by Ninie Hammon
About three years ago, he had contacted the brother-in-law of an inmate who’d been Billy Ray’s bunkmate until he died of cancer. The brother-in-law fenced jewels and precious metals, and over time he and Billy Ray had set up a business relationship without either one of them ever mentioning the exact nature of the transactions they’d be conducting.
That’s how he’d come by the big deal, the important deal, the one that would buy back his future. One of the phone calls Billy Ray had made was to the man who’d be running the big deal. Left him a message saying his end of the bargain was set in place. The second was to his “business partner.” By the end of the week, Billy Ray would cash in one of the bars, and he’d have all the money he would need to fund his own personal venture, the only venture that mattered to him. Finding Becca!
But it occurred to him that he might not have to spend a dime in that endeavor, that what he wanted to know might be just one conversation away.
CHAPTER 16
2011
Andi was seated on the counter where the jailer had set her so he could show her the antique jail keys he kept on display on the wall.
“That one looks like the key to the castle that Yellin gave them after Fessik burst into flames and pretended he was the Dread Pirate Roberts and scared the Brute Squad, and they ran away,” she told Jack, swinging her feet back and forth beneath her.
Princess Bride. Had to be. Though he had neither seen the movie nor read the book, Jack could quote most of the dialogue, courtesy of Andi’s obsession with it.
She was studying the key and didn’t look up when the jailer came back down the stairs. Theresa came next. Becca was behind Theresa, so small Jack didn’t see her until Theresa moved out of the way.
That’s when Andi saw her, too.
She instantly let out a squeal, hopped down off the counter and bolted toward Becca. The force of her impact when she threw her arms around Becca almost bowled her over. Becca seemed to melt. She disengaged Andi’s arms from around her waist long enough to sink to one knee in front of the child. Then she grabbed Andi in a mighty hug, and they clung to each other.
“Haven’t seen each other in a while, huh,” the jailer observed.
“Actually, they’ve never met,” Jack said and dragged his eyes away from Becca and Andi long enough to look at Theresa. She was staring at them too, of course, as shocked as he was, only she was smiling. Jack found himself smiling, too.
“Never met?” the jailer said.
“Princess Buttercup said I’d meet you today,” Andi said, holding Becca every bit as tight as Becca held her. “Well, she’s not really Princess Buttercup. The lady made out of light just looks like Princess Buttercup so I won’t be afraid of her. But she didn’t say it would be you. I mean, I didn’t know the person we were coming here to see would be who she was talking about. Sometimes, she tells me things that don’t make any sense, and then when I figure them out, it’s not what I was thinking at all.”
Becca didn’t say anything, just held Andi tight with her eyes squeezed shut and such a look of joy on her haggard features that Jack again had the sense that he was witnessing a holy moment.
“You telling me those two don’t know each other,” the jailer asked, and the question seemed to break the spell and the light in the room dimmed. It was only then that Jack realized there had been a luminescence coming from Becca and Andi, a glow. It was a brightness that didn’t cast shadows, lit up everything it touched, front and back sides. The glow had replaced the ugly yellow light cast by the overhead fluorescents and had been reflected in the dark windowpanes, like a warm fire on a hearth, only not flickering.
It wasn’t the first time Jack had seen a glow like that. That day at the burning warehouse when he’d rushed into the impenetrable smoke to find Theresa, he’d been guided to her by the same kind of glow. And years before, he’d seen it, that summer when he was twelve years old.
After they left, they stopped to grab carryout pizza and hadn’t driven five miles before Andi and Becca were sound asleep in the back seat. Andi’s head was in Becca’s lap.
“Do you know what all that”—he waved his hand back toward Hendersonville in a kind of all-inclusive gesture—"was about?” Jack asked Theresa quietly.
“Not for sure, but I can guess. Can’t you?”
Jack said nothing.
“I swear, son, you ’spect the good Lord to drop a piano on your head?”
