If Looks Could Kill

But now he was staring at her, green eyes shining with tears. “Madison?”

“Madison…are you all right, Madison?”

She turned slightly. Roger was there, as well. Roger, who was openly crying.

“Roger, move aside.”

It was her father who was speaking. The Jordan Adair, a handsome man in his forties with a headful of long silver hair, a silver beard, dark, penetrating eyes. Leave it to her mother. Lainie would only marry men who were different: a rock star first, a writer, an artist. Jordan liked women in the arts, as well, but he didn’t seem to be quite as picky. He’d been through an opera singer, a stripper, a ballet dancer and Lainie, and had now broken the pattern to marry a sex therapist. He’d always loved Lainie, though. Always. And Madison knew that he loved her, too.

Like Roger and Kyle, Jordan had tears in his eyes.

She became aware of the sirens then. And the fact that the foyer was filling with cops. Roger moved away. She saw more of her family, her sister and her step-and half-siblings, standing awkwardly in the living room.

The girls, Jassy and Kaila. Jassy, her father’s daughter from his first marriage, was pretty and delicate, a dark-eyed blonde. Kaila was her only full sister. She and Kaila were both just like Lainie, redheads with blue eyes.

Her other brothers were there, as well. Trent, her father’s son from his second marriage, had sandy hair and Jordan’s piercing dark eyes. Rafe, Roger’s son from his first marriage, twenty now, was completely different from Roger and Kyle in coloring; his eyes were a misty silver, and his hair was a shining Nordic blonde. Like the others, he was pale now, scared-looking, quiet, his cheeks streaked with tears.

Kaila, just a year younger than Madison and nearly her twin in looks, suddenly began to sob. Loudly. Her knees buckled, but Rafe slipped an arm around her before she could fall.

Suddenly Madison remembered.

She began to scream and scream, shaking. There were paramedics at the scene, and even as she screamed and thrashed and tried in her hysteria to explain, someone came with a needle, pressing it into her arm. She could hear someone saying she couldn’t possibly talk to the police yet, and even if she could, what good could it do? Then the tranquilizer slipped into her, and everything went black once again.

This time she woke back at her father’s house, Kyle sitting by the side of her bed. She heard soft sobs coming from another room. One of her sisters.

“My mother is dead,” she whispered.

Startled, Kyle looked up. He stared at her compassionately and nodded.

“Someone killed her, Madison. I’m so sorry. Your dad is with Kaila, but I can get him for you if—”

“I saw it, Kyle.”

His eyes narrowed sharply.

“I saw it.”

“What do you mean, you saw it? You were in the hallway. Did the murderer run past you? Did you see who did it?”

She shook her head, looking for the words to describe what had happened. Tears welled up in her eyes. “She was terrified, absolutely terrified. She saw the knife. I saw it, too. I felt it.”

“Madison, you were forty feet from her room when we found you. Had you been in there?”

She shook her head.

“Then you couldn’t have seen anything.”

“I saw the knife.”

“Who killed her, then?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see a face. Just the knife. Just the knife, coming down at her. And I felt it. I felt it ripping into her.” She started to shake and sob again. Her mother had been killed, and it hurt as if a million tiny knives were digging into her heart. Lainie had been wild, headstrong and reckless, but Lainie had also been her mother, the one who held her, cherished her, laughed with her, shook her head over her, took the time to make red pipe-cleaner hearts with her class last February. Her mother was dead, and she didn’t think she could bear it.

Kyle didn’t try to say anything else. He sat beside her on the bed, taking her awkwardly into his arms while she cried and cried. Eventually her father came to the room and took her from Kyle, and she kept crying. She tried to tell her father that she had seen the knife, had felt Lainie die.

Her father was gentle and tender, and he pretended to believe her, but she knew he didn’t.

In the days and weeks that followed, the police investigated the murder with energy and zeal. They questioned Lainie’s various husbands extensively, certain that either Roger or Jordan had murdered her in a crime of raw passion. The tabloids picked up on the murder, as did the major magazines.

The cops talked to Madison. Lots of them. City of Miami cops, Metro-Dade cops. She told them that she had seen the knife, had felt her mother die. They didn’t believe her, either. But there was one cop who was at least nicer than the others. Jimmy Gates. He was fairly new to homicide, young, with warm brown eyes and sandy hair and a gentleness about him that soothed her. He wanted to know just what she had seen; he made her think back. When he questioned her, she saw the hand holding the knife. And she knew then that the killer had worn thin, flesh-colored gloves, like a doctor’s gloves.

