Journey to Another Door

JOURNEY TO ANOTHER DOOR

By Bob Gabbert

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Copyright

Copyright © 2016 by Bob Gabbert

All rights reserved, except as permitted under the US Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission by the publisher.

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e-Book Edition: March 2016

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

About the Book

Liz Waters is an elementary schoolteacher with three life-goals: become the best schoolteacher she can be, find a good man to marry, and become a mother of three children.

Well on her way to achieving her first goal, she meets and falls in love with Tony Broderick, an attorney. He hates children, but he promises: After a few years we will definitely start a family, just not right now. She realizes that he is not the man of her dreams, but she’s in love with him and naïvely believes that he will change.

Years go by with excuse after excuse for not having a child, a child that she has yearned for her entire life. With her biological clock running out, she decides to take desperate measures. Ken, a married schoolteacher friend, has the same physical characteristics as Tony, so she asks him to get her pregnant in the belief that Tony will believe the child is his, and he will love the child once he holds it in his arms.

On the fateful night of their sexual encounter, Ken falls asleep afterward and then must hurry home to prevent his wife from finding out what he has done. He and Liz get in her car with him driving, and he speeds headlong through an unfamiliar section of the city. In his blind haste, he hits something in the road that he believes is a stray dog. Liz wants to go back and take the dog to a vet, but Ken won’t stop.

The next day, a newspaper prints an article in which they describe how a hit-and-run driver killed a homeless man the night before.

Ken and his family disappear leaving Liz alone to face the consequences that her car killed a man. She is sentenced to seven to 10 years in prison for vehicular homicide and leaving the scene.

When the door of the prison closes behind her, she knows that the door to her career, and life, is also closing. Will another door open?

Table of Contents

Title Page

About the Book

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Acknowledgement

About the Author

Other Novels by the Author

Chapter One

Superior Court Judge Harvey Kimble looked down from the bench, his gray hair disheveled as it had been throughout the trial. Will the defendant please rise?

All of the color drained out of Liz’s face, because she knew her life as a schoolteacher was over. Her hands were shaking as she tried to stand up, but her legs gave way, and she fell back into the chair. Her attorney helped her to her feet and steadied her. Her eyes teared as she tried desperately to keep her composure. In the pit of her stomach was this dull nauseating feeling of doom.

Does the defendant have anything to say before sentence is passed?

She opened her mouth to speak, but her throat was so dry nothing came out. She took a sip of water and cleared her throat. "Your Honor, I was not driving that car. Please, believe me. I didn’t do this."

Judge Kimble had heard the same story from virtually every defendant who had ever come before him, and he was not moved. Elizabeth Anne Waters-Broderick, to the charge of reckless driving, you have been found guilty by a jury of your peers. To the charge of leaving the scene of an accident, you have been found guilty, and to the charge of vehicular homicide of one John Doe, you have been found guilty. It is the judgment of this court that you be taken from this place and incarcerated for a period of not less than seven years nor more than 10 years in a correctional facility to be determined by the Washington State Department of Corrections. Mr Bailiff, take charge of the defendant.

Judge Kimble banged the gavel ending the trial. The finality of that sound shot through Liz’s body like a knife. She collapsed back into the chair.

Mark Sanford, her attorney, put his hand on her arm. Liz, we’ll appeal.

The bailiff came. Mr Attorney, I need to take Mrs Broderick and begin processing her.

The next few days were like walking through a strange forest in dense fog with shadows that were unrecognizable as the Department of Corrections processed her.

For a schoolteacher, it was ironic that she was transferred to the correction center in a school bus. But, unlike school buses she’d previous been associated with, this one was painted gray and it had wire mesh over the windows, and at each seat there were steel rings to lock the handcuffed prisoner to the seat that was bolted to the floor.

She was taken to the little town of Purdy, Washington, located on the Kitsap Peninsula across Puget Sound from Seattle. The official name of the facility was the Washington Correction Center for Women, but most people, and even the media, referred to the facility simply as Purdy.

Purdy was an unbelievable destination for the young Iowa farm girl who came to Seattle 12 years earlier at 18 to get her degree in elementary education at the University of Washington. She spent the entire four years on the academic Dean’s List, and by graduation, her life goals were planted firmly in her mind. She wanted to make her home in Seattle, become a great schoolteacher, meet a nice man and have three children—two boys and a girl that she would name Sarah after her favorite grandmother.

