Life Penalty (38 page)

Mommy, when we die, can we die together? Can we die holding hands? Do you promise?

She blew out all the candles, struggling with the one for good luck.

She cut herself a small piece of cake, ate it quickly and washed it down with the last of the wine. Then she sat staring at the small black gun, so much heavier than it looked, so much deadlier than it seemed.

She pulled it toward her and lifted it to her head.

Through the temple or through her mouth? It was a tricky question and an important one. If she put the gun in her mouth, there was the chance that the bullet would be misdirected and would lodge somewhere inside her skull, causing blindness but not death, putting her into a coma but not into her grave. That wasn’t good enough. She lifted the gun to her temple.

Then she started to laugh, throwing her head back and dropping the gun to the table. “Bullets,” she said aloud. “It helps to have bullets.” She stumbled to the kitchen counter and retrieved the bag with the bullets. Her head was very woozy; the room was barely standing still. Her hand shaking, she gripped the gun and raised it in front of her eyes, dropping a small, deadly bullet into each of the nine cylinders, the way Irv had showed her. “Ready, aim, fire,” she said, lifting the gun back up to her head.

She had to go to the bathroom.

Can’t you wait? she asked her stomach silently, and then decided that she couldn’t, remembering as she tried to stand up that she had intended to do it in the bathroom anyway.

She sank down onto the toilet, the gun resting against its white porcelain base. Her head was throbbing. She would be glad to miss this hangover.

The phone was ringing. At first, she thought maybe the noise was coming from inside her head but after four rings, she knew someone else was responsible. She debated for an instant, which felt like much longer, whether or not to bother with it, then decided she might as well. Her final words. She pushed herself off the toilet seat and stumbled toward the phone in the bedroom.

“Hello,” she murmured into the phone, balancing on the side of the bed.

“Gail?”

It was Jack. She tried to clear her throat, almost gagged on the effort and concentrated very hard on keeping her eyes open.

“Hello, Jack,” she managed, wishing she weren’t so drunk.

“Is everything all right? You sound funny. Did I wake you up?”

“I’m drunk,” she told him.

There was silence. “Jesus Christ,” he swore softly, upset, not angry. “Are you by yourself?”

“As far as I know,” Gail answered, straining to make her words coherent. “Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine here. I spoke to Jennifer. She’s okay.”

“Good.”

“Gail, I want you to come home.”

“No.” She shook her head and watched the room spin.

“Then I’ll come back and get you.”

“No, Jack, please.”

“I don’t think you should be alone. It was such a stupid thing for me to do. I guess I thought it would slap some sense into you, but …”

“I know. Please don’t feel guilty.”

“I can’t hear you, Gail,” he said. “You’re slurring your words.”

Gail was surprised. She had thought she was managing rather well. “Please don’t feel guilty,” she repeated clearly.

“I’ll fly down tomorrow,” he told her.

“No, please don’t, Jack. There’s no need. It’s almost over.”

“What? I can’t hear you.”

“I don’t want you to come,” Gail said loudly.

“Jack …”

“What?” he asked quickly.

“I want,” she began, then swallowed hard. Her throat was very dry. She needed a glass of water. “I want you to get a divorce,” she said, knowing that as a widower a divorce would be somewhat redundant, but wanting to spare him as much guilt as possible.

“Gail, you’re drunk. This isn’t the time …”

“I want you to divorce me.”

“I love you, Gail.”

Gail lost her already shaky grip on the phone. “I love you too,” she muttered, her words just missing the receiver.

“What? What did you say? I couldn’t make it out.”

“I have to hang up now, Jack.”

“Gail …”

She hung up. “I need a glass of water,” she said aloud, and tripped into the bathroom to get one. She drank two glasses in rapid succession, realizing as she put the cup back on the side of the sink that she had left the gun on her bed. “Dumb,” she cursed, and guided herself along the
walls of the narrow hallway to her room. So it would be Jack who found her she thought as she reached across the bed for the weapon. Her knees gave out as they slammed against the low baseboard, and she fell forward. As her head hit the soft, quilted bedspread, she felt the tip of the gun smack against her temple, and she wondered, as her eyes closed, if she had managed to pull the trigger.

