First Offense

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  Harold Duke stood again. “Could we address the issue of bail at this time. Your Honor?”

  “Mr. Duke,” Hillstorm said sternly, “if you’ll give me just a moment here, I was about to order the probation officer to conduct a bail review. That’s the way we do it.”

  “I object,” Duke said quickly. “I realize this is standard procedure, but surely you can see there is a conflict of interest here. The victim is a probation officer, and it’s highly unlikely that my client will receive impartial treatment from the probation department. We feel the court should determine bail for my client independent of any other recommendation.”

  Glen Hopkins was quick to object. “Why should Mr.

  Sawyer receive special consideration, Your Honor? Mr. Duke’s allegations that the probation department would act in an unethical fashion are inflammatory and downright offensive.”

  Judge Hillstorm removed his glasses, wiped them with a tissue, and then slipped them back on his nose. “I concur with Mr. Duke,” he said slowly. “I’ll settle the issue of bail. Mr. Hopkins, state your position.”

  “The people are asking that the defendant be held without bail,” Hopkins said firmly, still irritated that Sawyer was receiving special treatment. “He was on probation at the time of this offense, and there are circumstances to suggest he’s clearly a danger to the community. Further, Ms. Carlisle has been traumatized by this crime and should not be placed at further risk. Don’t forget, this poor woman was shot right here. Your Honor, right outside this courtroom and only a short time after the defendant was sentenced. How can she continue her work, walk to that parking lot every night, with the knowledge that this man is back on the street?”

  “Mr. Duke,” Hillstorm said.

  “My client has only one prior offense, a misdemeanor. He has no history of violence and has resided in the community all his life. In considering bail, the criterion is basically to address the likelihood of the defendant fleeing. There is absolutely no reason to believe my client would not return to this court as instructed.”

  “Your Honor, that isn’t the case at all,” Hopkins protested. “There’s concrete proof that the defendant was preparing to abscond at the time of his arrest. He rented a U-Haul van, and he moved all the furniture out of the house he was leasing. If that’s not an indication he was attempting to flee, I don’t know what is. He doesn’t have a job or own real estate, and he’s facing serious felony charges.”

  “Is this true, Mr. Duke?” Hillstorm said, shuffling papers but unable to find the arrest report. “Was your client attempting to flee when arrested?”

  “Not at all,” Duke rebutted. “He was only moving back into his parents’ home. There’s no proof whatsoever that he intended to leave the state or even the city.” The attorney glanced back at Rosemary Sawyer, and his voice rose in indignation. “These charges are a sham anyway. What evidence do they have linking my client to this crime? In my eyes it’s unconscionable to incarcerate an innocent man when you know very well you’ll never convict him.”

  “I object,” Hopkins said, leaping to his feet. “That was uncalled-for.”

  “Bail is set at a hundred thousand dollars,” Hillstorm said, pounding his gavel. “This court is hereby adjourned.”

  Once the judge had left the bench, Hopkins seized his file and rushed over to Ann. “It’s a start, Ann,” he said quickly. “The preliminary hearing’s in three weeks. If he’s held to answer, they’ll probably revoke his bail.” Seeing she was not comforted, he lightened his tone. “Hey, at least Hillstorm set it at a hundred G’s. That’s a pretty hefty amount. Sawyer might not be able to make it.”

  “He’ll make it,” Ann snapped, locking eyes with him. “His father’s a surgeon, remember?”

  As people poured out of the courtroom. Glen said a few words to Harold Duke. Then he rushed out to return to the Delvecchio trial in another courtroom. Sawyer’s family had to come up with merely ten percent, not the entire amount. Ann knew they’d never let their son sit in jail.

  As she and Reed started walking out of the courtroom, she had a sudden flash of the severed fingers in the house on Henderson. Instantly she forced it away. There was nothing to be gained by dwelling on it and making herself crazy. No matter what Sawyer had done, whom he had butchered, or how many narcotics he had peddled on the streets, he would soon be on the loose again.

