On Wings of Deliverance

by Elizabeth White

  “I’m sorry, Bernadette.” He didn’t know what else to say.

  “Yeah, me, too.” She looked at her fingers. “After that, I didn’t really care anymore what happened to me. Just wanted to be happy. And I couldn’t get happy there with my mama, so I ran away. Several times until—until the state took me away from her.”

  “Was that when you met Mrs. Coker?”

  “Yes. She lived not too far from here.” She looked out the window, as if Mrs. Coker might be standing out on the tarmac. Owen wished he could kiss the blessed woman’s feet for being kind to Bernadette. To his surprise, Benny laughed softly. “I told you she gave me a Bible. After that, I sort of had a Bible fetish. I stole them from every foster home and hotel room I stayed in. Kept them under my bed.”

  “Hotel room? Why would you be in hotel rooms?”

  The blood drained out of her face, then came back with a rush to her cheekbones. She actually shrank into her chair. “The last time I ran away, I wound up on Beale Street in Memphis. I was always crazy about Elvis and it sounded so romantic to be there, where he recorded. I went into the lobby of the Peabody Hotel to watch the ducks and got to talking to this man.”

  There was something peculiar in her voice, a deadness he’d never heard before. Owen jerked to his feet. “Stop. I don’t need to hear any more. Just skip to where this Sherman lady comes in.” He was being a coward, but he couldn’t listen to what he knew was coming.

  “This is it. This is how I met her.” She looked up at him and the blind pain there sent him to his knees in front of her.

  “All right, then. Go ahead, just…” He shook his head. “Bernadette, I don’t know how to deal with this.”

  “Well,” she said reasonably, “you asked for it. You wanted me to trust you, and this is who I am. I told you you wouldn’t like it.”

  “Yeah, you did.” He covered her hands, knotted in her lap, with his. “Only, would you please come sit with me so I can touch you?”

  “No, because it’s important that I see your face.”

  “Then I’ll stay right here.” Dread crashed around in his chest. “Go ahead.”

  She took a sharp breath. “That man took me to a place down near the other end of Beale, where other girls my age lived. With a woman they called Sister Zena. She was sort of a mystic, into palm readings and mojo bags and voodoo dolls and all that creepy nonsense. Her deal with us was that she’d let us live there if we’d give her part of what we made.” She paused. “Owen, you’re hurting my hands.”

  He loosened his grip immediately, brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. “I’m sorry,” he said helplessly.

  Oh, Lord. Lord, what do I do?

  She sighed. “She was awful, and I was afraid of her, but none of us could leave. We didn’t have anyplace else to go.”

  “How old were you then?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “What does a fourteen-year-old do to earn a living on Beale Street?”

  She blinked at him. “Owen, don’t you understand? I sold myself. I was a prostitute.”

  FIFTEEN

  She saw it register on that open, all-American-boy face when her words sank in.

  “You were a…” He physically flinched, as if he’d been punched in the stomach. “No.”

  In a detached sort of way, she was amazed that she had no tears. Maybe she’d cried them all out a long time ago. She felt a little sorry for Owen. “You know it’s true. I sure wouldn’t make something like that up. It’s almost like it happened to somebody else, it was so long ago and I’ve come such a long way. I lived there on Beale Street for about nine months before Miranda came.”

  Owen shook his head again. He seemed to be having a hard time processing her words. No wonder. “Miranda?”

  “Miranda Gonzales. The Lord Jesus sent her to Memphis on vacation that summer. We met in the Peabody Hotel restroom. She heard me crying after I got stood up one day and followed me to Zena’s house. I would never have gotten out without her.”

  “That’s a mighty wild story.”

  “You can see why I don’t tell it. It’s complicated and makes people uncomfortable.” She searched Owen’s eyes. He was more than uncomfortable. He looked flayed alive. A tinge of anger crept through her chest. I’m the one who was abused and betrayed.

  “You’re okay now, right? The people who brought you out of there…they took care of you?”

