The Words I Speak (Anyone Who Believes Book 2)

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  Was it something in the personal history of Detective Ramirez that prevented all of this from sounding like good news? That question muted Willow’s celebration.

  “I’m so glad. I thought she would be rescued.” Then it occurred to Willow, that maybe she needed to be more guarded in what she said. She stopped to ponder this thought and to try to find its origin amidst the early morning fog in her head.

  Detective Ramirez continued. “Ronald Percy isn’t cooperating at all. He won’t tell us about any other girls. He won’t talk about any accomplices.”

  At the word accomplices, Willow woke fully. Though she didn’t know everything about criminals like Ronald Percy, she understood the reference to other girls, assuming that Heather was not Percy’s first victim. But she hadn’t assumed there were any accomplices. Weren’t sexual predators, like Percy, usually lone wolves?

  Now that Heather was safe, and the jet propulsion to do whatever it took to get her free had burned out, Willow coasted into an entirely different view of her part in the solving of this crime. Because she knew she was innocent, she hadn’t filtered her actions through the eyes of professionally-trained suspicion. She suddenly understood the low tone and lack of celebration in Donna Ramirez’s voice. Willow realized she should say no more at this point in the conversation.

  To Detective Ramirez, the long hesitation after the mention of accomplices confirmed her worst suspicions. Now that the two women thought they understood each other, the rest of the conversation became a farce.

  “Thanks for the call,” Willow said stiffly.

  “We’ll be in touch,” said Detective Ramirez.

  And they both hung up.

  Willow Pierce sat on the edge of her bed, her feet on the carpet. She looked down at her white socks, both slightly askew, against the dark brown carpet. She started to replay the events of the past thirty-six hours. What exactly had she said? How had she said it? She looked especially for how any of that could be held against her.

  Back at the police station, Ronald Percy was asleep in a cell, as FBI agents worked to transfer him to a federal facility. Though the crime had not crossed state lines, the Bureau still held jurisdiction in cases like this. And perhaps Percy could be linked to similar crimes in other states.

  The local police had carefully investigated the two-flat that Percy owned, the upper floor used for his personal residence, the lower unit strangely clean of evidence of any other crimes. Only physical evidence of Heather Tomlinson’s ordeal could be identified. And even that had to be left in place for the feds to collect and evaluate.

  Just as Willow had assumed, the police were confident that other crimes could be linked to Ronald Percy. They were less confident that they could find someone who had helped him in his sick obsession with young teenage girls. It was only when they had to reveal Willow’s role in the rescue that the local police surrendered to their suspended doubt about her ability to see things supernaturally. They allowed the federal agents to assume that she knew about Heather’s captivity because she had at least been aware of Ronald Percy’s scheme, if not complicit in it.

  Willow lay in bed praying and waiting. Perhaps she was waiting for a heavy knock at the door, but she thought she was waiting for a sense of peace, for release from the vacuum in her chest at the realization that she had just been dragged into trouble that was not her own. In the self-talk that scrolled back and forth over her attempts to relax and trust God with her future, she began to hear echoes of false accusations under which she had suffered in the past.

  In those teenage years, when her mother had self-medicated and generally ignored the torment to which she allowed her daughter to be subject, Claudia would occasionally turn against Willow and accuse her of the very thing that she herself had sold her daughter into. It was as if Willow were trapped between the pernicious control of her abusers and the fear that someone would find out what she was doing in those church basements, accusing her of those very things she was forced to do.

  Now, she felt the hollowing ache of being accused once again for something that should have elicited a much different response.

  Swinging her legs back down to the floor once again Willow stood up this time, determined to be proactive. She found her cell phone and the number of the church administrator. From him she would get the name of the church’s lawyer, a man she had met once but whose name she couldn’t remember.

  Still wearing her flannel night gown and socks, standing in the middle of her cold but sunny living room, Willow left a voice mail. It was Saturday morning, not a good time to do serious business.

  As she assembled a simple breakfast, just toast and juice, Willow tried to convince herself that she had nothing to worry about. After all, she was innocent. They couldn’t convict her of something she hadn’t done, even if they could accuse her. But few people have reached the age of two score and seven and not heard of someone wrongly convicted, even spending decades in prison as a result.

  That these thoughts dominated her morning, testified to the degree to which she was dealing with her prospects on her own, in her own strength, or perhaps weakness. Willow looked this fact in the eyes when she sat at her little round maple table in the kitchen. One slice of toast lay untouched in front of her. She sucked in a deep breath and let it go slowly. Standing up and heading for her recliner, Willow knew she had to get up and move, to break herself from the tumble that turned over and over in her worry-addled mind.

  Once seated where she had been when she first received the frightening vision of the captive girl, Willow saw a new view, like cresting a ridge on a climb in the mountains. She assessed the fact that less than two days had passed since she received that revelation for which she had not been able to debate the appropriate response.

