Page 85 of The Furies

“She wants to leave,” Marjorie said. “She told me so when we last spoke, but she’s frightened of what he’ll do to her if she tries and fails. And even if she does get away, she’s convinced he’ll come after her. Now we’re being advised to remain at home because of this virus, but she can’t stay locked up with him for however long it lasts. She just can’t.”

“Have you spoken to the police?” I said.

“I tried, but there was nothing they could do. They went to the house, but Melissa assured them she was okay. A woman officer went into a room alone with her while the other cop stayed outside with Donnie, just so Melissa could speak without fear of him overhearing, but she stuck to her story. Sometimes I think that, while she wants to get away from him, she still cares enough not to want to see him get into any more trouble with the law.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard a variation on that tale, and I was certain it wouldn’t be the last. Whatever her reasons for remaining, they wouldn’t stop Melissa Thombs from being dragged down into the depths by her boyfriend, there to drown alongside him. Donnie Packard’s reputation revolved around various synonyms of the word “mean.” I’d passed him in courthouses and bars, and once watched him being arrested on Fore Street after he’d tangled with a doorman and come off worse. Nothing about him had ever impressed me, but dealing with him would still require a degree of caution. He’d always been undisciplined and unpredictable; addiction would only have made him more so.

I realized I was already approaching this as though I’d taken on the case. It seemed that I couldn’t even trust myself.

“Do you know if Donnie has a gun?” I asked.

Packard’s conviction for domestic violence, dating back to the previous August, meant he was prohibited from owning firearms or ammunition under the Lautenberg Amendment.

“I asked Melissa, but she wouldn’t say.”

“Which means he does,” I said, “and is ignoring the ban.” Criminals: at least when they broke a law, it wasn’t out of character.

Marjorie Thombs stared down at the handkerchief in her hands. It was white, made of cloth decorated with red roses, and looked like it had been stolen from the heroine of a Harlequin romance.

“I don’t know what to do, Mr. Parker,” she said. “I just don’t.”

It felt odd to have her address me so formally, but then she was approaching me out of desperation. She was a supplicant, and all supplicants bend the knee, yet I wished she’d never come here to lay the burden of her familial misery on the table between us. Intervening in a domestic dispute always involved a very particular order of hazard, but this one sounded as though some form of violence would be unavoidable. To begin with I was on thin ice, legally speaking, and had no right to enter a dwelling uninvited, even if it was to help a woman suspected of enduring psychological and physical abuse. Of course, I might arrive at the house to find Melissa Thombs alone, her bags packed and a one-way ticket to Anywhere But Here already bought and paid for, in which case I’d stop off to buy us both a scratch card before dropping her at the bus station. More plausibly, Donnie Packard would be with her when I arrived, and would naturally object to someone coming onto his property in an effort to deprive him of his chattel. Finally, as I recalled from my time in uniform, even a woman filled with fear and hatred for her partner was capable of baring her claws to protect him if she saw force being required to subdue him.

And yet I couldn’t turn away from this, no more than I could have turned my back on Sarah Abelli’s pain. I dearly wanted to, but I couldn’t.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said, and the tension went out of Marjorie Thombs so quickly that her forehead was in danger of hitting the table.

“Thank you,” she said, and started to cry again, but we didn’t have time for that.

“I need you to contact Melissa,” I said. “If we can do this with her cooperation, it’ll be easier for everyone involved. But I have to warn you, I have another case that’s going to take up most of my immediate time and attention. I can’t promise that I’ll get your daughter out today. I’ll try, though.”

“That’s enough for me. What do you want from Melissa?”

“First of all, are they living in an apartment or a house?”

“A house: what used to be Donnie’s mom’s place up in Yarmouth. She left it to him in her will. It’s a hovel, which is the only reason he hasn’t sold it. Well, that and Melissa as the voice of sanity, because she knows that if he sells the house, they’ll be out on the street, what with Donnie’s habit and all.”

“Does it have a yard?”

“Yes.”

“Where do they keep the garbage cans?”

She looked thrown.

“Out front, I think, under an old tree.”

“Okay,” I said, “it would be best if I had a direct line of communication with Melissa, because it may be that we’ll have to do this fast, and without a whole lot of notice. I’m going to arrange to have a phone dropped behind those garbage cans”—I glanced at my watch—“by six, or seven at the latest. I’d ask you to do it, but I’m worried Donnie might see you. You’ll just have to find a way to let Melissa know the phone will be there. She needs to pick it up, mute it, and find somewhere to hide it. Once night falls, I want her to keep it on her person. It’ll be as small a model as we can find, and there’ll be a text message on it with instructions for how we’re going to handle her escape. When she feels it vibrate, that’ll be the sign we’re ready for her. She can tell Donnie that she has to throw out trash, or get some air, whatever it takes. Then all she has to do is run to the car and we’ll drive her away. She’ll have to leave all her possessions behind, but we can retrieve them later.”

“You make it sound so simple.”

“I’m trying to be optimistic, because if she can’t leave we’ll have to go get her, and that will be messier. If she hasn’t appeared within ten minutes of that first contact, the phone will vibrate again. We’ll have someone at the back door and someone at the front. She has to get to one of those doors and open it. That’ll cover us legally because it can be argued that we were invited to enter, even if Packard decides to kick up later, although my guess is he won’t, not if he’s holding Spice and an illegal weapon. So that’s the second-best course of action.”

“Which leaves?” said Marjorie Thombs.

“The third of four, on a very sharp sliding scale. Melissa knows we’re waiting, but she can’t reach the door, and we have to force our way inside. Now the likelihood of someone getting hurt has increased considerably, and I’d prefer to avoid that for all our sakes.”

“And the final recourse?”

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