by Irene Pence
Despite the gorgeous panorama, the loft’s stark aura was as cold as a tomb.
Faith and Liberty kicked off their shoes, as they always did when they entered their dad’s loft. The feel of the cool, rough surface of the floor was a drastic contrast to their own home’s thick carpeting and highly polished oak floors, which felt like silk under their feet.
“How long’s it gonna take you to change?” Liberty asked her dad.
“I won’t be long.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s just seven now,” he said, as he headed for his closet.
A few minutes later, he came back wearing a snow white T-shirt and creased blue jeans. “Before we go to dinner, I want to talk to your mom and check out this story you’ve been telling me. I need to get to the bottom of why she’s trying to put me in jail.”
“You can’t do that,” Faith said. “You’re not supposed to call Mom.”
“Well, then, how about you calling her? If she’s not there, just leave her a message to call you back.”
Faith hesitantly picked up her father’s portable phone, punched in her mother’s number, and waited for her familiar message. When she heard the beep, she said, “Hi, Mom. Call us back. Okay? Call us back.”
Battaglia, disappointed, said, “Guess I’ve got to think of something else.” He leaned over and placed his elbows on the kitchen’s white Formica countertop. “Would either of you please tell me why your mother wants me in jail? I mean, really. What have I done to her? I don’t go inside her house and I don’t call her on the phone.
“How about you, Faith?” her father said. “Since you left the message, why don’t you try to see what she’s up to when she calls back?”
Tears filled the little girls eyes and she lowered her head. “Okay, if I have to.”
“On second thought, your mom may be out till late. Let’s talk to Grandma.” Battaglia punched in the number for Dorrace Pearle. After a few rings, she picked up. “Hi, Dorrace. It’s John.”
“Oh, er, hello, John,” Dorrace said, obviously surprised to hear his voice.
“I need a favor,” he began. “The girls have a question for their mom and I don’t want to break the rules and call her. So would you give her a jingle and let her know that they want to talk with her?”
“Well, I guess I could.”
“Just have her call them over here at the loft.”
“Okay, John. I’ll call her right now on her cell phone.”
As Mary Jean strolled up the sidewalk to Melissa Lowder’s house, she passed a large elm on her left that had a graceful fern hanging from one of the lower branches; behind it stood a beautiful magnolia tree. Overall, it was a lovely place for a single mother of two. Mary Jean had met Melissa when their older daughters were in kindergarten, and for the past five years they had remained good friends.
They had socialized as married couples, but now both women were divorced, which added another commonality to their friendship.
Just as Mary Jean started to climb the stairs leading to Melissa’s front porch, her cell phone rang. She glanced at the caller ID and saw it was her mother’s number, so she punched the receive button.
“Mary Jean, it’s Mom,” Dorrace said. “I just got a rather strange call from John. Said the girls wanted to ask you about something and would you please call them at his loft.”
“Oh darn. What’s he putting them up to now?” She paused for a moment, then said, “On second thought, judging from the last time I saw them, they probably want to come home. Okay, I’ll call down there. Thanks.”
Mary Jean crossed Melissa’s porch and rang the doorbell. Melissa greeted her with a broad smile, then gave her a warm hug. “I’m surprised you’re here. I expected to see you much later,” she said.
“My plans have kinda changed. Right now I’ve got to call John. Which phone do you want me to use?”
“There’s another line in the kitchen,” Melissa told her. “The kids are in there finishing up their dinner, and I’m just doing some paperwork back at the desk in my bedroom. Come back when you finish.”
Mary Jean went to the kitchen and chatted with Melissa’s son and daughter for a few minutes, then around seven-twenty she picked up the phone at the kitchen desk and punched in the number for Battaglia’s loft. She hoped one of her girls would answer so she wouldn’t have to speak to her ex-husband.
John Battaglia said hello and it grated on Mary Jean to hear his voice.
“Hi, John,” she said lightly. “Mom called and said the girls wanted to ask me something.”
