Before Another Dies

by Alton L. Gansky

  The black figure stood above me. From my supine position he seemed to tower. The light from the foyer silhouetted his masked face. He reached down and grabbed a fistful of hair and began pulling me up. My heart had stopped beating; instead it quivered without rhythm. I couldn’t breathe. I was being suffocated by fear.

  He yanked my head around and my body followed. Something pressed against my jaw—a hand. The pain searing my scalp from where he held my hair lessened as he let go. He placed that hand on the back of my head. I felt my head turn slightly and my neck twist. His fingers wiggled on my jaw. I thought of Jose Lopez. I thought of Jim Fritz. I thought of a guard found dead in his guard shack. So this was what it was like for them.

  My fear melted away. My heart steadied. My mind came back online. For years I had watched old movies and had always been critical of the way they portrayed women as helpless, good only for screaming and stepping to the side until rescued by the hero. If I was going to die, I wasn’t going to die like one of those silver-screen goddesses.

  He moved my head to the right as if measuring the distance it would travel, then eased it to the left. I had never seen someone break another person’s neck, but I knew that the next second would bring a snapping motion that would end my days. I could yield to it and it would all be over in moments.

  I thought of my mother. I thought of my father. I thought of Nat and Celeste and Fritzy and Titus and Larry and West. And I thought of Jerry. Poor Jerry. This act would surely kill him as it killed me.

  I pulled at the arm with the hand that held the head God built. At best, I could hold him off a second, maybe two. But if I tried, his practiced move might not work, and I might lie on the stairs suffering a slow death.

  If I were to be another victim, I decided, I’d be one he’d remember for the rest of his miserable life. I placed one foot on the nose of the next tread, then the other, and pushed backward as hard as I could. If he wanted to break my neck, maybe I could return the favor.

  He rocked backward, and I fought for purchase and pushed again. Legs that pounded a treadmill five days a week and fueled by fear-laced adrenaline did their work.

  We fell backward. He landed on the stairs. I landed on him. And I heard the glorious sound of his head bouncing on a stair tread. He let go on the way down, clawing for the rail to one side and the wall on the other. His body cushioned my fall. The stairs knocked the wind from him, which spewed out in a guttural grunt.

  I kept pushing backward hoping that he wouldn’t have time to regain his composure. I raised myself up, scrabbled up the stairs, but felt the fleshy vise of his hand clutch my other ankle and pull. I went down again, my face by his feet.

  If my face was by his feet, then maybe my feet were by his face. I kicked for all I was worth. One heel hit something soft; next my other heel hit something hard. I knew it was the treads on the stairs. I had also gotten some part of his head.

  Again I was free. I crawled up two more steps before he was on me. Arms wrapped around my waist, and suddenly I was in the air, then falling. He had lifted me and tossed me over the handrail.

  I landed on the floor hard, and it was my turn to feel my breath leave my body. Had I been farther up the stairs, the fall would have broken something. Air or no air, I had to get to my feet. I was beyond pain. Survival was at the forefront of my mind. I must have caught him a good one with my foot, because it took a second for him to gather himself and start down the stairs.

  A second was a blessing. I staggered to my feet. My vision was blurred, and my lungs demanded air. I heard a thud behind me but I had no time to wonder about it. I started for the front door, but it was too near the staircase. I’d never make it.

  On the wall near the staircase was the alarm panel. It had a panic button, but the odds of me battling my way past my assassin long enough to hit the alarm was nil. Instead, I turned and charged for the dining room. If I could open the sliding glass doors, I could make it outside. If I could do that, I could scream loud enough and long enough to be my own alarm.

  If only I could get outside.

  I would try. I took a step and wobbled on legs that had been yanked, pulled, and forced to do work they were never designed for. The kitchen was right off the dining room. If I couldn’t make it outside, then maybe I could reach the knife set next to the stove. Could I stab a man? I decided I could. I would work out the morality later. The dining room was dark and the kitchen darker. I ran for the dark.

  Thump. Thud. There was noise from outside.