  She felt his big hands gripping hers, saw the anxiety in those turquoise eyes. A stronger wave of pity for him filled her.

  He wanted everything tied up neatly like a romance novel. He wanted a perfect sweetheart who came to Christ and never had another impure thought.

  Well, she couldn’t give him that woman. All she had was herself, broken and pieced back together. She could feel herself withdrawing.

  “Not right away.” She sighed, straightening a little. “I went back to the children’s home in Collierville, but it wasn’t a perfect place, either. At least I was back in school. Finally, after about a year, the Gonzaleses got custody and took me in.”

  “And that’s where you became a Christian.” Some of the color returned to his face.

  “Yes.”

  He stayed on his knees in front of her, looking down at his thumb rubbing across her knuckles. “So how does all this relate to the guy who tried to kill you? And how does the Sherman woman play into it?”

  “Ladonna Sherman is—was Zena.”

  “You became friends with your madam?” His mouth hung open.

  “Is that so impossible? I changed. So did she. Owen, Christ is powerful. The Holy Spirit can work miracles in people’s lives.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Look, it’s not like we’re best friends. A few years after I left, a local church was doing renovations on the river end of Beale Street as a mission project. Somebody got brave enough to tackle Ladonna’s house and told her about the Lord. After she became a believer, she changed her name, left town and started a new life.”

  “What made you get in touch with her?”

  “I didn’t. It was the other way around. She found out where I was and called one day. To apologize. To try to make it up to me.” She squeezed Owen’s fingers. “Which was ridiculous, and we both knew it, but eventually I forgave her. We’ve kept in touch off and on, once or twice a year. I changed my name, too, by the way—to Malone. It used to be McBride. And I started calling myself Benny.”

  He stared at her for a moment, soaking that in. “So where is Ladonna now?”

  “In Coldwater, Mississippi. Just south of the state line, about twenty miles from here.”

  “Is that where we’re going?”

  She nodded. “She doesn’t know I’m coming. I wanted to make sure I could actually get here before I called her.”

  “Okay.” Owen frowned. “That explains a lot, but I still don’t understand what she has to do with the hit man. And your three dead friends. Was that a lie or—”

  She snatched her hands away and reared back. “I don’t lie! Especially not to you!”

  “Wait!” He reached for her. “I didn’t mean—”

  “I know I’ve dumped a lot on you. You can wait for me here while I go to see Ladonna—”

  “Bernadette, don’t treat me like that.” He sat back on his heels, seeming to realize she wasn’t going to let him touch her again. “I just want to understand what’s going on.”

  “All right, I’m sorry.” She pushed her fingers into her hair. “The three women used to be in Ladonna’s house when I was there. We were pretty close friends. Ladonna wrote to me when Daisy died of an overdose five years ago. It didn’t even make the news. Then a couple years later, Tamika was found strangled, with no clues as to who did it or why. Ladonna e-mailed me the night before you and I left Agrexco. Celine’s body had washed up on the riverbank, cause of death unknown.”

  The stark, bare facts still horrified Bernadette. Three young women linked to her and to Ladonna. Murdered?

  Owen echoed
her thoughts. “You think they were all killed by the same guy and now he’s after the two of you?”

  “I wouldn’t have assumed so, but that guy showing up at the clinic and asking me if I knew Daisy—less than twenty-four hours after I heard from Ladonna…As far as I knew, nobody knew who I was in my old life, except the Gonzaleses, of course. And Meg and Jack Torres. And nobody but my close friends know who I work for and where I’ve been for the last three months. So for the FBI to show up like that, well, it made me nervous.

  “So that morning I had the Jeep sitting ready to go, close to the dorm. Just intuition, I guess. Then he shot at me.” She shuddered. “And here we are.”

  “But, Bernadette, we should have gone straight to the police. Even the Mexican police would have protected you. I know a few cops down there—”

  “No. You don’t understand who this guy is. He’s got tentacles everywhere. Remember, he found us, even after we crashed in the middle of nowhere. I had to get up here to talk to Ladonna and decide what to do. Right now, it’s just my word against his. I have no proof of anything.”

