Private Justice

by Terri Blackstock

  But his finger was over the trigger. Just a slight nudge could make it to go off.

  She headed for the stairwell, but stopped at the door.

  “Open it,” he said.

  Dread rose up in her. They would climb those stairs to Susan’s floor, and no one would stop them. Didn’t they realize that they had to stop him? If he got to Susan, he would kill them both! Didn’t they understand?

  She opened the door and shuffled into the dark stairwell, wondering where the light switch was.

  “Turn the light on!” he said in a panicked voice. “Find the switch!”

  He moved with her as she felt around for the switch.

  Suddenly she was hurled against the wall, and she spun as Craig was knocked away from her.

  “Run, Allie!” It was Mark’s voice, and she groped for the stair rail and began running up, as fast as she could, stumbling in the darkness as the staircase turned. Below her, she heard the sounds of a struggle, heard bodies thudding and curses and groans. She found the light switch at the top of the stairs and flicked it on, bathing the place in light—just as she heard the whoosh of Craig Barnes’s silenced gun.

  Allie screamed and threw herself back against the wall.

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Allie slid to the floor, her hands covering her head, screaming hysterically. But over her screams she heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and then there were hands on her shoulders, pulling her out of her fetal position, and a soft, soothing voice saying, “It’s okay, baby, he’s dead. It’s over, Allie. Come here. It’s over.”

  She surged upward and fell into Mark’s arms. She wept as he held her with all his might. Below them, she heard the many voices of cops revved up with adrenaline, checking for a pulse, shouting loud enough to wake the dead. One of them said, “Forget it. He’s dead.”

  Craig’s plan for achieving his own redemption, doomed from the start, would never be completed.

  She heard paramedics rushing up the stairs, and the door behind them opened as Ray Ford dashed in. He looked from Allie to the body at the bottom of the stairs. He put a hand on the wall to steady himself and sat slowly down on one of the stairs.

  “He’s dead,” Mark told him as he kept holding Allie. “It’s over.”

  She tried to control her sobs, but they came like hiccups as Issie Mattreaux rushed up the stairwell. She touched Ray’s shoulder. “Ray, I just brought Sid in. He was shot, but I think he’s gonna be all right.”

  In shock, Ray looked up at her and nodded his head. “I thought he was dead,” he said. “They made it sound like—”

  “He’s asking for you,” she said.

  Ray got clumsily to his feet and went back out the door he’d come through. Issie came the rest of the way up. She stooped down next to them. “Let go of her, Mark. I need to check her, make sure she’s not hurt.”

  “No,” Mark told her. “Leave her alone. I’ve got her.”

  “But she could be injured. I need—”

  “She was,” he choked out, “but it’s nothing you can fix, Issie. She’s my wife, and I’ll take care of her.”

  Issie stared at them, a dozen emotions passing over her face. “I understand,” she said quietly. “I’m glad you’re both all right.”

  Issie went back down the stairs. Allie realized that Mark seemed entirely uninterested. His only interest right now seemed to be in her, and in the words he muttered in her ear.

  “Thank you, Lord, thank you…thank you so much…”

  And she let that gratitude seep into her own heart as well. Gradually, the realization came that she was alive, and her marriage was renewed, and her life had a new start. It was a new day.

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Dan Nichols lay on the hard cot in the Newpointe jail cell, staring at the ceiling and wondering how on this green earth he had wound up in such a mess. The betrayal gnawed at him like a mole tunneling through his heart. Stan, Vern, Chad, Mark, Allie…

  He heard his name and looked up to see Vern standing at the cell door. “Dan, you’re free to go,” he said, unlocking the door. “We found Craig Barnes. He’s the killer, so we owe you an apology.”

  Dan hesitated. Were they going to make someone else the scapegoat now? “Just because Craig has a bunker suit doesn’t mean he’s a serial killer.”

  “He’s dead, Dan.”

  Dan’s face changed. “Craig Barnes is dead? How?”

