Life Sentence Read online

  However, he saw no other solution, but to steal her money. He needed money to continue and he knew he couldn’t explain all of it in a way she would understand. She certainly wouldn’t willingly give him the money. What she even more certainly wouldn’t understand or sympathize with was his driving need for revenge, but what else could he do? Retreat to an old-age home and die?

  You could have died there with her at least, he told himself.

  What sort of a choice was that?

  He was always like this, imagining arguments and getting himself all worked up and enraged before a word was spoken. While he was growing up, it happened too often in relation to his mother and certainly his father. He would go to sleep dreaming of smashing their faces with a rock or a frying pan to shut them up.

  It amazed him how his mother hadn’t changed in some ways. She still kept way more cash than was necessary or prudent in a Tampax box under her panties in the bottom dresser drawer. She was always thinking about being prepared. Something terrible would happen and not having actual money in hand would prove to be disastrous. Credit cards and banks would fail.

  But look where she hid it. Somehow, she harbored the belief that someone robbing her wouldn’t look in a Tampax box under panties. It was too indecent. From where did she draw these favourable conclusions about human nature, from which well of optimism to think that a thief would have some inhibition or reluctance to look in the box after he had pealed away a piece of underwear in his search for booty?

  All his life he had equated kindness and trust with weakness. What other lesson did nature teach so clearly and repeatedly? What other lesson did human history teach so clearly and repeatedly? Expect the worse from people and you’ll never be disappointed, was his motto. His immediate problem existed because he hadn’t followed that rule to the letter and now he was suffering because of it. He almost blamed himself for the mess he was in as much as he did them.

  Them, he thought. They were a group that consisted of lawyers, a priest, scientists and, of course, men of power, wealthy, influential pullers of the strings. Soon, he would be the one pulling their strings or wrapping the strings around their throats.

  They had tricked him, used him. They didn’t play fair. They weren’t embezzling money; they were embezzling life.

  There seemed to be no other purpose for his life now than the quest for vengeance. In the condition he was in, what other ambition could he entertain even though he was free? Travel? Meet beautiful women? Accumulate a fortune? None of that was within his grasp or mattered anymore.

  Vengeance, on the other hand, would bring a deep sense of satisfaction. In that lay the only hope of once again experiencing happiness and pleasure. There was never anything as delicious as tasting revenge, doling out pain and disappointment to those who had doled it out to him, no matter what their justifications or reasons. There was no higher law than the law that protected his own safety and pleasure. The Bible, the commandments, all those sermons and rules for behaving made absolutely no sense. Churches supported wars and accumulated great wealth; everyone believed God was on his side. When you got right down to it, it was all a matter of convenience, so why not do everything to make things convenient for yourself?

  There was, however, one other small hope. He tried to keep it buried under his darker thoughts because it probably would bring him only greater disappointment if he gave it some credence and it turned out to be false hope. However, it was difficult to keep it down. It was like a bubble that found ways to pop up on the surface of the water. It slipped around and under thoughts until it was out there, impossible to deny.

  If they could do this, maybe they could reverse it. Maybe they could correct it. Maybe they could take it back. He remembered when he was a young boy, an unadulterated bully, how he could twist some poor sucker’s arm or squeeze his balls until he took something back. He not only had them take back nasty words, he had them take back nasty looks. ‘Smile and compliment me or I’ll burst out your eardrums.’

  Lording it over those weaker than him gave him a godlike sense of control and power. He ruled the world, or at least his immediate world. Those who did his bidding or clung to his shadow for protection would make sacrifices, betray their mothers, give up their treasures just to keep him on their side.

  Maybe this wasn’t such a hopeless ambition, an impossible goal. Maybe he would find a way to twist their arms. That, with the energy coming from his drive for vengeance, renewed him, resuscitated him, sent him charging ahead. He was surprised and grateful for this small turnaround. If only he had enough time, he thought, and wondered if within him, there was an hourglass dripping his seconds, his minutes, his hours, his days, dripping them into some dark hole. Like a sailor tied to an anchor whose rope had been twisted around his ankle, he would follow it down, screaming, waving his arms in vain.

