Married to a Stranger

by MacDonald, Patricia

  Burke shook his head disgustedly. “No. But what can you expect? That sister of his is a vain, stupid woman. She knows how close to the edge this kid is, but instead of trying to help, she went on a cruise. She doesn’t give a damn essentially.”

  Emma sighed. “I’ll make a special effort to engage him in the group.”

  Burke put his hands gently on her upper arms and kissed her cheek. “You be careful, Emma. You’re very important to…us.”

  THE CLARENCEVILLE train station was located adjacent to the sprawling Lambert University campus. The trip to New York City was only an hour by train, and the convenience of having the train right near the campus was an attraction for both students and faculty alike. The taxi let Emma off in front of the dull, forest green station house. She opened the door and went inside. There was one college-age kid in a parka lying on one of the benches that lined the white bead-board walls. His head was resting on his backpack, and he was sound asleep, snoring lightly. On the track side, Emma could see a couple of young teenagers, knitted caps pulled down to their eyebrows, sailing past the windows on the cement platform.

  As Emma approached the ticket window, the man behind the window in a blue uniform was muttering, “Those kids! Excuse me, miss.”

  He let himself out of the side door to the ticket office, opened the door on the train side, and began to holler. “Hey, you kids. Take those skateboards and get out of here.”

  The teenagers laughed derisively, but began to roll slowly down toward the handicapped ramps flanking the stairs to the bridge over the tracks, which had attracted them to the station platform in the first place. “Get off those skateboards and carry ’em,” the ticket agent yelled. Emma could not see whether or not the kids had complied.

  The ticket agent came back inside, shaking his head and scowling. “They’re like cockroaches. You think you got rid of them and ten minutes later, they’re back.” He climbed back up on his stool and peered at Emma. “Where you going?” he asked.

  “New York. Penn Station.”

  “Round-trip?”

  Emma hesitated, then nodded. “Round-trip.”

  The ticket agent glanced at the clock. “The next train through is an express. Doesn’t stop here. The next local is at five o’clock.”

  “That’s fine,” she said. Emma paid for her ticket and thanked him. Then she went outside to wait. The platform was deserted on the northbound side. In an hour or so the commuter trains from Manhattan would be arriving on the southbound side, disgorging a phalanx of men and women in suits, talking on cell phones. But for the moment, Emma was the only traveler. There was no one else on either side. Sometimes she wondered how the railroads could keep running with so little patronage all day.

  The day was growing dark, and the halogen lights on the platform were beginning to come on. Emma thought about sitting on one of the benches attached to the station house, but she was too anxious to just sit. She walked slowly down to the end of the platform, away from the station house. Standing there on the lonely platform, she began to wonder why she had even decided to go. Now that she was away from David, she missed him and began to think perhaps she had been too hasty in walking out. Obviously, their marriage had gotten off to a stressful beginning. They were coping as best they could, between the police, the reporters, her injuries. They’d both been under a lot of strain. Surely, if it weren’t for all that had happened, she would never have cared, or even given a thought, to that locked drawer.

  If she left now, was she playing into the hands of all the doom mongers? A marriage took time and trust. It was as if she was fleeing at the first sign of trouble. She shivered, glad she had on the alpaca cape instead of the shawl she had worn to the funeral. Besides, a shawl was too difficult to manage while traveling. She had abandoned the rust knit suit and her long loose hair as well, twisting her shiny blond hair up into a knot, and choosing knit pants and a turtleneck for the trip.

  A bright white light appeared in the distance along with the noisy clatter of the approaching train. The shrill whistle sounded, warning that the train was an express and would not stop. Emma stiffened against the harsh scream of the whistle and stared at the white light growing larger as the train barreled down the tracks.

  It’s not too late, she thought. You can rip this ticket up and go back home. What do you think, Aloysius? she thought, putting a protective hand on her stomach. You’d probably vote for me to return to your daddy. Kids always vote for that, she thought wistfully. Always rooting for reconciliation.

