Justifiable Means

  He watched soberly, pensively, as she brushed her hair, then turned back to him. She looked so young today, he thought, so delicate, like a China doll precariously balanced on the edge of a shelf.

  As they stepped off the elevator, she scanned the lobby. She walked very close to him all the way to his car, then she hurried to get in.

  Larry was quiet as he drove her to a little restaurant where they could have some privacy and a corner table mostly hidden from the front door. Maybe she’d be comfortable there.

  After they ordered, Melissa seemed to relax; he wondered how long it would last. “You’ve been a lifesaver, Larry,” she said, clasping and unclasping her hands in front of her. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “I’m just doing my job,” he said, wanting to emphasize that before he asked what he needed to ask.

  “And it’s your job to take victims out to lunch?”

  “It’s my job to protect them.” He looked down at his own hands, then added, “And to ask them questions.”

  She stiffened a little. “What questions?”

  Larry didn’t want to ask. He wanted to make her laugh instead, ease her mind, restore to her some peace. Instead, he was going to drag up the worst part of her past and dangle it in front of her like an accusation. But he had no choice. “We got the file on Soames this morning. It seems that he has a history in the Pensacola area.”

  He noted instantly when she averted her eyes.

  “There were two other rapes,” he went on.

  Melissa’s big, pale eyes moved back to his and locked there, waiting. Larry knew she expected what was coming, so he forced the question out.

  “Melissa, why didn’t you tell me that Soames had raped your sister?”

  Melissa gasped—not the reaction he’d expected. “What?”

  “Sandra Hayden. She was your sister, right?”

  “Yes!” Melissa’s face reddened, and she stared at him. “But that wasn’t Soames. That was some guy named Pendergrast!”

  The waitress came to deliver their food, and Larry stayed quiet until she was gone. Neither of them touched their meal. “Melissa, Soames and Pendergrast are the same guy. Are you trying to tell me that you didn’t know that?”

  Tears of indignation and horror filled her eyes. “Of course I didn’t know that! How could I?”

  “Hadn’t you seen him? Didn’t you know what he looked like?”

  “The defendant isn’t allowed in a grand jury hearing, unless he testifies,” she said in a harsh whisper. “And he didn’t. I never saw him in person. I saw pictures, but he had this beard, and he was heavier . . .”

  That much was true, Larry thought. The mug shots of Pendergrast had looked different. Still . . .

  “There are just some questions, Melissa. Like why you quit your job with the FBI to take a job as a receptionist in an office where your sister’s rapist just happened to work.”

  Two tears escaped and ran down her face as she gaped at him. “What do you think? That I planned all this?”

  He looked helplessly down at his food. “I just need for you to explain to me why it happened the way it did. How it could happen. And why you never told me about your sister.”

  “Because it’s not the kind of thing I like to talk about!” She looked around at the other patrons, then lowered her voice as more tears ran down her face. Her lips seemed to grow redder as she got out the words. “Have you ever found your sister dead? Have you had to make that phone call to your parents? To her husband? Have you spent years wishing you could have helped her, gotten there in time . . .”

  Her voice broke off, and she covered her face with both hands. Her shoulders rolled with the force of her quiet sobs, and Larry realized it had been a mistake to bring all this up in a public place. “Look, I’m sorry. I have lousy timing.”

  She couldn’t stop crying, and Larry felt helpless. There was nothing he could do for her in the middle of a restaurant. He motioned for the waitress and asked for take-out boxes. Then, taking the bag with the boxes in it, he ushered Melissa gently out of her seat and back to his car. He set the bag on the seat, then nodded to the park across the street. “Wanna go for a walk and talk about this?”

  She was still crying, and he hated himself. Doing his job had never been enough reason, he thought, for making a woman cry. He put his arm around her as they walked, and felt her shoulders shaking as more pain flooded back through her. When they’d reached a cluster of trees that surrounded a park bench, he made her sit down next to him.

  “Please believe me,” she cried, wiping her face with wet hands. “I didn’t know that Soames and Pendergrast were the same person. How could I have known? I left Pensacola because I couldn’t stand all the memories. I wanted to get away, and I thought St. Clair was a good choice. I had heard how clean the town was, how warm and friendly, and I thought maybe I could forget here.”

  “How did you know about the opening at that company?” he asked gently.

  “It was in the paper,” she said. “I answered an ad. And when I met Pendergrast, it never for a second occurred to me that he could be the same guy. Why should it? There was no indication. Maybe—maybe he orchestrated it somehow. He’s like that. He stalked Sandy for weeks after they let him off. He drove her completely over the edge. Maybe he was following me, too, but I didn’t know it. Maybe he put the ad in to lure me.”

  That was a stretch, Larry thought. A big one. “You weren’t a secretary, Melissa. You had a degree in criminal justice. Why would he think that you’d apply for a job like that?”

  “Maybe he talked to some of my friends from school. I had told them I would take a clerical job. Maybe he knew I’d gone to a couple of employment agencies looking for clerical work. I don’t know.”