  “Look, Ann,” Reed said, “I’ll put a tail on him. If he gets anywhere close to your house, we’ll blow his fucking head off.”

  “That would help,” she answered, and then laughed nervously, trying to mask her fear. “I mean, the surveillance.”

  “We only have three weeks to put this together,” the detective told her. “I’m going to pull every man I can and put him on this case. We’ve got to move fast.”

  Ann nodded without speaking, deciding she would never make a recommendation for bail again, no matter what the case involved. Now she knew. She knew how they felt: the victims.

  In many ways it was worse than before Sawyer had been arrested. Even though the pleadings had been filed under the name of the state of California, Sawyer knew it was Ann who was his accuser. And Ann had a face to insert behind the gun that shot her. Ironically, it was the same face she had thought was so beautiful that night on the sidewalk. Sawyer had to be deranged, twisted, the worst possible adversary. A man who would shoot you, she thought, and then stop to save you had to be a sociopath, a person with no conscience, no understanding of basic values.

  What would he do now? she wondered, a sliver of fear slipping its way up her spine. If only Hank were alive, she thought sadly. But he wasn’t, and Ann knew she must do what she’d been trained to do, years before her husband had entered her life. She had to protect herself. In a few short hours Jimmy Sawyer would walk out the doors of the jail, and Ann would not be safe until he walked back in again. Only three weeks, Glen had said. To Ann, three weeks sounded like a lifetime.

  Chapter 9

  Ann drove to her house in a driving rainstorm at nine o’clock that evening after having dinner with Claudette and her husband. She’d given David permission to stay at his friend’s house. She was so exhausted and emotionally drained that she headed straight to the bedroom and peeled off her clothes, turning off the lights and crawling under the covers. Heavy rain was pelting the roof and the wind was blowing, making the old house rattle and creak. Pulling the covers over her head to shut out the noise, Ann quickly fell asleep.

  Approximately fifteen minutes later, a loud clap of thunder rang out, and Ann bolted upright in her bed. Looking out over the dark room, she saw her own image quickly flash in the mirror, lit by a bolt of lightning. Yesterday she’d moved Glen’s floral arrangement to the top of the safe under the window directly across from the bed, but she could smell the too-sweet odor of wilting flowers, intermingled now with the damp scent of rain.

  Hearing a loud dripping sound, Ann finally forced herself to get out of bed and reached for her robe. When she couldn’t find it, she decided to forget it and headed down the hall naked. No one could see into the house, and David wasn’t around. When she reached the kitchen, she flipped on the overhead light. As she suspected, water was dripping from a leak in the ceiling onto the kitchen floor and collecting in a large puddle. Ann removed a metal pot and placed it under the drip, wondering how much a new roof would cost. Then she got several more pots and carried them to various locations throughout the house where she knew there were existing problems. Last year she had patched. This year she was looking at a new roof.

  Ann headed down the hall to her bedroom, passing David’s room. Although the lights were out and the room was dark, she felt a gust of damp air. He must have left his window open. It was probably raining in and soaking the top of his desk and all his papers. When the kid got home and saw it, he would go bonkers. “Serves you right,” Ann said, entering the dark room. She’d told him a dozen times to shut his window before he left the house. For security reasons. Hank had installed window locks
, but her silly son kept leaving his window open.

  Ann touched the desktop as she leaned forward to get the window. His desk was wet, all right, and David even had several textbooks on it. Ann would have to dry them out in the microwave and try to save the expense of replacing them. She gripped the window and was trying to pull it down when something fell with a clunk onto the top of David’s desk. It was a large shard of broken glass. Turning on the desk light, Ann saw that the entire window was shattered. Some of the pieces were scattered on the desk, some on the floor, and several large sections had slid between the desk and the window. Great, Ann thought, now she needed a new window as well as a new roof. She stuck her head through the window, careful to avoid the jagged glass. She saw nothing so she assumed the tree branch right outside had smashed into the window, whipped by the wind.

