Life Penalty (26 page)

“There will be. Don’t give up.”

“I don’t intend to,” Gail told him before hanging up the receiver.

H
alloween night was cold and windy. A night for witches, Gail thought, looking out her kitchen window. A night for goblins and for freaks.

“I told you about this party a week ago,” Jennifer was whining from somewhere behind her.

“I’m sorry, honey, I don’t remember.” Gail searched the sky for stars. There were none. “I never would have agreed. It’s a week night and you know you’re not allowed to date during the week.”

“I
did
tell you. You just didn’t listen. You never listen anymore.”

“Yes, I do, Jennifer,” Gail said patiently, trying not to sound defensive.

“I told you that Marianne was having a Halloween party and you said that sounded great.”

Gail turned to face her daughter. “I’m sorry, sweetie, I really don’t remember. I’m sure you never told me that it was during the week.”

“It’s not my fault that Halloween is on a week night this year!”

“Is there some kind of problem in here?” Jack asked, coming into the room wearing an old fright wig.

Jennifer burst out laughing, temporarily abandoning the argument with her mother. “Where did you get that?”

“I wore it to a costume party a few years back. Remember?” he asked, turning to Gail. “At the Thompsons.”

“You’re not going to answer the door in that, are you?” Jennifer marveled.

“I thought I might,” Jack smiled. “What time’s your party?”

‘“Eight o’clock,” Jennifer said slowly. “But Mom says I can’t go.”

“Why not?”

“Ask
her.”

“Gail?”

“I don’t remember Jennifer saying anything about a party during the week.”

“Sure she did,” Jack said. ‘“Last week at breakfast. Mary some body-or-other …”

“Marianne,” Jennifer corrected quickly, sensing victory.

“I just don’t think that she should be going out,” Gail explained, her voice picking up speed. “Halloween is a time for kooks. There are all sorts of crazies out walking the streets tonight, using Halloween as an excuse for their madness. All you have to do is listen to the radio, the warnings to parents to accompany their children, to check out apples for razor blades, to make sure that all packages of candy haven’t been tampered with. They’re even advising parents with small children to forget about Halloween this year. It’s become too dangerous.”

“Mom,” Jennifer interrupted, “I’m not going trick-or-treating. I’m going to a party with a bunch of friends.”

“‘You are
not
going!”

“‘Why not?” Jennifer’s eyes traveled from Gail to Jack. “‘Jack …”

“Gail …?” he asked in Jennifer’s behalf.

“Stay out of this, Jack,” Gail snapped, and then instantly regretted it. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to …”

“No, you’re right,” he agreed quickly. “This is between you and your mother, Jennifer. I have no right to interfere.”

“Why don’t you?” Jennifer argued. “She’s not being fair. You know she’s not.”

Jack lifted his hands as if to say What can I do? and left the room.

“Why are you doing this?” Jennifer demanded angrily.

“I’m just trying to protect you.”

“You’re not protecting me. You’re smothering me! I can’t breathe around you anymore. You’re treating me like a little kid. I’m a big girl, Mom. I’m almost seventeen. I’m a good student. I get good grades. Goddamn it, Mom, I’m a good kid.”

“I know you are.”

“Then why are you giving me such a hard time? Don’t you trust me anymore?”

“I do trust you,” Gail whispered. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I’m not going to get hurt. I promise.”

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

“Okay,” Gail nodded, too tired to continue the argument. “Go to the party. But just this once. No more parties during the week.”

Jennifer nodded. “Thanks.”

There was a long pause. “Something wrong?” Gail asked, watching as Jennifer’s eyes darted nervously around the room.

“Mom,” Jennifer started, and then stopped, taking a final swallow before spitting the words out. “Are you having an affair?”

“What?” Gail was genuinely astounded. She burst out laughing. “Where on earth would you get a ridiculous idea like that?”

“Is it ridiculous?” Jennifer started to laugh herself, with relief.

“It’s the silliest damn thing I’ve heard in a long time. What would make you think I was having an affair?”