  The clatter of the approaching train was deafening. Emma took a step back from the yellow line on the platform, which marked the safety cutoff point when trains were approaching. As she did, she noticed a swift movement out of the corner of her eye. She looked down the platform and saw one of the teenaged skateboarders, sailing down the handicapped ramp in his black watch cap and baggy sweats. The ticket agent’s going to be furious, she thought. She shook her head, smiling. The skateboarder, zooming toward her now, began to gesture wildly. He was yelling something at her, but she could not hear him over the clatter of the express.

  “What?” she said, peering at him. She could see him speeding her way. She wasn’t taking any chances. She took another step back from the line and suddenly, from behind, felt a vicious thud. Hands shoved up her shoulder blades. She stumbled and screamed but was drowned out by the whistle. She saw the white light as she pitched forward into the path of the oncoming train.

  18

  OH GOD, NO, she thought desperately. My baby!

  Suddenly Emma was jerked back, nearly strangled by the fastened neck of her cape. Her head snapped forward. Her arms flailed, and she fell, landing on one hip with a sharp crack. The train was screaming by and she saw the lights from inside the cars careening past.

  The skateboarder, in a black watch cap pulled low and a baggy sweatshirt, one sneakered foot on the board, one on the ground, bent down and regarded her warily. “You okay?” he asked.

  The boy had swept behind her and yanked her cape. His young reflexes had saved her. Emma, stunned to be alive and safe, tried to speak but couldn’t. She nodded.

  A man in a Burberry trench coat who had just stepped out of the station house with a middle-aged woman in a black coat, rushed up to them. “What the hell did you do to this woman?”

  “I didn’t do nothin’ to her,” the kid snarled.

  The man in the trench coat crouched down and put an arm under Emma’s shoulders. “Here, let me help you. Are you all right?” he asked.

  “You kids and your skateboards,” muttered the woman to the skateboarder. “You’ll kill someone someday.”

  Emma was shuddering. She wanted to explain, but the fastened cape had pressed on her windpipe and only a squeak came out.

  “You, young man, you stay right there. I want to talk to you,” said the older man in the trench coat, pointing at the skateboarder.

  The skateboarder flipped them all the finger as he resumed his swift, illegal cruise, this time leaping off the edge of the platform and into the parking lot.

  “Delinquent,” muttered the man. “Did he hurt you? Are you all right? What happened here?”

  Emma grasped the sleeve of the man’s coat. The train had passed and the station was silent again. “It wasn’t him,” she managed to croak. “Someone…pushed me from behind. Tried to push me in front of the train.”

  The man frowned at her. “Are you sure about that? They pushed you deliberately?”

  “My baby,” Emma cried. “What about my baby?”

  “My God, was there a child with you?” the man cried.

  Emma shook her head. “I’m pregnant,” she said. Then she began to weep.

  “Linda,” the man said to his wife, not taking his eyes off Emma. “Get out your cell. Call 911.”

  JOAN ATKINS, alerted by the Clarenceville police, careened into the parking lot of the station. The local police were there in force, flashing red lights everywhere in the lot, black-and-whites parked at odd
angles. An ambulance was there as well, the doors to the bay already open. The news media, ever alert to the police scanner, were also out in force, although they were being held outside the station itself by a uniformed policeman. Joan flashed her badge to part the crowd and hurried up the steps and into the station house.

  There were at least ten cops in the tiny building. Two of them were talking to the station master in hushed tones. Another was escorting the man in the trench coat and his wife out onto the platform. The next train was almost due, and there were reporters on the platform, clamoring for information, pelting the couple with their questions. Joan saw Trey Marbery talking on his cell phone and signaled to him. Marbery nodded grimly.

  Emma was lying on a gurney while the EMTs busied themselves with her injuries. Her eyes were vacant and her face was dead white. When she looked up and saw Joan, a spark of recognition came to her eyes.

