Life Penalty (12 page)

Gail sat on the sofa, the books of photographs still in her lap, open to the last page. She stared at the delicate face of her younger sister, her eyes puffy with lack of sleep. Slowly, with deliberate care, she closed the albums and put both down on the leather cushion beside her. “What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to forget about her? To put away the albums and all my memories and just pretend that she never existed?”

Carol was shaking her head. “No, Gail, no,” she whispered. “Nobody is asking you to forget about Cindy. Just don’t forget about yourself. You have to go on living. You have a family that loves you, a wonderful husband who loves you. We all have to carry on somehow …”

Gail laughed sadly. “You
do
sound like Mother,” she said softly.

“I knew it,” Carol said, laughing and crying at the same time. “I knew it was going to happen.”

“That’s all right,” Gail cried. “She’s not such a bad person to sound like.” She hugged her sister, then reached over and picked up the leather-bound book of photographs. “You’re right,” she said, crossing to the other side of the room and stacking the photo albums at the far end of the bookshelves before returning to her sister as if possessed of a new strength and purpose. “I’m very lucky to have you,” she said. “But I think it’s time you took your
own advice and got on with your life. You’ve put things on hold for long enough because of me.”

Carol nodded. “I have to admit that I’ve been thinking the same thing these last few days.” She looked toward the albums on the bookshelves. “You seem much stronger now. You have Jack and Jennifer. I know you’re going to be all right.” She broke off. “Besides, I’m only a phone call away. If you need me …”

“I’ll call, don’t worry. When do you think you’ll leave?”

“How about just after the July 4 weekend?”

Gail nodded her approval. “I think I’ll go out for a walk,” she said.

“Want me to come with you? It’ll only take me a few minutes to change.”

“No,” Gail told her. “I won’t be long.”

Gail was secretly pleased that Carol felt it was time to return to New York. Not that Gail was tired of her company, far from it. Just that some things were better accomplished alone.

Gail looked around at the small clump of bushes, the well-trodden grass around the dark green bench, and knew that Carol was right. It was time to get on with the present, time to start getting things done. It was time, as Lieutenant Cole had told her earlier, to start putting her life back together.

There was only one way she could do that and that was by finding the man who had tom it apart.

A drifter, the lieutenant had postulated. Gail thought the term a good one to describe herself as well. It contained just the right touch of irony, she decided, as she walked behind the bench and into the trees, no longer a grieving mother searching for memories, but a detective, as it were, ferreting out clues. She knelt on the ground and ran her hand along the soft earth, feeling for the spot where her daughter had fallen, feeling for the weight of
the stranger as he fell on top of her. Gail looked toward the bushes, letting her fingers bounce haphazardly along their branches. She wasn’t sure what exactly she was looking for, but she was determined to keep looking until she found it.

Her eyes traveled back and forth between the bushes and the ground. The police, despite their valiant efforts, had found nothing. All their tips, all their “hot leads,” had led exactly nowhere. She had given them all this time and they hadn’t been able to do anything with it but apologize and advise patience. They would never find the man responsible. She would have to do that herself as she had known all along she would.

It was the end of June. The murder had occurred on April 30. In a few days it would be the Fourth of July. She stood up and took a final look around the small park. Enough time had been wasted.

The sixty days were up.

G
ail spent the better part of the holiday weekend reading every article she could get her hands on concerning deviant sexual behavior. She learned that the world was full of people who liked their sex in groups, in graveyards or on church pews; that others preferred members of their own sex, members of the animal kingdom or members of the dear departed. There were those who were into bondage and those who were into buggery, those who liked to exhibit and those who chose to watch. Some liked to beat; others preferred being beaten.

She learned all the terms. There were the standards with which she was already familiar such as homosexuality, lesbianism and sodomy. There was the masochist, the sadist and the rapist. There were also words like necrophilia, coprophilia and pedophilia.

Pedophilia—sex with children.

