Malice

by Danielle Steel

  “You little bitch!” he shouted at her, still shaken by the strength of his orgasm. No one had ever aroused him as Grace did. He wanted to take her and turn her inside out, tear her limb from limb, and devour her. Nothing excited him more than his own flesh, it was deeply primeval. And he was outraged now that she was still going to fight him. He moved to grab the gun from her, and she could see what he was going to do to her. He was going to beat her again and beating her always aroused him further. She couldn't let him do it, couldn't let him take her ever again. She had to save herself from him. He was still inside her, as he reached over to grab the gun from her, and in panic she squeezed the trigger as he tried to take it. He looked stunned for just an instant as the gun went off with a sound that terrified her, his eyes bulged, and then he fell down on her with a crushing weight. She had shot him through the throat, and he was bleeding profusely, but he wasn't moving. She tried to fight her way out from under him, and free herself from him, but she couldn't do it. He was too heavy, and she couldn't breathe, and there was blood in her eyes and her mouth now. She was gasping for air, and then with all the strength she had, she forced him from her. He rolled over on his back on the bed, and made a terrifying gurgling sound as he looked at her, but nothing moved and his eyes were open.

  “Oh my God … oh my God …” she said, still gasping for air, and clutching her own throat now as she stared at him. She could still taste his blood on her tongue, and she didn't want to touch him. There was blood all over her and the bed, and all she could think of were her mother's words … “Be good to Daddy, Grace … be good to him … take care of him … always take care of your father …” And she had. She had shot him. His eyes moved around the room, but he seemed to be paralyzed, nothing moved, as he stared at her in terror. She backed into the corner then, and looked at him, and as she did, her whole body shook violently and she threw up on the carpet. When she stopped, she forced herself to go to the phone, and dial the operator.

  “I need … an ambulance … ambulance … my father's been shot … I shot my father. …” She was gasping for air, and she gave them the address, and then she stood staring at him. He hadn't moved since he'd fallen back on the bed, and his organ was limp now. The thing that had so terrified her, that had tortured her for so long, looked suddenly so small and harmless, as did he. He looked terrifying and pathetic, blood was bubbling from his throat, and he moaned from time to time. She knew she had done a terrible thing, but she couldn't help it. The gun was still in her hand, and she was cowering naked in the corner when the police came. And she was gasping from her asthma.

  “My God …” the first officer into the room said softly, and then he saw her and took the gun from her as the others walked into the room behind him. The youngest of them thought to wrap her in a blanket, but he had seen the marks on her, the blood smeared everywhere, and the look in her eyes. She seemed crazy. She had been to hell and only halfway back.

  Her father was still alive when the ambulance and the paramedics came, but barely. She had severed his spinal cord and the paramedics suspected that the bullet had gone into his lung after that. He was completely paralyzed, and couldn't speak to them. But he didn't even see Grace as he left. His eyes were closed, and they were giving him oxygen. He was barely breathing.

  “Is he gonna make it?” the senior policeman asked the paramedics as they put him into the ambulance and turned the siren on in a hurry.

  “Hard to say,” they answered, and then in an undertone, “Not likely.” They left the scene then, and the older officer shook his head. He had known John Adams since he was in high school. John had handled his divorce for him. Hell of a guy, and why in God's name had the kid shot him? He'd seen the scene when they'd arrived, and he'd noticed that neither of them was dressed, but that could mean anything. Obviously, it had happened after they went to bed in their own rooms, and John probably didn't sleep in pajamas. Why the girl was naked was another thing. She was obviously unbalanced, and maybe her mom's death had been too much for her. Maybe she blamed her father for the mother's death. Whatever it was, they'd find it out in the investigation.

  “How is she?” he asked one of his junior officers. There were a dozen officers on the scene by then. It was the biggest thing that had happened in Watseka since the minister's son had taken LSD and committed suicide ten years before. That had been a tragedy, but this was going to be a scandal. For a man like John Adams to be shot by his own kid, that was a real crime, and a loss for the whole town. No one was going to believe it. “Is she on drugs?” he asked as a photographer took pictures of the bedroom. The gun was already in a plastic bag in the squad car.