  “Lieutenant Atkins,” she said.

  Joan took Emma’s hand and squeezed it briefly, shaking her head. She looked so frail and broken that it was painful to see. “Emma. What happened?”

  Emma’s eyes filled with tears again. “Sorry,” she said, waving a hand impatiently, as if trying to stave off a sneeze. “I’m just…so freaked out.”

  The EMTs were working swiftly to staunch the blood flow from the reopened wound in her side. One of them, a pretty girl with dark curly hair who wore a name tag that read BOBBY SHIELDS was taking Emma’s blood pressure. Joan looked up at Trey Marbery, who had finished his phone call and was approaching the gurney.

  “What do we know?” Joan asked her erstwhile partner.

  Trey cleared his throat. “My men questioned the couple who called 911. They came upon the scene and thought that she had collided with a skateboarder, but the young lady tells us otherwise. Apparently, somebody pushed her from behind, and the skateboarder pulled her back. Kept her from falling in front of the train.”

  Joan winced, imagining the close call. “Where’s the skateboarder now?”

  “There’s a half-dozen guys out looking for him.”

  “Good,” said Joan. She looked down at Emma. “Tell me about it. What were you doing here?”

  Joan’s piercing eyes were focused on Emma’s face, and her calm, no-nonsense presence was comforting. “I was waiting for the New York train. Going to visit an old friend. Standing at the far end of the platform.” Emma licked her chapped lips. “I saw the express train coming, and then the skateboarder. He was coming at me, really fast. He was yelling to me. Gesturing. I guess…” Emma let out a sob and then tried to compose herself. “He was trying to warn me. I had no idea.”

  “Okay,” said Joan. “Take it easy.”

  Emma closed her eyes and then gave a shuddering sigh. She could hear Joan Atkins and the younger detective, the one with the café au lait skin, conferring out of her field of vision.

  “Any other witnesses? Anyone at all?” Joan was asking.

  “The platform was deserted. The skateboarder is our best bet.”

  “What about the station master?” Joan asked. “Or the engineer? Somebody on the southbound side maybe?”

  “Nothing. The station master was inside. We were able to contact the engineer by phone, but he was moving too fast to see anything. As for the southbound side, there wasn’t a soul there.”

  Joan came back into Emma’s line of sight as she walked over to the window overlooking the parking lot. “What about those buildings there?” she said.

  “That’s part of the Lambert campus,” said the male detective.

  “Maybe somebody was looking out the window and saw something. Have you got a couple of patrolmen who could canvass those buildings?”

  “I’ll get them on it right away,” said Marbery.

  “Thanks, Detective.” Joan returned to Emma’s side. “Where’s your husband? The police have not been able to contact him.”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered.

  “Did he know you were coming here to take the train?”

  Emma remembered her accusations, and David pleading with her not to leave. Emma nodded.

  “Anyone else know?” said Joan sharply.

  “A few people.”

  “Can we continue this at the hospital?” asked the EMT named Bobby. “We need to get her over there now.”

  “Sure,” said Joan, stepping back, once again out of Emma’s line of sight.

  Emma closed her eyes and felt the gurney rattling beneath her. Back to the hospital, she thought, and woolly-headed though she was from the painkiller they had given her, she felt unutterably depressed at the thought.

  Suddenly, there was a commotion at the door to the station house. “Hold it just a second,” Emma heard Joan Atkins yelling.

  Lieutenant Atkins appeared beside her stretcher, grasping the arm of a young man in a watch cap and a baggy sweatshirt.

  “Don’t push me, lady,” the kid said. “I didn’t do nothing.”

  “Emma,” said Joan, “is this the young man you were talking about?”

  Emma took a look at the skateboarder’s angry features. “Yes,” she said, nodding. She spoke directly to the boy. “You saved me.”

  “Whatever,” said the kid.

  “What’s your name, son?” asked Joan.

