Vendetta

Marion followed Keller’s broad back to one of the nearest sheriff’s cruisers. Rain pelted her in fat drops. The rainfall was abnormal for the time of year, but the weather sometimes did strange things due to the White Tank mountain range.

They stopped at the car and Keller nodded to the deputies standing guard. The man put his hand on his sidearm and gingerly opened the door.

“You’ll want to be careful, Cap’n,” the young deputy said. “She fights something fierce. Jonesy is at the hospital getting his ear stitched up where she bit him. Got to wonder if he needs his rabies vaccination, too.”

They’re afraid of her, Marion realized. That surprised her. She hadn’t seen men afraid of women very often. Or if they were, they’d given no indication of it.

The woman sat in the backseat with her hands cuffed behind her back. Her dark chestnut hair cascaded across her shoulders. Her profile was strong. Pale skin picked up the lights from the motel parking lot. Even seated she looked taller than average and extremely athletic.

She ignored them as they stared at her. The effort reminded Marion of the wild animals that had gotten trapped in the attic of her family home. She and her dad had once had to relocate a whole family of raccoons. They’d used live cages to capture them. While caged, the raccoons had pointedly ignored them in the same manner as this woman. But when the cage was rattled, they attacked immediately. Marion suspected the same would hold true of the woman in the back of the sheriff’s car.

“I’m Marion Hart,” Marion said. She felt guilty simply staring at the woman. Despite what she’d done, she wasn’t a zoo animal.

The woman ignored Marion and kept her gaze locked on the front windshield.

“I’m with the district attorney’s office,” Marion said.

Slowly the woman turned her head and looked at Marion. Deep blue eyes gleamed like daggers in the pale light waxing over the motel parking lot. They were cold and devoid of emotion.

“Prove it,” the woman challenged. Her voice was flat and harsh. There was a nasal quality that made Marion immediately think she was from somewhere back East.

Taken aback by the woman’s decision to speak and the unflinching challenge that had rung out in her voice, Marion opened her purse and removed her identification. She started to lean in with it but Keller intercepted her hand.

“She’s who she says she is,” Keller said.

Resentment flashed over Marion. “I’m quite capable of—”

“Capable of getting yourself killed,” Keller growled. “This woman does things with her fists and feet that I haven’t ever seen done before.” He handed Marion her identification back.

“A woman,” the woman mused. “Interesting.”

“I have some questions,” Marion said.

“I don’t care.” The woman turned and went back to staring through the windshield.

Despite repeated attempts to get the woman to talk, Marion finally gave up in disgust. The newspaper people were pressing forward as well. Keller shut the door on the cruiser and ordered the driver to take the prisoner to jail.

“We’re not going to get anything out of her,” Keller said as the departing car’s taillights flared red.

“She has to talk,” Marion said. “What kind of woman would walk into a man’s motel room, shoot him dead and then show no emotion?”

“She’s already shown emotion,” Keller commented. “That was the part where she put all six rounds through Marker’s head.”

They watched in silence as Doc Shetterly and his team brought the body from the motel room on a gurney. White sheets covered the dead man, but blood soaked through and turned the material dark.

Bulbs from the reporters’ cameras flashed. Marion was also certain she heard someone cheering. She tried not to think about how quickly a person went from living to being a temporary news sensation.

Life had to be worth more than that.

Back at the Maricopa County Jail, Marion watched as the jailer matron, a hefty dishwater blonde named Whitten, forced the woman to strip and subject herself to the obligatory shower to kill possible lice infestation. The prisoner stood arrogant and proud before the stares of the other women.

Her body was a work of art. Hard, lean muscle created dynamic curves. She was a woman, Marion realized, that would turn men’s heads no matter where she was or what she wore.

But the beauty was marred. Several scars—bullet, knife and burns—marked the prisoner. Miraculously nothing had touched that gorgeous face.

However, the bruising from the blow they suspected Marker had delivered before he’d died was starting to darken. The prisoner’s left cheek was puffy from it. A long scratch held blood crust. Due to the darkness in the cruiser, Marion hadn’t noticed the damage.

Marion made a note to have a medical doctor take a look at the woman. She didn’t want charges of law enforcement abuse or coercion to taint the case.

Staring at the signs of present and past violence, Marion couldn’t help wondering what kind of life the woman had lived. If she was a product of abuse, how accountable could she be held for her actions?

Domestic abuse had always been something practiced behind closed doors, but cases were being brought out of the homes into the courts these days. When she’d grown up, Marion had lived next door to a family where a woman had been abused.

Marion’s father had intervened on more than on occasion. He’d grown more and more frustrated with his helplessness. The neighbor had been a long-haul trucker and the beatings had been as regular as the work that had taken the man out of town.

Marion’s mother had advised the woman to leave her husband one night while tending the bruises and cuts the man’s fists had left. The whole time, the women’s two young children had clung to Marion and quivered. In the end, the woman had cried pathetically and told them that she couldn’t leave her husband because she wouldn’t be able to care for her children.

Immediately following one late-night episode, Marion’s father had called the police. Marion had been frightened for her father because the trucker’s rage had been dark and out of control. He had threatened to kill Marion’s father.

In the end, though, the police had done nothing. The woman had sworn she’d fallen down the stairs. One of the policemen stated that she must have fallen up the stairs as well to do all the damage they’d seen. She’d refused their offer to take her to the hospital and asked them to leave. Without testimony, the officers hadn’t been able to act.

That experience remained within Marion’s mind. Women sometimes ended up helpless not because they lacked the will or ambition to take care of themselves. Many of them ended up victimized by men and life simply because they lacked options.

Marion hadn’t wanted to be that helpless. But there were several women who still were. Someday, somehow, she wished she could help them realize their potential instead of accepting a secondary citizenship role. She also wanted to change the law so police officers could act to protect the welfare of a family without testimony.

Marion had taken the job as an assistant district attorney not just because she loved the work, but because she’d wanted to show other women that they could succeed outside the home, too.

That hadn’t worked out as well as Marion had hoped. Most of the wives of the men in the D.A.’s office resented her because they viewed her as a threat, not a role model. Some disliked her because she spent more time with their husbands than they did.

Marion had always heard that nothing worth having ever came easily. She tried to remember that to convince herself she had made the right choices, but it was hard.

Once the shower was over, the woman stepped into a pair of white cotton panties, a bra and pulled on the jumpsuit Whitten issued her. She pulled her wet hair back into a ponytail and secured it with a rubber band. During the whole process, she never once acknowledged anyone else in the room.

Marion felt sorry for the woman. During her time with the D.A.’s office, Marion had never watched anyone processed through an arrest. The whole experience seemed demeaning.

Like dealing with cattle, Marion couldn’t help thinking. But then she focused on what the corpse had looked like in the motel room. Whatever family Colonel Thomas Marker had left behind couldn’t even have an open casket service. No one would be able to replace what the woman’s bullets had taken away.

But thinking like that only raised the question of the woman’s motivation in Marion’s mind again. She really wanted to know what had happened in that motel room.

They stood the prisoner against one wall and took pictures of her right profile and full face. She was booked under the name Jane Doe.

A few moments later, Whitten looked at Marion curiously. “Where do you want her?” the matron asked.

“Put her in interview room D,” Marion responded. “I’ll be along shortly.”

The jailer nodded. She took the woman by the arm and guided her through the door. Before they’d gone three steps, the woman slid into sudden movement as graceful as a dancer’s choreography.

The woman lifted her captured arm, folded it, then rammed it into the matron’s face. The meaty impact filled Marion’s ears. Blood gushed from the matron’s mouth, but she was a big woman and used to dealing with violent prisoners. The matron reached for the woman.