Julie pulled away from him and quickly stood up. “I’m fine now; I’ll be all right. Thank you. I really have to go,” she said. Such an array of feelings during the course of the day, sadness, abandonment, panic, amusement and now . . . what was this feeling? He was a stranger, what gave him the right to wake up this corner of her heart?
“I remember you. You came in last week. I hope everything’s alright.” He reached into his pocket and presented a card. “Call me if you ever need a cop. I’m always here.” He shook her hand. “I’m Jack, be careful on those stairs.”
Chapter 39
As she drove home in rush hour traffic, each swoosh of the windshield wipers clumped more snow on Julie’s wiper blades. A snow sludge mix was now her view. Traffic moved slowly on the slick streets. At a red light, she rolled down her window and tried to lift the moving wiper blade and snap it back down, but she couldn’t grab it before the light turned green. She finally pulled over and cleared the windshield with her bare hands.
Julie finally got home just before nightfall. Shaking off the snow inside the foyer she slipped off her coat and shoes. Then she took off her torn stockings, and scouting for some slippers she stepped into the kitchen in her bare feet. She was looking forward to changing into something big and bulky and warm.
But just as she rounded the corner, she saw a figure in the shadows. He was sitting at her dining table, sipping from a mug. She couldn’t see his face.
“I thought you’d never get here, Juliet,” a man’s voice came from the shadows.
“Sam?” she asked, hoping it was. Sam was one of the few people who knew where to find the key to her house.
“No, but you can call me Sam if it makes you happy.” The stranger slowly stood up. He had smudged his face with charcoal and was wearing tight-fitting black gloves.
“How did you get in my house?”
He came closer. A gleam of light bounced off a hunting knife in his hand.
Julie backed up to the wall and slid against it in the direction of the phone next to the stairs, her heart beating furiously.
“This is my favorite part. Go ahead. Pick up the phone. Try to call someone.”
Julie picked up the phone. There was no dial tone. “Take whatever you want,” Julie pleaded. “There’s money in my purse, at least two hundred dollars.” Julie gripped the phone in her hand like a weapon, hiding it behind her back
He came toward her, holding his hand out to her as if she would willingly take it.
Without even thinking, she bolted up the stairs just out of his reach, and flung a picture that was on the wall at him, her heart pounding. He chased her up the stairs. She tore family pictures off of the wall every step of the way, hurling them at him. Just as she reached the last stair step, he grabbed her ankle. She kicked him hard in the face. He fell backwards but just for an instant. Finally in her bedroom, she slammed the door shut and locked it.
He slammed his fist on the bedroom door. “I don’t think I like you. You don’t play nice.”
“Who are you? Take what you want and leave!”
“You know what I want. Don’t act like you don’t. You were all over the news, broadcasting about your husband in jail. I bet I know how you like it, too.”
She heard him jiggle something in the keyhole, probably what he had used to break into the house. She pushed a heavy dresser against the door, and backed away, suddenly remembering that she had a fire rescue ladder somewhere. But where?
“I bet you like to be tied up. I bet you like to be whipped. Don’t you?” His voice was deep, taunting.
She pulled out the bottom dresser drawer, frantically looking for the ladder. It wasn’t there. She heard the doorknob click and knew he’d unlocked the door. Julie flung every box inside her closet to the floor, dumping them upside down—still no ladder. She heard the dresser scrape the floor as the door inched open. He reached his arm through the gap in the door. It looked like he was leaning into the door, pushing it with his shoulder. She could see where his glove and sleeve had exposed his skin. A tattooed ring of skulls around his wrist seemed to be part of a bigger tattoo.
Julie opened the window; it was a long drop down from her second-story bedroom. The dresser scraped the floor as it moved. He was trying to wedge his body through. She took hold of her wedding picture, framed in heavy crystal and hit him hard in the face.
“You bitch! I’m going to cut your eyes out and make you eat them.”
Ransacking every corner, ripping through every shoebox, she finally found the ladder. Frantic, she shook it out of the box, watching him all the while, and hooked it onto the open window’s sill. She hoisted herself through the window, and climbed out faster than she should have, touching her bare feet to the flimsy ladder. Her foot slipped. The brick wall felt cold against her body. The ladder swung. Hanging onto the ledge by her fingers, she heard the dresser move again. Blindly, feeling for the cold metal bar with her toes, she regained her footing.
“They’re going to find your body parts in every room of this house bitch,” he said, his voice unwavering.
She slowly lowered herself, step by step, to the bottom of the ladder. Swaying in the wind, teetering on the last rung, she saw that it was five feet short from touching the ground. The wind blowing up her skirt, she let herself fall backward in the snow. She heard the dresser tumble and she saw him in the window, but just briefly. He had to be coming outside.
Her legs as bare as her feet, she fumbled to stand and ran to the road, every step more painful than the last. Crossing the road, taking glimpses back, she saw him. He was outside, crazy mad, stabbing at nothing below the ladder, kicking up snow where she had landed. Then he saw her. She knew he saw her. He was after her again.
