Before Her Eyes

by Jack Jordan

  The journalists hadn’t been here for a couple of days, but she knew they would be back the moment they heard she had stepped out into the world again. The Blind Widow, the papers were calling her, likening her to the killer spider, small and unintimidating until it bit.

  For the first two days she had cried whenever she heard the journalists heckling her, taunting her as though she were an animal in a cage, rattling the bars, waiting for her to break, cameras poised to capture the second her eyes changed and madness seeped in. But then she hardened herself against their presence, immune to the hostility leaking through the walls. She was fair game, someone they could bully and torment, because who would pity a killer?

  Rain pattered against her face and soaked through her jeans.

  Peggy had told her to stay at home and rest, but they would be struggling at the café without her. They must need her help.

  Naomi gripped the cane and stepped out into the blustery day.

  Her foot landed on something soft. She took another step. Something crackled beneath the sole of her shoe.

  She bent down and felt paper, covering the concrete path from her gate to the front door. She rifled through it, the pages flittering in the wind. Newspapers. Was she on the front? What were the damning headlines today?

  She scooped up the papers, some dry and fresh, others soggy from the rain, and collected them in her arms before rushing back inside and shoving them into the fireplace. It took a while to get the fire started, her hands shaking so violently that she struggled to light a match, but it wasn’t long before she heard the flames devouring the lies the media had spewed.

  Don’t let them win, she told herself once the papers were gone and she had extinguished the fire. Don’t let them get to you. She made her way back to the front door and stood in the doorway.

  She took a deep breath and shut the door behind her.

  Her week inside the house had left her feral. She startled at the slightest sound, flinched from the lightest touch from the wind. With every car that passed, she wondered if the people inside were talking about her behind the glass.

  The wind was harsh and fast, blowing against her until her eyes streamed, as though it was trying to force her back home.

  Shoes scuffled against the path, approaching her quickly. She lowered her head and continued to drag the cane across the ground. Her heart began to race.

  A hard shoulder shoved against hers and sent her stumbling into the road.

  A car horn blasted.

  It was an accident, she told herself as she stumbled back onto the kerb on shaking legs. She waited for the culprit to turn and apologise. All she heard was the stranger’s dissipating footsteps.

  She kept walking with her head down until she reached the high street. Unusually, it was heaving with people. Gradually she began to hear gasps and muttering as she passed. Her cheeks burned and she lowered her head further.

  ‘She’s got a nerve, showing her face,’ a woman muttered under her breath.

  The muscles in Naomi’s chest tensed. Someone kicked her cane, throwing her forwards and into a stranger’s back.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she muttered, the words trembling.

  ‘It ain’t me you should be apologising to.’

  The man hated her. She heard it in his voice. Venom dripped from every word.

  She felt the wall beside the path and realised that she was outside Wilson’s house. She could smell cigarette smoke.

  ‘Wilson, is that you?’

  She heard a cough crackling with phlegm. He mumbled something and a door slammed shut.

  ‘You should be ashamed of yourself!’ a woman said behind her. Naomi turned just as a wad of saliva splattered on her sleeve.

  She covered her face until the woman passed, then wiped her sleeve on her coat. Someone had actually spat on her.

  She headed up the road as quickly as she could, dragging the cane fast against the ground, bashing it against garden walls and bins, a shop’s sandwich board that swung violently in its frame.

  One more turn.

  The moment she felt the café’s gravelled parking lot beneath her feet, her shoulders relaxed and air rushed back into her lungs.

  The bell chimed above her head. Customers’ words overlapped and muddled together. It hadn’t been this busy in a while. The smell of food in the air and the warmth drifting in from the kitchen made her feel at home, but slowly the murmur of conversation stopped, and cutlery clattered onto plates. Silence whistled in her ears. She stood in the doorway feeling the heat of dozens of eyes burning on her skin.

  ‘Naomi,’ Nick said in a high-pitched tone.

