felt a cold, hard surface and closed her trembling fingers around her Beretta.

Holding the gun with both hands, Ann found the safety and released it. Then she depressed the trigger! and fired to make certain it was loaded. The explosion rang in her ears, reverberated inside her head, and the distinctive smell of cordite drifted to her nostrils. It smelled wonderful, Ann thought. Greatest smell in the world. She sucked it in and felt her confidence surge. “Hear that, motherfucker?” she yelled, panting, bringing the gun up and sighting the door, her right wrist braced against her other arm. “Come down that hall, asshole. Come and get me.”

She heard feet scurrying on floorboards.

A flash of lightning illuminated the room, and Ann realized that what she had thought was the door leading to the hall was a reflection in the dresser mirror from the bedroom window. Kicking the tennis shoes off so she wouldn’t trip again, Ann sprang to her feet.

Creeping down the hall, she patted the wall and found the entrance to the bathroom. She stopped, pointing the gun into the darkness. A second later, she heard a noise in the direction of the kitchen and spun around. Was he trying to escape? Did he think she’d ever give him a second chance to hurt David? Outside the door to the kitchen, she flattened herself against the wall. On the count of three, she jumped into the doorway, her gun in her outstretched hands, ready to fire.

A gush of air suddenly struck her face, and Ann realized the back door was standing open, rain and wind rushing into the room. Moving forward cautiously, she reached the door and then broke into a run when she realized the man had fled.

Glimpsing a shadow moving rapidly down the driveway, Ann squeezed off a shot. A loud clap of thunder sounded almost the same instant as she fired, and a second later, she saw the shadow fall to the ground.

She’d shot him.

In a ray of light from a nearby streetlight, she saw his face from only a few feet away. His head was turned and he was looking back at Ann, his haunches high in the air like a sprinter, not like a man who’d been hit. Her finger was on the trigger, but she was mesmerized, unable to fire. Time stood suspended for those few seconds as they made eye contact. Ann’s body shook violently. She knew this man, had seen him before. Her throat was so dry she couldn’t swallow. Her heart strained against her chest.

Ann closed her eyes, wanting to block out the image, and felt for the trigger blindly. Shoot him. Now, she told herself. Opening her eyes to aim, she saw he had vanished. She let the gun fall to her side.

His reflexes had been too quick, she thought, cursing herself. Only a split second before she had fired, the man must have dropped to the ground, and the bullet had sailed right over his head. But she’d had another chance and she’d hesitated. Only a few seconds, but it was too long. Should she chase after him, or simply forget it and protect herself inside the house? She sucked in a breath and remained perfectly still, listening. There were no sounds other than the wind and rain.

Then she heard a car engine start, tires spinning on the rain-slick street, the sound of wheels skidding, a loud metallic crunch.

Ann sprinted from the driveway to the street. When she got there, she discovered only a parked car turned sideways in the road, its front wheels up over the curb. Ann knew this wasn’t the suspect’s car. It belonged to the man across the street. Realizing she was naked, she wrapped her arms over her chest and jerked her head to the right, hearing a car engine. All she could see was a glimmer of taillights as the car carrying her attacker fishtailed around the comer.

She ran back to her house, intending to get her car and catch him, but then she stopped herself. By the time she got the garage door up and the car started, he would be long gone.

Stepping over the glass by the kitchen door, Ann looked back and saw a hall light burning inside her neighbor’s house. She then recalled seeing the intruder in the streetlight. If it was a power failure caused by the storm, the electricity would be out on the whole street. The person who had broken into her house must have turned off the current at the power box on the side of the garage. He had set her up, placed her in the most vulnerable position possible, just as on the night she’d been shot. Wet from the rain, shivering, she stood there in a daze.

Who could have done this? Why had the man seemed so familiar to her? Finding the candles and matches over the stove, Ann lit one and headed to the living room, grabbing the first garment that came to hand in the coat closet.

Shoving her gun in a pocket as she prepared to call the police, Ann felt something and pulled out a crushed pack of Marlboros. She was wearing Hank’s trench coat, the London Fog she had bought him one year for Christmas. Suddenly she caught an echo of her husband’s voice inside her head. The attacker’s voice, she thought, trying to remember what it was about it that she’d recognized.

Once she had called the police, she dropped onto the sofa to wait, her candle flickering in her hand. In her dazed state she didn’t notice it until hot wax began dripping onto her fingers. Flicking away the pain, Ann tipped the candle on its side, letting wax form in the ashtray on the end table. Then she stuck the candle into it. She pulled Hank’s trench coat tight around her. Bringing her arm up close to her face, she thought she could still catch a whiff of his cologne on the fabric. But no, she decided, it was only her imagination.

Picking up the phone again, Ann called Glen and got his machine. Deciding not to leave a message, she quickly hung up. She couldn’t tell him what had happened on an answering machine.

Where were the police? Already, it seemed she’d been waiting for hours. Her feet were tapping uncontrollably as she watched the shadows, her thoughts turning again to Hank. He would have been here by now, even if she wasn’t his wife. Although he mainly responded to traffic accidents, her husband had always thrown caution to the wind and driven flat-out to get to a crime scene as fast as he could. Ann had ridden along one night and scolded him, telling him he was going to get killed one day. “They’re waiting out there,” he’d told her. “How would you like to be trapped in the wreckage of a car, hurt and waiting for someone to show up?” His dedication to people in need was one of the things Ann had always admired about him.

She reached for his picture on the end table, the one David had placed on her chest the night before. Then she saw that something was missing. On one comer of the end table was a shiny spot, devoid of dust. A picture of David had been in that spot. Thinking it had fallen down behind the table in the commotion, Ann got down to search but didn’t see it. A fresh wave of panic engulfed her. The assailant had taken David’s picture. During the attack she had clearly heard him state her son’s name. Like the shooting, this was no random attack, no ordinary burglary.

Ann leaned forward over her knees, her head in her hands. A few moments later, though, she pulled the gun out of her pocket and clasped it tightly, pointing it at the front door.

“Come back, you bastard,” she said between clenched teeth. “Next time I’ll be waiting.”

Chapter
10

D
etective Jess Rodriguez had been parked in front of the Main Street Mall since six o’clock, tailing the kid and his Porsche from Dr. and Mrs. Sawyer’s residence on Seahorse Avenue. He had no idea what the punk was doing inside the mall, since the stores all closed at nine o’clock and it was almost ten now. Finally Rodriguez decided to go inside and see if he could spot him, but the outside doors were already locked and rain was pouring down. He returned to the car and got his raincoat out of the trunk. The guy would come back, he told himself. With a car like that one, he wasn’t about to walk off. Jess slid down in the front seat of the Camaro and looked out over the parking lot. He was bushed. People didn’t realize how draining it was to sit around for hours staring at a parked car.