It was dark now. She stumbled on the edge of the road, slipping on ice but caught herself before she fell. She crossed the ditch and slid again, falling down this time. She could still see him. He hadn’t crossed the road yet. A string of cars had stopped him. She pulled herself up, her eyes on Debra’s house. The telephone wires, the catalpa tree, the mailbox, crystallized in frozen drips. Julie made her way through Debra’s white lawn, up Debra’s quarry-stone steps, and barged through the door, shaking uncontrollably. “He . . . he’s after me,” she yelled, locking the door.
“Who’s after you?”
“He’s outside. He broke into my house.”
“Okay, calm heads. Lock up the garage. You do that and I’ll get the rifle.” Debra headed upstairs. “Then we’ll call the sheriff.”
Julie hurriedly locked the door between the garage and the utility room. She locked the kitchen door, too. The card was still in her pocket the officer had given her. She dialed the number frantically.
“Precinct 46. How can I direct your call?” a dispatcher answered.
“A man broke into my house. He’s got a knife. Please. Send someone now. Officer Jack Wilson gave me this number.”
“What is your address?”
“Hold on.” Julie sifted through Debra’s mail. “57795 Adams Road.”
“Are you in the house now?”
“I’m at a neighbor’s house, Debra Hamilton. He’s outside. I know he is.”
“We’ll send our first available officer,” the woman answered, in what seemed like a canned line. Then she hung up. Julie knew it would be a long time before anyone would come. It could be hours before a cop would show up—unless a patrol car happened to be near the county line.
Debra came back with her rifle. “I don’t have any more bullets. Did you close up the garage?”
“I locked the kitchen door and that other door.”
“No . . . they’re broken.” Debra blazed through the kitchen and to the garage. Julie followed her as far as the kitchen, she couldn’t feel her feet anymore. Greg’s loafers were by the door. She stepped into them and clomped out to the garage where the garage door was still wide open. Debra had hit the garage door button on the wall and the oversized door had started its slow decent.
“Come on! Come on!” Debra pleaded, clutching the barrel of her rifle.
In the dark, they could see the figure of a man. He was coming around the corner towards the semi-open garage door, from the direction of the front porch like he had already been there, like he might have tried to open that door first. The oversized garage door seemed to move in slow motion.
“Come on, come on!”
Julie scavenged Greg’s workbench where she found a spray can of hornet killer, and took her place next to Debra. The garage door needed four more feet in order to close. They saw him fall on the ice—a short reprieve. He got right up.
“Come on! Close!” Debra pretended to cock the rifle, squatted down and aimed, trying to scare him. But he didn’t seem to care.
The door closed another foot . . . three more feet to go. There he was right at the door, now in a running stoop to get under it. But the door suddenly slammed shut. He pounded on it, his fist shaking the whole thing.
The garage door had never done that before, just drop with three feet left. Julie could see that Debra was shaking. “I think we should blockade the doors inside. He’s got some sort of tool that he used to pick my lock.” They went back inside with their makeshift artillery. Debra blocked the kitchen door by hooking the back of a tilted chair under the doorknob. Julie blocked the front door the same way; she was so cold that her teeth were chattering.
“I think that’ll hold. You need some dry clothes. Come on upstairs.”
“I can’t feel my feet anymore. I could use some socks, maybe some sweat pants and a spare robe?” Julie followed Debra up to her bedroom. “Where’s Greg? I saw his truck outside,” Julie asked, her body shaking.
“He left with his brother. I don’t think he’ll be home for a while.” Debra rummaged through the closet and handed her a robe. “Was there anything familiar about the man who broke in?”
“No, I’ve never seen him before. Did you get a look at him?”
“It was too dark. I couldn’t see his face.”
“He said he saw me on the news.” Julie tied the robe and brushed a wet curl away from her eyes.
“Do you think he’s still out there?”
“I know he is. He’s got to be on drugs or something.”
Debra pulled back the window curtain and they peered outside, trying to see through the snowstorm against the darkness.
A man’s face looked right back at her. He bashed the window with a hammer.
Both of them screamed. Both of them grabbed each other.
“He’s got one of Greg’s ladders!” Debra said.
“Help me,” Julie said, leaning against one of Debra’s heavy dressers. The two of them pushed it against the window. “How long do you think before he can get through one of the windows?”
“I . . . I don’t know. He’d have to break through four panes of glass, the wood in between, a screen, plastic . . . Those windows have been painted shut a million times over.” Debra said, leaving the bedroom with a handful of clothes. “Did the police say how long it would take to get here?” She closed the bedroom door tightly, and the two of them went downstairs.
“You forget. This isn’t the city. We’ll be lucky if they get here at all. What are our chances of getting to the car?” Julie asked at the bottom of the steps, pulling on a pair of sweat pants.
“Not good,” Debra said, “my car’s in the driveway. Greg has an order of supplies where my car usually is.”
Julie put on a pair of thick socks. They heard more breaking glass from upstairs. Then they heard Greg’s ladder clanging against the house outside.
“Did you hear that?” Debra said quietly. “It sounded like the ladder fell.”
The wind outside rustled through the branches, playing its tune through the windows. They sat together, Debra with the rifle, Julie with the hornet spray, listening, and waiting, each of them afraid to speak. A train whistled, long and deliberate, from the distance. Five minutes went by, ten minutes, fifteen. The house grew eerily quiet.
