Justifiable Means

by Terri Blackstock

  “I told you not to.”

  “Well, I had to.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  He took her hand again and seemed to study the shape of her fingers. “Because I miss you like crazy. I’ve worried about you day and night. I can’t stand the thought of you here.”

  Her lip began to tremble, and she struggled with her tears again. He hated himself for making her cry.

  “I don’t know how all this happened,” she whispered, bending her head down to hide the tears. “I did something wrong to try and right things, and I wound up hurting so many people. I didn’t want to hurt you, Larry, and the last thing I want is for you to keep coming here out of obligation. Six months is a long time. You’ll forget about me. I hate to get used to having you come, and then start noticing that you’re coming less and less. I hate for you to feel guilty about having fun when I’m in here, like you owe me some debt.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” he assured her. “Melissa, look at me.”

  She looked up, her eyes red and wet.

  “I love you. It’s not something I chose to do, but it happened. I really mean it. I’ve never felt like this about any other woman.”

  She sucked in a sob and covered her mouth. “I love you, too,” she whispered. “But I’m so worried about you.”

  “You’re worried about me? Why?”

  “Because you’re out there, and he’s out there. And you’re trying to catch him at something all by yourself. Larry, I’ve tried that. It didn’t work.”

  “There’s a difference. I’m a cop. I know what I’m doing.”

  “I knew what I was doing, too.”

  “But you manipulated what happened with you. I’m not manipulating anything. I’m just watching.”

  “Please don’t get so tired that you get sloppy and let him see you. He might kill you, Larry. He’s a vicious, violent man.”

  “I’m going to get him off the street. But I’m going to come and visit you on every visitors’ day, too. Got that?”

  She sat gazing at him for a moment, wiping her tears as fast as they came. “I have a lot to be thankful for.”

  “What?” he asked. “Tell me.”

  She tried to think. “Well, I have you. Not everybody in here has somebody. And I’m safe from Pendergrast. He can’t get to me in here.”

  Larry smiled. “That’s right. That’s what Tony said. Thank God for small favors.”

  “That’s a big one,” she admitted, “and I do thank him. I thank him for other things, too. Like the fact that I’m learning to depend on God. Completely. Being this low makes me realize how high he is. But he’s still here, too, even in this place. I feel him.”

  “I feel him, too,” Larry whispered. “Sometimes when I think of you being here, and I get such dread, I feel his comfort. But I don’t think I want to be comforted. I guess in a way I feel I’m doing some kind of penance by worrying myself sick about you.”

  “We have to have faith, Larry,” she whispered. “This morning, I was reading the book of James. He said life wouldn’t always be easy. He said to let your trials strengthen you. I intend to do that.”

  “Then I will, too,” he said.

  As the noise grew around them, and the chaos in the room continued, they put aside their doubts and fears, their worries and anxieties, their remorse and regrets, and lost themselves in the world they had in common.

  But that night, as Larry sat in his car in the parking lot across the street from Pendergrast’s, waiting for him to come out of his apartment, Larry began to worry again. Melissa had looked so tired. The burn on her hand might not have come from the iron at all. And that cellmate of hers would instill fear into the toughest of men.

  He had a long talk with God, pleading with him to find her another cellmate, pleading with him to protect her with his angels, pleading with him to let something good come of all this.

  And then he pleaded that he would be able to catch Pendergrast at something soon, so that he could lock him away.

  But it wasn’t going to happen tonight. Pendergrast didn’t go out. Larry wondered if he’d realized he’d been found out.

  He gave up around four A.M. and went home to get a couple of hours’ sleep before he had to be at church. He needed to worship today, he thought. He needed to feel God’s glory. He sure hadn’t seen enough of it in that rec room at the Pinellas County Correctional Facility for Women.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  The prison chapel was filled with more women than Melissa had expected that Sunday morning. She had hoped it would be a sanctuary—a safe place in the midst of all this madness. But as she went in, she saw the red-haired woman who had harassed her sitting at the back, and some of the others that she feared scattered around the room.