  Larry leaned his elbows on his knees. Propping his chin on his hands, he watched two squirrels darting up the trunk of a tree. It was so far-fetched, yet there was a gut-deep part of him that wanted to believe her. “You said you were a Christian, Melissa. I want to trust your honesty. I really believe that God put me on this case because you needed someone who wouldn’t shoot first and ask questions later.” He sat straight and looked her in the eye. “But if you’re lying, this is very serious. You wouldn’t take advantage of me that way, would you?”

  She hesitated a moment, and he couldn’t tell whether she was struggling with the lie, or devastated that he would question her sincerity. Either way, her expression grieved him.

  “I’m telling the truth, Larry,” she said in a dull voice. “If I’d known Soames was Pendergrast, I would never even have come to this town. I wouldn’t have gone within a hundred miles of him. I’m scared to death of him. You should have seen what he did to my sister. How he destroyed her—”

  She covered her mouth then and bowed under her grief, and Larry pulled her against him. This woman had so much pain inside her, he thought, more than he could imagine. To find her only sister dead, the way she’d found her—and now this.

  “Tell me about Sandra,” he whispered, hoping it would be therapeutic for her. “What was she like?”

  “Sandy,” she corrected, laying her head on his shoulder. “She was always happy. Sweet to everyone. She had been married just a few months, and they were delirious.” She thought for a moment, then laughed softly through her tears. “We didn’t always get along. When we were kids, we fought like sisters do. When I started wearing makeup, I was always ‘borrowing’ her stuff, and she could never find what she needed. When we got to be the same size, though, she started ‘borrowing’ my clothes. My poor mother—she was like a referee. But we always worked it out.”

  “Were you in her wedding?”

  She smiled again. “Maid of honor. I’ll have to show you the pictures. Sandy was beautiful. I always wanted to look like her. But after Pendergrast—”

  Her voice broke off again, and she shook her head dolefully. “After it happened, she never looked the same. Not just the scars. I don’t think I ever saw her smile again.
There was this dullness in her eyes . . . like she was already dead.”

  She swallowed, then looked up at him, intent on making him understand. “Her husband worked nights, and sometimes she did, too. But she got off at ten that night, at the mall, and came home. She didn’t know he was following her. When she opened her front door, he put a knife to her throat and pushed his way in.”

  Larry tightened his arms around her.

  “Rick found her the next morning when he came home from work. She was almost dead from blood loss, and she had gone into shock. He got her to the hospital.”

  “Tell me about the hearing,” he whispered.

  She got that helpless look on her face again, and she stood up, paced a few feet, then leaned back against the tree the squirrels had gone up. “I’ll never forget that day they decided to acquit him. Sandy fell apart. We practically had to carry her out of the courtroom. He was out on the street again, and she was petrified. Then he started making phone calls to her, laughing about getting away with it, telling her that he was free to do it again. She was so scared she quit her job, but she still saw him following her sometimes. After a while she didn’t leave her house at all, just turned it into a prison for herself. She was locked in—but she wasn’t convinced that he was locked out. And she just got more and more depressed, more and more terrified, more and more paranoid . . .”

  “What about her husband?”

  “Wonderful guy. Totally supportive, trying to help her through it,” Melissa said. “He was scared, too, and started trying to prove that Pendergrast was making those calls, that he had followed her, that sort of thing, but Pendergrast was smart. They never could catch him.”

  A pigeon landed at her feet, pecked a little on the ground, then fluttered away, and her eyes followed it. “Sandy was a Christian, Larry, but toward the end, instead of turning to God, she just lived in fear.”

  Larry watched the pigeon’s progress across the sky, then brought his eyes back to her.

  “The attack changed her whole personality,” Melissa said. She came back to the bench and sat down, wiping her tears. “Do you think a person who commits suicide can go to heaven?”

  Larry looked down at the dirt, uttering a silent prayer that he’d give her the right answer. “I don’t know, Melissa. I’ve never seen anywhere in the Bible where Jesus said that suicide was the unpardonable sin. If Sandy really believed—in her heart, not just in her head—if she truly had faith in what Christ had done for her—”

  “She did,” Melissa said unequivocally. “But sometimes I lie awake at night, just praying and praying that God has her with him. That there’s no more pain for her. That the wounds are all healed. That she’s forgiven.” She stopped and stared off with a broken look. “But he has no reason to answer my prayers.”

  The last words were so softly uttered that they were almost inaudible, and Larry touched her chin and made her look at him. “Why not, Melissa?”

  “Because I have my own sins,” she whispered.

  “And you don’t think you can be forgiven?”

  “Not for these,” she whispered, averting her eyes again. “There are criteria for forgiveness, you know. I don’t think I’ve met them.”

  “Just repentance,” he said. “That’s all.”

  “That’s all?” she asked, almost laughing at the complex simplicity of it. “Well, that’s the problem.” She looked into the trees, where the wind was lapping against the leaves, and her hair began to blow into her face. Pushing it back, she said, “When I found her, I couldn’t believe she had done it. That she had let him do that to her. That I let her do it to herself.”

  “Melissa, you couldn’t have stopped her. What could you have done?”

