True Light Page 16

  Mark stared at the kid for a moment, knowing that his grief over his suffering dad had brought him here. Maybe he could put him to work doing something, just to distract him.

  “Look, if your parents say it’s okay, I’ll talk to Wheaton, and see if we can put you to work around here. You won’t be out chasing killers, but if you’re willing to do gopher work, run errands, clean up . . .”

  “I’ll do whatever needs doing.”

  Mark could see that Jimmy was determined. “Okay, then. If your parents give the go-ahead, then come back and see me. As long as Wheaton says it’s okay.”

  The grief on Jimmy’s face seemed to fade as he raced out of the station.

  FORTY-FIVE

  WHEN DOUG, BRAD, AND DEPUTY WHEATON CAME BACK to the department, their van was filled with the men who had beaten up Mark. The prisoners were spitting mad, all of them, and fighting the cuffs that bound their wrists. Mark came to his feet as Wheaton led them in, grinding his teeth as he remembered the helplessness he’d felt as he’d struggled to fight back.

  “You’ve got him working here?” Sam Ellington cried as he spotted Mark.

  “Are you asking for trouble?” Paul Burlin said.

  “Shut up and sit down,” Wheaton said.

  Mark sat back down, his jaw popping as he fixed his eyes on the file he was reading. He tried to ignore them as they were processed, but his pulse pounded in his broken arm, reminding him of what they’d done to him.

  Finally, when Wheaton led them through the jail door, his tormenters began to cough and gag.

  “You can’t put us in there! That smell is horrible!”

  “There’s something dead in that place!”

  Mark looked up. “It isn’t anything dead,” he said in a low, deliberate voice. “It’s human waste.”

  “Come on, boys,” Wheaton said as he ushered the men into the dark room.

  Satisfaction rushed through Mark as he heard the cell doors clanging. Their cursing shouts echoed over the room.

  Justice had been done, if only for a little while.

  After a moment, Wheaton came back out. “Green, we’re going to talk to Mahaffey and Kraft and check out the addresses you’ve come up with. Hopefully some of the escapees are stupid enough to go home. I want you to just babysit the prisoners and take care of whatever comes up. If their lawyers or family members come, let them in to talk. Hopefully, they’ll bring food. But don’t open the cell doors for anything.”

  Mark dreaded the duty but didn’t argue. How could he, when he’d sworn to do whatever Wheaton needed?

  “You got it. By the way, I meant to tell you that Sheriff Scarbrough’s son came by.” He told him what Jimmy wanted.

  “If he comes back, give him something to do,” Wheaton said. “Something safe. Keep him away from the prisoners, and don’t leave him alone.”

  As Brad and Doug left with the deputy again, Mark prayed that people would start volunteering to help soon. The idea of him guarding the ones who’d beaten him was absurd. Through the steel door, he could hear their shouts: demanding attorneys, yelling threats. He thought of opening the door and screaming for them to shut up, but part of him enjoyed hearing them suffer.

  His arm and collarbone ached, his brace was chafing his skin, and the stitches in his forehead were beginning to pull tight. He’d kill for a shower — it had been eight months since he’d had one. Washing with a bowl didn’t cut it when you had dried blood crusted all over you.

  He went into the department kitchen, wondering what he was going to feed these prisoners tonight if their families didn’t come through. He knew what it was like sitting in a jail cell with disease festering in the Porta-John, his stomach growling. He wondered if any of Lou Grantham’s men had been part of the break-in at his house. Had they stolen his food? If so, should he be expected to come up with something out of his own resources to feed them? Maybe he should just let them starve.

  He went to the defunct refrigerator — empty. As many people as he’d told about turning refrigerators into solar ovens, he wondered why Sheriff Scarbrough hadn’t done that with the departments’ refrigerators. It would help keep the prisoners fed.

  Maybe he could do it for them. All he would have to do was remove the door, take the coils and mechanics off the fridge and paint the metal liner black. The glass cover could be made out of old storm doors, or the big screen of a ruined television, or the windshield of a car. The whole contraption could be set on the refrigerator door to help insulate it, then wrapped with layers of cardboard, Styrofoam, or old newspapers to insulate it further.

