Because You Loved Me. M. William Phelps
be tears in his eyes and his vision would be blurry and he didn’t think he’d be able to see straight.”
“You’ll be OK, Billy,” Nicole assured him. “I’m so sorry you have to leave without me.”
“They say you’re never supposed to drive when you’re angry or upset,” answered Billy, “because you’re more likely to drive faster, recklessly. If you’re not with me, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Peer pressure. Nicole seemed addicted to it lately.
Nicole stared out the window and cried. She couldn’t “fathom the thought” of ever losing Billy like that. Billy started the car and took off, out from the parking lot. He drove down Amherst Street for about a mile, turned around and headed back to 7-Eleven. The night, like their lives, was going round in circles.
“Vermont, Billy. What about our plan to take off to Vermont?” They had discussed running away. At one point, they even went to one of Nashua’s libraries, looked up directions to upstate Vermont and Niagara Falls, “or,” as Billy put it, “somewhere to get the hell out of there.”
Billy looked at Nicole. “Vermont, huh?”
“I hate that house,” said Nicole. “Hate it with a passion. Park over there,” Nicole added, pointing to a space on the side of the 7-Eleven building near Deerwood Drive. From the parking lot of 7-Eleven, they had a clear view of the back of Jeanne’s house.
As Billy and Nicole sat and talked, a Nashua police officer pulled in. There were plenty of No Loitering signs up around the outside of the store. Nicole had grown up in the neighborhood. She knew how oppressive and protective cops were of the store because of the problems with kids in the neighborhood.
The officer got out of his car and walked toward the 7-Eleven.
“Shit,” said Billy. “He’s staring at us.”
So, Billy and Nicole got out of Billy’s car and walked into the store.
“That’s a sign,” Billy whispered to Nicole. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
Nicole continued crying. “A sign. Huh!”
“Maybe we should leave?” said Billy.
“Yeah.”
As Billy pulled out of the parking lot after they left the store, the officer got into his cruiser.
When Billy left, the officer followed him.
Billy took a right into the parking lot of Bruster’s just down the road. As he did, either the cop got a call or just gave up on the fact that they hadn’t done anything illegal, because he drove by.
“Let’s go back to 7-Eleven,” Billy suggested, making a U-turn in the parking lot of Bruster’s.
“OK,” said Nicole. “Go.”
CHAPTER 8
As Chris McGowan pulled into Jeanne’s driveway after leaving 7-Eleven, he noticed the family Shih Tzu, Buster, out in the backyard on his leash. Jeanne probably tied Buster outside as soon as she got home from work so he could “do his thing.” Buster was cooped up for most of the day in a cage inside the house. Jeanne couldn’t really count on the kids to let him out regularly. Putting him out on his leash when she got home from work was one of those daily rituals Jeanne did robotically without thinking as soon as she walked through the door. Mail in one hand, telephone cradled on the crook of her shoulder, picking up after the kids, while opening Buster’s cage to let him out. The ultimate multitasker Jeanne Dominico. She could do ten things at once, not one of them to serve her own needs.
“She was so unbelievably thoughtful, always thinking about everyone else,” said Carla Hall, one of Jeanne’s neighbors, “and what she could do for them. She made me want to be a better person.”
Jeanne’s husky, Princess, had a doghouse in the backyard. That dog was also outside, Chris noticed as he grabbed the bottle of soda off his front seat and walked toward the foyer door. The dog was circling around, barking in a welcoming way.
Reaching the steps, Chris told himself that Jeanne should have let Buster in the house by now. Why is he still outside?
“Hey, Buster,” Chris said, approaching the door into the house. “How’s it goin’, boy?” Buster was antsy, yelping rather than barking, jumping around a bit. Very anxious.
Walking up onto the steps, Chris muttered to himself, “Jesus.” Buster had done his business right there on the porch welcome mat. “What the heck! I’ll deal with you later,” Chris snapped, pointing at Buster, shaking his head.
Where in the heck is Jeanne?
There were no lights on in the house.
Maybe she went for a walk?
Jeanne wasn’t prone to taking walks around the neighborhood.
Looking at the door, Chris noticed it was ajar. The house appeared ominous, uninviting. No one was obviously home—at least that’s what it seemed to Chris at first glance.
“Hello…Jeannie? Jeannie?” Chris yelled in his normal tongue, pushing the door open. “Jeannie, you in there, honey?”
Although Chris didn’t notice right away, the coffee table in the living room was smashed into bits and pieces. The kitchen was a mess. In fact, things were out of place all over. There had been some sort of struggle, a commotion.
As he made his way into the kitchen from the doorway, Chris realized the lights in the house were off, but the refrigerator was slightly ajar, allowing the tiny light from inside to cast a straight, flat beam on the floor, like the sun peeking through the slats of a picket fence.
“Jeannie?”
Walking farther, Chris saw Jeanne’s legs first. She was on the floor, lying facedown.
“Jeannie…my goodness, Jeannie?”
Chris immediately knelt down by his fiancée’s side and called her name. “Jeannie? Answer me. Jeannie? Damn it, Jeannie?”
Jeanne wasn’t moving, so Chris began shaking her.
“Wake up, Jeannie.”
Chris McGowan first assumed that Jeanne had perhaps fallen and hit her head on the corner of the stove, or passed out for some reason. Over the past few days, Chris remembered, Jeanne had been complaining about “not feeling like herself.” She had even called her doctor that previous Monday, August 4, after reporting to Chris that she felt “tipsy,” “dizzy” and quite drawn down. Jeanne was always one to monitor her weight. At five feet six inches, she had put on some weight in recent years. But over the past month or more, she had dropped several pounds while closely following the popular Atkins diet. She had even told Chris a week prior how “great” she felt since losing so much weight in such a short period of time.
Now, though, Chris wondered if perhaps the weight loss and her recent complaint of feeling light-headed and weak were symptoms of a major health issue.
As he stared at Jeanne for a moment in disbelief, getting no response after calling out to her, Chris noticed a large pool of blood underneath Jeanne’s head and upper body. For some reason, she had bled all over the floor.
What’s this? It was still tacky, even wet.
What Chris didn’t realize was that there was blood spattered from one end of the kitchen to the other: on the refrigerator, cabinets, doorjamb, table, chairs, floor. Even the carpet in the living room had patches of blood, and there were droplets leading up the stairs.
The moment Chris noticed the blood, he reached for the telephone, which was on a small ledge between the kitchen and living room, about a foot-and-a-half away from Jeanne. By now, Chris was a wreck. Shaking. Stuttering. Mumbling to himself. Trembling to the point of having difficulty dialing the three numbers.
What the hell happened?