Community Service (4 page)

Oh, God, let it all be
over soon.

Finally she turned onto her street, a
pleasant block of two-story houses, once the epitome of
middle-class prosperity but now surpassed and supplanted by bigger,
more fashionable designs, for the most part further out, in more
expensive and trendy neighbourhoods. They’d bought the place
shortly after they had married. It seemed like another life,
once-upon-a-time, and she wondered why she hung onto the
place.

It was at least
familiar.

Something to cling to
desperately.

Hitting the button on the automatic
garage door opener, Marion eased the Lexus, cream with white
leather seats, Blaupunkt radio and Harmon-Kardan speakers, into the
right side space.

There really wasn’t room for two cars
in there, with the other slot dominated by exercise machine, a
rowing machine, a stationary bike, a lot of her husband’s old stuff
in boxes and a metal set of shelves with all kinds of crappy old
books, pots and pans, house-wares and Christmas decorations piled
up every which way but neatly.

It had been a long week, with the
weather generally dull, and with the cases on her docket even
duller. There might be lonelier ways to live, although it was hard
to think of what.

Why had she ever become a lawyer, let
alone a judge, in the first place?

Life was so rarely like a Harold
Robbins novel. She almost spat, all these literary allusions coming
from that voice in her head. Remembering her briefcase and her
raincoat, still in the backseat, she unlocked the door into the
house and stepped in, with just a bit of a hollow in her heart. She
had two whole days to kill and perchance to rest, if only sleep
would come.

Then I get to do it all
over again.

Getting out of these clothes, into a
hot tub and maybe having a nice glass of red would be a blessing.
She opened the interior door and stepped in, feeling for the light
switch.

There was the faintest suggestion of
some odd sound from the front foyer to her right.

Turning, all she saw was a tall, dark
shape there and then something brushed past her eyebrows and over
her head and the whole world disappeared.

“
Oh!”

Someone had her upper body and they
spun her around before she even knew what was happening.

“
Ah! Ah!
Ooooh!”

Strong hands gripped her, one hand on
the back cord of the bag over her head, it’s interior full of tiny
pinholes of light from the nature of its rough fabric, and the
other hand wrapped around her arms and upper chest. The cord
tightened around her neck…

Her briefcase and the raincoat dropped
as she struggled and attempted to get at the man’s face, which must
the right up close beside her head.

“
Ah!”

“
Shh.” The man gave her a
shake.

He loosened the cord.

“
Oh, no,
please…please.”

“
Shh.”

Marion went limp, tears sprung to her
eyes and she begged the person who had grabbed her for her
life.

Act Three

The Voice Beside Her
Ear

Her arms were at her sides
now.

She felt sick to her
stomach.

The voice was up beside her left ear
as he guided her from close behind.

“
Off with the
shoes.”

She struggled with her balance as he
held on, trying to remove one tight shoe by using the toe of her
other foot against the heel and Achilles tendon area. She kicked
them off so to one side in unconscious habit, but then she was
always tripping over them. He yanked her coat down and back and off
and she heard something, presumably it, hit the tiles. Her keys
were in the pocket. She was incapable of effective action and she
knew it.

“
Okay, now we’re going to
walk straight ahead. You know where the couch is.”

“
Please…Mister…please
don’t hurt me….please don’t kill me…I have some money, sir. Please,
sir. Take my car. Take it. I’ll do anything you want. Please,
please, please…please don’t hurt me.”

He’s going to cut
me…

Her guts were icy and shaky
inside.

She could barely walk. Her knees were
beyond her control.

“
Keep going…be careful,
the coffee table’s right there.” He stopped her there.

She reached out with a trembling foot
and found it. There were children playing in the street right out
front, she could hear their voices. Yet she could not bring herself
to scream. She would be dead and he would be gone before anyone
could get here.

Please, God, let it be
quick.

“
Sit down.
Careful.”

Marion took very small steps. She felt
something brush against her right calf. It must be the couch. Her
heart pounded in her chest. He pushed, prodded, and lowered her,
and she went. The voice seemed familiar and yet unfamiliar, soft
and low.

Much of it was in whispers, and yet it
could be Albert—oh, God, what had she done in tormenting
him?

It was all so clear now.

The man was a criminal after
all.

The couch was under her, and then she
felt something cold and hard on her wrists. They snapped into
place.

“
Oh, God,
no—please—”

“
It’s okay, Marion. Trust
me a little bit. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“
Please, Mister, whoever
you are—”

“
You know who it
is.”

Yes.

Of course she did.

An electric chill went over her, it
flashed from head to toe and the fear was unbearable.

She gulped convulsively, listening
intently and wondering if she was dead—already dead. Marion fought
for air.

He’s going to cut me up in
little bits.

Slowly, one piece at a
time.

She wondered how bad it would be and
how long it would take. A primal sob escaped her and he shushed her
again. He shackled her feet, and then, taking her in his arms
again, settled her back into the cushions.

“
Now.
Ahem.
Your Honour. Ah, yes, the
Right Honourable Judge Marion Carter, of the Fourth District
Criminal Court. I’ve got a bit of a bone to pick with you. Now that
I have your full and undivided attention.”

