Butcher

29

Kansas City Emergency Shelter

“You know, I didn't do anything to provoke him. I would never flirt like that in front of him. Honest.” It hurt Sharon to look at the girl. “But he got so worked up. When we left the party he called me names and stuff all the way home, telling me I was a whore and that I made a fool out of him in front of his friends. And Duane was calling me all these names and I guess I talked back to him so he hit me. You know, like in the stomach.

“I fell down and I knew I was hurt real bad. I tried to get him to take me to the hospital and he wouldn't do it. He said the cops would investigate and because of his record he'd be thrown in jail. He said I wasn't hurt that bad, but I was bleeding and everything. I tried to call a cab and he knocked the phone out of my hand and started hitting me in the face.” Stacey Linley. A twenty-two-year-old womanchild.

“Did Duane know he'd caused you to miscarry, Stacey?"

“Yes, Miss Kamen, I told him. I'd passed tissue in the commode. He joked about it. Said it was a Kansas abortion. He thought it was real funny to call it that."

“You know you're lucky, Stacey. I don't suppose I have to tell you."

“I know.” Her face was a mottled collection of dark purple-blue and black bruises, but it was nowhere nearly as swollen as it had been in the police photos taken at the hospital.

“Okay, hon, first things first,” Sharon said gently. “We want to get you safely relocated.” The young woman was clearly frightened. “Just as we talked about on the phone, first we have to go to the Circuit Clerk's office and file the papers, right?"

Stacey Linley looked down at the floor. Sharon could see a tear in the corner of one of her blackened eyes. The bruises went down under the clothing. She'd been very lucky indeed.

“We can't put it off, Stacey,” Sharon said, a bit more firmly.

“I don't want to."

“You don't?"

“I don't have to, do I, Miss Kamen?” She'd asked in the softest possible voice.

“I told you what you have to do, honey. I'll be right there with you."

“I just want to get away from Duane.” The tear trickled down her cheek.

“That's what I want for you, too. We want all the law we can get on our side. We want you protected, right?"

The Linley girl only shrugged.

“Stacey, Duane is very dangerous. Look at what he did to you. You have to deal with that.” It was unusually still in the office. Sharon was aware of the thrum of the outside traffic, her clock, a door closing loudly in the foyer, a phone ringing, the small refrigerator in their makeshift lounge.

“Can't you make them put him in jail and keep him there until I can get away safely?” She sniffed back the tears.

“You don't have any money, Stacey. Nowhere to run to. No resources. Nothing. How can you get away?"

“Like I said on the phone, I have a girlfriend. She'd loan me a few dollars. I could take a bus somewhere. Anywhere. How could he find me?"

“Look,” Sharon said, “you're twenty-two. You don't have any money. I spoke with your friend and she said she could loan you about twenty dollars. You can't travel far enough to hide if this guy decides he isn't ready to call it quits and makes up his mind to find you. Not looking like this."

“I could wear lots of makeup and dark glasses. Just get on a bus...” Her TV fantasy.

“I've been through this a hundred times, hon. These guys can get very persistent about tracking people down. Duane's obviously violent. His record of prior arrests has to be considered. You need to go over with me to the Circuit Clerk. We'll file an ex parte. He won't be able to touch you, come near you, go anywhere near the apartment—"

“You don't know him,” Stacey Linley whined. “He's not gonna care about a piece of paper. It'll just make him mad.” Even through the discolored meat of her face, Sharon could see she was attractive. So many who came into the Kansas City Emergency Shelter were good-looking, bright, decent women. But they'd been called whores, ugly sluts, tramps, worthless, stupid bitches, and no-good mothers so many times they'd begun to believe it themselves. It was what her father termed the concentration-camp mentality, the breaking down of one's esteem, the first step on the road to domination.

Sharon Kamen was a caring and loving woman. She'd been part of the shelter since it originated. She was twenty-nine, and it was really the only job she'd ever held. She loved it and, at times, hated it for the frustrations. The Linley woman had been a referral from the Missouri Coalition's crisis team. They'd recommended Sharon immediately house this outpatient in the domestic violence ward they maintained for the extreme abuse cases.

“Thing is, we hit him with that ex parte and if he so much as looks like he's going to cross the line the police will drop him like a rock for us. We'll have all the law working in our favor. Right now this bozo is out and, for all we know, stalking you. I'll go there with you when we file. We'll come right back here so you'll be safe tonight. They're empowered to serve him as soon as we go over there."

“Serve him? What do you mean?"

