by Judy Candis
She still couldn’t understand why God had allowed this cruel insanity into her life. What have I done, Lord? Why have you directed your anger toward me? Was it because I was flirting with Grant? She knew in her heart that the God she served would never be so petty. He was a just and fair God, full of mercy, and she knew that even in this ordeal, all things would work together for the good. Just as quickly, Jael realized she had just fought another bout of doubt.
“Dear Lord!” she said out loud in anguish. “Is this some kind of test? Oh, God, I can barely stand it. Please deliver me from this terrible mental battle. Take away this maddening fear. BRING BACK MY SON!!!”
Jael’s insides were crushing in on her. She could barely breathe from the hurt. She wanted to scream at the Lord for letting this happen. She wanted to plead to Him to just make it all go away and take this cup from her. She wanted to curl up in a corner and cry her heart out.
Instead, she began pleading the Blood of Jesus over her son, claiming her right as a child of God and placing her petition of victory at the throne of Jehovah.
“No weapon formed against me shall prosper! I am strong in the Lord and in the power of His might! I will put on the whole armor of God and stand against the wiles of the devil!”
By the time she reached the drop-off point, a peace had settled over her heart, along with the surprise that verses were popping up in her spirit she hadn’t known she’d committed to memory.
Jael slowed the Bronco down, reached over for the phone book and tossed it out the passenger window. Her detective instincts continued to kick in as she rolled away, prompting her to observe every moving item around her. She smiled and praised the Lord to spite the worry in her heart.
Chapter
32
Before stepping into the house, Jael proceeded around the side and back of her home, noting any specific changes that might give her a clue as to how the men had entered. Nothing seemed out of place.
As she reached the back door Rhonda said she’d found open, Jael saw that it was now shut. A ragged splinter of wood, just at the curve of the door lock, stuck out like a beacon, increasing Jael’s feeling of being violated. As small and slender as the strip of wood was, Jael could see how Rhonda might have missed it, thinking the boys had taken off in haste. But as she touched it lightly with her forefinger, Jael knew someone had used a crowbar to break into her home. That also explained away any doubts that the boys had left the back door unlocked through carelessness while they were still safely inside.
From what little Grant told her, she remembered that these people usually worked as single instruments of destruction, but Jael was positive that more than one person had been at her back door.
Jael pulled her keys from her shoulder bag and unlocked the door. Pushing it inward, she was met with the chaos of the kidnapping. What Rhonda had probably assumed was bad housekeeping on the boys’ part, Jael knew was the aftermath of the abduction.
An untouched pepperoni pizza lay open in its box on the kitchen counter. Glasses of Big Red and A&W root beer were spilled across the table, and a single, unused paper plate lay upside down on the floor. And more important than anything else was the fact that one lone counter stool was tilted against the kitchen sink just over the plate on the floor, as if one of the boys had been snatched while preparing to get a slice of pizza.
That was the strike that released the tide Jael had held tightly within her for the last hour. Slumping to the floor on her knees, she crossed her arms before her chest and wailed, rocking back and forth. Her insides felt as if they were being ripped out with a hot iron. For five solid minutes she rocked, pouring her heart out through the tears. Wounded, she reared her head and screamed to the one source she had left.
“Oh God, help me, sweet Jesus, help me! I’m losing my mind with fear. I know your Word tells me not to fear lest that which I fear most come upon me, but dear Jesus save my baby! Save me!”
She sobbed and cried out to God until it felt her heart was as raw as her throat with pain.
When the doorbell rang, Jael chose to ignore it. She brought a hand to her mouth, then dropped it. She pulled herself up, rubbed her hands over her cheeks, hobbled to the kitchen sink and turned on the faucet. Cupping her left hand, she filled it with cold water and splashed it over her face. The doorbell rang again.
Jael reached for the dish towel and wiped her face. Dear Lord, I can’t take the pain. You said you’d never put more on me than I could bear, but oh God, I’m dying inside.
The doorbell stopped ringing, but whoever it was began a persistent pounding. Jael shut her eyes and sighed. Slowly she moved toward the front door. She had no time for Rhonda, and would be as polite as possible but would get rid of her.
Jael opened the front door a crack. Grant stood outside on the front step.
She spread a grin she didn’t feel across her face. “This is a bad time, Grant. I was just about to prepare for bed.”
“Aren’t you curious how I found your house on my own?”
“You’re an FBI agent. I would imagine you could get around in a small town like Dadesville.”
“If the boys are already in bed, I thought maybe you and I could go over a few strategy points. I promise not to keep you up too late.”
“It’s been a long day, Grant. I’m really tired. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” Her hands began to shake and she clung tightly to the doorframe to still them.
Grant stared at her for a few minutes without speaking. He leaned closer. “You okay?”
“Just tired. Please, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Grant finally nodded and stepped back from the door. Jael closed it on him as politely as possible and headed straight for Ramon’s room.
There she stood just within the door of her son’s room, tears welling up in her eyes. Lord, please keep my son safe until you deliver him back into my arms.
