Facing the Future

by Jerry B. Jenkins

  Josey took a labored breath. “Did you know I lost two boys?”

  Vicki shook her head. Why wouldn’t Tom have said something?

  “They were from my first marriage, and I didn’t see them as much as I wanted to. I’ve always been curious about God, and I tried all kinds of religions and belief systems. Unfortunately, I was into some kind of strange stuff when my husband Steve left me for someone else. Even though he was living with another woman long before we were divorced, he got custody of Ben and Brad. I couldn’t keep him from moving out of state, and I’ve been able to see the boys only about one weekend a month for more than two years.”

  “And your first husband?” Vicki said.

  “What about him?”

  “Was he left behind?”

  Josey nodded. “Bless his heart, Steve blames himself. His young wife has already left him, so he has no one. But the boys, they were just gone from their beds the next day. He tried to file a missing person’s report and was laughed off. Someone told him that if they filed missing person reports now, the cops would never get anything else done. Poor Steve had to swallow his pride and call Tom for advice. He wanted to know how he could get somebody somewhere to help him look for his kidnapped kids. Tom told him he’d maybe be a little more sympathetic if he didn’t have a grieving mother to take care of too and if Steve would quit being so naïve as to think someone kidnapped millions of kids all at the same time.”

  “Basically,” Tom interjected, “I just reminded him that he wasn’t the only father to lose children that day. I mean, that may not have sounded too sensitive, but did he really think law enforcement was going to help him find his two kids when the whole world was grieving the loss of millions? Even Josey was realistic enough to know there was no future in driving six hundred miles to look for her boys.”

  “But don’t think I didn’t consider it,” she said.

  Vicki couldn’t imagine the pain of losing your own child. It was hard enough for her to miss her big brother and little sister, and she felt guilty every day for the way she had treated her parents, right up until the time they disappeared. It was no wonder the world was in such chaos. There were millions of grieving mothers all over the world, hoping against hope that whatever these disappearances were, wherever their children had gone, it was not painful or frightening for them. The hardest part for parents whose children have been victims of crime, she knew from a mother in the trailer park, is imagining the fear and pain and loneliness of their last minutes alive. Vicki’s neighbor, whose daughter had been kidnapped, said her worst nightmare was her complete inability to do anything for her child in the moment of her greatest need.

  Vicki felt a flash of inspiration, a question crossing her mind that surprised even her. She hesitated, wondering if she should actually say it aloud. Before she could talk herself out of it, it talked itself out of her. “So, is that why you’re so interested in knowing whether these people are in heaven? Because of your sons?”

  “Of course,” Josey said. “If I thought this was some kind of an alien invasion or attack from some foreign power, I’d rather die than think my boys are scared to death and suffering, or that they’ve been killed. They’re dead to me unless they come back anyway, but I have to know they’re all right.”

  “Nobody can tell you that for sure,” Tom said.

  “He’s been saying that all along,” Josey said, “and I know he means well. But someone must know. I’m not asking you to say something just to make me feel good, but—”

  Vicki was glad when Judd finally decided to chime in. “If they disappeared right out of their pajamas in the middle of the night of the Rapture, then they’re in heaven. You don’t have to believe that, but that’s the only explanation that makes sense to me.”

  “Well,” Josey said, “thank you for that, anyway.”

  Lionel was talking straight with Talia Grey. He had run through all the verses Talia had heard in church from childhood. He started with the fact that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) and that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). He said there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved. He reminded her that she could not earn her salvation, that it is “not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy” that God saves us. He added that Ephesians 2:8-9 makes it clear that we’re saved by grace and that not of ourselves, not of works “lest anyone should boast.”

  With Bruce out in the hall, Lionel said, “You’ve got to be honest with me, Talia. I don’t know what you and your brother and LeRoy were running out of my house, but if it was a burglary ring or dope selling or whatever, you’re gonna wind up in jail for a long time, just like them. They’re going to try to get you in on André’s murder too, and—”

  “There’s no way! I loved him! I knew nothing about that! I would have tried to stop LeRoy if I’d known he was gonna do that.”

  “I’m saying that LeRoy and Cornelius will try to say you were in on it.”

  “How could they?”

  “Criminals turn on each other all the time. André told me that.”

  “But Connie’s my brother, and me and LeRoy go way back!”

  “You know them better than I do. But didn’t you tell me that Connie has already tried to kill you?”

  Talia slapped a palm on the table, rousing the attention of the guard, who asked if everything was all right. “We’re all right,” Talia snapped. “Mind your business.”

  Lionel knew she was upset because she realized he was right. The only people she had left in the world would leave her high and dry if they thought it would do them any good. “Don’t you think you ought to make sure about you and God before you go to trial or even to county jail? You never know what’s going to happen to you.”

  “That’s why I asked you to come here,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”

  “What’s to think about? You grew up with this just like I did, and your mother was raptured just like she warned you about.”

  “I know.”

  “It takes more than knowing.”

  “I want to do this. But I’m not going to be pushed into it. I have to do this on my own.”

  “Fine. Then do it.”

  “Who do you think you are, talkin’ to me like this? You’re what, thirteen?”

