If Diana were indeed the avenging mother of Carina, it would explain why she had been so overbearing with Maggie, telling her to write “truthfully” about the rape. Diana had no doubt thought that her own daughter was the victim of the rape and that it had resulted in Carina’s suicide; the same story that Maggie had hinted at to Jane beginning on that first night on the pond. But that was before the latest Diana letter had appeared, telling the truth about Carina’s death. She had not killed herself because she was a victim of a rape but from the rejection by Maggie. And now Maggie must believe that Diana would kill her next because of her part in Carina’s death. And that was what she meant when she said so cryptically that Diana “will do what she will.” Maggie was resigned to the fact that Diana would kill her, and Jane needed to stop that from happening, although her mind spun as she tried to figure out how.
Suddenly, Jane remembered the day that Diana had broken into her office to leave the severed penis of her first victim on her desk, and something in her mind clicked into place. Diana hadn’t just dropped off her package that afternoon on Jane’s desk as a weird joke; she had used the incident to cover-up her theft of the key to the file storage room. And that, Jane realized, was the reason the key had been found on the floor a few days after the break-in. Diana had tossed the key through the mail slot to make it seem like it had simply come loose and fallen to the floor.
But if Diana had indeed broken into Jane’s office for the purpose of removing a file, why hadn’t she removed Maggie’s file as well? The answer could only be that she had not known the pseudonym that Martha had used to conceal Maggie’s identity. That also meant that Diana’s sole purpose in breaking into the office had been to remove her own file.
Quickly, Jane went to the cabinet containing the file beginning with “S”. It did not take long to find a thin file that bore the pseudonym “Shakespeare’s Favorite Daughter” which matched the initials SFD. Inside, Jane was disappointed to find no documents except a form indicating that the papers had been destroyed. She was about to put it back when she looked again at the date written on the form. It was for a day about two months before Martha’s death, which was not possible. Three months before she had died, Martha had gone into the hospital and never returned to her apartment or office. The last six weeks she had been in a hospice facility. She would never have allowed her secretary to do something as important as stripping files, especially files sensitive enough to have a pseudonym. That meant someone else had put the form in this file and concocted that date to cover her tracks. And the person who had done all that was Diana, Shakespeare’s Favorite Daughter. But who could that be?
Restless and desperate now to contact Maggie, Jane went back upstairs to her office and found a new e-mail in her inbox.
Dearest Sweet Jane,
I know you have been trying to reach me and it must seem callous of me not to respond. But believe me, I am suffering every minute that I am away from you, especially when I think that I might be causing you even the slightest pain. But I have made a decision, and I know that it is the best way for both of us. Sweet sweet Janey, I am at peace. Finally. Or at least I will be soon.
Please don’t try to contact me anymore! Each call is like a dagger to my heart.
M.
Finally at peace? Those words confirmed Jane’s fears. Maggie expected to die, no doubt at Diana’s hand.
Frantically, Jane typed the words “Shakespeare” and “daughter” into her computer’s search engine. Within minutes she learned that Shakespeare indeed had two daughters—Judith and Susanna. Jane felt her heart rise in her throat at the sight of those two names. Between Judith and Susan, surely Judith was the more likely, but Susan Hempten was also capable.
Jane thought there must be some key to Diana’s identity in the fact that Martha had said she was Shakespeare’s favorite daughter. Judith Shakespeare apparently had had a child, thus making Shakespeare a grandfather, if only briefly since the grandchild seemed to have died at a young age. That could be what Martha had meant. The other daughter, Susanna, had herself died at a very young age. Was there some reference in Shakespeare’s plays or sonnets to indicate that he had loved that little girl the best of all of his children until she died?
Jane did not have any more time to spend on speculation. It was now almost five-thirty and the demonstration was going to start in half an hour. She had to tell Smalley and Maggie what she had discovered.
She ran out the door to hail a cab but realized that the subway would be the fastest way to get to Chelsea in the rush hour of a Monday evening, especially if streets near the demonstration were closed by the police. As she hurried to the 86th Street subway station, she dialed Smalley. He picked up almost immediately, but his calm voice had no effect on her cascading emotions.
“I don’t have time to explain,” Jane said breathlessly. She crossed Lexington at 88th street, dodging cars that sounded their horns angrily. “But I’m sure that Diana is either Judith or Susan.”
“How do you know that?” Smalley asked.
Jane slipped between the pedestrians on the sidewalk.
“It’s too complicated to explain right now. It’s from Martha’s files.”
Halfway along the final block, Jane heard a train entering the station.
“I can’t do anything with just that!” Smalley said.
Jane started to run, taking the stairs down into the station two at a time. Smalley’s voice was breaking up. She wasn’t sure he could hear her at all as she went through the turnstile and the train came to a halt. The loudspeaker blared above her.
“I’m going to the demonstration now,” she shouted. “We’ll talk there. But please watch them both! One is a killer!”
