Justifiable Means

by Terri Blackstock

  They followed him back to his apartment. When his lights went off after twenty minutes, they assumed that he’d gone to bed. Quickly they drove back to the dirt road down which he had disappeared earlier. Tony started to turn the car into the little dirt road, but Larry stopped him. “Not a good idea,” he said. “Let’s park and walk. If he sees our tire tracks tomorrow, he’ll know someone’s on to him.”

  Tony pulled the car to the side of the road. They got out and hiked up the long, dirt road, shining their flashlights as they went, not knowing what they were looking for, but hoping they’d know when they saw it. They followed the tiny, broken road all the way to the end, about a mile into the woods, then around a curve and further into the trees.

  “Do you think this is where he was going to take her?” Tony asked.

  Tony nodded. “Has to be. But it’s too dark to see anything tonight. We’ll have to come back tomorrow when the sun comes up.”

  Larry agreed. “Even if we don’t find anything, at least we can get familiar with it in case we have to come this way again.” He gave Tony a pensive look. “It won’t be much longer now,” he whispered. “He’s ready. I’m just worried about the girl.”

  “Well, we could tell her and stop the whole thing. She could quit her job, never go home alone again, move. It would divert this attack, all right, but it wouldn’t stop him from the next one.”

  “I want to get him,” Larry whispered. “I want to get him for good.”

  “Then this is the only way. She’ll be traumatized and terrified, but she’ll be alive. We won’t let him hurt her.”

  Larry thought about that for a long moment. “I just wish I could be sure of that.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  It was nearly nine in the morning by the time Tony and Larry made it back to the dirt road they had seen Pendergrast turn down the night before. They had watched his apartment for most of the night, then gone home for a little sleep before getting up and getting started again. Today, fatigued but determined, they made sure that Pendergrast was engaged at a construction site in another area before they checked out the road.

  In the daylight, Highland Drive looked less threatening. Construction was going up in various places along the road, and the curb was lined with the trucks of men working. But the dirt road to which they’d followed Pendergrast last night was at least half a mile from the nearest construction site.

  Again, they left the car on the street and followed the road on foot. After walking for twenty minutes or so, Tony asked, “How far do you think we’ve come?”

  “A mile, at least,” Larry said. “I didn’t even know the woods back here were this thick. Where do you think it goes?”

  “Nowhere,” Tony said. “The next road is close to the interstate, but that’s several miles from here. Listen.” He slowed his step. “Do you hear that?”

  Larry listened for a moment. “Water. Do you think there’s a pond or something? Maybe people fish here?”

  “Now that I think about it, there’s a little canal that feeds into the Gulf. The road Highland runs into crosses it. It must cut through these woods.”

  They followed the road until they came to the canal. The Toyota’s tire tracks turned onto a clearing there, and Larry muttered, “Bingo.”

  “This is where he came last night, anyway,” Tony said, stepping into the clearing and looking around. “Well, one thing’s for sure. If he’s planning to bring her here at night, it’s far enough back that nobody would hear her scream.”

  “And if he left her here, it’s not likely that anybody would find her for a while, either.”

  He set his hands on his hips and looked around. The canopy of trees was so thick that little sun got through. It was hot, too, for little wind was able to sweep through the thick brush. He wondered how Pendergrast had found this place to begin with, then realized that the guy probably knew the land around here intimately, since his company contracted the clearing of it for new construction sites. Proffer Builders might even own it.

  “What’s this?”

  Tony was across the small clearing, stepping through bushes and trees, getting closer to the water.

  “What?” Larry asked.

  “Oh, man.” Tony turned back. “You’ve got to see this.”

  Larry hurried across the clearing and stepped through the brush. His breath caught in his chest when he saw what Tony was standing over. “Unbelievable.”

  It was a round hole about six feet deep, but the diameter of the hole was no more than three feet. The dirt that had been dug out of the hole was piled next to it, ready to be shoved back in.

  Larry got down on his knees and peered into the hole. “Well, there goes the possibility that it’s preparation for clearing the land. That shovel and bag you saw last night?”

  Tony looked in and saw them at the bottom of the hole. “He’s planning to kill her.”

  “Yep.”

  “He would have buried her here, and nobody would have found her. He could bury her in five minutes, kick a few leaves over the dirt . . .”

  Larry sat down on the ground, resting his arms on his knees. “He might have buried Melissa here.”

  “Do you think he’ll go after Karen Anderson tonight?”

  “Could be. We have to be ready. Somehow, he’s going to have to get her into his car, so he can get her here.” Larry was beginning to look pale. “What if we don’t make it in time, Tony? What if we get there too late?”

  “We won’t.”

  Larry rubbed his face. “This poor kid. She has no idea what’s about to happen to her.”

  “We’ll stop him before he hurts her, Larry.”

  “We hope we will.” He looked at Tony, playing possible scenarios over in his mind. “What if we used a decoy?”

  “We can’t,” Tony said. “Not if we want to catch him on something that’ll stick. You can’t really think he’s going to drag some woman off and rape her without looking at her face.”

  “We have to catch him,” Larry said. “But there has to be some other way.”

