The day had gone like the snap of my fingers, and I stayed longer than planned. It was dark and getting Kansas cold outside.
As we walked to my car, still parked on the street in front of Karen’s house, I felt like an old friend of hers. We had bonded quickly, maybe because I had been hearing her voice for so long through her letters.
“Well, this is it.” I looked down at Karen as we stood at my rental car beneath a yellowish streetlight.
“Yep. It’s been a great day!” She peered up at me. “I’m glad you came. Really glad.”
“Let’s talk again soon.” I didn’t want this to end.
“Sounds great. You’ve got my number.” She laughed.
“Listen.” I looked deeply into her eyes. “I can’t thank you enough. For your prayers. I’m so grateful.”
“It was all Him, Everett. It’s always all Him.”
“I think I’m going to miss you,” I said, hoping it didn’t sound too romantic, not wanting to rush the one good and innocent thing in my life.
“I may miss you a little bit, too.”
We stared into each other’s eyes for a long time.
“I’m going to be praying that everything works out fine,” she whispered.
“Please do. I need your prayers… They work!”
We laughed together.
“When will I see you again?”
Maybe never, I thought that instant as my eyes locked in on a large, black pickup truck barreling straight for us.
“Run!” I barely had time to yell, jerking Karen by the wrist.
CRUUUUUNCH.
Metal to metal. An explosion of plastic and glass. Smoke, hissing, and the smell of antifreeze…
We had just made it around the front of the Lumina, a split second onto the sidewalk, when the pickup plowed into my rental car.
Running Karen up several concrete steps and down a long sidewalk that led to a neighbor’s house, I quickly rang the doorbell four or five times.
“Stay here!” I commanded, not wanting to but letting go of her wrist. “Call the police!”
“Don’t go!” she yelled as I ran back down the sidewalk toward the street.
The truck was roaring and rocking, back and forth, trying to jerk its way loose from being embedded in the side of the Lumina.
This has to stop.
With fear and anger heaving up to the base of my throat, I made it to the driver’s door of the wicked-looking truck and yanked on the door handle, but it was locked.
I pounded on the jet-black driver’s window as the giant pickup revved and lurched, loud as thunder.
“Open up!” I pounded with the bottom of both fists.
When the door suddenly blasted toward me, I had no time to react. It slammed me backward, off my feet, and skidding into the street. Then a torturously loud metal to metal peeling sound, getting more deafening and, RRRRIIIIIIIIIPPPP, the black truck jolted backward.
I just made it to my feet again in the middle of the street when I heard Karen’s piercing scream. “Look out!”
The front of the dented pickup truck rocketed toward me, its hot engine within four feet of me when I dove atop the Lumina, rolling off the other side.
This time, the truck bashed the rental car sideways, bouncing off and coming to a chilling halt. Then it shot backward and screeched to a stop. Its engine revved and roared. I heard sirens, and the driver must have too, for the truck squealed away, no license plates to be seen.
The Topeka police officers who stood with us in Karen’s yellow and blue kitchen were typical-looking cops. One was a male, the other female. They were both tough looking, with broad shoulders and superhuman posture, hands on their thick black leather belts.
No license plates, no names…not much they could do, they told us, besides promise to cruise the area more frequently. A real comfort.
“You can’t stay here,” I stated, after the police cleared out. “You’re not safe.”
“I thought this would end, with Endora…dead.”
“I did, too.”
She sat in a chair at the kitchen table, appearing tired and dazed. “I’ll go to my parents’.”
“I don’t feel good about this,” I said, pacing. “Come back with me to Miami.”
She said nothing.
When I asked her again, she got upset.
“I can’t go to Miami! I’ve got a job and…commitments. It’s not realistic.”
“I’ve hurt too many people, Karen. I won’t let anything happen to you. Come with me. I’ve got a big house with lots of rooms. Or I can rent you a place in the Village…please.”