She did her student teaching at Morningside Elementary School, and after getting her teaching certificate she was hired to be the homeroom teacher for the second grade. It was exactly what she wanted.

Liz had a good life, a happy life, growing up in Iowa. She had what some call a healthy complexion and didn’t require makeup to enhance it. She was a high school cheerleader and had to wear makeup while performing, but otherwise the only thing she wore was lip-gloss and at night, a moisturizer.

She was on the student-body council for three years. Her flaw, at least in her mind, was her height. She was not unusually short at five-feet three-inches, but in her mind, she was too short to attract the boys that she and her friends wanted to date. When they look down at me, all they see is a little girl, she said. She began to wear three-inch heels in high school anytime boys were involved. After college, when she entered the real world, her imagined defect, became even more acute, so she switched to four-inch heels when she went out partying.

Her lithe body was made to look even more slender wearing four-inch heels, and as one man described her, Her legs seem to go on forever. It was exactly what she wanted them to think, because it was only when men were attracted to her, that she truly felt beautiful.

She was 30 years old when the trial began, and the stress of it caused her to start wearing eye shadow to hide the effects of stress and sleepless nights. By the end of the trial, lip-gloss was replaced by a light shade of pink lipstick, and she was using makeup as a mask to hide behind.

Liz was a woman whose appearance was dramatically altered by the way she wore her long brown hair. If her hair was pulled back, her fair complexion, light freckling, and strikingly beautiful brown eyes made her look impish, and she did like to be naughty and mischievous at times. However, if her hair was down and framing her face, the sparkle in her eyes was hidden and her eyes took on a sense of mystery and sensuality of the mature woman she had become.

Daniel Patrick Tavisham had no problem with his height. He was one inch over six feet tall, and had a boyishly handsome face with a fair complexion, blue eyes, and reddish blond hair. His mother was Irish and his father was English. They met while British troops were occupying Northern Ireland. Unable to live happily amongst either the Irish or the English, they immigrated to Boston when Dan was four. His father became a Boston policeman rising through the ranks to become sergeant.

Dan followed his father into law enforcement, but Dan didn’t want to stay in Boston. After graduating from Boston University with a law enforcement degree, he applied to police forces on the West Coast, and was hired by the Seattle Police Department.

His first arrest of a felon was dismissed, because the defense attorney, Anthony Broderick, got his client off on a technicality. Dan had inadvertently misspelled the defendant’s name on the arrest report, and Broderick made the case that they had arrested the wrong man. Over the years, Dan had other cases thrown out on technicalities when Broderick was the defense attorney, and he grew to loathe the man.

Although Dan knew Broderick professionally and had seen him many times in court, he knew nothing about Broderick’s private life. It was not until the Seattle Times began covering Mrs Broderick’s trial, that he became aware that Broderick was married. According to the newspaper, her name was Elizabeth, and she was six years younger than Broderick.

Dan was not involved in her case and knew nothing more about it, or her, than what he read in the newspaper. His only interest in the trial was the fact that she was Tony Broderick’s wife.

The day she was sentenced to prison, Dan went to the precinct with a spring in his step. He went to his partner’s desk and proudly held up the Seattle Times. The headlines read: Noted Attorney’s Wife Gets 7 to 10. Dan sat down with a grin and patted the newspaper lovingly. "I hope that bastard hurts so badly this morning that he jumps off of a building."

Anthony Broderick also went the office that day with a spring in his step. With Liz in prison, he knew he would have no problem divorcing her without having to pay her an enormous sum of money.

He and Tavisham were definitely not friends, but they did have similarities. Tony also followed his father into the practice of law. Dan went into law enforcement and left his hometown to come to Seattle. Broderick grew up in Modesto, California, and after graduating from Stanford Law School he accepted a position as a trial attorney in the Seattle law firm of Baines Dixon and Dyer. When Dyer retired, Tony was 32. They made him a partner, and the name of the firm was changed to Baines Dixon and Broderick.

