Fear Has a Name: A Novel (3 page)

5

“He sat out there in his car for ten minutes.” Pamela felt flushed as she talked to Jack and Officer Dennis DeVry at the kitchen table. “Right in front of the house. Not trying to be inconspicuous at all. I can’t believe you guys couldn’t get here any faster—especially after this just happened.”

Pam couldn’t stop her hands from shaking, and her palms were damp.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Crittendon,” said DeVry. “We got here as fast as we could.” The officer was not a handsome man, with his wide, pockmarked face and yellowish teeth, but his broad chest and thick arms suggested a physical strength that Pamela found reassuring. “You’re sure it was the same guy?”

“Positive. I could see him in the car.”

“Could you tell what he was doing?” DeVry examined the framed photo from which Jack had been cut out.

Pamela moved to the edge of her chair. “He was looking at the house. I was sure he was going to get out of that car and come right up to the front door again.”

Jack reached over and covered one of her hands.

“You weren’t able to get a license number?” DeVry said.

“I called Tommy, the neighbor you met yesterday, to see if he could go out and get the plates, but he wasn’t home. I wasn’t going out there.”

“And he eventually just left?” DeVry set the photo upright on the kitchen table.

She nodded and sniffed back the emotion. “Very slowly, looking at the house the whole way.” She covered her quivering mouth with a wadded tissue. “I’m sorry. Excuse me a minute.”

Pamela rose and hurried through the family room to the downstairs bath. Shutting the door and turning on the exhaust fan, she patted her eyes with a clean tissue, blew her nose, and stared at herself in the mirror.

Her mascara was running, and the skin beneath her brown eyes was dark and swollen. She ran a wet finger below one eye, then the other, and patted dry with a towel. She ran her fingers through her hair and applied lipstick. That would have to do.

She leaned all her weight through her hands onto the marble counter, sighed, and closed her eyes.

Jack’s words from the garage the day before came back.
Leave it all in God’s lap …

Lord, help me. I’m scared. I can’t deal with this.

She looked into the mirror again. Her bottom jaw jutted forward. Tension had carved its signature in the crevice between her eyes and the sides of her nose and mouth.
Relax, Pam.
But she couldn’t work up the tranquillity she had been seeking ever since the break-in.

She sucked in her cheeks, took a deep breath, and headed back out.

“Girls?” she called upstairs, where she could hear Rebecca’s and Faye’s giggles and the sound of a DVD they were watching. “You okay?”

“Yes, Mommy,” Rebecca called.

“Yes,” Faye echoed.

“Pam,” Jack said as Pamela made her way back to the kitchen, “Officer DeVry is going to arrange for extra patrol.”

“And I’ll come by myself when I’m on duty, Mrs. Crittendon.” DeVry stood and handed a white business card to each of them. “This has my cell. I want you to call me the instant you see that car again. Let’s hope you don’t.”

“What about checking that picture for prints?” Pamela pointed to the framed photo on the kitchen table.

“Well …” DeVry hesitated. “You and your neighbor both saw the perpetrator at different times with gloves on, and we found no prints anywhere. I’m 99 percent sure there aren’t any prints on that picture except ours.”

“Why would he take Rebecca’s locket?” Pamela said. “I just don’t get it.”

“Are you sure your daughter might not have misplaced the locket?” DeVry asked. “I know my kids are always—”

“No.” Pamela shook her head. “It’s her absolute favorite. Jack gave it to her at a father-daughter banquet, and she had a special place for it in her jewelry box. She’s extremely organized for her age, and she says it was in there.”

Jack retrieved the scarred photograph from the kitchen table. “Could you possibly have someone dust this anyway?” He handed it to DeVry. “Just to make sure.”

DeVry took the photo from Jack and put it under his arm. “Sure. If anything turns up, I’ll let you know.”

Pamela blinked with a nod of gratitude toward Jack.

“Thank you.” Jack placed a hand on the officer’s shoulder.

“Is there anything more you can do, or we can do?” Pamela asked.

“I’m afraid not.” DeVry rested a hand on the big black gun in his holster. “I realize finding this picture makes this whole thing even scarier for you and your family. But as I told your husband, we really will get by here every time we possibly can. Try not to lose too much sleep over it. People like this rarely hit the same house twice.”

“Then why did he come back and sit out there?”

Office DeVry pursed his lips. “You folks need to be all eyes and ears, just as you were today. This might be some sort of stalker or someone with mental issues. Be careful. Keep the doors locked. Don’t hesitate to call us.”

