Justifiable Means

  Determined not to let her panic drive her today as it had for the past several days, she stopped and got a hamburger, then found one of the few vacant tables and sat down to eat.

  As she bit into her burger, she watched random faces in the crowd. No one seemed to be looking at her, pointing, staring. Everyone went about their own business, scurrying here and there, rushing back and forth, coming in and out.

  And then she saw a man, his dark hair too familiar, his teal shirt even more familiar. She watched him walk around the food court, never looking her way. She twisted in her chair to follow him—and finally, he turned his head toward her.

  Pendergrast!

  Stifling the urge to scream, she grabbed her purse and pressed between the tables, toppling over a chair here and a chair there as she went, bumping into people, knocking packages out of hands. When she got to the mall exit nearest her car, she looked back.

  He was gone.

  She broke into a run and made it to her car. Her hands trembled as she jabbed the key into the ignition, screeched out of her parking space, and pulled back into traffic.

  She searched her rearview mirror for a sign of him. Nothing.

  Still, he was there, she told herself. He could see her this minute. He was nearby, somewhere, following, watching.

  She headed for the police station, desperate to find Larry. Stopping in a no-parking zone, she slammed the gearshift into park and ran inside. The precinct was noisy with cops coming and going, angry prisoners, and telephones ringing on a dozen desks around the big room. She glanced toward Larry’s desk but didn’t see him.

  Pushing to the front of the line, she asked, “Is Larry Mill-saps here?”

  “No,” the desk officer told her. “He’s out on a case.”

  “I have to talk to someone!” she shouted. “He’s following me!”

  “Who?”

  “Pendergrast!” she shouted. “Or—Soames! Edward Soames. Please get in touch with Larry. He was at the mall, watching me—”

  “Larry Millsaps?”

  “No! Pendergrast!” She burst into tears, then, clutching her forehead, said, “Look, just ask a patrol car or someone to circle the block or something. Check out the cars in the parking lots around here. Look for his car—a dark blue Cherokee—and see if he’s still following me. I’m afraid to go home.”

  She sat and waited for what felt like an hour. Finally, an officer told her that Pendergrast’s Cherokee was parked in front of his apartment.

  “Of course,” she mumbled to herself as she hurried out to her car. He’d have known she’d go to the police station, so he’d have gone straight home, figuring that someone would be looking for him. But Larry would believe her.

  Frantic, she drove to an electronics store and bought a caller ID device to connect to her phone, so that she’d know who was calling her before she answered. Then, from a pay phone, she called the phone company and asked them to hook her up to that service.

  At least if he called her, she would have proof. If only she had access to some of the surveillance equipment they used at the FBI. But she didn’t, and her money was running out.

  She hurried home and locked herself inside the apartment, quickly hooked up the device, then grabbed a knife and sat on her couch facing the door, waiting for the knob to move or the floor to creak.

  She had felt so relieved when the temp agency had given her a job to start tomorrow—she’d been so worried about her money running out. Now she wondered if she’d even be able to go. He was trying to terrorize her, just like he’d done Sandy. The worst part was—she was letting him.

  I’m not going to let him get away with it, Sandy, she promised. Even if it costs me everything it cost you, I’m not letting him get away with it.

  T he phone rang an hour later, and Melissa checked the Caller ID and saw that the call came from the St. Clair Police Department. Quickly, she answered it. “Hello?”

  “Melissa, it’s Larry. I had a message that you’d been by. Are you okay?”

  “He was following me,” she blurted. “At the mall. I saw him.”

  “I talked to the officer who found his car in the parking lot of his apartment complex. It was the right car. Had his plates. And the engine was cold.”

  “Larry, it was him! I saw him at the food court. He’s not going to leave me alone. I don’t know what to do!”

  “Is he still calling your parents?”

  “Yes,” she said. “He called a couple of times yesterday, and I keep trying to assure them that it’s just a prankster. But I’m not sure they’re convinced. My dad has him on tape. He express mailed the tape to me, and I should get it today. Then you’ll see. Oh, and I got Caller ID. If he calls here, I’ll know.”