  All of those things were pretty easy to come by — it was the reflective panel that was tricky. For the ones he’d already made, he’d used three sides of a big cardboard box and covered it with reflective material — aluminum foil or old mirrors glued together. Set on top of the box, the three-paneled reflector could heat the box to 275 degrees Fahrenheit. An oven that size could bake twenty loaves of bread — or anything else a person would want to cook.

  Maybe tomorrow he could get someone to help him drag the refrigerator out where he could work on it. If Jimmy came back, he could enlist his help. But even with the boy, he doubted he could handle it with a broken arm.

  He heard the front door open and rabid voices as people came in. He picked up his gun and stepped out of the kitchen.

  Sally Grantham, Lou’s wife, led an entourage, and they looked ready for a fight. She froze as she saw Mark, and cried out, “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve been deputized.” His tone dared her to protest.

  “What kind of idiot would deputize someone like you?” She turned to the man with the bad toupee behind her. “This is ludicrous.”

  The man looked as if he’d suffered a personal affront. “Yes, it is. But maybe it’s the basis for a motion to have them released. I’m Don Patton, attorney for Sam Ellington, Lou Grantham, Alan Newman, Mike Hinton, and Paul Burlin.”

  Mark recognized him from his personal injury commercials. He had a reputation for showing up at funerals and dropping his business card into the widows’ hands. “I know who you are.”

  “Where is Deputy Wheaton?”

  “He’s out making more arrests.”

  “So you’ve been left in charge, with men you hold a grudge against?”

  Mark breathed a sardonic laugh. “For the record, I’m not the one who’s dangerous.”

  Sally bristled. “We demand to see our husbands.”

  Mark took slow, measured steps to the steel door and opened it. “Be my guest.”

  Sally stepped into the doorway. “Isn’t there some light in here?”

  “You may not have noticed,” Mark said, “but we’re in the middle of a power outage.”

  Sally looked like she could spit at him. Setting her teeth, she grabbed a lantern burning on one of the desks and carried it to the door. He heard her gag as she stepped into the cell room. The attorney pulled out a handkerchief and held it over his nose as he trailed her. Becky Ellington and Trish Burlin followed.

  Mark sat back down at his desk as he heard one of them vomiting on the floor inside. He supposed he would have to clean it up.

  Or maybe he’d just leave it there to add to the ambience.

  He sat down at one of the desks, covered his face with his good hand, and tried to block out the sound of their angry voices.

  God, help me to hate less.

  The Biblical admonition flashed through his brain. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

  Mark felt a stirring of resentment that the Lord would remind him of that passage right now. He didn’t want to think about praying for those who had beaten him. He wanted to rub their noses in their plight, and make them as miserable as he had been. Unlike him, they were guilty of what they’d been charged with.

  He stepped outside to get a little air. The temperature had risen — it felt like it was in the fifties. The snow was melting and the sky was clear, without a cloud. And this same sky wa
s clear and pure for the prisoners who laughed at their exploits as they hid from the law.

  Rubbing his eyes, he thought back over the last twelve months. It had been a nightmare for much of the civilized world. But for him it had gone much deeper. It had been a time of waking up to his father’s true nature, then losing the dad that he couldn’t help loving despite all his sins. It had been a time of overcompensating for his own unearned reputation, and of guarding his heart against Deni’s on-again, off-again relationship with Craig. Now his house had been broken into, his mother threatened. And he was nursing broken bones when he hadn’t done a thing wrong.

  Why was God allowing all this? What had Mark done to deserve it?

  And then a thought entered his mind. To whom much has been given, much is required.

  “What does that mean?” he asked God aloud. “That in exchange for your grace, I have to be abused and insulted and humiliated?” He wondered if the cost was too high.

  Almost as quickly as the thought came to him, he realized that it wasn’t. No cost was too high for that grace. Jesus, too, had been abused and insulted, humiliated and beaten. Accused of something he hadn’t done.

