Chapter 21
“Where are you taking me?” Lori asked, thickly.
I looked at her. She was still high or drunk or both, but she was alert enough to be afraid.
“Home, Lori, I’m taking you back to your family.”
She considered that for a moment, and then her countenance crumbled. She shook her head.
“I can never go home again,” she sobbed. “Please turn around.”
Tears were streaming down her face. She buried her face in her hands.
“No, Lori, it’ll be OK. Don’t worry. We’ll be in Tyler in a couple of hours.”
When she looked up again her expression was calculated.
“Come on baby, if you turn around, I’ll make it worth your while. Whatever you want, just turn around and I’ll do you right here.” She put her hand on my thigh.
She was trying to look seductive, but her face was somewhat slackened by whatever chemicals she had ingested and her cheap, pink wig was crooked and messed up. Her face was streaked with makeup and tears, under all of that were the frightened eyes of a barely sixteen year old girl, now hardened and desperate.
“Stop it,” I snapped.
She pulled back away from me and sneered.
“What, you’re gay? You like boys? I can hook you up.”
“Lori, do you have any idea how much you are loved?”
She laughed. “Oh, mister, you have no idea how much I’ve been ‘loved’.”
I gritted my teeth.
After a few minutes she tried another tactic.
“If you don’t pull over and let me out right now, I’ll tell people you raped me.”
I ignored her.
“Please mister. Just stop the car and let me out. I’ll be fine.”
“Why don’t you want to go home, Lori?”
She looked out the window on her side for a little while. “Look at me. Don’t you get it?” she pleaded.
I nodded.
“Doesn’t matter,”
“You don’t get it. You don’t know what I am, what I’ve done. How can I ever go back to my family or my friends?”
“You are God’s child, and He loves you.”
“Oh, you’re a preacher. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord, and pass the offering plate.”
“Do I look like a preacher?”
She stared at me for a moment.
“Are you a cop?”
“No ma’am.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is John Wesley Tucker. Your parents hired me to find you and bring you home. They love you very much. They know what you’ve been through, at least some of it, and they want you home and safe.”
Her lip quivered and she looked at me intently. “How can I ever be safe? Orlando will come after me. Now my family will be in danger! I don’t know what he’ll do to me!” She wailed.
“Orlando has no idea where you are. He was asleep on the floor when we left. If his friends describe this car, it has New York license plates. If he does come to Tyler, looking for you, he’ll find me. He won’t like that.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
I looked at her and smiled.
“Live, Lori. Finish growing up, finish school, have a healthy, normal life.”
She was quiet for a time.
“Do you really think I can, mister?”
I smiled again.
“I know you can. Your parents will do whatever it takes to help you get it sorted out. So will I.”
“I just don’t think I can.”
I nodded. “It’s nearly 3:30 in the morning, you’ve been through hell. You’re beaten down and wiped out. No wonder you don’t think you can. Have a little faith, Lori. If not in yourself, then have faith in God. You’re right, you know, you probably can’t do it by yourself, but you don’t have to. You’ll see. Just relax and watch for the miracle.”
She shook her head. “That’s easy for you to say.”
We drove on in silence for a while.
We got back to Tyler just before 5:00 AM.
I took Lori directly to her parents. After the initial wake up and shock of having her home, after all the coffee, tears and prayers, I left them with instructions to call me if there was a complication. By “complication” I meant Orlando Cruz.
It was 6:15 when I got back to my apartment.
I would have to charge Lori’s parents for two days work.
When I got to the office, I told Christine about Lori.
“The poor girl, how will she ever get over something like that?”
“Earlier this morning, she became a Christian. She’s born again. God will heal her and direct her paths.”
Christine rolled her eyes.
“There you go again. ‘God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life’,” She mocked. “Would it be the same loving God who let that jackass take her away from her family and pimp her out? Was that his wonderful plan for her life? Is it the same loving God who causes horrific storms, and earthquakes, destroying thousands of people’s lives? Is it the loving God who unleashes pestilence and disease on his children, or sits by idly watching babies starve to death?”
“Christine, God doesn’t cause those things. We all live on the same violent planet. This is a fallen and dangerous world. The things you mention are all caused by our separation from God. The sin of man has led to the sickness of the whole creation. In this case, Lori put herself in a bad situation. Yes, God let her do it. He lets us all make our own choices, and we get to live with the consequences of our choices. He also forgives His children when we sin. He sent a Redeemer to pay the ultimate and final penalty, His only son. How much more loving can He be?”
She shook her head.
“You Christians believe you are the only ones this ‘loving God’ of yours will let into heaven. Everyone else gets sent to hell.”
