by Jenna Brooks
He held his glass up in a salute, then drained it.
She chugged a little less than half of hers, stretching her lips as it went down, baring her teeth. “Wow. I need to start ordering top-shelf. Anyway, does it matter that Sammy and Dave got married last week?”
His glass fell from his hands, tipping over as it landed on the bar. “What?”
She grinned. “You know, big fat diamond, white dress, flowers. We had the devastatingly handsome–and I mean, smokin‘ hot–David Delaney,” she winked, “spiriting away his beautiful bride–to you, that would be the one that got away–for a hon-ee-moon…” She sighed dreamily. “It was the stuff that dreams are made of, Jackie.”
His face was crimson with rage, his eyes slits. “You…lying…bitch.”
The bartender took notice then, moving closer.
She lowered her voice. “Take a look.” Jo opened her phone, bringing up a series of pictures from the wedding. “She made such a beautiful bride, don’t you think? I’ll bet you’re happy for her, now that she has…Oh, let’s call it a ‘functioning’ man in her life. I heard you have issues in that department. What’d she say about you? Oh yeah…‘Wee Willie called–he wants his dick back.’” She nudged him. “Two words, short-stuff: ‘penis pump.’”
He looked away, running his fist across his mouth. “You better shut up.” His voice sounded oddly childlike to her, and she laughed out loud.
“They just got home today.” She slid her glass to the edge of the bar. “But that’s not even the best half of the story.”
They stared each other down for a moment, then Jo said quietly, “You know what, idiot? I think I’ll let you find out for yourself just how bad it sucks to be you. See ya, Car-boy,” she said as she hopped down from the stool, heading for the door.
“Hey! Hey!” he bellowed after her, and a few of the patrons who had been watching them stood up.
“Hey, buddy, calm down,” an older man, about sixty, put his hand out as if to stop Jack from following her.
She turned to face the people in the bar, appearing terrified, then ran out the door.
“Damn you…Jo!” Jack scrambled off the stool, clumsy from too much alcohol in too short a time, and ran after her. The conversation in the bar went from a low, curious hum to a chaotic din, as the customers voiced their concerns.
“Wow–he looks like he wants to kill her,” someone said.
“Yeah, she’s in trouble there.”
“Did anyone catch his name?”
“Yeah. It was ‘Jack’.”
“I’m calling the cops,” the bartender said, reaching for the phone.
A few people went outside to see if they could help, but they were already gone.
“Jo?” Max knocked a couple of times, then tried the knob, even though she knew it would be locked. “Jo!” She knocked again. Her stomach was starting to turn over inside her as she wondered if she had been duped somehow. It seemed like it, but she couldn’t figure out exactly why.
She headed for the parking area, pulling her phone out. As she feared, Jo’s truck wasn’t there.
Dave picked up on the first ring. “Max. What’s going on?”
“Jo took off.” She explained the situation, and what their plans had been. “And I don’t have a working car. I’m going to walk over to Barley’s. I don’t know where else to start.”
Dave could hear the fear in her voice. “I’m on my way.” He grabbed his wallet from his desk, looking around for his keys.
Sam was beside him, handing them to him. “What happened?” Her voice trembled. They had both been skittish all evening, weighed down with a grim feeling of expectation.
“We don’t know. She stranded Max at the apartment and took off.” He bent to kiss her. “Stay here with Ty. I’ll call you when we know something.”
Max ran through the door at Barley’s, winded and scanning the bar for Jo. She hurried over to the bartender. “Have you seen a small woman, blonde, around fifty…”
“Name’s ‘Josie’?”
“Yes. She was here?”
“Some guy–Jack - chased her out of here a few minutes ago. He was pissed enough that I called the cops, because seriously, if he catches her…” She shook her head, looking knowingly at Max.
“Did you see what direction they went in?”
She shook her head. “Sorry.”
“Thanks.” She went out to the street, looking around frantically. It was quiet, with only a few people wandering around in what was normally a busy area. It seemed to Max that the night was unusually dark.
Her cell was going off in her pocket, and she pulled it out eagerly.
“Dave,” she said, “I was hoping it was her.”
“Nothing yet?”
“She was at Barley’s, and Jack…. He chased her out of the place.”
“What happened?”
“She did, said something that pissed him off, and when she ran, he went after her.” Her voice broke. “The bartender called the cops, he was that out of control.”
“Think, Max. Where would she have gone?”
“I don’t know…Maybe the apartment? Don’t know why she’d go back there, though…” She turned toward the road to their building, breaking into a jog. “What the hell is she doing? Is she setting it up for some kind of self-defense thing to get rid of him?”
He thought about it. “It seems that way, but really, that just isn’t her. She didn’t seem to have that on her mind when we talked tonight.”
“What did she say to you? Try to remember everything.”
“Mostly, she was just evasive. The only thing I remember her saying about Jack was some comment about knowing how to flush guys like him out.”
Max stopped. She remembered the story of New Year’s Eve, of Jo trapping Keith–on tape, for the record. Parlaying that event into a divorce settlement.
You actually engineered all that?
Hey, you do what you have to.
“I know how to flush these guys out,” she murmured.
