Page 66 of Kill For Me Kill For You
Amanda left the deli, headed for the subway and was glad to have some time to think.
She had come up short. But in some ways she knew more about Naomi now than before.
She knew Naomi was a false name. That she expected someone to try to trace her through the group. That she had only attended the sessions after Amanda had been sentenced to probation and assigned to that particular group. And Amanda knew Naomi was smart, maybe with money behind her to get a false ID that good, and she was careful. She also had the criminal contacts to get a false ID.
Naomi was perhaps more dangerous than Amanda had realized.
She turned the corner, headed downstairs into the Manhattan subway system. She liked to ride the trains sometimes. It helped her think. She swiped her MTA card, took the train for downtown, got on and found a seat.
As the doors closed, Amanda already knew her next move.
It was the only play she had left. The only question was whether there was still time.
Maybe Quinn was awake already? Maybe giving a description of Amanda to the cops right now? She had to find out the truth, before she wound up behind bars. She had to find out who Naomi was and why this had happened. She’d almost killed a man for her. Maybe a good man? Maybe an ex-husband? Maybe a loan shark? Maybe a blackmailer?
Maybe a relative?
The only thing Amanda knew for certain was that she had to know why she’d been manipulated into attacking the man Naomi called Quinn. She would need to tell a story in court. But, more than that, she wanted to know for herself. The thought that she might have attacked a totally innocent person made her feel sick. She had to know. For better or for worse.
She had to take this risk.
And it had to be done tonight.
32
Ruth
It took Scott an hour to calm down.
Ruth sat in the kitchen with him. He rocked back and forth on the kitchen floor, his arms wrapped round his frame. He had stopped crying now.
‘How could I have done this?’ he said. This was the third or fourth time he’d said it. And this time Ruth had to answer.
‘You did the right thing,’ she said.
He looked at her, the skin beneath his eyes red and puffy from the tears. He wanted to believe Ruth. He needed to. She could feel his desperation to draw some meaning, some justification from this terrible thing.
‘The cops couldn’t do anything. They would’ve let him go. He would’ve been free to kill more women. He was hunting us, Scott. What else was there to do? This was survival.’
He nodded. Sniffed. Let out a low moan.
‘He tried to kill me. What you did was right. Never forget that.’
She helped him up and they held each other for a long time. Resting her chin on his shoulder, she was reminded of something long ago. Emotional touchstones in a life create powerful memories that can live large again with a smell, a word, or a feeling.
Ruth’s mother had got stomach cancer in Ruth’s senior year of high school. There had been a lot going on in that year, and Ruth had missed most of it. Her parents had divorced years before and her father had moved to Holland with his new wife. Ruth’s mother, Beth, needed support and so Ruth accompanied her to the clinic for chemotherapy, for months. She sat up late, holding her mother’s hair while she vomited into the toilet; wiped her mother’s emaciated body with a cool cloth all night; made sure she got her meds; made light dinners and sometimes even spoon-fed her mom ice cream when she couldn’t hold down anything else.
The morning of her senior prom, Ruth’s mom tied a bright purple scarf round her head and drove them to the clinic. It was a big day for both of them. It had been a date marked in their calendar for a while, for two reasons – the prom, of course, and it happened to be the same day Beth’s scan results were due. At the clinic, Ruth sat in a pine chair, covered in beige leather in an antiseptic hallway, swinging her legs and smiling at the nurses and patients who passed by. Her mom was in the consultation room, talking with the doctor. Ruth spent most of that half hour staring at the bell on the wall by the nurse’s station. It was old. While everything in the hospital looked like new, this brass bell was covered in a dark layer of grime and dirt engrained into the brass. Discolored and out of place in the white-walled, white-tile hallway. A small hammer hung on a piece of string from the bracket holding the bell.
If her mom got bad news, Ruth had already decided that she couldn’t leave her on her own that night. She would just miss the prom. Her mother was more important, and their time together now was precious.
Beth emerged from her oncologist’s office. Ruth couldn’t see her face yet. Couldn’t gauge what the results were like because she couldn’t yet read her expression. And then Beth turned, a blank look on her face. Ruth’s grip on the armrests tightened. Beth didn’t look at her, she just walked calmly toward the bell, took the hammer in her hand and smacked the dirt clean off the brass.
Rushing forward, Ruth took her mom in her arms, and they held one another while the bell pealed, and all the nurses, patients and doctors applauded and whooped. Cancer patients rang the bell when they got theall clear. It was the best sound Ruth had ever heard in her life, and the feeling she had then was indescribable. It wasn’t just relief – it was love growing stronger, a blessed release from sickness and impending death. They held each other and cried with something more than joy.
As Ruth held Scott tightly in the kitchen of the little apartment in Hartford, she felt that extraordinary sense of elation and relief again. Only this time it was more powerful. She thought if she shut her eyes tightly enough, and listened,reallylistened, she might even hear a bell ringing softly in the distance. There would be no more long, dark days being haunted by a killer.
Ruth was in remission.