  Did he have enough time? Damn it, couldn’t he stop the clock?

  He looked down the street at a parked taxicab. The driver was smoking a cigarette, taking a break. Could he make it to the cab? And if he did, could he make it to the end of the ride? And if he did, could he make it into the building? Every step, every immediate goal of this journey would be in question, would be another crisis.

  His breath was short; his legs wouldn’t go much faster, and the aches and pains wouldn’t dissipate, but somehow, because he had come this far, because he had surprised himself, he had regained the confidence he needed. He prided himself on not believing in anything but himself, and once again, at least for now, he could do that.

  They had taken it away, but it was coming back.

  Maybe there was an angry God after all, and maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t as angry at him as he was at them. He didn’t care if he was being so used by this angry God, exploited. In fact, he welcomed it. ‘Yes, use me,’ he muttered as he walked. ‘Use me, use me.’ As long as we have the same goal in mind, he thought, I’ll pay the toll and say a prayer, even two. I’ll even light a candle.

  It made him smile and that was something he thought he would never again do.

  Already, he was ahead. Surely, this meant he would succeed.

  He banged his closed fist on the taxicab window, surprised at the strength he showed.

  ‘I’m off,’ the driver said barely turning to look at him. ‘Taking a break. Find another cab.’

  He opened the rear door and got in anyway.

  ‘Hey,’ the driver said. ‘Didn’t you hear me, old timer? I’m not on duty.’

  He slipped out a knife he had taken from his mother’s kitchen and put it up to the driver’s neck. ‘Drive,’ he said, ‘or die. The choice is yours and it might be the last one you make, so think carefully.’

  There wasn’t even a pause. The driver started the engine, put it in drive, and pulled away from the curb.

  ‘Where we going?’ he asked, hovering over the steering wheel to keep his throat more protected.

  ‘Back,’ Bradley Preston Morris said. ‘We’re going back.’

  ‘Back? Back where?’ the cab driver asked, glancing up at the rear-view mirror.

  Bradley’s eyes picked up the headlights of oncoming cars and glowed like a cat’s. ‘Back,’ Bradley said in a hoarse whisper. ‘Back to where it all began.’

  ‘How disgusting,’ Tracy said after Palmer had described the events involving Ceil Morris. Despite the promise he had made to himself after all on his way to pick her up, he couldn’t put it out of mind and besides, she saw how distracted he was. She was keen at reading him. There was no sense denying.

  ‘At least she wasn’t physically harmed,’ he said, thinking about the case he and Tucker had just closed.

  ‘Yes, but somehow, you don’t think of elderly people becoming or remaining thieves while they’re on social security. Is this guy the oldest criminal you’ve come across, you think?’

  Palmer loved how animated and excited she could become. Everything seemed to move on her face, but in an adorable way. Her nose twitched slightly like a rabbit’s might
. Her lips stretched and thinned exploding that dimple in her right cheek. Her eyes widened and brightened with her eyebrows looking as if they were lifting off and, most unusual, her earlobes, tiny and soft, inviting a lover’s nibble, quivered, too.

  ‘If I take her word for it, her description of the guy, yes.’

  ‘What a scam.’ She sipped her Grey Goose Cosmopolitan and thought a moment. ‘I think I’m with you and not with Tucker on this one.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘It can’t simply be an old cell mate from prison. Something persuaded her to believe this was her son and it wasn’t just the birthmark and a story about some scar. There had to be more, a connection she made with his eyes, his … essence, if you like.’

  ‘I know what I said, but Tucker’s not wrong, Tracy, To believe that, we have to believe her son aged at least twice as quickly as she has, if not faster.’

  ‘People age under stress.’

  ‘Not like that, like the way she’s describing him. No, there has to be another explanation.’

