Evidence of Mercy

  “Maybe too much. Anyway, I’ve kind of reconciled myself to giving it up for a while.”

  “What a waste,” he said, his gaze returning to the sky. “You can fly and don’t want to while I’d give my right arm to fly—and can’t.”

  Lynda followed his gaze to the sky.

  “They replaced me, you know,” he went on. “I got flowers from my boss at TSA. I called him to thank him, and he said that he’d had to find a replacement. He said they were looking into a supervisory job on the ground if I wanted it, but I told him no thanks.”

  “Well, couldn’t you at least consider it?”

  “Right now, I’m not up to considering anything. I don’t want to take a desk job, and I don’t want to be on disability, and I don’t want to be grounded for the rest of my life.”

  “You can get a medical waiver to fly with one eye, Jake, if you get use of your legs back. Maybe you can’t fly for TSA, but you’ll be able to fly again someday.”

  “But I loved my job.” His voice caught, and he let out a heavy breath. “I guess I thought that maybe . . . by some miracle . . .” His words fell off, and she saw the tears gather in his eye as he shook the thought away.

  After a moment, as if one dread reminded him of another, he spoke again. “We’re having the unveiling Monday.”

  “What unveiling?”

  He pointed to the bandage on his face. “The bandages. They’re taking them off for good.”

  “Jake, that’s wonderful.”

  Those tears seemed to well deeper. “Is it? I have a gash that goes through my eye to my cheekbone, Lynda. It was bad enough to blind me. I don’t even know how many stitches I have. Do you honestly think I’m looking forward to seeing myself?”

  “It’ll be okay. You have good doctors.”

  “It doesn’t matter how good they are if I have only one eye and a mug that would terrify children.” He looked away, as though doing so could divert her attention from his tears. “You know, I was a good-looking guy. Women liked me. It was my greatest strength.”

  “I guess that’s a matter of opinion.”

  “What? You didn’t think I was good-looking?” he asked skeptically.

  “Oh, there is no question that you were. But that wasn’t your greatest strength. It never is. Maybe you needed to stop relying on your looks so you could find what you’re really made of.”

  He felt his face reddening. “In other words, I was arrogant about my looks, so I needed to lose my face? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “No. What I am saying is that looks are just temporary, anyway. Don’t you think it’s time you go deeper into yourself to discover other strengths?”

  “Wow,” he said. “What did the doctor do? Ask you to prepare me for looking like the Elephant Man? Did he tell you to teach me to be beautiful on the inside?”

  “No. Your face is going to be fine, Jake. You lost an eye. But you can still see. You’re not blind.”

  “I’m blind enough to lose my job even if I get my legs back! What am I gonna do for a living?”

  “Not everyone who works in the airline industry is a pilot, Jake—there are other positions, even at TSA. And if that doesn’t appeal to you, you’ll find something, Jake! You’re an intelligent man. It’s going to be all right.”

  Her reassurances seemed to make him angrier, and he looked off into the trees and shook his head dolefully. “Sometimes I wish I could have your kind of naivete.”

  “I’m not naive,” she said. “In fact, I think I’m pretty savvy.” She touched his hand, and he recoiled. “Jake, look at me.”

  He moved his disgusted gaze back to her. “What?”

  “You’re scared, but it’ll be all right. In fact, I’ll be here when they take the bandages off if you want. Do you want me to be here?”

  He breathed a sarcastic laugh. “Yeah. You can give me another pep talk like this one after I see myself. You always make me feel so much better.”

  “I’m sorry, Jake,” she said. “I haven’t been trying to depress you, really. Do you want me there?”

  His shoulders wilted, and he rubbed his forehead. “Yeah, I guess so,” he said quietly. “I’ll probably need somebody in my corner.”

  “Okay, I’ll be here. And you’ll see. You’re probably even better looking now than you were before.”

  “Yeah,” he said, not believing a word. “The scar will give me character, right?”

  “Right. I happen to really like men with scars.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said. “I didn’t notice any scars on that detective friend of yours.”

  She frowned. “Who, Larry?”

  “Yeah, Larry.”

  For a moment, she stared at him blankly, and he hated himself for sounding like a jealous lover. He wasn’t jealous. He was just ... curious. “So you two are getting pretty close, aren’t you?”

  She seemed to struggle with the smile creeping across her face. “There’s something about having a maniac trying to kill you that makes you depend on the detective on the case. Call me crazy. I don’t think I’ll be seeing that much of him now, though, since they caught the guy.”

  She couldn’t tell if Jake accepted that or not or if he even wanted to. Finally she stood up. “Are you ready to go back in?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I have a hot date with Oprah. Can’t miss that.”

  “Do you want me to bring you some books Monday? Or a radio? Or a hamburger?”

  “Why don’t we get these bandages off first, and then I’ll decide if I have an appetite.”

  She looked down at him, wishing for the right words. “Are you that scared, Jake?”

