Bad Behavior(36)

I lived in constant fear. Seventeen days of nightmares, little food, and no peace. Sherman came to embody that fear. I couldn't look at him without shuddering. So I didn't. I kept my eyes ahead. If the jury realized I loathed him, it was over. I internalized it all. Kept the fear hidden away where it ate at me slowly, dissolving my insides like a hungry spider. I waited those twelve days, dreading every second more than the last, for my reprieve or my death sentence.



       
         
       
        

When the jury finally came back, my day of reckoning had arrived. We stood as the foreman rendered the verdict.

Not guilty.

Sherman only nodded at me. I didn't care. I was going to live for another day, and I sure as hell didn't want him to touch me. He was free to go on his vicious way, and I was free to keep breathing.

The prosecutor wouldn't even shake my hand. I didn't blame him. All the same, though, I didn't make the rules. I didn't set up the altar of reasonable doubt. I just worshipped her along with everyone else. But my stakes were even higher. I was the one who would be offered to her as a sacrifice if I couldn't free the demon sitting next to me.

DiSalvo stopped me on the way out of the courtroom. He congratulated me. He said he saw something in me. In hindsight, I knew that he saw something he thought he could use. That's what people like him were at their core, users.

"Your card, Ms. Pallida?" he asked.

I gave it to him. I didn't know who he was or what he did. But a client was a client. I had to keep my lights on. I had to eat.

"I'll keep Sherman on a leash from now on. You won't ever see him again."

This little grampa was telling me that he could control the murdering psycho who'd promised my death on several occasions. In the holding cell, walking to the courtroom, under his breath during jury breaks. This old man had no chance of controlling that mad dog.

I wanted to vomit. The fear was no longer in its cage. It had walked free, just like Sherman.

"Forgive me if that doesn't really give me the warm fuzzies," I said.

"I assure you. I can manage him." He took my card. He looked more closely at my face, no doubt noticing the dark circles under my eyes. "Has he done something to you? Threatened you?"

I threw a glance back to Sherman. He was standing at the counsel table, looking at me with murder in his eyes. I almost pissed myself.

I hurried out, ignoring the reporters and photographers taking my photograph and asking me for comment on the case. Instead of giving them the tale of triumph they wanted, I paid for a cab to my shithole of an apartment, ran upstairs, and locked myself inside. I collapsed against the door. The shudders racked me as I cried. I cried for so long that I began dry heaving. I hadn't eaten in days. The fear wouldn't let me.

I hid for a week. The terror didn't abate, even though I knew I'd done what I had to do. Every footstep in the hallway, every yell on the street below-I just knew it was Sherman. He was coming for me. He was going to do to me what he'd done to that poor woman, the same bloodletting, the same desecration. I had no one to turn to. I was utterly alone.

A knock at my door was like a gunshot to my ears. I wanted to hide under my bed or jump from the fire escape. 

"Ms. Pallida, it's Leon DiSalvo, from the courthouse."

It was the voice of an old man-the white-haired grampa. How did he find me?

"I called your office, but your voice mail is full. I stopped by, but the man who owns the building said he hasn't seen you in a week. I'm sorry to say he plans to kick you out on Friday."

"Shit." I rose and went to the door. The old man wasn't a threat. I didn't open up, though. Even if the pope was on the other side of the door, I wouldn't have opened. Sherman could have been hiding in His Holiness's skirt for all I knew, waiting to get me. "I'm here. What do you want?"

"I want you to know that Sherman will no longer be bothering you or anyone."

I guffawed, though it sounded more like a shriek. "Okay." Sure.

"No, I mean it, Ms. Pallida. He's been dealt with. I don't take kindly to my staff making threats against officers of the court." His voice was cold, hard, no longer the friendly grampa.

"What do you mean by 'dealt with'?"

"Let's just say he's taking a long vacation in Jersey. That doesn't sound so bad, does it?"

It sounded like music to my ears. If that motherfucker was in a shallow grave in the Pine Barrens, then all was right with the world.

"I won't ask to come in, but I would like to invite you to visit me at my office. Say, next week, Wednesday around one?" An envelope slid under the door, making a whispering sound against the cheap linoleum.