Justifiable Means

  “Pendergrast. I followed him last night. He’s stalking a woman who works at the mall.”

  Tony looked confused. “What do you mean, he’s stalking her?”

  “He’s been watching her. He knows when she gets off work, what kind of car she drives, where she lives. He follows her home, and watches her go in.”

  “Well—does he go in?”

  “No. He waits and watches, and then he just drives away.”

  Tony thought that over. “Are you sure he’s not just pulling your string? I mean, maybe he realizes you’ve been following him. Maybe he’s just trying to give you something to chew on.”

  “He doesn’t know I’m there.”

  “How do you know? You’ve been watching him every night. How do you know he doesn’t see you?”

  “Because I’ve been careful, okay?” The name came up on the screen, and Larry sat back in his chair. “Her name is Karen Anderson. She’s twenty-one. That’s her, all right.”

  “What are you planning, Larry?”

  “To get the captain to put somebody on her twenty-four hours. Maybe warn her what’s going on.”

  “Larry, we can’t spare that kind of man-hours. We have work to do.”

  Larry banged his fist on the desk and swiveled around in his chair. “That is our work, man! Keeping a woman from getting raped is just as much a part of our job as it is to clean up the mess afterward. Personally, I’d rather do it before.”

  Tony backed away slightly and lowered his voice. “But look at the logic, Larry. We know at least a dozen dangerous guys out there right now who are likely to commit a crime at any given time. It doesn’t mean we can follow them around every minute of the day just to catch them at it.”

  “Then this whole system is twisted! If we can’t prevent crimes, we might as well not even be here!”

  Tony got up. “Look at you, Larry,” he said, an edge of anger in his voice. “You’re going to drop from exhaustion, and nothing’s going to be accomplished. As a matter of fact, you’ll probably make some terrible mistake and get yourself killed, just because you’re not alert.”

  “I’m plenty alert.”

  “Oh, yeah? Your eyes look as bloodshot as a drunk’s on Monday morning. And you haven’t shaved.”

  Larry rubbed his jaw. He’d forgotten. “I’m growing a beard.”

  “In honor of Melissa? Have you taken a vow of self-deprivation until she serves her time?”

  Ignoring him, Larry got up and kicked his chair out of his way. “I’m going to talk to the captain,” he said.

  Tony gave the chair a kick of his own as he went back to his desk.

  Sam Richter was a no-nonsense captain who hated wasted time more than anything else in the world. He hated meetings and conferences and telephone calls that took him away from his work. Today, he was in a particularly bad mood because of a frustrating new case. And he was in no mood to listen to Larry’s pleas to go off on some wild goose chase to get revenge for his convict girlfriend. The thought thoroughly disgusted him.

  “Come on, Captain. I know he’s about to strike. I have the name of the victim. We need to put a twenty-four-hour watch on her.”

  Sam looked at the ceiling, as if trying to find some patience there. “Millsaps, tell me something. When’s the last time you slept? Or shaved, for that matter? Or took a bath?”

  Larry thought of pleading the fifth, but instead he chose to remain silent.

  “That’s what I thought. It hasn’t been recent.” He leaned forward on his desk, his big hand propping up his chin. “Millsaps, I’m going to tell you this one time. Leave that man alone. You’ve caused him enough trouble. If you keep at it, you’re going to get this police department slapped with another lawsuit, and I’m not in the mood to negotiate with that ambulance-chaser of a lawyer again.”

  “But Captain, you can’t ignore what I saw! He’s going to strike—I know he is. We can keep another girl from being raped.”

  “Another girl?” Sam asked on a laugh. “Millsaps, there wasn’t a first rape. At least, not one that we can prove.”

  Larry burst out of his seat. “You’re not buying into that innocence story, are you? How many times have you seen a suspect admit to what he’s done? He’s pretending he’s innocent!”

  “He may not be pretending.” The captain stood up dismissively and took a file over to his file cabinet. “Millsaps, I know your girlfriend’s going to jail really knocked you for a loop. Everybody in the precinct’s talking about it.”

  Larry rolled his eyes and peered out the window to all the activity beyond it. “I should have known.”

  “But I don’t have time to coddle you, man. I don’t have any man-hours to devote to making you feel better. About fifteen minutes ago a jogger discovered a body washed up on Peretta Beach, and it turns out she was one of those two seventeen-year-old runaways from St. Clair. Now, I only have two detectives. You and Danks. I need you working on this, not going off on some hunch.”

  Larry couldn’t accept that. “We can do both, Captain. Work on both cases. We can follow the girl, and—”

  The captain leaned over his desk. “What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand, Millsaps?”

  Larry slapped at the chair he’d been sitting in, knocking it over.

  The captain straightened with a look of quiet rage in his eye. “One more word—one more outburst—one more anything from you, Millsaps, and you’re on suspension. Matter of fact, I just might put you on it, anyway. You’re losing your edge, Detective. You’re cracking up. I’ve never seen you behave this way in all the years I’ve known you. If you come in here like this tomorrow, you can look forward to a long vacation.”

  Not honoring that with a reply, Larry turned and slammed out of the office. As he bolted across the room, Tony looked up. “Hey, Larry. Wait!”

