Mercy 101 by Pat Remick- written version
Posted by Reader at 2/8/2008 3:04 PM 
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: state police Hit and Run husband wife police car mourning mother-son murder lies and deceit
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: state police Hit and Run husband wife police car mourning mother-son murder lies and deceit
Mercy 101
The space beside him was cold. He rolled over and flicked on the light.
The clock read 3:30 a.m. He strained to hear the sound of the television coming from downstairs. Just the quiet ticking of the grandfather clock. Not even the cat was stirring. Jenny was away at college. Jack lived in New York with his new wife.
He was alone.
He turned off the bedside lamp and lay rigid in the dark, listening to the silence. It gave him no peace. It was that way in the daylight, too – dark and silent. And without peace.
But he knew where she had gone: The same place she went every night. Driving endless miles along New Hampshire Route 101. Her destination was a place where pain could not reach.
It had been this way for 3 months, two weeks and three nights. It would be this way again tomorrow. She would return after daybreak. The tires would crawl across the gravel driveway at exactly 7:25 a.m.
The sound woke him. He was surprised that he had actually slept for a few hours. Most nights he just lay in the dark, thinking, worrying, waiting for her return.
He dressed and went downstairs. She was sitting at the scarred wooden kitchen table. Staring out the window, seeing nothing. Steam coming from the red coffee cup in front of her. Traces of wet sand on her battered sneakers.
He walked into their once cheery kitchen. “How are you?”
“Fine.” She did not look at him.
“Did you stop at the beach?” He moved past her to the coffee pot.
“Yes.”
He poured hot coffee into his cracked “World’s Greatest Dad” mug. “See anyone last night?”
“Kristin.” She picked up her cup and took a sip.
He sat down across from her. “Working?”
“On break. I stopped for coffee.” She gazed out the window again.
“What did she have to say?”
“Not much. She got called out right away. A couple of guys off the road, probably drunk or high.
“Dead?”
“Maybe. Mass plates.”
“She say anything else?”
“She misses him.”
“Me, too.” He looked away.
She stood and walked over to the sink filled with dirty dishes. She found an opening in the jumble of plates and glasses, and emptied her cup.
“I need to sleep.”
“Of course.” He said it automatically, without emotion, without judgment.
He watched her climb the stairs. She would stay there until late afternoon, sometimes sleeping but mostly tossing and turning. When she came back down, she’d move silently through the house in her socks and a well-worn sweatsuit, her partially gray hair tied back. The woman who had been his vibrant and impeccably dressed wife had been replaced by an empty shell. Eventually she would slide into her favorite armchair and stare at the television for hours.
Sometimes it was even turned on.
He would make supper. They ate in silence in front of the nightly news. Then he moved to the living room to read. But she preferred to remain surrounded by the sitcom laughter and commercials. At 10 p.m., she’d go upstairs again, change into a sweatshirt and blue jeans and lay down in bed, eyes closed. He’d kiss her goodnight when he came to bed after the 11 o’clock news. She never responded. But it was the only time she let him touch her.
Then the cycle resumed. He would fall asleep, then wake up to find her gone. He didn’t worry anymore about her driving alone. But winter would soon be here and the weather could complicate her nightly journeys. Tomorrow he would try to persuade her to stop.
The next morning he found her in the kitchen again. She was looking out the bay window into the backyard, a cup of coffee in her hand and a slight smile on her face. The morning newspaper was on the table.
He wondered if she was reliving a happy memory. She turned and for the first time in three months, spoke first. “Good morning.”
“You look happy. Good night?” He moved toward her. She stiffened, then raised her cup as if to shield herself.
“Not really.”
He sat down and picked up the newspaper. He could make out the word “Gangstas” on the Massachusetts license plate of the mangled Dodge Intrepid. The headline over the photograph read, “Teens Killed, Speed Suspected.”
“Isn’t this the wreck Kristin got called out on the other night? Looks like her in the corner of the picture.”
She moved closer to the table. “I didn’t notice.” She bent to read the news story. “They were from Lowell. Probably drug dealers if they were on 101 that time of night. Not exactly a big loss to society.” She got up to refill her cup.
He was surprised by how cavalier she seemed. “They had mothers and fathers, too, you know,” he said quietly.
Her face turned red and her eyes flashed with anger. She opened her mouth but quickly closed it.
“Say it, Janice. For God’s sake, just say it.”
She gulped, shook her head and rushed by him toward the stairs. It was the most emotion she had shown in months. He wanted it to continue. He wished she would yell, scream, even hit him.
Again, nothing.
He wasn’t sure how much longer this could go on before he was the one doing the yelling, or leaving. He grabbed his book and sweater, and marched onto the screened porch. Maybe fresh air would help. His home had become a mausoleum and the air was stifling. He needed space, to breathe. But he was afraid to leave her alone for long.
He put down his book and gazed into the backyard. It hurt to look. Too many memories. He could see them laughing, sweaty and dirty as they tumbled over each other like puppies. His three beautiful children had grown up well. Made him proud. As young adults, their playfulness moved from the yard onto the porch, where they shared stories and their new lives.
With his firstborn, Jimmy, that meant drinking coffee together after he ravished the hot breakfast his mother had waiting precisely at 7:25 a.m. She poured his juice when she heard his tires roll across the gravel. His arrival each morning was reassurance that his shift had ended safely. Breakfast together also helped Jimmy decompress before heading to his new apartment to sleep.
But the morning ritual ended when Trooper James Gardner Jr. was killed as he returned to his patrol car after a routine traffic stop on Route 101. The investigators concluded it was a hit-and-run accident.
There had been no comfort in hearing that Jimmy died in the line of duty, doing what he loved. The pomp and circumstance of his funeral didn’t help. Nor could the nearly 1,000 somber law enforcement personnel who came from across New England to pay their respects, or the heartfelt remarks of the Governor, remotely ease their pain.
