Will I be convicted of murder?
My lawyer says it depends on the jury. The law is tricky in Missouri. Seventeen is the age of consent, but if Angela believed Sarah was older and my daughter had given her consent, then Angela would not have been guilty of sex with a minor.
But Angela knew Sarah was only fifteen. She went to our daughter’s birthday dinner with us. My husband can’t find the photos to prove that. I wonder if my daughter destroyed them. She’s testifying for the prosecution. They’re saying my little Sarah was sexually emancipated. A TV talk show shrink said when Sarah brought her lover into her parents’ bedroom she was declaring herself a sexual being. He didn’t mention that the bed was a lot bigger than hers.
Jack sold our house to help pay for the best criminal lawyer in the city. He and Sarah rent a small apartment near his office. Grandma sleeps on a pullout sofa in the living room. She’s moved in with them. She sold her house to pay for my legal bills. My grandmother wants to testify on my behalf. My lawyer says she’ll help prove a family history of mental illness.
The last time Grandma visited me in jail, I asked if she saw my future. Grandma said she saw nothing. The dead no longer visit her in the new apartment. She’s glad her so-called gift is gone.
Her tiny house has been leveled, and an upscale subdivision is being built on the site. These grand houses will have two baths, marble fireplaces, three bedrooms, and walk-in closets.
I wonder if one will have a walk-in bedroom doorway.
The Conqueror Worm by Barbara D’Amato
Neal Hofstra had been home from work just three minutes-time enough to throw his coat on the sofa, stop in the bathroom, get a bottle of water from the fridge, and sit down at his computer and click up his e-mail. Although he complained about e-mail to his girlfriend, Sandy, claiming that because of it he never got away from his job, in fact he loved it. Neal was aware he wasn’t the most assertive man on the planet. Telephone conversations made him uneasy. He never quite knew how to end one and was left saying, “Well, okay-” or “Um, that’ll be fine, then,” and hoping the person on the other end would firmly say “Good-bye.” But with e-mail he could get the wording exactly right. Plus he could send off a note to a friend or even an order to a supplier-his job was supply manager for a chain of office supply stores-at any time of the day or night and not have to worry about disturbing the addressee. When he was forced to actually telephone somebody, he was sure he was interrupting. After all, if the person was at work, she was busy and shouldn’t be bothered. And if she was at home, she was resting and shouldn’t be bothered.
He sat down in his swivel chair and opened nkHofstra. He clicked on in-box. Three new messages in the in-box. It was like opening surprise packages.
From subject received
Sandy Hossler dinner tonight? 11/5/2008 2:44 PM
JDPutnam Brant erasable pens order 11/5/2008 5:01 PM
Earl Think reminder 11/5/2008 5:17 PM
The one from his girlfriend Sandy was a nice thing. He’d like to do dinner tonight, but he deleted it and would get back to her in a couple of minutes. The one from his boss with the pen order wasn’t such a nice thing. The 5:01 time made it irritatingly clear that Mr. Putnam knew he had left work on the stroke of five.
Well, screw him. Neal would get the stupid pens order in tonight. Brant’s took orders 24/7.
The mystery e-mailer was interesting. No attachment, so he opened it.
The message read:
Hello, Inky.
Neal shoved himself away from the desk so hard his chair caught its wheels on an electric cable, and he tipped over onto the floor. Grabbing the chair by the back, he slammed it down in front of the desk and dropped into it.
The rest of the message read “Just asking how you are after all this time.” It was signed “l. Amoco.”
Neal hit reply and typed “Who are you?” Then he hit send. He got up and walked around the room a couple of times until he realized he was holding his breath. The message was a joke. A stupid joke. He ought to be angry. No, he was angry. He sat back down and, furious, he deleted the original message with a hard thumb on the delete key.
But now there was an incoming message. This one from Moca Hooy, which had to be something different. Neal opened it.
You know who I am. Your old friend Berko.
Although Neal was trembling now, he managed to type a reply.
But you’re dead.
A ten-second pause and another message. This one from acc most.
Nope. Can’t get out of it that way, Inky.
Neal punched Delete. Went to the second message and deleted it. Then, thinking he was going to vomit, he ran to the bathroom. But as soon as he got there, the anger took over instead. He washed his hot face with cold water. Then washed it again.
All right. He was furious with whoever it was. But this was not the time to get crazy. Who else knew him by the name Inky? Berko had invented the nickname from his initials, N. K. Hofstra. He was always making up mildly insulting nicknames, like calling Henry Caringella Zorro because he got a zero on his first differential equations test. It wasn’t quite insulting, because it wasn’t Zero. Berko never used these names except in one-on-one conversations, as if it were some sort of intimate endearment. Neal had only heard about the Zorro name because Henry told him. Neal had certainly not told anybody about the Inky name.
Time to trace this thing. He wished he were a computer genius. Sitting back down again, he checked his in-box. Gone, of course. He had deleted the messages. But they would be in the delete file.
He clicked on the delete file. Oddly, the messages weren’t there. Could he have emptied the file? Well, he certainly didn’t remember doing so, and there was the deleted message from Sandy. And besides, he would have had to answer “Yes” when the program asked whether he was sure he wanted to permanently delete the messages, and then he would have had to return to his in-box, because that had been up on the screen when he got back from the bathroom.
And he certainly had not done all that and been unaware of it. There had been no mental blackout. He was angry, not insane.
What was the name the first message had come in under? Something about an oil company? He couldn’t remember.
Of course! He was so rattled he wasn’t thinking. Look in sent items! The first message would be there, attached to his response.
But it wasn’t. It and his response were gone.
The phone rang. He was trembling so much he could hardly answer.
“Hi, hon. Get my e-mail? Let’s do dinner.”
“ Sandy, I don’t think I’m up for dinner tonight.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m not feeling very well.”
“You sound funny. I’ll come over and take care of you.”
“No, honey. I think I’d better just hunker down. I’ll call if I need you.”
She was ringing his doorbell twenty minutes later.
He had loved Sandy when he first heard her speak. Her voice summed her up so well-gentle, willing to listen but willing to speak her mind, too. There was a trace of sadness in Sandy, which he thought was the result of her divorce. She had the air of a person who had made a mistake and grown as a result.
The first time she visited his apartment, he’d cooked for her. She’d had a hard day at her job as a paralegal. The lawyers had kept her working through lunch. Without thinking much about it, he’d taken a carton of eggs from the refrigerator. He cracked six into a bowl, whisked them with a fork, and poured them gently into a pan where butter was bubbling on low heat. While they were scrambling, he took lox and a red onion out of the refrigerator. He sliced two bagels and lowered them into the toaster.