Presumption of Guilt

  A knock sounded on the door, and he called, “Come in.”

  Brad, an eleven-year-old he’d been grooming for the last four years, opened the door. “Bill, you called for us?”

  “Yeah, guys, come on in.”

  Seven boys and four girls, ranging in age from eight to fifteen, filed in quietly and found places around the room. Tailing the group was little Lisa Westin, her big green eyes looking frightened and apprehensive as she stepped into his office.

  “What’s she doing here?” Brad asked with contempt. “She’s too little.”

  “She’s taking Jimmy’s place,” Bill explained.

  “Any word on Jimmy?” Brad asked.

  “No. And things don’t look good for him.”

  Bill knew that would give them all images of the child rotting in a jail cell. Enough incentive to keep them from messing things up.

  He glanced at Lisa and saw that those big eyes were full of tears. “Lisa’s already done one job for me, and she did such a good job that I thought I’d reward her by giving her a little more responsibility.”

  She didn’t look all that proud.

  “And she knows that if she botches anything up, Jimmy will be in even worse shape than he is now. You all know I can get to him if I have a point to make. There’s not a lock made, even in a jail cell, that I can’t open. You know that if you mess up, Lisa, that Jimmy will pay for it, don’t you? That’s how it works.”

  She swallowed and nodded her head.

  He turned his attention back to the others. “It’s come to my attention, people, that there’s supposed to be a newspaper article coming out about us in the paper tomorrow. It will point fingers at each of you, exposing you as thieves, and will probably result in the police arresting all of you before daylight.”

  There was a collective gasp all over the room.

  “Bill, what are we gonna do?”

  “I don’t want to go to jail!”

  “Can’t you tell them we’re not thieves?”

  Bill sat back and shrugged. “Wouldn’t do any good. They have proof. Some of you have been seen, but that’s not the worst of it. Jimmy Westin has turned state’s evidence.”

  “What’s that?” Brad asked.

  “He’s told them everything he knows about our operation.”

  “No! He wouldn’t.”

  “Au contraire.” He chuckled in his sinister way, and met the eyes of each individual kid around the room. Satisfied that he had put sufficient fear in them to manipulate them into doing anything, he smiled. “But don’t worry. Bill is going to take care of you.

  Doesn’t he always?”

  A few of them nodded.

  “I’ve got a plan. But it’s going to require a lot of hard work and a few risks. Somebody might even have to get hurt. But sometimes sacrifices have to be made. As the Good Book says, ‘Greater courage hath no man, than to lay down a life for his cause.’”

  The children all gazed somberly at him. He had them right where he wanted them.

  “Oh, don’t worry. I’m not asking any of you to lay down your lives. I just want that kind of commitment to this project—that you would if it came to it, which it won’t. No, it’s not your lives that’ll be in danger. But the people in the building . . . well, some things are just in God’s hands.”

  He looked down at the blueprint. “This, my friends, is the blueprint for the newspaper offices. In this big room, here at the back, is the printing press that puts out every copy of the newspaper that will be distributed all over town the first thing in the morning. Your job, should you decide to accept it,” he said, drawing on the Mission Impossible theme, even though he knew they didn’t have the option of refusing it, “is to stop the presses. Literally. That way, the story won’t come out, and you won’t be arrested.”

  Some of the kids let out huge breaths of relief, and Bill smiled and said, “I told you I’d take care of things, didn’t I? Now, come on over here and get around the desk, so I can show each of you what your job will be. We’ve still got a few hours before we need to go. That gives us plenty of time to plan every move.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The waiting room for the family members of those in the Intensive Care Unit was full of rumpled, tired people with lines on their faces and worry in their eyes. Beth followed Nick past the reception desk, where a woman stood consoling a family whose loved one had just been in a car accident. On the desk were two stacks of towels and a sign that said that toilet articles were available if anyone needed them.

  “They take showers up here?” Beth asked quietly.