“Yeah. That’s what she said.” He paused. “What is it? What are you thinking?”
In a few lucid, horrifying seconds, it all became clear to her. Jo had gone from depressed, to apathetic, to suicidal.
I could never take a life, Max. That includes my own.
And Max knew that was true. She closed her eyes as the thoughts and the memories came in rapid succession: Jo’s strange affect in recent months; the back-and-forth of her emotions, as if she truly wanted to hang on but just couldn’t anymore. Her obvious pain over her boys, the harassment of Keith and his wife. Her serenity after Daisy died. The anguish in her eyes that day at the ocean, as she gave Max a primer on the fact that there are no heroes left.
Her resolution that Jack would not be allowed to destroy her friends.
“She’s going to go out a hero.”
“Maxine–I can’t hear you.”
“She’s setting him up, all right. But she’s not going to kill him. She’s…” She rolled her head, her eyes heavenward, her mouth hanging open. “Dear God, no.”
“Maxine! Tell me!”
“It’s suicide, Dave.”
“Suicide? What?”
She was breaking into a cold sweat. “But she’s getting Jack to do it for her, and that takes him out, too.”
“That’s not…I don’t understand.”
“It solves every problem, as far as she can see–which isn’t too far ahead these days…”
“Call the police, Max.”
“They’re probably at Barley’s right now. Wait…” She was only a minute from the city precinct. “Hold on, Dave.” She sprinted the last fifty yards to the station.
At the front desk, she breathlessly asked the woman there if Joey Derosa was on duty that night.
“He is. May I help you?”
“Please, it’s an emergency. Tell him Maxine Allen is here to see him. Tell him I’m a friend of Josie Kane’s.” She got back on with Dave. “Still there?”
<
br /> “Yeah. How long ago do you figure they left Barley’s?”
“Maybe…I guess, ten minutes?”
Damn it. He hit the steering wheel in his frustration, and pushed the car up to ninety. “There’s probably still time.”
“How far away are you?”
“Twenty minutes.”
She looked up as an officer approached. “Miss Allen?”
“Hold on, Dave.”
She shook his hand quickly, then pulled him to a corner and explained the situation to him.
He let her finish the entire story before he spoke. “Yeah, we sent a cruiser over to Barley’s just a few minutes ago. But she ran off, and he followed her, you said?” He took a set of keys from the desk. “Let’s head over to his house. If she managed to lose him, he’d likely head home. The guy’s a real head case, assaulted one of our officers a few weeks ago. So you stay in the car.”
“Dave, meet us at Jack’s house.”
Jo ran as fast as she could. She needed to get to Jack’s perfect little house, leave the evidence there. It had to happen there.
Her legs trembled from the effort, but she was calm: she felt completely detached from herself, like some force was pushing her from the inside out. It was the right thing to do, the only thing that could be done–and it was the first time in years that she felt genuinely alive.
She rounded the corner where she and Max had left the truck running, not even a month earlier when they took Sam away from Jack. It seemed impossible to her that it was such a short time ago.
As she got to the corner near his house, she stopped at the edge of his yard, crouching behind the hedges with her hands on her knees. Her heartbeat throbbed in her ears; her thoughts ran rhythmic with it.
You won’t win this one. Not this one.
She straightened then, looking up. Please.
His arm came around her neck from behind, and he hissed into her ear.
“You said there’s more I don’t know.”
“Go to hell.”
He punched her hard in the side, and her breath left her again as the pain cramped in her back. Her neck was at an odd angle, and with his hand now pressing on the back of her head, her spine tingled as he jerked her to the side. “We’re going inside now. Make a sound and I’ll snap your neck.”
He walked her to the back of the house, keeping his hold on her as he opened the door. “Get in there.” He shoved her hard, and she tumbled over one of the kitchen chairs, landing in the doorway to the dining room.
He didn’t turn on a light, and she squinted as she looked up, trying to get her bearings. His hand came down on the top of her head, grabbing a handful of her hair to pull her to her feet.
“What else?” he screamed, directly into her ear.
She finally managed a deep breath. “Let me get my phone and I’ll show you, you prick,” she yelled into his face, and he backhanded her.
“Hurry up.” He loosened his grip enough that she was able to dig her phone out of her pocket.
“You think you can screw with Sammy, huh? Use the baby?” She brought up the texts as she spoke.
“Screw with her?” His face was almost touching hers. “I plan on making her wish she was dead.” He shoved her again, and she almost dropped the phone as her back hit the doorway.
She felt as though she truly could kill him. She pushed off the wall, fully connecting a sidekick to his stomach. He doubled over, but came back up quickly: the uppercut to her jaw caught her tongue, and she felt blood gush into her mouth.
“Take a look,” she mumbled, spitting blood on the floor, trying not to choke on it as she thrust the phone at him. “No baby. Dead. Gone. Get it? The only kid in play here is the one she has with the guy she just married.”
He backed her up against the wall and held her there with his body, and she watched him, waiting until he met her eyes.
He was pouring over the texts. Jo could see his face clearly in the light from the phone–first going pale, and then bright red as he realized what had happened. The phone slid from his hands and clattered onto the floor.
