Last Dance, Last Chance

foster home to foster home. They were eventually placed in a Roman Catholic home for boys near Portland, Oregon. Denny stayed there several years before he was released to his father. That didn’t work out either, and in his mid-teens he’d been placed in the Luther Burbank school for boys on Mercer Island, Washington. It wasn’t a reform school, but it was for teenagers who had deep problems.
    Denny ran away from Luther Burbank, and when they caught up with him, he was given a choice of going to a state reform school or joining the Army. Denny chose the Army.
    He didn’t do well in the service. He had a violent temper, and Cherie knew he’d been in trouble and had a dishonorable discharge, but she didn’t know all the details. In fact, for the Army at least, his decision was not a happy choice. Once, while he was in the stockade for being intoxicated, Tuohmy took a gun away from a guard and beat him over the head with it. When a superior officer was called, the defendant attacked him, too. Taken to a prison hospital, Tuohmy had insisted that he had no memory of the events.
    Cherie had seen his temper, but she just couldn’t believe he would hurt her mother. She didn’t want to believe that.
     
    Pat Jacque didn’t know about Gladys Bodine, or anything about Denny’s past. Perhaps it was better that she didn’t. After circling through the woods for a long time, they parked in back of a house—which was actually within a few miles of her own.
    Three boys came out of the house and said, “Hi, Uncle Denny. What is it? Why do you have that gun?”
    “I’m serious,” Denny told the youngsters. “I mean business.”
    Surprised, the boys looked at Pat, and she nodded and said softly, “He really means it.”
    Denny Tuohmy’s brother lived in this house, and once more Denny was set on getting to Tacoma, which was less than 20 miles away. He said he wanted his brother to drive him there. But his elder brother wasn’t home.
    For a moment, Pat Jacque felt relief. If he wanted to have his brother drive him, maybe that meant she would be allowed to go home. It was a bizarre experience. She sat there with his nephews and Denny in a silent tableau and waited. Denny balanced the high-powered rifle across his knees, ready for use.
    Pat Jacque asked if she could use the bathroom, and Denny allowed her to go, but he followed her, and kept talking to her constantly through the door to be sure that she didn’t try to escape out the window. Of course, she had thought of that, but she didn’t think she could make it out and away before he came around the house and caught her.
    Even though it was December, the room where they waited seemed to grow warmer with Denny’s anger and frustration. His brother finally came home, but he was furious when he saw the gun. He ordered Denny out of the house and told him to take the gun with him. Denny refused. He insisted that his brother should drive him where he wanted to go.
    The scene was getting more hysterical all the time. Denny’s sister-in-law was pregnant and was due within a few days, and she became so upset that she started having labor pains. At this point, Pat realized she was more worried for the other woman than she was for herself. She was afraid that Denny was going to hurt his sister-in-law, because he was getting so infuriated with her, but he quieted down.
    Denny’s family apparently assumed that Pat was with Denny by choice, and that she was his girlfriend. Should she tell them that he’d kidnapped her? No. That might set him off. All she could do was sit there and watch this absolutely unreal spectacle take place.
    Their conversation turned to family problems, and then the sister-in-law said suddenly, “Gladys is dead. They found her this morning, and they think she was strangled.”
    Instantly she got a frightened look on her face, as if she knew she’d said the wrong thing. She backed up, saying, “No, no, that’s not right. They think she died of a heart attack.”
    Pat had no idea who Gladys was, but she saw Denny’s face change when her name came up. She could tell that he didn’t believe the second version of the news about Gladys.
    Pat felt as if she had come in during the middle of some horror film. She didn’t know what any of them were talking about, and she tried to concentrate on how she could get away from Denny while there were still people around.
    Now Pat Jacque was finally able to put the pieces together. This was why Denny had been