  To this day, the name of Jesus was a curse word to some, a source of distrust, a reason for persecution.

  How dare Mark think he was above that suffering? He’d given his life to Christ years ago, and gladly taken up his cross to follow him. He couldn’t put it down now, declaring himself too righteous to carry it.

  And where did he get the right to hate?

  He thought of Jesus’ model prayer — Forgive us of our transgressions as we forgive those who’ve transgressed against us. If Mark was indeed forgiven only as he forgave, then he was in a terrible mess.

  Tears rushed to his eyes, but he blinked them back. “Dry up,” his father would have told him. So he did.

  Slowly, he stepped back into the building. The women and attorney were still in the cellblock with their men. He could hear the voices, angry and desperate. He was sure they were raking him over the coals.

  He found a Gideon Bible on Gordon Jones’s desk. Had the slain deputy been a Christian? He picked it up, and opened to the prayer that was tormenting him. He found it in Luke 11 and read the Lord’s Prayer again. Okay, Lord, I need to forgive. Show me how.

  He heard heels clicking on the concrete, and the group burst out. “You’ve got to do something about those toilets,” Sally cried. “If my husband gets a disease, I’m going to sue the county, the town . . . I’ll even sue you!”

  “Good luck,” Mark said. “I’m not worth much. And neither is the sheriff’s department.”

  Trish stepped toward him, her eyes pleading. “Mark, don’t you have any compassion?”

  There he stood with his arm in a sling, his bruised and stitched face, his broken collarbone. Was she serious? Anger boiled in his chest again . . . and he thought of telling her what she could do with her compassion.

  Don Patton wiped his oily face with his handkerchief. “I’m going to see the judge immediately. They’ll be out of here within the hour.”

  That was it. Bitterness sliced through him. It was a clean cut, eliminating any hope of compassion. “Knock yourself out.”

  Furious, the women left with the attorney on their heels, slamming the door behind them. He walked to the jail door and slammed it.

  But the Golden Rule flashed like a neon sign through his brain: Do unto others . . .

  He turned his angry face up to the ceiling. “What is this, Lord? A day of Christian platitudes that don’t work?”

  Word of his innocence probably hadn’t gotten around the neighborhood yet. If people knew that he was in charge of the jail, they would assume the lunatic was running the asylum. Someone else might come after him. He had bones that weren’t yet broken.

  It was all because of those men in there.

  And because of Randy Kraft and Blake Mahaffey, who had deliberately lied about his whereabouts the morning of the shooting. And they were still free. He couldn’t wait to hear that loud, iron door shut behind them.

  Had they been the ones to shoot Zach? He pictured them in the woods the morning of Zach’s shooting, one of them hearing the gun go off, finding the deer lying dead on the ground, coveting it enough to raise his gun and pull the trigger. Mark imagined the pact they’d made to pin the whole thing on him — a man people already distrusted. They deserved to be sitting in a dark jail cell that reeked of human waste and urine — with others like them. He hoped they’d be arrested quickly as all the escapees were rounded up. He would house the two boys with Tree House.

  The men in the cells hollered and cursed, blaming, accusing, insulting him. How could he forgive men like that? How — and why — should he force himself to make it more pleasant for them?

  I don’t expect you to feel it. Just do it.

  The thought, clearly from God, made him furious. “Do it how?”

  The toilets. Clean the toilets.

  He struggled against that thought, amazed that it would be asked of him. Hadn’t he earned his anger? Wasn’t it warranted?

  He sat back down, leaning on his desk, rubbing his stubbled jaw as he wrestled with the prompting. The apostle Paul had been beaten, shipwrecked, run out of town. He called them his “light and momentary” afflictions, and said they were nothing compared to the glory that awaited him.

  Mark wondered if he could ever learn to think like Paul. Wasn’t that why he had the Holy Spirit? So he could do the hard things?

  Clean the toilets.

  It was ridiculous.

  And yet . . .

  He couldn’t escape the thought that forgiveness wasn’t a feeling. It was cleaning toilets for men who had beaten you.