Maybe there was something else the man saw in the house that he decided he wanted, Pamela thought—like her … or one of the girls.

The late morning sun flooded the white and yellow kitchen. Officer DeVry was back out on the hot streets of Trenton City, and Rebecca and Faye had just finished lunch and were playing with their felt-board dollies at the dining-room table. Jack took the carafe from the coffeemaker and poured the leftover coffee, now cold, into a tall glass. He set the empty carafe at the sink where Pamela was working, went to the freezer, and dumped a handful of ice into the glass and set it on the counter to chill.

Pamela finished rinsing the sink, hit the disposal for a few seconds, and dried her hands on a daisy-print towel as she approached him.

“I want us to get a gun,” she said.

Jack’s face fell.

“How else will we defend ourselves if he comes back?”

Jack’s mouth sealed and his eyes narrowed.

“We can’t count on a patrol car coming by here once every few days,” she said.

He still didn’t speak.

“If you’d have been here, you’d be thinking the same thing. It was so … brazen! This is
our
home. We need to defend it. It’s against the law for a stranger to break his way in here.”

Jack took a sip of the iced coffee.

“I want to learn to shoot,” she continued. “We can go to Amiel’s range, on the square.”

The slightest smile curled at the corner of his lips.

“I mean it, Jack! This is
not
funny. We’ve got to think of the girls. I’m not going to be put in that situation again. We were completely helpless.”

He set the glass down, folded his arms, and leaned back against the white tile counter. “First of all, I don’t think it’s funny. I’m sorry. I started to smile because when you get an idea, you are like a heat-seeking missile.”

“Jack, I’m being serious.”

“Okay.” He lifted his open hands in front of his chest. “First of all, where would we keep it?”

“I don’t know. In our closet, up high, with the safety on.”

“If he broke in again, you wouldn’t have time to go upstairs to get it.”

“Then we’d keep it down here. That’s a better idea anyway. We’d put it up in a cupboard.” She motioned to one with her head. “The girls would never know.”

Jack exhaled. “You know, they say if you’re going to own a gun, you not only better know how to use it, you better be
ready
to use it
first
when you take it in your hand.”

“I’d use it first,” she practically spit. “Believe me, if that monster set one foot on our property again and I had a gun, I would
put—him—down
.”

“I know, I know … I hear you, baby. But they say if an intruder, someone all pumped up on adrenaline and possibly drugs, sees his victim with a gun, someone in
that
house is more likely to die than in a house where there is no gun. I
am
thinking about Rebecca and Faye. I just don’t want to add more danger.”

“I don’t know about the statistics, Jack, I really don’t. All I know is what happened to us—and it should never be allowed to happen to anyone. We were violated! We were lucky to get out. What if I’d been upstairs and the girls were down? What if the girls had been napping? What if I’d been doing laundry? I’ve thought this through a million times.”

She’d hit a nerve. She could see it in his facial muscles, the flare of his nostrils, the way his teeth clenched ever so briefly.

“I know.” He nodded. “I have too.” He lifted his arms toward her. “Come here.”

“No!” She stomped a foot, then thought of the girls and lowered her voice. “I’m not going to let you sweet-talk me out of this. We are getting a gun. Period. I’ll pay for it out of my own money.”

“Okay, listen, honey. If we’re really going to consider it, we need to ask ourselves if it’s safe for us. What about when the girls get older and have friends over?”

“We can get rid of it when this passes.”

She couldn’t believe Jack wasn’t right on the bandwagon with her.

“Your dad had a gun,” Pamela said. “Mine has one.”

“Does that make it safe?”

“Safe? Let’s talk about safe! There’ll be nothing left to
keep
safe if he comes back and hurts us!”

That too struck home. For a flash, Pamela felt like the devil’s advocate for riling up the old Jack. But that’s what she was trying to do. She steamed to the window near the kitchen table and stared out blankly, the stress blurring the outdoor landscape into a foggy mix of bright greens and yellows.

“He came back, Jack.” Her voice quieted. “You said he’d never remember where we lived.” She turned to face him. “He was
here
, this morning, and you weren’t! I am here alone with the girls much of the day. I need protection.
Period.
”

The way he looked at her with his mouth locked shut, it was as if he was forcing himself not to speak, not to say something he would regret.

Pamela waited, resolute.