  If life actually contained one of those scenes, so common to action movies, where one of the main characters falls toward a consuming abyss only to be hooked by one fortunate hand, it was a scene like the one Willow had experienced in that chair the night before last. With your lover, partner, or child dangling over destruction, you have no alternative response but to hang on tight and to exert all of your strength to haul that beloved one away from the edge of disaster. Willow could not have responded any more carefully, any more circumspectly, or self-protectively to the girl dangling from her strained hand that night. Hindsight, for all its clarity, reminded her of that one reality. And, with that, she buried all regrets and second-guessing inspired by the suspicious tone of Detective Ramirez on the phone that morning.

  “Maybe I’m overreacting,” Willow said aloud.

  That’s when she heard that authoritative knock on her front door.

  An Advocate

  Willow’s one phone call from the police station went to her pastor, Simon Toliver. She left the rest to Simon. The sixty-year-old former deep sea diver took a long breath and released it much as Willow had. No time to panic.

  Simon reached Martin Jordan, the lawyer for the church. Not being a lawyer himself, Simon wasn’t sure whether Martin could handle a case like Willow’s, one that would move to a federal criminal court within twenty-four hours or so. Martin’s specialty was real estate law. He had never been called on to represent a church member for federal felony charges. But Simon knew he could leave the rest with Martin.

  By noon that Saturday, Martin had reached Kellan McGregor, in California. The Oak Tree Church was part of a growing network of churches. The mother church, Jack Williams’s church, was a few hours north of the Bay Area of California. Kellan McGregor was a criminal lawyer who was a member of Jack’s church. He promised to fly out to Colorado on Monday.

  At five o’clock on Saturday, Kellan sat in Jack Williams’s office. Jack wore a hooded sweatshirt and warmup pants, and not because Kellan had summoned him from the gym. That was just how Jack dressed on a Saturday, a day he usually worked from home.

  The two men could hardly be more dissimilar. Jack, the avuncular ex-hippie with his mellow pace and permanent grin, was well into
his sixties. Kellan was not yet forty, though few people who knew him could accurately guess his age. The young lawyer reminded Jack of a flag pole, tall and slender and perfectly straight. Kellen remained perfectly upright when the world around him rocked and swayed—a good man to have in your corner in a fight, especially a legal fight.

  “So, you know who Willow Pierce is, right?” Jack was saying. He leaned far back in his leather office chair holding his head in both hands, fingers interlocked behind his light gray hair.

  Kellan nodded. His eyesight the envy of aspiring fighter pilots, Kellan wore no glasses or contacts and didn’t expect to need reading glasses for decades yet. And his eyes looked as clear as his vision, the whites unmarred by strained blood vessels or encroaching color of any kind. Both Scottish and Irish in heritage, as his name reflected, nevertheless Kellan’s hair was dark, nearly black, and his eyes dark brown, with a slight halo of gold around the edges.

  “I was at that meeting when she gave Beau Dupere the news of his approaching end,” Kellan said. Lots of people claimed to be at that famous meeting. Kellan actually was.

  Jack breathed a small laugh through his nose, shaking his head slightly. He dropped his hands to the arms of his chair. “I hope she’s in better shape these days. She looked like her end was near when I last saw her.”

  Kellan just stretched his thin lips into a long dash. “I told Martin, their church’s attorney, that I’d be out there on Monday.”

  “Does this make sense to you?” Jack was pressing his fingertips together in front of him now, his elbows on the arms of the chair. “Are the feds saying the information she gave about the abducted girl implicates her in the crime? So she’s part of a kidnapping?”

  “Kidnapping, child abduction,” Kellan said. “That’s why the FBI got involved.” He glanced away from Jack for half a heartbeat and then back. “Yeah, I think that makes sense. She might have provided just too much evidence for them to believe that she was relaying a revelation from God. She is pretty far out there.”

  Now Jack chuckled, his whole chest concussing. “Yeah, I don’t think there’s any length she won’t go to, to get a word out. And I doubt she even knows how to settle for less than everything there is to know. She won’t just be satisfied with a sliver of the picture, if she has any say in it.”

  Jack was remembering a time that he was in Colorado and this skinny young woman came up to him and stared him down for a full thirty seconds. Being the well-known apostolic leader in the room, those ten years ago, Jack didn’t expect an unknown prophet to come up and pin him to the wall. But he found himself unable to say anything to interrupt the strange stare-down. When she finally did speak, it rocked Jack and weakened his knees.

  “The father says to you, ‘Jack, I see you. And I also see ahead of you. Don’t ever doubt me.’ ”

  When words of such a foundational character hit Jack with spiritual authority, his joints seemed to slip loose and he had to grab Simon Toliver, who was standing next to him at the time, to keep from falling down. The authority came not only from the unbreakable focus of Willow’s penetrating eyes, but also from the fact that Jack had been complaining to God that week about letting him down, not being there for him on some controversies in his own church. Those assuring words from Willow were a recognizable rebuke, as well as a promise.

  “I can imagine she just kept getting more details along the way and that just didn’t seem like what they’re used to, when dealing with the occasional psychic,” Jack said to Kellan. “That’s probably how they categorized her information.” Jack was only saying what Kellan had already surmised. Still baffled by something, Jack continued. “But wouldn’t they have to have some kind of proof of her involvement beyond her own words?”