“Everett,” she said painfully. “This is my home. I’ve got to get through this.”
“Yeah, this is your home. Do you want to die here? Something’s come up, okay? You’ve got to be flexible. You can’t stay here. Come with me…”
9:20 p.m.
I looked at Brian through the thick glass partition; he was pale and unanimated. “We took a beating today.”
“Still no Zaney?” I asked.
“Nada. The guy’s disappeared…thin air.”
“Great.”
“We need him.”
“What if they don’t find him?”
“That’s bad,” said Boone. “We can ask Sprockett for a mistrial because of Zaney’s escape, but I know he won’t buy into that. I’ve been thinking of other options.”
“Like what?”
He paused for a long time. “I’m thinking maybe we should change our plea, Everett.”
“What? Since when? You’ve never mentioned anything like that.”
“Since this deck is so heavily stacked against us.”
I looked down at the carvings on the blue metal desk in front of me. “It’s that bad?”
“It’s serious. Look, Everett, I’ve pursued every lead. Yes, we’ve had some success. Raised some good questions. Got some doubt going in the jury’s mind. But we’re stretching everything, trying to… Our case just isn’t as solid as I’d hoped it would be at this point. I’m afraid where this thing may be going. I’m not giving up hope, but…”
“What would we plead?”
“Guilty.”
“By reason of insanity?”
“No,” he said softly. “It’s too late for that. Just guilty to reduce your sentence.”
“What, so I would get seventy-five years instead of a hundred? What difference will it make?”
“Capital punishment is alive and well in the state of Florida. If we change our plea to guilty, we may be keeping you out of the electric chair.”
Why was it that before now—before this precise instant—I had never actually entertained the thought of dying for Endora’s murder?
I sat, stunned.
“Dooley’s out for blood. If he doesn’t put you in the chair in Starke, Florida, he’ll try the next best thing, which is life without parole. They believe in that down here. A guilty plea will give you some hope for the future.”
That didn’t deserve a comment.
“We’ve got to examine this thing realistically,” Boone said. “My job is to look out for your best interest. We’re quickly approaching a time when a guilty plea may be better for your future.”
“I see compassion in the jury, Brian. I saw it today.”
He didn’t say anything.
“I want to take the stand.”
“No.”
“Brian, why not? What can it hurt us?”
“If you did actually see compassion in the jury, your testimony would erase every bit of it!”
“How?”
“Everett, I know you’re a born-again Christian. I know you are a godly man, and I’ve come to admire you for that. But most of your life has been the opposite. Dooley will nail your coffin shut if you testify.”
“I know you’re the lawyer. And I trust you…very much. But I’ve been praying about this. I think I may be supposed to take the stand.”
He shook his head and exhaled loudly. “I want y
ou to keep praying about it, because only an act of God is going to change my mind about allowing you to testify.”
26
IT HAD BEEN AN emotional day—flying into Topeka to meet Karen for the first time, seeing the home where she almost perished, and running from a maniacal death machine. A lot had happened in the past fourteen hours, but perhaps none of it compared with sitting across the room from Jacob and Sarah Bayliss.
After the police left Karen’s home on Primrose Lane and a tow truck hauled my rental car away, she insisted we go to her parents’ house in suburban Topeka, about a fifteen minute drive from her place.
I did not want to go. After all, I was the sinister rock star for whom Karen had chosen to pray all those years when she was a teenager. I was supposed to be a larger-than-life character from another world, someone none of them would ever actually meet. Instead, I had traipsed into their daughter’s world, bringing with me fallout from the remnants of my past—including things like phone threats, black roses, fires, and now…blatant attempted murder.
Needless to say, I expected a chilly reception from Karen’s parents. But what I received instead was something I did not deserve. Love. Rejoicing over my newfound salvation.
Now I was beginning to see what made Karen so special.