  Promoted to waiter and I didn’t even have to die.

  ‘Hi, Nick. I’ll go through to the back.’

  Peggy and Mitch were squabbling in the kitchen by the stove when she appeared on the threshold. She breathed in the familiar scent.

  ‘Naomi,’ Peggy said, her voice high like Nick’s. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Naomi shrugged out of her coat and approached the hooks on the wall to hang it up and grab her apron. Her apron wasn’t there.

  ‘I was driving myself crazy at home. I need a distraction. How’s everything going? It sounds busy. Where’s my apron?’

  ‘You’re supposed to be resting.’

  ‘My hands are better now.’ She put the cane under her arm and held out her palms. ‘I’ve had the stitches out already.’

  The buzz of the diner trickled through the open doorway. They were all talking about her.

  ‘Naomi, you can’t be here,’ Mitch said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m sorry, darlin’,’ Peggy said. ‘But people don’t want to be served by a mur—’ She stopped mid-word.

  ‘I didn’t hurt anybody. Josie’s lying.’

  ‘But they don’t know that.’

  ‘Then tell them.’

  ‘It will make people feel uncomfortable,’ Mitch said. ‘We can’t afford to lose any more business, not when we’ve just got up and runnin’ after the broken window.’

  ‘Most of the customers in there are here because of me, can’t you see that? You haven’t filled that many seats in years.’

  They fell silent.

  ‘Are you firing me?’

  Mitch hesitated. ‘Not right now.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It might not come to that,’ Peggy added.

  ‘If I’m proven innocent, you mean.’

  ‘Naomi, we can’t take the risk.’

  ‘I’ve worked here for twenty years! You know me!’

  ‘Naomi.’ Mitch’s voice was firm. ‘You need to go home.’

  Naomi stood shaking on the spot as tears filled her eyes.

  ‘Of all the people …’ she said faintly. ‘After everything we’ve been through together, all these years of hard work … You should be ashamed.’ She snatched her coat from the hook.

  ‘Naomi …’

  ‘No, Peggy. You’ve made your opinion of me very clear.’

  She walked out into the diner. The chatter died down again, eyes collected on her skin like flies crawling across her face and neck. She stopped in the middle of the room.

  ‘What?’ she demanded.

  A woman gasped. Another whispered. Slowly the mutter of voices began to grow. She wasn’t a human being to them any more. She was a myth they all had to fear.

  She strode towards the door and out onto the gravel, a sob bursting from her lips the second the door slammed shut behind her.

  Screw them. Screw them all.

  FORTY-TWO

  Peggy and Mitch had been family. Naomi had trusted them, loved them, stayed late without being asked, covered shifts when other staff called in sick. She had given them everything, and in the end it had amounted to nothing but a shove out the door.

  She walked along the street, too busy thinking of the betrayal to hear the angry footsteps behind her.

  ‘How dare you!’

  She stopped suddenly. A hand grabbed her shoulde
r and turned her roughly.

  ‘Of all the days,’ he hissed. Saliva sprayed against her face.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re—’

  The hand grabbed the nape of her neck and dragged her forward. Passers-by ignored her screams. Her cane fell to the ground as she stumbled off the kerb. It felt like she was falling, lurching across the wet road with only the man’s grip keeping her from falling face first on the wet tarmac.

  Her forehead landed against a car window, wet with rain.

  ‘You know what’s in there?’

  She tried to shake her head. The moist glass squeaked beneath her brow.

  ‘My daughter. The girl you killed. You and your husband killed my Cassie.’

  Cassie’s funeral procession was making its way towards the church. She had walked right through it. That was why the street was packed with townspeople. Of all the newspaper articles her mother had read to her, the announcement of the date that Cassie was to be laid to rest was the story Naomi had forgotten. No wonder they hated her – they thought she was there to gloat, relish in their misery.