  Larry didn’t answer. He fled from the building as fast as he could.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Though the prison was air-conditioned, the huge room where they worked on the laundry was sweltering. Tiny vents at the top of the big warehouselike room blew cool air in, but the heat from the irons and the dryers and the steam from the washing machines all filled the room with a humid heat.

  Melissa had been there only an hour, and already her hair was soaked with perspiration. Her clothes were sopping wet and sticking to her, and she began to feel dizzy, as if she might faint from the heat.

  Behind her, women cursed at each other, but guards who had the misfortune of being assigned to this location didn’t bat an eye. They were used to the foul moods and foul mouths of the women who worked here day after day.

  She grabbed the next jumpsuit in her basket, laid it on the ironing board, and quickly reached for the iron. Her fingers brushed the hot metal, scalding her flesh, and she jumped back, knocking the iron over.

  A CO was at her side in an instant, not to help, but to warn her against wasting time.

  Quickly, she picked the iron back up, fighting back the tears in her eyes as her skin began to blister.

  Where was the peace she was supposed to feel? Where was the comfort that would chase away the paralyzing, stomach-knotting fear? All she felt was the terror of messing up, the horror of making the wrong person mad, the fear of getting killed in this abyss where they had sent her to teach her not to lie.

  She looked across the room and saw her big roommate, Chloe, folding towels with a slow, methodical rhythm. Each night, she lay awake, listening to the rhythm of Chloe’s breathing, waiting for the woman to snap and decide that she was angry enough at Melissa to attack her.

  But she hadn’t. Chloe was a mystery. One minute, she was leering at Melissa as if she could snap her in two, and the next she was leering at the others who looked as if they might like to try. She couldn’t decide if the woman was tormentor or protector.

  She longed for ice to put on the burn to relieve the pain, but she kept working. She tried to shift her mind away from the pain by wondering where Larry was, whether he was work
ing today, whether he would be coming to visit tomorrow.

  She wouldn’t be crushed if he didn’t come, she told herself. It was best if he didn’t. She didn’t want him to see her this way.

  Her parents would come, and that would probably be all the emotional upheaval she could stand for one day. That she had ever put them in the position of having to visit their child in prison gave her such shame that she wanted to die.

  Her mind counted the hours she had been here already. Five days. That meant there were only 177 days to go. 4,248 hours. 254,880 minutes.

  Only three days before she’d earn her first visitation privileges.

  She needed something more constructive to occupy her mind and wished that she had memorized Scripture so that she could call on it now when she felt such despair. Maybe that’s what she would start doing during her free time in her cell. Maybe it would get her mind off Chloe’s bad moods—and her fears that the next moment she might explode like a ticking bomb.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The back door to his church was open, as it always was during the week, and Larry stepped into the big corridor, avoiding the choir director and minister of education who were conversing in the hall just outside their offices. Hurrying, he made his way to the small private prayer room at the back of the building and slipped inside.

  It was dark, except for two dim little bulbs at the front of the room. There were four pews, and he slipped into the back one and looked at the small podium on which a big Bible lay open. His sister had gotten married here—it had been a quiet wedding, with just the families in attendance. Katie was shy, and she hadn’t wanted a big production made out of something she considered so personal.

  That had been a joyous occasion, an occasion when Larry had felt the Holy Spirit’s presence so keenly that he’d felt he could reach out and touch his Savior. Now, it seemed like ages since he’d felt that.

  He sank into the pew, covering his face, letting out the deep, dark misery on his heart. “Everything’s out of control,” he whispered to his Creator. “I can’t help. I can’t change anything. And now I can’t even come to you.”

  The barren loneliness in those words hit him harder than anything else had that day, and he wept into his hands, desperate for some word that would somehow restore him. But there was a wall there—between him and God—a wall he had constructed himself. And he had made no move to break it down. Like Melissa, he’d decided that he wasn’t worthy, that his own choices had rendered him unacceptable in God’s eyes.

  “I was going to lie for her,” he whispered, propping his elbows on his knees and looking down at his feet. “You took it out of my hands. I didn’t have to do it. But I would have. And I’m just as guilty as if I had.”

  He wondered whether he’d have felt repentant and remorseful if Melissa hadn’t come forward and if he’d gone through with his plan to cover for her—

  Yes, he thought unequivocally. He had been miserable about the choice even before he’d made it. It would have eaten at him, just as it did now. That was God’s curse—as well as God’s blessing.

  He looked up at the ceiling, as if he could see God sitting there, judging him. “I don’t even know what to say,” he cried. “I want to pray for her, plead with you to change things somehow, to get her out of jail, to put Pendergrast away—but how can you hear my prayers when I’ve turned away?”

  He leaned his arms on the pew in front of him and rested his head on them. “Nothing makes sense, Lord. He’s going to do it again. To another innocent girl. And it’s Melissa in jail instead of him. Help me to understand!”

  A verse like an admonition came into his mind:

  You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.

  He looked up, his face wet and twisted, and wondered why that verse, of all others, had spoken to him just now. It couldn’t work to God’s glory, he thought, for a beautiful, sweet, broken woman to be in jail. Or for Pendergrast to ruin another life. Those couldn’t be “things of God.”

