Life Penalty (3 page)

The front door opened and suddenly Jack was beside her, his arms around her, his lips brushing against her cheek. “Do they know yet?” he asked.

“Know what?” Gail demanded.

The policeman who had brought her into the room now sat down across from her on a chair. Gail found her eyes being drawn to his face, surprised to find that it was quite a young face. “A child’s body was discovered about half an hour ago in the bushes by the small park just down from Riker Hill Elementary School,” he said evenly, careful to keep his voice nondescript. “It was found by some boys on their way home from school. Apparently, they cut through the park every afternoon. They heard some sounds coming from the bushes. They saw someone running off. When they went to see, they found the girl’s body.” He stopped as if waiting for Gail to interrupt, but she said nothing, kept staring at the light beige broadloom at her feet, waiting for him to continue. “At about the same time that we got there, your daughter came running up the street looking for her sister. We brought her back here and called your husband. We didn’t know where to get in touch with you.” He stopped again. “We’re not sure it
is
your daughter, Mrs. Walton. We didn’t want to ask Jennifer to try to identify the body …”

Gail was suddenly aware that Jennifer was sobbing uncontrollably from somewhere in front of her, and she reached up and grabbed the trembling girl to her, rocking her back and forth on her lap as if she were a baby.

“Where is the child … the body?” Jack corrected. Gail was aware of a strain in his voice, knew he was trying to hide his own fears from her and her daughter.

“Down at the station,” the policeman said. “We’d like you to come down and make an identification if you can.”

Gail stared at him, thinking how odd it was that policemen really did say things like “down at the station.”

“But you’re not sure it’s Cindy?” Jack stated more than asked.

Gail was quick to agree. “Just because she’s missing, because she got lost coming home, that doesn’t mean that
the body you found—” She broke off, falling back into her silence. It hurt too much when she tried to speak, as if someone were plunging a knife into her chest.

“How was the little girl killed?” Jack was asking.

Gail tried not to listen to the answer but was un successful.

“It looks like she was strangled,” the policeman answered. “And it looks as if she might have been sexually assaulted.” He lowered his voice, as if aware that he was beginning to sound too clinical. “We won’t know, of course, until all the reports come in.”

Gail shook her head. “Those poor parents,” she began, feeling the tears stinging her eyes and running down her cheeks. “Those poor people when they find out about their daughter. Such an awful thing to have happen.”

“Mrs. Walton,” she heard someone say from what seemed a great distance. “Mrs. Walton.” The voice continued to retreat each time it called her name until it sounded as if it weren’t coming from the same room at all. Even the hand touching her arm felt as if it were touching someone else. “Mrs. Walton,” the voice said again, but she could hardly hear it with all the other noise that had suddenly seized control of her brain. “Do you recognize this?” the voice was asking. “Mrs. Walton, do you recognize this?” The hand was forcing her face to look at something she did not want to see, something her eye had caught a fleeting glimpse of moments before when her husband had entered the room, but something that her mind had refused to allow her to accept.

“Oh my God,” Jack whispered, his head falling into his hands, his shoulders starting to shake with a grief he no longer tried to hide.

Gail felt Jennifer’s head bury deep into her chest, felt her own head being pulled as if by a magnet toward the policeman’s outstretched hand, saw in that hand the purple
velvet dress stained by the mud of the recent rains. She tried to speak, but when she did, she again felt the pain shooting through her body, felt the force of the invisible knife as it was thrust deeper into her chest. She looked down and saw the knife slicing down the center of her stomach like a zipper opening a jacket, watched as her insides tumbled out, and waited eagerly for her own life to be over. Instead, she only fainted, and when she was revived, she stayed conscious only long enough for the doctor to give her a sedative.

G
ail watched as the next few days passed through her drug-filled mind like scenes from a play—early dress rehearsals where the blocking wasn’t quite right and the actors had trouble remembering their lines.