The articles confirmed much of what Lieutenant Cole had already told her, that sex offenders were almost exclusively male and usually young, that they hated women or feared them, that they hated themselves and feared their desires. They had often been abused or neglected as children, born to monsters, and so destined to become ones themselves. Small cruelties grew larger with the passage of time. There was little that could be
done to help these people, even less to protect others from them.

Men who preyed on little girls were characteristically quiet and cowardly. They killed more from fear of discovery than from desire to inflict further pain, although there were those demented minds who regarded the kill itself as the ultimate in thrills.

Society’s attitudes toward the more sexually advenure-some had changed through the years, moving from one of strict condemnation to a more casual acceptance. It was now generally assumed that consenting adults could do whatever they wished in the privacy of their own homes. There were private clubs and even public bathhouses to accommodate what was becoming increasingly acceptable social behavior.

Even the hard-core deviant, the sexual psychotic, who didn’t ask but took, who violated and destroyed regardless of age and beyond all reason, was being viewed in a more sympathetic light, no longer held responsible for his actions.

The papers and weekly newsmagazines were full of stories of the gross indecencies of so-called justice. Gail sat on the wing chair in her living room, a newspaper on her lap, a cup of coffee and a stack of magazines at her feet, and mentally reviewed what she had read in the latest editions of
Time
and
Newsweek.

There was the story of a twelve-year-old girl in Canada whose grandfather had been accused of molesting her. The judge had dismissed the case after extensive questioning of the girl revealed that she couldn’t remember the last time she had been to church. The judge reasoned that with no religious upbringing she couldn’t properly understand the seriousness of the oath she would be asked to take, and since she was the prosecutor’s only witness, the case against the accused was dismissed.

Gail had read this item three times through to make sure that she understood it, that she hadn’t left anything out. When she was satisfied that she had indeed read it correctly, she lowered the magazine to her lap and let her eyes drift to where Jack sat reading a spy novel on the sofa. The message of the article was fairly clear, she decided. Children were somehow less than people; the deviant would be set free.

Another story concerned a woman, two of whose children had died previously under highly suspicious circumstances—one had drowned in the bathtub at the age of seven months, and the other had apparently swallowed some sort of poison—who was now accused of causing the death of her three-month-old daughter by willful neglect. She had been found guilty and was sentenced to a grand total of two years less a day in prison. She vowed that once she got out, she intended to have many more children, that no one could stop her from having as many children as God intended.

Again Gail had lowered the magazine to her lap, pondering the meaning of what she had read. It was all right to kill a child, she reasoned, especially if it was your own child. Again children were considered less than people. The murderer of probably three defenseless children had been sentenced to only two years in jail.

There were similar stories in the Sunday
New York Times:
a man who had shot and killed his wife had been given the same sentence as that of the woman who had killed her babies, because he had shown genuine remorse and was unlikely to commit such an act again; two men were freed after a judge ruled that the woman they had raped and sodomized had consented to the acts. He cited the photographs one of the men had taken which showed the victim smiling through her tears while she was being buggered as sufficient evidence to dismiss the charges,
despite the victim’s testimony that the men had threatened to kill her if she did not smile for the camera. The judge had ruled that the woman was obviously enjoying herself. He dismissed evidence of her two subsequent suicide attempts and lingering depression. It was obvious, he had ruled, that she had been remorseful only after the fact.

Toward the back of one of the newspapers were two more stories of a slightly different nature. A man in Florida had shot and killed two young men who had attempted to rob his store. Apparently, he had actually killed one as the youth was ordering him at gunpoint to open the cash register, and then he had calmly walked over to the by now cowering second young man and fired a bullet into his brain. The shop owner was now considered something of a local hero and was happily giving interviews on the right of the American people to protect their property.

In another incident, a group of irate New Yorkers, who upon seeing an old and well-liked shopkeeper shot dead by a robber, had, rather than calling the police, taken off after the killer themselves. They caught up with him and fell on him, tearing out his eyes in furious revenge.