  Had they come to worship, she wondered, or had they come to break the monotony of their lives?

  It didn’t matter, she told herself. What really mattered was that she had the opportunity to worship here, and she was going to.

  Her heart felt lighter as one of the women from the prison ministry began to play the piano and direct the inmates in some praise songs. Most of the women didn’t sing, she noted, but some of them did, Melissa among them.

  Next to her sat a tiny Hispanic woman with dark circles under her eyes, singing in a lovely, lilting voice, with tears running down her face. Melissa could easily picture the woman in a small evangelical church, with a cotton, flower-print dress on, and maybe a hat with a bow. Instead, she sat here in her prison-issue jumpsuit looking as out of place as Melissa felt.

  The chaplain who gave his time to come here on Sunday mornings was a young man in his early twenties, probably someone who had never had a church of his own. His name was Doug Manning.

  “If you have a Bible with you, please turn to John, chapter 4.”

  Melissa opened her Bible to John, and noticed that the woman next to her did as well. Few others had Bibles with them.

  It was the passage about the woman at the well, and as he launched into his sermon about the woman with a past, the woman who stood before Christ with all her sins exposed, and was offered forgiveness freely and without cost, Melissa felt a renewal of hope.

  After the sermon, the chaplain entreated the women to stay for a prayer time, but one by one, most of the women filed out. Only the woman sitting next to her, and four others in different parts of the room, stayed behind.

  Melissa sat quietly, waiting for the pastor to lead them.

  He looked disappointed that so many had gone. “Well—since there aren’t many of us, why don’t we come up to the front here, and sort of put our chairs in a circle?” As they came, he asked, “Do you all know each other?”

  Melissa looked around. A couple of them knew each other, but she knew none of them. “No. I’m new.”

  “Then let’s introduce ourselves. I’m Doug, and this is my wife, Tina.”

  The woman who had been sitting next to Melissa offered her a timid smile. “I’m Sonja. I’m in cellblock C. I haven’t been here long, either.”

  The next woman, a heavyset, jolly-looking woman, spoke up. “I’m Betty. I used to be a choir director in a little mission church we belonged to.”

  The next one, a black woman whose Bible looked worn and used, nodded to Melissa. “I’m Keisha. In cellblock A.”

  And after her, the last one, another black woman with huge, almond-shaped eyes who looked like model material, said, “I’m Simone. Cellblock B.”

  Doug smiled, pleased, then looked at Melissa. “And you are?”

  “Melissa,” she said quietly.

  “Do any of you have any specific prayer requests?” he asked.

  Sonja spoke up as tears filled her eyes, and she groped for the tissue she carried in her pocket. “I need prayers,” she said. “I don’t belong here. I didn’t do what they said I did.”

  Doug looked as if he’d heard that before, but he didn’t voice it.

  “I didn’t know my husband was selling drugs,” she wen
t on in her heavy accent. “When he got arrested, they arrested me, too, because they had seen me driving him places and dropping him off at places where he was making deals.” Her face reddened, and she covered her face. “But I didn’t know what he was doing.” She stopped, sniffed, and tried to steady her voice. “I have three small children. Two, three, and five. I have to serve a year, but that’s an eternity to them. They’ll forget all about me.”

  The horror of that situation gripped Melissa, and by instinct, she reached out and took Sonja’s hand.

  “All right,” Doug said. “We’ll pray about that. Anyone else?”

  “Yes,” Betty said. “I’m due to get out in four weeks. I need prayers that nothing happens to mess up my release.”

  “All right.” Doug looked around, waiting, for anyone else to speak up. “Anyone else?”

  “Yes,” Melissa said, almost in a whisper. “I’m not like Sonja. I did something wrong to come here. But I need prayers for strength. I need to see some sense in all of this.”