  “He shot Sid and R.J. and took Allie as a hostage. He was headed for the Slidell Hospital to finish Susan off, but Mark managed to get his gun away from him.”

  Dan slowly lowered back to the cot. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Me, either,” Vern said. He leaned in the doorway of the cell, then pushed off from the bars and stepped closer to Dan. “Look, man, no hard feelings, huh? We were strung out. We didn’t know which end was up. We were desperate.”

  Dan shook out of his reverie and got to his feet. “You say I’m free to go?”

  “You can walk right out.” Vern held out a hand to shake, but Dan ignored it and pushed past it.

  “Dan, come on. You have to understand—”

  Dan spun around. “How could you think that I was a serial killer?” Dan stared him down. “No, I don’t think I can understand that.”

  “But, Dan—”

  Dan walked up the hallway, between the other cells, where drunk drivers slept it off and vandals waited for their parents.

  Jill was waiting at the end of it. She’d been crying, he could see. Her eyes glimmered and her nose was red. “Dan, I’m so glad you’re free. You’re not going to believe what’s happened. Allie almost got killed, and Craig—”

  “I heard,” he said coldly. “Where’s my stuff?”

  “Over here.” She led him to the booth where he could pick up his watch, his wallet, the cross he wore around his neck. “Dan, are you all right?”

  He looked down at her as he slipped his watchband on. “No, I’m not, Jill. I feel like the whole town betrayed me.”

  “I know, Dan. I’d feel the same way. But put yourself in their places.”

  “I don’t care what their place was. If I’d been in the same position, I wouldn’t have suspected Vern or Chad, or Stan, or Mark or Allie.”

  “You also wouldn’t have suspected Craig. It was an unusual circumstance, Dan. The town doesn’t know how to deal with so much tragedy. It went on for too long.”

  He headed out the door. Thankfully, all of the reporters had fled to the scene of the shooting, so he and Jill were alone on the steps, squinting in the morning sunlight. “Oh, great.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “I don’t have my car. They brought me in a squad car.”

  “I’ll take you home, Dan,” she said. Wearily, he walked her out to her car, took her keys, and unlocked her door. Then he got in on the other side.

  He was quiet as she drove to the outskirts of town, where he lived. When she reached his driveway, she looked at him expectantly. “Guess I’ll see you later.”

  “Yeah. Thanks for the ride.” He got out and started up to his house, then stopped suddenly. Jill was the only person in town who had come to his defense, and he’d treated her like he was angry at her, too. Slowly, he turned back around.

  She was still sitting there, waiting for him to go in. He went back, opened the passenger door again, and got in.

  “Uh—I meant to tell you how much I appreciate you going to bat for me. It means a lot that you didn’t seem to have any doubts about my innocence.”

  “Why would I doubt, Dan?”

  “Mark and Allie did.” She started to object, but he went on. “And you didn’t. You went in there with both barrels loaded, like you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I wasn’t the guy. I really appreciate that, Jill.”

  She was quiet for a moment as she regarded him. “It was easy,” she said. “I’m a good judge of character.”

  He sat, thinking, as he gazed seriously at her. “Do you think, after this is all ov
er, that you might like to have dinner with me some night? Maybe someplace nice on the Southshore?”

  Her smile broke through the fatigue and tension on her face. “I’d love to.”

  “Okay then.” He squeezed her hand, then got out of the car. “I’ll call you.”

  “Get some sleep. And take care of that hand.”

  “Yeah, I will.”

  He went into his house and watched from the window as she drove away. He felt warm around her, close to her—a strange feeling for a man who dated widely but avoided feelings that might lead to something deeper than mere dating. He tried to shake it away, along with the fatigue and the distress, as he headed back to his bedroom.

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Nick Foster waited until Susan was out of the hospital—four weeks after Craig Barnes’s death—before he held the memorial service the town so desperately needed to begin its healing after all of the deaths. Mark expected the whole town to turn out—except for Dan, who hadn’t been to church or spoken to him at work since he’d been wrongly arrested.