  Again, the verse played like a chant through his mind, and finally, he broke down and got to his knees. Maybe that was God’s answer—that Larry didn’t understand it, and that in fact it wasn’t up to him to understand. Who was he to question the mind of God?

  Suddenly, an overwhelming remorse fell over him, so deep and heavy that it almost flattened him. He had done exactly as Melissa had done. He had trusted his own solutions rather than God’s. He had taken things out of his Father’s hands, and with his own limited vision, had decided how things should go. “Please forgive me, Lord. Forgive me for not trusting you. Forgive me for making a decision to lie and cheat, for turning away.”

  He wept until he was exhausted. Finally, he got up again and sat on the pew, listening, waiting, hearing. His eyes fell on the open Bible, and he slowly got up and went toward it.

  The book was open to Luke 22. Aloud, in a trembling voice, he read Jesus’ words.

  “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

  But he replied, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.”

  Jesus answered, “I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me.”

  Jesus had known that Peter would turn away, that he would lie, and cheat, and run. And even knowing that, he had assured him that his relationship with God would not be ruined. When you turn back, Jesus had said. He had known he would. Just as he had known Larry would.

  Larry felt that same forgiveness washing over him, cleansing him, filling him with the strength he would need to get through the days ahead. They were no worse than Peter’s future had been—no more frightening, no more uncertain. But this was his future . . . and Melissa’s. And he would need God to get him through it.

  He sat back down, amazed and awestruck at the way the Lord had ministered to him, even when he hadn’t deserved it—but then he realized that he had never deserved it. That was the beauty of grace. God was not dwelling on his past sin. God was looking ahead to how he wanted to use Larry.

  “Strengthen your brothers.”

  Melissa would need strengthening. And he would be there for her.

  “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

  More Scripture he’d memorized, never realizing how much he would need it one day. Now it came to him like an old friend, holding his hand, propping him up.

  He sat there for a while longer, in his own private Gethsemane, soaking in the peace of God’s love and forgiveness and hope. And knowing that whatever was to happen in the next few hours and days, it was all in the hands of the Almighty God.

  An hour later, as Larry and Tony drove in silence in their unmarked car to the beach where the runaway’s body had washed up, Tony looked at him. “I took it from the way you burst out of the building a little while ago that the captain nixed your idea.”

  “He said what you said. Not enough manpower.”

  “I figured.”

  “So meanwhile, another girl is going to end up a victim before we act.”

  “Maybe not.”

  Larry was bone tired and didn’t feel like arguing. But he couldn’t let that go. “He’s a rapist, Tony. We know it. And now he’s stalking another woman. How long before we realize what’s going on? What’ll it take? Why is everybody so dead set on proving that Pendergrast is a saint?”

  “History,” Tony said. “We thought he’d done something before, and it turned out he didn’t. Nobody else wants egg on their face.” Tony looked over at his friend, as if deciding whether to say what was on his mind. “Larry, there are people on the force who think you’re losing your edge. They think you snapped when Melissa went to jail. They don’t give a lot of credence to your ideas right now.”

  Larry sat still for a moment, letting i
t all sink in. Too emotionally exhausted to fight back, he said, “I’ve been on this force for twelve years, Tony. I’ve always done my job with a clear head and all the energy and commitment I could give it.”

  “We know that, Larry. But look at you. You haven’t shaved in days, you haven’t slept, you’re probably not even eating—it’s hard to put a lot of stock in what you say when you look like you’re about to go over the edge.”

  “Then ride with me,” Larry entreated. “Ride with me tonight, after we’re off duty. You’ll see. I’ll show you.”

  “Larry, you saw him stake her out once. That doesn’t mean he does it every night.”

  “He might,” Larry said. “Ride with me. Just come once and you’ll see.”

  “Man, I need my sleep. So do you.”

  “All right. Just until the mall closes. Just give me that long, and I’ll take you home.”

  “So what do you hope to accomplish? I mean, even if I come, and he stalks her tonight—”

  “Back me up with the captain. Tell him I’m not losing it. Talk him into putting a tail on the girl.”

  Tony sighed. “I don’t even know if he’d listen to me.”

  “That’s my problem. Just come with me. Let me show you.”

  Tony moaned. “But it’s Friday night, man. I have a date.”

  “Cancel it. Look at the irony here, Tony. We’re heading out to the beach to investigate this girl’s death—and at the same time, another girl’s life is in danger, and we won’t do anything to stop it.”

  The look in Larry’s eyes was so haunted, so weary, so determined, that Tony found himself agreeing.

  “No matter what we find, the girl on the beach is dead. We’re not going to bring her back. But what if we had seen somebody preparing to kill her before she died? What if we could have stopped it? Would we have turned our heads and gone on with our other cases?”

  Tony thought that over for a long moment. “All right, Larry,” he said finally. “But just tonight. And that’s only if we’re finished with the work on this case by then. After the news reports on this girl’s death come out, we might get some call-in leads on the girl who ran away with her. But if we don’t have any strong leads on this case, I’ll go with you.”