“Look,” he finally said, “his coming back today raises the stakes, I admit it. I just think that before we buy a gun and learn to use it—which we can certainly do—we need to ask ourselves if that’s the best choice, the wisest choice. Is it what God wants? If it is, great; we’ll do it.”

Pamela’s head dropped into her hands. She didn’t want to talk about what God wanted. Not now. She knew what she
needed
, and that was all there was to it. Her mind and body and spirit felt utterly spent, and the day was only half over.

“I’m not trying to belittle you,” Jack said. “I understand you felt helpless. We just need to make sure we both agree completely before we decide to keep a weapon in this house that can take someone’s life …”

6

As Jack sat on the flowery couch in the McDaniels’ dark, cool living room while Wendy McDaniel went to the kitchen to get him some water, he found it difficult to believe anything could be as wrong as it was within this household, because everything seemed so right.

A smooth blacktop driveway sloped down, then led up to the small white ranch house perched on a hill about seventy-five yards off Iradale Drive. It was a quiet residential street in Cool Springs, just outside Trenton City. The home was surrounded by towering trees that swayed and rustled in the breeze, blocked out the hot Ohio sun, and smothered the acre-or-so lot in pleasant shade.

Jack looked around, guessing the house was forty or fifty years old. It had hardwood floors and thick, soft rugs. The interior wood trim was dark gray, and the walls were done in rich sage green and cocoa brown, giving it an early-American look. Rustic abstracts of doors and windows hung in just the right spots on the walls, and pretty colored glass bottles of all sizes sat along each window.

“I feel bad about getting so upset with the other reporter on the phone,” Wendy said. She handed Jack a bottled water. “But I was absolutely shocked that his story talked about suicide. To see it on the front page …”

“I completely understand.” Jack opened the bottle. “If it had been up to me … well, listen, let’s just start from scratch. Can we do that?”

“Yes.” She sat near him on the edge of a leather recliner. She had short, spiky brown hair and was slight and youthful looking in jean shorts and Crocs. “I’m ready.”

“First of all,” Jack said, “you saw the blurb from
Faith Line
?”

Wendy nodded. “I got it in a blanket email, like everyone else. That was the first I’d heard anything public about suicide. I couldn’t believe they put it in there. When I called, they told me they hoped it would lend urgency and generate some leads to help find Evan, but again—to make public mention of it, before we even know what’s happened?”

“When did you last see Evan?”

“Friday morning.” She spoke confidently. “He left for work just like always.”

“Did everything seem okay?”

“Normal. Everything was normal. He got up early, as usual, although he didn’t go on his morning run; he hasn’t been doing that lately. So I didn’t think anything of it that he missed that day. Some mornings he’s just not in the mood. But he had breakfast with Silas, our youngest, then showered and left for the church. I was up too. Our other boys, Nathaniel and Zachary, were still asleep. Everything seemed okay.”

“And did he make it to the church?”

“Yes. One of the secretaries, Barbara Cooley, saw him. He was in his office for about an hour, then left. Friday is his day to do hospital and home visits. I’ve asked the assistant pastor if he can tell me who Evan may have been planning to visit.”

“The assistant pastor.” Jack looked for the name in his notes. “Dr. Andrew Satterfield?”

“That’s right.” Wendy bit the inside of her lip, and her eyes shifted to her lap, where her fingers were interlocked.

“I do plan on talking to him.” Jack wrote a note to himself along the top-left edge of his pad, where he jotted things he needed to follow up on. “But as far as we know,” he said, “Barbara Cooley was the last person to see Evan?”

“We think so.”

“All right, let’s see.” He reviewed some quotes he’d written on his pad from the church news story. “Can we talk about this? Where it says Evan took with him ‘a significant quantity of medication’?”

Wendy’s shoulders arched back. She took in a deep breath and let it out. “On and off over the years, Evan has struggled with depression. He’s taken antidepressant medications. He told me recently that it had been several weeks since he’d had any.”

“And how was he doing without them? What state of mind was he in?”

Wendy peered out the sliding glass doors for a moment, then leveled her eyes on Jack. “He hasn’t been sleeping well at night, so he’s been dragging during the day,” she said. “He thought he had the flu—a bit of an upset stomach. I thought that was why he hadn’t been exercising lately.”

“Anything else out of the ordinary?”

“He’s been a bit down,” Wendy said. “There are a lot of challenges with his work.”

“I can imagine.”