  I preferred to hear sirens. I reached the door, my gaze welded to the handle and the lock. I’d have to flip a lever releasing the lock, then slide the door to one side. There was the screen door. Mustn’t forget the screen door.

  My hand touched the handle, its cool metal chilling my fingertips.

  Thud, thud, thud . . . “Mad . . .”

  The handle receded from my grasp. No. I was receding from it. He had me by the back of my coat and blouse. This time his arm went around my throat, and I felt my feet leave the ground. I had seen police shows where this was done. They called it a sleeper hold. His arm tightened around my throat, not choking off my air but pinching off the arteries that took blood to my brain. I kicked. I clawed. Lights sparkled in my eyes like stars. Then there was a loud bang, and the stars poured into the room and showered me.

  The image was right; the logic wasn’t.

  Not that it mattered.

  I was free. He dropped me, and I fell to my hands and knees. Now what?

  I raised my head and my neck protested painfully. Something was coming through the sliding glass door. But I hadn’t had a chance to unlock it. The stars. The stars that showered me were bits of broken, tempered glass. The door had shattered into a thousand little cubes and coming through the opening was Jerry—a Jerry I didn’t recognize. His face was pulled back in a sneer that would terrify the Grim Reaper. At least, I hoped so.

  My strength was gone, my brain was demanding more blood, more oxygen, and my arms were overcooked noodles. I fell on my side and watched Jerry’s feet tromp across the glass, crunching with each step.

  Jerry wasn’t a fighter. He had never been in the military, didn’t play any sports in high school or college, hated confrontation. He was a passive, gentle, thinking man—a teddy bear in a doctor’s smock. At the moment he was a stranger. He was the best, most welcome stranger I had ever seen.

  “Get out!”

  You tell ’em, Jerry. It took a moment for me to realize he was talking to me.

  I forced myself to my knees. Not far from where I had fallen was the small, wood side table I kept between the lounge chairs on the deck. My brain had enough oxygen to do the math. The thumping I had heard was Jerry trying to get in through the back door. The garage was sealed up tight and the front door bolted. The glass door was his only possibility.

  Grunts and sick-sounding thumps came from behind me. I pulled myself up using one of the dining room chairs as a crutch. Jerry was faring badly. He was up against an experienced fighter. Jerry blocked as many punches as he could, but soon every other one was getting through. It must have taken the greatest and most desperate courage for him to do what I saw next.

  Jerry lunged, wrapping his arms around the assailant. “Run, Maddy. Run!”

  The man in black pulled his head back and head-butted Jerry straight between the eyes. Jerry’s arms dropped. His knees wobbled. A fierce blow caught Jerry just under the ribs and he went down. The brave man was on his knees before the demon in black.

  He stepped behind Jerry. A gloved hand reached for his jaw. Another found its place at the back of Jerry’s head. I found enough strength to charge, to jump, and to land on the back of the man who was about to kill my friend.

  My weight and momentum took all three of us to the ground. I held on. I didn’t try to break my fall. There could be no more pain. I held on, my arms wrapped around the man’s head. I held on, my legs around his torso. I squeezed with all my might, which wasn’t much and was becoming
less each second that ticked. I squeezed anyway.

  The attacker had amazing strength. He was able to lift himself to his feet with me attached to him like a leech. I didn’t care. I was beyond caring. I had one goal: not to let go. If he was going to kill me, he was going to have to do it while I was still attached. He staggered and clutched for me. His gloved hands reached for my head, my hair, but missed its mark. He bumped into a wall, then the dining room table. That’s when it occurred to me that I had his eyes covered. I found more strength to squeeze.

  I knew I wasn’t hurting him, although I wouldn’t have cared if I had, but I had taken away his vision. The problem was, I didn’t know what to do next. I prayed I would live long enough to see a next.

