Community Service Read Online Free Page B

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.