Her father, Jacob, was about six foot four, rugged and handsome, with a thick brown mustache. Karen had mentioned that he was once a pastor, but wearing faded Levi’s and an untucked blue-and-white-checked flannel shirt, he looked anything but. Karen’s mother, Sarah, a foot shorter than Jacob, was blond, fit, and radiant.
As we sat by a crackling fire in their warm den, I guessed Karen’s parents were in their mid-fifties. I also presumed they were extremely close to their daughter, since they knew everything about the events leading up to that night.
Karen and I sat next to each other on the toasty brick hearth, while Jacob sat nearby on a loveseat, waiting for Sarah to join him after she finished passing out warm white mugs full of steaming hot chocolate.
“You’ve been a big part of our family for a long, long time now.” Sarah smiled at me from the kitchen. “I feel like we’ve known you for years.”
“I’m grateful. I just can’t tell you how sorry I am about what’s happened…with Karen. It’s my fault, all of it. I mean, I’m responsible. I know you’re ready for things to get back to normal.”
There was an awkward silence.
“Everett, to see you come to Christ… It’s obvious God has been at work,” Jacob said. “It’s amazing to me how Karen heard from the Lord all those years ago. The thing we need to do now is just trust Him the rest of the way, with whatever’s going on.”
“I admire your faith.”
“Don’t think of us as super spiritual.” Sarah sat close to Jacob, putting her hand on his knee. “We’ve struggled. The fire was…bad.” The memories of the blaze rose in her eyes.
“We’re human, Everett.” Jacob clasped Sarah’s hand. “We’ve had to battle questions and doubts in all this…bitterness …and fear.”
“I understand. Again, I can’t tell you how sorry I am. If Karen were my daughter, I don’t think I’d allow her to have any part of the person who brought all this on.”
Jacob closed his eyes and smiled. “Believe me, it’s been a trying time for us.” He looked at Sarah and squeezed her hand. “But who are we to question God? We’ve made up our minds. We’re just going to trust Him. That’s all we can do.”
At that moment, I felt embarrassed and ashamed about what I had done to this family. Again, I had been thinking only of myself, wanting to get closer to Karen. The thought crossed my mind that if I really cared, I would get out of their lives.
“So, what happens from here?” Jacob asked.
“Everett’s attorney thinks he’s going to be called back for more questioning in Endora’s death,” Karen said. “They didn’t even think he should leave Miami.”
“I had to come.” I felt a jolt of emotion. “I had to say thank you.”
Karen slipped her arm around my shoulder. Her mother sniffed back the emotion and ran an index finger under her tearing eyes.
“We’ve still got a problem, don’t we?” Jacob looked at me, man to man.
“We do,” I said, facing the music.
“Who is it?” Sarah asked. “Why are they after Karen?”
“It’s all connected to Endora,” Karen said. “When she lived, her whole purpose was to stop Everett from becoming a Christian. Whoever was helping her is after me now, probably because they think I helped lead him to Christ.”
“But that’s not all,” Jacob insisted. “The deed is done. Everett is a Christian. These people are still after you, honey, because they think you’ll continue to play a part in his life. Maybe they think if they can hurt you, Everett will fall away from the faith.”
The emotion in the room was powerful, and the clarity of the moment struck me. It was like an appointed moment, a moment of revelation when it dawned on the four of us that Karen and I had been brought together for a greater purpose than my salvation, or even our relationship.
“Satan hates what’s happening to you, Everett,” Jacob said. “He hates Karen for being part of it. And he hates the prospect of what you’re going to do with your faith in the days ahead. You’re a very influential man.”
“I can’t stand what’s happening,” Sarah cried. “But it’s exciting.” Her sobs turned to laughter.
Looking intently at Karen’s parents, I said, “I can’t believe you people.” I paused to keep my composure. “You love God…so much.” I was stopped short by the sentiment.
Karen’s arm drew tighter around my back.
“I’ll be right back.” Jacob squeezed his wife’s hand, stood, and walked into the living room.
