LOVING HER SOUL MATE (47 page)

“Yes, sir,” Yannick said.
 

Then John looked at Shay.
 
“You go on back to the station, Yan,” he said to his captain, “I’m on my
way.”

Yannick glanced at Shay, his anger still showing.
 
“Sure thing, boss,” he said, and left.

John walked up to Shay’s chair and bent down, his hands on either
side of the arms.
 
“I don’t want you
sitting up here worrying yourself to death, now Shay,” he said.
 
“What happened has happened and there’s
nothing we can do about it.”

Shay nodded her head.
 
“I
know,” she said.
 
“But it just feels so
out of control now.
 
I never once thought
we were releasing a serial killer, I never once thought that.
 
I just took that police chief’s word for it
and---”

“And gave him the benefit of the doubt,” John said.
 

A tear dropped from Shay’s eye that she quickly wiped away.
 
“He saw me coming a mile away,” she
said.
 
“Me and my
delusions of grandeur.”

John rubbed her cheek and then pulled her into his arms.
 
“Stop beating yourself up.
 
What’s done is done.
 
You didn’t kill that girl, Glazer did.
 
You weren’t guilty of lying, that police chief
was.
 
And you didn’t release Glazer to
kill again.
 
The judge did that.”

“But my story---”

“Was a story based on what you were
told.
 
You reported it.
 
Everything else was out of your hands.”

Shay knew John was trying to make her feel better.
 
She knew he was trying to make her see the
light.
 
But all she saw was darkness, and
her part in it.
 
Her
oversized part in it.

John kissed her on the lips, warned her again not to obsess on it,
told her that he’d be back as soon as he could get back, and left.

Shay had promised to keep it together before he left, but as soon
as the door closed, she fell apart.

The tears came and wouldn’t leave.
 
John had refused to let her watch the news while he was there, but she
knew she had to know.
 
Who was the girl?
 
What happened to her?
 
He wouldn’t discuss the details with her, but
she had to know.

She turned on the television.
 
She had to wait until the eleven o clock news before she got any
information.
 
And it dominated the
news.
 
The girl, young, pretty, was named
Naomi Barkley.
 
Unlike the others, she
wasn’t a prostitute, just a random girl walking home from her job at a
twenty-four hour convenience store.
 
Glazer was in an alleyway as she passed, had grabbed her, forced her
behind the abandoned building, and then strangled and raped her.
 
Just like all the others, he raped her after
he had strangled her.
 
She was only
nineteen.

Shay’s heart sank when a picture of the girl appeared.
 
It sank further when the parents, who were on
the scene, spoke to the cameras.
 
Although
the father was too devastated to be angry, the mother was outraged.
 
“She did it,” she angrily proclaimed.
 
“That reporter, that Shay Turner is
responsible for all of this!
 
They got
them to release this killer and now my baby’s dead.
 
Now my baby’s gone.
 
And Shay Turner’s running ‘round like some
big shot.
 
My child’s dead and gone and
she’s running around like she did something big.
 
This ain’t right.
 
Ain’t nobody nowhere gonna tell me this is
right!”

Shay turned off the television.
 
She couldn’t take it.
 
Because
every word that woman spoke was nothing but the truth.
 
She went into John’s bedroom, laid across his
bed, and tried with all she had to fall asleep.
 
If only she could sleep.
 

But sleep wouldn’t come.
 
For
a full hour she just lay there, thinking about nothing but Glazer and that
girl.
 
And then she went back up
front.
 
Turned on those
late night news talk shows.
 
And
listened to the agony of the mother, to the anger of other citizens, as the
news of Glazer’s new crime dominated local TV.
 

It would be another hour of
this,
as if
Shay was determined to punish herself, until even the castigation of the news
wasn’t punishment enough.
 
And suddenly
she felt as if she had to leave.
 
She
couldn’t stay here another second longer.
 
John had given her keys, to his house, his truck, and his Porsche months
ago, so she used what she had.
 

She composed a note, taped it to his front door, and ran.
 
She jumped into his Porsche, her heart
hammering, and drove away.
 
She had to
get away.
 
She couldn’t stay here
anymore.

Not long after her decampment, John arrived back home.
 
He wasn’t aware that his Porsche, which was
normally in the garage, had been taken by Shay until he got out of his truck
and made his way to the front door.
 
And
he saw her note.
  

I need time
away.
 
Will call.
 
Shay
.

That was it.
 
Those seven little words.
 
And John was devastated.
 
He began
shaking his head.
 
No, he decided.
 
Not again.
 
He wasn’t losing her again!

He jumped into his truck, drove with sirens blaring to her house,
hoping that she would have stopped there to at least grab some clothes.
 

But she had apparently already come and gone.
 

Then he remembered that her car was still at the Brady Beast.
 
And knowing Shay, she would have preferred
her own car if she was leaving town.

He drove, again with his sirens blaring, to the Brady Beast.
 