  “You may not ever,” Doug warned her. “Sometimes you just have to trust God’s sovereignty.”

  She breathed a laugh. “I’m beginning to realize that.”

  “Well, let’s pray for these particular requests, and then I’ll pray for each of you, that you’ll be safe here, and that you’ll be lights in this dark place. You know, a lot of those women who walked out of here just now are hurting. They need some Christian influence here. And you may not have noticed just now, but each of the cellblocks is represented in this little group. That’s no coincidence. Each one of you has the power to change this whole facility.”

  “I don’t feel very powerful,” Keisha said.

  “Me, either,” Betty added.

  “Well, neither did the disciples after Jesus died. But they didn’t understand what was ahead. God saw their future, even when they didn’t. He saw the reason, and all the purpose. Maybe you’re here to work on the women in this prison.”

  “It’s hard to care about them,” Sonja said. “Some of them are hateful and wicked.”

  “Maybe they’ve never known any better.”

  “Maybe that’s just an excuse,” Sonja said. She brought her remorseful eyes up to Doug’s. “I’m sorry. I just haven’t been feeling much love for my fellowman—or woman—lately.”

  “Then we’ll pray about that, too.”

  They held hands and prayed, earnestly, openly, with tender, broken hearts, and in doing so they created a bond that Melissa hadn’t felt in years. She wanted to feel it more than once a week, she thought.

  When the prayer was over, she felt empowered. “We need a Bible study,” she said. “More than just once a week. Would that be allowed?”

  “Of course it would,” he said. “But I’m in seminary during the week, about three hours from here. I can only get here on Sundays. Would you be willing to lead it?”

  Melissa’s eyes widened. “Me?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  She looked around, surprised, and saw that everyone was looking expectantly at her. “Well, the truth is—I’m not real well educated on the Bible. I haven’t really been walking with God for the last few years.”

  “Great opportunity to learn more,” he said. “Just be available, pray about it, and God will lead you.”

  She hesitated and looked from one woman to another. “Would you come, if we had one? Say, three times a week?”

  To a woman, they all agreed that they would.

  “From this core group, other women can be reached,” Doug said. “One by one, you’ll bring them into the group, and it’ll grow. I’ve seen it happen before.”

  “When?” Sonja asked. “You’re too young to have seen much.”

  Doug only smiled. “My mother was in prison for several years when I was a boy,” he said. “She was a battered wife, and she killed my father to keep him from killing me. That’s why I feel such a burden to keep this prison ministry going.”

  “How many years was she in?” Sonja asked.

  “Seven,” he said. “But I had a loving grandmother who brought me to see my mother every time she could. My mother became a light in the prison. She built up a Bible study that started with three women and grew to about 200. And Sonja, I can tell you that, even from prison, my mother had a strong influence on me. I saw her making the best of the worst situation, and I saw her taking what had been given to her, and still being available for God to use. She wrote me a lot of letters, and read me books over the telephone at night, and rocked me when I visited. It wasn’t the best situation, but she made it good.”

  “Wow. And look how you turned out,” Sonja whispered. “Maybe my babies will be all right, too.”

  “And so will you. You know, some of these women were drug addicts when they came in here. Now that they’re clean, they’re different women. Regular human beings, with feelings, and regrets, and loneliness. Think of them as being like you, even the ones who act like monsters, and love them, anyway.”

  He knew, Melissa thought. He understood. And she felt so blessed that God had sent him to them.

  As she went back to her cell, she felt called to be the light that God had sent for this dark corridor. And she decided that Chloe needed to be the first to see that light.

  That afternoon, Larry came to visit again, and this time, Melissa was brighter. As they sat and talked and watched the other inmates with their families and friends, she noted Sonja in the corner with her children. The two babies were in her lap, and she was rocking them, while the five-year-old performed some little songs she’d memorized from a videotape she had at her grandmother’s.

  And then she saw Chloe again with her husband. The soft look on the woman’s face made her look like a different person.