  “He. This guy. Who are you talking about, Benny?”

  “Judge Paul Grenville. The man who first took me to Ladonna’s house.”

  “Grenville?” Dazed, Owen shook his head. “You mean the guy the President wants to appoint as Attorney General?”

  “Yes.”

  “The hearings start this week. Today.”

  “I know. That’s why I’ve got to get to Ladonna today.”

  He felt like some blockhead who couldn’t comprehend a simple sentence. “A Tennessee Supreme Court judge solicited teenage prostitutes—and basically became a serial killer?”

  “See, nobody’s going to believe me.”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t believe you. I’m just—” Owen couldn’t wrap his mind around this new knot in the thread of her story “—it’s just hard to take it in.” He got up off his knees and sank into the sofa again, putting his head in his hands. “He hired a hit man to kill you?” Saying it aloud, it sounded insane.

  “It had to be him behind it, Owen. After Ladonna’s warning, the guy mentioning Daisy Beech…” He heard her get to her feet but didn’t look up; he was too shocked to move. “Grenville has everything to lose if I talk about what happened thirteen years ago. Ladonna and I…we’re the only ones who know what he did.”

  He sat there, looking at her feet in the new shoes. Finally he locked his fingers at the back of his neck and looked up. “I’ve got to ask you—why didn’t you go to the police about him a long time ago?”

  Her expression froze. “Are you interrogating me?”

  “No, I’m trying to understand.” He sat up, exhausted both mentally and emotionally. “But you’ve got to realize, if you ever come forward with all this, you’re going to get a lot more embarrassing questions than that.” He turned his palms out. “Benny, it’s the nature of this kind of accusation.”

  “I don’t know if a man can ever understand. The night I got away from Ladonna, the police caught her and charged her and she wound up serving time. There was a huge splash in the Memphis news. Because I was a minor, my picture was suppressed, but it was still awful—seeing photos and film of the place, pictures of Ladonna and the older girls. And I had to testify at her trial.” She shivered.

  Owen wanted badly to hold her, comfort her. But she had withdrawn completely into a shell. “I’m sure that was awful.”

  “You can’t imagine. By that time, Grenville had faded off the scene. I never knew his name until later, when Ladonna told me who he was. She didn’t turn on him…maybe he knew something else about her or maybe he’d threatened her. Certainly she was afraid of him. She hoped as long as she lay low he’d leave her alone.

  “As for me, I just wanted to keep all that in the past, where it belonged. Focus on healing and getting my education and serving God.” A heavy breath lifted her shoulders. “I’m just now seeing how cowardly that was. I should have laid myself out in the open to make him serve justice.”

  “Bernadette—” he stood up and approached her “—you are the bravest woman I’ve ever met.”

  But she backed away toward the window, where planes flew on and off the runways like bees around a hive. “We’ll see how brave I am after I talk to Ladonna. I’m going to try to get her to corroborate my story. Then I’ll go to the police.”

  Briggs perched in the woods outside Ladonna Sherman’s—aka Sister Zena’s—little house out in the sticks. Somebody had conveniently left a portable tree stand attached to a white oak tree, so he’d climbed up into it and settled down to wait. He wasn’t much of a wildlife man. Didn’t really like the taste of venison. But he enjoyed the thrill of the hunt.

  He had taken care of one problem and it was just a matter of time before the other one was history.

  Grenville himself could have found Carmichael and the girl if they’d flown commercial like normal people. But Briggs had been crawling the Internet, looking up flight plans, while he was stuck in that godforsaken little airport in Del Rio, Texas. Only one carrier out of it and his flight got canceled because the plane had had a mechanical problem. A night in some fleabag motel left him exhausted and cranky.

  He slapped at a mosquito. Definitely cranky.

