First Offense by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg Page B

inside her bedroom closet. Once the woman had walked into the room, he’d sprung out and placed a knife at her throat. Wearing a stocking mask, the attacker forced her onto the floor, frightening the old woman so much that she had defecated in her pants. Randy had been a real sweetheart, Ann thought grimly, even going so far as to get a washrag and clean her up. Once he had done so, he had proceeded to beat her, rape her, and force her to orally copulate him. Then while Estelle lay on the floor, beaten and in shock. Randy had gone to her refrigerator and made himself a ham and cheese sandwich. For dessert, he had flipped the old woman over and sodomized her.
    Estelle Summer would never live independently again. The woman had been so terrorized by the assault that she suffered from severe insomnia. Months after the attack, she lay awake night after night, shaking in her bed with fear. She had proceeded to build a fortress around her house, expending all her meager savings to install sophisticated alarms, build fences, hire security officers to stand by her door all night. When that didn’t calm her fears, Estelle had boarded up all the doors and windows and refused to leave the house. Her weight had plummeted to sixty-eight pounds. She became incontinent and was forced to wear diapers. Finally her children had placed her in a nursing home.
    After thirty years in the public school system, a respected and dedicated teacher, Estelle Summer was unable to enjoy her retirement, her few remaining years on this earth. No wonder Glen was so intent on punishing this man to the full extent of the law.
    Ann parked in front of the nursing home, a long brick building set far back from the road, and got out and headed to the entrance. Lovely multicolored pansies were planted along the walkway leading to the front door, but through the open windows Ann could see the hospital beds and wheelchairs.
    “I’m here to see Estelle Summer,” she told the nurse in the lobby. An attractive woman in her thirties, the woman had fluffy blond hair, fair skin, and blue eyes.
    “Oh,” the woman said, her face blanching, “are you a relative?”
    “No,” Ann said, removing her county identification and flashing it. “I’m a deputy probation officer. I need to talk to her about a case.”
    The woman looked at the identification card and then slowly raised her eyes to Ann’s face. “Ms. Summer passed away three hours ago.”
    Ann lurched back from the desk, as if pushed by some invisible force. She knew it was fear, but she didn’t know why. She had never even met Estelle Summer. Why was she so stunned by this woman’s death? It had to be the shooting, she told herself She knew now what it felt like to be terrified, helpless, desperate. Estelle had counted on the police to find her attacker and bring him to justice, but before they did, it was too late. Would this happen to Ann? Would they never find the person who had shot her? Would the fear grow and grow until it consumed her every thought?
    “Did Ms. Summer have a heart attack?” Ann asked, unable to walk away.
    The nurse glanced over her shoulder and then back at Ann, standing and leaning forward over the counter. “No,” she said. “It wasn’t her heart.” The nurse dropped her eyes and started mindlessly rearranging the various items on her desk. Ann could see that her hands were trembling. “She quit eating,” the nurse said. “We tried to tube-feed her and she just pulled the tubes out.” The woman looked up. “You know what she said to me right before she died?”
    Ann didn’t answer.
    A metal chart in her hands, the nurse slammed it down on the desk. “She said you people were going to let that animal that raped her off, that the jury was going to find him not guilty. That’s why she wanted to die. She said she didn’t want to be alive when the verdict came in.”
    “But that’s not true,” Ann protested. “The trial—”
    The nurse flipped her wrist at Ann,