Presumption of Guilt

  worth her reputation? I can’t answer that. All I know is that God honors those who honor him by doing the right thing.”

  “When?” Beth asked, staring at the lines of her palm.

  “When what?”

  “When does God honor the person who honors him? How much of a sacrifice does he demand first?”

  Lynda looked a little surprised by the question. “That depends on the person, Beth,” Lynda said. “To one man Christ said to sell everything he owned. To another, he just said to go and sin no more. It all depends on what dark thing is in a person’s heart, separating them from him. Mostly all he wants is confession and repentance.”

  “Yeah, that’s the part I have trouble with,” Beth said. “There are some buried things in life that you just don’t want to dig up again.”

  Lynda’s eyes lingered on her for a moment. “Confession is risky, all right. No question. But it’s cleansing, Beth. Tell your source that the release that she feels afterward will overshadow anything the justice system can do to her. After repentance, she still might face consequences of some kind, but she won’t be alone. God will walk with her and provide for her in all of that.”

  Beth tried to let it all soak in, but she wasn’t sure she bought it.

  “So when do you think the story will come out?” Jake asked from the floor.

  “Tomorrow, if I can manage to get everything finished. It really has to be tomorrow. We can’t wait any longer.”

  “My sister’s there,” Jimmy explained.

  Lynda and Jake looked fully at Jimmy and saw the concern on his face. “Are you worried about your sister, Jimmy?” Lynda asked.

  “Yes. He warned me. He said, ‘The sins of the brothers are visited upon their siblings.’ He knows the Bible real good.”

  “That’s not in the Bible, kiddo,” Jake said.

  “I told him that,” Beth said. “But Brandon always misquotes Scripture. He rewords verses and gives them a perverted, sinister meaning, and uses them like weapons against the children.” She hesitated. “I’ve heard that from several people.”

  “Well, the more I hear, the more I think you need to get this story finished no matter what you have to do. Why don’t Jake and I take Jimmy to stay with us while you work?”

  Jimmy looked hopefully up at her.

  “Sure,” Jake said. “We could do some guy stuff.”

  “But we haven’t reported finding him. I’m not sure what the police would do. We were just going to hide him until the arrests are made.”

  Jimmy sprang to his feet. “Please? It’ll be all right. Nobody’ll see me.”

  Beth gave Lynda a narrow look. “Are you sure you wouldn’t feel compelled to report him?”

  “Of course not,” Lynda said. “I agree with you. It’s best to hide him quietly for a while, as long as HRS knows.”

  “We could go out to the airport and take him up.”

  “In an airplane?” Jimmy asked, his eyes huge.

  “Sure, in an airplane. Unless you know some other way to fly.”

  “Can I, Beth? That would be so great! None of the other kids would even believe it!”

  Beth couldn’t help laughing. “I guess that’s all right, if Jake promises he won’t crash.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Jake said, insulted.

  “It’s not like you haven’t done it before.”

  Jake gave a smirk. “It’ll never happen again. Jimmy’s not scared, are you, Jimmy?”

  Jimmy looked a little less exuberant now. “You crashed?”

  They all laughed. “It’s a long story. We’ll tell you about it on the way.”

  Beth walked them all to the door, said her good-byes to Jimmy, and watched them drive away.

  For a moment, she contemplated what Lynda had said, trying to draw it into the core of her heart, her faith. It was too great a risk—yet all those children had no one fighting for them, no one to make things right. Somebody had to talk.

  She looked through her Rolodex and found her old friend’s number. All of the “graduates” of Bill Brandon’s home kept unlisted phone numbers and very private addresses, so he couldn’t reach them. They all continued to live in fear, to one degree or another. But Maria had trustingly shared her number with Beth, who had never expected to use it for a favor like this.

  She picked up the phone and dialed Maria’s number at home.

