The Parking Garage

Friday evenings after work were always thoroughly enjoyable for Dori and Alex Mitchell. After a long day at their respective offices they would meet at Masapatonie, a fine Italian restaurant on Manhattan’s upper eastside. There they would enjoy a leisurely dinner and talk about how the day’s events had unfolded for each – the deals that had transpired, the ones that hadn’t gone through, the people, the pleas, the pressures, and the many other details that made up the daily work life of two successful lawyers.

Though Alex was a defense attorney and Dori a prosecutor, and though they found themselves with opposite opinions on cases, they had managed to keep the conflicts that sometimes arose in their professional activities, out of their personal lives. That was largely because besides sharing the same profession, Dori and Alex had another important thing in common – they were very much in love with one another.

Alex and Dori had met while both were studying law at Columbia University. Their first encounters had been in debate class. Alex remembered well watching Dori, a staunch defender of the death penalty and a pro-life advocate, standing in front of the class arguing that to provide life sentences to serial killers and senseless murders, instead of executing them, amounted to rewarding them for their heinous crimes by giving them free room and board for the rest of their pitiful, useless lives. She had also stressed the heartbreak of the families affected by such killers and how without the state having the death penalty, would never know the meaning of 'an eye for an eye.'

Family members unable to ever again see sons, daughters, mothers, or fathers. Meanwhile they watched cable television in the mess hall. She could not fathom the attitude that condoned what she considered such travesties of justice. The punishment should fit the crime, she argued, and it was clear to her that the punishment best fitting the crime of cold blooded murder was execution.

While watching his future wife in action during that debate and, later in semester, in another debate in which she argued passionately against abortion, Alex had not been able to keep from analyzing her lovely facial features: her brown, pencil-thin eyebrows that rose whenever she attempted to make a valid point through her soft, full lips; her small hands as they brushed away her jet black hair whenever it got in the way of her stunning green eyes. Alex had loved the way she stood up for her convictions, even if he didn’t agree with most of them. And as he watched her, he had promised himself that if he were able to win her, their differences of opinion would never be a part of their undoing.

Now, fifteen years later, on a late November Friday night in 1990, that promise was still being kept.

The waiter arrived with their check as Alex emptied the last of his Samuel Adams. Though he had always had an appreciation for fine clothes, including Pierre Cardin suits and two-hundred-dollar shoes, Alex’s success had not gone to his head. He was still a down-to-earth man, and he still preferred a good beer over expensive wine.

As Dori checked her purse and rose from the table, she looked across at Alex and appreciated, for the thousandth time, his good looks. His hair, like Dori’s, was black and full, and his face was unmarked by freckles, birthmarks, or scars. Though occasionally, he would go unshaven to the point that stubble was breaking his skin. His sad looking brown eyes had often benefited him in the courtroom when facing the jury for final arguments, especially with women jurors. It was something she always jokingly called “playing the sex appeal card,” but she didn’t worry about it. One thing she could count on was that this successful attractive gentleman would always come home to her. He was the perfect husband, she thought, not only in his looks but, more importantly, in his honesty, integrity, and fidelity. She loved him more than she thought any woman had ever loved a man before.

Alex paid the bill and left a hefty tip as always, then he and she headed out the door and to the parking garage a few blocks away. It took a few minutes to locate the car because Alex had a habit of not checking the lettered signs when he parked, But Dori finally spotted it and motioned to Alex, who was a couple of rows away. Alex walked to the passenger side, unlocked the door, opened it for Dori, then scooted around to his side, but as he started to slip the key into the lock, he suddenly lost his balance. As he felt himself falling to the pavement, his first thought was that he had slipped on something. He was down on the asphalt before he realized that someone underneath the car had a hold on his right foot.

“What the hell are you doing?” Alex yelled as he started kicking at the assailant’s face with his left foot, but the man dodged his blows and flashed a switchblade he was holding in his free hand. Still with a death grip on Alex’s other foot, the man began sticking the point of the knife into and out of Alex’s right shin.

Having seen Alex fall and hearing the commotion outside the car, Dori slid over to the driver’s seat and began to open the door.

“Dori, stay in the car!” Alex yelled. “Call the police on your cell!”

She fumbled in her purse, found the cell phone, and frantically tried to dial 911, but she dropped the phone. She bent down to retrieve it, and when she lifted her head back up, she dropped the phone again at what she saw outside the window; the man was kneeling on Alex’s shoulder, swiping the knife from left to right. Dori screamed as she saw blood gush out of Alex’s neck and splatter onto the asphalt like big splotches of red paint.