Gail read both these last stories again with a mixture of revulsion and curious satisfaction.

“Are you all right?” Jack asked suddenly. Gail looked up to find him staring at her, his book in his lap.

“Yes,” she answered. “Why?”

“You were shaking.”

“Was I?” Gail asked in surprise. She shrugged and folded up the paper.

Jack looked at his watch. “It’s almost midnight,” he said. “I think I’ll call it a night. You coming?”

“I thought I’d wait up for Jennifer.”

“What for? She’s with Eddie, isn’t she?”

“Just thought I’d wait up in case she felt like talking.
You know that I never really fall asleep until I hear her come in anyway.”

“Maybe
you’re
the one who feels like talking,” Jack pressed gently. “Upset because Carol leaves tomorrow?”

Gail shook her head. “No. It’s time.”

“It’s time for a lot of things,” Jack said softly, walking over to her chair and taking her hand in his. “Time we started seeing some of our friends again …”

“I know.”

“Laura and Mike invited us for dinner again next week …”

“I’m sorry about this weekend. I just didn’t feel up to celebrating.”

“I understand, and so do they. I didn’t feel much like celebrating either. But a quiet dinner with friends might be something to look forward to.”

“Maybe.”

Jack knelt down beside her. “I love you,” he said.

“I love you too.”

“How are you? How are you
really?”
he probed. “Look at me when you answer. Don’t try to hide anything from me.”

“I could never hide anything from you,” she said, pushing the newspaper deeper into her lap. “How am I? What can I say? I’m lonely,” she said after a long pause. “More than anything else, I guess I’m lonely. I miss her so much.”

She saw Jack’s eyes instantly well with tears and he turned his head to face the wall. “Look at me,” she told him softly, repeating his words. “Don’t try to hide anything from me.”

“I miss her too,” he said, his voice husky and strained.

“You have your work, at least that’s something. It keeps your mind occupied, keeps you busy.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “and it’s been a lifesaver in many respects. But there are days when some guy will come in with his little girl and they’ll both be crying over some
runover cat, and I can hardly see the cat for the little girl, and I wish I’d had more time with my own little girl. You were so lucky, you know, lucky because of all the time you got to spend with her, although I guess that’s one of the things that makes it so hard for you now.” He shook his head. “It’s affected my work,” he said after a pause.

“What do you mean?”

“I guess it’s a question of caring. I don’t care as much anymore.”

“But Jack, you’ve always loved what you do.”

“I know. But after something like this happens, it’s hard to get too worked up over whether a cat lives or dies. They’re just animals, for God’s sake.” He paused, shaking his head. “Although I must admit I had the cutest little dog in the other day. I’ve been as busy as hell, you know; you’d think I was the only veterinarian in Essex County, probably because of all the publicity. Whatever the reason, I’ve never seen so many sick animals.”

“Tell me about the little dog,” Gail said.

“It was a mixed breed, part poodle, part Pekingese, which sounds like a terrible combination, but it wasn’t at all. It was a beautiful little thing, apricot in color. Smart as a whip. Mixed breeds usually are. Much smarter than purebreds. This was a female. She was in because her back legs were bothering her. You see that a lot with poodles. It’s very interesting,” he continued, lost in his own recollections, “because she really doesn’t look like either a poodle or a Peke. She looks more like a cocker spaniel. I don’t know where that comes from.” He stopped, smiling at Gail sadly. “It looks like
I’m
the one who felt like talking.”

“That’s all right. I feel like listening.”

“They’re thinking of breeding her,” Jack continued. “They’ve offered me the pick of the litter.”

“You want a dog?” Gail asked in surprise. “You always said you saw enough animals at work.”

“This one sort of got to me. I don’t know. Something to think about.”

“A puppy,” Gail said, turning the thought over in her mind “They’re more work than having a baby.”