  “Talia, that has nothing to do with anything, and you know it. I’m being straight with you because you talk that way to people. I wish someone had talked to me this way before it was too late.”

  “Let me talk to the preacher man a second.”

  “Time’s up,” the guard said.

  “No it ain’t!” Talia exploded. “Not yet!”

  “Yes, it is,” the cop said, entering.

  “I’m ’bout to get saved, so let that preacher in here now.”

  “You’re what?”

  “You heard me, now give me a minute.”

  The cop hesitated, looking at the glaring Talia and then at Lionel, who responded with a pleading look of his own.

  “Awright, you trade places with the preacher man, and he’s got two minutes.”

  SIX

  New Lives

  “HERE’S the thing,” Josey was saying, crying openly. “I knew all that channeling, crystal, New Age stuff had nothing for me, but I was desperate. I had not been to church since I was a little girl, but I remembered there was supposed to be a God who loved me.”

  “Why didn’t you go back to church?” Vicki asked.

  “I believed what everyone else was saying. People said the church was full of hypocrites, that institutionalized religion caused more problems than it solved, that God was in all of us and that we could find him within ourselves. In fact, if some could be believed, we could be gods ourselves. It just seemed to me that the closer I got to finding the god within me, the farther I felt from a real God, if there was one. Then someone invited me to a Bible study. That wasn’t scary. It didn’t sound like church. It was just a place to read the Bibl
e and talk about it.”

  “What have you learned so far?” Vicki asked.

  “That’s just it. I think I’ve got all the basics. If I can just accept the fact that there’s nothing I can do to make this happen, I’ll—”

  “Make what happen?” Tom Fogarty said, suddenly interested. “What is it exactly that you want to happen, hon? You want to make sure there’s pie in the sky by and by for you, or do you just want to cover all your bases so you’ll get to see your boys again, in case they’re in heaven?”

  Josey turned to face him, and Vicki wondered if she was angry. She didn’t appear to be, though she may have had a right to be. “No, Tom. I don’t know. I want to be sure, and I want to know God. I have no idea where my boys are, but I have this feeling that if I can know God, I can know that too.”

  “I just worry,” Tom said, “that this is simply another short-term interest of yours, something with an ulterior motive. Seeing your boys again is a worthy goal, of course, but you see what I’m saying.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing, Tom,” Josey said, “this is no phase, no novelty. I’m desperate for God, and I won’t stop searching till I find him. It’s about the boys, yes, and it’s about heaven, yes, and it’s about fear over being left behind. But forgetting all that, I have to believe God knows me, knows about me, cares about me. If he loves me, I want to know it and know him.”

  Ryan surprised Vicki by talking directly to Tom. “What do you think, Sergeant Fogarty? Do you think we’re all wrong about the disappearances?”

  “I don’t know what to think, Ryan. One of my detective partners, Eddie Edwards, I think he’s really intrigued by all this. He thinks he has it figured out because so many people who talked about the Rapture were among those who disappeared. But there are also a lot of people missing who never talked about it. What about them?”

  “You don’t have to talk about it to believe it,” Judd said. “My dad wasn’t real big about telling other people, but he’s gone.”

  “But if he knew, why didn’t he say so? Why didn’t people tell everyone about this before it was too late, if that is really what this was?”

  “They’re telling us now,” Josey said.

  Tom Fogarty’s beeper sounded. “Excuse me,” he said, glancing at it and then looking for a phone. He looked at Judd, who pointed to one on the wall in the kitchen. A minute later Tom came back with an apology. “I have to run,” he said. “I can come back for you, Josey, or you can come along.”

  “I’ll stay if you don’t mind, hon,” she said. “What’s up?”

  “Banks and Grey attempted a jailbreak while Eddie and two uniforms were escorting them to a deposition. Grey and Eddie were wounded. Grey’s not serious. Eddie might be in trouble.”

  Vicki glanced at Judd, who had seemed so eager to talk to Eddie. Judd was pale, and he stood. “Can I come with you?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  Bruce was quiet on their way out of the jail. Lionel asked him what had happened with Talia, but he just put a finger to his lips. “Tell you in the car,” he said.

  After starting the car and putting on his seat belt, Bruce let his head fall back, and he sighed. He shook his head. Lionel waited, knowing Bruce would tell him when he was good and ready. “Well,” Bruce said finally, “she prayed the prayer, as they say, and she said the right words, but I don’t know.”

  “Don’t know what?”

  “Her motives or her sincerity. I think she’s mostly scared of her brother and LeRoy. She might be scared of going to hell too, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Who wouldn’t be? Lots of people become believers based on that kind of fear. But I’m afraid what Talia really wants, why she wanted to pray with me instead of with you, is for me to get her a lawyer.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “Oh, sure. I’ll make a few calls. We have lawyers attending the church. But if she was sincere about her faith, I’d like to see her get serious about Bible study, get a chaplain to counsel her, get into a church even in jail. I assume she’s not into this crime spree and the murders as deeply as her brother and LeRoy are—at least I hope she’s not—but still she could be in jail a long time. She’d better not wait till she’s free to start exercising her faith. You remember the parable of the seed that falls on the different kinds of soil? I can’t think of anything or any place worse for new seed than prison. She could come out of there hard as a rock, where the seed can’t grab hold and sprout.”

