The Words I Speak (Anyone Who Believes Book 2)

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  “So are they holding you in a solitary cell?”

  Here, Willow snickered. “The first night here I had a roommate, but she begged to be let out because she didn’t want me reading her mind.” She saw a questioning look on Kellan’s face and explained. “I just told her some things about her life as the spirit showed me. I wasn’t really reading her mind, of course.”

  “And they let her change out?”

  “Yeah,” Willow said without emotion.

  That inmate had been Betsy Sellers, a young woman who grew up in a small town in eastern Colorado. She had followed a boy to Denver when she was sixteen, and then ended up on the streets. Eventually, a heroin addiction had led her to a long list of criminal activities. Now, ten years later, she was in jail for shoplifting.

  Betsy had asked Willow what she did for a living. When Willow told her she was a librarian, the puffy-faced woman laughed loudly. “What you in for? Too many late fees?”

  Willow had laughed obligingly, but answered with an insight in Betsy’s life. “I tried to help a girl who was abducted by a man who’s a lot like the man that used to live next door to you, when you were a little girl, a man who hurts girls.” The phrasing was awkward and childish, but that tone opened up a painful memory, with which Willow tried to help on and off for hours. Betsy refused to go there, in spite of the supernatural introduction.

  Kellan was shaking his head about Betsy being moved out of Willow’s cell. “Actually, that’s pretty surprising,” he said. “You generally don’t get to choose where you’re staying when you’re in jail.” His tone carried a hint of irony. “I’m guessing they put her in with you to try and get information. They often use snitches like that to get your confidence, and then get you to confess something in that confidence.”

  Willow recognized the possibility that Kellan was right in this case. “She did ask a lot of questions, but I just attributed that to how strange my circumstances are. I only told her what I’ve been telling the officers all along.”

  Kellan smiled. “Of course. And that’s one thing they’re looking for, whether you have different versions of your story that you offer depending on your audience. It’s one of the great advantages of telling the truth.”

  Willow thought of a Mark Twain quote about it being easier to tell the truth because you don’t have to remember the story you made up. She wasn’t a librarian just as a cover for her superhero persona. She really did love books. Mark Twain was one of her favorites, pagan that he was.

  Having signed all the paperwork necessary to request release on bail and to begin the process of requesting that charges be dropped for lack of evidence, Willow and Kellan parted after an hour-long visit. He left feeling better than when he arrived, perhaps benefitting from his worst imaginations giving way to Willow as she really was, at peace and patiently waiting for justice.

  I Was in Prison

  That evening, when Willow was allowed to join two dozen other women for dinner in the cafeteria, she sat at an empty table, an introvert to the core. She was thinking and praying about her church, concerned about her arrest impacting them. In that distracted state her default was solitude. But word about her unique abilities had spread through the jail.

  A wispy, golden-skinned, African-American woman, not much over twenty, with dark circles around her eyes, approached Willow’s table. Willow looked up and smiled, another default response.

  “Okay if I sit here?” the young woman said, a hint of inner city in her voice, maybe Denver, but more likely Chicago or Detroit, Willow guessed.

  “Of course,” Willow said, maintaining her smile.

  She had learned to smile like that only as she became an adult and shed much of the shame and anger from her past. For most of her adult life, the smile was put on, like a mask she could pull down over her face when the situation required. In recent years, however, the real Willow had emerged along with her own authentic smiles. The young woman detected that genuine friendliness as she sat down.

  “I’m Cricket,” the girl said, reaching her hungry little hand across the table. She must have weighed even less than Willow.

  “I’m Willow,” she said without commenting on either the uniqueness of Cricket’s name or the oddity of the combination of their two names.

  Willow was looking deeper. But she didn’t have to receive a supernatural revelation to notice Cricket stop and look down at her chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes with gravy and mixed vegetables. The young woman regarded that food the way a veteran mouse would survey the cheese on a trap.

  Taking a small bite of her own vegetables, Willow chewed for a few seconds and then asked, “Your stomach bothering you?”

