True Light

by Terri Blackstock

  “I wish you were.”

  “No, you don’t.” Wiping her cheek, he whispered, “Hey.”

  She met his eyes, dread coloring hers.

  “You’re one of the reasons I’m doing it, you know. I want you to be safe from people like Grantham and those murderers I was in jail with. I want you to rest easy at night.”

  He saw in her eyes that she probably wouldn’t rest at all. But she didn’t say it. Instead, she kissed him. Then stroking the stubble on his bruised jaw, she whispered, “Why did I have to fall in love with a hero?”

  The sun banished the clouds, and he saw his life making a turn. Lowering his face, he kissed her, stroking her chin with his fingertips, tangling them in her hair. Had she really said she loved him?

  After a moment, Wheaton and his mother came out, so he got Deni to her feet and, taking her hand, led her to the van.

  When they reached the sheriff’s department in Crockett, they found Doug and Brad waiting to be sworn in. Wheaton read the three of them the oath of the sheriff’s department. They raised their right hands and repeated after him, swearing to uphold their duties to the best of their abilities.

  Deni stood by, refusing to shed more tears. She would brace herself for whatever was to come.

  When he was finished, Deputy Wheaton gave them instructions and keys to the department. “Brad,” he said, “you know the law. I want you to be in charge of the volunteer force.”

  Brad nodded. “It would be my honor.”

  “You’re all good men,” Wheaton said. “It’s a dangerous world out there. Let’s get started making it safer.”

  FORTY-TWO

  WHEATON INSISTED THAT MARK TAKE THE TIME TO clean up and change clothes before he started working. He dropped Deni off at her house, then took Mark and his mother home. As he drove down the street toward Mark’s house, he stopped each time he saw people out, and let them know that Mark had been cleared.

  The neighbors’ reaction was cool and suspicious, but Mark was grateful that the deputy had done it. He hoped it would keep him safe until they came back to arrest Grantham and his men. If it didn’t, the department-issued Glock he wore on his would.

  But as his mother led him into their home, Mark’s stomach plummeted again. He surveyed the mess the intruders had made of his family’s things. A tornado seemed to have blown through the room, stirring it up in a vortex of anger, then dropping it all. They had knocked books off shelves, pulled open drawers, left the contents on the floor.

  “They were looking for something,” Mark said. “What could they want?”

  His mother began folding the linens that had been pulled out of a hutch in the dining room. “They took all our food, and some cash I left on the counter. I can’t imagine what else they’d want.”

  “How many do you think there were?”

  “At least two, I think. I heard men’s voices, but they were muffled.”

  He began picking up the pictures that had been pulled off the walls and tossed aside. If they’d been average thieves, they would have been satisfied with a vanload of food. And the cash — as little as it was — would have been pay dirt for them. They wouldn’t have taken the chance of coming further into the house, with the possibility that someone was home. He stepped into the dining room; a cracked mirror lay on the floor.

  Why pictures and mirrors? Were they looking for a safe?

  “What would they have done if they’d seen me?” his mother asked, her voice wavering. “I heard them in the house, and I got my gun and hid. Maybe I should have gone out and shot them, I don’t know. I just wasn’t sure what to do.”

  Mark looked at his mother. She looked so vulnerable and tired. She’d lost a lot of weight in the last few months, and she’d aged five years in the last few days. Rage hammered through his heart as he pictured her hunkered in the closet, her gun shaking in her hand.

  She should never have been left alone.

  He couldn’t blame it on his stepfather. John hadn’t had much choice about where the government sent him to work. Besides, he’d left knowing that Mark could take care of her.

  They just hadn’t anticipated what would happen.

  “I heard them come in the bedroom,” she said, “and I got behind the shoe shelves in my closet and hid. They came in and looked around, took things off the shelves. I thought they were going to see me and I’d have to shoot them, but they didn’t.”