Once again, a shadow of doubt that she would ever see Ramon alive again passed through her mind. Shutting her eyes, she prayed. I rebuke you, Satan, in the name of Jesus. I will not listen to your lies. For nothing is impossible for God. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.
Jael continued exercising her faith as she moved about Ramon’s room touching his belongings. When she placed her hand on his pillow, she loudly declared, “BY THE BLOOD OF JESUS, I CLAIM THE SAFE RETURN OF MY ONLY CHILD, RAMON.”
She held on to the conviction of that statement in her heart, fighting the urge to fall beneath the weight of fear. Fighting the evil imaginations of her son being cruelly mistreated in the hands of the enemies threatening to defeat her.
Under an anointing she had never experienced before, Jael fell to her knees as if she had been knocked to the floor. Her head slumped onto the WWF blanket on Ramon’s bed. She gave herself over to the grief and moaning that claimed her. Yet, within this pain she began to speak as if her mouth were no longer her own. Words poured from her lips, words she had never uttered or heard before. And in her grief she could sense the power and flow of the Holy Spirit over her.
She let Him have His way, grateful for the evidence of the presence of the Comforter. When the fever of the spiritual flow began to subside, Jael praised God for touching her in such an intimate way during her darkest hour. She remained on the floor, too spent to rise and unwilling to break the spell that had wrapped her in its peace.
She felt safe on the floor beside Ramon’s bed, felt close to him. Someway, somehow, she believed, she would come through this storm victorious. She arose feeling strengthened and encouraged. For now, the stronghold of defeat had lost its grip, her faith was joyously renewed.
Leaving her son’s room, she headed for her own, slipped out of her jacket and tossed it on the chair by the bed. Something heavy inside the pocket struck the arm of the chair. Jael turned and lifted the garment, and the Instant Shot camera slipped out onto the carpet. In her haste to get home, she had forgotten all about it.
Quickly, Jael slipped her jacket
back on and headed for the front of the house and out the door. A twenty-four-hour Walgreens, with a one-hour photo department was just a few blocks away. Jael raced to the store, parked the Bronco haphazardly and bolted through the electronic doors.
A teenage girl was waiting in line at the photo counter and the clerk was ringing up her order on the cash register.
Uncharacteristically, Jael stepped up beside the customer, slapping the camera on the counter. “I need this in an hour.”
“Just a minute, ma’am, I’ll be right with you.” The clerk never looked up, obviously used to handling pushy customers.
Jael danced back and forth on the ball of her feet in an effort to control herself while she waited. What lay inside that camera could be very helpful in locating Ramon and Terrell. But waiting an hour would drive her crazy. When the clerk finally finished with the teenager, she politely smiled at Jael as she began filling out Jael’s order form.
“Is there any way you can rush this?” Jael asked. “I’m having a little trouble with the photo printer. If all goes right, I can have it to you . . . let’s see . . .” The clerk looked behind her at the huge clock on the wall. “. . . By twelve forty-five.”
That was just shy of an hour. Jael gave the young woman her phone number and address and started walking around the store, trying to think of what to do until the pictures were ready.
Then she remembered the extra Bible she kept in the Bronco. Leaving the store, Jael climbed into her car, picked the Bible up from the backseat and turned on the radio.
Tony Evans was preaching on one of the late-night slots. It seemed the message he was delivering in his strong, robust timbre was being spoken purposely for her. As she listened to his commanding voice, Jael smiled. This had happened more times than she could count: There would be a pressing matter she had to contend with, and God would speak to her problem over the Christian airwaves.
“The devil is the father of lies and will take your worst situation, twist it, fill your mind with false images of defeat in an attempt to steal your victory. But the Lord wants you to know that Jesus defeated Satan at the Cross. Take your eyes away from the problem and set them on the Lord. Remember 1 John 4:4: Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world.”
Jael had caught the tail end of the program, but knew the Lord was speaking encouragement to her. Flipping on the overhead light, she opened her Bible to Isaiah 26:3: Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.
Those words had always been a source of encouragement for her, lifting her spirits when all else seemed to fail. As she read both them and the passages that followed, she was filled with a surge of hope and expectation. She became so wrapped up in the Word that when she finally glanced at the dashboard clock, over an hour had passed.
Jael closed the Bible, lifted the maroon leather book to her lips and kissed it. “Thank you, Lord. Thank you for renewing my confidence that this matter is in Your hands.”
Back inside the drugstore, she rushed to the counter. The clerk smiled again as she handed Jael the photos in a Walgreens package.
“Thank you,” Jael murmured as she quickly paid before rummaging through the pictures. Out of a series of twelve possible shots, only eight were distinctly focused. The lined pages were slanted on the prints but clearly revealed names, numbers and those weird symbols.
At first she recognized none of the names, which were actually pen names, like Redneck Fred or Fiery-mouth Thomas. But the name “Red Dog” jumped out at her like a glaring neon sign. It was the same name she’d seen at the barn shed and again at Jasper’s house, but it also seemed to ring in her mind from someplace else. Where; where? Jael glanced farther down the list, hoping to jog her memory. Many of the phone numbers were outside Dadesville’s area code, and even those seemed to have several digits too many. She would need to have it decoded to garnish any worthy information from it. And just how did she go about getting that done? The FDLE—the Florida Department of Law Enforcement—could take days to get back to her, and she’d have to have others involved during the process.
