to take that before you can do something?
That's what they all say, right? That's what you're thinking? Well, if that's what they all say, maybe there's something to it.
The first year or so we both had jobs, we bought a house, we were going to be like our folks. He wasn't doing much coke yet. If he hit me one time in a fight, he'd be all sweet afterward and we'd make up.
I went home to my mom after the first bad time. You know what she told me? She told me she hoped he stopped but she'd better not tell Dad because he'd get all upset and what could he really do anyway? Except maybe go on over to Ned's and get himself in trouble. Either him or Ned, and either way it would be trouble so I'd be better off in the long run if I could just work it out with Ned and not involve my dad.
That's what wives did, Mom said. They worked it out and tried not to complain, and maybe if I was just a little nicer, maybe Ned wouldn't get so mad. If I wouldn't get so bitchy, you know.
So I did try but the thing was, I couldn't get any control over Ned when he was drinking and doing coke and all that other. He was just plain mean, and even worse after he lost the job with Bill Graham – he was like one of the chief roadies for a couple of years – and then they let him go – guess why? – and he had to go back to little clubs and just got meaner all the time. And of course in those music scenes there was all that coke.
Anyway, I had this girlfriend, Tara, down in LA, and I kind of ran away to stay with her. I made the mistake of calling Ned and telling him I was gone, I wasn't coming back but he shouldn't worry about me. Isn't that great? I didn't want him to worry about me. I just wanted it to be over.
But he didn't want it over. It was a mistake to have called. I never dreamed he'd come after me. Stupid. I know now. He came down and was so weirdly calm. He wasn't stoned or drunk. I think that's what scared me the most.
We let him in. I never thought he'd… well, he just walked up to Tara and didn't say a word and punched her in the stomach as hard as he could. Ned was a big man, you know, six feet, two hundred pounds. Then he stood over her and said he'd kill her if she ever hid me again or helped me or called the police.
And me, too. He'd kill me, too, if I called the police. I believed he would, too. I had no doubt at all. He grabbed me by the hair and the arm and we got to the car and drove back all night and he wouldn't let me go to the bathroom. Then we got home, he hit me because the car was dirty and he made me wash it.
It sounds strange, but during all this time we were trying to live normal lives. I mean, I was working with Harlan, I was his receptionist, thinking someday to be a hygienist – oh, you didn't know that? Yes, that's how that started. I didn't plan it, to be unfaithful. That wasn't who I thought I was. But everything with Ned was falling apart and Harlan was very nice to me. Gentle. So it was easy to keep the relationship hidden. It wasn't like I had to sneak out at night. I mean, we'd just close the doors at lunch.
And then, after we were together, he saw the… he saw what Ned had done and said I should report it, call the cops, do something. I kept telling him Ned hadn't done it. They were accidents, that's all.
Well, you saw Harlan. He thinks you do everything you're supposed to do and things somehow will work out. So finally, I think I'm in love with him – Harlan. I know he's fat now, but in those days he was just big. I've always had this weakness for big men.
Now I decide to wait until Ned isn't drunk or stoned and try to talk to him, tell him I'm unhappy and can't take him beating me anymore and I'm going to leave. I don't mention Harlan, of course. Thank God. I tell him there's no other man, nobody else. It's not that. It's just between him and me that we're not working out.
I kept thinking that if I don't run away, if I'm reasonable, his reaction is going to be different.
Which it was. He sits there in his chair for about an hour and then – real calm again, which should have been a warning – he says he's going to go out for a while and think about things.
By midnight he's not home and I finally fall asleep.
I wake up screaming, but there's a sock or something in my mouth and I can't breathe or make any noise and there's this awful awful pain down… down in me… and Ned's on top of me, holding me down.
The next day I can't move. My insides feel broken, ripped up, I still can't breathe, there's blood on the sheets and my hands are tied to the bed. I see that my closet is open and half the clothes are pulled out, cut into shreds, thrown around the room. On the floor I see the knife – it's a butter knife – he's used the dull end, poking it in me.
I wake up again and he's there, untying me, he's straight again. Helps me get in the bath. I'm scared every second now. He's being calm and says he can make things disappear without a trace. I'll find out it's true, he says.
So I take a sick day – I couldn't have gone in anyway – and then it's the weekend and one of the nights Ned has scored some coke and he wants me to get high with him. We'll have fun, he says. It'll be like old times. What old times? I never used drugs.
Well, I can't do it. I'm so scared, I'm still hurting bad. Ned starts to get upset with me again – I've got to stop that. I can't take it any more, not right them, so I try to be nice, do what he wants, and he wants to have sex.
Can you believe this? I'm pleading with him, saying I hurt real bad, but he says so what, I'm his wife, get on your back. And I do. And I'm not sure at the moment I'm going to die.
But I don't. That was the worst, not dying. You know how many times I wished I had just died then? How many other times? I mean, truly die, not wake up, just be gone from all this? And believe me, once you feel that – like you really want to die – it's not too far to want someone else to be dead. Why does it have to be me?
I wake up sometime early and Ned is lying next to me, not moving. For a long time I watch him, thinking, hoping, he might be dead. I pinch him in the leg and there's no reaction, then he snores or snorts or something. But the idea stays, the germ of it.
A couple of days go by and I'm starting to heal and things look different, the way they do. No one really wants to believe there's no hope, do they? Even though, really, there isn't.
I'm back at work, I'm putting Harlan off with some excuse and suddenly I realize I haven't seen Boots – Boots was my cat – I haven't seen her in days. Sitting at the front desk at Harlan's, then, all of a sudden, I just know, the only way out, what I have to do.
Don't kid yourself, there wasn't any escape. Ned can make things disappear without a trace. He was proving it. I was next.
I arrange it so he thinks we're going to get high. I'm sorry I've been so difficult. I'll be a fun person the way I used to be…
This time it's easy. I give him the shot, take a long hot shower, drive out to the beach and bury the stuff, go to my parents' house for breakfast – just visiting, which I still did back then. When I get back home I call the police, tell them my husband's had an accident.
John Lescroart
Hardy 04 – 13th Juror, The
The tiny airless interview room smelled of sweat and wet wool.
Freeman sat, legs crossed, in the chair that he had pushed back against the wall in the corner away from the door.
Hardy's mouth was dry, his back stiff. He had not moved a muscle in fifteen minutes. He found that he believed every word that she had said, and was struggling to keep his perspective. 'You could probably have pled that as a Murder Two,' he said, 'which would take it out of capital.'
Freeman said, 'We got a dismissal. That takes it out of capital, too.'
'I don't care what the law says.' Jennifer brushed her hair away from her face. 'I knew him. There was no other way.'
'You should have tried calling the police. They could have done something.' Hardy, arguing against himself now, realized how lame it sounded.
Jennifer allowed a one-note laugh. 'No, they couldn't. Don't you understand? This had been going on for two years and they couldn't have done a damn thing even if they wanted to, even if they believed me.'
'Why wouldn't they believe you?'
Because that's not how it really works. You should know better. You think the law's here to protect potential