“A lot of pressure,” she said. “Anyway, a few of the leaders at the church knew about the medicine. I guess he kept some in the restroom in his office. There was also some Valium in there. Apparently, since it’s not there anymore, they reported it missing.”

Jack took notes, then looked back at her. “Okay, I guess that leads us to the next obvious thing.” He was careful to read the words he’d written from the church’s news story. “The online story says Evan ‘left behind communication indicating his intention to take his own life.’” He left off the part about Evan’s body not yet being found, thinking it would be insensitive and morbid to mention. “‘Coworkers believe he was genuinely determined to follow through on his expressed intentions …’”

The corners of Wendy’s pretty mouth turned down, and she pressed her trembling fingers hard against her forehead.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. McDaniel,” Jack said. “Can I get you a Kleenex?”

She stood. “I’ll get it. Excuse me. I’m sorry.” She left the room.

Jack felt empty. What an odd case. The people at the church seemed so sure Evan was out to take his own life, yet his wife seemed so sure otherwise. Or perhaps she was simply in denial—it would be understandable.

“Okay, I’m going to pull it together.” Wendy reentered the room holding a small box of tissues. “Thank you for your patience. I told myself I wasn’t going to do that.”

She sat back down in the same chair and folded her tan legs beneath her. “There was a note on Evan’s keyboard, on his desk at the church, in an envelope. It was supposedly written by him, but it was typed. I couldn’t find it on his computer. I don’t think he wrote it.”

“A suicide note?”

“Yes … supposedly.” She shook her head and wiped her nose. “Evan just wouldn’t do this. He wouldn’t leave his boys; he wouldn’t leave me. Besides, the note doesn’t even sound like him. I just … I’m so confused.”

“Can you tell me what it said?”

She crossed the room to a desk built into the kitchen wall, came back, and handed Jack a white folded sheet of paper. “I asked for a copy.”

He unfolded it and read the plain type.

To those I leave behind,

I am sorry to have failed you. God knows I tried to be a good husband, father, and pastor. My goal has always been to live a life of service to you, my beloved Wendy and boys, and to you, my church family. However, after much struggle and spiritual warfare, I have come to believe certain people are not meant for this world. There have been glimpses of light, but overall the depression has simply overwhelmed me. Everyone will be better off with me gone. I will be at peace now, I pray (if God forgives me for this), and you will be free to move on and make a better future for yourselves.

With love, forever,

Evan (Daddy)

Jack looked at Wendy. “He didn’t sign it?”

“I don’t think he wrote it, Mr. Crittendon. And whoever did, didn’t want to try to forge his handwriting, because we would have known it wasn’t his.”

She was really grasping.

“If Evan didn’t write this, who do you think did?”

Her face melted slowly into a quiet daze, and she stared slightly off to Jack’s left.

He turned to see what she was looking at. It was a framed painting of a small white cottage, an old wooden dock, some seagulls, and a vast body of blue-green water. The artist had left plenty of white space amid the choppy water, making it look real yet abstract at the same time.

“That’s Evan’s favorite place on earth.”

Jack looked back at Wendy, whose glazed brown eyes were still fixed on the painting.

“Where is that?”

“Englewood, Florida. Gulf Coast. Between Sarasota and Fort Myers. Best seashells anywhere. And tons of sharks’ teeth.”

“Do you go there often?”

“Every spring since before the boys were born; sometimes more often.” She continued to stare. “It’s changed some. The beach has eroded a lot, but Evan and the boys still boogieboard in the surf most of the day. I read and walk. We never want to come home.”

“Has Evan gone off the antidepressants before?” Jack asked. He knew that quitting some of those things cold turkey could send users into a deeper state of despair than before they started taking them.

“Yes, like I said, he’s been on and off.”

“Was he weaned off the meds under a doctor’s supervision, or did he just quit taking them, do you know?”

“I know what you’re getting at, Mr. Crittendon,” Wendy said. “And I’m not sure of the answer. I think he may have just quit all at once.” She squinted, as if trying to open the lid of a jar that was stuck shut. “Look, if you’re implying Evan had antidepressant withdrawal symptoms, the answer is yes. His doctor cautioned him about it. He’s been restless. He’s even had a few of those electric shock feelings, like tremors. But I know my husband, and I know he would not quit on us.”

Jack reached for one of the tissues and handed it to her.

She took it, nodded thanks, and wiped her eyes.

It sounded to Jack as if Evan had some kind of chronic biochemical imbalance—something he couldn’t just will or wish away.

