The Terrible Trial of Kennedy Abrams (Treadmill II)

XXIII

Rebecca was quite sick of being in the passenger's seat of a car while Kennedy drove away from a crime scene.

            Not that she would have wanted to be driving, but...still. She didn't like the feeling.

            Getting the makeshift body bag out of the hotel had been relatively easy, since Lydia's room was on the first floor and each girl just picked up an end to hoist slightly above the ground. Getting it into the trunk of Kennedy's car, however, had required a lot of maneuvering and physical strength that Rebecca did not previously know that she was capable of.

            Rebecca sat there, thinking about the last time that she was in a car with Kennedy, in the dead of night, with the knowledge that she had just assisted in something that was incredibly wrong. As she thought about that night in September, she felt bile rise up in her throat and tried hard to keep it down. But their current situation was just too similar to their situation three months before, and her heart rate started to pick up so much so that she started to hyperventilate and Kennedy looked over.

            "What's your problem?" Kennedy asked, showing a bit less remorse than Rebecca would have liked, "You sound like an old person without their ventilator."       

            "I think—I think I'm having a panic attack." Rebecca choked out, trying to calm herself down. "I don't know, I've never had one before."

            "Well, snap out of it." Kennedy kept her eyes on the road while Rebecca struggled for air, "We all have problems. At least you didn't actually kill anyone. At least you're not going to hell."

            Rebecca's breathing slowed and she looked over at Kennedy in surprise.

            "Don't tell me that you actually feel bad about killing Hank."

            Kennedy was quiet, keeping her eyes on the road, but Rebecca swore she saw tears starting to form in her eyes.

            "Ken?"

            "I don't regret that he's gone." Kennedy finally spoke, her voice barely above a whisper. "But I regret that I was the one that killed him. I realized in court yesterday that he's never going to have to answer for what he did to me, at least not in this life. He got off easy. And I know that that sounds stupid, since he's dead. But I'm still here. I'm still struggling with everything that he did, and if he were still alive, I could make him answer for it. I could tell his wife everything. I could go to someone in authority who I actually trusted—not the police—and see if they could help me. But instead, everything's all messed up, and I killed a man, and now that man's legacy rides on the verdict of this trial."

            "When you say not in this life, do you think he's going to answer for it in a different way?" Rebecca asked; she hadn't realized before that Kennedy might have been religious. "Do you believe in some sort of life beyond this? Do you actually believe that there's a hell, and that you're going there?"

            "Don't turn this into some serious discussion about life and death and faith and shit." Kennedy snapped, "I just think that bad people don't get to experience the same death as good people. And regardless of the reasons behind it, or any type of religious belief, killing someone makes you a bad person. So I guess I'll get the bad death, just like Hank."

            Rebecca shook her head adamantly, her eyes trained on Kennedy, whose cheeks were glistening with tears reflected by the headlights in front of them.

            "I'm not going to make this religious on you. But I am going to tell you that the reasons behind killing someone does matter. I'm not condoning what you did, especially all of the lying and secrecy directed towards me, but sometimes you feel powerless and there's nothing else you can think of. And you didn't mean to kill him. You're young and naïve, and you didn't think it through when you decided to try and 'scare' him. And you've definitely made some questionable decisions. Even some downright awful ones."