Thriller 2: Stories You Just Can’t Put Down

Haven’t we all dreamed about revenge at one time or another? Getting an abusive boss fired, leaving an unfaithful spouse, or killing a disloyal best friend are all common fantasies-rarely admitted and never discussed. In “Justice Served,” bestselling writer Mariah Stewart shows what might happen when a young woman does what the rest of us only think about in our darkest moments. It is a tale of vengeance that takes you to corners of the human heart better left unexplored in real life. And in classic Mariah fashion, the many twists and turns make this story anything but a straightforward tale of justice and revenge.

JUSTICE SERVED

Every time I think back on that night, I can see myself poised at that exact moment in time. I watch the story unfold-it’s like watching a movie, you know?-and I wish to God I could relive that instant when I did the unthinkable.

I wait for that split second when I could change what happened, when I could do what I should have done, even if it killed me. Dying that night, possibly as a hero, sure beats the shit out of living with the memory of my cowardice.

It always starts at the same time and place, and try though I might to make it turn out differently, it never does. I see it as it happened, over and over and over.

I am driving Jessie home in my car-not the one I have now, but the one I had that night. The streets are quiet, it’s almost two in the morning, and we both have a pretty decent buzz on from all the drinks we’d had that night, Jessie in particular. She’d left her car at the lot rather than drive herself and I offered to drop her off since we lived in the same town, though several blocks apart. We knew each other casually, the way you know someone who works where you work, but who’s never worked with you. We’d always been cordial to each other, but never really had all that much to say. Maybe if she’d worked there a little longer, we’d have been a little closer, I don’t know. In any event, she was in my car because she’d had more to drink than I had, and the consensus among our coworkers was that her judgment was more impaired than mine.

A lot they knew…

So anyway, in my mind’s eye, I see my car drifting slowly through the night, almost like a leaf floating downstream, taking the corners carefully, pulling up in front of her place and putting the car in Park.

“Do you need help?” I ask her. “Want me to come up with you, or wait while you get the door open?”

Jessie looks out the window to the front porch of the three-story Victorian house. There are three mailboxes alongside the front door, one for each apartment. I know that Jessie lives alone on the second floor. I follow her gaze and notice that one of the lights attached to either side of the front door is missing a bulb, but I don’t mention it.

“I’m okay. I’ll be fine.” Jessie holds up her keys and gives them a little shake. “Just peachy. Not to worry…”

She opens the door and swings it wide, unbuckles her seat belt and slides to the edge of the seat.

“Thanks for the ride. ’Preciate it.” She pushes herself out of the seat and bends down to face me. “See you tomorrow.”

“I can pick you up in the morning if you need a ride,” I tell her, but she’s already slammed the door and is making her way up the sidewalk, more steady on her feet than I would have expected.

Out of habit, I lock the doors, then reach into the backseat and grab my bag and pull it by the strap and yank it to me, and some of the contents fall onto the floor behind me. Rather than take the time now to scoop them up, I plop the bag onto the passenger seat where Jessie had been sitting. In this brief time, she’s made it up the steps of the house and is at the front door. I put the car into Drive, and start to lift my foot from the brake when, out of the corner of my eye, I first notice the shadow moving along a line of trees to the left of the house. I turn my head and there are several more, creeping through the dark toward the porch, and I blink, not sure if I’ve seen anything at all. But then, there, the shadows draw closer to the house, like wolves stalking in the night.

My hand falls to the door handle and I start to open it, when I realize one of the wolves has remembered that my car still sits in front of the house with the motor running. He turns and eases across the lawn, and through the windows, our eyes meet. His are feral and small, and his nostrils are flared like the animal he reminds me of.

I look back at the house and see that Jessie is now completely surrounded. She’s striking out at them and in the dim light of the one bulb that’s still lit, I see them laughing at her. The one on the lawn stares me down defiantly, and I am frozen with fear.

And this is the part that I wish I could change. This is where I wish I could go back in time and do what I should have done.

But we know that there are no such second chances, right? What’s done is done, you can’t change the past-any cliché would fit right about here.

So every time, it’s the same as it was: when I finally react, it is with the greatest cowardice imaginable. I hit the gas and drive away, pretending I did not see, leaving Jessie to be plundered by the wolves.