“Yeah,” he said, and Mary Jean could hear the echo-like sound that always accompanied his punching the speakerphone button.
“Ask her!” John’s voice pounded. “Ask her,” he repeated in a louder, harsher voice.
“Mommy?” Faith stammered. She was noticeably crying and her voice sputtered out in short sobs. “Why do you want Daddy to have to go to jail?”
Mary Jean could feel her body temperature climb. “Oh come on, John, don’t do this to them.”
Then Mary Jean heard the screams that will forever haunt her. Faith’s voice cried out, “No, Daddy, don’t! Oh please no, Daddy. Don’t do it. No, no, no!”
Suddenly, over the piercing cries of her daughter, Mary Jean heard the blast of a gun. Her bewilderment at John’s question abruptly changed as she grasped the situation. Oh my God, he’s shooting the children! “Run, babies, run!” she screamed. “As fast as you can, run for the door!”
Everything was happening quickly. Mary Jean began to shake and her eyes filled with tears. She was overcome by a feeling of complete helplessness. If only she were there, she could try to wrestle the gun away from him, but she could do nothing but hang on to the phone—her lifeline, but also her connection to the nightmare. She continued to hear shots. Five? Six? She couldn’t tell for sure. They came so rapidly that they sounded like one continuous explosion. Then, all went quiet. Mary Jean pressed the phone closer to her ear. In only moments, John’s voice came back on the line. He spoke in a loud, threatening, mocking tone. “Merry fucking Christmas, Mary Jean!” he yelled. Then the line went dead.
Mary Jean’s screams brought Melissa running.
Melissa was breathless when she reached the kitchen. “What on earth’s happening?” she asked Mary Jean.
“John just shot the kids!”
“No!” Melissa said, her eyes wide. Her hand flew to cover her mouth.
“I heard shots,” Mary Jean said through her sobs. “Oh, God, call 911.”
Melissa grabbed the phone as Mary Jean ran to her car to get Battaglia’s address to give to the police. When she returned, Melissa was already talking with the 911 operator. “I’ve got the police,” she called to Mary Jean. “I’m talking to Highland Park right now.”
Melissa turned back to the operator. “Mary Jean Battaglia just got a call from her ex-husband who lives on Canton. He’s called her while shooting a gun at her children.”
“Okay,” the operator replied.
“You should have a file on him. Can you pull that up?”
The operator told Melissa that she had a lot of information on John Battaglia, and asked for Mary Jean’s address and phone number. Melissa explained that Mary Jean was now at her house. The operator told her under no circumstances should Mary Jean return home. She was to stay at Melissa’s.
Melissa could hear the operator giving instructions to a dispatcher. She told Melissa to hold on a second while she called other officers. Melissa listened to her relay a message: “I need to have you call in as soon as possible,” the operator said.
Oh, oh, Melissa thought, she’s only leaving a message. She hasn’t gotten hold of anyone.
By now Mary Jean had returned to the kitchen, and reached for the phone. “Oh, please, let me talk to them.” Melissa immediately handed her the phone.
“Hello,” Mary Jean said.
“Hi, this is Highland Park. I understand what’s going on.”
“Oh, thank God,” Mary Jean yelled. “H
e killed the children!”
“Okay, I understand,” the operator said calmly. “And we understand the problem with him.” It was like the two women were having completely different conversations. The operator continued, “We know where you are right now so we have a number where we can call you.”
Mary Jean responded as if she hadn’t heard the operator and began crying harder. She said, “He’s at two-seven-zero-zero Canton.”
“Canton?” the operator said.
“He’s in Apartment 317,” Mary Jean sobbed, giving the wrong number.
“Ma’am, ma’am. Calm down just a minute. Okay?”
“I am. I am. It’s two-seven-hundred Canton.”
“Canton? Is that in Dallas?” the operator asked.
