emergencies, people are capable of almost superhuman strength.
Once back in the boat, he had administered artificial respiration until Marjie began to breathe again. But she was still unconscious. Fortunately, the occupants of a nearby powerboat witnessed what had happened. They sped Mr. Palmer and his unconscious daughter to shore, where an ambulance sped her to Hennepin County General Hospital.
It was in the emergency room that the bump on her head, just over the right ear, was discovered. The doctor performed a lumbar puncture, hoping to find the spinal fluid to be clear. It was streaked with red.
The medical staff did what it could. They fitted her with catheters and IVs. Nurses came in periodically to turn the small patient to prevent bedsores. They administered physical therapy, moving her small arms and legs so the joints would not stiffen. But no one could predict whether she would ever feed herself or move her own body again.
Hours became days. Days melted into weeks. Marjie remained unconscious. Her classmates, her playmates- indeed, because of media coverage, most Twin Citians-prayed for her. One or the other of her parents was with her constantly.
One day, some three and a half weeks after the accident, Marjie’s eyes fluttered, then opened. Her father, seated at her bedside, had been staring at his daughter’s closed eyes for so long that at first he did not believe his own. Then, of course, emotion overcame him.
The Twin Cities celebrated. A lot of prayer and concern had been invested in that little girl. And it had paid off. The Sunday following her recovery, sermons were preached on the theme of Jesus curing the sick, especially children. Little Marjorie Palmer was a celebrity.
Her recollection of her coma was published in area newspapers and discussed in radio and television newscasts. It was not that much. She remembered striking her head as she fell. She remembered slipping under water. She remembered trying to breathe and swallowing water. She remembered being terribly frightened.
Then, there had been a brilliant light. As her eyes grew accustomed to the light, she was certain she had seen Jesus. He was waiting for her, smiling, arms outstretched. Gone was her fear. She felt very comfortable. Then, it was as if she had drifted into a deep, peaceful sleep, remembering nothing more until she awoke and saw her father crying tears of joy.
That had been almost ten years before Elisabeth Kubler-Ross made afterlife experiences popular. Little Marjorie’s experience made her even more of a celebrity.
From that time on, Marjorie Palmer held the firm belief that God had a very special purpose for her. That was why He had returned her to this world. She would have died after but six years on earth if God, perhaps as a result of all those prayers, had not restored her to life. Her parents, firmly believing this to be so, impressed the message on their daughter so repeatedly and forcibly that she had little alternative but to believe.
It was not simple growing up knowing she was divinely destined for some unknown but obviously earthshaking purpose. On top of all this, Marjorie was a bright girl, who learned easily and won top grades. She was also a beautiful brunette with a spectacular complexion. Little wonder she became the most popular coed at the University of Minnesota.
Looking back now, at her life from the time of her “drowning,” through her college days, she could find no reason why she had let Jay Galloway into that life. In the jigsaw puzzle of her existence, he was the piece that didn’t fit. When she forced him in regardless, he destroyed everything.
Though they had attended the university at roughly the same time, she didn’t recall him there. She had traveled with a crowd several levels above Jay Galloway’s expectations at that time.
Then had come the massive frontal assault he called courting. She had to admit that, at least through the courting stage, he was fun. Even the sex was good. Better than anything she had experienced until then. Better, in fact, than anything since, including Jay Galloway.
It started on their honeymoon. In the Hotel Liliuokalani, he began to treat her like a whore. She almost expected him to pay her after they copulated. She could not understand it. . nor would he discuss it.
As life with Jay Galloway continued, Marjorie slid subconsciously into her role as, not his wife, but a high- priced mistress.
How far she had fallen! From a privileged soul who had had an encounter not merely with death but also with God. She’d been programmed to believe that hers was a divine mission. God had saved her for something significant.
To be the debased consort of Jay Galloway?
It was when he sank everything they owned into that miserable tabloid, when they had been reduced to eating stretched-out leftovers and borrowing money-from her parents, his parents, everyone-she was pushed around the bend. She seemed to descend, in her husband’s eyes and her own, from being a high-priced mistress to a two-bit whore. She abandoned the last shreds of self-respect and acquired a well-deserved reputation for sleeping around.
As their financial condition improved with the success of the paper, followed by another success in the pizza business, culminating in this present adventure with the Cougars, she simply became more selective about her sleeping partners, whether of one night or of some duration. It seemed her only way of striking back at the man who had dragged her from the heights to the eighth circle of hell. Her condition might be best described by the ancient adage
She had planned Hank Hunsinger as the coup de grace to her relationship with Jay. She had long thought that her husband and the Hun deserved each other. They used each other shamelessly. Galloway urging Hunsinger to play even when badly injured, reminding him that one doesn’t make the club from the tub, and that a good part of the crowd had come to see him. And that any loss of playing time would certainly be reflected in the cash value of his next contract.
Hunsinger, for his part, gleefully wrung every last cent he could get out of Galloway’s wallet each time a new contract was negotiated. It was no longer that the Hun needed the money; he just enjoyed the torture he could inflict on the penurious Galloway.
Marjorie’s strategy, then, was not only to have an affair with Hunsinger, but also to make sure her husband knew of it. Knew that the two people he despised, one for marrying him, the other for working for him, were mocking him through the gossip columns. Knew that the money, expensive gifts, and investments she would insist Hunsinger lavish on her all had their source in Galloway’s carefully doled-out fortune. In effect, she would force her husband to support her twice over.
Her plan worked, at least to the extent that the affair did mark the end to any conjugal relationship. Until recently, the Galloways had continued to live together and be seen together, but there was no longer any intimacy between them. A divorce was in their immediate future.
However, Marjorie had very badly gauged how much an affair with Hunsinger would drain from her already depleted emotional reservoir. Even life with Galloway had not prepared her for the degree of humiliation Hunsinger was capable of inflicting.
Long after she felt that she had achieved the revenge she had plotted against her husband, Hunsinger would not permit their affair to end. He demanded that she beg for the shame he heaped upon her. When he was finished with her-and only then-he casually dismissed her.
She could not forget and would not forgive.
Marjorie attended the Cougar games faithfully. It was one of the few agreements she and Galloway had reached. Besides, she derived deep satisfaction from the physical punishment Hunsinger had to absorb in those games.
But it wasn’t enough. It never could be sufficient reparation for the brutality he had wreaked against her. There had to be something more. As time passed, the memory of her ill-fated fling with Hunsinger, instead of fading, became more intense and piercing. With increasing frequency, she found herself indulging in elaborate plans of revenge.
As her ace of trump, there was always that duplicate key to his apartment.
Lieutenant Harris needed more time and many more words to explain to Marjorie Galloway what Father Koesler was doing in her home. She was the only one of this morning’s interviewees who had not known him through the God Squad, or through any other circumstance, for that matter.
During the explanation, Koesler experienced one of those awkward sensations that was by no means unique