  Kellan nodded very slowly. “Well, words from her own mouth might seem like a confession, depending on how you look at it. But I suspect this is desperation on the part of the investigators. They may not really be convinced that she did take part in, or even know about, the abduction. They might just be trying to exhaust the possibility that she’s part of the crime.” He looked hard at Jack now. “Unfortunately, if she gave them detailed information about the crime, it will depend on the judge’s faith level whether he allows that this was all acquired without criminal involvement, that is, through a vision.”

  Jack stretched his eyebrows toward his receding hairline, a fork-furrow of lines snaking across his forehead. “This is the sort of risk you take if you really press in and insist that God tells you all of his secrets,” he said, resignation settling his words. And he closed his eyes and made a mental note of the observation.

  When Kellan arrived at the Denver airport on Monday, he received a text informing him that Willow was still being held in the Palos Heights jail. With no federal facility for women in the area, the local jail would suffice before a preliminary trial and grand jury. He caught a cab instead of renting a car, expecting just a short visit. He knew the church in California would pick up the cost of either, and simply felt that he wouldn’t be staying for long.

  A cross between a Frank Lloyd Wright creation and a mountain chalet, the Palos Heights courthouse and jail had stirred controversy for its architecture from the start. It was designed for days just like this one, however. Piles of snow, from white to dark gray, seemed fitting decoration outside the steep-roofed lobby area. Kellan prayed quietly as he approached the first security screening, preparing to shut down those parts of himself that ought to be open and vulnerable in normal human interactions. The incarceration of a woman who had done nothing but sacrifice herself to save an abducted girl, colored Kellan’s view of the police here with more suspicion than on other prisoner visits.

  He smiled when he discovered that he would meet with Willow in the dining room, along with other prisoners and their visitors. If she were really a suspected kidnapper, he wouldn’t have expected physical access to her, even if it was monitored physical access. He noted the surveillance camera as he sat down on one of the metal benches at the assigned table. He plunked his briefcase on the table in front of him. Before he could even release the first latch, the cafeteria door opened and prisoners began to shuffle into the room. A couple of them bounded and ran to grab hold of relatives, until officers reminded them of proper behavior on visits.

  Willow emerged from the rainbow of faces and approached Kellan with a question in her eyes only briefly. She seemed to recognize him once they made eye contact. To Kellan she looked healthier than he remembered the previous year.

  Kellan stood up and greeted Willow with a handshake and a smile. “Kellan McGregor, from Redwood, California. Jack Williams sends his blessings.”

  Willow smiled. That opening filled her with a hopeful sense of being embraced by a big, loyal family. Jack was involved already. This discovery settled Willow into the feeling that all that could be done was being done, a realization like having a full cupboard before a blizzard.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said after releasing Kellan’s hand. “You’ll be home to your wife and kids before the day’s out, I expect.”

  Kellan grinned and shook his head as he followed Willow’s lead in taking a seat at the little round cafeteria table. “You saw that with one handshake?”

  “I saw that,” she said, matching his big smile.

  He hadn’t anticipated the impression that he was more in need of help than the prisoner for whom he had been retained. But, he realized, that was an oversight on his part.

  Turning to business in the limited time they had, Kellan said. “Tell me what they’ve told you so far.”

  Willow consulted the corners of her eyes, recalling what had actually been said, beyond the implications and secret revelations she had also been accumulating.

  “Well, based on my knowledge of the activities of Ronald Percy, I am suspected of being his accomplice.”

  “Did they hint at any evidence beside your knowledge of his activities?”

  Willow curled a smile with half of her mouth. “As a
matter of fact, they have hinted, as you say, that they have such evidence. But I’ve completely discounted that every time. It just seems obvious to me that they’re bluffing. I’m even fairly certain that they don’t actually think I am an accomplice.”

  Kellan nodded, scribbling on a legal pad briefly. “I can ask to see the evidence. That should help me get a confirmation of your sense that they’re just stalling here.”

  Looking at Willow, something occurred to Kellan. “Have they intimated that they would like you to consult your unconventional information sources to help them find where other victims might be buried, or anything like that?”

  Willow’s eyes narrowed as she smiled this time. She was getting the sense that Kellan had been in the interrogation room with her. “I did get that idea, but just couldn’t believe that they would think they could coerce me into helping them, since I’m already in jail for helping them so far. It just seemed too crazy, as soon as the thought crossed my mind.”

  Kellan glanced away from Willow, catching a weepy scene at a nearby table with what appeared to be a teenaged daughter visiting her mother. He tried to explain the ironic strategy of the federal agents.

  “You must know that you’re dealing with people that have a whole range of reactions to your gift, in terms of how much they believe and what believing would imply for them.”

  Willow nodded, thinking about the array of people she had spoken with, from local officers to senior federal agents. Her sense of their faith levels was a scatter map, to say the least. And even those points on her intuitive map seemed to slide randomly with each new conversation and each new look into the eyes of her interrogators.

  “Fortunately,” Kellan said, “a federal judge will have to make a concrete decision at some point, and he will have to back it up with solid evidence.”

  Willow felt assured by this clarification of what lay ahead. She nodded.