  Mark’s heart stumbled at the danger she’d been in. If they knew he was in jail and had come in expecting to find her, would they have killed her? Was that their plan?

  “I’ve never been so scared in my life. I should have shot them. I should have had more courage.”

  “No, Mom, you did the right thing.” He had never wanted to do violence to anyone before, but he could see himself killing the men who had terrorized his mother this way. “Mom, you can’t be here alone when I’m working at the station. I want you to keep staying at the Brannings’ for the time being. I don’t want you alone in this house even for a minute. Someone was looking for something, and if they didn’t find it, they might be back.”

  “But what? What in the world could we have that anyone would want — other than food and cash? I can’t think of anything they’d be looking for.”

  Mark leaned back against the wall. Could it be the gold? No — he hadn’t told anyone about it. Not even his mother. It had been carefully hidden in the tree stump since he’d found it. No one knew that it even existed.

  At least, no one had known until he’d given some coins away.

  He thought of that tent family and the little girl he’d given the coins to. Could she have told the others in their homeless community? Maybe her father or someone else from the area had figured out who he was and found out where he lived. Maybe they thought there was more where that had come from.

  Yes, that had to be it.

  His generosity could have cost his mother her life.

  He thought of telling her about the gold, but he didn’t see the point. It would only frighten her more. No, the best thing to do was to make sure she was safe and keep her out of this house. Maybe now that he was deputized, he could figure out who had done it and arrest them.

  Until then, he would have to stay alert — and make sure his mother stayed safe.

  FORTY-THREE

  DENI WOULD HAVE GIVEN ANYTHING FOR A CAMERA THAT worked as Deputy Wheaton took her father and Brad to arrest Lou Grantham. She knew that there were people who had working cameras, but they were few and far between, and neither she nor her paper had the money to buy one.

  She stood on the sidewalk across the street from Grantham’s house and watched with satisfaction as Lou tried to talk his way out of arrest. “I was taking care of this community, and y’all know it! If it wasn’t for people like me and the men who were with me, this neighborhood wouldn’t be a fit place to live!”

  Wheaton wanted none of it. “You’re under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder, and assault and battery.” He cuffed Grantham’s wrist, but the man recoiled.

  “I didn’t murder nobody! I was just sending a message.”

  “Mark Green is innocent,” Wheaton said, wrestling Grantham’s other wrist into the handcuff. “Zach Emory has cleared Mark’s name. But even if he hadn’t, you’d still be under arrest. Nobody in this county is gonna go around beating anybody they choose.”

  With his hands bound behind his back, Lou thrust his chest out and threw up his chin in arrogant pride. His western shirt was wet with sweat rings, and his mustang belt buckle glistened in the van’s headlights. “I’m trying to help keep the law around here, since the sheriff’s department has failed so miserably.”

  Neighbors came out of their homes and yards and stood in the street, watching. Squinting in the headlights, Lou tried getting their help. “Tell them how I’ve kept this neighborhood safe!” he shouted.

  When no one came to his aid, he looked at Brad and Doug. “You men know me! Tell him I’m an asset to this neighborhood
!”

  That he would try to enlist Brad Caldwell’s help was almost laughable. Deni moved closer to the Granthams’ yard so she could hear Brad’s response. But it was her father who answered. “Lou, you and your buddies should have been arrested eight months ago, when I had to fight you to keep you from killing Brad.”

  “Come on, Doug, the evidence pointed to him. You understand that, don’t you, Caldwell? All’s forgiven, ain’t it?”

  “You have the right to remain silent,” Brad said in a calm monotone. “Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law by an angry attorney whom you once tried to kill.”

  Deni wanted to cheer.

  “I want an attorney!” Grantham shouted.

  “After we round up the rest of your gang,” Deputy Wheaton said. “Then you can get all the attorneys you want.”

  Desperately, Grantham looked around at the neighbors standing in the street. “This is what you get for helping your community!” he shouted. “This is what happens when somebody tries to keep you people alive.”