  He had left a dozen messages on Dan’s machine, all of which had gone unacknowledged and unreturned, and had tried to convince Ray, who had taken Craig’s place as fire chief, to assign them to the same shift, but Dan had managed to evade even that. He feared that Dan would never understand or forgive him.

  “Who are you watching for?” Allie whispered, sitting on the pew next to him.

  He started to deny he was watching for anyone, but then worried that she might think he was looking for Issie. “Dan,” he said. “I sure wish he’d come.”

  “He’ll come around,” she said. “I know he will.”

  The service started, with Susan, Ray, Ben, and Vanessa sitting in the front row with Marty Bledsoe and his twins, George and Tommy Broussard, Cale Larkins, and Mark and Allie. Much of the town packed in behind them, until there was standing room only.

  Mark held Allie’s hand as Nick preached on healing, pressing on, looking forward instead of behind, and finally, forgiveness.

  There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when he was finished, and as each of them said a word to the crowd, the emotions grew even more intense. Mark wondered if he could even find his voice as he went to take his turn behind the microphone.

  He cleared his throat—then simply stood quietly for a moment, looking out on the loving faces in the crowd, the people who were part of his family…

  Allie’s parents, who had forgiven him after he’d proven his remorse to them, were sitting on the second row. His father, dead sober though he trembled miserably, sat next to them.

  There were firemen and cops, schoolmates and teachers…

  And then he saw Dan, standing at the back in the crowd.

  He cleared his throat again, and tried to find the words he’d been wanting to say. “As Nick said, bad things aren’t all bad. I wish we could do some of it over. I wish I hadn’t hurt one of my best friends because I was so panicked that anything seemed possible. I wish he could forgive me. Me and all the others—because we do know that he’s incapable of such a horrible crime. We do know that, now that we can think clearly.”

  He saw Dan push through the crowd to the nearest door, and he was gone.

  Disheartened, Mark tried hard to go on. “But some good came, too. I realized that I didn’t want to live apart from Allie anymore. That I wanted to share a double rocking chair with her someday in that nursing home where our children would send us.”

  The crowd chuckled.

  “I guess I owe that to Craig Barnes—or more likely, to the Lord. He can make something good out of something bad. And today, it’s my pleasure to tell you, that Allie and I just found out we’re expecting our first child. A Thanksgiving baby.”

  A round of applause went up over the congregation, and everyone cheered. Allie got up and came to his side, and Mark kissed the wife whom God had taught him to cherish. They had so much to look forward to. So many things to be thankful for. So much to rejoice in.

  He only wished that Dan could rejoice with them.

  Dan stood just outside the door to the small sanctuary, fighting his wildly conflicting feelings while Mark spoke. When the announcement about the pregnancy came, he smiled, surprisingly glad for Mark and Allie despite how he wanted to hang onto his anger.

  Confused, he just stood, his mind shifting from his brief time in jail to the years he’d spent as Mark’s friend. The amount of time he’d spent in jail wasn’t the issue—it was the principle of the thing. He had the right to be angry.

  Yes, he had the right. But he didn’t want to be angry anymore.

  The choir sang the final song, and then the memorial service broke up, and the crowd began to pour out of the small building.

  He worked his way through the crowd back into the sanctuary. Mark and Allie stood at the front, hugging well-wishers with so much joy on their faces that he longed to share it with them.

  He pushed toward the front, through the people, weaving back and forth against the flow of traffic.

  Mark looked up, and their eyes met. Mark excused himself and started toward him.

  They grasped hands first, then pulled each other into a tight hug, one that lasted much longer than either of them would normally have allowed. When Dan let Mark go, Stan was waiting, and Dan hugged him too. Then Vern and Chad grabbed him, then Nick, then some of the firemen—as if he’d been one of the injured ones.

  And when he was done, Jill was standing nearby, looking so beautiful and so happy. He pulled her into a hug too, and laughed in her ear. Surprised, he found he didn’t want to let her go. “So how about that dinner you promised me?” he asked, still holding her.