“Mr. Crittendon, Evan is a very difficult person to read, even by me. He’s very emotional. But I believe with everything in me that he would not do this—not in a million years.” Wendy shook her head and peered back up at the Florida painting. “He would not leave us.”

“So what do you think happened?” Jack said. “Do you have suspicions?”

“Suspicions?”

“Does he have any enemies?”

Her eyes got wide. “Enemies? I wouldn’t go that far. Disgruntled church people? Every pastor has those. Tension at work? Sure, but nothing I can think of that would cause someone to want to harm him.”

“When you say disgruntled church people, are there one or two who stand out? I mean, who are angry at Evan?”

“You know …” She pursed her lips and made her head sway back and forth as if she had a kink in her neck. “You might talk to Andrew Satterfield about that.”

“I take it he and Evan work closely—”

“On second thought …” She paused. “Write down this name: Hank Garbenger.” She spelled the last name. “He cheated on his wife, and Evan ended up disciplining him in front of the church. It’s a biblical procedure most churches don’t adhere to anymore. There’s a long story about how it all unfolded, but we don’t need to get into that.”

“Okay.” Jack combed the scribbling on his pad and made a note to follow up on Hank Garbenger. “You mentioned tension at work. Is that worth getting into?”

Wendy looked at the shady scene beyond the sliding glass doors and scratched her forehead. “Just for background, I guess.” She locked her fingers together again, turned to Jack, and sighed. “The associate pastor, Satterfield, has never liked Evan.” She rubbed her face. “Oh, I shouldn’t say that. Forgive me. I’m not sure of his feelings. But the thing is, he’s made it clear he thinks Evan is unfit to pastor because he suffers from depression and has a need for medication.”

“Really?”

“He’s brought it up in meetings with the elders and deacons. He’s made it very clear he believes Evan should step down as pastor or be asked to step down by the leadership, at least until he can ‘overcome his deficiencies’—I think that’s how he once put it.”

“Wow. That’s pretty harsh, coming from someone under your husband.”

“Yeah, well, Satterfield has a very fundamentalist background. He views depression as a weakness instead of an illness.”

Jack nodded.

“The unfortunate thing is, he’s convinced some of the elders and deacons to believe the same thing.”

The longer Jack sat with Wendy, the more intriguing the story became.

A door slammed in another room, followed by what sounded like Spain’s running of the bulls.

Suddenly the kitchen was raided by three tan, sweaty, panting, pink-faced boys of all sizes. Ignoring their mom and the stranger sitting nearby, they methodically went to work. The littlest dropped to his knees, opened the cupboard, and filled his small arms with three huge plastic cups, each featuring the Ohio State University logo. Perched on a stool, the middle one yanked a huge ice tray from the freezer, hoisted it to the counter, and banged it down. The oldest one, who must have been approaching six feet in height, pulled an enormous pitcher of lemonade from the fridge and stood at the counter, poised to pour.

Wendy cleared her throat loudly enough for her sons to take notice. All three looked into the living room at the same time.

“Hi, Mom,” said the little one.

“Hello there, boys.” Wendy stood, rubbing her hands together. “We have company. Would you come in here and say hello for a minute?”

Each of them wore long shorts and tennis shoes with no socks. The oldest didn’t have a shirt on, and Jack could see the waist of his blue-and-red-checked boxers. The youngest and oldest had their mother’s eyes, while the middle one resembled their father, who Jack remembered from the marriage seminar and photo that ran in the
Dispatch
.

“This is Mr. Jack Crittendon.” Wendy put her hand out toward Jack, who stood up. “He’s a reporter for the
Dispatch
, and he’s going to be doing some stories on Daddy and our family. Mr. Crittendon, this is Silas.” She rubbed the blond hair of the youngest boy. “He’s seven.”

“Hi.” Silas gritted his teeth, gave Jack a viselike grip, craned his little neck sideways, and stared up at Jack for a response.

“What do you say to Mr. Crittendon?” Wendy prompted.

“Nice to meet you.” Silas shrugged.

“Next is Zachary.” Wendy squeezed her middle son’s shoulder. “He’s eleven.”

“How do you do?” Zachary’s handshake was equally … painful.

“And last but not least,” Wendy said, “this is Nathaniel, our fourteen-year-old.”

“Good to meet you.” His voice was surprisingly deep, and he shook Jack’s hand with not quite so much thought about breaking every bone in it. “You can call me Nate.”