She was amazed to realize what she could see, and also disturbed.

Roger was nearly arrested for the murder; her father was nearly arrested, as well. But there was no evidence that either man had killed Lainie. Kyle, Kaila and Madison had all been in the house at the time of Lainie’s death; Roger had arrived soon after. Kyle had immediately called Jordan Adair. In their questioning, the police said that Roger might well have killed Lainie, left by a window, disposed of the weapon and returned to pretend to find his wife. And Jordan’s home was well within walking distance, so he could easily have committed the murder, disposed of the weapon and reached his own house within a matter of minutes. Oddly enough, neither Roger nor Jordan accused the other. And with no evidence to go on, the police finally had to leave both men alone.

Time, Newsweek and People ran articles with headlines like Can Money Buy Innocence?—American Justice.

Jimmy Gates continued to talk with Madison. He listened gravely each time she went over and over what she had seen and felt. He tried to get her to see more, but try as she might, she couldn’t see beyond the gloved hand. Her father told Jimmy that he couldn’t torment her anymore, but she told her father she wanted to see Jimmy.

Two months after her mother’s murder, a suspect was arrested.

He was a crazy old derelict by the name of Harry Nore. Madison had seen him walking the streets of Coconut Grove most of her life. He begged at the corner of Bird and U.S. 1. Sometimes he shouted about Jesus and the Second Coming; sometimes he stood on the corner in the night and cried that Satan was coming and would devour them all with a sea of flame. He was first arrested for breaking into the house of a neighbor. He had stolen food, which the neighbor would have forgiven, but he had also filled his pockets with the family’s jewelry. The police found him in the kitchen, cutting bread.

With a butcher knife.

Harry Nore was also wearing a gold Saint Christopher medal that belonged to Roger Montgomery, which was what first made the police begin to wonder if the man was more than a thief. In examining the butcher knife Nore had been using to cut the bread, the forensic crews found minute traces of blood.

Lainie’s blood.

Nore’s fingerprints matched some of those lifted from Lainie’s bedroom. And he had a record. He’d already served time for killing his wife with a similar knife.

However, Harry Nore—the bug-eyed, lice-in-fested derelict—never went to trial for the murder of Lainie Adair Montgomery; he was judged incompetent to stand trial. When confronted with the murder, he began to rave. God had dropped the knife into his hat. God told him who was good and who was evil. He confessed to killing Lainie. In his confession, he stated that it was the devil who had come for her, because she had been one of his own brood. Lainie had been beautiful and evil, so beautiful that she led men to distraction and acts of perversion and violence. She was the devil’s spawn, and the devil had come for her. Looks could kill.

Harry Nore was evaluated and then incarcerated in a north Florida institution for the dangerously insane. He had a frightening, nearly toothless grin that was spread across the nation on the covers of the major magazines. He looked the part of a homicidal maniac, and the police and the investigators and the folks from the D.A.’s office were pleased, telling Madison and her family that at least they would not have to live with the agony of an unsolved murder. Nore had been found with the murder weapon, and he had confessed to the crime. Madison couldn’t understand why she didn’t feel as satisfied as she should that justice was being done. She wondered if it was just because locking Harry Nore away wouldn’t bring Lainie back. Or was it the presence of fingerprints, when she knew the killer had been wearing gloves?

The police were happy, and even Harry Nore was happy. He didn’t have to beg out on U.S. 1 anymore. He was fed three times a day.

Life went on. Madison had never thought that it could; but it did. She never stopped hurting for her mother. But though the ache remained, the raw, jagged edge of pain was dulled by acceptance. Even the sensationalism at last died down, and only now and then would a cable channel run a program about Lainie and her wild life and tragic death.

She and Kaila went to live with their father. Kyle, Jassy and Trent went away to different universities. Rafe finished at Florida International University and went to New York to work on Wall Street. Madison went to school, dances and parties, tried out makeup, shaved her legs, pierced her ears and temporarily dyed her hair a brilliant blue for Halloween. Seasons passed; she fell in and out of love. Her father married twice in three years. Both women were gone so quickly she barely remembered their names.

She began to forget that she had actually seen the knife coming down as it killed her mother.

Began to forget…

She was young, and life went on. She would always love Lainie, always remember her. But each day the little things began to matter more. Her sisters and brothers. Jassy, who looked after her. Kaila, who needed her. Rafe and Trent, who were gentle with her. Kyle, who was kind for a while, then infuriating, then strong, or gentle, when she needed help the most. Life had to be lived.

Pain and fear gradually faded.