I know what I should do-I know, I know-but I am shaking all over. I’m afraid to stop and get out of my car to look for my cell phone in the backseat where it fell when my bag overturned. Besides, if I call 911, they will wonder why I have permitted a friend to be dragged away by beasts without doing something. Screaming. Blowing the horn. Calling the police right then and there.

But my mouth is dust-dry and my brain seems unable to form coherent thoughts. My heart is pounding out of my chest and my skin has gone icy cold. I am sweating and crying as I drive around, wildly, looking for a pay phone-if I call from my cell, they’ll know, won’t they, that I left her, knowing what was about to happen to her? Finally, in desperation, I drive to a market that’s open all night and I find a phone, and with trembling hands, I dial 911. I whisper the words into the receiver anonymously and hang up and slink back to my car.

My face flushed with shame, I start off in the direction of my apartment.

They found her where those animals left her, after they’d done things to her that no one wants to even know about. For some reason known only to God, she was still alive. I went to see her in the hospital, but I never wanted to, never wanted to face her after what I’d done. But driven by guilt and shame, I had to, and I did. If I told you I didn’t have nightmares after that, I’d be lying. And if I told you that I did not see the accusation, the burning hatred in her eyes when I came into her room, I’d be lying about that, too.

So I did the only thing I could do. I leaned over and whispered in her ear.

“I’ll get them, Jessie. I swear to you on my life, I will get every one of them and I will make them pay.”

I know she heard me, but she never reacted. The look in her eyes told me that the very least I should do for her was to bring down the men who’d traumatized her to the extent that she lost her ability to speak.

I spent every week night and every weekend day at a firing range. I shot handguns of every caliber and every weight until I could hit a target dead center with every shot. And even then I practiced until I knew there was no way I’d miss once I aimed and fired. Finally, I felt ready.

It took me three weeks to discover the name of one of her assailants, but truthfully, one was all I really needed. And I found him in the damnedest place: in our small local paper, where he was identified as a person of interest in the robbery of a convenience store. Daniel Montoya, age twenty-four, had a history of arrests including assault with a deadly weapon and domestic violence. Up until now, his criminal activities had been confined to Shelton, the small factory town ten miles away. What had brought him into our town that night, I could only guess. In my darkest moments, I believed that he was put there to test me, a test I failed miserably. But studying his photograph, I knew his eyes were the ones that had taunted me that night. And just as surely, I knew it was my destiny to hunt him down.

Once I had his name, I had him. His neighborhood wasn’t hard to find-and it wasn’t anything like mine, that’s for damned sure. A few easy bucks on the street bought me everything I needed to know.

Daniel was a pool junkie, played every night at Tommy’s Pool and Suds on East Seventeenth Street in Shelton. The bar closed at two, and by two-fifteen he was on his way to his wheels in the parking lot. The last thing he expected was to find a woman leaning against his driver’s side door.

Did he think perhaps I was someone he knew, someone whose face was obscured in the dim light of the parking lot? Whatever, whoever he thought I might be, he was smiling as he walked toward me.

“Hello, Daniel,” I said in my sexiest voice.

“Hello, you,” he replied, never breaking stride as he walked toward me.

“Hey, Montoya,” one of his buddies called from across the lot, “Tomorrow, hey?”

“Right, man,” Daniel called back, never taking his eyes from mine. “Tomorrow.”

We stood staring at each other, listening as the other cars were started and driven from the lot.

“So, pretty lady, what’s happening?” he asked.

“You’re happening, Daniel.”

“Do I know you?”

“You know a friend of mine,” I said, my right arm folded across my waist, my hand hidden by the loose jacket I wore.

“Who’s your friend?” He stepped closer, sensing an easy score.

“Jessica Fielding.” My arm started its slow move from beneath the folds of the jacket.

“Doesn’t ring a…”

I could tell the exact moment that bell began to ring. His stare froze, his mouth half opened and his expression went from seductive to panic in the blink of an eye. “Don’t think I know her, sorry.”

In less than a heartbeat, my trusty little friend was pressed up against his temple.

“Should I describe her to you, Daniel? Should I remind you of the last time you saw her?” I had straightened up and now had him backed up against his front fender.

He was silent, trying frantically, I believe, to find a way out of this, a way to disarm me. He wanted to grab for the gun, I could see that in his eyes, but he wasn’t sure of my strength or my reflexes, so he, like a wolf, was gauging my movements, biding his time when he could move in for the kill. He opened his mouth to speak, thinking to distract me.

