Granger just shook his lowered head. There was no way to explain it.
“I’d like to help you,” Evan said. “I’d like to be your friend.”
Granger laughed, jerked his head up, and stared at the stranger, thinking he himself had never been that calm or at peace his entire life. He yearned for acceptance, longed for a friend, but he was afraid—so afraid of being hurt, deceived, mocked!
Death was within his reach … seconds away.
He’s just talking, saying words to stop you …
“Where do you live?” Evan said. “Are you from here? I’m not.”
The blaring sirens chirped oddly, wound down, and died one at a time.
It wouldn’t be long.
Granger had no dang home. He was a no-good drifter. The idea of this man becoming his friend was unrealistic and far-fetched. But oh, how he wished it could be true.
He shook his head. “I’m in bad trouble.” He fought not to cry. “Real bad.”
Evan looked deeply into his eyes. “I’m supposed to help you,” he said. “We’re in this crucible for a reason.”
Granger shook the gun. “Yeah, the reason is … I’m gonna use your crummy gun to end this miserable existence.”
Evan shook his head. “Listen, I know you need a friend,” he said. “I’m not gonna try to tell you everything will be okay. But I am here for a reason. To help you right now. I know I am. I know I’m supposed to live; I didn’t know it till right now. Please, will you do something for me? One thing?”
Granger just stared at the weirdo.
The running footsteps of a growing army could be heard all around them.
He was going to be arrested, sitting there listening to this nutcase.
“Make a pact with me.” Evan crawled over to him and put forth his hand.
Granger looked at it, then into the man’s piercing eyes.
“We will live.” Evan nodded. “Just say it with me: we will live another day.”
Voices, yelling outside.
Footsteps thudding on concrete, all around them.
Then through a megaphone: “Granger Meade.”
His name pierced the night and stung his heart with reality.
“You are surrounded. You have sixty seconds to come out of the church with your hands up high where we can see them.”
Evan examined Granger and nodded encouragingly. “We will live another day,” Evan repeated. “I will try to help you.”
Slowly, gently, Evan removed the gun from Granger’s right hand. He set it down. He put his hand in Granger’s and squeezed. It was warm. It was true.
They looked at each other.
They shook hands.
Granger watched Evan’s lips and began to speak softly, in unison with him: “We will live … another day.”
The doors busted open.
Granger turned to see a team of officers swarm in, weapons held high, jogging in unison in two lines down the center aisle.
EPILOGUE
Evan squeezed his arms around Wendy, who lounged in his lap in one of the comfy rockers on the back porch of the little white cottage in Englewood. They both faced the small yard out back, the mangroves and pier and long shadows falling over Lemon Bay. The setting sun behind them cast a reddish-orange hue over everything. Their three bronzed boys, clad only in shorts, backward caps, and untied tennis shoes, stood with waiting fishing poles at the end of the dock.
“Maybe we should move here.” Wendy stared out at the dark moving water and three of the four men in her life. “Or buy the place and rent it out; then we could come all the time.”
“But then it might not be like this,” Evan said. “We’d have stuff to do all the time, like painting and maintenance and all that.”
“Yeah … you’re probably right.”
“We could try to retire here—later. Although it would get pretty hot in the summer.”
She leaned her head back on his chest. “What are we going to do now, Ev?”
The boys’ voices and laughter drifted up with the breeze, filling him with comfort.
“Be a family,” he said. “Be a couple.” He brought his hands up and combed them through her hair. “I met an old homeless black lady while I was gone. A real firecracker. Valerie Belinda McShane.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I think she was an angel.” He told her about his various encounters with Valerie. “She seemed to know everything. She was like a guide in the storm. I really believe God sent her.”
“What made you think of her?”
“She said my work wasn’t finished.”
Wendy squeezed him.
“I’m going to get my house in order,” Evan said. “I’m going to be a friend to Granger Meade.”
Evan wondered if Wendy thought he was weird or wrong for making the pact with Granger—to be his friend, to try to help him. He had learned that Granger would be held at Mansfield Correctional Institution, which was just a little more than an hour from their home in Cool Springs. He planned to invest in Granger, convinced that was the main reason they had been brought together that night.
“What about the church?” Wendy said.
As it turned out, Archer Pierce had given his wife a copy of the show he had produced, implicating Dr. Andrew Satterfield on embezzlement charges in Denver, and the show was aired. Satterfield, Seeger, and Trent had been arrested for money laundering and embezzlement at Evan’s church, and charges were pending for the deaths of Archer Pierce and Jerry Kopton.
“There’s a big hole now,” Evan said. “I’m concerned about the people. But to tell you the truth, I don’t have it in me to go back yet. I don’t know if I ever will.”
Wendy patted his leg. “We’re going to take as much time as you need.”
Almost constantly, one at a time, the boys would drop to their knees, hoist up the dripping yellow shrimp bucket, put a snapping shrimp on the hook, and recast as far as they could. Evan just hoped one of them didn’t get snagged. Their neighbor Sam, who lived there year-round, had told them the red fish were hitting big, but so far no luck.