“I don’t know,” Jennifer shrugged. “Just that you seem so preoccupied all the time. You’re never home during the day. I’ve come home a few times at lunch and you’re never here.”

“Why would you come home at lunch?” Jennifer shrugged. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was afraid you’d tell me to mind my own business, like you did with Laura. I thought maybe Laura found out about it and that’s why you weren’t speaking to her anymore.”

“Jennifer,” Gail said, more calmly than she felt, “‘I am not having an affair. Believe me, it is the furthest thing from my mind.”

“Then where do you go all day?”

“Just out. For walks. For drives. Nowhere special.”

Jennifer walked to her mother’s side and put her arms around her. Gail was amazed to find them the same height. They grow so fast, she thought.

“I love you,” Jennifer told her.

“I love you too.”

“They say it’s supposed to get easier with time.”

Jennifer took a deep breath. “They don’t know what they’re talking about, do they?”

Gail hugged her daughter tightly, and then released her. “If you’re going to that party, you better get ready.”

“What will you do?”

Gail smiled. “Somebody’s got to hand out the poisoned apples,” she said.

By ten o’ clock, only three children had knocked on the door. The first had been dressed as Wonder Woman, the next two had each come as E.T. Gail had dropped several
packages of Reese candies into their bags and smiled with the knowledge that Jennifer had been right when she predicted that the majority of trick-or-treaters would come as the rubbery little creature from outer space as they had for the last several years. The only thing they miscalculated had been the numbers. Jack had bought enough candy for at least fifty callers. There had been fifty callers the previous Halloween, over a hundred the year before that. But each year brought fresh warnings, more reports of children swallowing straight pins hidden in chocolates, of children being rushed to the hospital with severe stomach cramps brought on by cyanide discovered in a friendly neighbor’s freshly baked brownies. The radio was advising parents to throw out anything that wasn’t store-bought and tightly sealed.

Perhaps that was the reason only three children had come knocking. Was it the same everywhere, Gail wondered, or had her house been singled out? Had parents been deliberately keeping their children away?

The fourth knock on the door came just before ten o’clock, as Gail was about to turn off the lights and go to bed. She was tired. She wanted only to go to sleep as Jack had done an hour before. She had hurt him deeply, she knew, despite the fact that she had apologized again and he had told her there was no need, that he had been wrong to interfere. Still, the fright wig he had proudly resurrected had remained in a shapeless heap on the coffee table, and he had excused himself early to go upstairs.

What was happening to her? she wondered, as she had wondered often lately. She had always gone miles out of her way to avoid confrontations.

The knocking at the front door continued, becoming insistent. Gail edged warily toward the door and opened it. What was the matter with some parents? she thought. Wasn’t ten o’clock a little late to be dragging youngsters around?

They weren’t youngsters, and there were no parents with them. Instead, when Gail opened her door, she came face to face with one wild-eyed teenage boy and two frizzy-haired females. They looked to be Jennifer’s age, but there was something truly terrifying about them, their smiles, the look of madness in their eyes. Gail realized as she stood paralyzed before them that she was frightened. She debated calling for Jack, wondering who it was they were supposed to be.

The boy held out his bag. “Trick or treat,” he sneered.

Gail wordlessly stuffed several packets of the candy into each of their bags.

“Is that all?” one of the girls demanded.

Gail piled more candies into their sacks, eventually dumping the remainder of the small packages into their open bags.

“That’s better,” said the boy. “What’s the matter with you? Can’t you talk or something?”

Gail found her voice. “Aren’t you kids a little old for this sort of thing?”

“You’re never too old to have a good time,” the boy told her with a leer. “You want me to send my friends away? I could show you a good time too, pretty lady.”

“I have leukemia,” Gail said with a clear voice, watching with satisfaction as the color drained from the young man’s face.

The youth backed off several paces. “Yeah? Well, that’s too bad.” He signaled to his two companions. “We better move on. Old Charlie’s got some more houses to invade.”

“Charlie?” Gail asked, a queasy feeling building in her stomach.

“We’re the Charles Manson gang,” he told her proudly. “Didn’t you hear? We got paroled!”

