Jennifer looked into the small foyer mirror and saw her own startled eyes. Behind her, still standing at the entrance, David clutched his empty glass and watched her. She was right. She wasn’t some crazy person, having dreams and seeing ghosts. It was all true. Margit had come to her after her death.
“Is that Tom?” David asked.
Jennifer nodded into the mirror. She was listening to Tom explain that a warrant had been issued for David’s arrest. “Now get the hell out of there, Jennifer. I don’t want you involved. I don’t want David to get an idea of what’s gone down.”
“There’s no need to worry, Tom,” Jennifer answered coolly. She was angry with him for not believing her at first, and now angry again that he was telling her what to do. “I can take care of myself.”
“Jesus, Jenny, let’s not try and prove anything, okay? I was wrong. I admit it. Now get out of there.”
“I’m going home, Tom. To Brooklyn. Come over later and we’ll have dinner. I have more to tell you. Kathy Dart called me at the office.”
She hung up the receiver and turned around to David, who had stepped closer to her, but only so that he could lean against the wall to steady himself.
“That was Tom,” Jennifer said quietly, pulling on her leather gloves. “He told me that he spoke to the coroner and that the tests came back on Margit’s skin tissue. They found evidence of the lidocaine, David. I guess the police have a warrant for your arrest.” She spoke without raising her voice.
“You knew?” David asked weakly.
“Yes, I knew.”
“How, goddamnit?”
Jennifer went to the apartment door and paused there with her hand on the knob.
“Margit told me on the morning after her death. We talked.”
“She couldn’t!” David protested, stumbling forward.
“She loved you, David. She loved you all her life. She kept your home and raised your sons. She never wanted anything but your love and respect, and what did you do in return? You turned her out for another woman, a younger woman who was—what did you tell Margit—’more interesting’? And then you just didn’t settle for a divorce. No, you had to kill her for her money.”
He threw his glass at her. With the speed and deftness she was only beginning to realize she possessed, Jennifer grabbed the glass out of the air before it hit her, and set it down on the small hallway table. She managed to smile curtly at him, and then she went for him. It suddenly seemed so natural and so right. She would use her powers to settle the score. He had taken her dear friend’s life, and now she would take his.
Jennifer grabbed David by the throat and jerked him off the floor. Holding him at arm’s length, she smiled at him while he gasped for breath and tried to break her grip. Then with one motion, as if she were flicking off a fly, she tossed him away. He flew across the living room and hit the wall, then crashed to the rug.
She moved closer, knowing she had to finish him off, that she couldn’t let him live, when she heard the doorbell. The sharp ring snapped her concentration, broke her desire to kill, and she turned away from him, leaving him choking up blood. She walked toward the front door, and in desperation he lunged at her, tried to grab her leg. Jennifer kicked him in the face, knocking him away, and opened the apartment door.
“You’re looking for David Engle?” she asked the two men at once.
They nodded, startled by her question, and then by the sight of David behind her on the living room floor. He was trying to pull himself up onto his knees.
Jennifer gestured toward David, who had recovered enough to begin to cry. “Well, you’ve found him.”
Then she moved quickly to the elevator doors and caught them before they closed. She looked back and saw the two men reach down to help David Engle off the floor. They were already reading him his rights.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
JENNIFER COULDN’T FOCUS ON her surroundings. She was thinking of Margit, of David, and of herself. She was thinking how she had gone after David and would have killed him if the police hadn’t come. She was trembling, frightened again, as she realized they could have arrested her, too, there in David’s apartment. She was mad, she thought, trying to kill David. She was losing her mind. In her confusion, she found herself walking along Riverside Park.
Plowing through the snow tired her, and she decided to turn left at the next corner, cross over to Broadway, and catch the subway home. Two men were ahead of her. They had come out of a park entrance, turned and walked off. Jennifer felt her heart race. She glanced around to see another man trailing her by fifty yards, and she knew instantly what they were planning. She should have crossed the street in the middle of the block and walked into one of the co-op buildings as if she lived there. The doorman there would call her a cab. Then she spotted another man on the other side of the street, tramping through the snow with his head down, his hands deep in his pockets. She should cross, she knew. Cross immediately, right there in the middle of the block. But she didn’t.
She kept plowing ahead, with her own head down, as if she were consumed with her own thoughts. What was she doing? she asked herself. Why was she behaving this way?
The two men had hesitated at the corner, as if waiting for the light to change, but she knew they were waiting for her. She knew, too, that they would come back toward her as the third man approached, and then they’d surround her and pull her off into the park. A dozen yards and she’d be completely out of sight in the winter afternoon darkness. There were no joggers in this weather, no one walking dogs. She was the perfect prey. They knew it. She knew it. And the thought made her smile. She felt her blood pumping, as her body warmed to the encounter.
The men were turning toward her, and from far behind, she heard the third man pick up his pace and start to run. She watched the men approach. They had spread out on the sidewalk, as if to give her room to pass. Both had long wool scarves wrapped about their necks, and stocking hats pulled down over their eyes.
They were close enough now for her to see that they were Hispanic, teenagers who weren’t more than kids, really. As they passed her, they said something in Spanish and lunged at her, grabbing her between them, lifting her slight body easily, and pulling her off the sidewalk.
Jennifer looked up to see the third one waiting. He had raised his fist and was holding a club in his hand, a short piece of pipe wrapped in electrical tape.
She waited for the surge of strength, her wild power, to consume her, and at that moment, as the small one raised the clumsy club, she thought, It won’t happen, I’m defenseless. Then it hit—the rising rage of her primitive self.
She felt the sudden shudder of cold through her body, felt her heart pump, as if it had a life of its own, then her blood surged through her limbs and, using the two men who held her as posts, she suddenly lifted her body up and swung her legs. The heel of her right cowboy boot caught the short man in the mouth, driving his teeth up into the soft roof of his mouth. He couldn’t even scream when she kicked him away.
The two others swore, furious, and one of them freed his left arm and swung at her head. She ducked the blow, slipping down onto the snowy path and pulling both of the men with her as she fell. She seized their thin necks with both her hands and heard them gasp and gargle for breath as she squeezed the life from them. She realized, holding them both aloft, that she was smiling at her own strength, at her own revenge.