  Stella Huckabee, wife of the neighborhood’s president, came up beside Deni. “Your daddy’s not going to let them take him to jail, is he? Lou was only trying to help.”

  Deni shot her a look. “By beating a neighbor half to death?”

  “Oh, you always defend Mark Green. You think he’s never done anything.”

  “He never has!”

  “Get real, Deni!” Harry Goff yelled. “His father was a sociopath! It’s in his genes.”

  Setting her chin, Deni went out into the street and came eye to eye with the man. “So I guess that would make you a lying adulterer, since your father, the pastor, ran off with the church secretary.”

  She knew it was a low blow. It had been a scandal of major proportions years ago, before she’d even been born, but she’d read it in an article the Crockett Times had framed on their wall. It was a story they were proud of, since they had broken it.

  He looked as though he might slap her. Her eyes dared him to. Finally, his wife Merilee, said, “Deni, I’m beginning to think you’re not the sweet young lady I thought you were.”

  “I don’t care what you think,” she flung back.

  Grantham struggled as they dragged him to the van, his cowboy boots clicking on the concrete as he tried to dig his heels in.

  “Somebody find my wife,” he shouted. “Tell her to get a lawyer. Tell her to hurry!”

  Deni quenched her urge to applaud as they closed him into the van, then headed to Sam Ellington’s house to make another arrest.

  Word of the unfolding drama would spread like fire through the neighborhood. But would news of Mark’s dropped charges make any difference in how they felt about him?

  FORTY-FOUR

  MARK WAITED AT THE SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT WHILE THE others made the arrests. Deputy Wheaton had left him with the files of all the prisoners who had escaped, and he pored over them now, searching for addresses or any information that might lead Wheaton to them.

  He opened a file with the name Miller on it and saw the Polaroid mug shot. The man staring back at him was Tree House. So that was his real name — Dante Miller. Mark flipped through the file and saw a long list of arrests on the rap sheet. Tree House was only thirty years old, but he had served prison terms three different times. Before he was eighteen, he’d spent five years in the juvenile detention center. His first arrest had been at the age of ten, when he and his own father had been caught robbing a liquor store.

  Mark leaned back and tried to imagine a man enlisting his child’s help in a criminal act. Miller’s father had been arrested for armed robbery in that heist. He couldn’t imagine being ten years old and following along while his dad put a gun to someone’s head. No wonder Tree House had turned out this way.

  But then he thought about his own father. Mark hadn’t dreamed that his dad was capable of murder — until there was proof that he had been. But he had always known that most of his dad’s business was probably not aboveboard. He remembered his parents’ divorce when he was eight years old, and his mother’s hysterical accusations: “You and those boys are going to wind up in prison! I don’t want any part of it!”

  He remembered wondering why his dad or his half-brothers would ever wind up in prison. That thought had haunted him for the next three years, until he found reason to be concerned himself. He’d been looking for his catcher’s mitt one day in his father’s SUV, and had discovered a dozen boxes of pirated videos of movies that were still being shown in theatres. Mark had been amazed at first and asked his father how he’d gotten hold of such treasures.

  Vic had sworn him to secrecy. “Don’t ever open your mouth about this, son. You’ll get me and your brothers arrested.”

  Mark had kept the secret, though he couldn’t imagine why a few boxes of videos could bring that much trouble.

  When Mark turned twelve, Vic tried to enlist his help in some of his pornography trade. Mark hadn’t understood it then, but now, looking back, he realized that his father’s introduction to the images on his website had been a subtle and sinister way of drawing him into the family business. It was by God’s grace that Mark had become a Christian a year earlier, and his youth minister had just given a talk about the covenant David had made with his own eyes, not to look upon anything sinful. Mark turned away from the images his father tried to show him, and told him that he wasn’t interested.

  “What do you mean you’re not interested? You’re a guy, aren’t you?”

