One Dog Night Read Free Page A

hurt his back.
    Three operations and years of agony later, he was addicted to prescription pain medication, and his life unraveled. He had no family to lose, only a sister who tried to stand by him, but there was really no one to cushion his fall. And he fell to the bottom.
    The night I told Nicole that I wasn’t pressing charges against Noah was the night we decided to separate. It started as a screaming match, prompted by Nicole’s certainty that once he was freed, he would come back and break into our house, this time successfully, and murder us.
    “Nicole,” I said patiently, “this is a guy whose life has fallen apart. He’s a Stanford graduate, a brilliant guy. This is a first offense. I just think Noah Galloway deserves another chance.”
    “I DON’T CARE ABOUT NOAH-GODDAMN-GALLOWAY!” It was a stunning sentence, if not eloquent, simply because for Nicole the word “goddamn” was the equivalent of a barrage of profanity from anyone else.
    So Nicole went off to live in one of her family’s homes, and Noah Galloway went free. I checked up on him a couple of times from a distance. He left the New York/New Jersey area, and when he came back I heard he had licked the disease, and in fact had become a drug counselor.
    Within a couple of years he was running an antidrug program for the city, and gaining significant recognition for his innovative techniques. He was being consulted by other cities for his expertise, and I had heard he was taking a job with the federal government.
    I was glad that I had played a small part in helping the man I knew as “Noah-Goddamn-Galloway.”
    Until today.
    “That’s the guy?” Laurie asked.
    I nodded. “That’s the guy. I don’t remember exactly when the fire was, but I think it was after we found him at the back door.”
    “Don’t go there, Andy. This has nothing to do with you.”
    She thinks I’m blaming myself for allowing him to be out on the street, and being available to murder those people. She knows me better than I know me.
    “Maybe.”
    “What do you think? If you had pressed charges on a first-degree trespassing that he would be sent away for life? He didn’t even get in the house.”
    “Laurie, I know I didn’t light the match, all right? But things might have been different, who knows?”
    The truth is, I’m not exactly racked with guilt, at least not yet. I need much more information before I’ll get there. But I am very capable of getting there.
    “So look into it if you have to,” Laurie says. “Talk to Pete; he’ll find out everything about this. Maybe it happened before the break-in, and then you’ll let yourself off the hook.”
    “Good idea.”
    “Just don’t find out too much about Galloway. You’ll wind up defending him.”
    “No chance. Nohow.”
    “Good,” she says. “That wouldn’t go over too well with Pete.”

“It isn’t possible, Noah. It simply isn’t possible.”
    Noah knew that she would react this way, by vehemently denying what was right in front of her. She would get angry, not at him, but at the injustice. It was a coping mechanism, made stronger by the fact that she truly could not believe him capable of such an atrocity.
    “It’s true, Becky. Believe me, I wish more than anything it wasn’t.”
    She flinched at his confession, which he had just made for at least the fifth time since she had arrived at the prison meeting room. Becky was not concerned that they would be overheard; she had registered as his attorney, so there would be no microphones or cameras eavesdropping on them.
    “Have you said that to anyone else?”
    He shook his head. “No, but I’m going to. I’ve known for years that I needed to be punished; I’m just sorry you and Adam have to go through this as well.” When he mentioned Adam he started to choke up, but quickly stifled it. Noah was going to be strong for her; he was going to be a strong, despicable mass murderer.
    “Please, Noah. Don’t talk to anyone; do that for me.”