I'll Be Watching You. M. William Phelps

going to end, Diana thought after hanging up the phone.

      How scripted. How perfect, really. It was as if their entire lives had led up to this one moment. After everything, here was Mom, killed by an attacker.

      V

      When the fog left and Diana realized that her mother had been stabbed by a stranger and could die, she frantically began looking for a way to get from her home in Pennsylvania, where she lived with her husband and child, to New Jersey. She needed a babysitter. Oh, my God, she thought, oh, my God. How am I going to get there fast enough?

      Then the spasms of guilt washed over Diana. I shouldn’t have left her alone down there…. Why did I not take her up here with me? (“I’ve been guilt-ridden my whole life,” Diana said later. “This just escalated that feeling.”)

      Diana called the hospital. She didn’t know what else to do. Her mother needed her. In many ways, Diana felt as if she had taken care of Mary Ellen.

      Now her mother was in the hospital after being violently attacked, and no one was with her.

      “Mom?” Diana said when she heard a voice on the line. “That you?”

      Mary Ellen was crying. She didn’t know what to say. Perhaps she couldn’t speak.

      “Mom, I love you. I’m on my way down there. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

      20

      I

      The Elmwood Park Police Department (EPPD) had a potential serial rapist/murderer on their hands, a man who had just attacked a woman in her home and taken off with her keys. It was clear from the way in which Mary Ellen had described the attack that the guy was no novice. He had possibly done it before.

      And would probably do it again.

      As the investigation got under way back at her apartment, Mary Ellen wasn’t going to be much help. She was in and out of consciousness.

      Ned had victimized a woman who was already a victim, which was perhaps his plan from the moment he had met Mary Ellen. He picked up on her vulnerability. Sensed it. Exploited it. For a guy like Ned, who could be smooth and deliberate without ever giving himself away, Mary Ellen was easy prey. He didn’t need to know that she had been mistreated her entire married life. It was written on her face. There in every word she spoke. Every mannerism.

      II

      When Diana showed up later that morning, she was told her mother was in surgery. There had been a problem. They were trying to save her life. She had been stabbed pretty badly. One of the wounds was deep.

      Diana wondered what she could do.

      Pray.

      While Diana was waiting for her mom to come out of surgery, her uncle, Mary Ellen’s brother, showed up. (“He started right in,” Diana recalled, “with blaming her. ‘Who was she out with? What is she doing now?’”)

      Diana couldn’t take it. Here was a man of the cloth talking as if Mary Ellen was the one to blame for being attacked by some animal. It was disrespectful, and Mary Ellen could be dead.

      Listening to her uncle, Diana snapped. “Shut the f*** up,” she screamed. “Enough!”

      She had heard it all before. Condemnation for the way Mary Ellen dressed or the way she walked or the way she talked. It was sickening for Diana. No matter what, even if her mother had invited the guy into the apartment and presented herself to him for sex, once she said no, once she said stop, that was it.

      How in the heck could it be her fault? (“I lost it,” Diana remembered. “I went at him full force.”)

      III

      The doctors came out. They explained that Mary Ellen’s heart had stopped once during the operation. But they had stabilized her and she was doing “OK.”

      “Will she make it?”

      They were sure she would.

      IV

      Later on that same morning, detectives asked Diana if she would take a ride with them over to the apartment and answer a few questions. “Sure,” she said.

      Mary Ellen was recovering from surgery. Diana wasn’t going to get a chance to see her until later on that day.

      One of the detectives led Diana into the apartment entrance—and it was there where Diana saw the immensity and violence of the attack. Blood was everywhere. On the walls. The floor. The doorknob. Going up the stairs, leading into Mary Ellen’s apartment. It was a wonder she was still alive.

      Diana gasped. “I’m kind of hysterical,” she said later, crying while recalling the memory. “The blood. It was all over the place.”

      There was blood on the bed, Diana said. The sheets and blankets and other items in the room were scattered. Cops were walking around. Taking photographs. Searching through drawers. Looking everything over.

      “Do you see anything that might be missing?” one of the detectives asked Diana.

      “No,” Diana said.

      “Nothing?”

      “I have no idea.”

      “Do you know where your mom was heading out to last night?”

      “No.”

      “Maybe who she’s been hanging around with?”

      “No.”

      Diana had a full plate of family life back home. She had been to the hospital during her current pregnancy regarding a few complications she had been experiencing. It was all she could do to keep her own life on track, let alone keep tabs on her mother. She spoke to her mother quite often, but Mary Ellen wasn’t one to give Diana a rundown of what she was doing.

      “Well,” the detective said, “we greatly appreciate you coming out here. We know how hard this must be. I’ll have someone take you back to the hospital.”

      V

      Mary Ellen was just coming out of anesthesia when Diana got a chance to visit her. She was crying and looked, understandably, as if she had been left for dead. “It was awful,” Diana said, recalling that moment. “About as awful as it gets.”

      The doctors had explained to Diana that Mary Ellen was going to be fine, at least physically. With some rest and recovery, her body would mend. The hospital that Mary Ellen was in, Diana believed, was not a nice place. She thought it was seedy and run-down. She felt odd about leaving her mother there. She couldn’t speak to Mary Ellen at any real length as of yet, simply because Mary Ellen was out of it. (“I was not happy with the hospital and wanted her to be moved,” Diana said.)

      When she spoke to her mother about it the following day, Mary Ellen said she wanted to stay. There was no reason to be transferred. They had saved her life. That was good enough for her. Within a few days, Mary Ellen was able to get up and walk around.

      Looking at her, Diana could only think of getting her out of there as soon as she could.

      Leaving the hospital that night, Diana resolved to do something. “I have to get her home…soon.”

      21

      I

      A few days after the attack, Mary Ellen indicated that she was well enough to speak with police again. They had interviewed her hours after the attack and she had provided a bit of information. But they needed more.

      Senior investigator Dennis Textor, from the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office (Sex Crimes and Child Abuse Unit), and Detective Robert Kassai, from the EPPD, sat with Mary Ellen. Looking at her, they could see bruises on her neck, where Ned had placed his hands—a ring of yellow and purple, a blurry collage of colors representing the nasty reminder of the violence she had survived.

      The detectives were told that one of the knife wounds had just