  Mark found it difficult to explain his values to his dad or his brothers. When the accusation had flown back from his brothers — “Are you gay?” — he had decided that there was no point in trying to explain it further.

  His father finally gave up. “But you let me know whenever you overcome your little religious experience. Puberty ought to take care of that.”

  His dad had tried again a couple more times over the years — Mark had been able to resist each time. But it would have been so easy to be taken in. He thought of his half brothers, who had probably fallen headlong into their father’s pastime. Sometimes he felt sorry for them, and though he knew that they’d fled Crockett as fugitives from their murder charges, he often prayed for them at night — that the Lord would do his work in their hearts, and that they’d become true brothers. After all, he didn’t have much family anymore.

  He looked again at Tree House’s file. That dangerous man who had killed two deputies right before Mark’s eyes had once been an innocent child, lured into crime by a bitter, angry father with a skewed system of values. Now the community had to be protected from him.

  Mark wrote down Tree House’s address, though he supposed Wheaton had already gone there. Of course, he wouldn’t be home anyway. Where would the man go? Mark searched the file for any references to family members or girlfriends . . .

  Hadn’t Tree House said something about having a girlfriend? Children? He tried to focus, to remember.

  “I’ll leave town. I got a woman and two kids live on a farm. They won’t find me there.”

  There was no girlfriend or wife named in the file, but on one of the reports of a previous arrest, Mark found the names of Tree House’s children. Rio and Cassandra had apparently been given their mother’s last name — Ford. If Mark could find some record of the children’s birth, maybe that would lead them to the mother’s address . . . and to Tree House. Mark made copious notes, hoping someone would follow up.

  He heard the front door opening, and his muscles went rigid as he reached for his gun.

  A teenaged boy came in, clutching a shotgun. Mark had seen the kid before, but he couldn’t place him.

  “Hey,” Mark said.

  “Hey.” The boy looked nervous, but he came in and lifted his chin high. “I came to sign up.”

  “For what?”

  “For the volunteer force.”

  Mark got up and came around the desk. “How old are you?”

  “Almost fourteen.”

  That woul
d be thirteen, Mark thought. Not much older than Beth.

  The boy thrust his chin up. “I know what you’re thinking — that I’m too young. But I’m mature for my age, and I have law enforcement in my blood.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “My dad’s the sheriff,” he bit out. “I’m Jimmy Scarbrough.”

  Oh yes, now he remembered. Softening his voice, he said, “Hey, Jimmy. I’m Mark Green.”

  The kid shook his hand. “You were here when it happened, weren’t you?”

  Swallowing, Mark nodded. “Yeah, I’m afraid so.”

  “You tried to stop it.”

  Mark frowned. “How did you know?”

  “George Mason, the paramedic, told me.”

  Mark’s gaze drifted to the jail door. He couldn’t let the boy go in there. There was still blood on the floor. “So how’s your dad?”

  Jimmy chewed on his lip for a moment. “They tried to put his face back together. It’s all swollen and sewn up. Plus he has pneumonia, and he’s having trouble breathing.”

  “I’m glad he’s alive,” Mark whispered. “Has he been able to talk to you?”

  Jimmy cleared his throat and looked down at his feet. “He said I am the man of the house.”

  Mark wished he could help the boy with his pain. “Then you should be looking after your mom.”

  “She’s going to be at the hospital most of the time. I’m staying with my grandparents.”

  “That doesn’t change anything. Your dad wants you to look after the house.”

  Jimmy’s gaze came back up and locked on his. “I want to catch them.”

  Mark sighed and sat back on the edge of the desk. “No way your folks are gonna let you do this. Look, Jimmy, I understand what you’re trying to do. But I don’t want to cause more stress for your mom. Deputy Wheaton would never sign up our wounded sheriff’s kid. Besides, you’re too young.”

  Jimmy tried to stand taller. “I’ve been taking care of my mom all these months, while Pop was out chasing bad guys. Ask her, if you don’t believe me. I know there’s something I can do here.”