I surprised myself by telling her that.
However, she didn’t seem fazed by it. “I don’t believe that’s what’s happening with you, Mylas. I think you’ve seen the truth, and you realize you need to put your faith in Christ, but you haven’t been willing to take that final step yet.”
“What’s the final step?”
“It’s not that hard. You need to recognize yourself as a sinner, believe Jesus received the punishment for your sins when he was crucified on the cross, and then you need to trust him to make you his child. You can do that by saying a simple prayer.”
I laid my head back against the couch.
“That sounds simple enough, Whitney, and I think I believe everything you’ve just said, but I’m not sure I’d be a very good Christian.”
“Well, then, welcome to the club. Most believers, if they’re honest, will tell you they don’t consider themselves very good Christians, but if you’re willing to make this commitment, God promises you eternal life and a more meaningful life while you’re here on earth.”
I leaned forward and grasped her hands.
“Would you help me say this prayer now?”
She smiled. “All you have to do is tell God what’s on your heart, and he’ll take care of the rest.”
* * * *
Whitney was right. Once I began talking to God about what kind of person I was, and how I wanted to be his child, I was surprised at how easy it was to voice my prayer.
After I prayed, I felt a sense of relief—like I’d let go of something I’d been holding on to for a very long time.
However, it wasn’t an earth-shattering experience.
When I related this to Whitney, she walked over to the kitchen and picked up her Bible from the kitchen counter.
“Let me show you some Scriptures that will help you understand what God said about becoming his disciple. The way a person comes to faith in Christ can be different for each individual. The apostle Paul had an incredibly exciting experience, but for others in the Bible it was simply a matter of hearing the truth and accepting it. It’s the same for people today.”
“Is there something I need to do now?”
“No, Mylas,” she said, as she sat down next to me, “that’s the beauty of placing your faith in Christ. It’s all been done for you.”
“I realize that, but I heard you say you read your Bible every day, and I know you go to church and pray for people. I suppose I should be doing that now too.”
She laughed. “Yes, but you also need to think of yourself as a baby Christian. You’re like a newborn baby, so you need to drink milk before you eat steak. Milk for you may be reading a few verses every day and talking to God about how to live out your faith one day at a time.”
“Okay, I see that.”
“Do you have any Christian friends in Washington who might be willing to answer your questions?”
I immediately thought of Lockett and how surprised—maybe even happy—he’d be to hear I’d become a believer.
“Yes, I have Christian friends. In fact, one of them goes to church every Sunday, and he’s invited me to go with him several times.”
“Then I’m sure he’ll be willing to answer your questions, and I would definitely recommend going to church with him. Finding a church where you can learn the Bible will help you become a stronger Christian.”
“What about you? Is it okay if I call you and bug you with my questions?”
“Yes, of course, it is. I’ll look forward to hearing from you.”
I laughed. “You may be sorry you said that.”
She reached over and touched my arm. “You know, Mylas, you may not think you’ve had an earth-shattering experience, but if you could see the difference between how you look now and how you looked when you walked through my door a few minutes ago, then maybe you’d change your mind about that.”
“It feels like a weight’s been lifted off my shoulders, that’s for sure.”
“I can’t wait to hear what Curtis has to say about your decision.”
* * * *
Whitney showed me several passages in the Bible she thought might help me understand what becoming a Christian was all about, but I was too distracted to get much out of them.
I kept thinking about Curtis, and how I was going to tell him that I’d become a believer. Would he question the sincerity of my decision? Would he think I was only pretending to be interested in Christianity because of Whitney?
When Whitney paused to ask me a question, I glanced down at my watch and told her I needed to get back to the hospital.
As she was walking me to the door, I suddenly had an idea.
“Would you be able to come with me to a family dinner tomorrow night at my parents’ house?” I asked.
“Uh . . . didn’t you just say it was a family dinner?”
“Curtis and his family will be there, but when I was having lunch with my mother today, she suggested I invite you.”
“Why would she do that?”
I smiled. “I told her what a wonderful person you are and how much I enjoyed being with you, and now she can’t wait to meet you.”
“I hope I won’t disappoint her.”
“There’s no way you could disappoint her. Does that mean you’ll go with me?”
She nodded. “It sounds like fun.”
After telling her I’d call her tomorrow, I started to open the door.
But then, seconds later, I turned around and said, “I’ll be honest with you, Whitney. What I’d like to do right now is to kiss you. Would you mind if I did that?”
She took a step toward me and put her arms around my neck.
“I wouldn’t mind at all.”
I put my arm around her waist and drew her close to me. As I bent down and kissed her on the lips, she returned my kiss.
A few lingering kisses later, I reluctantly let go of her.
As we drew apart I said, “I’ve been wanting to do that for a couple of days now.”
“That makes two of us.”