  Since he had all of them in one cell at the moment, he had the perfect opportunity to clean the other four. Just emptying the Porta-Johns would help the conditions immeasurably.

  Just the thought made him ill. How could he go in there with a broken arm and clean out bacteria-ridden waste?

  I’ll help you, came that still, small voice again.

  Mark wanted to raise his bruised fist at the ceiling and lash back, refusing to submit. But how would he dare? He had no right to argue with the one who had died for him.

  Instead, he went into the kitchen and found a bucket and some dirty towels.

  FORTY-SIX

  DEPUTY WHEATON, BRAD, AND DOUG FOUND THE JUDGE at the courthouse and got a search warrant for the homes of Randy Kraft and Blake Mahaffey. The search would be twofold — to frighten the boys into confessing to lying about Mark, and to see if any of their guns matched up with the gun that shot Zach.

  Luke Kraft, Randy’s father, was in the backyard building a power-generating windmill. Doug looked at it with interest. His own attempt at harnessing the wind had ended in failure, since the winds in this area were too inconsistent. Maybe Kraft knew something Doug didn’t know.

  Deputy Wheaton got right to the point, wrenching Doug’s thoughts back to why they were here. “Mr. Kraft, we need to ask your son a few more questions. Is he here?”

  Luke didn’t seem disturbed. “Yeah, he’s in his room. Blake’s over here too. I’ll get them. You guys come on in.”

  It was clear the man wasn’t threatened by law enforcement showing up at his door. The three of them stepped inside. The room was dim with only the window light, but a fire crackled in the fireplace.

  The boys came into the room, looking even younger than Doug expected. They were both eighteen, but they were skinny and didn’t look strong enough to carry off a ten-point buck. Randy was only five-six or so, much shorter than the men Zach had described, though Blake was probably closer to the shooter’s five-ten. Neither of them seemed particularly well built.

  Deputy Wheaton introduced himself. “How are you guys doing today?” he asked.

  “Doing fine, sir.” Randy looked troubled as he faced the deputy. “We already told the sheriff everything we know.”

  “The sheriff was shot, as you probably h
eard.”

  Randy nodded, and Blake’s hands went into his pockets. “Yeah, that’s bad. Is he gonna make it?”

  “We hope so,” Wheaton said. “We just wanted to come by and clarify a few things we’re confused about.”

  Randy swallowed hard and looked up at his friend. Blake crossed his arms and took a step backward.

  Wheaton scratched his head. “Grapevine’s pretty active in this town, so you may have also heard that Zach Emory cleared Mark Green’s name. Says it wasn’t him that shot him.”

  Silence, then Blake cleared his throat. “Well, we don’t know who shot him, Officer. All we know is that we saw Mark that day.”

  “Did Zach say who did shoot him?” Randy cut in.

  Wheaton reminded Doug of Columbo as he rubbed his jaw in puzzlement. “He didn’t know the name, but he described the guy. And see, the thing is, now I’m a little confused about your story.”

  Randy turned to his father, looking for help. Luke just stood there, waiting for him to clear things up.

  “It’s just . . . we thought we saw him,” Blake said. “Maybe it wasn’t him, after all. Maybe it just looked like him.”

  Wheaton just stared at him. “See, there’s the rub, boys. I read your statement, and it was emphatic. You said you were 100 percent positive that you saw Mark at the crime scene.”

  Doug held his breath. If they could just get the boys to confess to lying . . .

  The boys looked at each other again, then Blake nodded. Finally, Blake turned to Wheaton and cleared his throat. This was it, Doug thought. They were going to talk.

  “Okay, we lied, but we didn’t shoot Zach.”

  Luke looked incredulous. “What? You lied?”

  Randy couldn’t meet his father’s eyes. “Some guys paid us to say what we said.”

  Bingo! Doug’s heart leaped in his chest.

  “What guys?” Wheaton asked Blake. “You got a name?”

  “No, we don’t know them. I wouldn’t even know where to find them again.”

  Very convenient, Doug thought. Some “guys” they didn’t know and couldn’t identify had emerged out of nowhere.