Jael let out a sigh of frustration. All this photo work may have just been a great waste of time. Still, at least she had the pages, and maybe they would prove valuable later.
Dropping the package of photos back into her purse, Jael headed out of the store and back home. Once at the house, she threw her purse on the table.
“Show me what to do,” she cried to the ceiling.
When she could think of nothing else, she went to the computer. There she spent the next four hours downloading as much information as she could about the Klan, the Aryan Nation, and Nazi sympathizers. She was amazed by the amount of disgusting information readily available to anyone searching the Web.
The more she learned about the organization, the more she realized the sad state of the world around her. The more questions she came up with, the fewer answers there seemed to be. At what point, she wondered, does a man cross the line of dislike and distrust to enraged hate? Is there a certain kind of person whose nature allows him to harm another human being with no remorse? Can you honestly teach a child at a tender age to grow up and be a killer?
As a woman who’d worked in law enforcement for many years, Jael knew the sad answer to these questions. She knew the kind of world she lived in; it was why she felt such a strong need to protect the innocent. But today, the fight was for herself, and for her beloved son.
Chapter
33
Sometime during the night Jael left the computer, stumbled into Ramon’s room and fell asleep across his bed, inhaling the sweet boyish scents of his sheets. An insistent ringing beside her head brought her groggily awake, sore and far from rested. The head-splitting noise continued until the answering machine finally picked up.
Hearing her son’s innocent voice during the introduction “This is Ramon”—then her own voice—“And Jael”—yanked a choking cord around her heart. She listened to his hearty completion, squeezing her eyes in sorrow: “We’re not home right now. But you know the drill. Have a Jesus-filled day.”
The next voice she heard tightened the cord.
“Pick up the next time this phone rings or else.”
Jael sprang from the bed as if the mattress were on fire. Even though there was a phone right on the stand beside Ramon’s bed, she raced out the door and into her own room, where she’d heard the man’s voice speaking from the answering machine. With her hands clutched to her throat she stood before the phone, taking in deep gulps of air, and waited. It couldn’t have been more than two minutes, but it seemed like hours before the phone rang again.
Jael took note of the Caller ID number—it was a pay phone—then snatched up the receiver.
“Hello.”
“Running a little late to work this morning, aren’t we, Detective?”
“Let me talk to my son!”
“Oh, he’s waiting anxiously to talk to you, too. A big crybaby, that boy. But when you speak to him, you’d better tell him to keep his teeth off my flesh or he’ll come back to you toothless. Now, before you two get too sickening with the Mammy-and-Sambo crap, you’d better listen and listen well. I need the gun that was retrieved at the barn. You’ve got two hours to get it. I’ll call back then on your cell phone. When I know you have the weapon, you can speak to your bad-ass boy. Then I’ll tell you what to do next.”
“Why didn’t you just have me get the gun when I got the phone book?” she screamed.
“Don’t get smart-mouthed with me, Ms. Detective. I’m testing you. So follow your orders like a good little nigger and stop thinking you run shit.” He slammed the phone in her ear.
Jael immediately hit *69. But the phone rang and rang. She finally gave up after the fifteenth ring. Placing the phone back in its cradle, Jael looked down at the clock beside it. It read 7:53. She was already late.
When Jael arrived at the station, Tammy handed over her messages with a raised eyebrow. Givin
g Tammy what she hoped was a nonchalant shrug, Jael shuffled through the messages. One was from Big Jake, which was a surprise, and another was from Virgil, which wasn’t, reminding her that he was picking up Ramon tomorrow.
For possibly the first time since her divorce, Jael desperately prayed that Ramon would get to spend the day with his father.
She debated heading straight for the Captain’s office and telling him what was going on. A smart officer would do that right now, she told herself; a smart officer would have done that from the beginning.
Shoving her messages in the front pocket of her purse, she asked Tammy, “Is the Captain in his office?”
“No, he hasn’t come in yet.”
“Try his cell phone. I’ll wait.”
Tammy gave her a strange look, then clicked in the Captain’s number on the office switchboard.
“I’m getting his answering machine,” she said after the fourth ring. “Do you want me to leave him a message?”
“No, try to reach him at home.” Jael turned to leave, then called over her shoulder. “Transfer the call to my desk as soon as you get him.”
When she pushed through the double doors, the squad room was in its typical busy state, with officers shuffling back and forth going about their daily duties. Sills was at his desk.
“Not your norm to be running a little late, is it?” he addressed her, whirling a pencil under his nose. “But with all that’s happened, I guess you’re allowed one ‘off the clock’ day. So, how’re things going on your end?”
Avoiding direct eye contact, Jael pulled out her chair and busied herself with pushing paper around on her desk. “Haven’t gotten much more than what I had last night.”
“Seems you had a heavy date last night—could that possibly have something to do with why we’re a little late to work this morning?”