Gail slammed the door on his obscene laugh, standing in the hallway shaking, not moving. She thought of Jennifer
at Marianne’s party. “I’ll be back by midnight,” Jennifer had promised. She thought of Jack upstairs asleep. “‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me tonight,” he had said. “‘I can’t keep my eyes open. “Gail suddenly reached into the hall closet and grabbed her shabby old coat and purse, opened the front door and rushed out into the cold night.

There were only a handful of other people walking the streets when Gail looked at her watch and saw that it was almost eleven o’clock. Her shoulder bag slapped against her side and Gail looked at it, studying the glow of the white straw bag against the darkness. Nancy would have a fit if she saw this bag, Gail smiled. A white straw purse at the end of October. None of her friends in the shadier reaches of Newark thought there was anything wrong with a summer purse in late autumn. Of course, it could be that they were too polite to comment. At any rate, she’d do everybody a favor and change it when she got home. She had last year’s beaten brown leather one somewhere in her closet. She’d have to get it out. Make Nancy happy. Gail laughed out loud.

She was suddenly at Memorial Park with its now empty swimming pool and deserted, netless tennis courts. She stood for a moment at the entrance, surveying the black panorama of trees and pathways, wondering if she had come here deliberately. The park had developed a reputation of late for attracting derelicts and winos at night. Like any other park in cities everywhere, people were advised not to cut through after dark. Gail put her hands in the pockets of her coat and stepped into the park.

She moved with relative speed until she realized how fast she was traveling and slowed down. There was no need to race. Now that she was here, she might as well make the most of it, look for clues, try to pull some facts from the darkness. The killer was a loner, a frequenter of
parks. Perhaps he chose this park in which to sleep. Perhaps all the while she’d been renting rooms in Newark and East Orange, the killer was cozily staked out in her own backyard. Gail slowed her pace further, reaching the tennis courts without having seen a soul.

She stood in the middle of one of the courts, in the spot where the net would normally be, and watched an invisible ball being hit furiously from side to side. The forces of Good and Evil, she chuckled aloud, watching as Evil rushed the net to deliver the winning overhead smash. Gail turned and walked away from the courts.

She moved to a concentration of trees. There were two benches in front of them, both occupied by sleeping drunks, a cheap bottle of wine opened and empty beside them. Her eyes searched their features for traces of their lives, but she saw only years of self-abuse and neglect, and she turned her head away, wishing to see no more.

She heard a scuffling behind some bushes and turned immediately toward them, but then all was quiet, and, feeling suddenly tired again, and cold from the wind, she decided to return home. She would learn nothing here. She was almost out of the park when something was shoved into her from behind.

She gasped and turned, but her assailant was quick and strong, and he pushed her roughly to the ground, kicking at her ribs and grabbing at her shoulders, flipping her over onto her back. It was only when she was in this position, reeling with the pain of the attack, feeling her ribs aching in her chest, that she realized he was not after her but her purse. She rolled over on top of it, but a second kick to her side sent her sprawling away, retching into the dirt. Her assailant tore the purse from her hand, and when Gail looked up to try to see him—the whole episode had taken place so quickly that she hadn’t had a chance to determine anything about her attacker except that he was tall and
skinny—his fist came smacking fiercely down against her cheekbone, knocking her flat against the cold ground.

She lay there listening to his footsteps recede into the darkness, amazed by the suddenness of her loss of control. As she closed her eyes, she realized she hadn’t seen his face at all.

Jack came to the hospital at just after two in the morning to pick her up and bring her home.

A patrolman had found an empty white straw handbag lying on the road by the entrance to the park and become suspicious. He had gone through the park to see if there was any trouble and had found Gail semi-conscious on the ground. He had taken her to the hospital. She had no recollection of the drive over, and it took her a few minutes to realize that what had transpired in the park had not happened only in her imagination. For a terrifying time she had thought she might be waking up in the hospital just after the news of Cindy’s death and that everything that had happened in the last six months had been a prolonged nightmare she would only have to live through all over again. But then the shooting pain at the side of her face and under her rib cage assured her that the attack in the park had been very real.