  Maria had gotten pregnant shortly after leaving the home, and was

  now the mother of twin two-year-olds. She had a sweet, supportive husband—ten years her senior. Beth hoped that Maria was happy; she hated to drag all this up now. But Maria was her best chance for getting cooperation.

  “Hello?”

  Beth smiled at the sound of her voice. “Maria, hi. It’s Beth Wright. I mean . . . Beth Sullivan.” It had been a long time since she’d used that name.

  “Beth! It’s good to hear from you. How are you?”

  “I’m great,” she said, but couldn’t manage to work any enthusiasm into her voice. “Listen, I was wondering if you’d have time to meet me for lunch today. I know you have the kids and all. I could pick up hamburgers and meet you at the park or something so they could play. I just need to talk to you about something.”

  “Sure. I’d love to see you. But what do you need to talk to me about?”

  “It’s about Bill Brandon.”

  Dead silence hung between them for an intense moment. Finally, Maria said, “What about him?”

  “There’s just some stuff I need to talk to you about, but I’d rather do it in person.”

  “All right. What time?”

  Beth didn’t know what to expect Maria to look like; it had been nearly three years since she’d seen her. But the girl looked much more beautiful now than she had at eighteen. They hugged, and Beth admired the twins.

  “Two babies. Wow.”

  “We want at least five,” Maria said with a laugh as the children went to play in the sandbox. “The family I never had.” They took a bench just a few feet away, so Maria could rescue them if anything happened. “You dyed your hair! I might not have recognized you if I’d seen you on the street.”

  “That was the point,” Beth said.

  Maria touched Beth’s honey-colored hair. “Don’t you ever miss being a brunette?”

  “Sometimes. But it’s worth it. Staying in St. Clair had its risks, you know.”

  “Tell me about it. But I was so glad to hear from you. We should stay in touch more. I didn’t know how to call. I didn’t know you had changed your name.”

  “Yeah,” Beth said, watching the little girls in the sandbox. “I didn’t have a husband to give me his name, like you did, so I just made one up. It made me feel more secure to have a different name.”

  “Maybe if we’d kept in touch, we could have supported each other.”

  “It’s hard,” Beth said. “We’re both so busy. I’ve been working myself to death.”

  “I know, Beth, but I’m real proud of you. How close are you to getting your degree?”

  “One more year.”

  “You’re really going to do it, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, and I’ve got huge student loans to prove it,” Beth said.

  “You always were determined. And working at the paper. I didn’t expect you to get a job this soon.” “Yeah, well, they hired me as an intern my freshman year.

  They don’t usually give bylines to interns, but I’ve worked so hard and dug up such good stuff, that Phil, my editor, has started treating me like a regular staff writer. During the summers, he pays me like one, but believe me, I have to work for it.”

  “I’m so proud of you, I guess I can forgive you for never calling me.”

  Beth smiled and squeezed her hand.

  “So what’s up, Beth? Why did you want to talk to me about Bill?”

  Every muscle in Beth’s body tensed as she took in a deep breath. “Maria, I’ve decided to expose him.”

  Maria’s face showed no expression. She mere
ly stared at her.

  “Are you sure you want to do that? He’ll come after you.”

  “He already has.”

  Her face grew pale. “You’re braver than I am.”

  Beth almost laughed. She tried to push down her own self-loathing. “It’s not bravery,” she said. “Not on my part. But I can’t stand the thought of Bill abusing those children, training them to be thieves, preparing them for prison. Or worse. But I know that the minute this story comes out, hopefully tomorrow, Bill will be arrested. I’m not worried about him hurting me after that.”

  Maria stiffened. “Why are you telling me all this?”

  Beth shrugged. “Well, I thought you would want to know. And—I thought you might let me interview you. My editor says I need more sources, someone who was there, who’s grown now. Someone besides a dead woman and a little kid.”

  “Dead woman? What are you talking about?”

  “Marlene,” Beth said. Her mouth trembled slightly, but she managed to add, “She talked to me, and Bill killed her.”