“No, actually, I had in mind skywriting,” Jack said. “‘Dear Jack, I showed you that demons exist. Well, guess what—so do angels. Sincerely, God’ In purple. In Hebrew.”
“You read Hebrew, do you?”
“Only in purple. So…you’re saying there was an angel in that room?”
“You didn’t see it?”
“You did?”
“Not the form of it, but the light. The joy. You didn’t feel the good?”
“There could have been a whole herd of angels, and I don’t think I’d have felt…the good. I think only good people are aware of that, and I have too much…dark in me.”
Theresa made a humph sound in her throat.
“Everybody always thinks they own bad’s worse’n everybody else’s. They let they bad block out the light so’s they can’t see it even when it’s shining in their very own faces. I ’spect that’s what happened to Becca.”
“What did she tell you?” Jack couldn’t hold on to the question any longer, had to know if Becca still had the memories of that summer that had been wiped from his and Daniel’s minds—if she remembered how three children had defeated a monster demon. And if she knew anything about a nursing home and a can of gasoline.
“Not as much as you’d think and a whole lot of it didn’t make no sense, or ain’t real. I think I know what’s wrong with her, though, at least, part of what’s wrong. PSTD…or PDTS or whatever—”
“PTSD. Posttraumatic stress disorder.”
“Yeah, like soldiers get who’ve just come home from a war—seein’ things that ain’t there, reliving things. If anybody ever earned PTSD, it’s Becca Hawkins. The battle she was in took her a whole lot further out there into the dark than I ever plan to venture my own self.”
She saw the confused look on his face.
“Becca touched pure evil. She went up against it and it got to her somehow and now she can’t get away from it. Or thinks she can’t and that ’mounts to the same thing.”
“Does she remember?”
Theresa looked at him sadly. “No, she don’t,” she said. “She’s as clueless about what you children did that summer as you and Daniel—a piece of memory here, a snip there. I’m sorry, Jack.”
They drove on in silence for a time, Jack trying to come to terms with the reality that nobody could tell them how to destroy the efreet. And nobody could tell him what part he might have played in the fire that killed one hundred and sixty people in the Twin Oaks Nursing Home.
“Where’s she been, Theresa? What’s she been doing?”
“Ever’where and ever’thing. I didn’t get but a little peek into it. She spent a goodly amount of time locked up.”
“In prison?”
“In a mental hospital.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think! Her goin’ round talking about flaming monsters and demons made out of flies. They come after her in legions, armies of them, trying to beat her down. And she didn’t have nothing to hold to so they trampled her.”
“Nothing to hold on to…?”
“I don’t know, but best I can make out is that somehow…Becca let go of the light. The light didn’t let go of her, of course. It don’t never let go. But long’s she wouldn’t look at it, couldn’t see it through her own dark…they come at her then.”
“And after the mental hospital?”
“She wandered. Homeless. She’d get her some job washin’ dishes or cleanin,’ stay until a demon come along, and then she’d run, don’t even remember where all she went.”
Jack thought of the
clean-cut football player at the convenience store.
“I think she does remember a lot about when the three of you took on that efreet, but them memories is distorted now, real all tangled up with not real. Forgetting was a blessing, son, make no mistake about it, and Becca didn’t get that blessing.”
“Forgetting isn’t a blessing for me. Those pictures of me going into Twin Oaks…” He paused and tried not to sound as troubled as he really was. “What did I do there? Did I…participate? Did I…join the Bad Kids?” He laughed with no humor at all. “Had to learn the secret handshake and wear the magic decoder ring.”
“Course you didn’t.”
“You don’t know that and neither do I.”
“You will. When you need to, the Lord’s gone show you.”
“I need to now. The ATF called Major Crocker and said they’d be sending an agent down to talk to me. I need to be able to answer questions with more than ‘I don’t remember.’”