“I’ve got a conference call scheduled with the church leaders tomorrow,” Evan said. “I’m going to tell them I’ll be gone indefinitely. It will probably turn out to be a good thing.”
“Everything works out for a reason, doesn’t it?” Wendy said.
“Yes. It does.”
“I was terrified when you were gone,” she said. “It was the worst thing I could ever endure. I kept thinking, this has got to be a nightmare; it was madness. I kept asking God why we had to go through it.”
“Why did we?”
Wendy interlocked her fingers with his. “To get closer.”
When Evan said nothing, she sat up on his knee, put an arm around his shoulders, and leaned close. “After all these years,” she said, “I’m still learning, he just wants us to know he’s God. He’s in charge. He does what he wants—what he needs to do.”
“And we just hold on,” Evan whispered.
Wendy nodded, threw her other arm around his neck, and buried her head in his chest.
They hugged tightly and rocked.
“I got one! I got one!”
It was Silas, their youngest, legs braced, reeling as hard as he could, his pole bent as if he had landed a whale. His brothers jumped up and down, smacking him on the back, holding the pole with him, making sure he held on.
Jack laid his head back on the leather chair in the family room. He closed his eyes for a second, breathed in as deeply as he could with a severely cracked sternum, and cherished the sounds and smells and joy of being home among family and friends.
Since arriving back in Trenton City from the hospital in West Virginia two days earlier, Jack had worn lounge clothes—sweats, T-shirts, and moccasins—as he moved slowly about the house. He felt a bit ridiculous clutching his big pillow in front of Cecil, DeVry, Derrick, and Pam’s father as they sat chatting all around him; but since the accident, he refused to go anywhere
without it. The pain was so great it had come to feel like a necessity to have something against his chest, especially when he laughed, coughed or—God forbid—sneezed.
Rebecca and Faye, in their long dresses, high heels, and beads, danced and pranced in and out from the back porch to the kitchen to the family room, carrying trays of snacks and refreshing people’s beverages. They relished having company, as each guest became their new victim and playmate.
Somehow Benjamin had managed to corral Margaret the morning of Jack’s car wreck and bring her and the girls back to Trenton City. Jack imagined Ben must have had to tranquilize her to get her to come, but it was a huge help having them there to watch the girls and assist with meals.
Pam had told Jack about her mother’s experience with the intruder in her dorm room back in college. So now, oddly enough, Pam and her mom shared similar nightmare experiences, and Jack envisioned that ultimately those haunting events would draw mother and daughter closer.
Margaret functioned much better when she had something to do, like now, as she helped Pam in the kitchen and kept an eye on Rebecca and Faye. Of course, it didn’t hurt her frame of mind to know Granger was in custody.
“So what happens to Granger now?” Benjamin said.
The family room fell silent.
Pam walked in, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. Her mother acted busy setting the kitchen table, but Jack knew she was tuned in.
“Well, the formal charges pending range from breaking and entering and robbery to trespassing, stalking, auto theft, and kidnapping.” DeVry took a swig of his drink. “He’s being held without bond, obviously.”
“But no murder charge after all?” Benjamin said.
Jack wondered what Pam was thinking. She just stood there silently. She had come to know Granger better than anyone. Certainly she was relieved he’d been captured, but she’d told Jack that in many ways she had sympathy for him. That was a pill Jack still couldn’t swallow. But he was determined to be open about it, thinking if Pam of all people could forgive the monster, surely he should be able to.
“That turned out to be just another sick ploy by the parents,” DeVry said. “Granger showed up at their house that day. He was going to take a gun or two, possibly hurt them; we’re still not clear on his motives. Anyway, the father fired a shot into the floor as Granger was leaving. He wanted Granger to think he had murdered the mother and was going to frame Granger for it.”
“I wish he would have been framed for it,” Margaret said from the kitchen. “He deserves death, or at least life behind bars.”
“Think of how he grew up.” Pam whipped the towel to her side and faced her mother. “You don’t know what it was like in that home—the head games and mental anguish they put him through, all under the guise of Christianity. They hated him and let him know it since the day he was born. He had no friends. None of us knows what that would be like.”
“Well, he should have gotten himself some help …” Margaret’s voice trailed off.
Pam opened her mouth to retaliate but ended up exhaling loudly and disappearing into the kitchen. Soon cupboards slammed and pots clanged.
“The extent of his sentence is going to have a lot to do with the charges you and Pam end up pressing.” DeVry looked at Jack. “We’ve discussed that briefly. I know Pam had some reservations.”
“We still have a lot to talk about,” Jack said. “And pray about.”
“Wait a minute.” Cecil sat up on the edge of his chair and eyed DeVry, then Jack. “What are you saying?”
DeVry raised an eyebrow toward Jack and waited.
“Pam’s not sure she wants to press charges,” Jack said.