“Don’t say a word I don’t ask you to say,” I hissed, jamming the gun into the flesh on the side of his face. “I’m going to ask you a question, and you are going to answer it. No bullshit, understand? One question, one answer, or I will shoot you now, right now.”

Sweat beaded on his forehead, and I was certain he understood.

“The name of the others who were with you when Jessie Fielding was raped.”

“I don’t know…”

“You weren’t listening, Daniel. I will repeat this only one more time. I ask a question, you give me an answer, or I do you right now.” I was beginning to sweat a bit myself. I wanted this over with. “One last chance, Daniel. Who was with you when Jessie was raped?”

“Some of the guys, I didn’t know.”

“Then some of them, you did. Give me a name.” I began counting backward from ten.

When I got to six, he said, “Antonio. Antonio Jackson.”

“Is he from around here?”

Sweating profusely now, he nodded. “He’s my cousin.”

“Where can I find him?”

“He lives over on Chester Avenue.”

“Thank you, Daniel.” I smiled, and for a moment, he seemed to relax.

Then I pulled the trigger.

I watched his body jerk, then slide sideways onto the ground. Then, satisfied, I walked into the shadows and through the alley that took me, eventually, to my car parked two blocks away.

I heard the sirens as I started my engine. A few minutes later, I pulled to the side of the road to allow the speeding patrol car to pass me.

That night, I slept straight through until morning for the first time since the night that changed everything.

“One down, Jessie,” I whispered in her ear the next night. “Daniel Montoya. One down…”

I left her sitting in her wheelchair, her eyes still trained on something beyond the window that no one else could see. There’d been no change in her expression, but I know she’d heard and understood exactly what I said.

Ten days later, in the parking lot of yet another bar, Antonio Jackson and I came face-to-face. It had been remarkably easy to get his attention. Anytime a tall, well-built blonde beckoned, men like Jackson lost all caution. Even after what had happened to his cousin Daniel, Antonio apparently never considered the danger once he saw me perched on the hood of his car, my long bare legs dangling off to one side.

“One name,” I told him. “Just give me one name.”

He’d hemmed and hawed as I pressed the barrel of the gun to his throat. He stalled and he pleaded and he cried, but in the end, he gave me the one thing I wanted from him.

“Eddie Taylor.”

“Thank you, Antonio.” I pulled the trigger, and he dropped like a stone.

“Antonio Jackson,” I told Jessie the next evening. “Two down.”

It took me almost three weeks to find Eddie Taylor because he’d been in the county jail for possession and had only been back on the streets for less than forty-eight hours when we finally met. Like an avenging angel, I stepped out from the alley as he walked in. I knew I had the right guy. I’d spent every one of those twenty days staring at his picture on my computer.

“One name,” I’d said, emboldened by my previous success. “That’s all I want from you, Eddie. Just give me the name of one of the other guys.”

He’d swallowed hard and tears streamed down his face.

“Awwwwww,” I mocked him. “Scared, Eddie? Did Jessie cry when she realized what you were going to do to her? Did she cry when you raped her?”

“Listen, let me…”

“One name, Eddie.” When he didn’t respond, I once again started counting backward from ten. I’d found that to be universally understood.

“Kelvin Anderson.”

“Thank you, Eddie.” I shot him through the heart.

“Three down,” I told Jessie the next night. “Eddie Taylor…”

Obviously, the police were not oblivious to the fact that several young men from the same general neighborhood had been taken out by the same shooter-hello, same gun, which thank God wasn’t registered anywhere, I’d been careful in that regard even while I may have seemed careless in others-but they didn’t seem overly interested in investigating too deeply. After all, at one time or another, they’d arrested Daniel, Antonio and Eddie. I began to think of myself as performing a public service when I realized that the rap sheets of the three of them would have reached halfway to Pittsburgh. In my own way, I was proud of myself. I was taking the steps necessary to ensure that no one would ever go through what Jessie’d endured. As for my conscience, well, after the night that changed everything, do you seriously think my conscience bothered me over ridding the world of a couple of predators?

A month later I found Kelvin Anderson, and he kindly supplied me with the name of yet another wolf. Frankie Eden and I had a tête-à-tête in the front seat of his car, and later that same night I was able to confirm to Jessie that the count was now four down, and two to go.