Jimmy’s death devastated them all, but in different ways. Jenny returned to college, her youthful optimism gone. At first, she came home on weekends, seeking comfort and a place to talk about her brother. She didn’t find it. It soon became clear that her mother couldn’t look at a living child without thinking of her dead one. It was easier for everyone if Jenny stayed at school. She called frequently but spoke only to him. Janice hadn’t touched a telephone since Jimmy’s death.
Jack used e-mail to stay in contact from New York. There was little substance in the daily messages, but their youngest son ached too. Janice also wouldn’t use the computer, so he printed out Jack’s e-mails and left them on the kitchen table. He would find them later in the trash, ripped into tiny fragments.
It seemed as though he had lost not only his son, but all of his children. He also had lost the woman who had been his wife. Anguish had turned the two of them into little more than shadows moving between light and dark, day and night. He prayed every day for an end to the cycle of sorrow. He knew his only hope for survival was accepting that a terrible accident had taken his son’s life.
In the old days, he would have found comfort in a glass. But Jimmy’s death had made him vow never to drink again. Still, each night he took the bottle of bourbon down from the cupboard and stared at it in the dark until he found the strength to put it back.
Mercy was his only way out of this hell, but he knew Janice could never forgive the driver who killed their son. She sought solace on Route 101. He wondered if she drove only the portion Jimmy patrolled or the entire 95 miles stretching from western New Hampshire through Manchester, the state’s largest city, all the way to the ocean at Hampton Beach.
In the days after Jimmy died, Kristin and the other troopers contacted him whenever they spotted her Taurus sedan in the early morning hours. It was difficult to miss the “JJJJJ-G” license plate, or forget that now there was one less Gardner with a first name beginning with J. The troopers were concerned. Not that she drove alone along deserted stretches of highway, but that she might believe it could bring her closer to Jimmy.
They had no reason to stop her. She drove the speed limit. She wasn’t intoxicated. She had the right to drive anywhere she wanted. So they simply flashed their headlights in greeting. They knew she would eventually find her way to Al’s Diner, as Jimmy always had, and they would try to take their breaks with her if things were quiet.
Kristin had told him it was heartbreaking to see Janice sitting alone at the counter as if she were waiting for Jimmy. Her face would light up when she saw a trooper’s forest green and khaki knife-creased uniform, but sadness too quickly returned.
Kristin said the troopers would tell Janice about the shift or a funny story about Jimmy. Tears ran down Janice’s cheeks while the trooper pretended not to notice. Although she never asked, they knew she wanted to hear that the driver had been found. They were relieved they didn’t have to tell her the investigation had gone cold.
Sometimes a trooper spent an entire break with Janice. But all too often, the trooper’s radio crackled with news of an accident or erratic driving to investigate. Early on, the troopers tried to hug her goodbye. But it made her so uncomfortable that now they gently patted her arm or didn’t touch her at all.
No one could keep so much grief inside forever. He wondered if she would ever break -- or just continue to shrivel until she faded away.
Their brief exchanges and routines of grief had resumed. She seemed to have forgotten her anger over his comment about the dead teenagers having parents. The next morning he would broach his concerns about the unpredictable weather that would follow winter’s arrival.
It was after 8 a.m. when she got home. He could see through the bay window that there was a hint of buoyancy in her step as she moved toward the house. He even thought he heard humming as she unlocked the door. She looked startled to see him already at the table. “Oh, you’re up,” she said.
“How was your night?”
“Fine.” She moved toward the coffee pot.
“Anything happen?” He watched her slowly fill her cup. Grief had deepened the lines on her face.
“Actually, yes.” She opened the refrigerator and pulled out the cream. “A Nissan Maxima went off the road into Miller’s Creek. I saw it in the rearview mirror after they honked at me.”
“What did you do?”
She poured the cream into her cup. “I drove to Troop A to tell them. They called in the dive team but it was too late.”
“How many?”
“Three guys in their 20s. Car had New Hampshire plates, registered in Milford.” She stirred her coffee.
“That’s the second fatal in two weeks in Troop A’s district. Headquarters won’t be happy.” He looked past her into the backyard. The trees were losing their leaves.
“Everyone speeds on 101. They were probably drunk the way they were driving.” She sipped her coffee.
“That’s why I don’t like you out there all night. And I’m worried about winter coming.”
She got up and put two slices of bread into the toaster. “I had to give a statement.”
“Who took it?”
“The rookie, Sousa. Had the nerve to ask me how I knew it was a Maxima in the dark.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him that if everyone in law enforcement can learn to identify headlights in the dark, so can the mothers who help them practice. He knew I was upset so he changed the subject. Said if you wanted to sell the Wrangler, he’d buy it.”
“Maybe I should.”
There it was again: anger, almost outrage. She shook her head vigorously. Her eyes welled up. She rushed toward the stairs. “I need sleep.”
“Of course.”
He heard the bedroom door slam. Maybe she wasn’t dead after all.
The Wrangler was stored in an old shed on the edge of his neighbor’s farm. Jimmy had found the beat-up and rusted 1989 jeep at an estate sale five years earlier and persuaded his father it would be a great retirement project to restore the junker together.
It became far more expensive and time-consuming than they’d anticipated. But he never regretted a single dollar or hour. The night he finished repainting it, he’d wanted to celebrate and surprise Jimmy. Now, he wasn’t sure he could look at it again.
The evening news briefly mentioned a Route 101 accident had killed three unidentified men in their 20s. He suspected the story might have been longer if a news crew had videotaped the divers removing the bodies.
The newspaper account the next morning was more detailed. Fingerprints proved the victims were ex-cons. The story said an unnamed motorist had alerted State Police to the accident, and speed and alcohol were likely involved.
He was grateful Troop A hadn’t revealed Janice’s name. It might destroy her to be identified as “the mother of Trooper James Gardner who died in a tragic, unsolved hit-and-run accident in the same deserted area.”