* * * *
Minutes later, Jane ran through the crowd from the 42nd street shuttle. It seemed like an endless amount of time passed before the shuttle doors closed and the train began to make its way west to the Broadway line. Every few seconds she checked her watch. Her stomach was tied into a painful knot. Sweat beaded on her face and neck and chest. It was already five-fifty. Then the shuttle doors opened and within another few minutes she was on the Broadway local to 23rd Street.
When she emerged from the subway, she called Judith.
“Is Maggie with you?”
“Yes, she’s here.”
“I have to talk to her.”
“Well, she doesn’t want to talk to you. In fact, she gave me that exact instruction.”
“Judith, you can’t let her talk to the crowd!”
“I think that’s up to Maggie, not—”
“Stop the bullshit! I’m on to you, Judith. Shakespeare’s favorite daughter has got to be you.”
“You’ve lost your fucking mind!”
“I’m warning you!”
“Go to hell!”
The crowd was thick on the block of Jarvey’s Bar, but the street in front of the bar and for a hundred yards to either side was an empty no-mans land. Police in uniform held back the crowds, but Jane didn’t see Smalley, so she pushed her way through the mass of spectators to get to the barricades close to where the Eumenides were standing. Judith spoke to the gathering, thanking women for coming and introducing Maggie as the soul of the Eumenides. Maggie took the megaphone from Judith and waited for the crowd to become quiet as Jane struggled finally to a place along the wooden police barricades that was almost directly opposite from where Maggie was. The Eumenides were lined up behind Maggie in a phalanx of down coats. Judith stood beside her, surveying the crowd. Across the empty street from them was the bar. Outside, a row of men positioned themselves, shoulder to shoulder, mimicking the Eumenides. A large heavy man was in their center.
Maggie raised her head once in Jane’s direction, smiled quickly, and then looked down again.
“I am Maggie Edwards, and I have a confession to make,” she said. “I will try not to take up too much of your time. Diana must finally be stopped, and so must the violence. I am prepared to make that happen today.”
Her words were met by cheers from most of the crowd, but the Eumenides talked angrily among themselves. Judith was unfazed.
Judith stepped back and whispered to the woman closest to her. “Give the signal.”
The woman nodded and pulled out a cell phone as she disappeared behind the ranks of the Eumenides.
Maggie unfolded a few pages of typed materials and began to read:
Chapter Seven
~ Diana ~
By
Maggie Edwards
When I said I never saw her again, I lied. It didn’t happen that way at all.
After Carina and I argued, I went out to a pier on the Hudson River: a favorite spot from the days before Getting There, when I didn’t have money for any sort of entertainment or trips to the country. I had gone there often at night to listen to the sounds of the river, watch the stars, and feel the breezes coming across the water. The pier was not open to the public, but I found a small spot where the fence was loose enough to slip through and I could be alone. On a good night, I felt as though I were on an island of my own far away from Manhattan.
I made the mistake of bringing Carina there once. So she knew of the place and followed me there.
It was a foggy night and as I walked to the end of the pier, my connection to Manhattan seemed to vanish into the thick mist. The lights of the city buildings and of the opposite shore were insignificant blurs, like fireflies crossing a field.
Carina suddenly appeared before me. However, this time she was not filled with grief for the loss of her love, but rather with the anger of a woman whose love has been scorned.
She told me I should not have treated her so badly, and that I would regret it—she was not going to just walk away. She wanted money: a portion of what I had in the bank, and a portion of what I was to receive in the future. She stood inches from me, laughing. She said I was a coward—too weak to go after the men who raped me and too dishonest to allow the truth to come out about either the rape or the fact that the author of Getting There was actually a lesbian.
I slapped her hard across the face. The blow took her by surprise. She was knocked off balance and fell, hitting her head on a metal pipe that rose up through the pier. She lay awkwardly on the wooden pier, perfectly still. I went to her and patted her hand, calling her name, trying to wake her up, but she wouldn’t respond. I felt for her pulse but could find none.
I panicked. I left her, and ran along the river. Finally, I came to my senses and went back to where she had been lying. She was not there.
One morning a week or so later, a pair of policemen appeared at my front door. They told me that Carina’s body had been found floating in Lower New York Bay, an apparent suicide. Her body was badly decomposed at that point. They had discovered my name on some papers in her room. They were hoping I could tell them more about her family. I told them that she was a fan, a particularly devoted fan, which I had seen at first as flattering but who increasingly had become a pest. I had been forced to tell her to leave me alone and to threaten her with a formal protective order. Other than that, I knew nothing. That satisfied them.
As they were leaving, I asked how they knew it was a suicide. They said she had been alive when she went into the river. Her lungs were full of water.
She must have gotten to her feet, disoriented by the blow, and stumbled off the pier. If I had stayed, I could have prevented her death.
The image of her disappearing under the water has haunted me ever since: the possibility that she may have come to and struggled vainly to reach the surface.
It was a fitting punishment that I could no longer write. To purge the memories of that terrible time from my life, and to make amends to Carina, I plotted to kill and castrate those two men and to finally write the truth of the whole story.
Now I am prepared for one last death and the punishment that I deserve.”