The setting was a small private room in St. Barnabas Hospital. Decorative prints hung at suitably spaced intervals along pleasantly off-white walls. A large arrangement of flowers occupied much of the windowsill. At center stage sat a modern hospital bed, its crisply white sheets and neatly stacked pillows attractively appropriate, if a touch severe. Various people, dressed as doctors and nurses, alternately fussed over her, wiping her forehead, taking her temperature, administering needles and drugs, tripping over their lines of condolence or comfort, occasionally unable to hold back their tears, forced to retreat temporarily and then run through the scene again.

She was the center of all their attentions, the understudy pushed reluctantly into the lead role, totally unprepared, terrified of her new status, speechless despite the fact that all the best lines were supposedly hers, that they were all waiting for her to speak.

“What are these?” she managed, looking into an outstretched palm that had suddenly appeared.

“Valium. Take them. They’ll relax you.”

Gail took them. The actress in the white uniform withdrew her hand, seemingly satisfied, and exited stage left. She collided with a distinguished-looking actor wearing a white coat who was coming over to take Gail’s pulse.

Gail closed her eyes, and when she opened them, Jack was sitting beside her, his hand stretched through the bars at the side of the bed, encircling her fingers with his own. She could feel him struggling to keep his emotions in check, but the strain showed in his face, swollen with the bloated cheeks and vacant eyes of a drowned man, his skin pale and even pasty, touched by splotches of red, like misplaced rouge. In the almost overbearing stillness, she could hear his breathing coming in irregular spurts, nothing for many long seconds, and then a number of short, quick breaths following in rapid succession, as if he had to remind himself to breathe. He cleared his throat often and mechanically, and when Gail’s eyes finally managed to travel the distance to his without closing, she found him staring straight ahead at something only he could see, and she turned her head away, back against the pillows, afraid that she might stumble across his vision and have to share it.

“Jennifer …?” she groped.

“She’s okay. She’s staying with her father and Julie.”

“Have you spoken to her?”

“Last night. And again this morning. She’s better this morning. She said Julie slept in the same bed with her.”

“That was nice,” Gail said, hearing her words slur together. “Julie’s a nice woman.” Jack nodded. “How about you?”

“I took one of those pills the doctor gave me. Didn’t help much. I was up most of the night. I kept hearing Cindy calling me.”

“Oh, Jack …”

“Once I guess I must have dozed off for a few minutes, I could have sworn I heard her asking for a drink of water, you know how she always does, and I got up and went into the bathroom and started pouring it for her, and then I realized …”

“I should have been there for you,” Gail said. I have no business being in the hospital. You need me. Jennifer needs me. I have to get out of here.” Gail struggled to sit up. Immediately, she felt Jack’s strong hands at her shoulders, laying her back against her pillows.

“You’ll be home soon enough. Give it another day. Get your strength back.”

“My strength,” Gail repeated, trying to assign meaning to the word. “Every time I feel my head starting to clear, someone’s here to give me another shot or another pill. They keep telling me it’s going to relax me, make me feel better. But it doesn’t. The drugs don’t change anything. They just delay it. They don’t make me feel better; they make the
doctors and the nurses
feel better. I guess they think they’re helping.” She paused briefly. When she spoke again, her voice was very low. “Do you know what I keep wishing?”

“What?”

“Every time a doctor comes over with a fresh syringe, I hope that there’s been a confusion at the lab, a mistake in the drugs, a wrong dosage on the chart. It happens you know, they make mistakes … and I keep hoping that this shot will be the last shot—”

“Gail …”

“I’m sorry,” Gail apologized quickly, seeing the fright that flashed across Jack’s eyes. “I shouldn’t have told you that. It wasn’t fair.”

“I love you, Gail.”

“Do you know what Cindy asked me?” Gail said, suddenly switching gears. “Maybe a month ago. She said,
‘Mommy, when we die, can we die together?’ Out of the blue. Just like that. ‘Mommy, when we die, can we die together?’ What could I say? I said yes. And then she asked, ‘Can we die holding hands?’ And I said yes. And she said, ‘Do you promise?’” Gail was silent for several seconds. “And I promised. Oh God, Jack!” Her body began an unconscious sway.

She heard the sirens wail in the distance, felt her body rocking with increasing violence to the sound, saw Jack take a step back, to be replaced by a blur of white uniforms against her bed, and realized that the sirens were coming from inside her and that soon another needle would emerge to rescue them all from that awful cry, to make all those who didn’t actually have to suffer feel temporarily soothed.