Then Mary Jean corrected herself. “I think it’s Apartment 418. He just moved to an apartment upstairs. He was going to be arrested tomorrow. I was talking to my baby, then he shot the gun off,” Mary Jean’s sentences ran together as she rambled in a high, incoherent pitch.
“Ma’am, I understand. You have to calm down just a little bit so I can understand you. Okay? Now is that in Dallas?”
“Yes. It’s on Canton down in Deep Ellum in the Adams Hat Building.”
“Okay. This is what I’m gonna do,” the operator said. “I’m gonna call the Dallas Police Department, have them go over there.”
“He killed my children!” Mary Jean screamed.
“Ma’am, I’m gonna have Dallas go there. So, I need to hang up with you, okay?”
“I’m going down there,” Mary Jean said before the operator interrupted her.
“No, ma’am.”
“I’ve got to!”
“No, ma’am. You cannot go there.”
“Yes, I’ve got to! I’ve got to. He shot my children!”
TWENTY-NINE
Faith had stood facing the speakerphone, wiping her eyes against the back of her hand. When she heard her mother’s voice, her father had hissed, “Ask her. Ask her!”
Faith continued sniffling as she questioned her mother about wanting to put Daddy in jail. Before her mother could reply, she heard the click of a gun behind her. She turned to see a .38 revolver in her father’s hand. He had just flipped off the safety.
She could hear her mother’s voice in the background saying, “Oh, come on, John . . .”
When Faith saw the gun, she began shaking violently.
Without emotion, John Battaglia raised the gun and pointed it directly at his oldest daughter. Her eyes grew wild and she screamed, “No, Daddy, don’t! Oh, please no, Daddy. Don’t do it. No, no, no!” She sobbed and begged for her life as her father began to squeeze the trigger. Looking her in the eye, Battaglia fired the first shot. It ripped into her right shoulder, sliding through soft tissue. She screamed, both from physical pain and the emotional anguish of knowing that her own father was shooting her. The shot spun her around and she collapsed onto the floor. Battaglia fired again and the second shot entered her torso, severing her spinal cord and instantly paralyzing her. She was facedown by the kitchen sink. Her hand cushioned the side of her face.
When Mary Jean’s voice had shrieked from the speakerphone, “Run, babies, run,” Liberty had sprinted toward the front door, her only escape from the loft.
Battaglia had to chase her, running from the kitchen, past the laundry room, to his bedroom area, shooting at her wildly as she ran. Liberty’s little legs couldn’t take her fast enough as her father closed in. She screamed when her father caught her only fifteen feet before she could reach safety. His first shot grazed her head, slicing off three inches of flesh a quarter inch deep. She shrieked and raised her hand to her throbbing head, but the little girl kept running. His shots less accurate on this moving target, Battaglia’s next bullet tore into her right arm, inflicting another wound as it exited. Terrified, Liberty opened her mouth to gasp for air, and tears rolled down her cheeks. The next bullet punctured her side and the one after that severed her spinal cord.
He went back to the speakerphone and wished Mary Jean a Merry Christmas. Then he turned off the phone.
In a sick, psychotic haze, he picked up his Glock, a semiautomatic that held up to fifteen bullets. Ironically, Mary Jean’s father, Gene Pearle, had given the pistol to him to protect his family. It was a blessing that Gene would never know his gift had been used for such a heinous act.
Battaglia first walked back to Faith. Blood streamed from her wounds, but he had to make sure. He had to know that Mary Jean would never have her again. Pressing the gun to the back of her head until it indented her scalp, he pulled the trigger. Her body jumped as the bullet entered her head. Black gunpowder burned her flesh, and the bullet exited through her forehead, leaving a quarter-sized hole.
Moving over to Liberty who was spread eagle on the floor, he administered the same execution-style shot. The bullet entered behind her ear and exited by her nose, taking a tooth with it.
Battaglia hadn’t bothered to pick up the casings, hide the guns, or wipe off his fingerprints. He placed the Glock on the nightstand in plain view.