  He thought for a moment then said honestly, “Scareder than I was when we were about to crash. On Monday, I might just hit bottom.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  * * *

  Wearing his shaded glasses and a fake mustache with his hair moussed back, Keith pulled into the parking lot outside the Schilling Building where Lynda worked and slowly drove through it, searching for her car. If only he could find it, he could wait for her to come out then follow her to wherever she was staying now. He could get her out of the picture once and for all and find Paige and Brianna in the bargain.

  But her car wasn’t there. It wasn’t going to happen today. He tried not to let it discourage him.

  But the clock was ticking, and recent developments hadn’t helped his case any. If he knew Lynda Barrett, she’d find some way to use his arrest against him in court, even though he’d gotten off. She was slick that way. That’s why she was dangerous. He never should have shown up that day at Brianna’s school, but after the crash, he’d felt so sure he wouldn’t meet with any resistance. If Paige didn’t have a lawyer to run to, she would start feeling defeated and give in.

  He’d always made her give in before. All those visits to the emergency room when he’d convinced her to tell the doctors that she had fallen down the stairs or been in a car accident or a dozen other creative stories he’d come up with, she had always complied.

  Until Brianna had gotten hurt.

  That, he admitted now, was his biggest mistake, but it wasn’t as if it was all his fault. They’d been arguing, he and Paige, and she’d mouthed off to him, forcing him to crack her with a back hand across the face. Brianna had started crying—that loud, shrill, eardrum-piercing screaming that drove him up the wall—and someone had to shut her up.

  It was his duty as a father to teach her to control herself.

  But, as usual, Paige had gone off the deep end. And Lynda Barrett had empowered her to leave him, once and for all, and take his little girl.

  But if he could get rid of Lynda now, he knew he could reason with Paige again. She knew he was a better parent. He made more money and could give Brianna nicer things. He could teach her self-control, teach her right from wrong. He could discipline her much more effectively than Paige, who let her run wild most of the time. And he was certain that he loved her more.

  All he had to do was catc
h up with Lynda. She would have to report to work sooner or later, and when she did, he would be waiting. What he would do then he wasn’t sure, but he knew something would come to him.

  For a while, he drove around town—as he did every day before he reported to work—looking through parking lots of hotels and apartments, driving through neighborhoods and parks, looking for Paige’s or Lynda’s car, searching for his daughter’s tawny head among the children at playgrounds.

  He had even called Lynda’s secretary, pretending he was an insurance investigator looking for her, but the woman wouldn’t tell him a thing. When he’d asked her when she expected Lynda to return to work, she’d said maybe another week or two, possibly sooner.

  He thought as he drove: What would he do when he finally caught up with her? She had escaped the crash and the fire, so this time his attack needed to be swift and vicious. And certain.

  A bomb.

  A slow smile came to his face as he flipped through the possibilities. It was easier to buy dynamite than a gun, and he knew enough about engines to rig it to her car. All he needed was a few ingredients and a window of time to plant it in the right place. Then it would be all over.

  Turning the car around, he headed for the interstate. He’d have to buy the dynamite out of town, so the cops couldn’t trace it to him after the fact. While he was at it, he should probably get a gun, too. Then if he discovered where they were all staying before Lynda returned to work, he could try one more time to get her out of the way.

  One more time was all he would need.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  * * *

  The big church that had once been like a home to Lynda was still warm and welcoming, but in many ways she felt like the Prodigal Son, covered with mud and pig slop, starving and remorseful as she returned to her Father’s house.

  At her side was Paige, holding Brianna on her hip, looking a little awkward and nervous as they stepped through the side door of the church and entered the hallway where the Sunday school classes were.

  Paige’s step slowed, and Lynda saw the trepidation on her face. “I hate to leave her. I know this sounds crazy, but what if somehow Keith found out we were coming? Or sees our car here? He’s smart, Lynda. What if he comes to her class and takes her?”

  Lynda knew she couldn’t promise that nothing would happen, not when Paige had encountered so many surprises already. “I really wanted you to come to the adult class with me, Paige,” said Lynda, “but I understand your fear and wanting to stay with Brianna.”

  “I think it’s more important right now for her to be in Sunday school,” Paige said. “Do you think they’d let me stay with her? I could help with the other kids.”

  She had half-expected Paige to flee back home. This idea was at least better than that. “I’m sure it’ll be all right,” she said. “They always need help in the preschool area.” She followed the signs to the class for three-year-olds and looked inside. A few children were already there, playing with blocks, coloring, and banging on the piano in the corner of the room. Lynda didn’t know the teacher, and sadly she realized that a whole new group of people had become family members in the church in her absence. Maybe it wasn’t even her family any more.

  The teacher welcomed Brianna with delight and immediately interested her in some Play-Doh, and Lynda waited as Paige explained that she didn’t want to leave her.

  The teacher embraced Paige as an answered prayer. “My assistant just had a baby, and I didn’t know how I was going to handle the class today. Come on over here, and you can help me get the glue out for the projects.”

  Satisfied that Paige was welcome, Lynda left the room and drifted back up the hallway, wondering if her class was still meeting in the same place. Despair and humility fell over her as she went up the hall, against the crowd beginning to get thicker and realized that the few people she did recognize didn’t notice her.

