by R.J. Ellory
Father Henry stood up, but I felt incapable of standing.
The warden nodded, and the guards came forward, and they helped me to my feet. I expected them to get mean and tell me I was a coward, that I should face this like a man, but they didn’t say a word between them and they walked me to the door, and then they put handcuffs on me, and they shackled my ankles together, and we started down that corridor, a grim procession, and I knew that my death was right through the door at the other end.
I could see my mother’s face.
She was crying.
My father was nowhere to be seen. Did that mean something? Was he dead? Had he died and I knew nothing about it? Were we all finally free of him?
I did not dare wish such a thing in case a denial of my wishes was part of my Final Judgment. I hid that thought deep down inside of me, and I tried real hard not to think of it again.
And then we were passing through the door, and I saw the light, so bright, so fierce, and there was a window to the right, and I could see movement behind it, and I knew there would be journalists and maybe Maguire would be there with his partner, and maybe the girl’s sister would be there, the one I saw in court, and I closed my eyes as they led me to the chair, and when I sat down I knew there was nothing more I could do. Even the time for praying had been exhausted.
I just thought of Eugene, and I wondered where he was, and the fact that he was nowhere near any of this gave me a feeling of strength inside. I felt the straps over my chest and my arms and my legs, and I knew that soon they would put that thing on my head and I was ready to let it all go forever, and then someone asked me a question.
“Do you have anything to say?”
I opened my eyes.
I thought of the truth. I thought of Caroline McCready and Carole Shaw, and how one man was going to die for two murders, and only myself and Eugene knew the truth, and I thought of the minute that would elapse from the moment they put that cap on my head to the moment they threw the switch, and I prayed one last time that no phone call would come, that there would be no reprieve, that there would be no sudden change of heart.
I had to die for what I had done.
I had to die to save my brother.
I had to die in order to put an end—finally and forever—to the terrible curse that my father had laid upon both of us.
I saw Caroline’s face. I thought of all the years I had lived with that burden of conscience. I thought of the girl that Eugene had killed, and I wondered whether she too would be in Purgatory awaiting her Final Judgment.
I looked through that window.
I looked as hard as I could. I could sense the sister out there. I could feel her presence.
Could I see her there, to the right? Was that her? Perhaps, perhaps not, but I directed my words to her, and—though I knew she would never know the truth—I wanted her to understand that my words were genuine.
“In the eyes of God, I am innocent of this thing . . . but in my heart I am guilty. I am sorry . . . so truly, deeply sorry . . .”
And I was sorry.
For all of it.
For Caroline McCready, for Carole Shaw, for the legacy of my father that had seen two girls die at the hands of his sons, and I was sorry for failing to protect my mother, for not having the guts to pull the trigger of the squirrel gun that afternoon on the porch, and for my brother, Eugene, a thousand miles away and free from all of this.
They came with a black shroud, and as they put it over my head I caught a glimpse of something to my left.
I looked, and I saw him.
Eugene.
No, it could not be Eugene.
Eugene?
I wanted to say his name. I wanted to ask if that was my brother. Was he here? Had he come to see this? How long had he been in Chicago? Was that really him? Oh my God, oh my God no, it can’t be—
And then the shroud covered my eyes, my face, and I felt the leather cap on top of my head, and the strap beneath my chin, and then they were screwing that cap down tight, and I pressed my back against the chair with every ounce of strength I could muster, but my strength ran out in seconds, and I sat there and tried to convince myself that I had not seen Eugene, that I had created some indistinct image out of the depths of my imagination.
And then I do not want to know.
I try to count off the seconds.
Sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven, and I keep on counting just to have some way of filling my mind, and I am down to forty-five, and I can feel my whole body slick with sweat, and inside I am screaming, and I don’t want to go to Hell, please Lord no, don’t send me to Hell, and thirty-nine, thirty-eight, and it wasn’t all my fault, it was my father, and please do not punish my brother because he is righteous and kind and caring, and he deserves all the happiness he can find, because he was denied so much happiness as a child, and thirty-one, thirty, twenty-nine, and please let me die now, let me die now, I can’t bear this anymore, please Lord, twenty-three, twenty-two, let it all be over and done with, and can I hear movement? Is someone moving? Please God, let there be no phone call. Would I have heard a phone? Where do they have the phone? We must have reached nineteen, eighteen, and it has to be done now, surely a minute has gone, surely this is more than a minute, and Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, thirteen, twelve, and the integrity of the upright guides them, but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them, and riches do not profit in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death, and the righteousness of the blameless keeps his way straight, but the wicked fails by his own wickedness—
And then I heard something for sure.
Like the slam of a car door.
For a second there was a brilliant light, and then it was black.
Prologue
At first, somehow, it’s as if she is waking from some terrible, terrible dream.