  ‘Hmm. I guess you’re right. I’m being too romantic about a mother recognizing her own. She nodded and then smiled. ‘Maybe he’s a relative she never knew.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Your work is so much more interesting than mine.’

  He laughed. ‘That’s the first time I ever heard you say that.’

  ‘Well, it is. I crunch numbers, study markets, demographics and meet with people whose most exciting and interesting experience is finding a loophole in a zoning ordinance.’

  He laughed harder and then looked at the menu. ‘I’m going for the lobster dish,’ he said. ‘Screw the cost. You’re paying.’

  ‘I don’t expect that to be all you’re screwing tonight,’ she teased and blew the fugitive strands of her dark-brown hair away from her cheek. Her hair otherwise fell straight, shoulder-length, soft, rich. It flowed like some liquid jewel around her face.

  She belongs in a television commercial, he thought and then, No, I don’t want to share her with that many people, men.

  Everything she did was sexy to him, even the way she wove her fingers around the stem of her cocktail glass, keeping the tip of her pinky slightly up. He had never paid as much attention to the details of a woman as he did to her. No sense fooling himself any longer or denying it, he thought. I’m falling head first in love with her. However, he was afraid of being the first one to express it, absolutely terrified of committing too much, going out too far on that proverbial limb and being rejected and dropped on to the hard surface of cold reality, with her saying something like, ‘I thought we were both just out for a good time, neither of us ready to get tangled in the complications of a serious relationship, especially marriage. God forbid marriage.’

  The net result would be she would start looking for an exit strategy. He did not know how he had gotten to the point where the woman he was with had so much more control of their relationship than he had, but there it was. Despite his cool, James Bond facade, he was once again a starry-eyed teenager.

  ‘Why Tracy Andersen, how you talk. One would think you were a liberated woman.’

  She laughed and turned to the waiter to give him the same entrée order.

  ‘Can’t let me outspend you?’ he teased.

  ‘Not on my dime, no.’

  There was a singer tonight at the restaurant doing romantic Italian songs. With the good food, the wine and now the music, it was heading toward the best birthday dinner he had ever had, excluding the one where he was given his first set of car keys, of course. When he told her that, she smiled, but she didn’t laugh or turn it into another joke. She fixed those cerulean eyes on him and softened every hard place in his body. He thought he might just pour out over the table into her hands and let her mold him into anything she wanted.

  Afterward, strangely mute, but speaking more with a touch, a kiss, a smile, they went to his apartment. She was a little coy at first. It was as if this were the first time they had ever decided to sleep together. He had the feeling that she was giving herself to him in a deeper, more complex and complete way. Dare he think commitment?

  She was the first to say it, mention the word ‘love’ and then immediately explained why she had been hitherto reluctant to do so. ‘People use it too freely,’ she explained. ‘It’s almost automatic, a tag on to a goodbye: I love you. The listener feels obligated to return a “I love you”, too. I’ve always had this sense that people who said it or needed it said were insecure, and if there is one thing I would hate being or even be thought of being, it’s insecure, naked.’

  ‘You just talked me out of saying it,’ he replied and she punched him playfully on the shoulder. Then he got serious. ‘Tracy, if there is one person with whom I don’t fear being naked, it’s you.’

  ‘That’s close,’ she decided.

  ‘I don’t know where we’re going, but I’d be a helluva fool to think of this as dead-ended. I can’t imagine anything better.’

  ‘Closer,’ she said. ‘On second thought, Detective, you have the right to remain silent.’

  ‘Too late. I love you,’ he told her and they kissed and made love until they were both exhausted. They fell asleep within minutes of each other, neither able to say which one had dropped off first.

  The sound of his phone seemed to come from the end of a tunnel. She had to wake him to tell him he wasn’t dreaming it. It was only six fifteen.

  ‘Dorian,’ he managed and cleared his throat.

  ‘Now it’s ours,’ Tucker said.

  ‘What’s ours?’

  ‘The case. We don’t simply have a senior citizen thief. We have a senior citizen killer. I’ve been on it for a few hours.’

