by Julie Cave
“You will drink it,” said Petesky.
“I won’t,” retorted Dinah. A sudden and powerful realization hit her: I don’t want to die!
“She’s always had a stubborn streak, Wolf,” commented Hanlon. “But we know you can handle it.”
Winters drained his drink and stood. “Yes, we’ll leave you to it. Goodbye, Dinah. I truly am sorry that it’s come to this, but I’m afraid that’s reality. I really don’t like to hang around for the messy parts, so I hope you’ll excuse me.” Hanlon waved arrogantly at Dinah and followed the senator toward the door.
At the door, Winters turned and said to Hanlon, “You can stay here and make sure the job is done.” His tone brooked no argument, and Hanlon meekly obeyed.
“Now,” said Petesky. “I don’t want to have to hurt you, but the truth is, I can hurt you terribly without leaving any marks. So I think it’s best if you just do what I tell you to do.”
Dinah clenched her jaw, clamped her teeth together, and shook her head.
Petesky pushed a finger into the soft, tender gristle just underneath her ear. Stabbing pain shot through Dinah’s jaw and head, and her mouth fell open involuntarily. Fluidly, Petesky poured the liquid into her open mouth, and although Dinah tried to spit it out, the gag reflex in her throat meant that she swallowed the majority of it.
When they had finished the first glass, Petesky grinned at her. “There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Hanlon watched, a slightly sick expression on his face. Perhaps he’d never realized the impact his selfish choice had on their chosen victims, and was only now being forced to accept it.
Petesky spent the next half hour inventing ways that Dinah might be forced to drink the lethal combination. Gradually, Dinah could feel her senses fading and her resistance slipping. She was drifting into the dark, quiet place that she had dreamed about for so long, but she realized now that she wanted to live.
God! she cried desperately as the room spun and her vision narrowed. If You’re there and You truly care about me, please don’t let me die! I need You to help me. I’m sorry for what I’ve done, I’m sorry for everything.
And then she knew nothing as the darkness overcame her.
• • • •
Dinah floated in a mirage, hazy with streaks of light. She felt weightless and strangely out-of-body. I must have died, she realized. She was rather disappointed; where was the white light leading her home? Where was the rich and kind baritone of God welcoming her to heaven?
Instead she sensed a person leaning over her, possibly shaking her where her arm would normally be. The light gradually became stronger, and then her other senses started to kick in.
“Dinah! Wake up for me. Come on, Dinah!”
Dinah struggled to wake from the fog she was lying in. Was she alive after all? Eventually her eyes began to focus on an unfamiliar face leaning over her. Finally she realized where she was — in a hospital, with a doctor staring at her.
She tried to speak, but her tongue remained a furry slug in her mouth and wouldn’t move.
“She’s awake!” proclaimed the doctor. “Young lady, you are very lucky indeed.”
Dinah frowned and tried to convey her confusion without words.
Then a familiar face joined the doctor, who was now shining lights in her eyes and taking her temperature. Sandra Coleman grasped one of Dinah’s hands.
“Thank You, God,” she said fervently. “Oh, Dinah. You don’t know how glad I am to see that you’re awake.”
Dinah tried to speak again. “Wha . . . ?”
“Vital signs are good,” announced the doctor, finishing his checks. He turned his attention to Dinah. “You’ve had your stomach pumped, so you are going to feel a bit tender for a few days. You’ll stay here until you’ve regained your strength and your eating habits have returned to normal. Then I’d like you to book into the outpatient psychiatric clinic attached to this hospital. We don’t take murder attempts lightly.” He looked at Sandra. “I’ll be back later. Let the nurses know if you have any questions.”
Dinah looked at Sandra in confusion, and then pointed to the water glass next to the bed. Sandra helped her drink it, and the dryness in her mouth was relieved. Then Dinah saw the large head of Ferguson appear, also hovering over the bed.
“What happened?” she asked thickly.
Sandra sighed. “Ferguson is what happened. Thank God for Ferguson.”