  “Yeah. Many of these people are here twenty-four hours a day. They’re afraid to leave.”

  “But I thought visiting hours were only thirty minutes every four hours.”

  “Right. They sit by the bedside for thirty minutes, then come back to the waiting room and worry for four hours until the next visit.”

  “Seems cruel.”

  “Maybe it is. But those short visiting times are usually in the best interest of the patients. They need quiet.”

  He led her into the huge room lined with vinyl recliners and chairs. Families had nested in certain areas of the room, surrounded by books and little bags with their belongings, Walkmans, and canned drinks. It was easy to distinguish the family members from occasional visitors. They looked more worn, more stressed, more near the breaking point. In one corner, a woman crocheted an afghan furiously, and already it was big enough to cover her legs. Beth wondered when she’d started it. Across the room, someone else worked on a laptop, and next to her, a red-eyed teenaged girl did cross-stitch as if her life depended on getting every stitch exactly in line.

  The five telephones on the wall rang constantly, and they were always answered by one of those nearby. Then they would call out, “Smith family” or “Jackson family,” and someone would rush to answer it.

  “It’s like a little community up here,” Beth said.

  “Yeah. My dad was in ICU for three weeks before he died. I didn’t leave the unit except for meals. I ate those downstairs, and only if I had to. A lot of times, churches brought sandwiches and stuff right here to the waiting room.”

  “But what’s the point in staying? I mean, if you can’t visit them . . .”

  “It’s the fear that something will go wrong. That the doctor will need you to help make a decision. Even the irrational fear that if you leave, if you’re not there hanging on, they’ll slip away.”

  “I can’t imagine being sick and having someone waiting out here that diligently for me.”

  “What about your mother?” he asked.

  “She’s dead.” The words came so matter-of-factly that she feared Nick would think she was cold. The truth was, if Beth’s mother were alive, she wouldn’t have waited in the ICU waiting room for Beth anyway. The deep sadness of that fact washed over her. She was really no different than Tracy Westin, lying in there so sick with no one out here in this room, representing her and praying for her, refusing to leave because they had to stay and fight with her.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t say anything, but watched the dynamics of a family in the corner. “Poor Tracy.”

  Nick looked at her. “What do you mean?”

  “She’s all alone.”

  “We’re here.”

  “Yeah, but she doesn’t know us. We don’t love her.”

  “Yes, we do. I love her because I’m a Christian. I’m ordered to love her.”

  Beth smiled grimly at the irony. She hadn’t had much experience with love, but she knew that was wrong. “Love isn’t something you can be ordered to do, Nick. You have to feel something.”

  “Love is first something you do, Beth,” Nick said. “The feelings are important, yes, but love is a verb, not a noun. We’re here to love her because no one else is.”

  Well, there was something in that. She sat quietly for a moment, looking around the room at all the people so steeped in the act of loving. She wondered what
it would be like to have people like that caring for her, waiting hours to see her, not willing to leave for fear that she might need them. She couldn’t even fathom it.

  The crackle of the intercom quieted the room, and a voice said, “ICU visitation will begin now. The following families may go back: Anderson, Aldredge, Burton . . .” Eventually, they came to the name Westin, and Beth and Nick got up and followed the stream of visitors through the double doors into ICU. As he had promised, the doctor had bent the rules to allow Nick and Beth to visit Tracy.

  There were no doorways in ICU, only three-sided rooms open to the nursing station so that the nurses could see and hear the patients at all times. Tracy lay on her bed, sitting up at a forty-five degree angle, with an IV in her hand and an oxygen mask on her face. Several cords ran out from under her sheet and hooked to monitors that kept close watch on her vital signs.

  She looked so tiny, so emaciated. Beth hesitated at the foot of the bed, feeling like an intruder in this woman’s private hell.

  Nick went to her bedside and leaned over her. He looked carefully at her face to see if she was sleeping, but her eyes were half opened. “Tracy? Can you hear me?”