  Cricket had lifted her fork by then, but with little sign of intending to use it. She looked a bit startled when she responded to Willow.

  “Yeah. How did you know? Is it true what they say about you?”

  Willow could only guess who “they” included or what they were saying. She was glad to shatter some of the mystique.

  “I just noticed the way you looked at the food. It’s not terrible food, but you looked like you were a bit scared of it.”

  Cricket grinned and snorted a little laugh. “Yeah, I gots a love/hate thing goin’ on with food right now. I’m definitely hungry, but nothin’s been settin’ right with me in here.” She patted her stomach delicately.

  Willow chewed another bite, lifted her water bottle and then spoke matter-of-factly. “I know a woman who’d had half her stomach removed because of cancer. She could eat hardly anything. Then some friends prayed for her and her appetite came back and food never bothered her after that.”

  She could see that she had Cricket’s attention. Her reluctance to eat made the distraction of a story highly tempting. Willow continued.

  “The best part was the next time she went to her stomach doctor, for her regular checkup. He told her it looked like she was growing back the part of her stomach they had removed.” Willow looked idly toward the door of the cafeteria, recalling the joy on her friend’s face when she told her own story.

  Cricket shook her head. “I ain’t got nothin’ like that to deal with, thank God. I guess I should be thankful for that.”

  Willow could tell that Cricket had missed the point of the story. Before she started to bring around her point, she noticed three other African-American women watching them from two tables away. She sensed a setup, but no hostility. Perhaps Cricket had just been sent to check out the rumors.

  Turning back to her dinner companion, Willow said, “That just means it should be even easier for God to heal you then.” She cut a piece of meat and slipped the bit of ground beef covered in batter into her mouth. It tasted fine, not overly salted as she had expected.

  “Wait, you sayin’ that you can do sh** like that? I mean here? Like now?” Cricket still held her fork like it was a fashion accessory, not an implement for eating. She really was intimidated by what that food could do to her.

  Willow set her fork down. “I don’t even have to do anything strange. I can just heal it from here,” she said.

  Known in places all around the world for her prophetic gift, Willow had struggled for years with faith to heal people. To others it seemed ironic, that someone who saw Jesus so clearly, who knew the Father so intimately, who obviously communed with the spirit daily, could doubt her ability to heal. That was in her own church. Of course, in lots of places around Christianity, people would expect Willow to stay in her lane, to stick with her prominent gifting. Jack Williams’s churches, on the other hand, had no such expectations. Still, even this far into her life and ministry, Willow felt as if she were jumping from the top of the diving tower when she offered to heal someone.

  Cricket just raised her eyebrows. Willow’s comment about not doing anything strange was meant to assuage any fears of an embarrassing show around the healing she proposed. But that idea actually stretched Cricket’s credulity. She could only imagine healing coming in response to a big bang of some kind or
other. That’s the way she had seen it on TV, or at her aunt’s church, the one time she went there.

  “What do you think?” Willow said, sensing Cricket’s continued hesitance.

  But the young woman feared food more than she feared what this odd new inmate might do to her. “Give it a shot,” she said, with a “what’ve-I-got-to-lose” look on her face.

  Cricket’s response might have sounded flip and faithless to some, but it sounded about like what Willow was thinking already. She just smiled at Cricket and calmly said, “I command anxiety to let go of Cricket’s stomach and I release peace and healing to her whole digestive track.” That was it.

  Cricket looked at Willow like she had just revealed that she was an alien from Venus. But her baffled stare gave way to surprise which blossomed into shock. She dropped her unused fork and grabbed her shriveled stomach with both hands.

  “Lord, Almighty! I feel something in my stomach. I do. It’s all warm and calming and sweet-like. It don’t hurt no more.” She looked at Willow with her head tipped slightly, her brow dented. “What’d you do?”

