Miscarriage Of Justice (29 page)

It took only the time for him to walk halfway to the house for her to figure it out. “Ethan!”

Sixteen years had passed since the day he’d been sentenced by Judge Bingham and she’d not seen him during that time. But the man on his way to her door was definitely Ethan Rafferty! Surprisingly, he hadn’t changed that much.

A sudden panic swept over her. He was there! She’d been waiting for nearly a week for him to show up. Aside from a near constant line of guys wanting to fix something on her house, it had been the most peaceful time since he’d been released. But now here he was. And she wasn’t ready.

Mariana gazed forlornly at the switch she’d installed. Maybe there was time to reach it and turn it on before he made it to the door, she thought. But then, with a sinking feeling she realized it wouldn’t make any difference. The step outside had no water. The concrete was bone dry! All her hard work for nothing. The object of her wrath was two steps away from her door and the electrocution device she’d so painstakingly devised was useless.

Looking side to side around the room, Mariana frantically searched for something she could convert to a weapon. The emotion she experienced wasn’t fear; she was angry, apprehensive, and wary, but not scared. Ethan was a known enemy. The thought never crossed her mind that she may be in danger. She was too intent on inflicting a little vengeance of her own to worry about anything he had in mind.

Seeing the small shovel she’d used to bury Whitey the cat, resting against the wall only a few feet away, she sprang to retrieve it as Ethan’s loud knock sounded at the door.

Standing sideways with her right hand holding the shovel, keeping it hidden, she turned the knob and pulled open the door part way, smiling sweetly at Ethan. “Can I help you?” she asked pleasantly, not letting on she knew who he was.

“I’m from Donovan Plumbing,” Ethan said trying to sound like he had a legitimate reason for being there. “I’m supposed to check on a leak.” He paused and glanced down intently at his clipboard. “In the kitchen.”

“Oh yes,” Mariana responded. “Come on in.” She swung the door little wider, still keeping the shovel out of sight.

The way she smiled, the sweet voice, and the way she stood hiding behind the door, were definite red flags to Ethan. Something didn’t quite seem right. After all the plumbers he’d sent to the house, she should be disgusted at the sight of him and definitely shouldn’t have a leak! Her eager invitation for him to come inside was strange. Either she’d gone completely nuts, or he had. Maybe she knew who he was. But if that were the case, why would she so willingly invite him in?

For a brief instant, he considered not going through the door. Something warned him he could likely be walking right into a trap. What did she have waiting for him? Then the male chauvinist gene kicked in. Who was kidding who here? She was a woman! What could she do to him? Besides, he had a gun.

He still had no idea what the conniving D.A. had planned but he didn’t care, wasn’t really worried about it. Although, he did mean to find out. He hadn’t gone to all this trouble just to turn and walk away.

Keeping up the charade, Ethan smiled back at the contemptible woman, and took a confident step into the house. Cautious and wary, he noticed how Mariana unnaturally kept the right half of her body shielded behind the door.
She’s hiding something. A weapon of some kind
.

Switching the pen to his left hand, he let his right casually swing around to feel the reassuring grips of the .357.

Holding her position until Ethan made it all the way inside, Mariana suddenly and forcibly slammed the door. At the same instant, her right arm came swinging down, bringing the blade of the shovel slicing through the air directly toward Ethan’s head!

Amid the foray, Ethan was calm. He’d been expecting something of the sort. Her attack was not only predictable, but pitifully weak—and she was slow. Sidestepping the blow, he pulled the pistol from his belt. As the shovel whizzed harmlessly past his head, the force of the swing missing its target sent the woman’s body off balance. She tried to correct the mistake but by the time she realized what was happening her center of gravity was overextended. The momentum carried her awkwardly into an exposed and vulnerable position.

Dropping the pen and clipboard to the floor, Ethan snatched the shovel from the startled woman. Thumbing back the hammer on the pistol, he shoved the cold steel against her neck. “You should stick to fighting in court,” he snarled. “Oh wait,” he mocked. “I forgot. You have to cheat in order to win there too.”

Mariana said nothing, staring defiantly at her captor, but not moving a muscle. She hadn’t been scared earlier, but now with the cold barrel of a pistol resting against her skin, it all was beginning to sink in. The man in her house meant to kill her.