  He moved toward the shattered door, still clutching at me. Twice he bent forward so quickly I was certain I was on my way down, but my muscles hung on a little longer. He stumbled forward, then caught his foot on the upturned table Jerry had used to break in the door. We fell through the opening and onto the deck. We went down hard and that was it for me. I could hang on no longer. My arms and legs gave way, and I lay in a heap on the wood deck, the ocean beyond, the sky above.

  It was a good place to die.

  Sounds of sirens sliced the night like razors. The assailant rose, swayed, then took an abrupt two steps back. He fell over something, landing hard on his back. The something was looking at me. The something wore a white shirt and dark pants and a badge that read Atlas Security. The something stared back with unmoving, vacant eyes. His head was tilted at an odd angle.

  The sirens grew louder. Jerry appeared, blood trickling from his forehead, nose, and mouth. His face was swelling like a boxer in the twelfth round. The man in black sprung to his feet, started toward Jerry, then froze. Jerry jumped between the man and me.

  The sirens screamed. The man ran down the side yard. Jerry started after him.

  “Jerry! No!”

  He spun; anger had frozen his face into a sneer. He looked back down the side yard.

  “Jerry, no. I need you. Stay.”

  The mask of fury melted like ice in an oven. He blinked twice, then rushed to my side. “Let me look at you. Where are you hurt?”

  “No. No, Dr. Jerry. Just hold me.” I began to weep. “Just hold me.”

  He sat on the deck and cradled me in his arms.

  I sobbed. I didn’t care about appearances. I didn’t care about the media, about congress, or about city government. I let it all out as I shivered in Jerry’s arms, no longer able to control my emotions or my body.

  Jerry held me. It had all happened over the eternity of minutes, but it would live on in night terrors and every unexpected sound in the dark. We sat on the deck under a canopy of cold, staring stars, and heard the sounds of an apathetic ocean. In houses up and down the street, children slept safely in their beds, and parents watched televisions. Some would wonder about the sirens that sounded so near. A few might turn up their TVs.

  Jerry said nothing but his arms didn’t budge as he held me and we rocked gently.

  The sirens stopped. Through the shattered opening I heard a knocking. I also heard footsteps in the side yard. I tensed and Jerry held me tighter. Pulling my face away from Jerry’s chest, I looked at the man who rounded the corner. He wore the familiar uniform of the Santa Rita Police.

  “Ambulance,” Jerry demanded. “I want an ambulance right now!”

  The black of the night invaded my mind, and I could no longer hear the ocean or see the stars.

  chapter 35

  They gave me a private room. The time between the arrival of the police and when I was wheeled from the ambulance into the emergency room of Pacific Horizon Hospital was fuzzy. I remember being moved from the gurney to the ER bed well enough—it hurt. Jerry was there each moment. He refused to be seen by any doctors until my initial exam was complete. There had been poking, some prodding, a blood draw, a cold stethoscope to the chest and back, eyes peering into my eyes, ears, and mouth. All of that was followed by a short stay in radiology. By two the next morning I was in a room with pale green walls, a bulletin board with leftover get-well cards from the previous occupant, and the dark eye of a switched-off television staring back at me.

  I lay with the back of the bed tilted up, which eased the pain in my head. My arm throbbed and itched. A temporary fiberglass cast ran from my elbow to the palm of my hand.

  Pacific Horizon Hospital is a four-story building. It sits on the east side of the freeway, nestled in the side of a gentle hill. Almost all major buildings in the city were designed after the California mission style. PHH was a glass and concrete edifice whose very difference drew attention to itself. It lacked architectural style but it was a solid hospital with an intelligent, cut-above-the-average staff. I was thankful for its presence.

  Two people stood near my bed. “Dad, you need to take Mom home,” I said. “She’s tired.”

  “No, I’m not.” Mom pretended to act offended, but she was too worried to pull it off.

  “Okay then, Mom, you need to take Dad home. He’s tired.”

  “Nonsense, young lady, we’re old, we don’t sleep anymore.”

  I loved it when he called me “young lady.” With forty just around the corner I’d learned to appreciate anytime someone called me young, even if it was out of parental habit.