Jenny was coming home for the long Columbus Day weekend. He looked forward to having a conversation that was more than a few words long. God knows he had tried to reach Janice. But she pushed everyone away. He had suggested counseling or a support group, but she refused. He didn’t know how much longer he could wait.
He felt so alone. Their friends no longer called or came by. Acquaintances acted as though their loss was contagious or pretended nothing had happened. He wasn’t sure which was worse. Only the troopers stayed in touch.
But hadn’t Janice seemed a little better lately? At least she was showing anger. And wasn’t she humming that morning? Things might continue to improve with Jenny home.
But nothing changed. Janice still disappeared at night, slept through the day and seemed to sleepwalk through the evening. Jenny tried to make conversation, but Janice responded with one-word answers.
“Dad, what are we going to do?” Jenny pleaded after Janice went upstairs at 10 p.m. “Is she still going out every night?”
“She leaves after I fall asleep, I’d guess around midnight. She comes home at 7:25, just like your brother used to.”
“Where does she go? 101 is less than 100 miles long. Even if she drives from one end to the other and back, there’s no traffic. It can’t take more than 4 hours, tops.”
“She stops at Al’s. The troopers see her there. I think she also walks on the beach. I’ve seen sand on her shoes.”
“Don’t you ask?”
“Of course I ask, Jenny. She won’t talk to me. But the doctor says as long as she’s not hurting herself, or anyone else, we have to let her work it out.”
“Maybe we should follow her to see where she goes.”
“I know where she goes. I think it makes her feel closer to Jimmy to be on 101.” He put his arm around Jenny’s thin shoulders, trying to comfort her as much as himself.
“I want my mother back,” Jenny sobbed.
“So do I, honey. But this is going to take time, lots of time.”
They were waiting at the kitchen table when Janice returned the next morning. “Hi, Mom. Where were you?”
Janice stared at her, then moved to the coffee pot. “Driving,” she said, her back to them.
“But where did you drive, Mom?”
“Nowhere. I saw Kristin at Al’s. She says hi.”
“I’d like to see her. Can I come with you tonight?”
“No.” She put down her coffee cup and stomped out of the kitchen and up the stairs.
Jenny’s lower lip quivered. “Dad, I’m sorry. I can’t do this. I need to get back to school so I can focus.”
With Jenny gone, the house turned desolate again. He had to get out. Maybe do some grocery shopping, although Janice barely ate. He would put gas in her car. It was the least he could do. Most gas stations were closed during the hours she traveled 101.
As the gas flowed into the tank, he moved around the car to wash the windows. There was something on the front bumper. It looked like blue paint and a small dent. He scraped the color off with his fingernails. Strange, she hadn’t mentioned hitting anything.
During supper, he asked her about it.
“Maybe someone hit me when I was at Al’s or parked at the beach.” She continued eating.
“What do you do at the beach anyway?”
She took a drink of water. “Sometimes I walk. Sometimes I sleep in the car. Is that a problem?” She turned back to the evening news.
“No. I was just worried that you might have hit something.”
The next morning she burst into the kitchen. Her agitation unnerved him.
She also looked directly at him for the first time in weeks. “A Ford Escort tailgated me for miles, flashing the high beams. They flipped me off and threw beer cans at the car when they finally passed me. Bunch of teenagers in a beater car.”
He had forgotten how beautiful her eyes were. “Did they hit you?”
“I swerved.” She sat down and rubbed her temples. “Remember how Jimmy always said that people who couldn’t take of their cars, rarely took care of their lives? He could, but now he’s gone. But a bunch of low-life dropouts can be out there terrorizing people. It’s just not fair.”
It was the most she had said in months. Maybe she was getting better. He reached for her hand. “But life isn’t fair. We already know that.”
She pulled away and stood. He thought she might cry, but she turned away. “I need sleep.”
“Of course.”
According to the noon news, a 1992 red Ford Escort carrying three teenaged boys and two girls from Manchester had slammed into a bank of trees near Epping around 4 a.m. Troop A Commander Bill Edwards reported that none of the victims were wearing seatbelts and beer cans were found in the wreckage. He suggested speed and alcohol were to blame, but asked the public to call with any information.
The news video also showed grieving young people with multiple tattoos and piercings leaving remembrances at the crash site. “We was partying, man, and they wanted to see the sun rise at the beach,” a girl with black lipstick and spiked hair sniffled into the camera.
He believed the investigating officers would want to know that Janice had encountered the Escort before it crashed. She lay on her side facing the wall of their darkened bedroom, snoring lightly. He gently shook her shoulder.
“Janice, wake up. Those kids in the Escort, they’re dead. Commander Edwards is asking for the public’s help. You have to tell them what you saw.”
“I didn’t see anything,” she mumbled.
“You saw them before the wreck. Maybe you can help the investigation.” She was groggy but he persisted. “You must have driven right by the accident. Didn’t you see anything?”
“No. Please, let me sleep.”
He went downstairs and stared at the telephone. He didn’t want to upset Janice, but Jimmy would have told them to call. He punched in the number for dispatch.
An hour later, the phone rang. He told Patrolman Sousa about Janice’s road rage encounter with the Escort. “She’ll be mad that I called. But I knew you’d want to know.”
“We’re getting a lot of heat from the public about all the accidents on 101 so I hope we can wrap this one up quickly,” Sousa said. “We got a report from a trucker who says they harassed him, too, and he saw them tailgating a mini-Cooper and maybe a jeep. We’re hoping those drivers will come forward. ”
“Janice was pretty upset when she got home this morning.”
“I didn’t realize she was out last night. Hey, Mr. Gardner, speaking of jeeps, I told Mrs. Gardner a couple of weeks ago that if you want to sell the Wrangler, I’d love to buy it. I know it’s in pristine condition.”
“I wouldn’t even know how much to ask.”
“Tell you what, I’ll give you Blue Book value, OK?”