  “She doesn't look like it,” the young cop said. “Not obviously, at least. She looks kind of out of it, and very scared. She has asthma, and she's having a hard time breathing.”

  “I'm sorry to hear it,” the senior officer said sarcastically as he glanced around the neat living room. He had been there only hours before, after the funeral. It was hard to believe why he was back now. Maybe the kid was just plain crazy. “Her father's got a lot worse than asthma.”

  “What did they say?” The junior officer looked concerned. “Is he gonna make it?”

  “It doesn't look great. Seems like our little shooter here did quite a job on her old man. Spinal cord, maybe a lung, God only knows what else, or why.”

  “Think he was doing her?” the younger man asked, intrigued by the situation, but the older man looked outraged.

  “John Adams? Are you nuts? Do you know who he is? He's the best lawyer in town. And the most decent guy you'd ever want to meet. You think a guy like him would do his own kid? You're as crazy as she is and not much of a cop if you can come to a conclusion like that.”

  “I don't know … it kind of looked like it, they were both naked … and she looks so scared … there's a bruise coming up on her arm … and …” He hesitated, given the senior man's reaction, but he couldn't conceal evidence, no matter who the guy was. Evidence was evidence. “There was come on the sheets, it looked like …” There had been a lot of blood, but there were other spots too. And the young cop had seen them.

  “I don't give a damn what it looked like, O'Byrne. There's more than one way for come to get on a man's sheets. The guy's wife just died, maybe he was lonely, maybe he was playing with himself when she came in with the gun, maybe she didn't know what he was doing and it scared her. But there's no way in hell you're gonna come in here and tell me that John Adams was doing it to his kid. Forget it.”

  “Sorry, sir.” The other officers were already rolling up the sheets as evidence anyway and putting them in plastic bags too, and another officer was talking to Grace in her bedroom. She was sitting on the bed, still wearing the blanket they had given her when they got there. She had found her inhaler and she was breathing more easily now, but she looked deathly pale, and the officer questioning her wondered how clear she was on what had happened. She seemed so dazed that he almost wondered if she understood him. She said she didn't remember finding the gun, it was suddenly just in her hand, and it went off. She remembered the noise, and then her father bleeding all over her. And that was all she remembered.

  “How was he bleeding on you? Where were you?” He had the same impression of the scene as O'Byrne, though it seemed hard to believe of John Adams.

  “I don't remember,” she said blankly. She sounded like an automaton, her breath was still coming in little short gasps, and she seemed a little shaky from the medication.

  “You don't remember where you were when you shot your father?”

  “I don't know.” She looked at him as though she didn't see him sitting there on her bed with her. “In the doorway,” she lied. She knew what she had to do. She owed it to her mother to protect him.

  “You shot him from the doorway?” It was impossible, and they were getting nowhere. “Do you think someone else shot your father?” He wondered if that was where she was going with her story. An intruder. But that was even less beli
evable than the story about the doorway.

  “No. I shot him. From the doorway.”

  The officer knew without a doubt that her father had been shot at close range, maybe no more than an inch or two, by a person right in front of him, obviously his daughter. But where were they?

  “Were you in bed with him?” he asked her pointedly, and she didn't answer. She stared straight ahead, as though he weren't even there, and gave a little sigh. “Were you in bed with him?” he asked again, and she hesitated for a long time before she answered.

  “I'm not sure. I don't think so.”

  “How's it going in here?” the senior officer inquired, as he poked his head in the door. It was three o'clock in the morning by then, and they had done everything they needed to do at the crime scene.