  “Don’t wake her up,” Beth said softly.

  “I don’t think she’s asleep,” he said. “Tracy, I’m Nick. The one who found you and brought you here.”

  She looked up then, and met his eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “No problem. They’re going to do everything they can for you here. Did they tell you you have double pneumonia? You’re in ICU so they can watch you real closely.”

  She closed her eyes.

  Nick looked at Beth, not sure what to do. “My friend here, Beth, knows your son. We thought—”

  Her eyes fluttered back open, and she tried to rise up.

  “Jimmy?” she asked weakly.

  “Yes,” Beth said, stepping forward. “He’s a great kid.”

  Weakly, she dropped back down. “Haven’t seen him in three years. I have a little girl—”

  “Lisa?” Nick asked.

  Her eyes grew rounder. “You know Lisa?”

  “Yes, Tracy. That’s why I was coming to see you today. I’m a social worker, and I’ve taken an interest in your kids.”

  Tears began to roll down her face. “Are they all right?”

  “They’re good,” he said. “Healthy, smart . . .”

  Her face contorted in anguish, and she asked, “Do they hate me?”

  Nick looked up at Beth, not sure how to answer that. Beth felt her own eyes filling, which rarely happened. She hated herself when she cried. “I don’t think they hate you,” she whispered.

  “I left them, you know . . .” Her voice broke off, and she closed her eyes and covered her face with a scrawny hand that had the IV needle taped in place. “You should have just let me die.”

  Something about the heartfelt regret touched Beth in a deep place, a place of wounds that had never fully healed. She turned away, blinking back her tears, ordering back her tears. When she turned back to the woman on the bed, her eyes were dry. “We don’t want you to die, Tracy.”

  Nick shook his head. “That’s right. God might need you to get well so you can help your kids understand why you did it.”

  “I don’t understand why,” she said.

  Nick leaned closer. “Tracy, are you still addicted?”

  “No. Been through treatment . . . three times. Always fell back. But this last time . . . clean for two months.”

  “Do you work? Do you have a job?”

  “No.”

  “Are you on welfare?”

  “No. I was living with my husband . . .”

  He looked up at Beth, surprised. “Husband? You’re married?” “Six months. Doomed.”

  “Where is your husband now?”

  “Who knows? Gone. He’s worse off than I was.”

  “Do you mean he was sick, too?”

  “He’s a junkie.” She wiped her tear-streaked face with the hand her IV was taped to. “When I got sick, he took off. Couldn’t stand to hear me hacking all the time.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the doctor?”

  “No money.”

  “But you could have gone to the health department.”

  “Too weak.”

  “You didn’t have anyone to take you? No one?”

  “No . . . no one.”

  The nurse came into the room and told them their visiting time was up, and Nick touched Tracy’s hand. “Tracy, we have to go now, but we’ll be back. You get better, okay? We’re praying for you.”

  She nodded mutely, her face contorted with sorrow and regret.

  As they stepped out into the night, Beth felt anguish gaining on her again, sneaking closer to her breaking point, pulling her under. Nick seemed to sense it. He put his arm across her shoulders and said, “Let’s not go to the car just yet.”

  When she didn’t protest, he led her down the cobblestone walkway that led through the hospital’s courtyard and around the little pond. Moonlight flickered on the surface of the water, lending a sense of peace and beauty to the world that had so much ugly darkness.

  “I think she’s remorseful,” he said. “I don’t always see that.” Beth couldn’t answer.

  “I just hope she lives. Maybe through some miracle we could reunite the kids with her.”

  “Don’t you think you’re jumping the gun a little?” Beth asked quietly.

  He shrugged. “Maybe. I guess I’m just a believer in miracles.”

  Beth reached a bench, sank down, and pulled her feet up to hug her knees. “I believe in miracles, too, Nick. But I’ve learned that you can’t custom order them.”