There was one thing he did remember, though, had been remembering for months. He remembered Isaac, a tall, broad-shouldered young man with Bishop’s strength and Theresa’s kind eyes. He could hear the sound of his laughter—rich and full, and recall how he could throw a pitch so fast it’d burn right through the leather of a catcher’s mitt. Theresa had been so shattered by her son’s disappearance she was in a daze that whole summer, too tuned out to know what was going on around her. What Jack remembered about Isaac he couldn’t share with Theresa, had never told anyone. Whatever it was that had happened to Isaac……it had been Jack’s fault. He didn’t know about the fire, but he was absolutely certain about Isaac. And one day, he would remember what he’d done.
******
When the police came for Daniel on Saturday afternoon, they didn’t truss him up in handcuffs, but he was still glad he’d sent Andi off with Jack and Theresa that morning, grateful she wasn’t there to see him ushered out of the house and hauled away in a dark sedan with men in suits on either side of him in the back seat.
They’d made it clear he wasn’t being arrested—yet. They just wanted to ask him some questions. If Clayton hadn’t insisted on it the day before, Daniel wouldn’t have had the good judgment to tell the officers that he wanted to have his attorney present for the questioning.
“You use every weapon at your disposal—which in your case means getting the best legal advice money can buy.” Clayton said he’d handle that part, that the church would pay for all Daniel’s legal fees, would find the best criminal lawyer in Cincinnati to represent him and Theresa Washington, too, since she was in the crosshairs of the same evil Daniel was.
Daniel hadn’t even had time to think of legal representation, had no idea it would all happen so fast. In the back of the police car on the way to the station, the officers allowed him to use his cell phone to call Clayton, who hadn’t been in. Daniel left a message saying the church’s “top legal advice” needed to meet him at the police station this afternoon because he had been taken in for questioning.
Daniel was left alone in a different interrogation room this time, one that looked like it’d come right off the set of CSI—table, chairs and one-way mirror included. He sat there for a time before he heard muted voices in the hallway outside.
“Unless you intend to lodge formal charges against my client, I want him released right now.” Though Daniel couldn’t hear the voice well, the air of authority in the words would make any client glad to have the man on his side. “…haven’t even had a chance to speak to my client…” The voices moved on down the hallway and Daniel caught “…insist on questioning him today, I will advise him not to utter a single syllable.”
A few minutes later, one of the officers who’d come to pick Daniel up opened the door and told him he was free to go.
When Daniel turned the corner at the end of the hallway outside the room, he got his first look at the attorney Clayton had hired for him. He was dressed in a polo shirt and khakis, like he’d been ready to go play golf. And perhaps he had been, but the rain had canceled his plans for the afternoon. Daniel stopped still, but the man was too engaged in conversation to notice.
“My client will be glad to cooperate with the police in any possible way in this investigation and will work with you to come in for an interview sometime next week. Do you gentlemen have a problem with that?”
The attorney turned then and saw Daniel standing in the hallway, still as a statue. A look crossed his face that was utterly unreadable. Then he told Daniel simply, “I’ll give you a ride home.”
Daniel found himself nodding, mostly out of surprise and shock, then walked toward the elevator beside the attorney Clayton and the church had hired to represent him, who was, indeed, the best legal advice money could buy. And who was also the man Emily had been having an affair with right before she died.
As soon as the elevator doors closed, Jeff Kendrick said, “Because Clayton is an old family friend and when he asked me, I couldn’t come up with a good reason why not on the spot.” He didn’t look at Daniel. It flashed through Daniel’s mind that he really ought to make it a personal policy from now on to take the stairs. Some of the worst moments in his life in the past three days had been in elevators. “I knew you’d refuse my counsel and that would be the end of it, but Clayton called me a little while ago and said you’d been taken in. On Saturday…there was no time to find somebody else.”
The elevator reached the basement, the doors opened and both men stepped out into the parking garage. Kendrick turned to Daniel and looked him in the eye. Daniel felt a surge of emotions as tangled up as last year’s Christmas lights.