  Repressing laughter at that question, which seemed to ignore the entire exchange before the stomach pain began to leave, Willow answered sedately. “I just told the bad to go away and the good to come on in.” Willow had worked with Annetta for so long that she had adopted some of her speech patterns, especially when she heard similar vocabulary and cadence from the people with whom she spoke. By now, she was completely unconscious of doing it, and it sounded quite natural.

  Cricket shook her head, her mouth half open, her eyes staring at the table. Suddenly she felt very hungry. Pausing only to pick that fork back up and grin at Willow, Cricket set to her dinner with gusto she hadn’t known for months. Willow picked up the pace of her own eating, to get it while it was warm, and to keep Cricket company.

  Over the sound of Cricket chewing and moaning joyfully, as well as her own chewing, Willow heard a growing murmur from that table that had been observing them from a distance. Finally someone shouted.

  “Cricket, girl! Are you eatin’ or am I goin’ crazy?” The woman shouting from across the room was the same woman that Willow had seen hugging her teenage daughter during visiting hours.

  The large woman with hair pulled back in barrettes looked directly at Willow. She said, with a smile, “Looks like you found yourself a new friend, girl.”

  The Wheels of Justice

  Kellan found that Willow’s initial appearance was scheduled for Wednesday, somewhat delayed as he expected. State authorities were also pursuing false evidence charges, in case the federal charge was not sent to a grand jury. This dual process delayed the early stages of the case, and kept Willow in jail longer than she would have normally been held. Given his confidence that there was no evidence to convict Willow, Kellan requested a preliminary hearing before the Magistrate. This would minimize the time before Willow was released, if the gamble worked.

  Back in San Francisco, on his way to a connecting flight, Kellan’s phone range and he checked to see who was calling. It was Jack Williams.

  Kellan picked up the call. “Hello, Jack.”

  “Kellan, how’s it going?”

  “I’m at the airport, on my way home for a couple a days. Willow has her initial appearance on Wednesday.”

  “So, there’s no way to get her out of jail?”

  “Not yet. But Jack, I’m not really worried about her. She looks good, is completely at peace and waiting patiently. I felt like she gave me a lift during our visit.”

  “Well, that’s good to hear. She’s taking this all in stride. I tell ya, she’s hard core. She really wants this prophetic stuff.”

  Kellan sighed lightly. “And she had a pretty realistic view of the process, I think. Appropriately low expectations.”

  “Yeah, the wheels of justice turn slowly,” Jack said.

  “Uh-huh, and the wheels of injustice more slowly still. The feds and the court aren’t going to want to admit that this is a mistake. They’ll drag it out just to show that they’re in charge.”

  “Hey, you’re supposed to be our good guy in there. You sound jaded.”

  “I clicked down the list of silly ploys they could pull up to this point and Willow had seen ‘em all. Good thing she’s tough.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet she has some real God stories to tell when she’s freed,” Jack said.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Kellan.

  “Okay, then. Safe trip. Keep me posted.”

  “Sure will. G’bye Jack.”

  As Kellan sat under the gate C23 sign, he thought of a possible ally for their cause. He scrolled through his phone and found the number he was looking for. After three rings, a woman picked up.

  “Hello, Dupere’s house,” she said.

  “Is this Miranda?”

  “Yes, it is. Who’s this?” her voice stepped up a few notes.

  “This is Kellan McGregor, the attorney for Jack Williams.”

  “Oh, yes. Mr. McGregor. I remember.”

  “Just call me Kellan,” he said. “I’m wondering if you could put me in touch with that young woman who wrote those articles about Beau. I heard she got a new job. Is that right?”

  “Uh-huh. That’s Anna Conyers. She’s working for a big national news magazine, now, covering churches and religion. Her stories on Beau caught some national attention.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Kellan said, accelerating just a little as he saw his goal coming into focus. “Do you know how I can reach her?” He could hear Miranda tapping on a computer keyboard even as he asked.

  “Here it is,” Miranda said. “She’s at The National News, out of Chicago. I don’t have her number, but you could look her up there and tell her I said to give her a call, or you could use Jack’s name.”

