House Arrest

By J. N. Sadler

A young playboy is charged with hit and run. His father, a prominent lawyer, arranges house arrest for punishment, taking care of the middle-age woman he temporarily crippled, until she heals. They both deal with their alcoholism while under confinement.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499085754

J. N. Sadler

Janet Sadler is a resident of Havertown, Pennsylvania. She has published two volumes of poetry with her illustrations: Headwinds and Full Sail and has been published in many small literary magazines. Once member of the Mad Poets Society in Media, PA, and also the Overbrook Poets in Philadelphia, she reads her poetry at local venues. She was the former poetry director at Tyme Gallery in Havertown, PA and at Baldwin’s Book Barn in West Chester, PA. She has authored thirty flash fictions novels. Twenty-seven titles have been published through Xlibris and can be found at Xlibris.com, under J. N. Sadler Author’s email address: [e-mail]

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by J. N. Sadler.

ISBN:          Softcover          978-1-4990-8576-1

                    eBook              978-1-4990-8575-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 10/28/2014

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

696901

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 1

A black Mercedes traveled along deserted streets in Boston. It was winter. The streets were slick with freezing rain. Three feet of snow covered the ground, and higher mounds lined the plowed streets outside the city limits.

Theodore Filmore, a young, rich punk with dark, slicked-back hair, sped along, crazily. He was drinking vodka from a bottle, grinning as he turned the wheel suddenly to avoid a pit in the road. The road divided. He emptied the vodka bottle and tossed it onto the floor of the front seat, on the passenger side. It broke. He threw his head back and laughed.

On the other side of the highway, Katherine Green, a waitress at the Yankee Diner, in her late forties, waited for a bus. A wall of plowed snow formed a blind. She stood in the shadow of the frozen tower, shivering.

She wore a long black coat with a wool scarf wrapped around her head and shoulders, gloves, and high-heel boots. The strap of her black shoulder-bag rested on her shoulder. She was hunched, turning this way and that to avoid the wind, craning her neck to see if the bus was coming. The street was empty. It resumed snowing.

Theo’s car slid wildly on the ice where the two-lane highway divided. It skidded uncontrollably sideways across the road towards the curb on the right, crashing into the pile of frozen snow that resembled an alp in Switzerland. His head hit the steering wheel. The headlights shined on the blue ice, and the motor kept revving, even though his car was pressed up against the icy surface. A red lump formed immediately on his forehead. He put his hand to it and looked in the rear-view mirror. It was almost 2:00 o’clock in the morning. The streets were deserted.

The tower of frozen ice and snow that he rammed into toppled to the other side of the road with a crashing sound, leaving a partial view of the street on the other side of the ice wall.

An avalanche of snow and heavy ice slammed into Katherine where she stood. It shoved her across the street. Her legs slid into a sewer, and she heard her bones break as she continued propelling forward. She screamed, but no one heard her. She was covered with snow, lying on the dark side of the highway, unconscious.

Theo got out of the car, swaying. He looked over to the other street where a black shape seemed to be swallowed up by the sewer. It was not moving. A handbag lay in the snow a few feet away. He climbed over the wall and picked up the bag, scrounging for money in a wallet. He threw the wallet away after extracting a pay envelope with three hundred dollars in it.

He looked over to the shape. It looks like it could be an animal of some kind. Looking around both ways, he ran back to his car which was still revving against the wall. After going forward and backward several times, Theo backed up his car and spun around onto the highway, fishtailing through a red light towards his posh townhouse on the other side of town.

A bus slowed down. It appeared that there was no one to pick up at this stop.

Freddy Atkins, bus driver in his fifties, big Afro-American, bald, with a gold tooth and a gold ear ring, wearing gray transit uniform, looked over his shoulder as the bus idled at the light. He saw a woman’s body lying on the snow. There were no passengers on his bus. The diner was dark. He backed up the bus till he came to the spot where Katherine lay, unconscious. Her legs were in the sewer, and there was blood in the snow.

He parked the bus and got out to help her. Her face was covered with fast-falling snow.

He yelled, Kate!

Within minutes, he was dialing 911. He elevated her head and tried to examine her injuries. A gust of strong wind blew snow in his face. The sound of its howling came with the loud scream of sirens. First on the scene was an ambulance, followed by an EMT Jeep, then a police car.

The EMT parked sideways blocking the road. The driver and the other medic quickly got out of the ambulance, putting up the gurney and running to the scene. Freddy was kneeling next to her, his jacket under her head. She didn’t move. Blood trickled from her nose and mouth. Freddy stood. One EMT squatted next to her body to take her vitals. The other examined her legs. Bones were broken through the skin. He evaluated her injuries, quickly and moved to the victim’s head. There was a large lump on her forehead where her head struck the ice. Her purse was lying in the street. The EMT’s conferred. Freddy stepped back to give them room.

Officer Baldino, a big, burly policeman, strolled up to the scene. He looked at Freddy and asked, Are you the one who found her?

Yes, Officer. I am the one who called. She is a regular passenger at this hour every night. Her name is Kate Gallagher. She is a waitress at the Yankee Diner, down the street, Brooks Walsh’s place.

Baldino mades notes on a little tablet. He pushed his hat back and looked toward the diner. The tip of the neon sign could be seen over the huge piles of snow and ice, some six feet in height.

What’s your name?

Freddy Atkins, sir.

What do you think happened here? What caused her to slip and slide across the street. I’d say it was some kind of impact. Look at the ice.

He pointed to scattered chunks of snow and ice from the fallen ice barrier between the two roads. He looked up and walked to the area where the snow toppled. On the other side of the highway, there were skid marks. "It looks like a