It wouldn’t hurt to see what it was worth. But he needed to know the exact mileage in order to get an accurate estimate from the Blue Book web site. He decided to drive her car so he could fill it with gas on the way. But to his surprise, the tank was still three-quarters full so he drove directly to the shed. His hands trembled as he unlocked the peeling wood door.
He took a deep breath. The door opened with a creak as always, but it still made him jump. He felt his knees weaken when he saw the jeep. The memory of the last time he saw Jimmy alive seared his brain. He felt sick.
He didn’t bother to turn on the light. He slid into the front seat and turned the key. It purred to life. They had done good work. He was surprised that the mileage read 78,714. He thought it was lower, but so much had happened that he was unsure of anything anymore.
He turned off the ignition and opened the door. The car light flashed on just long enough for him to notice the clumps of something almost white on the floor. He reached down.
It was beach sand.
Someone had been in their Wrangler. He opened the glove compartment and unfolded the bill of sale. It showed the mileage as 77,659. He and Jimmy had probably added another 40 miles or so. Who had driven the other 1,000 miles?
The shed was locked. Only he and Jimmy had keys. All of Jimmy’s keys had been given to them after the accident. That meant someone had taken a key to the shed from the house.
It had to be Janice. But why? Was the Wrangler another place where she felt closer to Jimmy?
He backed the jeep out of the shed into the daylight. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but then he saw the dented front bumper. It was streaked with traces of red.
He sank to his knees. This couldn’t be happening. Janice had barely shown any emotions for months. Surely she was too grief-stricken to find enough rage to force the red Escort off the road for tailgating. She had been upset when she came home, but upset enough to kill someone?
Maybe she had hit something again and not realized it. His mind raced. There had been three fatal accidents during the time she was driving on 101. Ten people were dead. But people drove too fast on that highway. There were lots of wrecks that weren’t fatal, especially recently. Still, the Governor had demanded increased patrols.
Even if Janice was responsible for the 10 deaths, each victim probably would have come to a bad end eventually. And they might have hurt innocent people along the way.
Maybe Janice, or someone else, had done the world a favor.
Even if the investigators found out about the paint and dents on the fenders, they would never suspect a grief-stricken mother. If they did, she could plead temporary insanity from her beloved son’s death.
He had to know if sorrow truly had stolen her sanity.
First, he had to stop her from using the jeep. He would say he replaced the lock because it looked like someone had tried to break into the shed and he wanted to keep the jeep safe while he decided what to do with it. He would hide the key from her.
He needed a rental car so he could follow her. She recognized headlights too well for his truck to remain undetected. He would sleep on the couch while she spent the day upstairs in bed and she would never suspect that he, too, had been on 101 all night.
For the next two weeks he pretended to sleep when she left at night. He sprinted down the block to the elementary school where the rental car was out of sight in a rear lot. Within minutes, he also was driving east on 101.
The most difficult part was not catching up to her. She drove the speed limit, but he tended to push it by 10 miles per hour, or more, which might close the gap.
When she stopped at Al’s, he drove to the all-night gas station at the next exit to watch for her car to go by en route to Hampton Beach. He would follow until she parked at the beach. Then he rushed home to change clothes and pretend to be rested when she returned at 7:25.
He was beginning to think he was the one who was crazy. If nothing unusual happened tonight, he would stop following her. Traffic was light as he steered the rental car onto 101, cranked up the radio and cracked open a window to stay awake. The route was tedious. He didn’t understand how Janice could drive it the same way every night.
They were on their way back from Keene and had just rolled through Manchester when he noticed he was gaining too quickly on her Taurus. He slowed and moved into the lane behind her. Fifteen minutes and a mind-numbing radio commentary later, he realized he had lost sight of her. He sped up but there was no sign of the Taurus ahead of him, or broken down along the shoulder.
When he neared the exit for Al’s, he decided to risk detection and check the parking lot for her car. It wasn’t there. He quickly turned around and headed back onto 101. Maybe she had decided to forego Al’s to head directly to the beach. He sped up. He had almost reached the bridge before the Exeter exit when he was nearly blinded by the headlights looming in his rearview mirror. A vehicle was approaching quickly.
He hit the accelerator and switched lanes. The headlights followed, becoming brighter by the second. He swerved back into the right lane and pumped his brakes, trying to get the vehicle to back off. It didn’t. He sped up again. The vehicle followed. They were going at least 80 mph. He desperately hoped someone would stop them for speeding – and soon.
He kept changing lanes, but the vehicle followed. It made no attempt to pass him. He felt a thud, and then another. The vehicle was hitting his car on purpose. He panicked. Maybe the same vehicle had pushed Janice off the highway earlier.
He jerked the steering wheel to the right, bounced off the guardrail and then steered to the left. The vehicle hit him again, only harder. He heard metal crumple as he pulled the car back into the right lane. Miller’s Creek was ahead. He might be forced off the road into the water unless he reached the bridge first. He accelerated again and heard a roar as the other vehicle pulled beside him. He looked over.
It was Janice.
The bridge lights provided just enough illumination to see the shock on her face before she accelerated and pulled into the lane in front of him. It happened too quickly for him to avoid slamming into the Taurus. He watched helplessly as his wife’s car seemed to gather speed seconds before it flew through the guardrail and plunged into the creek.
He screeched to a stop. She had driven into the creek on purpose. If she had not died on impact, she would drown before he could reach her.
Her anguish was over. But his torment would continue.
The rental car would raise suspicions. Troopers would wonder why he was stalking his own wife along deserted portions of 101. They would know he hit the Taurus.
Eventually they would find the jeep and match the paint on the bumper to the Escort. He might be charged with killing the five teenagers. That could be enough to reopen the investigations into the other accidents, as well. He could be charged in five more deaths. The accusations might not stop there.
He couldn’t bear it if they learned the truth.
There had been enough blame. He would end it now. He backed up the rental car, shifted into drive, jammed his foot into the gas pedal and drove straight through the gap in the guardrail into the creek.