  ‘Why didn’t you call me?’

  ‘Figured I’d give you another birthday present. Was I right?’

  ‘Yes, thanks. Who’d he do?’

  ‘Taxi driver. Witness saw him get out of the cab and saw the driver fall face forward on to his steering wheel.’

  ‘How do you know it’s our senior citizen?’

  ‘Description fits … the coveralls … how old he looked. How many men that old looking like that are out there robbing old ladies and knocking off taxi drivers?’

  ‘Anything else … anything in the cab?’

  ‘Forensics on it, but I don’t hold up high hopes.’

  ‘Door handle might give up something. His prints would be most recent.’

  ‘Guess what?’

  ‘He wiped it?’

  ‘See, you do have powers of perception,’ Tucker kidded.

  He shifted his gaze toward Tracy who was propping herself up on her left elbow and staring at him, her eyes full of questions.

  ‘I’ll dress and meet you for breakfast,’ he told Tucker.

  ‘Maybe we’ll have to go back to talk to the crazy lady. See if there’s anything else she remembers that might help.’

  ‘Maybe she’s not so crazy.’

  ‘No. It’s the rest of us,’ Tucker said and hung up.

  Palmer hung up and lowered his head back to the pillow.

  ‘What? Is it that case? The senior citizen case?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Well,’ she said shaking him. He looked at her. Her eyes widened. ‘What?’

  ‘It appears the same old guy killed a taxi driver.’

  ‘Killed?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Oh, how dreadful. But he didn’t kill the woman claiming to be his mother, did he? What’s her name?’

  ‘Ceil Morris.’

  ‘Yes. He didn’t harm her except to rob her.’

  ‘The way she described him, he couldn’t harm a fly. Maybe he needed his Geritol first or something.’

  ‘Wow.’ She fell back to her pillow. ‘I told you. Your work is far more interesting than mine.’

  ‘In this case, I’m with Tucker. I’d rather be bored.’

  ‘OK, here’s my theory,’ she said, sitting up again and letting the blanket fall to her waist. How did she ex
pect him to hear a word? ‘Stop it,’ she said slapping him playfully when she saw his eyes widen and a little smirk appear through his lips. She pulled the blanket back up and over her breasts. ‘Are you listening or not?’

  ‘I am now.’

  ‘It’s her son but he’s wearing make-up, that’s all. There was some mix-up in the prison. He’s out and he’s wearing make-up to make himself look so old.’

  He nodded. ‘Yeah, that makes some sense if you believe they somehow confused identities in a maximum security prison. Highly unlikely, Tracy, and besides, his mother saw him before he was buried. She made the arrangements for the funeral and the burial.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘Yes. She said that,’ he told her.

  ‘Was it a big funeral?’

  ‘No. She told none of her relatives. She has only a sister and the sister’s family.’

  ‘So only she saw him in the casket?’

  ‘Yeah, so?’

  ‘Maybe he wasn’t really dead, Palmer. People can make people look like they’re dead, can’t they? You can be fooled. Especially an overwrought mother.’

  ‘Yeah, but that makes even less sense, Tracy. Why would the prison authority do all that to release a felon? These are not wealthy people. Nobody could buy any favors.’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers.’

  ‘Tracy, why would her son disguise himself and then tell her he’s her son?’

  ‘Because he knew no one would believe her and he wanted to get into her apartment and steal her money,’ she fired back.

  He shrugged. ‘Still doesn’t explain how he got out, Tracy. It’s too much of a stretch to claim mistaken identity and what you’re suggesting is too involved. All sorts of people in authority would have had to be in on it.’

  She thought a moment and nodded. ‘I guess you’re right. It doesn’t make any sense. Wow.’

  ‘Yeah, wow.’

  ‘You have no ideas, nothing. Even intuition?’

  He shook his head.

  She poked him in the chest with a stiff right forefinger and held it there. ‘You’d better keep me in the loop on this one, Detective Palmer Dorian, and none of that junk about not bringing the work home with you.’