The Icing on the Corpse. Mary Jane Maffini

      It was still dark when I snapped awake. Lindsay Grace s file was on my mind. This was one case where I had to make that difference. Because with Lindsay, we were talking the difference between life and death. I was prepared to do anything. Depositions. Court appearances. Appeals. Calls to the media. Hunger strikes. Name it.

      This one mattered.

      I remembered the first day she had come to see me. She was tentative but pumped up by my friend, Elaine Ekstein, the Executive Director of Women Against Violence Everywhere. Elaine had explained that WAVE was committed to assisting women like Lindsay, and I damn well should be too. I listened to Lindsay's story, and Elaine squeezed her hand.

      Then it was my turn to talk about legal options. That's why I run Justice for Victims. I talked long and hard. Nearly two hours later, Lindsay began to imagine the possibility of life without the man who could stub his cigarette on the soft skin of her belly after they'd made love.

      I found it hard to picture the high-flyer Lindsay Grace had been. Hard to understand why a successful and attractive financial analyst would let herself become the emotional hostage of someone like Benning. It was harder still to keep my personal opinions to myself and concentrate on the job at hand. I bit my tongue.

      Somehow, after that session, Lindsay Grace found the strength to testify against Ralph Benning. She stood in court and faced him. She knew, as we all did, that if Ralph Benning ever had the chance, he'd kill her without letting the smile slip from his handsome face.

      Convictions weren't enough to keep her safe. During his previous trial for assaulting his wife, twelve jurors took less than an hour to express society's revulsion. The judge expeditiously sentenced Benning to the maximum allowable sentence for the crime. Not soft time in medium or minimum security. Kingston Penitentiary. The real deal. But the law's the law, and it cuts both ways.

      Mandatory supervision placed Ralph Benning back on the streets eighteen months later. He'd had long enough to work up a good head of steam against the women who had put him in maximum security. Against Rina Benning, his damaged wife. And the girlfriend he had trusted to perjure herself for him. The woman who had let him down with a little help from her friends.

      Lindsay Grace. He hadn't found Lindsay.

      Rina Benning hadn't been so lucky. It was a hard six months before she got out of rehab. She hadn't been well enough to testify at his current trial for damn near killing her. Not that it mattered.

      No thinking person would believe for a minute Ralph Benning could end up a free man. Not after those photos of his wife's bruises, not after the X-rays showed the damage a baseball bat had done to her ribs, not after the dry, flat tone of the expert witness describing the internal injuries, not after seeing Rina Benning with her jaw still wired, one eye sightless.

      What court could fail to find him guilty? It was his twenty-sixth conviction. All that remained was the sentencing. But it would take more than that to put Lindsay Grace's mind at ease.