  The officer questioning Grace gave a hopeless shrug. It was not going well. She was not making a lot of sense, she was shaking violently, and she was so dazed that at times he really wondered if she even knew what had happened. “We're going to take you in, Grace. You're going to be in custody for a few days. We need to talk to you some more about what happened.” She nodded, and said nothing to him. She just sat there, with bloodstains all over her, in the blanket. “Maybe you'd like to clean up a little bit, and put your clothes on.” He nodded at the officer who'd been talking to her, but Grace didn't move, she just sat there. “We're taking you in, Grace. For questioning,” he explained again, wondering if she really was crazy. John had never mentioned it, but it wasn't the kind of thing one said to clients.

  “We're going to hold you for seventy-two hours,pending an investigation of the shooting.” Had it been premeditated? Had she meant to shoot him? Had it been an accident? What was the deal here? He wondered too if she was on drugs, and he wanted her tested.

  She didn't ask if they were arresting her. She didn't ask anything. And she didn't get dressed either. She seemed completely disoriented, which was what suggested to the officer in charge more and more clearly that she was crazy. In the end, they called for a female officer to come out and help them, and she dressed Grace like a small child, but not without noticing assorted marks and bruises on her body. She told her to wash the bloodstains off, and Grace was surprisingly obliging. She did whatever she was told, but she 6ffered no information.

  “Did you and your dad have a fight?” the woman officer inquired as Grace stepped into her old jeans and T-shirt. She was still shaking as though she were standing naked in the Arctic. But Grace never answered her question. “Were you mad at him?” Nothing. Silence. She wasn't hostile. She wasn't anything. She looked as though she were in a trance, as they walked her through the living room, and she never once asked about her father. She didn't want to know where he'd gone, where they'd taken him, or what had happened once he got there. She stopped only for an instant as they crossed the living room, and looked at a photograph of her mother. It was in a silver frame, and Grace was standing next to her in the picture. She had been two or three years old, and both of them were smiling. Grace looked at it for a long time, remembering what her mother had looked like, how pretty she had been, and how much she wanted of Grace. Too much. She wanted to tell her she was sorry now. She just couldn't do it. She had let her mother down. She hadn't taken care of him. She couldn't anymore. And now he was gone. She couldn't remember where he had gone. But he was gone. And she wasn't going to take care of him anymore.

  “She's really out of it,” the woman officer said right within earshot, as Grace stared at her mother's picture. She wanted to remember it. She had a feeling she might not be seeing it again, but she wasn't sure why. She only knew that they were leaving. “You going to call in a shrink?” the officer asked.

  “Yeah, maybe,” the senior officer said. More than ever, he was beginning to think she was retarded. Or maybe not. Maybe it was all an act. Maybe there was more to it than met the eye. It was hard to say. God only knew what she'd really been up to.

  When Grace stepped outside in the night air, the front lawn was swarming with policemen. There were seven squad cars parked outside, most of them had come just to see what had happened, some were responsible for checking out the crime scene. There were lights flashing and men in uniform everywhere, and the young cop named O'Byrne helped her into the back of a squad car. The female officer got in beside her. She wasn't particularly sympathetic to her. She'd seen girls like her before, druggies, or fakes who pretended to be out of it so they wouldn't get blamed for what they'd done. She'd seen a fifteen-year-old who'd killed her entire family, and then claimed that voices on television had made her do it. For all she knew, Grace was a smart little bitch pretending she was crazy. But something about her told the officer that this one might be for real, maybe not crazy, but something was wrong with her. And she kept gulping air, as though she couldn't catch her breath. Something was definitely odd about the girl. But then again, she had shot and almost killed her old man, that was enough to push most people over the edge. Anyway, it wasn't their job to figure out if she was sane. The shrinks could work out that one.

  The ride to Central Station downtown was a short one, particularly at that hour, but Grace looked worse than ever when she got there. The lights were fluorescent and bright, and she looked almost green as they put her in a holding cell where she waited until a burly male officer walked into the room and looked her over.