“Did you see how he kept coming?” Debra whispered. “I was aiming right at him.”
Julie whispered, “Did you see that? Something through the window?” Neither one of them moved. A sudden pounding came from the front door. They got up together. But neither of them could see who it was through the windows. Whoever it was, pounded again.
“Who’s there?” Debra yelled. They heard a man’s voice saying something through the door but couldn’t make it out. His voice seemed to have an official tone.
Debra turned the doorknob before Julie could stop her.
Chapter 40
Two officers stood where a surge of wind burst the door open. Snow dusted the two women, the hornet spray and the rifle. Julie with Greg’s slippers and Greg’s checkered housecoat; and Debra with her innocent little girl face, her unloaded twenty-two. The snow reflected the patrol car’s red and blue flashing lights against the night.
“Jack? . . . Officer Wilson?” Julie said, surprised, relieved, and puzzled by him being the one who responded.
Debra leaned into Julie. “You know him?” she whispered.
“Just barely,” Julie whispered back, glancing briefly at Jack. “He gave me his card earlier today.”
“There was a report of a prowler at this address,” Jack said, letting the storm door close behind him.
“He broke in . . . not here . . . across the street.” Julie stuttered. Relief hadn’t hit, not yet, only the realization of what had just happened. Shaking as though she were freezing, Julie fought with her words to make coherent sentences. Suddenly very still, Julie looked as though every expression had been wiped from her face, every thought, every emotion.
Debra stepped in. “The man was trying to kill her. She got away by climbing out of her bedroom window about thirty minutes ago. He chased her all the way here.”
Julie took a breath, lifted her chin, and composed herself. Even though her voice was shaking, she could answer questions in detail now. She described the hunting knife, the eerie tattoos. Jack’s partner called for backup while Julie talked; then he searched the premises.
“Have you ever seen this man before?” Jack asked.
“No. Never.”
“Have you?” He turned to Debra.
“I don’t think so. I couldn’t get a good look at him in the dark. But there was something familiar about him. I just can’t say for sure what it was.”
Jack jotted down some notes. “Let’s get a look at your house . . . . Mrs. Zumminger?”
“It’s Zourenger, just call me Julie.” Julie was just about to leave with him when she turned to Debra. “Deb, is it okay if I come back and spend the night? I would go over to Marie’s but I don’t want any of this to upset her.”
“You can stay as long as you like. I’ll make up a place for you to sleep.”
Still wearing the housecoat and slippers, Julie went with Jack to his car where he invited her to sit up front. Scooting into the passenger seat, him holding the door for her, she watched his every movement as he climbed into the driver’s side. Oddly enough, it felt reminiscent of a date. What was wrong with her that she was interpreting ordinary gestures to be some sort of flirting? He was just doing his job.
He looked down at Julie’s knees where one of them was bleeding through her sweat pants. “You’re not having a good day, are you?”
She said the first thing that popped into her head, “I haven’t had a good day in such a long time that I think they’re avoiding me.”
When they got to Julie’s house and got out of the car, she opened the useless aluminum frame that was once the storm door. The other door was unlocked and gaped open.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like this. Not only did he break the glass but he picked out every last piece,” Jack said, sliding his foot in the snow, seemingly looking for broken glass. Julie stepped inside.
“That was already broken—my husband. I cleaned up the glass right afterwards.”
“You’re going to have
to buy a new doorknob.” Jack kept trying to lock the door but it wouldn’t work. “I would get some dead-bolts, too. Show me where you saw him first.”
Julie led him inside the foyer. “He was in the dining room. I don’t know how long he’d been there.” She walked him through the kitchen to the dining room. “He was sitting at that table. I tried to use the phone by the stairs but he must have cut the phone line.”
“Is that the mug he was holding?”
“Yes.”
“This should have a set of prints if he wasn’t wearing gloves.”
“He was wearing gloves, but I saw a tattoo on his wrist, creepy skulls all the way around. I couldn’t tell for sure, but I think his whole arm must have been tattooed.”
Jack was writing in his notebook.
“You probably want me to go down at the station with a full description. Can I do that tomorrow?”
“That won’t be necessary. I’m writing it down. Was there anything else about him?”
“I can’t tell you what he looked like. He blackened his face with something. It looked like it could have been charcoal. Will you excuse me for a minute? The window upstairs is open,” Julie said, headed toward the stairs
“I’ll go with you.”
He followed Julie closely up the stairs. When they got to the top of the stairs her bedroom door was open just enough to squeeze through, around the toppled dresser. Julie made her way inside and went directly to the window. She pulled in the flimsy ladder and closed the window, keeping her back to him.
“He made quite a mess up here,” Jack said.
“No. I did that when I was looking for this ladder,” She said. All at once all the chain of events that lead to this flashed through her mind. From that first letter to Kyle sitting in jail for something he may not have done. Anguish enveloped her, deep down to the pit of her stomach. Tears followed, involuntary as a beating heart.
“Julie?”
“Yes,” she answered, her face toward the window, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.
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