Yes, like a dream, a nightmare, a series of hellish visions that have assaulted every sense and feeling, every thought and emotion, and left her in rags, in tatters, in pieces, as if she is a fragile thing of no real consequence, as if she has been dropped from some appreciable height, and—even now—is lying in scattered disarray on the ground.
It is like this.
She feels such pain, and it is not only the pain in her heart and mind, but in her hands, her chest, her throat, her head.
Oh, the pain in her head is immeasurable, and it is as if every ounce of blood she possesses is trying to escape through the top of her skull, an effort to relieve the dreadful, dreadful pressure that she feels.
For some seconds she cannot even think of her name.
She does not know where she is, or why, or how she came to be here, and as she tries to turn she understands that she is on her back, and that the floor above her is actually the ceiling, and then she is aware of the light burning bright in the center of that ceiling, and she tries to close her eyes against the light, but even lowering her lids takes more strength than she possesses, but she does manage it, or—rather—gravity and natural reflex close them as she neither possesses the will nor the ability to consciously control any part of her physical self.
I am dead.
This is limbo.
This is purgatory.
I have been hit by a car perhaps.
I have been hit by a car and my body is dead and now I am waiting here, and I can hear my own voice inside my mind, but there is so much pain, and someone is going to come soon and I will be told my name and my circumstances, and it will all be explained, and I will feel better—
Oh God, please let me feel better—
A handful of minutes pass, but she is not aware of the passage of time in any real and practical sense. Her perceptions are twisted off-kilter, and whatever was up is down, and whatever was left is right, and north is south and east is west, and she still cannot even find her own name within all of this, and this—perhaps more than anything—troubles her most.
W
hat kind of person cannot remember their own name?
A crazy person?
Have I gone mad?
Have I lost it completely, and I am in some kind of hospital or asylum or something, and they have given me drugs and that’s why I feel like this?
But somehow she knows she is not in a hospital. There is something about all of this that seems . . . seems familiar, like an old song unheard for decades, like a pair of shoes forgotten and found once again, shoes that have somehow preserved the shape of your feet in their being, or like recognizing the face of a child, but she is now an adult, and in looking into her eyes you see the child that she once was, and memories come back of barefoot summers and sand between your toes—
And she can feel herself breathing.
If I was dead, I would not be breathing.
If I was crazy, I would not be aware of being aware, would I?
How much of what is happening here is it possible to understand?
Anything?
Then it feels like the lights go dim, and her eyelids close tighter, and she lies there for a while longer until she becomes aware of the solidity of the floor beneath her, and she realizes that she is—in fact—lying down, and she is not floating, and she is not suspended somewhere, and the surface beneath her splayed fingers possesses a familiar texture, and she is even cognizant of the impression of a pattern in the rug, and then she tries to move sideways, and that’s when she swallows, and in swallowing she feels such a sensation of sharpness and tearing that it brings tears to her eyes, and she grimaces in pain.
And then it comes to her.
It comes in slow motion, and with each image there is the sound of a camera shutter, or she at least imagines she can hear a camera shutter, and the images play out before her like a movie theater presentation, and those images come—at first—in monochrome, and they are grainy, and with little sound at all, and yet gradually they grow, and there is texture and quality to the images, and then there is sound, and she can see his face, and she can feel his hands around her throat, and she sees the face of the man at the museum, and she can hear his voice as well, and then there is a waitress, and then there is the barkeep at The Blue Parrot, and she can smell the guy that hurt her, she can smell him in the room, on her clothes, on her skin, on her—
She starts to cry.
She understands what has happened.
She is lying on the floor of her own sitting room. She is lying on the floor, and she feels such pain and distress, and the reason she feels such pain and distress comes to her like the slowly dawning remembrance of a nightmare.
He hurt her.
He tried to hurt her . . . to kill her?
His name—
Eugene.
His name is Eugene, and he tried to kill her?
Really?
Carole Shaw lies there for a good while longer. She does not know how long. It could have been a minute, an hour, a day, but she finally opens her eyes and looks at the ceiling again. Tears well up and blur her vision, and the incessant thundering pain in her head is almost too great to bear and it grows more fierce and unkind with each passing moment, and she knows she will have to move, but she does not know how to, and she hates herself for being so vulnerable and afraid and hopeless.
Did I bring this on myself?
What happened?
We were having such a good time. It was a good day, a nice day, and we were at the museum, and then we had lunch, and did I drink too much again?
Eugene Wood . . . Woodward . . . Woodroffe.
Eugene Woodroffe.
She can see his face, even though her eyes are filled with tears, and she wonders what she did to cause him to inflict such violence on her.
And then she feels once more what it was like to have his hands around her neck, and she starts to cry, and the need to cry comes from somewhere deep and low in her body, beneath her chest, beneath her stomach, somewhere deeper, somewhere beyond physical.
She is crying from her soul.