  Later, when they were back in their cells, Melissa tried to make conversation as she straightened her things. “Your husband seems nice, Chloe.”

  “Yeah. He’s a prince. He’s stuck by me, too. Through thick and through thin. He’ll be there when I get out. And you can bet I won’t wind up back in here. This is my last time. I ain’t like those other women, who don’t know no better than to keep doin’ stupid stuff—killin’ and prostitutin’ and sellin’ and shootin’ at folks. Man, if you could get the chair for havin’ the stupids, they’d be killin’ ninety percent of the women in this jail.”

  Something about that struck Melissa as funny, and quietly, she began to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Chloe asked.

  Melissa covered her mouth with her hand and tried to stop.

  She heard Chloe laughing on the bunk beneath her, and felt the bed shaking with it.

  “Well, it’s true,” Chloe said. “You can laugh, but these girls—they ain’t like you and me, with our little namby-pamby crimes. Some of these women did some bad things.”

  Melissa came to the end of her laughter and took a deep breath. The laughter had cleansed her, relaxed her. “What did you do, Chloe?”

  The woman’s voice got deeper and more serious. “You won’t tell nobody?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I’m in for forgery. Forged some checks. They belonged to the woman I worked for. It was stealin’, but I never shot nobody. And I never shot up neither. I was clean, except for forgin’ checks. Never thought I’d get caught. She had plenty of money. Didn’t think she’d notice if a little of it was missin’. It was what they call a victimless crime. I never hurt nobody.”

  That was something to be proud of, in a place like this, Melissa thought. One person’s sins were worse than another’s. There was always someone whose sins were worse than yours. She supposed that was why the other inmates had tried to pin child abuse and murder on her, so they could all hold her up as an example of how far they would never go.

  The thing was, she wasn’t sure there was a big difference in God’s eyes.

  “Why don’t you want me to tell?” she asked.

  “’Cause,” Chloe said. “Some o’ them might have the impression that I
’m in for murder. I might have given ’em that impression.”

  Melissa began to laugh again. “Why, Chloe?”

  “It helps for them to be scared of you.”

  Melissa sighed. “You have an advantage.”

  “You got that right. Ain’t nobody much who wants to cross me here.”

  They were quiet for a moment, as Melissa contemplated her size.

  “You married to that honey who keeps comin’ to see you?” Chloe asked.

  “No,” Melissa said. “How long have you been married?”

  “Herman and me got married three years ago. He’s my man.”

  Something about that made Chloe seem more human. “Does Herman come often?”

  “Every weekend. Never misses a one.”

  Melissa turned over on her back and studied the dark ceiling again. “At first I didn’t want Larry to come. I didn’t want him to see me like this.”

  “You may not have a bunch of makeup, but you don’t need none. You look fine. He’ll probably just be glad to see you’re in one piece.”

  “Will I stay that way, Chloe? In one piece, I mean.”

  Chloe didn’t answer for a while. “It ain’t gon’ be easy, sister, but I’ll do what I can.”

  After a few minutes, she heard Chloe’s deep, heavy breathing on the rhythmic edge of a snore, and she knew she’d gone to sleep.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Karen Anderson sat up abruptly in bed in her mother’s guest room, and listened . . .

  She could have sworn she heard a noise. But the trees outside the window were rustling too loudly, and the wind was blowing too hard—

  What if he was out there?

  She hadn’t slept a full night since the two detectives had dropped their bomb on her. All night she heard things, and expected things, and imagined things.

  She got out of bed, went to the window, and peered out into the night. There was no one there. At least, no one that she could see.

  She thought of waking her mother and asking her to keep her company, but her mother would only think she was crazy. Karen hadn’t been able to tell her mother about the man who was stalking her. She didn’t want her to be afraid, so she’d just said that she’d had her heart broken and she didn’t want to be alone. But now, in the middle of the night, listening for any and every sound, the loneliness and fear were overwhelming.