Cecil almost dropped his drink. “Why on earth not? The guy needs to be put away. He could’ve killed her.”
Jack shrugged, somewhat embarrassed. “It would reduce his sentence a lot,” Jack said. “And he would still do time for the auto theft and other stuff.”
DeVry chimed in. “His father is indicating he is going to press charges for the break-in at their place.”
“Jack.” Cecil turned around toward the kitchen, then back, and spoke firmly. “You need to talk some sense into Pam. Who’s ever heard of that, not pressing charges? That’s ludicrous. This guy deserves every year he’s got coming to him. He deserves to rot; he’s a menace.”
There it was—in a nutshell.
It was something Pam had come to grips with long before any of them.
They were all guilty.
All deserved judgment. Sentencing. Imprisonment.
Yet someone had chosen to love—radically.
That’s what Pam wanted to do.
Jack lowered his head.
Perhaps that was why all this had happened.
To show a man mercy.
To show a man Christ on the cross.
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“Evil is a departure from the way things ought to be.
But it could not be a departure from the way things ought to be unless
there is a way things ought to be. If there is a way things ought to be,
then there is a design plan for how things ought to be.
And if there is such a design plan, then there is a designer.”
R. Douglas Geivett
“Thus it is not like a child that I believe in Christ and confess him.
My hosanna has come forth from the crucible of doubt.”
Anne Fremantle
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• Excerpt from Book 2 in the Crittendon Files: Poison Town
EXCERPT FROM
BOOK 2 IN THE CRITTENDON FILES:
POISON TOWN
CHAPTER 1
Jack could see his breath even inside the car as he dodged potholes on the Ohio interstate and maneuvered his way into Trenton City at daybreak. He blasted the heat, but was getting nothing but cool air. The gun he’d bought three days earlier still felt bulky and foreign strapped to his ankle.
Wiping the moisture from the side window, he glimpsed one of the city’s sprawling industrial plants, its web of mechanical apparatuses and smokestacks silhouetted by the dawn’s red-orange glow. He didn’t like keeping the gun a secret from Pam, but with Granger Meade out on parole, it was for her own good—hers and the girls’.
Jack put the windows down to clear the windshield. It was below freezing outside. “Shoot!” He laughed at how cold he was and how ridiculous he must look with the windows down in the dead of winter. Cars hummed alongside his, covered with clumps of snow and ice and white stains from the rock salt on the roads.
He’d been taking the cars to Randalls’ garage for repairs on the east side of Trenton City for years. Galen, the elderly father, and his two fortysomething sons, LJ and Travis, knew cars like a cardiologist knows chest cavities.
He glanced at the digital clock in the dash: 7:17.
The fact that Granger had returned to Trenton City made Jack sick to his stomach—especially when it was time to leave Pam and the girls each morning. The man had come to Trenton City to track Pam down a year and a half ago, because she was the only person who had ever cared two cents about his life. She had paid for that comp
assion—they all had.
Jack rested a hand on his chest. His sternum had been severely cracked that night when he slammed into the guardrail. The bone had eventually healed, but his heart had not. But Jack didn’t care. It was his right to despise Granger. He had zero sympathy for the man, even though Pam—the real victim—had mustered the mercy to forgive.
He recalled driving hopelessly in the dark, through sheets of torrential rain, in search of any sign of his wife—then spinning out of control. Jack realized he was clamping the steering wheel like a vise. Ease up. He tried to relax his hands, neck, whole body.
He shook away the disturbing vignettes of that night.
At the last second he spotted the Tenth Street exit sign, shot a glance back, and veered off the interstate. When Granger got into his head, the memories possessed him. Just like that—almost missing the exit.
He looped around the exit ramp, past the new soup kitchen, which was lined with dark figures—standing, sitting, sleeping—trying to stay warm on sewage grates billowing clouds of steam. He hit green lights for several city blocks. Once past the library, thrift shop, and triple set of railroad tracks leading to the east side, he slowed along the narrow streets.
The houses were shoeboxes whose colors had faded long ago. Many were trailers, yet almost every one supported a monstrous, leaning antenna or satellite dish. Smoke chugged from tiny chimneys, and he imagined the warmth inside. Beater cars and trucks were parked at all angles in the short driveways and right up against the shanties and shotgun shacks.
Jack’s phone chirped. He knew without looking that it was a reminder to attend an editorial board meeting at nine thirty. He had tons of work on his plate. He took a left on Pell Lane and a quick right at the Randalls’ place, easing the Jetta up to the large doors of the auto shop. It was a leaning, rusted silver metal building the size of a barn, sealed up tight with no windows or sign.
A hint of snow fell as Jack turned the car off. The Randalls’ one-story house was situated about fifty feet from the shop. It was faded green with a big metal awning over the back. Next to it was a rusting white propane tank that looked like a giant Tylenol capsule. Out back were a red tool shed, an ancient doghouse, and a broken-down sky blue Ford Pinto.
Fear Has a Name: A Novel (The Crittendon Files) Page 30