  She tried to remember his name after years of serving him on Friday afternoons at the café, but his grip tightened and squeezed the blood from her neck.

  ‘You killed my baby girl and yet you’re walking free. Tell me how that’s fair.’

  ‘I didn’t kill anyone!’

  The hand pulled her away from the glass and turned her roughly. Her back slammed against the hearse and rocked the vehicle. She thought of Cassie’s body knocking against the sides of the coffin, petals falling from the wreath.

  ‘Don’t fuckin’ lie to me!’

  His words were close to her nose. His hand snaked around to her throat and clamped down.

  ‘My wife and I have to bury our daughter today because of you. We’ve had to wait all this time for her body to be released, and now you’re here to destroy our last day with her.’

  Naomi remembered an article on Cassie’s body being withheld after the pathologist ordered further tests. She wasn’t to blame, but she might as well have been, from the sound of his voice and the strength of his grip.

  Why is my baby girl dead and you’re alive? Tell me how that’s fair.’

  ‘Leave her alone!’ a man’s voice said, before the hand was ripped from her throat and she heard the sound of two bodies thumping against the road.

  She knew that voice.

  ‘Dane?’

  People started to gasp and shout.

  ‘Someone stop them!’

  ‘They should be locked up!’

  ‘Call the police!’

  Naomi stayed flat against the car and listened to the punches, the crunch of someone’s nose, the thud of a skull hitting concrete. She slid along the wet metal until she reached the end of the vehicle and stumbled down the road, her hands desperately feeling the air.

  A wad of spit landed just below her eye.

  ‘I hope you rot in prison for what you did,’ a woman hissed, her voice shaken with furious tears. ‘If they don’t lock you up for killing my daughter, I’ll kill you myself!’

  Naomi staggered away, wiping the spit from her face with her sleeve. She reached the kerb and tripped, landing on the pavement with a heavy thud. Blood swelled from a graze on her cheek.

  She reached out for something to grab onto. No hands reached down to help. Bodies shoved past her; a knee jolted her elbow, a foot stepped on her fingers. She felt the cold exterior of the bus shelter and followed it upwards with her hands, pressing her weight against the glass. She moved round it with rainwater weaving between her fingers and down the backs of her hands.

  She was back where everything had started.

  ‘Someone …’ She was sobbing, could barely speak. ‘Please can someone help me … help me get home.’

  The street swirled around her: the echoes of the fight still going on in the road, the whispers of people as they passed her. Someone laughed. A bag knocked against her. She put her hands out in front of her and headed blindly for home. She felt a lamp post and clamped herself around it. She hadn’t been counting her steps. She had no idea where she was going.

  ‘Naomi!’

  Her name echoed up the street. Footsteps pounded against concrete and splashed through puddles.

  She pushed away from the lamp post and lurched off the pavement, slamming to the ground. A car horn blasted in her ears.

  Strong hands grabbed at her shoulders and pulled her roughly, tugging at her until she stood, bleeding at the knees. She screamed and hit the stranger with clenched fists, feeling the hardness of a collarbone beneath her knuckles, a shirt covering a broad chest.

  ‘LEAVE ME ALONE!’

  Someone was shouting. A car door slammed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ a familiar voice said.

  No. Not Dane. Anyone but Dane.

  Naomi’s hand grazed the wet bonnet of a car as Dane guided her out of the road. She had almost been run over. He had followed her, helped her when no one else would, but all it had done was shake fear into her.

  ‘Leave me alone!’

  ‘I’m helping you home.’

  ‘We can’t be seen together or we’ll be locked up again. I can’t go back in that cell. Please don’t let them take me back.’

  She tried to pull away from him, but he yanked her back towards him. His breath was hot against her face.

  ‘You can’t make it home on your own.’

  ‘Killers!’ someone shouted from across the street.

  ‘You’re making it worse,’ she whispered. Tears trembled on her jaw.