“You can thank me later, Harris. I was coming to see you and happened to catch sight of the Petesky fellow putting you into a car. You weren’t looking overly happy at the prospect. So I followed you out to the industrial precinct and called for backup. Imagine my surprise when we burst into that room and found you passed out, with Petesky and Hanlon standing over you. They were intending to take you back to your apartment, where it would look like you had taken the overdose yourself.”
“Did you arrest Hanlon and Petesky?” asked Dinah eagerly.
“We certainly did. It’s caused no end of fuss in the media. This hospital is crawling with journalists, hoping for a bedside interview with you.”
“After the way they’ve treated me?” Dinah exclaimed. “I don’t think so. I never want to talk to one of them again.” She paused, thinking. “Do you know what happened with David Winters?”
Ferguson shrugged. “The senator? There was no one else around at the time. Why?”
“Because he was involved, too!” Dinah struggled to sit up but didn’t have the strength. “He was there only moments before Petesky tried to jam sleeping pills down my throat. He’s the one who set it all up. I did some research just before Petesky arrived at my door. Petesky served under Winters in the Delta Special Ops. He explained it all to me — how they were unhappy with Whitfield wanting to introduce creationism into the museum and he set it up to have him killed. IAFSI ordered him to fix the problem with Whitfield because they have been funding his election campaigns, and he wants to be president and they’ve promised to fund that campaign, too. He arranged for Petesky to kill Southall, Mason, and Biscelli, too, because they all talked and he didn’t want us to find out his level of involvement.” Dinah stopped to catch her breath. “What did Hanlon and Petesky say?”
“They’re not talking,” said Ferguson thoughtfully. “I don’t know what evidence we’ll be able to find to implicate Winters. If Hanlon and Petesky don’t corroborate your story, it’ll be you against him in a court of law. And to be honest, I don’t think you’d win.”
Dinah was disheartened. Again, she was reminded of the power of the senator and her own self-imposed credibility problems.
Ferguson stood. “I’ll look into it,” he promised. “But don’t get your hopes up. If there is no physical evidence, and Hanlon and Petesky don’t talk, I’m not sure I’ll get a judge to agree to indict him. He’s a senator, not just some schmuck off the street.”
Dinah nodded, her mind whirling. Hadn’t Winters boasted to her that he didn’t tolerate loose ends? She was one of the biggest loose ends in the whole case.
Ferguson left and Dinah and Sandra sat in silence for several moments.
“Listen, Sandra. I know now that I don’t want to die,” Dinah said suddenly.
Sandra grinned and grasped Dinah’s hand. “I’m so glad to hear you say that,” said Sandra. “And what about your . . . you know, alcohol problem?”
Dinah hesitated only a moment. “I know I need to do something about that as well.”
Sandra let go of Dinah’s hand, looking vastly relieved. She pulled up a chair close to the side of Dinah’s bed.
“Can you tell me what happened?” she asked. “I know you carry great pain within you. Are you able to tell me about it?”
Dinah considered. She had never trusted anyone enough to open her heart. Yet the woman sitting before her had saved her life only hours before. She supposed if anyone deserved her trust, it was Sandra Coleman.
Chapter 20
Believe it or not,” said Dinah bitterly, “I used to b
e a very good FBI agent. I used to work with gang members, getting them to leave their gangs and set up a new life, and learning about the way the gangs worked in the process. It was important work, I thought. I threw everything I had into it. And I suppose my family suffered in the process. I was married to Luke and we had a little boy, Sammy. He was nearly two.” She thought of his golden wispy hair and cheeky smile and the pain assaulted her once again. The emptiness of her heart never ceased to shock her.
“Luke was my first and only great love,” Dinah continued. “We met at a concert that was terrible, so we left and went for coffee. I don’t even know how to explain the bond. We both loved music; in fact we measured milestones by the music that was around at the time. He was smart and funny and good-looking and I couldn’t bear to be apart from him. We were really happy for a time, our little family.”