She lies there on her sitting room floor, and she cries until the pain in her head stops her, and then she tries to roll onto her side, and her arm swings wide, and she catches the telephone cable and the phone crashes off the table and lands on the floor, and the noise is deafening.
But she is on her side, at least partially, and thus she knows she can move.
It takes a long time. Had she watched the clock she would have seen eight minutes elapse between the moment she first moved her arm and sent the telephone across the floor, and the point at which she finally, awkwardly dragged herself to her hands and knees.
She can hear the burring of the telephone line.
It is so loud.
It sounds like a plane flying overhead.
Even then—in pain, disorientated, the feeling in her head like a blunt hammer, her throat tortured and twisted and agonizingly sore—she kneels for a further three minutes before reaching out and using the edge of the table to maintain her balance so she can rock back onto her haunches.
Now she is kneeling. She is facing the bedroom door. To her right is the kitchen, to her left the front window of her apartment, and she knows that she has to call someone, she has to tell someone, she has to get next door and speak to her friend and get him to help her.
Eugene Woodroffe choked her half to death. Carole Shaw doesn’t even know what to think about that, let alone what to do.
Someone will know what to do.
But right now, first things first, she has to get to her feet. She has to do something about the pain she is feeling. She has to get a glass of water to help soothe her throat.
She reaches sideways, drags a chair toward her from the table, holds onto the backrest and uses it as leverage to bring herself to her feet. Each time she moves it hurts, but it gets easier, no less painful, but easier, and at last she is standing.
She stands for a while—a minute or two—and she just breathes as best she can. Her neck feels twice its normal size, swollen and raw and tight. Her throat feels like someone has raked the inside with a wire brush.
She uses the chair like a crutch, inching it forward, leaning on it with her full weight, taking half a step, moving ever so slowly towards the bathroom. Finally she can lift the chair no longer. She wants to scream. She leans against the doorframe, and she just lets her heart settle a little. Her pulse thunders in her temples, behind her eyes, in her ears. It rages furiously, like a storm battering through her, and she prays that it will stop soon.
Eventually she moves again, her hands on the wall, her steps still faltering but steadier, and she finds the handle of the bathroom door, grips it, and turns it.
It is dark inside, and she appreciates the relief this gives her eyes. It is a small room, narrow, just a bath, a toilet, a sink, above the sink a medicine cabinet within which there are painkillers. She needs them, three or four of them at least, and she opens that cabinet and finds the bottle, and unscrews the lid, and shakes those tablets out into her hand, and then puts the bottle back in the cabinet.
She looks for the water glass but it is not there.
Where is the damned water glass?
She cannot remember. Maybe she washed it. Maybe she took a drink of water to bed and left it there on the nightstand.
She turns around and goes back the way she came, turning left once outside the bathroom and heading for the kitchen.
She reaches the sink, sets those tablets down on the countertop. She takes a glass, half fills it with water, and then she raises it to her lips and tries to drink.
The pain of swallowing is excruciating, almost too great to bear, but she manages a small sip.
The agony in her head is greater, far greater, and she knows that all she needs is some relief from that pain, and then she will able to call someone, or go next door to her neighbor, and then she can get some help.
Someone will know what to do.
Someone will be able to help me.
She does not understand what happened. S
he cannot place what has happened in any context. Nothing like this has ever occurred before, and she has never heard of anything like this. Yes, of course, in the papers, but not to anyone she knows. Not to anyone real.
People get hurt by other people, and there are always reasons, always explanations, some that make sense and some that do not. But not herself, not people she knows.
This doesn’t happen to people like us.
She takes the first tablet and places it on her tongue. She takes another sip of water and tries to swallow. She cannot. It is just too difficult.
She stands there for a moment, and she feels the tablet starting to dissolve.
This will work. She will just get the tablets on her tongue and they will dissolve, and the taste will be awful, but anything will be better than the screaming pain that is pushing out of her skull every which way.
She picks up the other three tablets, puts them in her mouth, and she stands there for a minute or so.
Is it easing? Is the pain in her head decreasing?
The taste is dreadful—just the bitterest thing ever—and she knows she has to try and swallow them. If she swallows them they will dissolve faster, and the sooner they dissolve the more relief she will get from the terrible lightning in her head.
She takes another sip of water, and another, and she can manage it, she can actually drink some water, and she feels those tablets dislodge slightly and start to slide off her tongue.
One more sip of water and they all move.
She feels one catch at the back of her tongue, and she coughs.
The pain lances right through her throat like a knife.
Then they all go, bunching together as one, sticking there at the back of her tongue, and then gradually filling her throat.
She tries to take another sip of water but her hands are wet, and the glass seems to just slide in slow motion through her fingers.
It lands in the sink with a crash. It breaks into four or five pieces, and even as she watches the water drain away she can feel the tablets constricting her throat.