Chapter 28
After leaving Whitney, I returned to University Hospital and sat out in the waiting room with Savannah and Gus until around eight o’clock in the evening. That was when the nurse came out and told them they wouldn’t be able to see Lizzie until tomorrow.
After that, they finally decided to go home.
Detective Ross dropped by the hospital an hour later.
“I thought I might find you here,” he said, after taking a seat next to me. “I heard Senator Allen and his wife will be in town by midnight.”
“That’s right. I figured I’d stay with Lizzie until they got here.”
“How’s she doing?”
“The last report I had from the nurse was that she was responding to the medication, but she’s experiencing a lot of nausea and vomiting. She’s not allowed to have any visitors right now.”
He shook his head. “The situation could have had a very different ending, Mylas. You made a good call when you decided to investigate what the judge was about to do with that tarp.”
“Naturally, I wish I’d gotten to Lizzie a lot sooner.”
“But you got to her in time; that’s what’s important.”
“What about the judge? Has he had anything to say since he was brought into the station?”
“By the time Springer and I arrived, his lawyer was already present. The guy’s definitely got some mental issues. The officers who brought him in said he was talking to himself the entire time he was being transported to the station.”
“Sounds like he’s trying to lay the groundwork for an insanity plea.”
“Exactly what I thought.”
“Speaking as a defense lawyer, I don’t think that’s gonna work.”
“Let’s hope not.”
After the detective and I sat there for a few seconds without saying anything, he stood to his feet. “Well, I’ll be on my way now. I just wanted to drop by and see how Lizzie was doing and tell you I th
ought you did a good job.”
At that moment, I realized my dad was right. Ross was one of the good guys, plus he was an excellent detective. The fact that I’d been unwilling to share with him what I’d discovered about the judge wasn’t one of my finer moments.
I stood up and offered the detective my hand. “I feel I need to apologize to you, Detective. I should have at least mentioned my suspicions about Judge Woodard to you when we were together yesterday.”
He shook my hand. “Apology accepted. You know, Mylas, when I first met you, I didn’t think you were anything like your dad, but now, I believe I was wrong about that.”
Much to my surprise, his observation made me feel good.
* * * *
Around eleven o’clock, the nurse called me over to her desk and told me Dr. Ratliff would like to speak to me.
“Just give them your name at the nurses’ station, and someone will page him,” she said, pushing the buzzer to release the lock on the ER doors.
Perhaps I was reading too much into her facial expression, but I thought she looked a lot more serious than she had the last time we’d spoken.
After I went through the doors, I walked up to the counter at the nurses’ station, but before I could give them my name, Dr. Ratliff came out of a patient’s room and saw me standing there.
“Mr. Grey,” he said, motioning me over to a door on his right, “let’s step in here so we can have a little privacy.”
We entered a room with a sign on the door that said Consultation Room. It was barely big enough to seat four people, but I was more concerned about why the doctor wanted to see me than I was about the size of the room.
“Has Lizzie taken a turn for the worse?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head. “In fact, that’s why I wanted to speak with you. She’s fully alert now, and I believe the worst of the side effects are over. The problem I’m having is that she’s insisting she wants to talk to the police about her ordeal, but I thought I would consult with you before I got in touch with them. I wondered if you might prefer for me to wait until her family arrives before I let her be questioned by the police.”
“Yes, I definitely would. Senator Allen and his wife will want to be present when the police question her.”
“What about you? Would you like to see her now? I’m sure she’d feel better if she saw a familiar face.”
Since I hadn’t spoken to Lizzie in a couple of years, I wasn’t sure how familiar my face would be to her, but I told the doctor I thought that was a good idea.
He walked with me down the hall to Lizzie’s room, but just before we entered her room, he said, “You should keep in mind Lizzie hasn’t fully recovered yet. She may not look that great to you.”
He was right. Although Lizzie was sitting up in bed, the dark circles under her eyes hadn’t disappeared, and her skin was still pale.
“I brought you a visitor,” Dr. Ratliff announced.
Lizzie glanced over at me with a puzzled look, but a few seconds later, much to my amazement, she smiled and said, “Hi, Mylas.”
“Hi, Lizzie,” I said. “It’s nice to see you looking so good.”
“Are you kidding? I look like a freak.”
Dr. Ratliff grinned and said, “I’ll check in with you later.”
* * * *
I sat down in a chair beside her hospital bed, and after telling Lizzie her parents would be arriving at the hospital in less than an hour, I asked her if she needed anything.
“Yes, I need something. I need to talk to the police.”
“I imagine they want to talk to you too, but it might be best if you waited until your parents arrived before you talked to them.”
“You’re treating me like a child, Mylas. I’m not a child, and I want to talk to the police so I can find out what happened to me. I can’t stand it that I don’t remember anything.”
“I might be able to help you with that.”
She stared at me for a few seconds. “Why would you know anything about what happened to me?”