Frankie Eden’s eyes told me he knew who I was, why I was there and where his next stop through the cosmos was going to be. He gave up the last two without flinching, and of all of them, I have to say that Frankie was the only one who died like a man.

Bernie Gunther and Dominic Large weren’t as easy to track down, but in the end, although it took several months, I’d eliminated every one of them.

After I’d taken out the last of the six-that would have been Bernie-I went back to my apartment and took a long, hot shower. I slept straight through until one the following afternoon, which barely gave me enough time to do what I knew I had to do before evening came. After I’d completed my errands, I took another shower and blew out my hair so that it hung in long soft waves over my shoulders and down my back. I hadn’t realized it had gotten so long. I’d been so focused on the task I’d set for myself that I’d barely looked at my reflection in the mirror anymore. I was surprised to see how gaunt I looked, how pale and thin I’d become, which had, I suppose, prompted all those questions at work I’d been brushing off.

“How are you? Are you feeling all right?”

“Have you been ill?”

Yes, I’ve been ill, I wanted to say. Sick to death of myself, I wanted to say.

“No, I’m fine. Really.” I’d smile and make an effort to put a little spring back into my step.

But soon-probably by this time tomorrow, I thought-everyone will know the nature of my malady.

I typed up the letter I’d composed, sealed it and walked the seven blocks to the home of my parents. My father would still be at work; my mother had gone in to the city to have lunch with some friends and would have spent the rest of the afternoon shopping. I owed them the truth-they deserved the truth-but ever the coward, I was grateful to God that I wouldn’t be around to hear what any of them would have to say. I could not have borne my mother’s look of shock and horror, my father’s cold stare of disbelief and disappointment.

I walked back home, feeling just that much lighter that at least in this, I’d done the right thing. I needed to make certain that neither of my parents would think that in anyway, this was their fault, that they’d failed me in some way. I needed them to understand that the guilt, the shame, the failure, was all mine.

I loaded the handgun and tucked it into my bag. I looked around my apartment for the last time, my gaze lingering on those possessions that had once meant so much to me. The antique tables my grandmother had given me, the sofa I’d saved so long to buy, the candlesticks my mom had given me when I moved in. They’d been a wedding gift from an old friend of hers, and she’d never used them. Neither had I.

I sighed and closed the apartment door for the last time. Looking at the lovely millwork that surrounded it, I decided to leave the door unlocked so that when they came to search my place, they wouldn’t have to damage anything to get inside.

The drive to the nursing home seemed endless that night. For the first time ever, every light I approached turned red, as if some cosmic something was telling me to stop. But it was far too late for that. I’d done what I had to do, and now I was going to let Jessie do what she needed to do. I passed an old cemetery and thought for the first time about where they’d lay me to rest. Would I be permitted to be buried in the family plot once they learned what I’d done? Again, the only emotion I really felt was gratitude that I would not have to face their horrified eyes when the truth came out.

It was still early evening when I arrived at the nursing home, so I parked my car near the butterfly garden that some local school kids had planted for the residents and turned off the engine. Knowing I would not be needing them again, I left the keys under the driver’s seat and sat quietly for a few moments, taking deep breaths and holding them for as long as I could to calm myself. After my nerves steadied, I got out of the car, taking my bag with its special cargo with me. I took the long way to the building, going through the garden and soaking up the scents and the colors. Did one’s sensory memories go with them to the afterlife? I wondered.

I went up the handicapped ramp because it took me past the birdbath where, not surprisingly for that hour, no birds were bathing, but the little fountain there still trickled water and I loved the sound. I went through the big double doors in the front of the building in an effort to hold on to the music of the fountain for as long as I could.

Walking past the guard, I smiled and waved. They were all used to seeing me now, and so there were no questions asked while I signed in. Everyone knew me as Jessie’s devoted friend. I headed toward the south wing and Jessie’s room, trying to conjure up the words to “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” which, to tell you the truth, I didn’t. For me, dying wasn’t nearly as bad as living with what I’d done and what I was.

I went into Jessie’s room and found her sitting in a chair near the window, her untouched dinner tray on the foot of the bed. I knew how she felt. There were times when the horror of the night that changed everything came back full force and filled me so that the thought of eating made me physically sick.

“Jessie,” I said, seating myself on the chair opposite hers, “it’s done now. They’re all gone. All six.”