She paused as her throat tried to close. The funny thing was that now she was having difficulty remembering the line of his jaw and the exact shade of his eyes and she hated herself for it.
“Once we had Sammy, Luke wanted me to cut back on work and spend most of my time with him. And that was my plan, too. But I was caught up with work — I was too busy saving the lives of these gang kids and my own family was slipping away. I know now that I wasn’t doing the right thing. Sammy needed me, but I thought he would always be …there; I didn’t know I didn’t have much time.”
And how would you know that you didn’t have any time left? She thought of their lives as a long, intertwined braid with many years ahead of them. She had watched Sammy’s personality develop over the two short years they’d had together, and she had looked forward to seeing his first day at school, whether he loved sports, his first girlfriend. What she had lost was so much more than a son. She had lost her hope.
Dinah struggled on. “Luke was right and I should have listened to him. I wish I had listened to him. I was too engrossed in myself and my career to notice what was happening: that they needed me.”
Sandra could see the distress, still raw, on Dinah’s face. “You can’t change the past,” she said gently.
“I didn’t listen for such a long time. Luke got sick of repeating himself. I was working long hours — well, you’ve seen the odd hours we have to work sometimes. Finally he laid down an ultimatum. He told me to choose between my family or my job, that I couldn’t have both.”
Dinah sighed, wishing for the thousandth time that she could turn back time.
“We had a big fight that night. I hated being told what to do, being an independent woman. But if I’d just listened to what he was saying — it all could have been so different. I said some horrible things. I told him that I didn’t need him and not to drag Sammy into it, that he was overreacting.” Her words had been like tiny arrows, too hard to take back once they’d been fired. She remembered his wounded eyes as each arrow found its mark.
“Then Sammy woke up because he heard our shouting and came out, crying. It was already a stressful situation and then he started to scream. I couldn’t take it and I yelled at them both to stop it and be quiet. It only made things worse. I remember Luke’s eyes became really flat and cold, like I had crossed a line. The way he looked at me — it was horrible, like I wasn’t worthy of motherhood anymore. He told me to go to bed, and he was going to take Sammy for a drive to calm him down. That was the last time I saw them.”
A lump rose in Dinah’s throat and it took great effort to say, “My last memories of them are the cold hurt in Luke’s eyes and Sammy so upset his little face was red from screaming.”
Sandra put her hand on Dinah’s arm in comfort.
“They didn’t come home. I went to bed, thankful for some peace and quiet, and I didn’t wake up until about midnight. I hadn’t heard them come home, so I got up to check. The house was too quiet, it didn’t feel right. I thought perhaps Luke had decided to sleep on the couch but the house was empty. Sammy wasn’t in his bed, Luke was nowhere to be found. I remember that a cold shiver went down my spine right as the phone rang. It was the police, calling to say that there had been an accident. Luke and Sammy had collided head-on with a semi-trailer. The driver had fallen asleep momentarily and the truck crossed the lines and hit our car. They didn’t stand a chance.”
Dinah’s tears flowed freely. “I had to go to the hospital and identify them. The horror of that is something I can’t even think about. It is too deep; too painful. They were dead, and my whole life had died with them.”
“Oh, Dinah, how awful,” said Sandra, tears in her eyes. “I’m so terribly sorry.”
“I don’t remember the funeral. I felt as if it wasn’t real, that I was an actor in some tragic romance movie. I vaguely recall people being there around me, but I couldn’t tell you who they were. I barely even reacted when the caskets were lowered into the ground. I couldn’t believe they were in them. I went home and lay in our bed, staring at the empty side where Luke always lay. That was when I realized that he would never lie next to me again, that I would never be kept awake by his snoring again, that I would never again be awakened by Sammy in the early morning, wanting to snuggle in bed with us.” Dinah could no longer speak and she dropped her head into her hands, as her sobs wracked her frame.