  “I was late,” she whispered, fresh tears rolling down her cheeks. “I was supposed to have been there an hour earlier. But I stopped off somewhere. I didn’t go when I should have. She had left the door unlocked for me. Maybe she wanted me to find her before it was too late. Maybe she didn’t really want to die. If I’d just gone straight there . . .” She was sobbing now, and he pressed her head against his shoulder, wishing he could comfort her, but fearing that she would find comfort only when she was ready to receive it from God.

  “Melissa, is that the sin that you think God can’t forgive you for?”

  “One of them,” she cried. “Maybe I don’t even want forgiveness. Maybe I don’t even want to come close to God again. If I did ...”

  As a Christian, Larry had counseled many brothers and sisters. As a cop, he’d offered comfort before. But he’d never felt more helpless than he felt right now.

  He did know one thing, though. No matter where this took him, he was ready. He just might be the only one who could point Melissa back to God.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Tony banged a fist into the wall of the interrogation room the next morning and muttered a curse. “You’re losing it, Millsaps. You’re totally losing your perspective. You need to take yourself off this case now before you get any more involved!”

  “What!” Larry shot back. “Just because I’m not drawing the same deductions you are, I’m losing my perspective?”

  “Listen to what you’re saying!” Tony shouted. “She gives you some sob story about her sister and all these horrible coincidences, and you’re buying it right down to the last word. I can’t believe you! You really don’t think she knew that Soames and Pendergrast were the same guy? You really don’t think she deliberately got a job there, where he worked, so she could set him up?”

  “I just think we need more evidence before we draw any conclusions,” Larry said through his teeth.

  Tony headed for the door, shaking his head, then turned back before opening it. “Know what I think? I think you’re stalling. You’re letting your feelings for some wounded woman interfere with your professionalism.”

  Larry slapped his open hand on the table. “That’s not true! I’m open to any facts we can find. But the key word is facts. So far, all you’ve got is speculation. You’re not open to listening to her side.”

  “Hey, I’ve got all the sympathy in the world for her,” Tony said. “Her sister was brutalized and driven to suicide. I can imagine how she must feel. But she sat in front of that grand jury and told them that he raped her. Our job is to find out: Did he, or didn’t he? And man, if he didn’t, if she lied in an official hearing—”

  Larry dropped into a chair and rubbed his forehead. “Look, I want the truth as much as you do. And we’ll find it. We’re both drawing conclusions—just different ones. You’re wrong, Tony. I’m not getting too close to her, I’m not losing my professionalism—”

  “Then why are you spending so much time with her?”

  “Because whatever Pendergrast did to her, we know that he’s probably done it to others, and we know he’s dangerous. She’s not safe.”

  Tony hesitated, then nodded. “All right, I’ll buy that.”

  After a long moment of silence, during which neither looked at the other, Tony finally shook his head. “Well, this isn’t the only case we’ve got on our plate. We’d better get back to work.”

  Reluctantly, Larry got up. But he didn’t want to work on any other cases right now. Melissa’s was the only one that mattered.

  Melissa ventured back to her apartment the next morning, propping herself up with the hope that Pendergrast wouldn’t dare come back now that he knew they were on to him. But then, that was his game. That was how he had played it with Sandy. He had always gotten around the police. He always had an alibi.

  She wavered from panic to determination as she stopped on the way home and tried to buy a gun, but there was a three-day waiting period. From a pay phone, she called a locksmith to meet her at the apartment and had him change her locks. Then she had him add three more locks to the door and check out the windows. And before he left, she asked him if he’d look in her attic, just to make sure she was alone.

  Looking a little perplexed, as though he were dealing with a lunatic, h
e did as she asked, and assured her no one was there.

  The bill was more than she’d counted on, and as she sat in her living room balancing her checkbook after he’d left, she realized that her funds were almost depleted. The job she was supposed to have started today was too much of a risk, so she hadn’t reported to work. Since she had gotten it on the same day that Pendergrast hid in her apartment, it was possible that he had followed her to the interview, too. Now she was faced with another job hunt, and she had to find something soon.

  She changed clothes, then locked all the locks on her door and rushed out of the apartment that felt so frightening, so intimidating, and so unsafe despite the measures she’d taken. Breathing freer in the fresh air, she got into her car and headed for the nearest employment agency.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Edward Pendergrast, alias Soames, watched from his car parked down the street as Melissa came back out of her apartment. She’d had a locksmith meet her there, as if that could deter him, and he’d laughed softly as the man had left. Did she think a new lock on the door was going to keep her safe from him, when moving to a whole different apartment hadn’t worked?

  She got into her car and pulled out into traffic, and he waited to let a few other cars pass, then pulled out behind her. She had gotten away from him for a couple of days, but he wouldn’t let it happen again. He owed her big time.

  And he always paid his debts.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Armed with a temporary job that started the next day, Melissa left the temporary employment agency, located in the St. Clair Mall. As she walked back through the mall toward the entrance near where she’d parked, she glanced frequently over her shoulder, feeling that someone was watching her. For a weekday, the mall was crowded. A group of teenagers—the girls dressed in black and the boys in white shirts and ties—clustered behind her, probably here to sing during the noon hour. Already, she heard another choir somewhere across the mall, singing some classical, doomsdayish song that made the hairs on her neck rise.