  But he had already somewhat relieved his feelings this morning. Just a matter of time and he’d be all set for Acapulco. Or maybe Cancún. He’d just have to remember to buy sunscreen so his chemical peel wouldn’t get infected by sun poison.

  He could hardly believe how naive the girl was,

  sticking her head into the oven this way. Carmichael had filed a flight plan with Wilson Air Center for this very day. Where he’d found a plane to charter was anybody’s guess. Didn’t matter. Grenville was convinced they were headed down here to connect with Zena. Briggs hoped so. He’d hate to think he’d wasted most of a day out here in the woods for nothing.

  Owen talked Bernadette into letting him drive the rental car. He was way too jumpy to sit without something to occupy his hands. Exiting the airport, he circled I-240, merging onto I-55, and headed south across the Mississippi state line.

  Benny sat beside him, hands loosely clasped in her lap, staring out the window at flat, boring delta.

  Was she so shaken by what she’d told him that she was completely numb? He had no idea what to say, how to comfort her. So with a hard punch of his finger he turned on the radio and searched until he found a Christian station. A praise chorus filled the silence.

  “The Lord stood at my side

  And gave me strength,

  So that through me the message

  Might be fully proclaimed.

  And I was delivered

  From the lion’s mouth.

  The Lord will rescue me

  From every attack

  And will bring me safely

  To His heavenly kingdom.

  To Him be glory

  Forever and ever. Amen.”

  Well, it beat the ode to rice pudding.

  “Why are you smiling?” Bernadette was staring at him. “What are you thinking? You haven’t said much since I told you—” she swallowed “—you know, all that at the airport.”

  “I was remembering your song about the paper from the king—‘You have to marry my son, rice pudding.’”

  “What?” She smiled. “Owen, you are so weird.”

  “I know.” He sighed. “I’m just trying to absorb everything I know about you and piece it all back together into something I can deal with.”

  “How do you think I feel?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  She fell silent and looked away.

  How did a woman deal with the violation of her body, over and over, and emerge with unshakable maturity? What price of fear and anger and humiliation had she paid?

  The ordeal he’d been through with his father paled in comparison.

  Be honest, Carmichael. You’re selfish. You look at her and imagine the parade of men who must have t
ouched her before you. Men who paid to know her intimately.

  Sickened all over again, he turned the radio up. Maybe to drown out his thoughts. But nothing would do that. As much as he wanted to forget it—realizing that those events had happened to her before he knew her—the truth, realistically, would touch their lives from now on.

  Lord, can I accept it and still offer to be her husband? Can I love her as Christ loved the church, with self-sacrifice and purity? I’m just a man. I’ve never had a challenge like this one. The physical things I can do. Give me a plane or helicopter to fly. Give me a bad guy to take out and I’m Your man.

  But why did You give me this woman to love?

  Why, Lord?

  “Are we getting close?”

  Bernadette looked up at Owen from the satellite map printout she’d made back at the airport business center.

  “I think so.” If she’d remembered Ladonna’s address incorrectly, this whole trip was a bust. Her memory was generally dependable, but what if she’d transposed a number or misspelled the name of the road?

  But how many Duchovny Roads could there be in Coldwater, Mississippi?

  She had spent a good part of her life in the rural South. This flat, wooded area where Ladonna had chosen to hide from Grenville seemed familiar, almost like home. Well, as much as any place could seem like home. They crossed a creek with a small concrete bridge, passed cotton fields and a long stand of woods covered in dormant brown kudzu. In just another month, the parasitic vines would be green and growing with ferocious vitality.

  “Owen, I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you to come to Ladonna’s house.”

  “Why not? I’ve come all this way.”

  “She’ll be upset that I brought somebody with me. She’s very private these days.”

  He frowned. “I’m not letting you go by yourself. In fact, I’ve been thinking. If we can figure out a back way in there, we’ll take it.”

  She blinked. “Why?” The vague anxiety that had lurked all day suddenly turned into gut-clenching fear. “Do you think they followed us?”