She heard the ringing as if it were coming from somewhere far away, and so she didn’t bother to open her eyes. Then she remembered the events of the night before—she quickly realized it was morning—and she forced them open. She was not dead, she knew. The gun, despite its proximity to her temple, had not been fired. She had gotten herself too drunk to pull the trigger. There was no blood. Oddly enough, there was no hangover either. Perhaps, she thought, reaching over to silence the ringing phone, she was dead after all.

“Hello,” she said, sitting up very straight.

“Gail,” she heard Jack say, his voice strong and full of urgency, not hesitant like the night before. “Listen to me. Can you hear me all right?”

“Yes,” she told him, angry with herself and her failure. She had the gun, she thought, moving it into her lap, but she still lacked the guts. The governor had granted her yet another, unwanted reprieve, condemning her to the rest of her life. She was doomed to survive.

“I have something to tell you, and I want to make sure you’re not too drunk to understand.”

“What is it?” Gail asked, feeling frightened and unsettled. “Is Jennifer okay? You told me Jennifer was okay …”

“Jennifer’s fine. This isn’t about Jennifer.”

“What then?”

“I just got the call a few minutes ago. I literally just hung up the phone. The police called …”

“Jack, for God’s sake, what is it?”

“They found him,” Jack said simply, and at first Gail didn’t understand. “The man who killed Cindy. Some drifter. He’s confessed.” Gail felt her entire body beginning to tingle, every nerve beginning to twitch. She couldn’t sit still. She began rocking back and forth, standing up and then immediately sitting back down. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. She knocked the gun up and down against the bed, tightening her grip on its handle, loosening it until it almost fell. “Gail, did you hear what I said? They found the man who killed Cindy. He’s confessed.”

“I’m coming home,” Gail informed him, her fingers firmly closing over the top of the gun. The airlines might give her trouble if she tried to carry it on board. “I’m going to drive,” she said, calculating that she could drop the rental car in Livingston. “I should be home in a few days.”

“Drive?! Gail, you can’t drive all that way alone. It’s much too far for one person to drive all by themselves.”

“You forget that I’m used to highway driving,” Gail told him. “I’ll be fine, Jack. Really, it’ll relax me. Are they sure he’s the right man?”

Gail could sense Jack’s confusion through the telephone wires. “The police seem satisfied,” he said. “He’s confessed.” He paused. “Look, let me fly down—we’ll drive back together if that’s what you want …”

“I’ll be home in a few days,” Gail told him, not letting him continue.

She hung up the phone, packed her suitcase, tucked her gun inside her purse and carried her belongings out to the car.

Then she drove straight through to Livingston in twenty-four hours without stopping.

B
y the time Gail got hack to Livingston, the drifter had retracted his confession. He claimed he had been denied his legal rights, that he had been pressured by the police into signing his confession. The police said otherwise. The accused had been read his rights in the presence of many witnesses; they had needed to create no pressure whatsoever to extract his confession. In deed, they continued, the man seemed eager to talk about what had happened, almost boastful. At any rate, they continued in the radio reports, they remained confident of a conviction with or without the confession.

Gail was initially stunned by the retraction. She had arrived home hoping to have all the loose ends bound, the killer on his way to a speedy conviction. She found, instead, added tangles to the strings already left dangling too long.

Her family was waiting for her, huddled together in the living room as they had been nine months before. The sense of déjà vu was startling but not overwhelming, as it would have perhaps been earlier. Now there was no question about what time it was or if she had been living a dream these past months. She knew with certainty that her nightmare was horrifyingly real and that she had been awake for the duration.

Nine months ago, she thought, aware of the irony, she had returned from the hospital to find a similar scene. Now she saw her parents, looking no less tanned but somehow less substantial; Carol, drawing nervously on her ever present cigarette; Jennifer, fragile and pale, surrounded on either side by Mark and Julie. Lieutenant Cole was talking animatedly in the far comer between Laura and Mike. Jack stood alone by the window.

Gail rushed into her husband’s arms. In the next minute the room converged, everyone surrounding her with their arms, with their tears. Tears of anger, of joy, of relief.

