Page 116 of Don't Tell Me How to Die

Alex had called me an hour ago and said he should be wrapping up work “soonish.” But that didn’t mean he’d come straight home. He never left without stopping at the construction site to check on the progress of the new trauma center. He was like a kid with a multimillion-dollar new toy and hundreds of hard-hatted friends to play with.

My phone rang as soon as I pulled into the hospital parking lot. Johnny had seen me arrive.

“Stay where you are,” he said.

Two minutes later he slid into the passenger seat of my car. “Don’t ask questions. Just do what I tell you, and hurry—we’ve got to do this fast.”

He handed me a key fob. “I want you to drive Alex’s car to the boat. I’ll follow in your car. Go! Now! Don’t let anyone see you and turn off your cell phone so you can’t be tracked.”

Alex’s Lexus was in his reserved space. I scrambled in, and I drove off unnoticed. Fifteen minutes later, I pulled into the marina with Johnny right behind me. It was dark, and the place was quiet.

“Strip down to your bra and panties and put these on,” he said, passing me a pair of latex gloves. “It’s 8:21. I’m on a lunch break, and I’ve got to be back on the platform by nine.”

I did as I was told, and he shoved my clothes into a plastic bag.

“Take these,” he said, handing me Alex’s hospital badge, his cell phone, and his wallet. “Now I’m going to give you a set of instructions. Listen carefully, repeat them, and then follow them to the letter. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

Within minutes, I had set sail, and theDunn Dealwas making its way upriver. Mindlessly I put Alex’s keys, wallet, phone, and his hospital ID badge exactly where Johnny told me to put them. And then I stopped. Alex was a creature of habit, and nobody knew his quirks better than I did. I picked up his ID from the captain’s chair and hung it from the throttle. I waited till we drifted about a hundred yards out, then I dove into the water and swam to shore.

Johnny was waiting for me with towels and my dry clothes. I got dressed, and as he drove us back to the hospital parking lot, he told me what to expect over the course of the next several days.

We got back to the hospital parking lot at 8:52 p.m.

“Go straight home,” he said. “And get some sleep. It’s over, Maggie. You never again have to worry about Alex hurting you or the kids.”

“Johnny, I’m numb. I don’t know what to say.”

“You were numb the last time we did this shit,” he said. “But you still managed to come up with a few choice words. Do you remember what you said?”

“I think it was probably thank you. I owe you one.”

“You see that?” he said, a wide smile on his face. “You do remember.”

How could I forget? It was November 27, 1997. I got a message to Johnny’s pager and told him that I’d left my red bandanna in his car.

“This better be good,” he said when he showed up to meet me an hour later. “I’m missing the end of the Jets-Bills game. What’s your problem this time, little girl?”

“Connie Gilchrist is dead,” I said. “I just killed her.”

SEVENTY-TWO

twenty-six years before the funeral

I remember every detail of that day vividly. It was the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, and I was a senior at Heartstone High School. The previous day Johnny and I had broken into Connie’s house, and we’d discovered the manila folder with my mother’s obituary and the details of our family life that Connie had highlighted when she was looking for her next widower to victimize.

I was determined to stop her, but how does a seventeen-year-old girl go up against a career criminal?

Beth. Beth Webster. Saint Beth. The librarian who cared so deeply about my father’s pain that she had sent him a book that he of course never bothered to open. I liked her, trusted her, never once dreaming that she’d one day become my surrogate mother, Grandma Beth to my kids, and one of my closest confidants.

Years later she told me how uncharacteristically reticent I was that day. “After you asked me how to get background information on someone, I knew that it wasn’t a school project,” she said. “I could see the troubled look on your face. And then you very meekly said, ‘Her name is Connie... or maybe it’s Constance... Gilchrist,’ and I knew I was about to dive into treacherous waters.”

Treacherous waters or not, Beth dove in headfirst. She drilled down into those LexisNexis files and gave me the ammunition I needed. Grand larceny. Three victims. Prison time. Genghis Connie was everything I’d feared she was and worse.

My father and Connie had taken the train to New York, and later that day he called to say they wouldn’t be home until the following morning.

That night I had the dream. More like a vision. My mother and I were sitting on a blanket on the grass at Magic Pond. The red Mustang came out of nowhere, barreling toward us. Connie was behind the wheel. My mother stood up, but she was powerless to stop the stranger who had run off with both her car and her husband. Then she turned to me, her eyes pleading, “Don’t let that woman take Daddy.”

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