  Judd noticed that Tom Fogarty’s own car was the same size as his squad car but a lot roomier. There was no radio, no shotgun, no computer screen, none of the stuff that crowds the dashboard of a police cruiser. Tom looked worried and drove fast. Judd was buckled in, but he also braced himself and tried to engage Tom in conversation.

  “What’d they tell you about Eddie? How bad is it?”

  “Not good,” he said. “You know officers don’t carry weapons inside the jail, because if a prisoner jumps you and disarms you, you’ve got trouble. So Eddie and whoever else he was with would have checked their guns with the jailer, then escorted the handcuffed prisoners down the hall and into the parking garage for a ride to the courthouse or wherever they had to go.”

  “So where would Grey and Banks have gotten guns?”

  “Probably from a cop either in the garage, the elevator, or even one of the vehicles.”

  “Those jailbreaks never work, do they?”

  “Not usually. A guy jumped a woman officer in the elevator downtown once and disarmed her, killed her, killed a guard, and wasn’t shot himself until he had gotten free and was out on the ramp. I hope he enjoyed his freedom. It lasted maybe fifteen to twenty seconds.”

  “What kind of a shoot-out was this one with Grey and Banks?”

  “Quick, I guess. They usually are, but sometimes they get to be drawn-out things. They tell me one of them, probably Banks, grabbed someone’s gun and shot Eddie in the face before he had a chance to respond. Three cops fired at the prisoners, apparently blowing off Grey’s ear. Banks immediately surrendered.”

  “Sounds like the whole thing took just seconds.”

  “Probably, but depending on where Eddie was hit, it could last him a lifetime.”

  “You don’t know how serious it was?”

  “He’s unconscious, that’s all I know. And that’s not a good sign. Sometimes these facial wounds are bloody but don’t do much structural or organ damage unless they lodge in the eye or the nasal passage. If he’s unconscious because of the wound, it could be brain penetration. That would be bad. He might never regain consciousness.”

  “Could he die?”

  “I don’t even want to think about that. He’s the youngest guy in Homicide, but I worked with him for years. Met him when he first came over. Energetic, smart, good team guy. A cop’s cop. You know what the worse thing is? I got a call earlier today from downtown, congratulating me on the Banks bust. Said I was next in line to get back into Homicide but that they didn’t have a spot for me just yet. They said to be patient and I’d get my chance again.”

  “And you wanted that?”

  “More than anything, but I sure don’t want it this way.”

  It took Tom just minutes to get onto the expressway, and he wasn’t afraid to take chances, to ride on the shoulder even without an emergency light. If he got stopped, Judd assumed, he would just let the officer know he was on the job, and he would be waved on.

  Judd wanted to find out why Fogarty seemed so uninterested in God when his wife seemed so eager to learn everything she could. But Judd didn’t know how to ask. “You know, Mr. Edwards seemed really interested in talking with me about the Rapture and stuff.”

  “I noticed that.”

  “Was he just being polite, teasing me?”

  “I don’t think so. He’s not that kind of a guy.”

  “But even though your wife is interested, you don’t seem to be.”

  “I’m not.”

  Well, Judd thought, at least that was honest.
Tom was a straightforward kind of a guy. He liked directness and wasn’t afraid of disagreement. “Why not?” Judd asked.

  “You really want to know?” Fogarty asked.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “It might offend you. I can see you’re really into this. I wouldn’t want to be the one responsible for changing your mind.”

  “You couldn’t.”

  “Fair enough,” Fogarty said. “I’ll tell you exactly why. I was raised in a church where I was taught that God was love, but also that if you died with one sin on your soul, you went to hell. I couldn’t make that compute. I quit the church as soon as I was old enough to make my own decisions. I still carried around in my head the belief that there was a God, but that he was a God of love. Not an angry judge, not a crabby parent. Not someone who would create a person and burn him up later.”

  Judd wanted to argue. Bruce had taught the kids that hell was a judgment for sin and that it had to do with justice. But God didn’t want anyone to die and go to hell. He had given the world so many chances to be saved that there was no reason anybody had to go to hell. Judd sat silent, but Fogarty had just warmed up. As he wheeled around traffic and went as fast as the jam would allow him, he continued.

  “I was OK with that view of God for a lot of years, even after I became a cop. But then stuff started to not add up. When I got into Homicide I saw stuff nobody should ever have to see.”

  “But you like it. You want to get back into it.”

  “It’s where the action is, and I’m good at it. I feel I’m accomplishing something and helping people when I solve a case and put bad guys away. But I sure grew up in Homicide. I quit thinking of God as someone who made sense. In fact, I don’t know if I believe there’s a God at all anymore. How could there be a God, in charge of everything, who would allow the things I’ve seen? People bludgeoned and mutilated, usually by someone they love and trust. I’ve seen parents murder their own children, children murder their own parents. I’ve seen people go through things that no one should ever have to endure. Where is God in that?”