  “Great. That’s what I needed,” he said, his grateful voice fading just a touch. “So how are things with the family?” He was referring to the Dupere family. They had lost their husband and father the previous year.

  Miranda said, “Life has settled into a new sort of normal.”

  “Yeah, I wouldn’t expect any less. Well, thanks for the info. I’ll give Anna a call. I’m hoping she can help me get a story out to the world.”

  “Good. Give her my best when you talk to her,” said Miranda.

  “Will do. Thanks again.”

  “You’re welcome. Goodbye.”

  Of course, Kellan and Jack, and everyone on Willow’s side, were hoping things would be sorted out soon, and she would be free before Christmas. Kellan’s instincts told him this might not happen; and he wanted a weapon in reserve, in case Willow languished for a while. What he knew about Anna Conyers was that she had not only covered the Dupere family for her story in a West Coasts newspaper, but she had also converted under their influence and was quite sympathetic to the sort of thing Jack Williams taught in his church and, by extension, through all the affiliates around the country. The way things developed for Willow might just have more to do with the beliefs of the principals involved than with the law. Getting a sympathetic introduction in the press would help Willow’s cause, he hoped.

  It wasn’t until Tuesday night that Kellan finally reached Anna. She called him back from her office in downtown Chicago.

  “So what’s this about?” Anna said, after they finally greeted each other directly, instead of through messages and voicemail.

  Kellan sat in his living room, his two children playing near his feet on the floor, a seven-foot Christmas tree alight in the corner of the room and music playing lightly on the stereo. He stood up with his cell phone to his ear, heading for a quiet room, to be sure he could hear Anna clearly.

  “This is about Willow Pierce, a woman that Jack Williams knows, the woman who delivered the prophecy to Beau Dupere when his time was at an end. She’s been thrown in jail after helping the police find an abducted girl.”

  “Well, all that sounds intriguing,” Anna said. “You have my attention.”


  Kellan explained the events leading to Willow’s arrest and the current state of Willow’s case.

  Anna listened patiently and then asked an exasperated question. “So, they’re just holding her because they can’t believe that anyone would get knowledge of a crime from a supernatural source? I think most people have heard of psychics helping out the police. What makes Willow different?”

  Kellan thought about all the directions he could go for an answer to Anna’s question. Finally he settled on the most plausible explanation in his mind. “I think she was just too good. She just knew too much.”

  “So they’re fine with using a psychic as long as they don’t know so much?”

  Kellan laughed. He could tell from her questions that his instinct about getting Anna involved was on target.

  “Okay. I’ll consult my editor to see if I can look into the story. There’s a chance he’ll say no, but this is right up our alley these days.” Though she had been at the magazine for less than a year, she sounded confident about how things work at the edgy national news magazine, which attempted to distinguish itself from the other mainstream news weeklies without becoming a grocery store tabloid.

  “I appreciate it,” Kellan said. “Hopefully, she’ll be released too soon to make it a good story, but I’m not counting on that right now.”

  They said their goodbyes and each recorded the other’s name along with the number on their mobile phones.

  A Source of Comfort

  As Kellan had said, prisoners generally don’t get to choose where they stay, or with whom they share a cell. Law enforcement officials, on the other hand, have always looked for advantages they might gain by mixing one prisoner in with another. Someone from either the state or the federal government urged city jail officials to move a particular inmate into the bunk beneath Willow.

  Lila Foreman awaited trial for prostitution and other charges related to that profession. Lila was not the innocent young girl scooped into the net of a flesh trader, a street pimp. Lila had run her own shop, and had run girls who worked for her out of that shop. Just how much of that the police would be able to prove was yet to be determined in court. One way to influence that process in her favor was for Lila to help officers find out the truth about Willow Pierce. To be clear, she was not commissioned to pin anything on Willow, just to get close enough to see what was under the façade, to see if the enigmatic star inmate had a secret she was hiding.