  Maria threw her hand over her mouth and sprang up. With terror in her eyes, she hurried to the sandbox and picked up one of the twins, then grabbed the other by the hand and started to her car.

  “Maria, where are you going?”

  “Home!” Maria shouted as tears came to her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me on the phone that Bill knows you’re doing this? I never would have come! If he killed Marlene for talking to you, then he’ll kill me, too!”

  “No, he won’t! He’s not following me now.”

  “You don’t know that!” Maria shouted. She spun, her face red and raging as she glared at Beth. “I thought better of you, Beth, than to risk my life and the lives of my children. I have a family now! It took me three years to stop being afraid all the time, and now, just when I have some peace, you have to drag me into something that Bill’s already killed his sister over?”

  “I’m not dragging you into it, Maria. I just want to stop him.”

  “Then stop him yourself!” she shouted. “You don’t need me. We have the same story!”

  Beth froze, unable to find an argument to counter Maria’s. Her story was the same. As much as she tried to deny it, hide it, wipe it from her mind, it was almost identical. “I can’t use myself as a source,” she choked out. “It wouldn’t be objective.”

  “Are you kidding?” Maria shouted. “You’d probably win a Pulitzer Prize, if you didn’t wind up in jail. Is that what you’re scared of, Beth? That you’ll wind up in jail?”

  Beth looked down at her feet. “No. I made sure that I waited long enough. Three years. They can’t try us after three years have passed.”

  “Oh, that’s noble.” Maria said with a sarcastic laugh. “You were so worried about the kids that you waited three years to make sure your own crimes were covered!”

  “So did you!” Beth returned.

  “That’s right,” she said. “Because my kids are more important to me right now. But I’m not the one trying to make some noble cause out of the whole thing—all that compassion and concern for those kids, while you were waiting for time to pass so you wouldn’t go down with them!”

  “No one but Bill is going down, Maria!” Beth bit out through her teeth. “We’re not guilty! We didn’t do any of it of our own free will. We were just kids.”

  “I was old enough to be a mother, Beth!”

  “But we didn’t have a choice! We were wards of the state.

  They put us in his care. It’s their fault, not ours.”

  “Right,” Maria said. “Just don’t say that to a jury. When you start blaming other people for your own sins, they lose sympathy real fast. We knew that what we were doing was wrong.”

  Tears came to Beth’s eyes, and her face was crimson as she took a step toward her old roommate. “What could we have done?”

  “We could have run away,” she said. “Or we could have turned him in then.”

  “He had us brainwashed! He wanted us to think that we would all go to jail. He still has us brainwashed!”

  “Maybe so,” Maria said. “I heard it from the time I was eight years old—that I’d be the one to go to jail, not him. I’m still hearing it. And if it’s true, if any part of it is true, Beth, I can’t even think about it, statute of limitations or not. I have two babies who need their mother, and I don’t want them to grow up knowing I was a thief.”

  Beth just watched as Maria headed back to her old car. As the car drove off, she sat back down on the bench and stared ahead of her.

  Maria was right. It was cowardly to expect her friend to talk, when Beth wouldn’t talk herself. What kind of friend was she, anyway?

  The hot breeze feathered through her hair, making little wisps stick to her face. What did God think of her, looking down from his throne that seemed so far away? Did he give her any points at all for deciding to go after Bill? Or would some of the points be taken away because she’d waited three years? Would she be docked more points for hesitating to come forward herself?

  He must understand that the mere admission that she had been one of Bill’s kids would immediately make people presume her guilt—not just in those crimes, but in others. She had once been branded abandoned, orphaned, trash—she had outgrown those labels, had overcome them. She didn’t want to be known as a thief now.