He wasn’t afraid. His nightmare would end. No one would ever have to know he was drunk when the jeep struck and killed his son.
The End
The space beside him was cold. He rolled over and flicked on the light.
The clock read 3:30 a.m. He strained to hear the sound of the television coming from downstairs. Just the quiet ticking of the grandfather clock. Not even the cat was stirring. Jenny was away at college. Jack lived in New York with his new wife.
He was alone.
He turned off the bedside lamp and lay rigid in the dark, listening to the silence. It gave him no peace. It was that way in the daylight, too – dark and silent. And without peace.
But he knew where she had gone: The same place she went every night. Driving endless miles along New Hampshire Route 101. Her destination was a place where pain could not reach.
It had been this way for 3 months, two weeks and three nights. It would be this way again tomorrow. She would return after daybreak. The tires would crawl across the gravel driveway at exactly 7:25 a.m.
The sound woke him. He was surprised that he had actually slept for a few hours. Most nights he just lay in the dark, thinking, worrying, waiting for her return.
He dressed and went downstairs. She was sitting at the scarred wooden kitchen table. Staring out the window, seeing nothing. Steam coming from the red coffee cup in front of her. Traces of wet sand on her battered sneakers.
He walked into their once cheery kitchen. “How are you?”
“Fine.” She did not look at him.
“Did you stop at the beach?” He moved past her to the coffee pot.
“Yes.”
He poured hot coffee into his cracked “World’s Greatest Dad” mug. “See anyone last night?”
“Kristin.” She picked up her cup and took a sip.
He sat down across from her. “Working?”
“On break. I stopped for coffee.” She gazed out the window again.
“What did she have to say?”
“Not much. She got called out right away. A couple of guys off the road, probably drunk or high.
“Dead?”
“Maybe. Mass plates.”
“She say anything else?”
“She misses him.”
“Me, too.” He looked away.
She stood and walked over to the sink filled with dirty dishes. She found an opening in the jumble of plates and glasses, and emptied her cup.
“I need to sleep.”
“Of course.” He said it automatically, without emotion, without judgment.
He watched her climb the stairs. She would stay there until late afternoon, sometimes sleeping but mostly tossing and turning. When she came back down, she’d move silently through the house in her socks and a well-worn sweatsuit, her partially gray hair tied back. The woman who had been his vibrant and impeccably dressed wife had been replaced by an empty shell. Eventually she would slide into her favorite armchair and stare at the television for hours.
Sometimes it was even turned on.
He would make supper. They ate in silence in front of the nightly news. Then he moved to the living room to read. But she preferred to remain surrounded by the sitcom laughter and commercials. At 10 p.m., she’d go upstairs again, change into a sweatshirt and blue jeans and lay down in bed, eyes closed. He’d kiss her goodnight when he came to bed after the 11 o’clock news. She never responded. But it was the only time she let him touch her.
Then the cycle resumed. He would fall asleep, then wake up to find her gone. He didn’t worry anymore about her driving alone. But winter would soon be here and the weather could complicate her nightly journeys. Tomorrow he would try to persuade her to stop.
The next morning he found her in the kitchen again. She was looking out the bay window into the backyard, a cup of coffee in her hand and a slight smile on her face. The morning newspaper was on the table.
He wondered if she was reliving a happy memory. She turned and for the first time in three months, spoke first. “Good morning.”
“You look happy. Good night?” He moved toward her. She stiffened, then raised her cup as if to shield herself.
“Not really.”
He sat down and picked up the newspaper. He could make out the word “Gangstas” on the Massachusetts license plate of the mangled Dodge Intrepid. The headline over the photograph read, “Teens Killed, Speed Suspected.”
“Isn’t this the wreck Kristin got called out on the other night? Looks like her in the corner of the picture.”
She moved closer to the table. “I didn’t notice.” She bent to read the news story. “They were from Lowell. Probably drug dealers if they were on 101 that time of night. Not exactly a big loss to society.” She got up to refill her cup.
He was surprised by how cavalier she seemed. “They had mothers and fathers, too, you know,” he said quietly.
Her face turned red and her eyes flashed with anger. She opened her mouth but quickly closed it.
“Say it, Janice. For God’s sake, just say it.”
She gulped, shook her head and rushed by him toward the stairs. It was the most emotion she had shown in months. He wanted it to continue. He wished she would yell, scream, even hit him.
Again, nothing.
He wasn’t sure how much longer this could go on before he was the one doing the yelling, or leaving. He grabbed his book and sweater, and marched onto the screened porch. Maybe fresh air would help. His home had become a mausoleum and the air was stifling. He needed space, to breathe. But he was afraid to leave her alone for long.
He put down his book and gazed into the backyard. It hurt to look. Too many memories. He could see them laughing, sweaty and dirty as they tumbled over each other like puppies. His three beautiful children had grown up well. Made him proud. As young adults, their playfulness moved from the yard onto the porch, where they shared stories and their new lives.
With his firstborn, Jimmy, that meant drinking coffee together after he ravished the hot breakfast his mother had waiting precisely at 7:25 a.m. She poured his juice when she heard his tires roll across the gravel. His arrival each morning was reassurance that his shift had ended safely. Breakfast together also helped Jimmy decompress before heading to his new apartment to sleep.
But the morning ritual ended when Trooper James Gardner Jr. was killed as he returned to his patrol car after a routine traffic stop on Route 101. The investigators concluded it was a hit-and-run accident.
There had been no comfort in hearing that Jimmy died in the line of duty, doing what he loved. The pomp and circumstance of his funeral didn’t help. Nor could the nearly 1,000 somber law enforcement personnel who came from across New England to pay their respects, or the heartfelt remarks of the Governor, remotely ease their pain.