  Dane pulled her closer. Something dripped down the side of her face. At first she thought it was rain. She wiped it away and felt the familiar warmth of blood.

  ‘You’re … you’re bleeding,’ she said.

  ‘We both are, Ni.’

  He led her through the dark, the beat of his heart echoing in her ear. She had missed his touch and the sound of his voice, but after all the secrets he had kept, she couldn’t let herself trust him. She couldn’t let him in.

  When they turned into her road, she pushed away from him and put her hands out to feel her own way home.

  ‘Naomi, please …’

  ‘I told you to leave me alone.’

  ‘I helped you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t need your help if you hadn’t got me into this mess.’

  ‘I didn’t do it!’

  ‘Then what about the watch, Dane?’

  ‘I thought I’d lost it, I hadn’t seen it in years. We all had that bloody watch as teens – they can’t even prove it’s mine.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me!’

  ‘I’m not lying to you! Someone is framing me. Maybe it’s you who’s lying to me.’

  ‘Screw you.’

  She stumbled up the street, her hands swiping through the cold air until they were numb. Her knees banged into a parked car. The alarm blasted and echoed down the street. She followed the bonnet until she felt the kerb, and stumbled across the road.

  ‘I didn’t do it, Naomi. You have to believe me. Someone has set us both up.’

  She stroked her hand against the brick walls of the front gardens framing the street, searching for the familiar deep chip on one of the pillars. When she found it, she pushed the gate open. Dane grabbed her shoulder and pulled her round towards him.

  ‘You can’t push me away any more. We’ve only got each other.’

  His lips pressed onto hers. She squirmed against him and bit down on his bottom lip.

  ‘Leave me alone!’

  She walked down the path, fumbling for her keys, and dropped them at her feet. His hands supported her hips as she bent down to get them.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’

  She snapped up and slid the key into the lock.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, so quietly she barely heard him.

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ she said, stepping inside. ‘I’m sorry I ever met you.’

  She slammed the door behind her, t
hen slid down the back of it and sobbed into her hands.

  FORTY-THREE

  It was almost five. Lisa and Blake were still out of the office, working on the case that Marcus had once been a part of. He sighed and rubbed his eyes with the base of his palms.

  Craig Kennedy’s file was clean. He was a model citizen, husband and father. But Marcus knew that people were capable of hiding in plain sight. He would talk to Craig somehow, even if Lisa was determined to keep him at his desk. He looked around the empty office.

  This place had once excited him. He had seen his future here, and thought of all the cases he would solve, the lives he would save. Now it reminded him of Lisa. But even so, it was better than going home, where Natalie would be waiting for him with an eye on the clock. All he did was push her away, and yet there she was, digging in her fingernails. He didn’t need to work late tonight, but he would.

  He heard them before he saw them. Lisa and Blake were laughing as they made their way down the corridor towards the office.

  They didn’t greet him as they walked in. Blake shrugged off his coat but still wore his smile. Marcus wondered if his cheeks hurt from keeping the false expression on his face all day, so eager to please the boss that he followed her around like a dog, coming to heel when asked, sitting when commanded.

  ‘Good day?’ Marcus asked.

  ‘Fine,’ Blake replied as he sat at his desk.

  Lisa headed into her office and shut the door.

  ‘Any leads?’

  ‘Josie Callaghan is doing better.’

  Marcus dropped a file on his desk with a heavy thump.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

  He made his way to Lisa’s office and knocked on the door.

  ‘Yes?’ she said without looking up from her desk.

  He stepped inside. ‘I was wondering if you’d thought about further police protection for Naomi Hannah.’

  ‘Why would I think about that?’ she asked, looking up at him over her reading glasses, a page poised in her fingertips, ready to be turned. ‘I already told you no the first time.’

  ‘Well, I thought after what happened today, with Cassie’s family …’

  ‘You mean where one of our suspects got in a fist fight with a grieving man during his daughter’s funeral procession?’