“You did this? You did this?”
It was the moment she had lived for. Blood ran down her chin, and in the dim light, she appeared ghoulish as she spat a mouthful of her blood into his face.
Grinning, she hissed, “You lose.”
She shoved him away and turned to run as he exploded into screams of incoherent babbling, maneuvering her way around the shadowy obstacles in the darkened house as she bolted for the front door.
As he took off after her, he grabbed a knife from the block on the kitchen counter.
She made it to the front door, whirling to swing at him as he grabbed her hair from behind. She raked her fingernails down the left side of his face, and from there, she knew it was done; then, she felt the tearing, searing agony of the eight-inch blade penetrating her left side.
She managed to kick him in the stomach again. As he fell back onto the stairs, she ran through the front door, asking God to please not let it hurt too much.
Max stiffened as the voice came over the patrol car’s radio.
“All units in the vicinity of one-four-six-one-five Plymouth Street, respond to a disturbance. Man and woman at front of property. Man has a large knife. Repeat, man is armed with a large knife. Code Three.”
“That’s Jack’s address,” Max whispered, choking the words out over the panicked tightness in her throat.
“I know.” He hit the lights and the siren. Max’s vision grew blurry as he answered the dispatcher.
“One William Twenty-Two, responding to one-four-six-one-five Plymouth Street.”
In the days that followed, Max would sometimes remember it in a torturous kind of slow motion. Other times, her mind would race through it, like fanning a deck of picture cards: strobe-like images of pulling up to the house, of jumping from the car before it came to a stop, of Derosa calling her back. She heard him shouting, “One William Twenty-Two, requesting immediate backup and EMS at one-four-six-one-five Plymouth Street.”
For months after, every time she tried to sleep, she would see Jack standing over Jo with the dripping knife in his hand. Derosa had parked his car in such a way that Jack was bathed in the glare of the headlights. He looked enraged, but not at all insane–he appeared to be completely lucid. Jo was a small, crumpled form, curled up in a fetal position on the lawn by the driveway.
He took a step toward Max, his eyes darting back and forth, poised to strike out at anyone. Everyone. He was screaming about death, and murderers, and dyke bitches who killed babies.
She heard Dave calling her name; then, he was scooping her into his arms as she stood transfixed at the edge of the lawn, and as the police shouted for him to get back.
He ran to the street, carrying her there as more cruisers pulled up with lights flashing and rotating. Guns drawn, the police were screaming in unison for Jack to drop his weapon.
Dave placed her gently on her feet, putting his arm out to keep her behind him. “Stay there, Maxine.” His voice was ragged, breaking with grief.
She looked past him to see if maybe, Jo would move, make a sound, anything at all; then, she witnessed what would be her most vivid memory, the one she carried with her every day for the rest of her life.
Jack returned to Jo. He stood over her, tossing the knife to the driveway. He shrieked, “How does it feel to be aborted, bitch?”
And then he kicked her in the face.
As his foot connected, Max screamed the pain of it for her.
Dave groaned as he moved in front of her and pulled her to him, blocking it, talking to her softly.
Joey Derosa took Jack down hard, with a faceplant on the cement of his walkway, cuffing him quickly and dragging him up from behind by his wrists. The paramedics were already with Jo.
Someone shouted, “Got a pulse!”
It was then that Max squirmed away from Dave, slapping at him as he tried to pull her back, and ran up onto the lawn to be with her.
She ignored the EMS workers telling her to stand back. Jo’s pale green eyes were open wide, but unseeing, glazed over. Her face and hair were covered with blood–what he had done to her was grotesque, beyond comprehension.
Max knelt at her head, smoothing the blood-soaked hair from her face, taking her hand.
“Get her out of here!” one of the paramedics yelled.
She felt Dave’s hand on her shoulder. His voice trembled and then broke as he pulled at her, telling her to come with him.
Then he kneeled beside her. He understood, looking at Jo, that she was almost gone–and he wouldn’t let her die that way. Not bleeding to death on Jack’s lawn, with no one loving her.
Jo’s eyes focused for a moment on the two of them. The electric aura surrounded them, reflecting off of the periphery of her fading vision, but it was beautiful. Not at all frightening–it was soothing, a comfort. She understood that it was her place of refuge, and she reached for it, joyous, looking for him; but now, left with just a remnant of her ability to think, she knew that she couldn’t leave her friends with words of despair–words that would haunt them forever.
Her heart fluttered, then it thudded hard a few times. In the last moment of her life, she squeezed Max’s hand twice.
chapter 21
“I’M ON ELM Street. Where’s the house?”
Dave directed him turn-by-turn to Plymouth Street. Will could see the flashing lights from two streets away.
He had to pull over at the corner, where a small crowd of neighbors had gathered, a low hum of horrified chatter circling among them. Yellow tape cordoned off the house, and he scanned the yard, looking for Dave and Maxine. “Dave!” he shouted as he recognized him, sitting on the porch railing with his arm around Max.
They came slowly down the walkway to him. Dave held Max tight against him, shielding her face from the shrouded form on the lawn. The three of them were quiet for a moment, then Will lifted the yellow tape for them, taking Max’s arm to steady her.
