“And if you were on my jury?”
“Would I ask for a pound of flesh? No.”
Babe’s life would have been absolute hell if he’d been allowed to live it out. The best medical treatment in the world might have eased the suffering, but not reversed the insidious damage. “However, I do regret Babe’s murder – particularly the way he died.”
“All alone and scared,” she said, nodding. “Left to bleed to death like a dog in the road.”
She was in accord with him now, sharing his regret, her face set with real grief. And pity? Yes, that too. So, the death of Babe Laurie had mattered a great deal. And now the dead man was assured of one mourner, his own murderer, a woman who would certainly visit his grave to bring him the odd bouquet of guilty flowers.
EPILOGUE
The night was mild, and so she was without her black duster. The pale blue jeans and white shirt had made it easy to follow her in the gathering darkness. Though Charles had trailed Mallory here, he made no move toward her, but kept to the darkest shadows in the ring of trees, silent as a parishioner in church.
She stood on a small patch of open ground at the center of the cemetery, where two gravel roads met in the form of a cross. Just behind her was the movement of something small and alive racing through the grass in a line of bowing fronds. A bird of prey crossed the sky in a glide and then descended in a lazy circle, settling to earth. In the grass at the owl’s feet, a tiny animal screamed, and the night bird rushed up to the stars.
Mallory’s head tilted back, and at first, Charles thought she was only following the flight of the owl. But no, something else was going on here, and it was suspiciously close to a religious act. She was looking up at the sky, not in admiration for the holy handiwork in the firmament, nor with the aspect of worship, but it definitely was a communion of sorts.
Were there obscenities in her eyes?
Whatever did Heaven read in that angry face of hers? For now, in a sudden rush of wind, it began to cover its own vast face with clouds, and the conversation was ended, debate lost by default.
Disrespecting borders, she stalked across gravel and onto the grass, moving between the carved monuments and tombs. She paused by the stone that meant the most to her, and then Mallory moved on.
Now he only followed her with his eyes until she disappeared into Henry’s woods. She re-emerged, climbing the levee in long graceful strides. When she reached the top, she stood still for a moment, looking down on the cemetery. He pulled back into the circle of trees.
Though there would be days on the road before they separated, in a way, he was saying goodbye to her. Their actual parting would be more mundane; she would slip off into the canyons of New York skyscrapers and forget him. And for his part, he would cease to debase himself by following after her, doglike, growing smaller in her eyes until he altogether vanished.
The clouds were dispersing in a network of lace to expose the constellations. And now he had a small insight on the poetry of Ira’s vision, freed of conceptions of space and time, mass and the radiant energy of distant lights. Low-hanging stars winked in and out with her passage across the levee road. There was no hard line of demarcation between the heavens and the high earthen barrier. In his fractured perception, she was walking across the sky.
Goodbye, Kathy Mallory.
He said her name again, aloud this time, and now another connection was taking place, almost against his will. He climbed into Mallory’s point of view, an uncomfortable and cramped place to be, for she was only six years old, going on seven. The child in the closet had heard no sound from her mother, only the one voice speaking to the silent mob. The words may not have been clear, but the voice would have been recognized. Thoughts of the child were linking to Malcolm, whom those of long acquaintance called Mal.
Mal Laurie – Mallory.
The child had taken the name of her mother’s killer. She had been plotting, even then, to come back for him one day when she had her size, when her hands were large enough to hold a lethal weapon. Each day of her life, she had been called by that hated name – so she would not, could not, forget the worst pain a small child could suffer and yet remain alive.
Charles stood there for a time, collecting his emotions. And then, forgetting his resolution of goodbye, he struck out across the starry night, following after Mallory. He was planning to hold her very close, to inflict comfort on her, and consolation for all her pain and loss.
He realized she might not care for that. Actually, he knew she would hate that. She would probably try to wave him off, as though he might be an annoying two-hundred-pound housefly.
Well, too bad, Mallory.
He needed to hold her; that need was very strong. And now he was forming another intention to annoy her even more: Until the end of his life or hers, whenever she turned around, there he would be.
Carol O'Connell
Born in 1947, Carol O'Connell studied at the California Institute or Arts/Chouinard and the Arizona State University. For many years she survived on occasional sales of her paintings as well as freelance proof-reading and copy-editing.
At the age of 46, Carol O'Connell sent the manuscript of Mallory's Oracle to Hutchinson, because she felt that a British publisher would be sympathetic to a first time novelist and because Hutchinson also publish Ruth Rendell. Having miraculously found the book on the 'slush pile', Hutchinson immediately came back with an offer for world rights, not just for, Mallory's Oracle but for the second book featuring the same captivating heroine.
At the Frankfurt Book Fair, Hutchinson sold the rights to Dutch, French and German publishers for six figure sums. Mallory's Oracle was then taken back to the States where it was sold, at auction, to Putnam for over $800,000.
Carol O'Connell is now writing full time.
***
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Stone Angel Page 37