  “There isn’t, man. She’ll be all right. We’ll be right there, and the minute something happens, we’ll have handcuffs on that guy so fast he won’t know what hit him.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t like it? This is your case! You started the whole thing!”

  “But this is somebody’s life, Tony!”

  “Hey, if it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t know anything happened until her mother reported her missing. You’re saving her life, not risking it!”

  “But there’s a way to be more sure. First, we have to tell the captain, and get his support on this.”

  “Yeah, I’m with you. And then?”

  Larry looked up at him. “And then we have to tell her. Maybe she can help us.”

  Despite Larry’s absolute exhaustion, his adrenaline was pumping as he went back to the station. He was about to catch Pendergrast, and that was enough to keep him going.

  It was midmorning when he and Tony finally were able to get in to talk to the captain about taking the Pendergrast case full-time until they caught him. Tony backed up what Larry had already said—adding credence to the story with his clear-headed, emotionless recitation of the things they’d observed—and the captain paced in his usual way, turning the facts over in his mind.

  “Okay, I’ll buy it—something’s about to happen,” he said. “And since we don’t have any leads at the moment on the girl on the beach, I guess you can work on this for a couple of days. But if nothing happens in the very near future, I’m gonna have to take you off of it again.”

  Larry’s relief was apparent, but he pressed on to the next question. “Thanks, man,” Larry said, getting to his feet. “But there’s one more thing. I want to let the woman in on it. See if we can convince her to cooperate with us.”

  Sam considered that for a moment. “You might blow the whole thing if she says no.”

  “I’ll convin
ce her.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know,” Larry said, leaning over the desk. “But her life is at risk here. If we tell her, arm her, let her know what’s about to come down, she might be willing to go through with it. It’s the only way we can be sure to stop it when it happens. Otherwise, something could go wrong, and she could get raped, or even killed.”

  The captain sat slowly down at his desk. Clasping his hands in front of his face, he gazed at Tony. “What do you think?”

  Tony wasn’t sure. “I’d hate to have her balk and run. Then we might never catch him. On the other hand, if anybody can convince her, Larry can.”

  “It might work,” the captain said. “We can do a lot more to prepare if she’s with us.”

  “All right,” Larry said. “Then we’ll go talk to her. But we’re going to have to make some promises. Give her a sense of security. Let her know we won’t abandon her.”

  “Let me know what you need,” the captain said. “I’ll make sure you get it.”

  Tony shook the captain’s hand and started to the door, but when Larry reached for his hand, the captain held it a beat longer than necessary. “Sorry about the other day, Millsaps. I may have been too hard on you. I was a little stressed, what with this body washing up, and the mayor breathing down my neck about the drug problem.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Captain. I have a tough skin.”

  “You must,” he said. “How long’ve you been working around the clock now? A week?”

  “I’ll sleep when we get that jerk in jail.”

  “So will I,” the captain said. “So will I.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The crowd of inmates walking from the dining hall to cellblock C threaded into a single-file line that followed the yellow line down the hall and back to their cells. Melissa watched a group of correctional officers coming toward them, walking side by side. She had never realized how much she would miss the freedom to walk the way she wanted, where she wanted. Now, every step, every thought, every activity was monitored and controlled.

  Some of the women talked as they walked behind each other, but most were quiet, for one never knew when the wrath of one of the “bosses” might be stirred. It didn’t take much. One woman had been caught looking too long at a male officer, and it had made one of his jealous coworkers angry. She had dragged that woman out of line and put her in isolation for three days. So Melissa walked with her eyes downcast, never straying from that yellow line, for fear that she’d be cited for bad behavior and have even one extra day added to her sentence.

  As they drew closer to the doors to their cellblock, instead of crossing diagonally toward it, they had to follow the yellow line to its corner, turn ninety degrees, and then follow another line toward the doors. It was degrading, humiliating.

  As soon as they were in their cellblock, however, they were free to leave the line and mill about their floor. Melissa hurried toward her cell.

  Something tripped her, and she stumbled, then quickly recovered her balance. She turned around. The redhead who had harassed her on her first day was walking behind her, grinning.

  Melissa compressed her lips, determined not to be drawn into a fight. But when she turned to walk on, the woman tripped her again. This time, Melissa swung around. “What do you want?” she demanded.

  Red shoved her then, and Melissa lashed out to defend herself. Before she knew what had happened, the woman flung herself away from Melissa across the concrete floor, slammed herself into the opposite wall, and screamed. She came up with her knee bleeding. “I’ll kill you!” she shouted.

  Realizing that she was watching an award-winning performance, Melissa backed away, hands raised, as the COs rushed toward them. “I didn’t touch her,” she said. “She was harassing me, and then she flung herself across the hall—”

  “She’s lying!” Red screamed. “She knocked me across the hall! Look at my knee! I think it’s dislocated. I won’t be able to work tomorrow because of her.”

  “All right,” one of the COs said, grabbing Melissa’s arm roughly. “I’m writing you up. You can spend a night in isolation, and see if you still want to fight tomorrow.”