Jimmy’s death devastated them all, but in different ways. Jenny returned to college, her youthful optimism gone. At first, she came home on weekends, seeking comfort and a place to talk about her brother. She didn’t find it. It soon became clear that her mother couldn’t look at a living child without thinking of her dead one. It was easier for everyone if Jenny stayed at school. She called frequently but spoke only to him. Janice hadn’t touched a telephone since Jimmy’s death.
Jack used e-mail to stay in contact from New York. There was little substance in the daily messages, but their youngest son ached too. Janice also wouldn’t use the computer, so he printed out Jack’s e-mails and left them on the kitchen table. He would find them later in the trash, ripped into tiny fragments.
It seemed as though he had lost not only his son, but all of his children. He also had lost the woman who had been his wife. Anguish had turned the two of them into little more than shadows moving between light and dark, day and night. He prayed every day for an end to the cycle of sorrow. He knew his only hope for survival was accepting that a terrible accident had taken his son’s life.
In the old days, he would have found comfort in a glass. But Jimmy’s death had made him vow never to drink again. Still, each night he took the bottle of bourbon down from the cupboard and stared at it in the dark until he found the strength to put it back.
Mercy was his only way out of this hell, but he knew Janice could never forgive the driver who killed their son. She sought solace on Route 101. He wondered if she drove only the portion Jimmy patrolled or the entire 95 miles stretching from western New Hampshire through Manchester, the state’s largest city, all the way to the ocean at Hampton Beach.
In the days after Jimmy died, Kristin and the other troopers contacted him whenever they spotted her Taurus sedan in the early morning hours. It was difficult to miss the “JJJJJ-G” license plate, or forget that now there was one less Gardner with a first name beginning with J. The troopers were concerned. Not that she drove alone along deserted stretches of highway, but that she might believe it could bring her closer to Jimmy.
They had no reason to stop her. She drove the speed limit. She wasn’t intoxicated. She had the right to drive anywhere she wanted. So they simply flashed their headlights in greeting. They knew she would eventually find her way to Al’s Diner, as Jimmy always had, and they would try to take their breaks with her if things were quiet.
Kristin had told him it was heartbreaking to see Janice sitting alone at the counter as if she were waiting for Jimmy. Her face would light up when she saw a trooper’s forest green and khaki knife-creased uniform, but sadness too quickly returned.
Kristin said the troopers would tell Janice about the shift or a funny story about Jimmy. Tears ran down Janice’s cheeks while the trooper pretended not to notice. Although she never asked, they knew she wanted to hear that the driver had been found. They were relieved they didn’t have to tell her the investigation had gone cold.
Sometimes a trooper spent an entire break with Janice. But all too often, the trooper’s radio crackled with news of an accident or erratic driving to investigate. Early on, the troopers tried to hug her goodbye. But it made her so uncomfortable that now they gently patted her arm or didn’t touch her at all.
No one could keep so much grief inside forever. He wondered if she would ever break -- or just continue to shrivel until she faded away.
Their brief exchanges and routines of grief had resumed. She seemed to have forgotten her anger over his comment about the dead teenagers having parents. The next morning he would broach his concerns about the unpredictable weather that would follow winter’s arrival.
It was after 8 a.m. when she got home. He could see through the bay window that there was a hint of buoyancy in her step as she moved toward the house. He even thought he heard humming as she unlocked the door. She looked startled to see him already at the table. “Oh, you’re up,” she said.
“How was your night?”
“Fine.” She moved toward the coffee pot.
“Anything happen?” He watched her slowly fill her cup. Grief had deepened the lines on her face.
“Actually, yes.” She opened the refrigerator and pulled out the cream. “A Nissan Maxima went off the road into Miller’s Creek. I saw it in the rearview mirror after they honked at me.”
“What did you do?”
She poured the cream into her cup. “I drove to Troop A to tell them. They called in the dive team but it was too late.”
“How many?”
“Three guys in their 20s. Car had New Hampshire plates, registered in Milford.” She stirred her coffee.
“That’s the second fatal in two weeks in Troop A’s district. Headquarters won’t be happy.” He looked past her into the backyard. The trees were losing their leaves.
“Everyone speeds on 101. They were probably drunk the way they were driving.” She sipped her coffee.
“That’s why I don’t like you out there all night. And I’m worried about winter coming.”
She got up and put two slices of bread into the toaster. “I had to give a statement.”
“Who took it?”
“The rookie, Sousa. Had the nerve to ask me how I knew it was a Maxima in the dark.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him that if everyone in law enforcement can learn to identify headlights in the dark, so can the mothers who help them practice. He knew I was upset so he changed the subject. Said if you wanted to sell the Wrangler, he’d buy it.”
“Maybe I should.”
There it was again: anger, almost outrage. She shook her head vigorously. Her eyes welled up. She rushed toward the stairs. “I need sleep.”
“Of course.”
He heard the bedroom door slam. Maybe she wasn’t dead after all.
The Wrangler was stored in an old shed on the edge of his neighbor’s farm. Jimmy had found the beat-up and rusted 1989 jeep at an estate sale five years earlier and persuaded his father it would be a great retirement project to restore the junker together.
It became far more expensive and time-consuming than they’d anticipated. But he never regretted a single dollar or hour. The night he finished repainting it, he’d wanted to celebrate and surprise Jimmy. Now, he wasn’t sure he could look at it again.
The evening news briefly mentioned a Route 101 accident had killed three unidentified men in their 20s. He suspected the story might have been longer if a news crew had videotaped the divers removing the bodies.
The newspaper account the next morning was more detailed. Fingerprints proved the victims were ex-cons. The story said an unnamed motorist had alerted State Police to the accident, and speed and alcohol were likely involved.
He was grateful Troop A hadn’t revealed Janice’s name. It might destroy her to be identified as “the mother of Trooper James Gardner who died in a tragic, unsolved hit-and-run accident in the same deserted area.”
Jenny was coming home for the long Columbus Day weekend. He looked forward to having a conversation that was more than a few words long. God knows he had tried to reach Janice. But she pushed everyone away. He had suggested counseling or a support group, but she refused. He didn’t know how much longer he could wait.