Ethan could tell she was afraid, but that wasn’t enough. He wanted her petrified with fear; to see the sheer terror in her eyes, watch her body tremble and hear her scream in an agonized cry for help.

Suddenly, in a desperate move, Mariana bolted, scrambling across the room to the open archway of the den. Ethan let her go. There wasn’t much harm the woman could do, and she surely wasn’t going to get away, not running into a corner.

As she retreated behind the desk, her body quivering, Ethan fired a single shot over her head. Mariana dropped to the floor, trying to keep out of sight. It was a futile attempt. Ethan was only a couple yards away, and she had nowhere left to run.

He could hear her labored breathing and from the sound of it, a guy would’ve thought the bullet had hit her. He smirked. That was more like it. Enjoying her time of anguished torment, he pulled back the hammer on the pistol again, just for the effect of the ominous click. “Get up!” he ordered.

 Guarded and wary, Mariana did as she told, staring dismally at Ethan.

Leveling the gun only inches from her head, he aimed it right at Mariana’s temple. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t pull this trigger and blow your brains all over the wall,” he snarled.

Now Mariana wasn’t just scared, she definitely was terrified. Shivering and shaking uncontrollably, she didn’t answer, but her eyes desperately pleaded with him not to do it.

“Did you really think you’d get away with this forever?” he asked in the same tone. “That no one would ever find out the truth?” Did it ever occur to you that someday, say fifteen years later, I might get out? Did you actually expect me to just forgive and forget?”

Lips quivering, but trying to put on a brave front, Mariana gritted her teeth, saying nothing. She didn’t trust herself to speak. If she said the wrong thing, it might set him off and his finger was still wrapped tightly around the trigger.

Abruptly, Ethan lowered the firearm. “Maybe I shouldn’t kill you right away. How about a few practice shots first? You know, just to make you suffer? Then I’ll show you what a sensitive and caring guy I am, by ending your misery. Maybe sooner, maybe later, depending on how cooperative you are.”

The cowering D.A. finally found her voice. “You can’t do this,” she said trying to appeal to his sense of humanity. “You’ll get life in prison, or maybe the death penalty.”

Ethan glared back at her, amused by her outburst and obvious hysteria. It was exactly how he’d envisioned her feeling, but he wasn’t yet ready to end his game of tormenting the woman. Tersely, he replied, “You already took my life, sixteen years ago.”

At that moment, the telephone on Mariana’s desk pierced the airwaves. The unexpected ringing startled them both. Ethan and his captive froze, as the shrill sound reverberated through the room. The phone was no more than six inches from her hand and Mariana desperately wanted to answer it but immobilized by an innate fear of the gun in Ethan’s hand, she couldn’t move.

On the fourth ring, the answering machine picked up. Ethan listened as the tape played Mariana’s familiar greeting. He’d heard it many times, knew it by heart. Then, at the beep, the hoarse voice of a woman echoed through the speaker.

“Hi Mariana, it’s Jessi. Just checking on you. Call me. I think I have a solution to your problem with Ethan and how to get rid of him—for good. Bye.”

The room once more fell into silence. Ethan eyed his would-be murderess. “So,” he rasped, “Now you’re conspiring to commit murder huh? Normally, I wouldn’t care. What you do is your business, but since it’s my murder being discussed, I quite understandably have a few qualms about it.”

Having recovered from the initial shock of the situation, Mariana glared back at him with seething scorn, eyes spitting fire. All of a sudden, she found her voice. “I should’ve gone for the death penalty,” she said. “And you’d already be dead.”

Ethan returned her hate-filled stare with equal venom. “I’ve already been there,” he said. “Now it’s your turn.”

Defiant and belligerent, Mariana seemed to have forgotten the danger she was in. “You want to kill me? Go ahead. Shoot,” she dared him, stepping from behind the desk, now seemingly unafraid. She continued, “Yeah, I knew you didn’t commit that murder. And I sent you to prison anyway. Why? Because it was my job. The people in this county expected results. This was a big case. The court spent six months on it and I couldn’t just throw all of that away. I’m a prosecutor. Winning is everything. If I had let you go, the odds of getting a conviction on the real killer, if we ever were to find him, would have been almost zero. That wouldn’t have been a very wise career decision. Who would believe me after I’d spent half a year telling them all the evidence pointed to you? Do you think they’d accept my word that suddenly the same evidence now proved someone else was guilty? Besides, by the time I found out it was too late.”