  “But I didn’t do anything! She set me up!”

  But the CO didn’t care. He dragged Melissa out of the cellblock and down to the isolation cell she had heard about but never seen. It was six feet by four feet; everything was metal and welded down. There were no sheets on the bed, just a two-inch-thick pad that served as a mattress on the metal bed frame. A metal sink and a metal toilet were welded to one wall. The room was sweltering.

  “Listen to me, please,” she told the CO. “I’m telling you—”

  But the huge, sliding metal door slid shut behind him, and she was locked in.

  “I didn’t do it,” she whispered, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “I didn’t do it.”

  She sat there for hours, waiting for someone to come so that she could plead her case, but no one came. Unable to tell what time it was, but guessing that it was nearing midnight, she finally stretched out on the miserable excuse for a mattress and tried to sleep. Red was probably sleeping soundly in her cell, with her knee bandaged up from her self-inflicted wound, and laughing that she’d escaped a day of work at Melissa’s expense.

  Fantasies of revenge floated through Melissa’s mind—fantasies of really dislocating the woman’s knee—but in the wee hours of morning, she realized that she’d tried that before. That’s what had landed her here. She wasn’t going to become like the others here, she told herself. Even if it killed her, she would resist.

  Tears ran down her temples and into her hair. Help me to forgive them, Lord. I’m not very good at that.

  And as she finally drifted into a fitful sleep, she knew that she could trust God to answer that prayer, in his own time.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Larry and Tony made sure that Pendergrast was working away in his office before they went to Karen Anderson’s apartment. They had already learned from her license tag information her address, her name, and her age. Now all they needed was her trust.

  They tried to be quiet and inconspicuous as they made their way up the stairs to her door. Larry knocked. After a moment, they heard footsteps.

  “Who is it?” a woman asked through the door.

  “Larry Millsaps, St. Clair Police Department. Can we talk to you for a moment?”

  The door cracked open, and Karen peered beneath the chain lock. “What about?”

  Larry glanced at Tony, and he stepped forward, flashing his badge. “We’re detectives with the St. Clair P.D. Are you Karen Anderson?”

  “Yes.” She reached through the crack in the door and took both badges, read them, then peered up at the two detectives.

  “We need to talk to you in private. It’s very important.”

  Reluctantly, she closed her door, unlocked the chain, and opened it again. “You were in the store the other night,” she said to Larry as they came in. “You didn’t tell me you were a detective.”

  “No,” he said. “I was hoping it wouldn’t be necessary.” He closed the door and glanced around the small apartment.

  “Could we sit down?”

  She led them into the small living room furnished with old furniture that had seen better days. A pair of shoes lay in the middle of the floor, and books and papers were scattered all over the couch and coffee table. “Excuse the apartment. I’ve been studying.”

  “You’re in school?” Tony asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “I go to Jones College in the mornings.”

  Larry moved some library books out of a chair and sat down. “Don’t clean up on our account. You probably have everything right where you need it. We just need to talk to you.”

  She stopped straightening and swept her hair behind her ears. “What’s going on?”

  Larry gestured for her to sit down, and finally, she did. “Miss Anderson, we’re here because you’re in danger. In the course of an investiga
tion that we’ve been doing, it’s come to our attention that you’re being stalked. Were you aware of this?”

  She frowned and looked from one cop to the other. “Stalked? What do you mean?”

  “You’re being followed by a man who has been arrested before on rape charges. He’s been watching you. We believe he has every intention of making you his next victim. And soon.”

  “What?” The word came out in an astonished whisper, and she sprang up and went to the window. Peering out, she asked, “Is he out there now?”

  “No,” Larry said. “We made sure he was someplace else before we came here.”

  She kept staring out the window. “Why haven’t you arrested him?”

  “Because he hasn’t done anything yet. Twice before he was arrested and got off on technicalities. We have to wait until we can catch him at something substantial enough to get him put away for a long time.”

  “How do you know he’s following me? Maybe it’s someone else.”

  “No, you’re his target,” Larry said. “He goes into the store, watches you. He’s approached you once that we know of.”

  “Who? Who was he?”

  “The one I asked you about that night. Do you remember?”

  She came back to the couch, trying to remember. “No. I waited on a lot of men that night. I can’t remember . . .”

  “Well, that’s just as well. He also parks out in the parking lot and waits for you to come out. For at least the past three nights he’s followed you home.”

  Terror crossed her face, and she rushed to the door and turned the dead bolt, then hurried to the living-room window to see if it was locked. Desperately, she turned back to them. “The phone calls. Could he be the one making them?”

  “What phone calls?”

  “I’ve been getting a lot of hang-up calls. Like someone’s just trying to see if I’m home. At all hours, day and night.”

  “It’s him,” Tony said, glancing at Larry. “Has anything else happened?”

  “Well—no. I didn’t know anyone was following me. I can’t believe I didn’t see him.” She hurried around the apartment as she spoke, frantically checking window locks. “I’ve been taking the shortcut home, driving down Highland Drive all by myself. My mother warned me to take another route—” She swung around, confronting them. “What are you going to do about this?”