  “Maybe. Caller ID can’t identify calls that come from pay phones or car phones.”

  She sighed helplessly. “Well, what should I do? I came back here because I don’t have enough money to stay in a hotel another night. I had all the locks changed. But I’m not sure that will stop him.”

  “He’s not supernatural, Melissa. If anything happens, call me. I’ll keep my cell phone with me just in case.”

  “Larry, I just want to lead a normal life. I have a new job to start tomorrow. It’s just temporary, but it’s money. If I don’t get any sleep tonight . . .”

  “Maybe I’ll pay Pendergrast a visit. Put a little more fear into him. Let him know he’s being watched.”

  “Can he be? Watched, I mean?”

  “Off and on. But we can’t spare the man-hours to put someone on him full-time.”

  “He knows that,” she said, her voice falling to a helpless monotone. She sighed. “I’d appreciate your talking to him, Larry. It might help.”

  “Meanwhile, bring the tape as soon as you get it, and let me know if anything else happens.”

  Larry found Pendergrast’s blue Cherokee in the parking lot, and he and Tony made their way up to the apartment they had searched just days before. They knocked, but no one answered.

  “Now what?” Tony asked. “We can’t break the door down. We don’t have any evidence that he’s done anything wrong.”

  “We have her word,” Larry said.

  Tony banged on the door again, waited. “He could be sleeping. Or just sitting in there refusing to answer.”

  “Maybe he rode somewhere with someone else. Maybe his alleged girlfriend.” Larry glanced down at the Cherokee again. “Or maybe he has two cars.”

  “There aren’t two registered to him.”

  Larry gave Tony a wry look. “Think that would stop him?”

  Tony gave up on the door and looked back down at the parking lot. “It’s possible. Maybe some of the neighbors have seen him driving something else.”

  “I’ll take the downstairs neighbors,” Larry said. “You take the ones upstairs.”

  Melissa hated to hear her mother cry. Worse than that, she hated to be the cause of it.

  “Melissa, he’s been calling over and over for the last two days. Hanging up in the wee hours of the morning, saying things like, ‘Tell her I’ll find her’ or ‘Someone has to pay.’ I called the police last night, and today they found out that the calls have definitely been coming from your area. Melissa, what’s going on?”

  Her voice was weak when she got the words out. “Mom, he’s just a jerk. I’ll give him a call and tell him to stop. Maybe tell him I’ve given his name to the police.”

  “It’s starting up again, isn’t it? This nightmare. It’s just like with Sandy. Melissa, we’re worried about you. You’re the only child we have left.”

  Melissa closed her eyes. “I know, Mom. But I’m fine. Really. I’ll come home for a visit soon, and you can see for yourself.”

  “But you’d tell us if something was wrong, wouldn’t you?”

  For a moment, Melissa hesitated, wanting more than anything to share this burden with someone. But not at the cost of the pain it would cause her parents. “Of course, Mom,” she lied. “Really, it’s okay. Just let t
he machine get the phone for a while, and I’ll see what I can do from this end about making him stop. Nothing to be worried about.”

  Her hand trembled as she hung up the phone. Edward Pendergrast had a plan, a plan that would start—and end—with her.

  She went to the window and peered out at the street below, scanning the cars in the parking lot. She didn’t see his Cherokee, but it could be anywhere, up the street, around the side of the building.

  She checked her window locks again.

  The phone rang, startling her. She checked the Caller ID, saw the words, “Out of area.” Maybe it was her mother again. Her heart pounded as she picked up the phone on the second ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Were the windows locked nice and tight?”

  She caught her breath and slammed the phone down, then looked toward the windows where she’d stood just moments before, looking down for him, checking the locks—

  Trembling, she scrambled around for the note with Larry’s cell phone number on it, but couldn’t find it. It had to be here somewhere—

  There was a sudden, metallic sound. She looked up—and saw the doorknob turning, shaking, heard the sound of some kind of gadget working in the locks. Wanting to scream but unable to find her voice, she grabbed a chair and almost leaped with it across the room, then jammed it under the doorknob. With strength she didn’t know she had, not even conscious of the strain on joints and muscles, she shoved a heavy cabinet in front of the door.