Ethan listened with rapt attention to her wanton justification and lame explanation. He saw the beads of perspiration form on her forehead as her face and neck turned a deep hue of red, accented by the dripping sweat. This is what he’d wanted, but seeing it and hearing it, even straight from the Mariana’s mouth, didn’t make him feel any better. With an impassive look, he spoke in a curt voice. “So, in exchange for you not losing prestige, or points off your precious conviction rate, I lost everything.”

Mariana opened her mouth to speak but wisely held her tongue when Ethan again raised the shiny handgun, reminding her she was just a finger twitch away from the inside of her grave.

“Do you want to know what all I lost?” he went on. “I’ll tell you. I lost a lot more than a measly court case. And more than prestige or my freedom. I lost everything; my wife, my family, home, job, friends; my whole life. I had two little boys, three and five years old. I haven’t seen them for sixteen years! They’re grown now, and I never had a chance to do the things a normal dad does with his sons. We never played catch, went fishing, hunting, or camping. I didn’t help them with their homework, teach them to drive, or how to treat a lady. I didn’t attend any school functions, didn’t see them graduate and didn’t get to go to their wedding, if they had one. I was left with nothing. My wife divorced me, moved away, and took my boys.” Eyes burning, with a deep-seated rage, shooting darts of fire at Mariana, with sixteen years of pent up venom, he softly repeated, “I lost everything.”

Unaffected by his story, Mariana remained defiant throughout the impassioned speech. She really didn’t care what his problems were or how he had suffered. His sad tale meant nothing to her. But, in the midst of his painful recounting of events, she thought she’d discovered a glimmer of hope. “You know,” she said in her most compassionate tone, “it doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to do this.”
Was that a flicker of emotion in his eye?
Quickly, she continued. “It’ll just lead to losing everything all over again. We could contact your boys. I’m sure they would want to see you. I’m willing to call a truce. We can both forget this whole thing. I’ll even help you get your life back.”

Ethan knew what she was up to, and as she poured it on, he grew more incensed. Her fake concern, dripping with insincerity, made him sick. She was trying to appeal to his sense of justice and humanity. Humanity. Strangely, that too was something, which had been lost. Long ago, along with everything else—in that hellhole known as prison. Humanity, compassion, and humility, the very essence of his being, things that gave him his unique identity, had been stripped from his soul. Taken by a system that knew no justice, and possessed no humanity. A system, which had only one purpose, and that, was to win. And the house always wins.

Ethan’s eyes narrowed and he seemed to look right through Mariana. “I think it’s about time you lost something,” he said quietly. The gun was pointed right between her eyes.

Mariana’s heart sank. For a brief instant, she’d thought her ploy might work. But that moment was gone. She could see the hate and bitter anger in Ethan’s eyes. “He’s going to kill me,” she thought. Then, in a last-ditch effort, a final desperate attempt to survive, she lunged toward him, reaching for the gun, trying to knock it away.

Ethan saw her coming and mindlessly reacted to the threat. Almost automatically, his finger tightened on the trigger. It was an impulsive reflex and he was mildly surprised when the .357 Magnum bucked in his hand, belching a foot long flame. Then, he fired again. The sound was deafening in the tiny room, almost painful. In a daze, he slowly lowered the pistol.

Mariana recoiled with a bewildered look on her face, as her body involuntarily slowed its advance. Stumbling, as her legs buckled, she fell to her knees, gasping for breath. Looking up at the man who’d shot her with a stunned and partly confused expression, she toppled the rest of the way to the floor, and then lay still. A pool of warm red blood, oozing from the wound, gathered under her chest.

Ethan didn’t move, watching her motionless body as if in a trance. Just one thought was on his mind. It was over. His quest was finished. The woman was dead.

He continued to stare at the body of the D.A. as it began to sink in what he had done. He hadn’t meant to kill her. That had never been his intention. He’d just wanted her to suffer, as he had suffered. To torment her. That’s all. But even the best-laid plans sometimes go astray. They just don’t work out. His certainly hadn’t. But then, she’d left him no choice. He shrugged; “If you do the time, might as well do the crime.”