up, then down on top of John Richard’s head. The meat glanced off his forehead and his eyes rolled up in his head. Releasing my wrist, he stumbled backward. I lurched for the phone, dropped it, retrieved it, pressed 911. I shouted that I had an intruder, my ex-husband, John Richard Korman.
I screamed, “He hurt me! I’m bleeding!”
“Is he there now?” The 911 operator spoke calmly.
I scrambled for the window in time to see John Richard, one hand clutching his temple, limping toward the street. “Yes, yes, but he’s leaving! Hurry!” I yelled. “Quickly! Come and get him and take him away!”
But I already knew it was too late. The Jeep roared and he was gone.
22
I closed and locked the window. Outside, Jake had not stopped his incessant howling. I let him in through the back door. He bounded over to me immediately, whining, putting his muzzle up to my face, trying to lick it. I floundered into the bathroom to wash the blood off my arm. Unfortunately, the sound of sirens brought Arch and Macguire rushing down the stairs.
The bloody fingers of my left hand pressed the lock on the bathroom door. I couldn’t talk to anyone just yet. When the boys called, I responded by saying I’d be there in a minute. I looked dreadful. My face was blotchy; my right cheek bore the scarlet imprint of John Richard’s hand. I turned the cold water all the way up and splashed and resplashed my face. It had been a long time since the Jerk had treated me like this. Our house boasted a security system, a bloodhound, and a live-in policeman. Tone of these had helped.
Would we ever be safe?
The next hour passed in a daze. At my insistence, Arch and Macguire went back upstairs. The two policemen who came to the door, both deputies I did not know, asked if I could tell them where John Richard had gone. I gave them his address in the country club and begged not to have to go down to the department to make my statement. The deputies instructed me to write down exactly what had happened. As I was scribbling, one of the cops called Tom, who was not at his desk. The other took the ham into evidence. I almost laughed, but I couldn’t stop trembling enough to do so.
By contacting and attacking a witness in the homicide investigation in which he’d been charged, John Richard had gotten himself into deep trouble. When the sheriff’s department located him, they would arrest him again. Somehow knowing this did not make me feel much better. All I could think of was Arch.
I took a shower, changed into fresh clothes, and searched for my son. I found him on a portable phone in his room. Judging from his confidential tone, he was talking to his buddy Todd. When I knocked on the door, he quickly disconnected.
“May I come in?”
I could tell he felt horrible. His voice cracked when he whispered, “Mom, are you okay?”
“No, hon, I’m really not.”
“I didn’t even have a chance to see him.”
“I know.”
Arch slumped morosely on his bed, his lips pressed together. Finally he said, “I just feel as if it’s so hopeless. You promised you’d help him and ? “
“I have tried to help him,” I interrupted, carefuI to keep my tone soothing. “Not because of anything good he’s done, but because I promised you that I would ? “
“Excuse me, Mom, but you have not helped him. He says he didn’t kill Ms. Craig. I believe him.”
“Arch, please. I have spent the last three days on the telephone asking questions, going around talking to people, and ? “
Behind the glasses, his eyes burned ferociously. “And what have you found out? Nothing!” Guiltily, he softened his tone. “I know you want him to go to prison. In your heart.”
Poor, miserable Arch. It didn’t help that he was probably right. I did want John Richard in prison, where he couldn’t hurt another woman. I said patiently, “I am waiting for people to call me back. I can’t make people talk to me.”
He got up and slid halfway under his bed. When he inched back out, he was clutching his backpack. “Sorry, Mom, but I’m going to live with the Druckmans for a while. At least until Dad’s hearing. Todd’s mother said it was okay.” He opened a drawer and began pulling out shorts and shins. “If I hadn’t been here, Dad never would have come around and started hitting you. He was probably looking for me.”
“Honey, please, please don’t go.”
“This way,” my son continued, avoiding my eyes, “we won’t have another big mess with the police coming over. Please leave my room now, Mom.”
He’d ordered me from his room. He wouldn’t speak to me. He refused to even listen. I retreated to my kitchen, where I sat in silent shock for ten minutes. Then I called the Druckmans to apologize for my son being a freeloader and to see if I could at least bring over some food. Kathleen Druckman assured me that she was happy to have Arch for as long as he wanted to stay. I didn’t need to deliver any meals, either, she said with a laugh, she’d be insulted. She and her husband would even take Arch down to the jail to see his father. And was it true that John Richard had knocked me unconscious with a whole poached salmon? I said no, thanked her again, and hung up.
Macguire had left a note taped to my computer: Going out for a walk, hope you’re okay. See you at dinner. Can we have pizza? Not even Macguire’s renewed appetite cut through my misery. When Arch slammed out the front door, I almost burst into tears. Instead, I dialed Tom’s number.
It was four o’clock. He wasn’t there, so I left a very brief voice-mail message. John Richard had been here. Both Arch and I were okay. If he wanted more information, he could talk to the officers who, I hoped, would have arrested John Richard by the time he got this message.
The memory of the Jerk’s slap rushed back into my consciousness. But what had he shrieked about Suz Craig? She’d been reprimanded. For what? I put in another call to Brandon Yuille. He was the Human Resources person, after all. Unfortunately, he again refused to speak to me except through hi secretary. I told her to ask Brandon if the ACHMO bigwigs were about to fire Suz Craig and if so, why: And remind him, I said, that I was sorry we’d had a misunderstanding. Also that I had a close personal relationship with the investigative journalist of the Mountain Journal and she’d just love to start bothering him for an interview. I hung up with a bang that did nothing to improve my mood.
I cleaned up the mess in the kitchen left from my fracas with the Jerk. To fulfill Macguire’s request, I mixed up some pizza dough and set it aside to rise. I called my supplier to see about replacing the ham and got her machine. Then, because I couldn’t think of anything else to do, I started over on the orange poppy-seed bread.
This time, just as I was again at the fateful point of folding in the poppy seeds, the phone rang. I thought it might be Marla or Tom or even Brandon Yuille getting back to me, but I was wrong. To my surprise, it was Patricia McCracken.
“Well,” she demanded breathlessly, as if none of the sorry events of the last three days had ever transpired and we were still happy confidantes, “what have you found out?”
“About what?” I gently scraped a poppy seed-speckled pillow of the light, moist batter into a buttered and floured loaf pan.
“About John Richard, silly! Has he gotten himself into any more trouble?”
“Like what?” I really did not want to discuss this. Any info I gave Patricia would be all over Aspen Meadow in an hour, given her feud with the Jerk. At least she hadn’t heard the crazy story about him hitting me with a salmon.
“My neighbor’s son was driving by the park when the helicopter came down. I heard ReeAnn was burned over three-fourths of her body.” she continued. “Was she with John Richard? You don’t know what happened with that, do you?”
This was the woman who had complained so bitterly to me about our community’s obsession-with-disaster? Incredible. Some people just can’t see themselves as fostering the very problem they’re griping about.
“I can’t talk, Patricia,” I responded. “I need to finish making some bread.”
Bitterly, she said, “You’re not much help,” and hung up.
Not much help. Well, wasn’t that what everyone was saying about me these days? I slid the bread into the