He felt so alone. Their friends no longer called or came by. Acquaintances acted as though their loss was contagious or pretended nothing had happened. He wasn’t sure which was worse. Only the troopers stayed in touch.
But hadn’t Janice seemed a little better lately? At least she was showing anger. And wasn’t she humming that morning? Things might continue to improve with Jenny home.
But nothing changed. Janice still disappeared at night, slept through the day and seemed to sleepwalk through the evening. Jenny tried to make conversation, but Janice responded with one-word answers.
“Dad, what are we going to do?” Jenny pleaded after Janice went upstairs at 10 p.m. “Is she still going out every night?”
“She leaves after I fall asleep, I’d guess around midnight. She comes home at 7:25, just like your brother used to.”
“Where does she go? 101 is less than 100 miles long. Even if she drives from one end to the other and back, there’s no traffic. It can’t take more than 4 hours, tops.”
“She stops at Al’s. The troopers see her there. I think she also walks on the beach. I’ve seen sand on her shoes.”
“Don’t you ask?”
“Of course I ask, Jenny. She won’t talk to me. But the doctor says as long as she’s not hurting herself, or anyone else, we have to let her work it out.”
“Maybe we should follow her to see where she goes.”
“I know where she goes. I think it makes her feel closer to Jimmy to be on 101.” He put his arm around Jenny’s thin shoulders, trying to comfort her as much as himself.
“I want my mother back,” Jenny sobbed.
“So do I, honey. But this is going to take time, lots of time.”
They were waiting at the kitchen table when Janice returned the next morning. “Hi, Mom. Where were you?”
Janice stared at her, then moved to the coffee pot. “Driving,” she said, her back to them.
“But where did you drive, Mom?”
“Nowhere. I saw Kristin at Al’s. She says hi.”
“I’d like to see her. Can I come with you tonight?”
“No.” She put down her coffee cup and stomped out of the kitchen and up the stairs.
Jenny’s lower lip quivered. “Dad, I’m sorry. I can’t do this. I need to get back to school so I can focus.”
With Jenny gone, the house turned desolate again. He had to get out. Maybe do some grocery shopping, although Janice barely ate. He would put gas in her car. It was the least he could do. Most gas stations were closed during the hours she traveled 101.
As the gas flowed into the tank, he moved around the car to wash the windows. There was something on the front bumper. It looked like blue paint and a small dent. He scraped the color off with his fingernails. Strange, she hadn’t mentioned hitting anything.
During supper, he asked her about it.
“Maybe someone hit me when I was at Al’s or parked at the beach.” She continued eating.
“What do you do at the beach anyway?”
She took a drink of water. “Sometimes I walk. Sometimes I sleep in the car. Is that a problem?” She turned back to the evening news.
“No. I was just worried that you might have hit something.”
The next morning she burst into the kitchen. Her agitation unnerved him.
She also looked directly at him for the first time in weeks. “A Ford Escort tailgated me for miles, flashing the high beams. They flipped me off and threw beer cans at the car when they finally passed me. Bunch of teenagers in a beater car.”
He had forgotten how beautiful her eyes were. “Did they hit you?”
“I swerved.” She sat down and rubbed her temples. “Remember how Jimmy always said that people who couldn’t take of their cars, rarely took care of their lives? He could, but now he’s gone. But a bunch of low-life dropouts can be out there terrorizing people. It’s just not fair.”
It was the most she had said in months. Maybe she was getting better. He reached for her hand. “But life isn’t fair. We already know that.”
She pulled away and stood. He thought she might cry, but she turned away. “I need sleep.”
“Of course.”
According to the noon news, a 1992 red Ford Escort carrying three teenaged boys and two girls from Manchester had slammed into a bank of trees near Epping around 4 a.m. Troop A Commander Bill Edwards reported that none of the victims were wearing seatbelts and beer cans were found in the wreckage. He suggested speed and alcohol were to blame, but asked the public to call with any information.
The news video also showed grieving young people with multiple tattoos and piercings leaving remembrances at the crash site. “We was partying, man, and they wanted to see the sun rise at the beach,” a girl with black lipstick and spiked hair sniffled into the camera.
He believed the investigating officers would want to know that Janice had encountered the Escort before it crashed. She lay on her side facing the wall of their darkened bedroom, snoring lightly. He gently shook her shoulder.
“Janice, wake up. Those kids in the Escort, they’re dead. Commander Edwards is asking for the public’s help. You have to tell them what you saw.”
“I didn’t see anything,” she mumbled.
“You saw them before the wreck. Maybe you can help the investigation.” She was groggy but he persisted. “You must have driven right by the accident. Didn’t you see anything?”
“No. Please, let me sleep.”
He went downstairs and stared at the telephone. He didn’t want to upset Janice, but Jimmy would have told them to call. He punched in the number for dispatch.
An hour later, the phone rang. He told Patrolman Sousa about Janice’s road rage encounter with the Escort. “She’ll be mad that I called. But I knew you’d want to know.”
“We’re getting a lot of heat from the public about all the accidents on 101 so I hope we can wrap this one up quickly,” Sousa said. “We got a report from a trucker who says they harassed him, too, and he saw them tailgating a mini-Cooper and maybe a jeep. We’re hoping those drivers will come forward. ”
“Janice was pretty upset when she got home this morning.”
“I didn’t realize she was out last night. Hey, Mr. Gardner, speaking of jeeps, I told Mrs. Gardner a couple of weeks ago that if you want to sell the Wrangler, I’d love to buy it. I know it’s in pristine condition.”
“I wouldn’t even know how much to ask.”
“Tell you what, I’ll give you Blue Book value, OK?”
It wouldn’t hurt to see what it was worth. But he needed to know the exact mileage in order to get an accurate estimate from the Blue Book web site. He decided to drive her car so he could fill it with gas on the way. But to his surprise, the tank was still three-quarters full so he drove directly to the shed. His hands trembled as he unlocked the peeling wood door.