  “Are you Grace Adams?” he asked curtly, and she only nodded. She felt as though she was going to faint or throw up again. Maybe she would die. That was all she had wanted anyway. Dying would be fine. Her life was a nightmare. “Yes or no?” he asked, shouting at her.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Your father just died at the hospital. We're arresting you for murder.” He read her her rights, dropped some papers into the hands of a female officer who had walked in just behind him. And then, without another word, he left the room, with a heavy clang of the metal door that sealed them into the cell where she had been waiting. There was a moment's silence, and then the female officer told her to strip all her clothes off. To Grace, it was all like a very bad movie.

  “Why?” Grace said hoarsely.

  “Strip search,” the officer explained, as Grace slowly began undressing, with shaking fingers. The entire process was utterly humiliating. And after that, they took fingerprints, and did mug shots.

  “Heavy rap,” another female officer said coldly as she handed Grace a paper towel to wipe the ink off her fingers, “How old are you?” she asked casually, as Grace looked at her. She was still trying to absorb what they had told her. She had killed him. He was dead. It was over.

  “Seventeen.”

  “Bad luck for you. You can be tried as an adult for murder in Illinois if you're over thirteen. If they find you guilty, you pull down at least fourteen, fifteen years. Death penalty too. You're in the big leagues now, baby.” Nothing seemed real to Grace as her hands were cuffed behind her back and she was led from the room. And five minutes later, she was in a cell with four other women, and an open toilet that reeked of urine and human waste. The place was noisy and filthy, and all of the women in her cell were lying on bare mattresses and covered with blankets. Two were awake, but no one was talking. No one said a word as she was uncuffed, handed a blanket, and went to sit on the only unoccupied bunk in the small cell.

  She looked around her in disbelief. It had come to this. But there had been no other way out. She couldn't take it anymore. She'd had to do it … she hadn't meant to … hadn't planned it … but now that she had, she wasn't even sorry. It was her life or his. She would have just as soon died, but it hadn't happened that way. It had just happened, without intent or plan. She had had no choice. She had killed him.

  Chapter 2

  Grace lay on the thin mattress all night, barely feeling the sharp metal coils beneath her. She didn't feel anything. She wasn't shaking anymore. She just lay there. Thinking. She had no family anymore. No one. No parents. No friends. She wondered what would happen to her, would she be found guilty o
f murder? Would she get the death penalty? She couldn't forget what the booking officer had told her. She was being charged as an adult, and accused of murder. Maybe the death penalty was the price she had to pay. And if it was, she'd pay it. At least he could never touch her again, he couldn't hurt her anymore. Her four years of hell at his hands were over.

  “Grace Adams?” a voice called out her name just after seven o'clock in the morning. She'd been there for three hours by then, and she hadn't slept all night, but she didn't feel as disembodied as she had the night before. She knew what was happening. She remembered shooting her father. And she knew he had died, and why. She knew that better than anything else. And she wasn't sorry.

  She was escorted to a small dingy room with heavy locked doors at either end. They put her in it without explanation. There was a table, four chairs, and a bright light overhead. She stood there, and five minutes later, the door at the other end of the room opened. A tall blond woman walked in. She looked cool as she glanced at Grace, and waited for a moment as she watched her. She didn't smile, she didn't say anything, she just observed Grace for a long moment. And Grace said nothing to her, she stayed at the far end of the room, looking like a young doe about to bolt from the room, except she couldn't. She was in a cage. She was quiet, but afraid. And even in her jeans and T-shirt, there was a quiet dignity about her. There was an unmistakable quality about her, as though she had suffered and come far, paid a high price for her freedom, and felt it was worth it. It wasn't anger one sensed about her, it was a long-suffering kind of patience. She had seen too much in her short years, life and death, and betrayal, and it showed in her eyes. Molly York saw it the moment she looked at Grace, and she was touched by the raw pain she saw there.

  “I'm Molly York,” she explained quietly. “I'm a psychiatrist. Do you know why I'm here?”