  Looking frantically around the room for her knife, she saw the piece of paper with Larry’s number, lying where she’d been sitting. She snatched up the phone and dialed.

  “Millsaps here,” he said after the first ring.

  “Larry, he’s here,” she whispered into the phone. “He’s trying to get in!”

  She heard the urgency in his voice. “Melissa, hang up, and call the dispatcher at 911. A squad car might make it before I can, but I’m on my way.”

  “All right.” Melissa hung up and punched 911, but the phone went dead. Frantic, she punched some buttons and held the phone to her ear, but there was still no dial tone.

  Pendergrast must have cut her telephone wire. She sat holding the phone in one hand, the knife in the other, waiting for him to come through the door.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  By the time Larry and Tony made it to her apartment, there was no sign of Pendergrast. But the scratch marks around one of her dead-bolt locks made it evident that someone had tried to pick it. After hearing Melissa’s story—first with the phone call, then the noise at the door, then the cut telephone wire—Larry suspected that it had all been an attempt to terrorize her. If Pendergrast had wanted her, he could have caught her at the mall. And he wouldn’t have warned her with the telephone call today.

  But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try something more dangerous tomorrow. And Larry and Tony had discovered, when they had questioned some of Pendergrast’s neighbors, that one of them remembered seeing him driving an older-model gray Toyota now and then. Which strengthened Melissa’s story about seeing Pendergrast at the mall.

  Larry knew, now, that he couldn’t leave Melissa here alone. She was terrified, and her fears were legitimate.

  He paced across her apartment, watching her sit balled up in the same chair she’d been in the first night he’d met her. She’d been terrified then, too.

  “She can’t stay here,” he told Tony.

  Tony nodded, obviously concerned—something Larry found gratifying. “Melissa, why don’t you go home to your parents? Lay low for a little while?”

  “Didn’t you hear what I told you?” Melissa asked him. “He knows where they live. He’s been calling them. I’m no safer there, and I don’t want to drag my parents into danger, too.”

  “She’s right,” Larry said. “She has to go somewhere where he can’t find her. At least until we can catch him doing something and get him back behind bars.”

  Tony got up and rubbed his neck. “Shades of the Barrett case.”

  “What?” Larry asked.

  Tony shook his head. “It just reminds me of the Barrett case.” Lynda Barrett, a lawyer, had been pursued by someone as deadly, and as sneaky, as Pendergrast. In that case, too, Larry had gone beyond the call of duty to protect a lady in distress—which, as it turned out, had been necessary to save her life. Tony was beginning to agree that it might be necessary in this case, too.

  “That’s it,” Larry said, stopping his pacing and turning back to Tony. “Lynda Barrett. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.”

  Melissa looked up. “Who’s Lynda Barrett?”

  Larry started to answer, but Tony cut him off. “What has Lynda got to do with this?”

  “Her house,” Larry said. “It’s perfect. And she has room. We could ask her to let Melissa stay there for a while.”

  “Larry, you can’t be serious,” Tony said. “You can’t call one victim and ask her to house another victim.”

  “Would you please stop talking around me like I’m not here?” Melissa demanded. “Who is Lynda Barrett?”

  Larry sat down. “She’s a lawyer who was being stalked a few months ago. Someone sabotaged the plane she owned, and she crashed—”

  “Just the first of several murder attempts,” Tony said, as if this proved how foolish Larry’s idea was.

  “And it almost succeeded,” Larry continued. “But her father had died shortly before that, and he had this great little house on a secluded dead-end street. She hid out there.”

  “Does she still have the house?” Tony asked.

  Larry nodded. “Still lives there.” He picked up the phone, remembered it was dead, then hung it back up. “I’ll call her on my car phone, Melissa. We’ll see if she’ll take you in for a while.”

  “But she doesn’t know me. She wouldn’t just take in a stranger, would she?”