He was hoping against hope that he was right;
that she had made this one additional stop.
 
He began to pray.

And that was when he saw her.
 
She was getting out of his Porsche and going toward her Beetle.
 
John swerved his truck behind her Beetle,
effectively blocking it in, and jumped out.

Shay was surprised to see him.
 
She had expected to make a clean getaway.
 

John placed his hands on her arms.
 

“I just need a little time,” she said with a plea in her voice.

“No, Shay,” John said with pain in his.
 
“The last time you needed a little time you
stayed away from me for two years.
 
Not
this time.
 
I can’t take that.
 
If you go, I go.
 
We go together.
 
If you stay, I stay.
 
We stay together.
 
We’re in this together, Shay.
 
I let you get away from me before.
 
It cost me two years of sleepless
nights.
 
I can’t let that happen again.”

Shanay tried to smile through her tears.
 
“It hurt so much, John.
 
It hurt so much!”

“I know, baby,” John said, pulling her into his arms.
 
“But that’s why you have to stay.
 
We’ll face this together.
 
Understood?”

Shay closed her eyes and embraced him too.
 
“Understood,” she said, although her heart
was still breaking, although she really didn’t understand any of it.

EPILOGUE

The waves crushed against the rocks and John walked along the
winding shore in his Bermuda shorts, sandals, and shades.
 
Shay was just ahead of him, picking up
seashells, running and grabbing them as if she was a kid in a candy store.
 
John couldn’t stop smiling as he watched
her.
 
She’d been through so much, but she
was still standing.
 
And was still able,
he was pleased to realize, to embrace the good, bad, and ugly of life with
gusto.

It was a month after that craziness with Glazer.
 
The Mississippi police chief, Glazer’s
cousin, was fired from his small-town post.
 
The judge who released Glazer and threw out the prosecution’s case,
resigned under tremendous public pressure.
 
Paige Kent, the senior editor of the Brady Beast, was supposedly called
away on a “family emergency” and took an indefinite leave of absence.
 
Presumably until the public outcry calmed
down.
 
The young community activists who
were spearheading the release Glazer campaign found themselves with dwindling
followers after the video of Glazer killing that girl was released.
 
The only career, in fact, left unscathed was
Shay’s.
 
Not because they didn’t want to
excoriate her too.
 
They did.
 
But John wouldn’t allow it.
 

He fought for Shay.
 
He even
met privately with the publisher, just the two of them, and reminded him that
he knew all about that questionable land deal he made a few years back with those
equally questionable out-of-town investors.
 
That deal, John reminded the publisher, could come back to bite him in
the ass.
 
The publisher agreed that he
wouldn’t want that kind of bite, and Shay kept her job.
 
Shay assumed it was because of the ultimate
fairness of the Brady Beast brass.
 
John
never bothered to disabuse her of that belief.

Shay kept her job, but more importantly than that, John thought,
as she started running back to him in her string bikini and that flowing pink
sarong around her waist, she kept her spirit too.
 
And her youthful vigor.
 
And her faith in her fellow
man.
 

“Aren’t they gorgeous?” she said to him, showing him the handful
of shells she’d collected.
 
“They’re
smooth and rough.
 
They’re beautiful and
odd looking.
 
There’s just something
different about each one of them, isn’t it?”

“They’re odd, all right,” John said, taking one of them from her
hand and examining it.
 
“I’ll give you
that.
 
They’re certainly different.”

“Like us?” Shay asked with a smile.
 

John smiled too, his blue eyes blazing with joy behind his dark
shades.
 
He looked at her with such love
in those eyes.
 
“Yes,” he said,
heartfelt.
 
“Exactly like us.”

“I’m going to go and find more,” Shay said excitedly, ready to run
off again.
 
But John grabbed her by the
hand and pulled her back.

“Hold on,” he said.
 
“Not so
fast.”

He pulled her to him, his arms around her narrow waist.
 
“I want to spend a little quality time with
you first.”

 
“You’re spending quality
time with me.”

“Not here,” he said.
 
“But
upstairs.
 
In our cozy
little room.”

Shay inwardly smiled.
 
She knew
exactly what he meant.
 
“Why, John
Malone,” she said in her best southern accent, “what do you take me for?”

“Why, Shanay Malone,” he replied in his worst southern accent, “I take
you for my wife.
 
And my wife and I are
here, in Hawaii, on our wonderful honeymoon.
 
I intend to spend a good deal of this honeymoon getting some honey.”
 
Shay laughed.
 
“I intend to spend quality time with my brand new wife, in our bed,
fucking her brains out.”

Shay smiled as her entire body shivered in delight.
 
She remembered last night, when they first
arrived in Hawaii, and how her brains were still recovering from the last time
he spent “quality time” with her.
 

“Well, excuse me, Mr. Malone,” she said, “but I came here to enjoy
the beautiful beaches, and collect the gorgeous seashells.
 
I didn’t come here to fuck.”