“Short and sweet,” Kendrick said. “From what Clayton told me, the assault and rape charges are your biggest problem. A murder charge would be a stretch. They may have motive, but they’d still have to come up with evidence linking you to the crime and not having an alibi doesn’t constitute evidence. But the other—the surveillance camera footage is evidence and so is the lineup. And—”
Daniel hit him.
He smashed his fist into Kendrick’s face. The attorney staggered backward, collided with a concrete pillar and slid down it to the floor. Blood poured out of his nose and split lip, ran down his chin and began to drip on his clean polo shirt.
The sudden violence probably surprised Daniel as much as it did Kendrick. He’d never hit anybody—not as an adult—had never even considered it. And he hadn’t “considered” hitting Kendrick. He’d just done it. The images that haunted his waking and dreaming moments ever since he found out, images of Emily and…he’d just let go.
Kendrick sat dazed for a moment, then reached into his pocket for a handkerchief and began wiping the blood off his face. Daniel gradually became aware of the thundering of his heart in his ears and the smell of exhaust fumes mixed with the clean scent of rain. His knuckles throbbed.
The man on the dirty concrete looked up at him.
“I take it this means you don’t want me to represent you.” He started to rise, then sank back. “Can I get up, or do you plan to deck me again?”
Daniel said nothing. Kendrick got slowly to his feet, holding the bloody handkerchief to his mouth with one hand and using the other to brush the dust off his khaki pants.
“Don’t expect me to be noble and say I deserved that,” he said and continued to brush at his pants. “But maybe I did. Yeah, I probably did.”
Still Daniel remained silent.
“You need to know—I am going to take your friend’s case, Theresa Washington’s, if they charge her,” Kendrick said.
“Why?” Daniel realized that was the first word he’d spoken to Kendrick since he’d seen him standing in the hallway upstairs.
“Because Clayton Abernathy came to every one of my baseball games—when every other little boy had a father in the stands, he was there for me.” He swiped at the blood still running out of his nose and then pressed the handkerchief hard to his split lip. “He paid my way through law school.” He sniffed, but still the blood
flowed. “And because I believe she’s innocent.” He looked Daniel in the eye. “I think you’re both innocent.”
“Why?” Daniel asked again.
“Because Clayton believes you, that somebody is trying—”
“No. Why…Emily?”
Her name still tore a hole in his gut every time he said it. He was surprised by the look of pain—grief?—that crossed Kendrick’s face.
“You’re not entitled to that one,” he snapped. “It’d take more than one sucker punch to make me go there.” Then he shook his head, gave Daniel a wry smile. “I’d have taken her away from you, Daniel. I absolutely would have, in a New York minute! I tried to take her away from you.”
Kendrick leaned over abruptly and began fussing with the papers that had scattered on the floor, like he wanted a moment to gather his composure. Daniel remembered then that Kendrick was a champion kickboxer. Sure, Daniel caught him totally off guard, but the man could have wiped up the parking garage floor with Daniel if he’d wanted to.
Kendrick collected the last page and stood.
“Because of who you are, I’m betting the prosecutor won’t want to get anywhere near this one. He’ll make the grand jury take the heat, present his evidence and let them issue an indictment. So you’ve got a week, maybe ten days. But whether he charges you or they do, you are in deep poop, my friend.” He handed Daniel the papers. “The ‘victim’ picked you out of a lineup, and with her dead, her initial statement to the police stands as is. No chance to go after her in a deposition, get her to explain why she never screamed, why she refused a rape kit. No chance to pick her story apart piece by piece on the stand. There’s just her statement and it sounds pretty damning.”
“I didn’t touch her.”
“Of course you didn’t. But it’s a bear to win a case when there’s a videotape of your client committing the crime and the victim's underwear is in his pocket.”
He swiped at his lip and looked at the handkerchief. It had finally stopped bleeding. He reached into his suit coat pocket and took out a business card. “I’d appreciate it if you’d give this to Mrs. Washington,” he said, and handed it to Daniel. “Tell her I’ll call her early next week so we can talk.”