“I tell the judge, they drop the ex parte on him, somebody from KCPD or County serves him with it. That's his formal notice. One violation and they'll have to lock him up and throw the key away."

The younger woman didn't bother to conceal what she felt.

“But why don't they ... why didn't they keep him in jail? They had him locked up."

“He posted,” Sharon said. “But he won't be running to the bail bondsman next time to post some nickle-dime bond. It won't go that way. I'll see to it.” She could hear a commotion in the hall.

“I'll go with you, but can't I stay here for a few weeks until he gets tired waiting?"

“You can spend the night tonight but, no, Stacey, I have a full house. We have battered wives with children. Child abuse cases. But don't worry, I'll try Safe Haven for you, and we have some private homes, too. This happens to be our busy time,” she smiled.

“Your busy time?” Stacey Linley at the moment looked all of fourteen.

“Believe it or not, battering seems to be seasonal. Stress and whatnot, I suppose. Partying, things like that."

“Merry Christmas,” she muttered.

“Knock, knock,” a large, powerful man said. He had a lopsided grin on his unshaven face.

“You'll have to leave.” Georgia, the shelter's secretary-receptionist, was trying to hold his left sleeve, hoping to restrain him. He jerked his arm away from her grasp.

“Telling more lies about me, Stacey?"

“No, baby.” The young woman began whimpering, begging him, “I wanted to—please, baby—” The hard fist failed to catch her fully but it smacked the side of her head, knocking her from the chair. He shoved the receptionist backward and as Sharon tried to grab the telephone to dial 911 he reached over and tore it from its connection, throwing it across the room, where it came apart in a crash of glass, wood, and broken plastic, the phone and a picture frame exploding like a gunshot.

“Georgia, call the police—” she tried to say, springing up to try to protect Stacey Linley, but he was strong and fast. He backhanded her and she fell across the desk.

“You're coming home where you belong,” Duane told the sobbing, bruised woman on the floor.

Sharon pushed herself up, her head abuzz, vision cloudy, fists balled to fight. “Don't you touch her again. Georgia!"

“Shut your loud mouth,” the man shouted, threateningly. “Come on, baby,” he reached for Stacey, “this bullshit's over. Let's go."

“No, Duane, Don't—"

"Shut up. Move it!” He yanked Stacey up by her hair, pulling her toward the door, shouting for Sharon and Georgia to stay back. Stacey was screaming. Georgia was screaming. He was screaming.

“Stop! Let her—” Sharon never saw the fist.

Once, when she was nine, the boy down the road had thrown a chunk of wood and it had hit Sharon in the forehead. It had stung badly and frightened her, the sudden pain, the stars from the blow, the momentary absence of vision and equilibrium. But with that exception the worst pain she'd ever known had been a terrible sunburn one year, or a toothache. Childhood accidents. The thrown piece of wood. Never in her wildest dreams would she have been able to imagine what it felt like to be struck in the face.

Sharon could not see. She had started crying before she could stop herself, bawling like a kid struck on the nose in a schoolyard fight, tears streaming down her face, fighting to see. Trying to get her eyes to focus. It had been like being struck with a hammer. The pain was almost overwhelming. The only advantageous aspect was that, after the first couple of seconds of numbness, the terrible pain of the fist to the face cleared her vision, which was still cloudy from when he'd slapped her.

She broke a long nail fumbling the desk drawer open, taking the gun out, the revolver her dad, the famous Nazi hunter and firearms buff, had given her years ago over her protestations.

It was heavy and unfamiliar. She knew what kind it was but had long forgotten. He'd taken her to the river and made her fire two loads, ten or twelve shots. She'd hated the noise and her wrist had ached from the kick of the recoil.

Now it weighed a ton in her hand as she staggered out into the hallway, tasting blood in her mouth.

“Let her go,” she said, very afraid, as she pointed the barrel at him, head pounding, the screaming voices and the fear and the horror of the moment all one terrorizing tactile overload.

She was as afraid of the thing in her hand as she was of the man dragging Stacey by her hair, shouting his violent curses into the cyclone of the women's fearful screams. She hated guns and everything they represented, but in that first fleeting reaction, her eyes desperately searching for a blunt office object to stop him with, a cane, a paperweight, whatever, her fear for Stacey's life overcame her revulsion for the instrument of destruction she now clenched in a death grip.

From the moment Duane had barged into her office, to the backhanded slap, to the hard fist, everything had led to her reaching into the desk drawer for the iron executioner, and these events climaxed as her finger squeezed the trigger beyond the point of no return. Sharon Kamen's penultimate act of violence.