  She pulled the desk out from the wall, wondering if she had a piece of cardboard somewhere in the garage large enough to tack in place until she could get glass installed. As she did, she became aware of the danger of the shattered glass on the floor. She stepped into a pair of David’s tennis shoes, already too big for her, and grabbed his textbooks. As she was leaving the room, everything suddenly went pitch-black.

  Ann screamed and fled from the room, then stopped at the door and took some deep breaths, laughing at herself. “Don’t be such an idiot,” she said aloud. “It’s just a power failure.” She wasn’t used to being in the house alone, she told herself, and lately she’d become thoroughly spooked.

  “Damn,” she said, feeling her way along the hallway. She couldn’t see a thing, not a blasted thing. If she could just get to the kitchen, she thought, she was certain she had some candles. Just then her shoulder collided obliquely with the wall, and she decided to maintain the contact as she inched along.

  “Ann,” a man’s voice said in the dark. “Ann.”

  She froze, her breath trapped in her throat, her heart leaping like a jackrabbit. Quickly she spun toward the kitchen and the voice. “Who’s there? What do you want?” Dropping the books, she tried to run and slammed her shoulder into a doorframe. She could smell wet clothes, body odor, raspy breathing. The intruder was only a few feet away from her. He had to be in the bathroom. The bathroom was between David’s room and the kitchen doorway.

  A hand touched her arm, and Ann shrieked again, bolting at a dead run down the dark hallway toward the door to her bedroom. After only a few feet she tripped in the untied sneakers. Losing her balance, she crashed into the wall. The shock of pain brought her to her senses. She had to summon up her police training. If she stayed low to the ground, she would be a more difficult target. She had to assume the intruder had a weapon.

  Holding her breath and telling herself not to panic, Ann started crawling. She had to get to the safe in the bedroom and get her gun.

  Clothes rustled and a dark image moved around her. Suddenly Ann was slapped flush against the floor as a heavy weight dropped on her. The man was on top of her, on her back. She couldn’t breathe. He was crushing her. “Get off me,” she screamed, in full panic now. “What do you want? I don’t have any money.” Was it Jimmy Sawyer? Had he come to kill her, make certain she would never testify against him?

  “Just be still. It’s all right,” the man said, his voice muffled. Ann pushed up with all her might, trying to throw him off her back. He was too big, too heavy. She felt something prickly and coarse brush her cheek, felt hot breath fill her ear cavity. “Relax, Ann,” the voice said firmly. “Don’t fight. Don’t you know who I am?”

  As he spoke, his hands were moving over her buttocks, darting between her legs. Ann squirmed beneath him, kicking out with her legs, pushing up with all her might. “Get off me,” she cried. Hands forced their way under her body from the sides and pinched her nipples. Ann screamed in pain. The man was going to rape her. She was naked and had never felt so helpless and vulnerable in her life. “Stop! No! Let me up and I’ll give you what you want! Please!” A horrid thought darted into her mind: Estelle Summer. The way the assailant was positioned, he could sodomize her without even turning her over.

  Again the hands squeezed her nipples, and Ann clenched her eyes shut.

  Who was this man? His voice…she tried to get a fix on the voice. It was muffled, distorted, as though he was speaking through a handkerchief or stocking mask. Did she know this person? Had she heard this voice before? Was it Sawyer? Was it some other man she had sent to prison? Hadn’t Tommy always told her this would happen, that one of the men she had tricked into a confession would come after her?

  Hands were still groping at her, roughly moving from her breasts down between her legs. If she couldn’t get to the gun, Ann decided in that second, she would kill this man with her bare hands. She would poke her fingers in his eyes, reach down his throat, and yank out his tongue.

  “Doesn’t that feel good? Don’t you like that?” the man said seductively. “Where’s David? Tell me where he is, Ann.”

  David? She heard a rushing sound inside her eardrums. How did this animal know about David?

  Consumed with fury, Ann suddenly found strength she didn’t know she possessed. Adrenaline raged through her bloodstream. She would never let anyone hurt David. She would die first. “You bastard,” she snarled from deep in her throat.

