Lisa Scottoline - Lady Killer

She read on, noticing that the verbal abuse intensified in the June entries, and she stopped flinching at the whore, slut, and lying bitch. Trish wrote that he’s slipping up on the job and not doing as good as he used to. On July 4th, she felt snubbed by the other Mob girlfriends at a barbecue because he’s not doing as good as he should be, even as good as his brother, who’s a dumbass on top of it.

Mary read on. The story reached a climax of sorts, when Trish confronted him about his stealing, but he denied it to her, and she wrote, he told me I’m nuts to think he’d be dumb enough to steal from the boys, and if Cadillac thinks it, he’s an idiot, too. Cadillac keeps having his suspicions, which led to Trish being accused of having an affair with Cadillac, which she would never do because he’s a pig. Again, no last name supplied.

More suspicions that led to the incident where he shoved me in the closet and held the door closed so I couldn’t get out! I was so scared he was gonna trap me or something! Mary read the following entries, in which a newly mistrustful Trish didn’t believe the apologies: And when he socked me in my stomach like four times and I couldn’t get my breath. In the next pages, the violence escalated. He beat the shit out of me after Biannetti’s again and the very next night, he won’t stop with the biting. More assaults after Biannetti’s, more reconciliations, more I’ll-never-do-it-again, and at least ten Polaroids, each one uglier than the next.

Then Mary turned the page and it got worse: he made me suck his gun and he kept laughing and wouldn’t let me stop or he said he’d shoot me and blow my brains out my neck. Her stomach turned over. He had become a sadist, a sociopath. She shook her head in disgust and bewilderment, then kept reading. Entries in the days following were filled with I’m so scared and what do I do and what if he sees me writing in the diary. There were no references to any weekend getaway, as Brinkley had said, or any clue as to where they would be now. It was the chronology of a nightmare, and Mary reread the final entry: I went to see Mary but she didn’t do anything. Now I don’t know what to do. If you’re reading this now, whoever you are, I’m already dead. But at least this can prove he did it.

She closed the diary, her heart leaden, and looked aimlessly around her bedroom, hoping to see something that would lift her out of Trish’s world and restore her to her own. It was a feeling she had after reading any book, a reentry issue when she was finished, as if she’d been out of earth’s orbit, but this diary was more powerful than any story. It was real, and Mary herself had let the heroine down, resigning her to a fate that admitted no happy ending.

She was scared he was gonna kill her and now maybe he did. Ya happy?

Mary felt her eyes moisten and blinked it away. A white ginger lamp filled the cozy bedroom with a warm glow, and a blue-and-yellow flowered chair sat in the corner. Two landscapes hung on the wall, and a pine dresser sat nearby with a large mirror, which still had Mike’s photos stuck in the side. They weren’t photos of Mike; rather, they were photos he’d taken, loved, and put there, of his parents, his fraternity brothers, and the class he taught, third-graders, missing teeth here and there. He had loved teaching, and every time Mary saw those photos, she remembered him. She didn’t need to see his face in a photo; she had his face in her heart. She wanted to see what he saw, through his eyes. That’s what the photos showed. His soul.

She felt suddenly lucky that she’d been married to Mike. She wouldn’t have married anybody but him, least of all Trish’s mobster. She wouldn’t have changed a single thing about her life, except losing Mike. And that, she couldn’t do anything about. So she set the legal pad and the diary aside, then took off her glasses and set them on the night table, faceup so they didn’t scratch. She reached over and turned out the light, and darkness covered her like a down comforter.

She scooted down in bed, thinking in the silence of her room. Her solitude seemed more obvious to her now than ever, after the noise and violence of the relationship she’d been reading about, though she finally understood some things. Trish had stayed in the relationship because she was afraid to leave it, that much was obvious. But what Mary learned was that Trish had gotten into it because she didn’t want to end up in a bedroom alone, with her hair in a Pebbles ponytail and a mug of decaf tea cooling by the bed.

Trish didn’t want to be her.

Nobody did.

Nobody wanted to be the girl avoiding a good-night kiss from a perfectly nice and handsome man whose only fault was that he liked her. Finally, there in the dark, Mary understood something about Trish, and about herself, too.

And if Trish were still alive, Mary vowed to find her.

M ary’s office window was a harsh pewter square, and the dawn sky cloaked her desk in a cold, gray light. She was at work by six thirty, moving the computer mouse and logging on to www.phillynews.com for the latest. The headline read DONCHESS BABY STILL MISSING. She skimmed the top stories, all about the child’s kidnapping, but there was no new news about Trish. Mary hadn’t slept well last night and she’d come into the office to get work out of the way before she made her next move, which she couldn’t do until nine o’clock. She was dressed for it, in a brown tweed suit, overpriced pumps, and with her hair back in its loose twist. Sleuthingwear.

She flipped through her phone messages from the past two days, a dangerously high stack. The top one was from somebody named Alfred Diaz, Esq., then she read Marshall ’s neat notation on the message: Diaz is Roberto Nunez’s new lawyer, he wants you to send file.

“I’m fired?” Mary asked aloud, in dismay. She’d worked the Nunez case for six months, but she couldn’t blame Roberto. He’d wanted his lawyer with him at his deposition and he had a right to that. She thumbed unhappily to the next message, from Tom DeCecco, canceling their appointment tomorrow on a workmen’s comp case, and another was a cancellation from Delia Antoine, of a meeting at her house on Friday, about lead paint removal.

Hmm. Mary would’ve rescheduled those meetings anyway, to deal with Trish, and she usually prayed for cancellations. But two? Uneasy, she sipped her take-out coffee, which tasted hot and good. Was something going on with her clients? Was it related to Trish? She flashed on the scene last night in her parents’ dining room.

Mary’s a big shot now.

Her BlackBerry started ringing, and she startled, wondering who could be calling so early. She checked the display, alarmed, and picked up. “Amrita, what’s the matter?”

“Sorry to bother you at this ungodly hour, but I don’t know what to do. Dhiren won’t come out of the bathroom. He’s missed the bus. He says he won’t ever go back. He’s in there, crying.”

“Poor kid. Don’t make him go.”

“He’s so upset. He was taking a shower and one of the scabs on his head started bleeding. He’s afraid they’ll mock him.” Amrita sounded beside herself. “Did you make any progress with getting him tested? I can’t take this much longer, nor can Dhiren.”

“They can’t see him or test him until April, but I want to improve on that.”

“He needs help now.”

“I understand.” Mary’s face burned. “I’ll get on it.”

“Thank you. I must go. Talk to you later.”

“’Bye,” Mary said, but Amrita had already hung up. She got back on the computer and logged on to the white pages to find a qualified child psychologist in Philly. She’d skip all the red tape. She couldn’t listen to Dhiren cry like that and she didn’t want to let another client down. In fifteen minutes, she had a list of psychologists to call, and a grinning Judy Carrier materialized in her threshold.