  Larry nodded. “She’s been where you are. And besides that, she’s a Christian.”

  “She kind of has a hobby of taking in strays,” Tony threw in.

  “Stray animals?”

  “No. Stray people.”

  Melissa didn’t appreciate that label. “Is that what I am?”

  Larry smiled. “He’s talking about Jake, the guy who lives in her garage apartment. It’s a long story.” He hurried to the door, then turned back. “Stay with her while I call Lynda, will you, Tony? Meanwhile, Melissa, start packing.”

  “How can you be so sure she’ll take me in?” Melissa asked.

  “Trust me,” he said. “She will.”

  It was just getting dark when Melissa followed Larry’s car onto Lynda’s street. Between Lynda’s house and the next one up the street was a long stretch of woods. Larry parked on the street, and Melissa pulled in behind the car in the driveway, then waited as Larry got out and walked across the yard to her car. “This house is secluded and safe,” he said as she got out. “He’ll never find you here.”

  The stress apparent on Melissa’s face told him that the last thing she needed was to be thrust into a live-in situation with a stranger.

  She looked toward the house. Lynda had left the porch light on, and mosquitoes buzzed around the bulb. “You won’t have to be here long, Melissa,” Larry said. “Pendergrast is going to screw up, and as soon as we can prove that he violated his bond, he’ll be back in jail until the trial. Then you’ll be safe.”

  “I just feel like such an intruder,” she whispered. “Complete strangers, taking me in. I may even be putting them into danger.”

  “That’s why I thought of Lynda,” Larry said. “If anyone can understand your dilemma, she can. You’ll see. Come on.”

  He reached into the backseat for her suitcase, and the door to the garage apartment opened. A tall man stepped out, leaning on two canes.

  “Hey, Jake!” Larry said, laughing. “You’re walking!”

  “Yeah, Lynda didn’t tell you?”

  Larry stepped nearer to shake his hand, then looked down at his legs. “We
ll, she said you were a little, but I pictured a step or two now and then. I figured you were in the wheelchair most of the time.”

  “Nope. Got rid of the thing. I’ll be jogging around the block in another month or two.” Larry turned to Melissa, who seemed small, fragile, in comparison to the tall man.

  “Jake, this is Melissa Nelson. She’s going to be staying with Lynda, too, for a while.”

  “Lynda told me,” he said, taking both canes in his left hand so he could shake. “Nice to meet you, Melissa. Tough times, huh?”

  “Yeah,” she said quietly.

  “Larry probably told you we’ve been through them ourselves. My legs are a result of them. There was this little plane crash.”

  Melissa caught her breath. “You were in it?”

  “Yeah. But there must have been a team of angels surrounding us, because both Lynda and I came out of it alive. Matter of fact, I’d say we both came out of it better than before.”

  The back door opened, and a woman with shoulder-length brown hair stepped out. Her eyes lit up at the sight of them, as if she welcomed an old friend. “You must be Melissa,” she said, bypassing Melissa’s extended hand and hugging her. “I’m Lynda. I was just making up a bed for you. Gosh, it’ll be good having a roommate again.”

  “I really appreciate your taking me in like this,” Melissa said.

  “Have you eaten?” Lynda asked, looking down at Melissa’s small frame. “Jake made a killer stew tonight. Larry, you stay, too. There’s plenty for everybody.”

  Before Melissa could answer, she ushered them all into the house. Supper was already on the table.

  An hour later, Larry could see that Melissa was relaxing. She’d been intrigued and reassured by Lynda’s own story, told over supper, of being chased by a killer. Lynda explained, too, that she had housed another young woman and her child recently, and had been lonely since they had left. Even with Jake right next door, sharing meals and conversation, Lynda said she missed having a roommate. Larry knew it all made Melissa feel like less of an intruder.

  Melissa walked Larry out to his car before he left. The smell of fresh-cut grass wafted on the October breeze, conveying a sense of peace and safety. Larry looked around at the trees, whispering in the night. If any cars came up this street, it would have to be deliberate and wouldn’t go unnoticed. Melissa would be safe here.