Killing Spree Read Online Free PDF Page B

always in a financial pinch. But Gillian didn’t complain. A lot of people were much worse off than they were. She longed for a bigger place after Ethan was born, but they couldn’t afford it. So for the first four years of his life, Ethan slept in a crib, and his bedroom was a converted walk-in closet. Gillian painted a window with a lovely seaside view on his wall to make up for the fact that her son was sleeping in this claustrophobic little space. When he was five, they got him a bigger bed—on stilts, with a ladder. Beneath the bed, Barry had arranged a small dresser, lamp, and an old bean-bag chair. Ethan loved it, because it looked like something in a submarine. But Gillian felt frustrated. After all these years, they were still in their “starter” one-bedroom apartment. Their son deserved his own room with a window, for God’s sake. Where was all their money going?
    It got so every time Barry bought her an expensive present, Gillian nagged him about spending beyond their budget. Then afterward, she’d feel horribly guilty and ungrateful.
    One Saturday morning, Barry went off to work for “a couple of hours,” and by 11:15 that night, he still hadn’t returned home. Gillian hadn’t been able to get ahold of him. She was going out of her mind, and kept busy doing laundry all evening. On a trip up from the building’s basement with a load from the dryer, she saw him sneaking into the apartment. His back was to her, and his suit looked dirty and disheveled. He had his key in the door.
    “Where in the world have you been?” she whispered.
    Barry swiveled around. Gillian gasped and dropped the laundry basket. His beautiful face had been savagely beaten. His right eye was swollen shut, and dried blood was caked around his nose and mouth. “I got mugged,” he replied, talking out of one side of his mouth. His lip was split. “These two guys jumped me.”
    In the bathroom, she helped him clean up his face. They spoke in whispers, so as not to wake Ethan. Barry didn’t want their son seeing him like this. “It’ll give him nightmares.”
    The more Gillian asked exactly how it had happened, the less Barry wanted to talk about it. Finally, he admitted he hadn’t gone to the police yet. “Two teenage boys made me fork over all the money out of my wallet—along with my watch and my wedding ring,” he said. “Then they kicked the shit out of me. Please don’t humiliate me any further by making me tell this all to the cops.”
    Gillian called the police anyway.
    “I really wish you wouldn’t have done that,” Barry grumbled, changing his clothes to go to the station.
    They had a neighbor sit with Ethan, and drove to the station house together. Barry was friendly, but not terribly helpful to the detective questioning him. He had a tough time recalling what his assailants had looked like, and was vague about the exact time and location of the incident. The police didn’t think he’d get back the wedding ring or the watch.
    Two days later, Barry told Gillian of a fantastic job offer with a new ad agency in Seattle. Apparently, a former superior from Leo Burnett had recently defected there, and he’d asked for Barry. The job meant more money. The only catch was they needed him right away. So Gillian packed up and they moved—all very hastily, almost stealthily. She should have known something was wrong. But the mugging had soured them both on their neighborhood. And she imagined a fresh start with a chance for a real home.
    Gillian found the duplex within days. Eight-year-old Ethan finally had a genuine bedroom—with a window, and a view of the ravine.
    They hadn’t even finished unpacking when Barry gave her the bad news. The ad agency had gone belly-up. He scurried around looking for a job, any job. That was how the former ad executive ended up driving a delivery truck. As for Gillian, even with her file full of prize-winning syndicated stories, all she found was part-time grunt work at a Seattle