“Tell me everything,” Gail said, clinging tightly to Jack’s hand. “The radio said he’s retracted his confession. Are they still sure he’s the one?”

Jack led her toward the sofa. Everyone automatically arranged themselves around her.

“We’re sure,” Lieutenant Cole said, his voice leaving no room for doubt.

Gail noticed the newspapers on the coffee table in front of her. She leaned forward to get a better view of the grainy black and white photographs spread across the front pages.

“His name is Dean Majors,” the lieutenant began. “We were on the right track—he’s a drifter, no permanent address. A history of arrests for drunk and disorderly conduct, served six months for assault a few years back.”

Gail pulled one of the papers closer toward her. The face that stared blankly back at hers was that of a middle-aged man.

“He’s forty-two,” Lieutenant Cole said, reading, her thoughts. “He’d been living in a rooming house in East Orange …”

“What street?” Gail asked quickly.

The lieutenant smiled. “Shuter.”

Gail shook her head. It was not one of the streets with which she was familiar.

“Apparently,” the lieutenant continued, “a new boarder had moved in, a man named Bill Pickering. Young guy, but with the same kind of background as Majors. They got together one night over a few drinks, started trying to one-up each other about crimes they’d pulled off, and Majors started boasting that he’d been the one who killed that little girl in a park the previous spring. Well, this Bill Pickering had spent some time in jail himself for breaking and entering, and if you know anything about convicts, you know that they consider sex offenders the lowest of the low, especially where children are concerned. Pickering and Majors ended up in a real brawl, and Pickering beat him up pretty badly, in fact, might have killed him if the landlord hadn’t broken it up and ordered Pickering out of the place. Pickering went. He spent the night breaking into half a dozen homes in Short Hills. We arrested him after someone reported seeing a prowler. That’s when he told us about Majors.” He paused. “We got a warrant and searched Majors’ room. We found the yellow windbreaker, boots that match the footprints, everything we need. Majors confessed immediately. He was very arrogant about it, kept asking us what took us so long.”

“When did he retract his confession?” Gail asked.

“He was assigned a public defender …”

“I understand,” Gail said. “He received legal counsel.”

“Please don’t blame the lawyers,” Mike Cranston urged. “Apparently, from what I read in the papers, his lawyer claimed that Majors was roughed up pretty badly by the cops, and there’s no question about his being covered with bruises. The police say they’re the result of the beating he got from Pickering, but it’ll be up to the courts, of course, to decide.”

“So where exactly do things stand?” Gail pressed.

“They’ll probably push for a change of venue. There’s some speculation that Majors couldn’t get a fair trial in this county. The district attorney will fight it, of course. Right now Majors is in jail. Bail was denied. So he’ll sit there until the case comes to trial.”

“Which is when?”

Lieutenant Cole shrugged. “Could be a month, could be a year. But I suspect that his lawyer will press for a speedy trial.”

“And Majors will plead not guilty,” Gail said, acknowledging their nods.

“Don’t worry, Gail,” the lieutenant assured her. “There’s no question of his guilt. His confession was only icing on the cake.”

“Somebody should just shoot the bastard,” Dave Harrington muttered.

“I think I need to be alone for a while,” Gail pleaded softly.

“Gail …” her mother began solicitously.

“Please,” Gail urged, effectively stopping her.

Jack came to her support. “I think Gail needs to rest. Let’s give her time to digest everything that’s happened, okay?”

Laura nodded. “Let’s grab some lunch,” she said, ushering everyone out the front door. Gail twisted her head to watch them leave.

“I love you,” Laura mouthed from the doorway, and Gail smiled and repeated Laura’s words with her eyes.

Gail watched Mark and Julie, neither of whom had said a word, walk out with Jennifer between them. At the doorway Jennifer suddenly broke away from her father’s protective arm and ran back to Gail, falling to her knees and laying her head in her mother’s lap. “Oh, Mom,” she cried.

“It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s okay now,” Gail comforted her, running her hands along the top of her daughter’s soft hair. “Don’t cry, darling. Don’t cry.”

Jennifer raised her eyes to her mother. Gail wiped the tears off her daughter’s cheeks. “Can I come home?” Jennifer asked.