  In one burst, she rose up to her hands and knees and flung the man off her back. He fell sideways, slamming into the wall. A hand seized her arm, but Ann kicked out and collided with something fleshy—the man’s stomach? She didn’t know, but he was groaning as though she had kicked him in the groin.

  Springing to her feet, she dashed down the hall to her bedroom. Once she passed through the door, she wheeled in the direction of the safe and smashed right into the thick steel surface with her thigh, knocking the vase of flowers to the floor. Fierce pain raced up her leg, as if she’d struck a nerve, but Ann was oblivious to it, tossing the tablecloth that covered the safe up into the air, whipping the door open.

  From the hallway, Ann heard banging: the man had tried to stand and had fallen back against the wall.

  Patting the bottom of the safe with her palms, Ann finally felt a cold, hard surface and closed her trembling fingers around her Beretta.

  Holding the gun with both hands, Ann found the safety and released it. Then she depressed the trigger! and fired to make certain it was loaded. The explosion rang in her ears, reverberated inside her head, and the distinctive smell of cordite drifted to her nostrils. It smelled wonderful, Ann thought. Greatest smell in the world. She sucked it in and felt her confidence surge. “Hear that, motherfucker?” she yelled, panting, bringing the gun up and sighting the door, her right wrist braced against her other arm. “Come down that hall, asshole. Come and get me.”

  She heard feet scurrying on floorboards.

  A flash of lightning illuminated the room, and Ann realized that what she had thought was the door leading to the hall was a reflection in the dresser mirror from the bedroom window. Kicking the tennis shoes off so she wouldn’t trip again, Ann sprang to her feet.

  Creeping down the hall, she patted the wall and found the entrance to the bathroom. She stopped, pointing the gun into the darkness. A second later, she heard a noise in the direction of the kitchen and spun around. Was he trying to escape? Did he think she’d ever give him a second chance to hurt David? Outside the door to the kitchen, she flattened herself against the wall. On the count of three, she jumped into the doorway, her gun in her outstretched hands, ready to fire.

  A gush of air suddenly struck her face, and Ann realized the back door was standing open, rain and wind rushing into the room. Moving forward cautiously, she reached the door and then broke into a run when she realized the man had fled.

  Glimpsing a shadow moving rapidly down the driveway, Ann squeezed off a shot. A loud clap of thunder sounded almost the same instant as she fired, and a second later, she saw the shadow fall to the ground.

  She’d shot him.

  In a ray of light from a nearby streetlight,
she saw his face from only a few feet away. His head was turned and he was looking back at Ann, his haunches high in the air like a sprinter, not like a man who’d been hit. Her finger was on the trigger, but she was mesmerized, unable to fire. Time stood suspended for those few seconds as they made eye contact. Ann’s body shook violently. She knew this man, had seen him before. Her throat was so dry she couldn’t swallow. Her heart strained against her chest.

  Ann closed her eyes, wanting to block out the image, and felt for the trigger blindly. Shoot him. Now, she told herself. Opening her eyes to aim, she saw he had vanished. She let the gun fall to her side.

  His reflexes had been too quick, she thought, cursing herself. Only a split second before she had fired, the man must have dropped to the ground, and the bullet had sailed right over his head. But she’d had another chance and she’d hesitated. Only a few seconds, but it was too long. Should she chase after him, or simply forget it and protect herself inside the house? She sucked in a breath and remained perfectly still, listening. There were no sounds other than the wind and rain.

  Then she heard a car engine start, tires spinning on the rain-slick street, the sound of wheels skidding, a loud metallic crunch.

  Ann sprinted from the driveway to the street. When she got there, she discovered only a parked car turned sideways in the road, its front wheels up over the curb. Ann knew this wasn’t the suspect’s car. It belonged to the man across the street. Realizing she was naked, she wrapped her arms over her chest and jerked her head to the right, hearing a car engine. All she could see was a glimmer of taillights as the car carrying her attacker fishtailed around the comer.