“Everything is going to work out,” Sarah said, assuring herself, Karen, and me.
When Jacob returned to the warm den, the blue, digest-sized Bible he held seemed small in his large hand. He sat next to Sarah and flipped to the back of the worn book.
“A few months ago, my pastor gave a message to our men’s group about how important our testimony is. Before then, I never thought much about my testimony: how I came to the Lord or what I was like before. But I learned something powerful that night. It may be good for you, Everett.”
Karen found my hand, and the warmth that coursed through my body at that moment was indescribable.
“In Revelation 12 it says that you overcome the accuser—Satan—because of the blood of the Lamb and the word of your testimony,” Jacob said. “My pastor felt so strongly about that text, that he made us write down our testimony on one page and turn it in to him the following week. And when he had us read those aloud… I mean, tears flowed, the truth came out, and men accepted Christ—many men.”
“I never heard that story,” Karen said.
“Before, I would just kind of ramble when I tried to tell people what God had done in my life, but this forced me to nail down my testimony, to know it, and to be ready to share.”
“That’s hip,” I said enthusiastically. “What is your testimony anyway, Jacob? Karen had told me you were a pastor at one time.”
It was past lights-out, but the sobering conversation with Brian several hours ago kept me awake. Lying in my bunk with pad, pen, and flashlight, I racked my brain to recall the people who had and had not been called as witnesses thus far in my trial.
I still couldn’t fathom that Boone might want us to cop a guilty plea. That was a real blow, mainly because I trusted him so much. It scared me to think that an attorney of his caliber was considering such a drastic measure. What Boone said to me through that recommendation was, “Everett, in all likelihood, we’re going to lose this case. I don’t want you to die for this crime. I want you to be able to get out…someday.”
Maybe I’d just been naive, thinking all along that the jury would believe my story and side with me. After all, I was used to getting my way.
When I began to think a
bout spending the rest of my life in prison, I got a terribly sick feeling of helplessness and claustrophobia. There was just no way. I couldn’t even continue that train of thought. Then again, could it be that God had chosen this as my destiny? They say He had a sense of humor, but frankly, I didn’t know if I was mature enough to handle that.
By 12:22 a.m., I’d listed every single person I could think of who might or might not have a positive influence as a witness in my case. A few minutes later, I’d scratched off the name of every person who had already testified, as well as each of those who I didn’t believe would have any relevance at this stage of the trial.
I was left with a sheet of paper filled with chicken scratch and five surviving names, each circled in blue ink, in different places and angles on the page. They were: Ricky Crazee (DeathStroke bassist), Dr. Jack Shea (my personal physician), Jeff Hall (DeathStroke fan club president), Pamela McCracken (DeathStroke publicist), and...Everett Lester (yours truly).
“When Karen was young, she grew up in a very legalistic, very religious home,” Jacob explained to me as Sarah and Karen cleaned up the kitchen. “It was our home—mine and Sarah’s—but we were different people back then. I was the proud pastor of a church of seven hundred members here in Topeka.”
Karen smiled beautifully at me as she entered the room to pour her dad and me more cocoa. She patted me on the shoulder before leaving.
“Basically, I was one of the Pharisees you read about in the New Testament,” Jacob told me. “I had all the college degrees, I had a deep knowledge of the Scriptures, I had a flourishing church with all the popular programs—but I had no love, absolutely none. And no real relationship with God.”
I shook my head in amazement.
“I could point a ridiculing finger at people and tell them to read their Bibles more, to serve more, and to work harder in the church,” he said. “I could lay down the law to troubled couples about why their marriages were failing, from a Biblical perspective… You see, Everett, in my sick eyes I was above everyone spiritually. I was at a higher level.” He raised a hand above his head, then lowered it as he said, “Then came the elders, the deacons, and the rest of the sheep—who hadn’t arrived yet spiritually.”
Dark Star: Confessions of a Rock Idol Page 24
