“Margit, I won’t let you talk like that! I won’t let you believe—”
“Believe it, Jennifer. It might happen to you. Once you’re over forty, they put you out to pasture.” The small woman’s voice rose with anger. “Well, if he leaves me, I’ll make him pay.”
“Margit, I’m going to cry. Please.”
“I’m sorry. Please go to sleep. Don’t worry about tomorrow. I’ll take you back to Brooklyn Heights. David said he has to go into the office, or at least that’s the excuse he’s giving me.” She stood up and forced herself to smile. “Sleep tight, dear,” she said, and pulled the door closed, leaving Jennifer alone.
Jennifer sat very still, holding the glass of water in one hand and the sleeping pill in the other. She forgot about her own problems for a moment and thought of Margit and David: a lifetime together, two children, a long and happy life, and now David had found another woman. She hated him at that moment, even though David was her doctor.
She felt her hatred pump through her body. It began in her fingers and raged like a forest fire in hot wind. Her breath came quick and hard, and in an effort to try to control herself, she took the pill, washing it down with a gulp of water. Yet still she raged. She stood up, forgetting her pain. She wanted him. She wanted to hurt David.
She opened the door and stepped into the hallway. The lights were out and the apartment was quiet. With her feet silent on the thick carpet, she moved toward the light that seeped out from under their bedroom door.
Jennifer realized they were sleeping separately when she saw the light under Matthew’s bedroom door. That he had left Margit alone in their bed enraged Jennifer more. At that moment she felt a draft of cold air and shivered. A surge of blood pumped through her veins.
With a violent push, Jennifer swung the bedroom door open. David was in the bathroom. He was wearing just his pajama bottoms, and his heavy white flesh sagged over the drawstring. He was brushing his teeth and his eyes bulged when he saw her. He looked old and useless.
“Jenny,” he mumbled, his mouth foamed with the white toothpaste.
“You!” She came at him with her hands extended, fingers reaching to clutch his throat. She knew how she would kill him—with her fingernails ripping into the flesh of his neck. But suddenly her vision swam; she felt lightheaded and stumbled forward. He caught her before she fell to the floor.
“It’s all right, Jenny. You’re all right.” He lowered her to the carpet and called for his wife.
“What happened?” Margit asked, rushing from the other bedroom.
“She passed out from the medicine. It was too large a dose, I’m afraid. I forgot to ask her if she’d had something to drink earlier. She’ll be all right, though. Give me a hand.”
“She’s not hurt?” Margit asked.
“No, but she’s going to have a hell of a headache in the morning.”
“Damnit, David, why weren’t you more careful?”
“I was careful. She shouldn’t have had this serious a reaction. Something must be wrong with her metabolism.”
They had her in the hallway, carrying her between them like a sack of potatoes.
“What was she doing in there, anyway?” Margit asked as she struggled with Jennifer’s legs.
“I don’t know. I looked up and saw her in the mirror. She was coming straight for me,” David said, puzzled. “I was brushing my teeth. I didn’t have my glasses on. She looked wild, as if she were out of her head. I couldn’t tell whether she was just wandering, or whether she had—I don’t know —come to get me.”
“Get you?” Margit looked over at her husband. “What do you mean?”
“She looked like she wanted to kill me,” David replied, setting Jennifer gently on the bed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
JENNIFER STOPPED WALKING AND let the other Wednesday morning commuters rush by her. She stood staring at the bold headline of the New York Post:
Several people bumped against her in the crowded corridor, and she moved out of the steady stream of pedestrians, then closer to the newsstand to read the smaller print:
Jennifer walked over to the newsstand and stealthily purchased the newspaper, as if she thought she might be watched. She took it to a relatively quiet corner and flipped through the pages for the story. There was a photograph of the street and an arrow indicating where the body had been found, wedged between the parked cars.
As she rode from Brooklyn to Manhattan, she scanned the story for details that might link her to the death. No one had seen the murder. A neighbor had found the victim on Monday while walking his dog. It had snowed hard all weekend, and by then the body had been buried beneath twelve inches of snow, but the dog had sniffed out the blood. One foot of the murder victim had been sticking out, like a raised flag, the neighbor explained. And so he had called the cops. There was a close-up photo of the man’s battered old shoe.
“Inhuman,” the neighbor with the dog was quoted as telling the Post. “The killer must have been some kind of King Kong. What’s this city coming to?”
There was a description of how the man’s neck was broken, and the article speculated on the size of the assailant. “Two hundred and fifty plus pounds,” estimated Detective Coles Phinizy, “and maybe six feet six or seven. We’re looking for a man the size of a defensive back, someone who’d give Hulk Hogan a match.” The victim’s identity was being withheld until his nearest relatives were located, but anyone with information about the murder was asked to call the Twentieth Precinct.
She glanced around carefully and then tore out the article and tossed away the newspaper. Her fear had returned—not that it had really left her, but she had been able to suppress it.
She had taken Tuesday off from work and, with the help of another sleeping pill, had slept most of the night. When she did wake, she remembered the attack but had begun to believe that she had simply overreacted. It hadn’t been as brutal as she remembered. She hadn’t killed anyone, she finally convinced herself.
Taking a shower that morning, she had studied herself in the mirror, searching for some telltale signs, a new growth of hair, a change in the size of her muscles, but there were no marks on her body, no signs that her body had changed on her.
Now her fear flooded her body. It wasn’t fear of being arrested for murder. The police would not be looking for a blond white woman, five foot seven and 126 pounds.
Her fear was much more terrifying and secret. She had killed someone with the strength of her own hands, and she had no idea where it had come from.
She rushed through Penn Station, up to the street, and out into the cold New York morning. She was on her way to a meeting with the members of a nearby Catholic church that wanted funds for a homeless shelter. But as she hurried to the street, Jennifer knew she couldn’t sit through any meeting. Instead of going to the church, she’d take a taxi to her office and have Joan telephone and reschedule.
The snow had been cleared from the streets and pushed into the gutter to form a high ridge, already blackened with soot and broken down at places where pedestrians had beaten an icy path into the street. A taxi stopped ahead of her and a man with a suitcase jumped out, over the ridge of snow, and went toward Penn Station. Jennifer bolted immediately for the cab. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that another man had spotted the taxi and begun to run. Jennifer picked up her pace, found an opening in the ridge of snow, and ran into the street. She came at the taxi from behind, from the blind side.