It was over in a few seconds. Alex lay still, while the murderer was up on his feet, leering through the window. Dori sat paralyzed, her eyes fixed in horror on Alex’s body, his head almost completely cut off, the blood still slowly pumping from the terrible wound.

When Dori saw the man bend down to pick up the key Alex had dropped, she managed to come to her senses enough to pick up the cell phone again and quickly dial 911. Before the connection could be made, the man was already inserting the key into the lock. As the 911 operator answered the phone, she realized she would not have time to explain what was going on, so she she threw the phone on the back seat, then leaned on the car horn. A second later the man’s knife was at her throat as he slid into the car and forced her against the passenger-side door.

Realizing that if she screamed she would be dead within a few seconds, Dori lay slumped in terror against the door while the fiend cut and ripped her clothes. When he began raping her, she started sobbing uncontrollably. If it had not been for the sirens that sounded a few minutes later, Dori would have surely been killed. The murderer had just finished his business when he heard the sirens, and immediately got off Dori. He took one swipe at her with the knife to silence her, then he turned and took off running, the sound of his steps echoing through the cavernous garage.

Through her tears, she straightened her clothing, crawled across the seat, half fell out of the door, and collapsed onto the asphalt. There she pulled herself next to Alex and lay in his blood while she caressed his matted black hair. “Oh my love,” she sobbed. “Where have you gone? Where has it all gone?”

It was about two months later when detectives called Dori to the twenty-eighth precinct to see if she could identify him from a police lineup, the man who had killed Alex and assaulted and raped her. The face of the man who had murdered her husband and taken away her life as she had known it was indelibly printed on her mind. As the men in the lineup filed into the room behind the glass, Dori was able to identify her attacker immediately.

“Do you recognize any of these men, Mrs. Mitchell?” The detective asked. “Take your time.” As Dori looked through the glass, tears started to well in her eyes. She wiped them away with a tissue, continued to stare at the man who had destroyed her life, and quietly replied, “No. He’s not there.”

***

Eighteen years later, on a November night in 2008, Trevor Orlich was sitting in his one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx, watching an insipid sitcom on television and pulling on a bottle of cheap wine. After a close call during a police lineup eighteen years earlier he had been able to keep his nose mostly clean and to avoid any trouble that would lead police to believe he was involved in the murder of Alex and the rape of Dori Mitchell. Close to fifty now, his once blond hair had taken on the green tint that often settles on men with light colored hair as they get older. His facial scars, though still visible, were now mixed with wrinkles, and his once-wide eyes were half-covered by heavy eyelids – the toll not only of age but also of too many years of abusing alcohol.

As Trevor sat immobile on his sagging couch, lost in the inane jokes of the sitcom, he was startled by a knock on his door. It was something he seldom heard but always feared.

He slowly got up from the couch and made the short trip to the front door. “Who’s there?” he asked in a deep, raspy voice.

“I’m sorry to bother you sir,” said a voice from the other side. ‘My name is Jason. I’m with the census bureau. I just need to ask you a few questions.”

“You’ll have to come back another time,” Trevor replied through the door. “I’m kinda busy now.”

“Another agent will just be back tomorrow, sir,” said the voice sarcastically.

Trevor thought for a moment. The guy was probably right, and he did not want to be bothered everyday by government employees at his door.

“It will just take a minute, the voice on the other side of the door said. “Believe me, this won’t take long at all.”

“Alright then.” Trevor said. He unlatched the chain lock, twisted the dead bolt, and started to open the door. The man on the other side pushed hard at the door as soon as it was open, the force knocking Trevor to the floor.

“It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me!” Trevor pleaded, looking up at the man who he thought must be a cop.

The man standing above Trevor looked to be barely out of his teens. He opened up his suit jacket, reached into the inside pocket, and drew something out. He held it out to Trevor as if he were about to give it to him, then his thumb imperceptibly moved on the object and a long, silver blade clicked out in front of Trevor’s eyes.

“Look familiar?” the man asked through clenched teeth. “Remind you of the knife you used to kill Alex Mitchell?”

The man took a step toward Trevor, who was still cowering on the floor, his hands now up to shield his face. The man began swinging the razor-sharp knife back and forth, cutting Trevor’s hands and wrists into shreds. As Trevor tried to twist away, the man grabbed him by the right wrist with one hand and proceeded to cut off his index finger.

“Stop! Please stop!” Trevor screamed. “You’re a goddamn psycho!”

The man grabbed Trevor by his hair, jerked his head upward, and put the knife to his throat.

“Like father like son,” he whispered, and as he felt the knife cut into Trevor’s flesh, he thought of his mother’s convictions and how she had honored both of them.