He took a deep breath. The door opened with a creak as always, but it still made him jump. He felt his knees weaken when he saw the jeep. The memory of the last time he saw Jimmy alive seared his brain. He felt sick.
He didn’t bother to turn on the light. He slid into the front seat and turned the key. It purred to life. They had done good work. He was surprised that the mileage read 78,714. He thought it was lower, but so much had happened that he was unsure of anything anymore.
He turned off the ignition and opened the door. The car light flashed on just long enough for him to notice the clumps of something almost white on the floor. He reached down.
It was beach sand.
Someone had been in their Wrangler. He opened the glove compartment and unfolded the bill of sale. It showed the mileage as 77,659. He and Jimmy had probably added another 40 miles or so. Who had driven the other 1,000 miles?
The shed was locked. Only he and Jimmy had keys. All of Jimmy’s keys had been given to them after the accident. That meant someone had taken a key to the shed from the house.
It had to be Janice. But why? Was the Wrangler another place where she felt closer to Jimmy?
He backed the jeep out of the shed into the daylight. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but then he saw the dented front bumper. It was streaked with traces of red.
He sank to his knees. This couldn’t be happening. Janice had barely shown any emotions for months. Surely she was too grief-stricken to find enough rage to force the red Escort off the road for tailgating. She had been upset when she came home, but upset enough to kill someone?
Maybe she had hit something again and not realized it. His mind raced. There had been three fatal accidents during the time she was driving on 101. Ten people were dead. But people drove too fast on that highway. There were lots of wrecks that weren’t fatal, especially recently. Still, the Governor had demanded increased patrols.
Even if Janice was responsible for the 10 deaths, each victim probably would have come to a bad end eventually. And they might have hurt innocent people along the way.
Maybe Janice, or someone else, had done the world a favor.
Even if the investigators found out about the paint and dents on the fenders, they would never suspect a grief-stricken mother. If they did, she could plead temporary insanity from her beloved son’s death.
He had to know if sorrow truly had stolen her sanity.
First, he had to stop her from using the jeep. He would say he replaced the lock because it looked like someone had tried to break into the shed and he wanted to keep the jeep safe while he decided what to do with it. He would hide the key from her.
He needed a rental car so he could follow her. She recognized headlights too well for his truck to remain undetected. He would sleep on the couch while she spent the day upstairs in bed and she would never suspect that he, too, had been on 101 all night.
For the next two weeks he pretended to sleep when she left at night. He sprinted down the block to the elementary school where the rental car was out of sight in a rear lot. Within minutes, he also was driving east on 101.
The most difficult part was not catching up to her. She drove the speed limit, but he tended to push it by 10 miles per hour, or more, which might close the gap.
When she stopped at Al’s, he drove to the all-night gas station at the next exit to watch for her car to go by en route to Hampton Beach. He would follow until she parked at the beach. Then he rushed home to change clothes and pretend to be rested when she returned at 7:25.
He was beginning to think he was the one who was crazy. If nothing unusual happened tonight, he would stop following her. Traffic was light as he steered the rental car onto 101, cranked up the radio and cracked open a window to stay awake. The route was tedious. He didn’t understand how Janice could drive it the same way every night.
They were on their way back from Keene and had just rolled through Manchester when he noticed he was gaining too quickly on her Taurus. He slowed and moved into the lane behind her. Fifteen minutes and a mind-numbing radio commentary later, he realized he had lost sight of her. He sped up but there was no sign of the Taurus ahead of him, or broken down along the shoulder.
When he neared the exit for Al’s, he decided to risk detection and check the parking lot for her car. It wasn’t there. He quickly turned around and headed back onto 101. Maybe she had decided to forego Al’s to head directly to the beach. He sped up. He had almost reached the bridge before the Exeter exit when he was nearly blinded by the headlights looming in his rearview mirror. A vehicle was approaching quickly.
He hit the accelerator and switched lanes. The headlights followed, becoming brighter by the second. He swerved back into the right lane and pumped his brakes, trying to get the vehicle to back off. It didn’t. He sped up again. The vehicle followed. They were going at least 80 mph. He desperately hoped someone would stop them for speeding – and soon.
He kept changing lanes, but the vehicle followed. It made no attempt to pass him. He felt a thud, and then another. The vehicle was hitting his car on purpose. He panicked. Maybe the same vehicle had pushed Janice off the highway earlier.
He jerked the steering wheel to the right, bounced off the guardrail and then steered to the left. The vehicle hit him again, only harder. He heard metal crumple as he pulled the car back into the right lane. Miller’s Creek was ahead. He might be forced off the road into the water unless he reached the bridge first. He accelerated again and heard a roar as the other vehicle pulled beside him. He looked over.
It was Janice.
The bridge lights provided just enough illumination to see the shock on her face before she accelerated and pulled into the lane in front of him. It happened too quickly for him to avoid slamming into the Taurus. He watched helplessly as his wife’s car seemed to gather speed seconds before it flew through the guardrail and plunged into the creek.
He screeched to a stop. She had driven into the creek on purpose. If she had not died on impact, she would drown before he could reach her.
Her anguish was over. But his torment would continue.
The rental car would raise suspicions. Troopers would wonder why he was stalking his own wife along deserted portions of 101. They would know he hit the Taurus.
Eventually they would find the jeep and match the paint on the bumper to the Escort. He might be charged with killing the five teenagers. That could be enough to reopen the investigations into the other accidents, as well. He could be charged in five more deaths. The accusations might not stop there.
He couldn’t bear it if they learned the truth.
There had been enough blame. He would end it now. He backed up the rental car, shifted into drive, jammed his foot into the gas pedal and drove straight through the gap in the guardrail into the creek.
He wasn’t afraid. His nightmare would end. No one would ever have to know he was drunk when the jeep struck and killed his son.
The End
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