  Quiet settled between them as he sat down next to her, watching her face. She couldn’t look at him, for those tears were slipping up on her again, threatening her. She looked out over the water, trying to sort out the storm of emotions whirling through her mind. Anger, rage, sorrow, loneliness, rejection, frustration, fear . . .

  “We sure have screwed things up, haven’t we?”

  “Who?” she asked.

  “Us. The human race. God gave us families, such a wonderful gift, and we break them into tiny pieces, reject them, throw them away . . .”

  “That’s it,” she whispered, still staring across the water.“Thrown away. That’s how those kids feel. And no matter what happens to them, that feeling doesn’t quite go away.”

  “And then there’s Tracy.”

  “Yes. I wonder how Jimmy will feel when we tell him we found his mother.”

  Nick tried to imagine. “Well, he’ll put on a tough-guy act.

  But deep down, kids love their mothers. Even kids who have been abused and rejected.”

  “Sometimes there are other things that cover that love so deeply that you can never get back down to it. I don’t think we should let him see his mother like that. I don’t think we should even tell him we’ve found her until she’s better.”

  “That’s true. Besides, she might die, and then he’d have to grieve for her all over again.”

  “Again?” she asked, finally looking at him. “I doubt he grieved for her at all. Being taken from her may have been a relief to some extent. And he was probably so hurt, so angry that she left him like that . . . So worried for Lisa . . .”

  “He’s still worried for Lisa. Like I said, this isn’t the kind of thing God ever meant for a kid to have to worry about. Families are supposed to protect each other. Love each other. When I have kids, nothing in heaven or earth could force me to leave them. And the best thing I’ll do for them is to love their mother.”

  A soft, gentle, wistful smile curved her lips. “I believe you could do that.” She watched his face as he propped it on his hand and smiled at her. “Tell me about your family, Nick. Did you have a mother and father who loved you? Did you eat at the table at night, all together, talking about your day?”

  130

  He gave her a strange look that told her the question had been too
revealing. “Yeah, I guess we did. I had four sisters and brothers, and my parents have been married forty-five years. It was a busy household. What about yours?”

  Her smile faded and her eyes drifted back to the water. “My household was very busy, too,” she said. “But not like yours. You might say I’m one of the pieces my family broke into.”

  He gazed at her for a moment, and she wondered if it was pity or disdain she saw on his face. Was he measuring her against himself, finding her flawed and scarred? Did he look at potential mates against a measuring stick of broken families and dysfunctional childhoods, as she sometimes did? She had broken a budding relationship recently when she’d discovered that the man had been raised fatherless. She had told herself that she desperately needed someone who had not suffered the battles she had as a child, someone who had more parts to him than she had to her.

  Yet she knew it was a double standard, for if others measured her the same way, she would always be alone.

  “I wondered where that tough edge came from,” he whispered. “Is that where? From a broken family?”

  She smiled. She liked that he’d seen a tough edge in her. She had cultivated it for years. “Maybe.”

  “I’m sorry if you had to go through pain as a child, Beth. But God works all things for good. And if you had to go through all you did to be who you are today, well, it turned out pretty good, didn’t it?”

  She sighed. “You don’t really know who I am. Not really.”

  “Then show me.”

  It was a challenge, and she rarely backed down from challenges. Yet what he was asking was too intimate, too revealing, and she couldn’t risk it. He couldn’t know that she had once been one of those kids in the homes he monitored, one of the names in the files he kept stacked on his desk. He couldn’t know that she had been a trained thief, a practiced liar . . .

  “You don’t have to show me,” he said, finally, when he could see that she struggled with the challenge. “I’ve seen it. In the way you’re fighting for these kids, risking your life, daring to make a change. Not many people would do that.”

  “Given the proper motivation,” she said coolly, “people will do lots of things.”

  “Yeah, you’re real tough,” he said with a hint of amusement as he touched her soft, short hair. “But you know what I saw the first time you came to me to get information about the home?”