  Greg and Agnes Anderson were the best parents any human could hope for. Both were intelligent, funny, talented, and loving. Mom had retired from teaching music at the local high school, and my father continued to teach history at the University of Santa Barbara. He was close to retirement age, but they were going to have to extract him from the school like a dentist removes a molar. He wasn’t going to go quietly.

  I wasn’t sure how long they had been at the hospital, but they were waiting for me when I was delivered by wheelchair to the place I would call home for the night. I wanted to be discharged, but since I had been knocked about the head and shoulders, choked, and tossed over the handrail of my staircase, the doctors decided I needed some observation. They were a cautious bunch.

  “I appreciate you coming, but I’m all right. I’ll be going home in the morning.”

  “No, you’ll be coming home with us,” Mom said. It wasn’t an invitation.

  “I appreciate that, Mom, but no.”

  “All right then, we’re coming to stay with you.” Again, it was a statement, not an invitation for discussion.

  “I’d love to have you, but I charge rent. I’m thinking a large taco casserole should cover a couple of nights.”

  She smiled and tears filled her eyes. Her baby was going to be fine, but she couldn’t push the imagined scene from her mind. Nothing will start a woman crying faster than seeing another woman cry. I had to act fast. “And pound cake. I need it to keep my strength up.”

  “It’s a deal,” Dad said. Mom had put him on a diet, and any reason to break it was welcome.

  I looked at them. Each sporting hair more gray than not, more wrinkles than I recalled, and masks of deep concern. The corners of my father’s mouth turned down, making his closely trimmed beard droop. The sparkle that was always in his eye was dimmer than I had seen it.

  “I’m sending you two home. I’m mayor, I have the authority. The entire police force is at my disposal, so don’t trifle with me.” I grinned. That really hurt. I had seen my face in the mirror of the bathroom. I was confined to bed for the night, but some things demand attention. The bathroom was one of them. The image that came back from the mirror nauseated me. I had a monster bruise on my right cheek and dark bruises along my jaw, marks similar in size and shape to fingers. I knew how they got there and the realization that I was one quick, snapping motion from meeting my Maker fired up the nausea I had been fighting. While in the bathroom, I was tempted to remove my gown and see what other bruises awaited discovery. I decided they could wait until I was home.

  “We’re fine, honey,” Mom said. “You don’t have to worry about us.”

  “I won’t be abl
e to sleep if I know you two are standing vigil. Give me a kiss, then go home and rest. I’m putting you to work tomorrow.”

  Mom stepped forward and looked at me. She seemed puzzled.

  “What is it, Mom?”

  “I’m trying to find a place to kiss that won’t hurt you.”

  “The forehead’s in pretty good shape. Try there.”

  She did. I felt her warm lips on my skin and a tear that fell from her eye to my cheek. I was getting close to losing it again, and I had cried all I wanted to for the night. Dad followed suit.

  “Will you get someone to come out to the house and fix the glass in the back door?” I asked, trying to hold myself together with the glue of distraction.

  “Already done. I called and left a message at one of the glass shops in town. I’m sure they’ll be out first thing in the morning. Detective West tells me he had a couple officers put up some plywood to secure the house.”

  “That’s good. When did you see him?”

  “In the ER waiting room. He sat with us for a good while, then said he had to check on a few things.”

  “Careful what you say about me.” West walked into the room. “Look what I found nosing around your door.”

  Jerry walked in behind him. Mom gasped. So did I. I hadn’t seen Jerry since they had wheeled me down to radiology. He had taken a beating and was examined by another ER doctor. I heard him objecting to the exam, but emergency room doctors are not to be messed with, even if there is an MD after your name.

  In the dim light of the room, I saw the sweet, mildly rugged face of Jerry looking the worse for wear. One eye had closed to little more than a slit; his jaw, nose, forehead, cheeks—everything really—was puffy.

  “Oh, Jerry,” was all I could say.

  He smiled and it looked excruciating. “Do you like my new look? I think it gives me the rugged he-man appeal so many men wish they had.”