Broderick liked to wear expensive business suits such as Armani, Ralph Lauren, and Hugo Boss. With his six-foot frame, his immaculate and closely cropped and professionally styled black hair, he cut an impressive figure, and he used it to perfection in the courtroom. He rarely lost a case when a jury was involved.

The first time he saw Liz was in a nightclub. She was 24 and dancing with another woman. Both women were attractive, but Liz was so fluid, so graceful and sexy as she swayed to the music that after the dance, he went to their table and pulled up a chair.

Do you come here often? he asked. Broderick had all the confidence in the world when he was in a courtroom, but he had little experience with women, and the way he said it, made it sound like a line from a third-rate movie.

Liz looked at her friend and burst out laughing. As often as I can. Who are you?

Turned on—

"Oh, please! Don’t you have a better line than that?"

He blushed. No one had made him blush since he said goodbye to his father when he left for college, and the memory of that sad event made him angry. He never felt that his father loved him, and when he left for college, he hugged his father and said, Dad, I love you.

Instead of his father telling him as last that he loved him too, his father pushed him away with an expression of having tasted something bitter. Are you queer or something?! Those words were seared into his brain as if by a branding iron.

Now, his face was flushed with embarrassment and anger. He had to bite his tongue to keep from lashing out at her as he did with other people who tested him. He smiled and tried to turn on the charm. I was just kidding. My name is Tony. How about we get out of here?

I don’t think so, Tony. You seem a little old for me.

Again he blushed and directed his anger at her. Too old! For you?!

Hey, I just came here to have fun. She turned to her friend. Let’s go, Pat. She started to get up.

He grabbed her arm. Do you know who I am?!

She looked down at his hand on her arm and frowned. You’re the man who’s not getting laid tonight. She jerked her arm free and went to get her coat.

Well, you bitch! Tony swore under his breath. He downed the last of his drink and left in a huff.

Her friend, Pat, joined her at the coat rack. Who was that?

Some jerk who thought I was going to fall all over him. Let’s get out of here.

Patricia Freeman was the same age as Liz. They did their student teaching together at Morningside, and now she was the first grade homeroom teacher with her classroom next to Liz’s homeroom. She and Liz were best friends. They shared an apartment and a car. During free time at school, they played bridge with Kenneth Franklyn, the physical education teacher at the school, and John Whiskey, a math teacher.

Ken Franklyn was married with three children, but John Whiskey was divorced. John hit on Liz and Pat almost everyday. Their nickname for him was hands, because he was always trying to touch them or put his arm around them. They would have had him up on sexual harassment charges, but he was nice guy and fun to be with, and they knew he was harmless.

The one strict rule of their bridge game was that John and Ken were not allowed to be partners. Why can’t Ken and I be partners? He asked when the women made the rule.

Liz retorted, If you and Ken are partners, both Pat and I will have to fight off your hands. This way, only one of us will, and we can take turns sitting next to you.

I thought you liked me messing around with you, John said with a pouting expression, but he followed their rule and always sat with Ken next to him.

Ken, on the other hand, had a crush on Liz. He loved his wife and children, but Liz was one of the sexiest women he had ever known. Where John openly tried to put his arm around the women or take their hand, Ken tried to make his touch more natural, such as rubbing his finger along her arm, You’re bid, Liz.

Ken and John were the only men who Liz felt comfortable enough around to wear low-heel shoes. In her mind, there was no sexual tension between them even with John’s constantly roaming hands. She knew John would have done anything for her, except keep his hands to himself. They were friends—good friends, just as Pat was.

Chapter Two

When Tony went home the night he met Liz, he fumed all night. He could stand in a courtroom and talk about any subject to get his client acquitted, but she had made him feel like a high school dropout.

By the next day, he was ready to forget all about Liz, but he couldn’t. It was rare when he lost a case in court, but when he did, he analyzed the transcript line by line until he discovered why he’d lost, and so it was with Liz. He went back to the nightclub night after night, staying in the shadows and studying her every move.

He learned her pattern. She always came with the same woman. They usually came on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday nights. They got a table, and if no one asked them to dance, they danced together. On Tuesday and Thursday nights, they usually left by ten, but they stayed until midnight on Saturday. If one left with a man, the other left soon after, even on Saturday.

Tony hated to see Liz leave with a man, because he knew she was going to have sex with him. He