  And then she saw Brother Tommy, the pastor who’d once had such faith in her, the man who’d come to visit her in the hospital, who’d started a prayer vigil for her the moment he’d heard of the crash.

  Like the Prodigal Son, she was transformed by the joy in his eyes, and he cut through the crowd, arms outstretched to meet her.

  “It’s so good to see you, Lynda.” He hugged her carefully, as if he feared breaking her. “I’ve been waiting for you to come back.”

  Sadly, she looked around her. “I don’t even know anyone any more.”

  “Sure you do,” he said. “Come on. I’ll go with you to your class. They’ll be glad to see how their prayers have been answered.”

  The class met in the same place it had for years, and by the time the hour was over, Lynda felt accepted back into the family. When she met Paige and Brianna outside the sanctuary before the worship service, she felt so full of God’s Spirit that she had no doubt some of it would spill over onto Paige.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  * * *

  Across St. Clair, Keith Varner worked at his kitchen table with the background noise of a broadcast church service filling the dead air in his apartment. He had all the ingredients laid out on the table in front of him: fuse wires, needle-nose pliers, ten pounds of Power Prime Dynamite, a blasting cap—everything he would need to blow Lynda to kingdom come.

  All he would need was a few minutes under her car, and he could tape the bomb to her gas tank, wire it to the starter, and then get back and wait.

  He could see it now. The explosion, the fire, the ambulances that would get there too late, and the media reports. And then he’d get a call from his lawyer saying that the court date had been postponed until Paige was able to find another lawyer. Only she wouldn’t be able to get another lawyer because she had no money, and then she’d have to make a choice: either go into court to represent herself or give Brianna to him without a fight. And if she chose to represent herself, it would be a joke. Paige was not an articulate person, and she froze whenever she had to speak in front of a crowd. She would stutter and stammer and hem and haw, but she wouldn’t make her case as clearly as he and his attorney would. It wouldn’t take anything for the judge to rule that Keith was the better parent to have custody of his daughter. It was practically a done deal.

  All he had to do was make sure that—once he caught up with Lynda Barrett—she would be taken out of the picture once and for all. And if he could get her when she was parked in her office parking lot, maybe she would have Paige’s file and all of the evidence against him in her briefcase. That, too, would go up in flames.

  He heard the choir on television singing the “Hallelujah Chorus,” and with a round of laughter, he joined in.

  He had an awful lot to be thankful for.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  * * *

  Jake was sitting upright in bed when Lynda got there on Monday morning, and she stopped and smiled at him before coming all the way into the room. “You look like sitting up comes more naturally now, Jake,” she said. “Are the nausea and dizziness gone?”

  “Yes, thanks to those two sadistic slave drivers who wouldn’t let me rest until I was upright.” He grinned slightly then and added, “Actually, I’m pretty thankful for them.”

  “So am I.”

  She came further into the room and set down the bag of magazines and books she’d brought him. “So have you heard from the doctor yet?”

  His grin faded. “I’m told he’s in the building, but he hasn’t made it by yet.” He breathed a sardonic laugh. “Amazing. Getting this bandage off seems like a matter of life and death to me, and to him it’s just routine.”

  “It’s going to be all right, Jake. I know it is. Have they prepared you at all? I mean, you’ve seen yourself when they changed the bandages, haven’t you?”

  “They wouldn’t let me. The hospital shrink convinced the doctor that I couldn’t handle it. When they took my eye out after the crash, they put in an implant and attached it to the muscles. They told me it doesn’t look like an eye at all. In fact, they sai
d it looks like the inside of my mouth. Talk about bloodshot.”

  Lynda stepped closer to the bed, realizing that this might be more grim than she’d expected. “I guess I figured they had already put an artificial eye in.”

  “No, they can’t do that for another three weeks or so. Most of the swelling has to go down. Plus, they have to make the eye.

  The guy who makes them and installs them is coming by this morning, too, to fill me in on the gory details.”

  “The guy who makes them puts them in?” she asked, cringing. “Is he a doctor?”

  “Nope. An optician.”

  “An optician in the operating room?”

  “Apparently there’s no surgery involved,” he said. He glanced up at her and noted the dour expression on her face. “Hey, if you don’t want to stay, I understand. In fact, I’m not too thrilled about anybody seeing this but me.”

  “I’m staying,” she said firmly. “You’re going to need somebody here. It’s just—I didn’t realize they did it that way.”

  Groping for something to get both their minds off the dread, she glanced at the untouched breakfast tray beside his bed. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

  He shook his head. “Can’t. I don’t have much appetite today.”

  “But Jake, you’re losing so much weight.”

  “And you think that’ll detract from my good looks?” he asked sarcastically.

  “Well, it won’t help your therapy. You need your strength.”

  “I can’t eat,” he bit out. “Period. So give it a rest.”

  “Fine.”

  He reached over to his bed table and pulled out the mirror he shaved with. As he gazed into it, Lynda realized that the bandage allowed him to imagine his eye still intact and his scars perfectly healed. After it came off, however, there would be no imagining.

  “Did you know I was in a calendar once?” he asked quietly.

  “A calendar? What kind?”