The 911 operator quickly called the Dallas police dispatcher and explained that she was calling from Highland Park. “We have a sort of a domestic situation,” she began.
“Okay,” the dispatcher replied, assigning it a second-level urgency.
“The husband is actually gonna be at an address in Dallas and he has possibly, he does have a gun, and, uh, the wife believes he has possibly shot his children.”
“Oops,” the dispatcher responded.
The operator told the dispatcher that this was the only information they had from the mother, and gave the Dallas police the address and loft number, adding that it was apparently near Deep Ellum. Then she mentioned that police had a huge file on the man.
“The wife still lives here in Highland Park. He has visitation rights with the children. He has the children now. She has called me and is panicking. She talked to him on the phone.”
“Right,” the dispatcher responded.
“He shot off his gun. She thinks that he shot the children.”
“God,” the dispatcher groaned.
“I’m trying to get hold of one of our supervisors to let him know, too, but I wanted to go ahead and get you guys going.”
“Do you know the name of the apartments?” the dispatcher asked.
“No, I don’t,” the operator replied, forgetting that Mary Jean had said the Adams Hat Building, which was similar to the name of the lofts. The operator spelled out Battaglia’s name, told the dispatcher that he was a white male, and gave his date of birth; then she repeated, “But like I said, we have had several problems with him. Several domestic disturbances.”
The dispatcher asked if they should go ahead and get an ambulance to the lofts.
“Uh, ya know. I, I don’t know,” the operator replied.
“Okay.”
“If he actually has, ya know, shot his children or not. I mean, she’s panicking because she is the mother.”
“Right. Sure.”
Then, with a change of heart, the operator said, “As long as we have an officer going, ya know?”
The dispatcher finished her sentence, “. . . go ahead and get an ambulance over there?”
“Okay, thank you,” the operator said, and hung up.
John Battaglia walked into his bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. After rummaging around and pushing a few prescriptions aside, he found a bottle of tranquilizers. Grabbing it, he popped open the top and shook out the collection of pills. He threw them into his mouth and cupped his hand under the water spigot, gulping them down. Somehow he had managed to stay clean throughout the killings; his clothes bore no trace of blood.
Battaglia slammed the loft’s door shut and hurried along the hall to the elevator, taking it down to the garage.
He felt he’d had no choice about what had happened in his apartment. Mary Jean had finally forced him into it. She was always using the Highland Park Police as her o
wn private little police force. It irritated the hell out of him to see them jump every time she called them to report his phone calls or whatever else he had done. Well, he had finally shown her.
With an arrest warrant possibly coming down on him for probation violation, the police could come pounding on his door any day now to haul him away. It was particularly frightening that his attorney had told him that jail time was a definite possibility, because previously, his attorney always had managed to get the charge reduced or the bail lessened, and he would escape his problem. In fact, he had made a game out of it.
If he were arrested, he’d be fired as the chief financial officer of Arcturus, and lose his own private business. He had finally realized how fast this could happen when Faith reminded him tonight that he wouldn’t be around next weekend. That realization felt like somebody had socked the wind out of him, and forced him to act.
That damn Mary Jean. This was all her fault.
In the musty garage, he climbed into his truck and drove away cautiously, doing his best to avoid attracting attention. He heard no sirens, no commotion. At least for the moment, he was safe.
Driving only a couple of blocks, he pulled up to July Alley, a local bar he frequented. He walked in and nodded to the bartender, then sat at a table near the window. He didn’t want company. He frequently sat alone, only this time it was by choice. He ordered a Tanqueray and tonic. While he waited for it, he pulled out his cell phone and made a call. When his drink arrived, he chugged it down, ice cubes clinking as he drained the last few sips, then ordered another. He watched young people in jeans pass by on the sidewalk. He remembered being that age, but he couldn’t remember being as happy as they seemed. Then he wondered, had he ever been happy?
He gulped down his second drink and motioned for the check. He pulled out a ten-dollar bill to cover the tab, thought what the hell, and threw down another five for the tip.