  “Tonight?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Right now.”

  She laughed heartily against his shoulder, and made no attempt to get out of his embrace. “All right,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  Allie beamed as she watched two of her favorite people head out of the church together, and she breathed a silent prayer that something important would blossom between them. They both deserved so much happiness.

  Celia touched her arm, and Allie turned and hugged her.

  “I’m so excited for you,” Celia said, her voice shaking. Allie pulled back to look into her friend’s face.

  “Celia, what’s wrong?”

  She tried to laugh off the tears. “I’m just so jealous,” she said. “Stan and I have been trying to have a baby, too.”

  “You will,” Allie said with excitement. “And they’ll play together, and we can join some hokey mom’s group and take our kids to the park. I’m selling the flower shop so I can stay home with the baby. We’re going to have to cut way back, but it’ll be worth it. And you and I can exchange recipes and baby-sit for each other…”

  Celia threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, if it would only hurry and happen.”

  “It will,” Allie said, as Mark walked up behind her and put his arms around her. “I know it will. And there’s no rush. We have all the time in the world.”

  Or so it seemed—and that was good enough for them.

  Afterword

  As a Christian writer, I struggle with the balance between the message and the story. I don’t want to preach to any of my readers, nor do I want to read stories that preach to me. But each time I finish a book, I experience the very real fear that someone will read my book and be spiritually moved, but not know where to go from there. Will they know they need something, and follow a false doctrine that might come along at just that time, a false doctrine that temporarily fills some void in their life, but keeps them from ever walking through the door that leads to salvation?

  It’s possible. So I include this page, to let you know that there is only one way to God, and that is through Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the light. There are many counterfeit religions, and they’re dressed up in pretty packages. They promise great rewards. Some promise license to live as you want; others exalt you as God; others tickl
e your ears through psychics and New Age thinking; others lead you to angel worship and offer “spiritual guides” who seem safe but are, in reality, demonic. But perhaps the most counterfeit religions of all is the one in which you sit in church Sunday after Sunday and tell yourself you’re a Christian, when you’ve never entered into a sacred covenant with Christ, never died to yourself, never lived for Christ, and never borne fruit. All of these counterfeits offer cheap hope, temporary pleasure, shallow fulfillment. They also offer a miserable eternity.

  That wonderful salvation through Christ is not cheap, temporary, or shallow! Our doctrine deals with sin—my sin, your sin—and only through dealing with that can we come to understand why Christ had to die. Only then can we have the promise—not of feeling good and important and guilt-free and unaccountable while on this earth—but of having abundant life on earth, and eternal life in God’s presence. The most wonderful worship experience I’ve ever had is just a sample of what my everyday life will be like in heaven!

  But I’m like a prisoner on death row who’s been pardoned. All I have to do is accept the pardon and walk out. I have a choice. Why would I deny a pardon that came at such a high price—in fact, at the cost of someone else’s death—and insist on finishing out my sentence? I don’t know. But day after day, millions and millions of people choose to do just that.

  Don’t be one of them.

  Tell Christ you accept that pardon today, and walk out of your prison into freedom. And if you’ve already done that, tell someone else, so that they can be pardoned, too.

  Coming April 2002

  THE FIRST BOOK IN THE CAPE REFUGE SERIES

  Cape Refuge

  The air conditioner was broken at City Hall, and the smell of warm salt air drifted through the windows from the beach across the street. Morgan Cleary fanned herself and wished she hadn’t dressed up. She might have known that no one else would. The mayor sat in shorts and a T-shirt that advertised his favorite brand of beer. One of the city councilmen wore a Panama hat and flip-flops. Sarah Williford, the newest member of the Cape Refuge City Council, looked as if she’d come in from a day of surfing and hadn’t even bothered to stop by the shower. She wore a Spandex top that looked like a bathing suit and a pair of cut-off jeans. Her long hair could have used a brush.