“
Please, please, I’m so
sorry, Albert—”

“
You and I really do need
to have a talk, ah, my sweet lady Marion.”

“
Oh, Albert…oh, God,
please.”

“
I am your God now.
Marion.”

That was a show-stopper in every sense
of the word and all she was aware of was the thudding of her heart,
the ringing in her ears and the knowledge that it was all over but
the pain and the bloodbath.

“
Okay. Let’s get on with
it, then.”

She heard him take a deep
breath.

He cleared his throat, and he seemed
hesitant as she craned her ears to pick it out.

“
About all this shit, you
know, like when you parade around in front of the window. You know,
like in your black and lacy
Donna
Karan
thigh-highs, the frilly
Victoria’s Secret
panties, and the strapless, and yet somehow, miraculously,
push-up bra…not too sure of the label, but that was, ah, definitely
a very nice little number…that’s right, my dear. I took a little
look in your panty-drawer.”

That was where she kept the vibrator
too. One or two other small things.

He chuckled, low, deep and
mean.

Something thrilled to it, deep down
inside of her, in spite of all her terrors.

It’s like I want him to kill me…she’d
often wondered how victims felt just before the moment.

Perhaps it really was a blessed
relief…for some.

She had suddenly gotten to know
herself.

Marion had never heard that one
before, and wondered what other revelations people had in the
moment of dissolution.

There were other things.

A kind of morbid, narcissistic terror,
a desire to watch vicariously, as if your own death was a cheap
summer blockbuster horror movie…all full of slashing blades and
screaming teenage girls.

She could see it from somewhere
outside of herself…somewhere up in a corner of the living room. She
was looking down on a scene.

Blood, blood, blood
everywhere. A pale, dramatically spread-eagled Marion Carter, the
centre of attraction.

She sat there shaking like a
leaf.

“
Oh, Albert…” Her eyes
were full of tears and she sniffled inside of the bag. “Oh, God,
no, please….Albert.”

To think that she had been falling in
love with him. Was in love with him. She could admit that
now.

She saw it all so clearly.

You could never say that to a killer.
They would like it too much—it would just get them
going.

He listened to her sob for a while,
holding her wrists very gently as she shook.

She felt his hands at the back of her
neck, and mercifully, he pulled the bag up, and off, flinging it
aside on the far end of the couch.

He took her hands in his. He was
wearing his jacket and tie again.

“
So. What do you have to
say for yourself, oh, my Lady Marion?”

He sat there biting his lip with a
most solemn look on his face, and it was in that moment that she
realized what a terrible power gap had existed between them before.
How could she have missed that? It must have been a terrible
torment. What must the poor man have thought?

She’d made every stupid mistake in the
book with this one.

“…
guilty…guilty…guilty…on
all counts…” Her voice was low, husky, filled with
shame.

She hung her head.

He nodded at this response and they
stared at each other again, her somewhat more defiantly
now.

She gulped air and she swallowed and
looked away, ashamed, but of what?

Of what?

As for the present
situation, she really didn’t
quite
know what to think, but some of the tension left
her.

It was all over but the
screaming…

But it was
Albert
that had been in
control of himself all along—it was
her
that had been out of control,
even when she thought she was the one that really had it all
together and that he was somehow less competent of a person than
she was. Marion was all confused, and rightly so. She was out of
control when she bought all those pretty things,
never to be used
so help
me God…

Fuck.

Fuck.

“
I’ll take them off if you
want.” He gave her wrists a little shake, staring into her eyes in
all honesty and it suddenly dawned on her that this was a man
awaiting his fate too.

He wasn’t going to kill
her.

He just wanted to
know
—to really
know.

“
Oh, no, Albert…no, that’s
all right. Please, Albert.”

No, leave them on, Albert.
This is exactly what I needed. I needed you to take me because I
didn’t have the moral courage to give it as a gift.

She shook off his grip and lifted her
hands and took his face in them, struggling to twist around, and
get closer to him. She licked her lips unconsciously and stared
into those sad, soulful eyes.

There was a mysterious twinkle in
there and then he spoke.

“
You know, this isn’t the
only place I worked, Marion.” He spoke in the past tense. “You
know, for my community service. I also did four hours a day, on
week days, down at the food bank…hell, I even mopped floors at the
hospital. But that was only a couple of days. I got the sheets
signed and everything.”

“
What…” She licked her
lips, staring. “What…what are you trying to tell me,
Albert?”

He grinned.

“
My community service was
over ‘bout a month, maybe five weeks ago.” He gave her a wink.
“Except I just kept on coming back. On account of you, Marion
Carter.”

She laughed. It was a huge relief
after such an opening shock. She sagged against him, trying not to
cry again.

“
Oh, God.”

He held her for a while.

“
I’m glad you did,
Albert.” Marion marveled that here she was, literally in Albert’s
arms, and handcuffed and shackled too, which she felt now was a
kind of a bonus.

It kind of focused and directed their
conversation towards things that really mattered…he was about to
say something.

“
May I kiss you,
Marion?”