Victims Read Online Free PDF

the young cop’s expression: he had been afraid that maybe they had been wrong. The older cop’s face was blank and cool.
    He checked his watch. “She left about eleven? Two hours ago? Thank you. No, no. Nothing’s wrong. Nothing.”
    He replaced the receiver, turned and said, “What are you guys telling me?”
    All the way from Little Neck to Forest Hills, Bill Grace talked nonstop. About his job, about risks they had taken and how many people they rescued. He was aligning himself with the cops. They were on the same side of things. They were not among the victims.
    Abruptly, he spoke about his wife.
    “Miss Parson, her supervisor, said Annie had a headache. Jeez, she’s been getting a lot of them lately, migraine, they’re real tough, ya know? But she takes something for it, and that helps. Look, she wouldn’t have gone to Forest Hills, because her mother’s down in Florida. My mother-in-law, she’s visiting her mother in a retirement community in Florida...”
    He kept talking until they got out of the car and he was led through the crowd into the wide-open area designated as a crime scene. Someone uncovered Anna Grace’s face.
    Bill Grace knelt down.
    “Hey, babe, what the hell? What’s happened here?”
    He embraced her, and the blanket fell away. He held her close, combed her long dark hair with his fingers. Finally a hand pressed his shoulder hard, and he looked up, surprised, puzzled.
    “Mr. Grace,” a detective said softly, “I’m sorry, but I haven’t asked you officially. Do you identify this woman as your wife?”
    He turned back to her and for the first time realized that she was covered with blood. Her face and arms and clothing were covered with blood.
    “Annie?” he called softly. “Annie?” This couldn’t be Annie. “My God, Christ, Annie, what happened?”
    The detective nodded to the men with the stretcher: Okay, she’s been identified.
    “C’mon, Mr. Grace. C’mon, Bill,” a voice said with easy familiarity. “Let’s go inside your mother-in-law’s apartment and see what we can get sorted out, okay? It’ll be okay,” the man said senselessly, because nothing would be okay, but Bill recognized it as the kind of thing you say and he nodded and walked away from the body and went with the detective.
    There were a lot of people in Mary Hynes’s apartment. He looked around for his mother-in-law and saw her standing in the doorway to the kitchen. She looked like the Invisible Man in the movies. It was a joke of some kind; her face was hidden behind bandages, and she whirled away and ran into her bedroom and slammed the door. He could hear her sobbing.
    He accepted now that something terrible and irrevocable had really happened.
    He asked the strangers in her living room, “Who did this to them? Who hurt them like this?” He called, “Mary, who hurt you? Who hurt Annie? Mary, for God’s sake!”
    He pulled open the bedroom door and could not believe how small she looked. She was lying on the bed, her back to him, her knees drawn up, her bandaged face in her hands.
    “Oh, Mary,” he said. His voice was as hoarse as if he had entered a room filled with smoke. His mouth tasted of ashes. “Mary, my God, what did they do to you? How did... what...”
    It was so confusing. It made no sense. Annie out there covered with blood; Mary in here bandaged. There seemed to be no time sequence. Nightmare time, events crossing and slipping and merging.
    He was astonished at her rigidity. His hands seemed to be pressing on stone as he tried to turn her toward him.
    “Mary, please, Ma, tell me what happened, please!”
    There was a soft, muffled sound coming from beneath her bandages, a gagging, choking, anguished sound. Someone pulled Bill Grace away. A doctor. Someone had sent for a doctor.
    “She’s in pain, son. Let me take it from here.”
    “But what happened? I don’t understand. Who did this to her? Why is she bandaged? What happened? It doesn’t make sense.”
    He turned to a