Mortal Danger

believed that he didn’t mean it. Just to be sure, she did the only thing she could—become submissive. That usually settled him down, and he didn’t object when she grabbed her kitten and went to sleep on the floor of the room they used as an office, locking the door and barricading it with a dresser. He shot at the door lock but soon gave up trying to get in. He went to sleep on the futon in the living room.
    Kate remained resolute. By the next morning, she knew she had to leave John. He hadn’t changed. Each angry outburst escalated to a more threatening level. She was truly frightened for both of them if they stayed together. Even so, she expected to find that his rage had passed as it usually did overnight. She put on sweats and slippers, and was surprised to find him still “crazy-mad.”
    Kate wasn’t going to back down about their breaking up, and she said quietly, “Don’t worry, I’ll be fair about the money—”
    Before she could say anything more, he had the gun inhis hand again and was pinning her with his arm as he held the gun muzzle against her head. Bizarrely, John remembered it was her father’s birthday.
    “This will be my birthday present to your father,” he breathed. “His dead daughter…”
    “He threatened again to kill Mittens and me,” Kate said, “and I believed he meant it. I grabbed Mittens and jumped in my car. As I was backing out of the garage, he was ranting at me and trying to jump in my car.”
    A heavy rain sluiced over her windows, too much for the wipers, and Kate squinted to see the road. Mittens was in the backseat. Somehow, just as they turned onto the highway, the cat managed to put his paw on the window button, and the side window lowered all the way down. Kate reached out to grab Mittens before he could jump out. She caught him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him back in the car, fortunately without having an accident.
    When she got to a public phone, she called the Domestic Violence hotline and spoke to a counselor at Oasis, the shelter for women fleeing abuse in Curry County. Paula Krogdahl had told Kate about Oasis, but Kate had never thought she would be calling there for help.
    The counselor told Kate to park at the hospital, and she would meet her there. Like most domestic violence shelters, Oasis had no facilities for pets. Kate knew a woman named Ursula Elliott, who fed homeless cats down at the jetty, and she agreed to watch Mittens while Kate was hiding at Oasis.
    (Women in sudden need of a safe haven can take their children, but many stay in dangerous situations because they can’t bear to leave the animals they love. Today, thereare good Samaritans who provide temporary homes for dogs and cats of families in trouble, but there is a need for more.)
    Kate stayed at Oasis for four days. She learned later that John had called a cab to look for her, and the first place the cabbie had taken him to was Oasis. She wondered how he’d known where it was, and she learned that the local paper had unthinkingly printed the address and a photograph of the shelter when it opened. Fortunately, her car was parked behind the hospital and not at the shelter, so John thought she wasn’t there.
    On January 21, 1999, Kate filed a formal complaint against John alleging domestic violence, and she asked the judge for a restraining order. She asked the Court questions about the efficacy of such an order and realized it would not protect her in California or New York or anywhere her American Airlines layovers took her. In fact, the judge couldn’t give her any answers that would make her feel safer with a restraining order. She withdrew her request.
    After four days, she agreed to go back to the cottage, but only if John removed all his guns from the premises. He went along with that, and stored them with a friend who had an auto-repair business in town. She confirmed that they were safely locked away there.
    A long time later, she learned that John retrieved his weapons only two weeks later.
    Kate had gained stunning knowledge about domestic violence at Oasis, and she was grateful the center existed. But she had also learned how little women can do to protect themselves. She felt somewhat safer, because John wouldn’t be in Gold Beach much—he was working on yetanother “major venture” down in San Diego. He had joined with a dentist there in selling vitamin supplements. He’d told Kate that he was putting together a training program for potential sales