I opened my bag and felt the butt end of the old handgun, all cool metal hardness. My fingers wrapped around the handle and I drew it out.

“I know you’ve wanted to do this since the night it happened.” I took her hands and placed the gun in them. “It’s all right,” I told her. “I deserve this. Everyone will know the truth now. No one will blame you. And after it’s done, you can come back, Jessie. You can come back into the world, once I’m gone from it.”

I sat directly in front of her, my back straight, my vision clear, my conscience for once subdued. I was ready.

Jessie’s gaze dropped to the gun in her hand and she stared at it for a long time before looking up at me again. The gun raised slowly, the barrel aimed at nothing in particular. I tapped my chest, right where I felt my heart beating, with my index finger and told her, “Aim here. I’m ready when you are.”

I closed my eyes, and waited for the end to come. And waited.

Curious, I opened my eyes just as swiftly, so swiftly, before I could take a breath or utter a sound or reach out to stop her, Jessie’s wrists twisted and suddenly the gun was at her temple, and the room reverberated with the single shot.

I stared in horror as Jessie slumped forward before falling face-first from the chair onto the floor, red like a fluid carpet flowed around her as if to cushion her fall.

“No!” I screamed as the room filled with people.

Suddenly nurses, orderlies, visitors, residents, everyone who’d been close enough to have heard the shot crowded into the room even before the realization of what she’d done completely sunk in.

“Oh, my God, Jessie,” one of the nurses said, “what have you done…?”

What, indeed?

So there I was…obviously I’d brought her the gun with which she’d killed herself, which made me an accessory.

My panicked brain recognized immediately that one, I was not dead, and two, I’d be charged with a crime. But since I was alive, and Jessie was not, at that point, copping to a charge of accessory to murder was definitely more appealing than admitting what I’d really done.

The story I’d tell swirled through my head, bits and pieces tripping over each other as I tried frantically to put one together. And I’d come up with a pretty damned good one, if I do say so myself.

Jessie couldn’t face another day living with the memory of what had happened to her. She begged me-begged me-to help her to end it. As her friend, as someone who loved her, as the only person to whom she’d speak, how could I deny her that release? Who would doubt that story, knowing what she’d gone through?

I could get off with a light sentence, I knew, once I explained. No one would ever need to know the truth, right?

I was just starting to breathe a little easier when the door opened and my father walked in. He’d seen the story on TV-who in the tristate area had not?-and he’d come down to the station.

But he’d not come to comfort me, or even to ask me why.

His gaze was just as cold as it had been when, as a child, I’d disappointed him in some fashion. I wasn’t surprised, frankly, that there’d be no attempt at understanding. There never had been in the past.

In his hands, he held a blue envelope. The same blue envelope I’d left in his mailbox earlier.

“Daddy,” I said, ever the coward, holding out my shaking hands, silently pleading for him to give it to me.

But Judge Lucas Bradley-Judge Luke “Hang ’Em High” Bradley-handed the letter over to you. I guess there were other instincts that were stronger in him, other bonds harder to break than the one that existed between father and daughter.

Signed this date: Deanna Jean Bradley

When Detective Mallory Russo finished reading the last page of the statement, she held it up in one hand and said, “You haven’t signed it.”

“I will.” The young woman held out her hand for the pen.

The detective and the once promising assistant district attorney stared at each other from across the table.

“You could have come to me, Dee,” Mallory told her. “You could have given me the information and we could have gone after these guys. It didn’t have to be this way.”

“Yes, it did, Mallory. And may I remind you that none of you were too interested in them even as I was picking them off.” The A.D.A. shifted in her seat. “Besides, everything that happened…it was all my fault. It wasn’t your fight.”

“They’re all my fights,” Mallory told her. “We’ve known each other for years, Dee. Why couldn’t you have trusted me to take them down?”

Deanna shrugged, her eyes shifting to the two-way window on the opposite side of the room.

“Is he still there, watching? My father?”

“Judge Bradley left an hour ago.” Mallory rested her arms on the table.

“You know, he could have burned my letter, he could have kept it and held it over my head for the rest of my life.” Deanna Bradley continued to stare at the mirror. “I still can’t believe he turned against me.”

“Your father has an unswerving sense of justice,” Mallory reminded her. “He’s always going to follow his conscience.”

“So will I, Mal.” Deanna sighed. “So will I…”