“Did someone call my parents?” Gail asked Jack sometime later. She wasn’t sure if it was another day or the same one.

“I did,” he answered. “They’re flying in this afternoon. Carol’s already at the house. The doctors thought it was best for you not to have too many visitors at the hospital.”

“She’s my sister.”

“If you want, I’ll bring her over later,” he offered.

“Who sent the flowers?” Gail asked, having trouble focusing her thoughts.

“Nancy.”

“That was nice.”

“Everyone’s been calling, asking what they can do. Laura’s been terrific. She’s organizing everything, making sure there’s food …”

“What about your mother?”

“I haven’t been able to reach her. She’s on a boat somewhere in the Caribbean. Laura’s trying to track her down.”

“I should get home,” Gail repeated numbly. How many times had she said that lately? How long had she been
here? “Were there reporters?” she asked, recalling a barrage of notepads and eager faces.

“Outside the house when we were taking you to the hospital,” Jack told her. “They’re still there, a couple of them.”

“What do they want?”

“Answers. Like the rest of us.” Gail closed her eyes.

“The police are outside,” Jack said, and Gail wondered if she had fallen asleep in the space between his words. “They want to talk to us. Are you up to it?”

“Yes,” Gail told him, raising her body up against the pillows and watching as an attractive, young-looking man with light brown hair and a sad smile approached her bed.

“I’m Lieutenant Cole,” he told her, pulling up a chair. “I was at your house yesterday.”

Was it only yesterday? Gail wondered. So many dreams in so short a time. “Have you found the man?” Gail asked, her voice barely audible.

“No,” the lieutenant replied. “But we have a description from the boys who discovered Cindy’s body.” He said the last few words as gently as possible. “It’s not much, I’m afraid. We even had a doctor hypnotize the boys, but all they could agree on was that the man had dirty-blond hair, was slim, of average height, and appeared youthful.”

“That’s all?” Jack asked.

“They only saw his back. He was wearing blue jeans and a yellow windbreaker. It’s a pretty vague description. It could fit anyone of a thousand guys, myself included.” He paused, collecting his breath. “Your ex-husband, Mark Gallagher, for another.”

“Mark?” Gail was incredulous.

“Can I ask you some questions about your ex-husband, Mrs. Walton?”

“You can,” Gail said clearly, shocked out of her drug-induced lethargy, “but you’re wasting your time. Mark would never have hurt my little girl.”

“How long have you and Mr. Gallagher been divorced?”

Gail had to think for several seconds, her mind running back through the years. “Uh, almost thirteen years.”

“Do you mind my asking
why
you were divorced?”

“There were a lot of reasons, I guess. We were very young, very different. Mark wasn’t really ready to settle down. He had … he had other women.” Lieutenant Cole looked up from his notepad. “Women,” Gail repeated. “Not children. Believe me, his taste in women is anything but puerile.”

“What was his attitude when you remarried?”

Gail shrugged. “He wished me well. I’m not sure what you want me to say.” Jack’s hand gripped hers tightly.

“How about his relationship with his daughter?”

“He loves Jennifer. He’s a wonderful father to her.”

“How did he feel about Jack replacing him?”

Gail stared into her husband’s eyes. “I think he might have been a little uneasy initially,” she ‘began, “but after he saw that Jack had no intention of trying to replace him, as you say, he relaxed. Jack and Jennifer get along beautifully. She loves him and he loves her, but Mark is her father, and she knows that.”

“How did Mark feel when you had a child with another man?”

Gail tried to recall Mark’s reaction. “I don’t remember,” she said at last. “I don’t think he felt too much about it one way or the other.”

“He wasn’t jealous?”

“Not that I know of. Why would he be jealous?”

“You don’t think that he harbored any feelings of revenge?”

“Revenge? For what? I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

“Take it easy, Gail,” Jack cautioned.

“What’s he trying to say?” Gail asked her husband as if the police lieutenant were no longer present.

“Your ex-husband has no verifiable alibi for the time your daughter died,” Lieutenant Cole said simply.