The crowd was hushed after she spoke. Across the open area, Jane saw that Smalley had pushed to the edge of the crowd. He spoke into a radio.
Maggie gave the papers to Judith and pulled a pistol out of her bag—the same pistol Jane had seen in the drawer of Maggie’s dresser at the farm. The sight caused the entire crowd to draw in its breath and several to cry out in alarm. With the gun at her side, Maggie started walking across the street toward the bar where the men stood outside. Before she was halfway there, several police officers had drawn their guns and blocked her way, shouting at her to drop her weapon.
Jane ducked under the barricade. A police officer immediately stopped her.
“Get back!” he said.
“Don’t shoot her!” Jane screamed. “Smalley, stop them! Maggie’s gun is empty. She just wants to be shot.”
Smalley stepped forward his identification held high in the air.
“Hold your fire!” Smalley shouted.
Maggie paused, turning to Jane with a slight smile on her face, shaking her head.
“I left one in the chamber, Jane,” she said. “And I had more bullets hidden away. Didn’t I tell you—false in one thing, false in all things.”
Then she looked again at the officers and lifted the gun toward them, holding it with two hands. Screams erupted in the crowd, and several bystanders dropped to the ground. In the confusion, Jane pulled away from the cop and raced toward Maggie, tackling her around the waist and grabbing the gun.
“No, Janey, no!” Maggie screamed, her voice filled with despair as she fell to the pavement. “Why won’t you let me die?”
“What happened was an accident, Maggie.”
Maggie sat up, rocking her body forward and backward.
“I killed Carina. I killed her!”
“Please stop talking this way,” Jane said. “We will face that together! You made a mistake. I still love you. Why won’t you let yourself be loved?”
At that moment, while the police and the rest of the people in the crowd focused on Maggie, the overhead street lights along the block were smashed, and out of the darkness two bricks were heaved through the bar’s front windows, leaving jagged openings through which Molotov cocktails were thrown. Immediately, the interior of the bar erupted into flame. The men who were still inside scrambled through the door, one of them screaming as he beat at the flames that engulfed his shirt. Before anyone had a chance to help him, the Eumenides emerged from the crowd and fell on the men from the bar with baseball bats and crowbars, breaking legs and knees to render them helpless to run away.
The crowd panicked at the sudden darkness, and the explosion and fire. They spilled over the barricades, running in all directions. Smalley tried to organize the officers, but his voice could barely be heard and they were all swept up in the surging waves of people. One or two cops reached the Eumenides but were set upon before they could do anything.
The heavyset man who had been standing in the center of the men outside the bar, the one called Nat, grabbed a trashcan and used it to defend himself, but a blow from behind at the side of his leg crippled him. He was limping away down the block, when a second swing of a baseball bat shattered his other leg and he fell to the pavement. Desperately, he dragged himself into an alley, followed by two women.
When a man appeared out of the shadows, Nat thought he had found an ally. But the man simply stood and watched as the two women grabbed his hair in their clenched fists and pushed his head downwards hard against the concrete, leaving him flat on his back.
Nat was stunned momentarily. He struggled to sit up, but his head was smashed against the pavement a second time. Blood appeared at one edge of his mouth. His arms were restrained.
The man knelt awkwardly beside Nat, who looked up to see his tormenter’s face in the darkness.
“Remember me, Nat?” the man said.
Nat seemed on the verge of recollection when a knife disappeared upward between his legs, penetrating just below his scrotum. The surge of pain turned Nat’s eyes glassy for a moment. Then he gasped and shook as the knife moved up his body slowly, cutting him open
in a line six inches deep across his belly to the ribcage, where it stopped, stuck in his bloody entrails.
“Justice,” one of the three whispered.
Back in the street, Jane helped Maggie to her feet. But as the crowd rushed around them, Maggie pushed Jane away and ran off into the night. Jane tried to follow but lost sight of her almost immediately in the darkness.
She found Smalley. Ari was with him, and for the first time even she seemed stricken by the evening’s events. She curled her head against Smalley’s chest as Jane explained what she had found earlier in Martha’s files.
“We’ve already arrested Judith. Susan Hempten is still here. She’ll be arrested next as a precaution.”
“Thank you, Detective,” Jane said. Abruptly, she turned to leave.
“Where are you going?” Smalley asked.
“I think I know where Maggie’s gone.”
“Do you want an officer to come with you?”
“No, I think she’s safe now that Diana has been stopped.”
* * * *
Ten minutes later, she reached the Hudson River and started north. In a short while, she found the pier that Maggie had once told her about, stretching into the Hudson at the base of 11th Street. It was more dilapidated than she had expected it would be. On one corner, the wire fence was loose as Maggie had described in her confession, and Jane squeezed underneath.
The concrete surface was uneven and broken through in places. She could both hear and see the water lapping beneath her, which disoriented her as she walked along. Several times she stumbled over pipes and bits of reinforcing bar that jutted out of the concrete. She wanted to turn back but knew she had to keep going.
Praise Her, Praise Diana Page 35