There were so many things that she couldn’t verbalize to Sandra: that the numbness of her heart terrified her; that death didn’t sever the bonds of love yet didn’t allow her to practice it; that their ghosts still haunted her when she saw other boys Sammy’s age; that guilt is so huge and encompassing that it chokes the will to live.
“That is why,” Dinah said, finally, “I have spent the last 12 months wanting to die.”
• • • •
Sandra nodded. “Please, go on.”
“I went back to work too soon,” Dinah continued, when she was able. “I wanted something to occupy my mind so that I couldn’t think about Luke and Sammy all the time. If I stayed home, I probably would never have gotten out of bed at all. But things had changed — I was tired and distracted and …well, you read what happened in the newspaper, I’m sure.”
“Everyone makes mistakes, Dinah,” Sandra said.
“Except that my mistakes lead to people dying,” replied Dinah bitterly. “I had let down my family and they were dead. I had let down a boy who wanted to escape his gang and have a chance at a normal life and he was dead. I felt like I had the touch of death.” Dinah closed her eyes and tried to compose herself. “I was given a research and teaching position where I couldn’t do any damage. It was humiliating.”
“When did you start drinking?” Sandra asked.
“A few nights after the funeral,” Dinah said, after considering. “I couldn’t sleep. I found that if I had a few drinks before I went to bed I slept better. Plus, I hate being awake — all I think about is how I could’ve done things differently. And drinking made me feel numb.”
“Is that how you feel now?”
Dinah frowned. “I don’t know …I suspect I’ll always crave it, but before, I didn’t really care. I was planning to …you know, I didn’t want to be alive. But now I do and I don’t want to live the same life. Things have to change.”
“Why did you think suicide was the answer?”
“I didn’t want to feel pain anymore. I was sick of waking up every day and having to live with an empty house and in pain. It wears you down. Every holiday and birthday is a torment. It never gets better. I just got sick of it.”
“What did you think would happen once you died?”
“I was hoping for nothing,” admitted Dinah. “I just wanted to sleep forever and never wake up.”
“Did you think about God?”
“Not really. I….” Dinah hesitated. “I guess I believe that there is a God. But He’s always seemed very distant to me and uninterested in what’s going on down here. And frankly, I can’t understand why He would allow my family to die. I thought He was supposed to be a loving God.”
“You think God is responsible for the suffering and death
in the world?”
Dinah shrugged. “Well, if anyone can do anything about it, it would be Him.”
“Actually, God created an earth that was perfect in every way,” explained Sandra. “There was no death or suffering in that world. But we ruined it by rebelling against Him. So really the fact that there is death and suffering in the world is because of us.”
Dinah frowned. “I don’t get it. What do you mean?”
“Let me tell you that God has two major characteristics — one is love and the other is justice. There are other characteristics, of course, but let’s focus on these. He created human beings by breathing life into them, by putting something of Himself into each and every one of us. The love He has for us is the pure and unconditional love of a parent for a child. Here’s the thing: He created us to have free choice. And one of the choices we can make is to reject a relationship with Him and do our own thing. When humans chose to reject God, then the earth ceased being perfect and everything started to go downhill. For one thing, everyone dies because the punishment for sin is death. That wasn’t part of God’s original plan. People get sick. People do awful things to one another. The world in which we live is not the one God intended for us; it’s the one we chose.”
“But humans are capable of good, as well,” objected Dinah. “Most people live decent lives. How can you say we are all terrible?”
“Let’s use the Ten Commandments as an example,” suggested Sandra. “They’re a guide as to how God wants us to live. Are you suggesting that people don’t lie? That they always honor their parents? That they don’t use God’s name as a swear word? That they don’t look at their neighbors’ plasma TV and covet it?”
“Well, I suppose everybody has done something like that once or twice in their lives,” conceded Dinah.
“Exactly. Those things are sinful, just as murder and rape are sinful. So everybody sins, and the truth is that no matter how hard we try to live up to those standards, we simply can’t.