“When your father found out you were missing, he sent me to Columbia to find you. I’ve been trying to figure out where you could have gone ever since I got here on Tuesday night.”
“Are you saying you’re the person who found me?”
“That’s right. It took me three days, but I finally figured it out.”
“I can’t believe today is Friday.” She leaned her head back against the pillow. “I can’t remember anything that happened to me past Monday afternoon.”
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t feel like it, but what do you remember about Monday?”
She raised her hands and gathered her long brown hair into a ponytail, and then she glanced around the room and asked, “You don’t see a hair tie around here do you? I hate my hair right now.”
“Ah . . . no, I don’t see anything like that,” I said, glancing around the room. “I can go out and ask the nurse for one, though.”
She let her hair fall down around her face again. “No, that’s okay. I guess it’s bothering me because I’m feeling all jittery.”
“That’s understandable. Your body’s been pumped full of drugs for several days now. I’m sure you’ll feel better by tomorrow.”
“That’s what the doctor told me.” She let out a big sigh. “So, you want to know what I remember about Monday?”
“Only if you feel like telling me.”
“In some ways, I don’t want to tell you because it’s embarrassing, but since it sounds like you may already know most of it anyway, I guess I might as well talk about it. When I say it’s embarrassing, I’m talking about some bad decisions I made.”
“If it helps, I promise not to criticize the bad decisions you made.”
“No, I don’t suppose you would. My dad says you’re not a judgmental person, and that’s what makes you a good investigator.”
She gave me a mischievous grin. “Of course, I wonder if you don’t criticize others because you don’t want them to criticize you.”
Ouch.
* * * *
Before Lizzie told me what she’d done on Monday, she told me about the article she’d been assigned to write for The Columbian on Judge Woodard.
To her credit, she admitted she’d chosen to keep her research a secret after learning about the judge’s gambling obsession from Dr. Dawson. She even told me she’d lied to Gus about what she’d been doing.
Finally, she let me know she’d been the person who’d written the anonymous letter asking me to look into the judge’s gambling habits.
She said, “You don’t look surprised. I guess you must have already figured that out, huh?”
“That’s right. After I spoke with Dr. Dawson, I suspected it was you.”
Lizzie took a drink of water, and then she began talking about interviewing Judge Woodard in his chambers at the Supreme Court Building.
She said it was the most exciting interview she’d ever had.
“I had everything planned out,” she said, “plus, he had no clue who I was, so I thought I might be able to get him to admit to stuff he wouldn’t ordinarily tell one of the big-time reporters or even someone like yourself.”
“To be honest with you, Lizzie, I had Nina Rivers hack into your computer. She found your interview notes and the questions you asked the judge.”
Her eyes widened. “That’s invasion of privacy.”
“Yes, but your father gave her permission, and technically, he owns the computer. One more thing you should keep in mind is that after I read your notes, I was able to figure out where you were.”
“I guess I shouldn’t be upset about it then.”
“Why bother? I’d like to hear more about your interview, though.”
“The thing is, the judge wouldn’t admit to anything. He acted like I was asking frivolous questions, and when I tried to follow up on his answers, he just brushed them aside.”
“So what happened when he called you on Monda
y?”
“How do you know he called me on Monday?”
“I found a sheet of paper with some doodles on it in the trash can in your office. Savannah told me you doodled whenever you talked on the phone, and eventually I was able to decipher your drawings.”
Lizzie seemed fascinated when I told her what I thought her doodles meant. The only one Whitney and I had gotten wrong was the camera. She said it wasn’t meant to represent Judge Woodard’s first name. It was just a camera.
She’d drawn it to remind herself to bring her camera with her because she’d asked the judge if she could take some photographs of him for the paper.
“But, you’re right,” she said. “Judge Woodard called me on Monday morning as I was headed out to class. He said he’d like to amend some of the answers he’d given me. He told me he had to be at the courthouse in Centralia, and he suggested I meet him there to finish up the interview.”
“I’m guessing there was nothing about the judge’s request that set off any alarm bells with you.”
Lizzie rocked her hands back and forth. “Oh, maybe a little, but I thought it was an opportunity to get the story right, so I was willing to take the risk. Looking back on it now, I realize that was a bad decision.”
The rest of Lizzie’s story followed the account the judge had confessed to me at his cabin. She said when the judge texted her in Centralia, she’d agreed to follow him to his cabin at Finger Lakes.
“Yeah, I know,” she said, looking up at the ceiling. “This was another bad decision on my part, but in my defense, the judge seemed like a nice guy even though he wouldn’t admit to having a gambling problem. In fact, I was beginning to wonder if what Dr. Dawson had told me about him were true, and I saw this follow-up interview as a chance to get all the facts straight before writing the article.”
She glanced over at me as if she thought I might want to comment on what she’d said. To make her feel better, I said, “You make a good point. After all, the President did nominate Judge Woodard as an appellate court judge.”
One Day Gone Page 26
