Life Penalty Read Online Free PDF

looking back at the young lieutenant. “It can’t be Eddie. He loved Cindy like she was his own little sister. I know that’s how he thought of her.”
    “He has no alibi for the time period involved,” Lieutenant Cole said, as he had said earlier in the conversation about Mark Gallagher. “He claims to have gone right home after school to study for a test.”
    “If that’s what he says,” Gail protested, “that’s what he did.”
    “Unfortunately, there was no one else at home at the time to back him up.”
    “This is ridiculous,” Gail said, firmly closing her eyes. She would not listen to any more of his questions if he wasn’t going to listen to her answers. Eddie was not a child molester. He certainly wasn’t a killer. Neither was Mark Gallagher. The police were wasting their time when they could be out trying to find the man responsible.
    “What are you doing to find the killer?” she asked, and knew immediately it was the next morning, though no one seemed to have moved. The sun was hitting the floral arrangement in the windowsill at a wider angle; thenurses looked crisper, more efficient, their actions more defined. They traveled from point A to point B as if there were really a reason for doing so. Nobody had thought to tell them that there were no reasons.
    Gail had spent most of the night in the park, confronting the faceless killer of her young child, wanting to kill him but unable to do so, missing the opportunity to avenge her child’s death, to alleviate some of her guilt. She knew it was the next morning because, if it were possible, she felt even more tired than she had the night before.
    “What are you doing to find the killer?” she repeated, not sure whether the lieutenant had heard her the first time, whether she had, in fact, asked the question aloud.
    Lieutenant Cole’s assurances were quick and automatic. “We’re doing everything we can,” he stated, almost by rote. “We have all our available men working on the case; we’ve rounded up all known sex offenders in the area. Your husband’s already gone through our file of photographs to see if anyone looks familiar. We’d like you to do the same when you’re feeling a little stronger.”
    “I’ll look now,” she told him, and he immediately produced several sheets of photographs. Gail slowly perused each face, some young, some not so young, some distinctly unpleasant in appearance, others quite good-looking. No one was familiar. She handed the photographs back to Lieutenant Cole. “They’re all so … ordinary,” she said at length, surprised by the word. She had expected evil to be more striking in appearance.
    “We’re conducting. numerous tests,” Lieutenant Cole continued.
    “‘Tests’? What kind of tests?”
    “The killer left a pretty clear footprint in the mud which we’re making a cast of. Then there are saliva tests, blood tests, semen tests.”
    The full impact of these words hit her square in the stomach like a fighter’s fist. She felt the bile that lay lodged in her throat beginning to move up to her mouth, and in the next instant she was retching violently into the bedpan. Within seconds a nurse was beside her, holding her head, and the lieutenant was gone.
    Sometime later, her head back against the pillows, Jack’s hand still in hers, the room quiet except for the sound of their dull breathing, she wondered how she could still be alive when she felt so altogether dead inside.
    The reporters were waiting for her when she left the hospital, hurling their questions against her like hard, fast pebbles, surrounding her with their bodies and their cameras.
    “Do you have any idea who might be responsible?”
    “Have the police given you any indication in which direction they’re heading?”
    “Are there any leads?”
    Just like on television, she thought, without answering them.
    “How do you feel about the death penalty?” Someone had answered, and she was surprised to see in later newscasts