  “Josh,” said the boy sullenly.

  “Josh, that was a fine, brave thing you did.”

  The boy shrugged, but his tense shoulders seemed to relax a little bit.

  “Now, tell me, Josh. This is really important. Did you see the person who tried to push Dr. Webster onto the tracks?”

  “She’s a doctor?” the kid said.

  “Answer the question.”

  “I saw him coming up behind her,” said Josh. “I could see he was getting ready to push her.”

  “What did he look like?” Joan asked.

  Josh shrugged. “I don’t know. He was wearing a ski mask. Red around the eyes.”

  Emma gasped. She felt as if something heavy had just landed in the middle of her chest. Bobby, who was carefully attaching her ankles to the gurney, looked up at her worriedly. “Am I hurting you?” she asked.

  Emma shook her head slightly. “No.”

  “What else?” Joan asked.

  “Regular clothes. Dark pants. A hoody.”

  “A hooded sweatshirt?” Joan asked.

  The boy nodded.

  “Tall? Short?”

  “Average. I don’t know. It all happened so fast. I only saw him for a few seconds.”

  “Anything else?”

  Josh shook his head.

  “Okay, well, give your name and number to this officer here before you leave. We may need to talk to you again.”

  “Thank you, Josh,” Emma whispered to the boy who was turning away.

  Joan frowned at her. “You know this eliminates any possibility that the attack in the Pine Barrens was random.”

  Emma did not reply, but she knew.

  The pretty, dark-haired EMT said, “We really have to go, Lieutenant. Now.”

  “Okay, we’re good for the moment. Are you ready to go?” Joan asked her.

  Emma nodded.

  “I’ll get some patrolmen to escort you out. They’ll stay with you at the hospital,” she said.

  “Thank you,” said Emma in a small voice.

  Joan spoke to the sergeant, who was the ranking officer in the station house, and then a pair of officers appeared at the head of the gurney, one on either side of her. Emma lay back against the pillow and allowed herself to be moved toward the door of the train station, bumping along.

  She saw someone opening the door, and then she felt herself being lifted and tilted upward so that she could be taken down the stairs. She had expected the parking lot to be dark, but it was brightly lit. Wires crisscrossed the parking lot, and some photographers had set up lights. Reporters were yelling, but Emma avoided looking at any of them. The photographers’ lights were so bright in the darkness that they made the large lighted windows of the campus buil
ding opposite the narrow parking lot look dim. In a good number of the enormous windows, Emma could see people looking out curiously on the scene. She felt like a zoo animal. They were gaping at her, on her gurney, as it was lowered toward the spot where the ambulance idled. Pressed to the glass the gawkers were only visible in silhouette. In one of the windows Emma saw that there were three people looking out. One of them appeared to be propping up a large dark object that was as tall as he was, with a wide, curving base that narrowed to a long, straight neck. Emma frowned and then realized what she was looking at. A bass. The student was holding a bass fiddle.

  As if to confirm Emma’s visual impression, the girl beside him lifted up a violin, placed it under her chin, and moved away from the window. Her fellow musicians also tore themselves away from the chaotic scene. They had music to practice. The building, which looked out over the station, was the music building.

  The music building, she thought. The station house and the long platform were clearly visible from the Lambert University music building.

  The gurney was lifted, its legs folded and pushed into the ambulance. The doors were slammed shut, and the siren began to wail.

  19

  “THIS WILL BE COLD,” said the technician as she smeared the gel onto Emma’s belly and attached the wires that led to the monitor beside her bed. A tall, bespectacled resident in a white coat entered the cubicle in the emergency room where Emma had been taken.

  “All ready for you, Doctor,” said the technician.

  “Okay,” said the young man. “I’m Dr. Weiss. I’m from ob-gyn. I think everything is fine here, Mrs. Webster. No bleeding or cramping. But just to be on the safe side we’ll have a look.” He switched on the monitor and began to position the scanner on her abdomen.