“Not exactly, Christine, God doesn’t desire that anyone should go to hell. Hell is meant for the enemies of God, those who oppose Him. Some people think all people are God’s children. That is simply not the case. God’s children are those who acknowledge Him as their father in heaven. He simply offers the gift of salvation through Jesus to anyone and everyone who will receive it. People get to choose, to accept the gift or to reject it. Anyone may come to Him and be adopted as His child. Anyone may choose not to come to Him. Heaven or hell, they get to choose the destination for themselves.”
“It isn’t fair John. Why do the innocent suffer? Why do the wicked prosper? If your God is such a good guy, why does he sit around and do nothing, as decent people waste away to cancer, and let us kill each other, while we poison the planet?”
I nodded. I felt the same pain. There is horror all around us.
“If there is no God, as you seem to presume, then everything in life is random. If there is a God, by definition, He is different from us. He is more than we are capable of understanding, well beyond our judgment, or our limitations. You expect fairness, according to your definition. He won’t fit into any box made by any ordinary human being. Why do you think you have a right to be the one to judge a holy God?”
“Well, you seem to think you have God all figured out. You are the only one who ‘gets him’.”
“No, that’s not it at all. I’ve known Him a long time. The only thing I’m sure of is I don’t ‘get’ Him. I’m not capable of it. He constantly surprises me. He does things in ways that are hard for me to understand. That’s my limitation, not His error. I fail to hear His voice sometimes. Should He yell louder, so I can hear Him?”
She stared at me for a moment.
“No, John, He just needs to speak loud enough for me to hear Him.”
I smiled.
“He is speaking to you. You’ll hear Him soon enough.”
Later that morning, I was sitting in my office working on a fourth cup of coffee, when Christine buzzed me.
“You have a visitor. L
ieutenant Escalante, of the Tyler Police Department is here to see you.”
I checked the monitor. Sure enough, there was a clear picture of Tony, smiling at Christine.
“Well, send him on in,” I drawled.
“Nice digs, J.W.,” Tony said, by way of greeting. “That redhead is stunning.”
He sat down in one of the chairs upholstered in green fabric with hunt scenes that now sat in front of my shiny new carved oak desk.
I grinned.
“That’s Christine, and she did it all, Tony. She found this office, negotiated the deal, and decorated it herself. All I do around here is work to earn the money. She even opens the mail and pays the bills.”
“How can you possibly deserve all this?”
I shrugged.
“What brings you by, LT?”
“It’s business, actually. It seems we got a call from a local car rental agency this morning. They wanted to report their suspicion one of their cars might have been used in connection with a crime.”
I groaned.
“When our officer arrived to look at the vehicle, he found it shot to pieces. Further investigation revealed you were the man who rented the car. Is this correct?”
“Good thing I got the extra insurance,” I offered.
He scowled.
I shrugged.
“Well, I did get surprisingly good gas mileage.”
“J.W., tell me you didn’t use the car in connection with a crime.”
I told him the whole story.
“I can’t believe you were able to drive that wreck all the way back to Tyler. You only had one headlight, and part of the windshield was shattered. You could have hit a deer or gotten a ticket.”
“Here’s the thing, Tony. That guy Orlando, may show up here in Tyler. If he does, he’ll try to take her back.”
“It’s a little late for you to be thinking about what he might do. I looked at the rental car. There were nine bullet entrance holes in it and six exit holes. The car is smashed and battered. It’s a miracle you survived. Why didn’t you just have the Dallas PD arrest him?”
“Arrest him for what, Tony, statutory rape? She wouldn’t have cooperated with the police. She’s terrified of him.”
He considered my perspective for a moment.
“It sounds like he probably has a record. I’ll look into it. His friends are probably gangstas; I’ll look into that as well. This is the second time you’ve been shot at, in what, two months? Did you shoot anybody?”
I shook my head.
“Good, I suspect you’re probably guilty of disturbing the peace, up there in Oak Cliff, but that’s their problem.”
He reached behind his back and drew my Browning Hi Power from his waistband, and handed it to me.
“I know you’ve been missing this. We don’t need it anymore, so there you go. Use it in good health,” he smirked.
I grinned.
“There’s something else. I looked up the license number on the black SUV, which you said has been following you. Would you like to know who it’s registered to?”
I was shocked!
“Tony, I didn’t ask you to …”
He held up a hand.
“Forget it, J.W. Do you want to know, or not?”
“I think I already know.”
“Yeah, who do you think it is?”
I put my finger tips together and considered what I had seen on the video footage.
“Is it a guy by the name of Walter Farley?”
Tony shook his head. “Nope, I’ve never heard of him.”
“You’re kidding. I could have sworn it would be him.”
Tony shook his head again.
“Sorry, Sherlock, the car is registered to the World Wide Security Agency.”