  Maybe she should have left town when she’d left Bill’s home—gone somewhere she’d have been free to start over without constant reminders of Bill’s presence nearby. But she’d spent her senior year of high school filling out forms for financial aid at St. Clair University, and when the loans and grants had been approved, it had seemed silly to go elsewhere. Now she was bound to St. Clair until she graduated, no matter how she wished she could relocate to someplace where she’d never fear Bill Brandon or think of him again.

  It was too late now. She had to think of the children.

  And she had to give Phil something he couldn’t deny.

  She got up from the bench and squinted against the sun in the direction Maria had gone. She had a decision to make. A big one. She only hoped that she had the guts to make the right one.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  So you were a real pilot? The kind that flies those big planes with hundreds of people on them?” Jimmy asked as he and Jake and Lynda strolled across the tarmac to the Cessna they had rented for the afternoon.

  “That’s right,” Jake said. “A commercial pilot. I S thought I was hot stuff.”

  “You were!” Jimmy cried. “Go to all those cool places, whenever you wanted, and all those people trusted you—”

  “And the money,” Jake said, winking at Lynda. “Don’t forget the money. For a bachelor with no responsibilities, I made pretty good. I was real proud of myself.”

  Jimmy sighed. “I wish I could learn to fly. I’d fly me and Lisa to Brazil or somewhere far away. We’d have it made.”

  Lynda smiled as they reached the plane. “Look, Jimmy,” she said. “See over there, on Runway 3?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “That’s where we crashed when our landing gear wouldn’t drop.”

  “Right there?” Jimmy asked. “You really crashed?”

  “We were trying to land.”

  Jimmy gazed out at the runway. “Wow,” he said, awestruck. “You almost died right there.”

  “In a way, I did die,” Jake said. “But you know what? That crash was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “No, really. That was when I learned that God’s in control of my life, not me. And once I knew that, I really started to live.”

  Jimmy breathed a laugh that sounded much too cynical for a boy his age. “God’s not in control of my life. Bill is.”

  “Not anymore, he’s not,” Lynda said.

  “You watch. He’ll get me back, some way. And he’ll make me and my sister pay.”

  Lynda bent down until her face was even with his. He was so small for his age, and his Op
ie-like expression belied the experiences he’d had. “Jimmy, I know this is easier said than done, but I want you to trust Beth and the others working on this.”

  But the expression that crossed his face was just the opposite of trust, and he turned away from her to peer out at Runway 3 again. “My mom said that to me once. To trust her.” He didn’t cry, but the tough look on his face had an amazingly fragile quality. “Are we gonna fly or what?”

  Lynda looked at Jake, and silently they agreed to back off.

  “All aboard,” Jake said, and climbed onto the wing. Bending over, he pulled Jimmy up behind him. “Get ready, Jimmy Westin, to experience the ride of your life.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Nick sat over the books and files on his desk, trying to find a loophole in the law that would allow him to get Lisa out of the children’s home immediately so that he could satisfy Jimmy’s—and his own—fears. But there was nothing. Nick’s suspicions were unproven, and today’s N inspection had been fine, even though he’d known that Bill was tap-dancing to cover the fact that all of the children weren’t accounted for.

  To all outward appearances, SCCH seemed to offer the children a loving, compassionate environment. Taking the kids swimming, to the library, to birthday parties—it was all very impressive, if one didn’t know better.

  He got up and pulled Jimmy and Lisa’s files out of the file cabinet, hoping to find some forgotten aspect of their situation that would offer him some reason to pull her out. He flipped through the file and saw a picture of the two kids. Jimmy a couple of years ago, and his little sister—It was her. The little girl in the picture was the same one Bill had put into the car to take to the birthday party. She had looked pale, almost afraid. She was shy, Bill had said.

  But that was Lisa—and if Jimmy was right, Bill was already taking his anger out on her. No wonder she’d been frightened.

  He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. How could he have stood there and not realized that it was her? He had placed them in SCCH, after all. But she’d been three years younger then, and her hair had been short and sparse—she’d been malnourished. No wonder he hadn’t recognized her. They had driven her off right under his nose.