Programmed for Peril

Melody’s jumper. He went after her. “Stop, Melody!” he growled, “or you’re going to be badly punished.”
    “Mommy, make him stop!”
    “Carson—”
    “Don’t try to run from me, Melody. I’ll catch you. And when I do... So come here!”
    Melody ducked away but couldn’t get past the big man. She dodged backward toward the doorless bathroom. Had he his full strength, he would have caught her in a moment. Trish saw he would do so eventually because he was cornering her. She screamed at him: “Why are you bothering her?”
    He didn’t turn. “She’s the last smudge of chalk on our old slate, Queen of My Heart. She has to be... rubbed out, you might say.” He chuckled.
    “Carson, don’t!” He was going to kill her child! And she was letting him do it.
    With painful lunges he bluffed Melody further toward the bathroom. She was wailing in fear. Those cries struck Trish like lashes. They jarred at the inertia that possessed her. “Carson!”
    Melody was in the tiny bathroom now. Carson loomed before her eyes, a bloody, fanged horror. "Mom-mmmiiiiieee!”
    That cry shattered the spell under which Carson had placed Trish. She rushed forward, her mind empty of all but the most primitive thoughts.
    Carson had caught Melody’s arm. His other hand found her neck. The child coughed feebly as his thumb slid to her soft throat.
    He was going to strangle her.
    Trish raised the pistol, hesitated. If she fired, the bullet might go through him and into Melody. ‘‘Let her go!” she screamed, so loud she thought her throat might tear.
    Carson released Melody’s arm and put both hands on her throat. “Rub... rub,” he muttered.
    She angled to the side, stepped close to Carson’s exposed ribs. Melody’s eyes were wide, bugging, her tongue stiffening in her open mouth.
    Trish shoved the pistol into Carson’s ribs and pulled the trigger. She kept pulling it despite the deafening sound and the spent powder burning her hands. Not until she heard clicks did she drop the weapon beside his inert body. She threw the pistol at his gory head.
    She wrapped Melody in her arms and hugged with her little remaining strength. She carried her out of the bathroom. The child clung to her like a limpet.
    “That was all so awful horrible!” Melody blubbered.
    “It’s never easy to get your soul back.”
    “What’s that mean?”
    “Never mind.”
     

29
     
    REVEREND GRAYMOKE HAD PUT ASIDE HIS CUSTOMARY illuminations of the eternal struggle between good and evil in favor of a homily on peace on earth and goodwill to men. Christmas Eve service called for that. Trish enjoyed hearing from this different side of the minister. Earlier in the year she had come to appreciate being in Jerry’s church, and not just because he was beside her. The assembled worshipers, the uneven voices raised in song or muted in prayer, and the sense of community comforted her.
    More than a year had passed since the violence and death in the two-room apartment—twelve months of outer and inner changes for her. Melody had been her first concern. She found a counselor who specialized in the sort of psychological trauma her daughter had suffered. The three of them met to talk it through in depth. The first sessions had been brutal, both she and Melody in tears, hers of recrimination and guilt. After all, hadn’t it been her behaviors that led to her child’s terrorizing? Never mind the little detail of not telling her who her father really was. Initially the trio met twice a week. Now only twice a month. Counselor Strong, puffing on his pipe, announced last Monday that he thought Melody would do fine without him from here on out. It was Trish he was wondering about.
    To her surprise, Stoneman Gore had stepped to the forefront of her business problems. The gassing in his Cadillac had startled awake the substantial dormant portion of his talent. His energy level rose. His business acumen sharpened itself. Trish hadn’t known he had been a successful entrepreneur in the heyday of the plastics boom. The bonds whose coupons he clipped had been bought with the profits from the sale of his own company to a multinational. While Trish spared her shaky nerves by putting only half days into the shell to which PC-Pros had been reduced, Stoneman brought in a retired accountant friend who did the books. Soon she and Stoneman knew just where the firm stood financially. He next begged the services of a management consultant chum. The three of them devised a