For The Least Of These (30 page)

Before going back into the rain and wind, I tried using Alicia’s phone to call 911 and report the dead body. I gently used a paper towel to pick up the phone so I wouldn’t disturb
– or leave – any fingerprints. The phone was dead. I had my cell phone, but I wasn’t going to get a signal in this weather. I left the apartment and tried to close the door as best I could. The wind was coming from the opposite direction, so the door held for the moment. As I crossed the yard, I noticed that the Volkswagen was no longer in the drive. Had that car belonged to the killer who had now escaped? As much as I wanted to be a more altruistic version of Rick Hartwood, Superstar, I was still relieved by the thought that the killer had left the premises. I didn’t want Adam – or anyone else – to be dead, but most of all, I didn’t want to be dead.

I now felt a little more daring as I approached the back door. I had convinced myself that the killer was gone, so I could now become the hero without risking my own life. I decided to knock before trying the door. I let myself hope that someone was still alive inside the house. The door flew open with such a jolt that I feared that the killer was still here and that I was about to become his next victim. If this was the killer, he was disguised as a tired looking old man.

“What do you want?” he barked.

“I’m Rick Hartwood, a friend of Adam’s.” I tried to be cautious, just in case this man was part of the crime next door.

“Who the hell is Adam?” he barked again.

Just then, a sweet looking little old lady came up beside the man. “Adam is Brandy’s friend,
dear. Let the young man come in out of the weather.” She pushed the old man aside so I could enter.

“Oh, damn!” the old man yelled. “Now he’s dripping all over the floor, Agnes!”

I apologized for dripping on the floor. And since this was Mr. Meyers’ main concern, I was certain that this couple didn’t know anything about the dead man on Alicia’s floor.

“We’re Alicia’s parents, the
Meyers. I’m afraid you just missed Adam.” This was Agnes.

“Really? Do you know where he went?”

“Does it matter? The fool is driving around with our daughter in a hurricane. If he brings her back alive, I’m going to kill him.” This was Dear – also known as Mr. Meyers.

“What are they driving? I’ll find them and bring them back if you can tell me where they were going.”

Mrs. Meyers tried to remember, “It was that little black car. Dear, did you notice what kind of car it was?”

I jumped in, “Was it a Volkswagen?”

Mr. Meyers replied, “Yes, it was a Jetta. And it was black.” He was about to say more, but his wife interrupted.

“They were going over towards Brandy’s house. She and her roommate are stranded on the road. I think Brandy called them on her cell phone.”

Something wasn’t adding up. Brandy’s cell phone wouldn’t work in this weather any more than mine would. Whatever was going on wasn’t as important as finding Adam and Alicia. They had just left, so I might be able to catch up with them. “Can you tell me how to get to Brandy’s house?”

Mrs.
Meyers decided to draw me a rough map. While she was doing this, Mr. Meyers softened a bit. “You’ll never survive in that little car you drove up in. I think you’d better take my Silverado. I was going to offer it to Alicia and that boy, but they took off so fast that I didn’t get the chance. It has four-wheel drive if you need to use it. It’s got an extended cab, so you can fit all five of you in there if need be.”

“Thank you, Sir. That would be wonderful,” I said earnestly. I hadn’t really thought out my plan, but it would be hard to rescue someone in Bella
– especially if she choked out in a large puddle of water.

After Mrs.
Meyers had given me the crude map, I remembered the body in the apartment. I now realized that Adam and Alicia had kept the body a secret, but I wasn’t sure why. The right thing to do would be to call the police on the Meyers’ phone, but in order to do that, I would have to alert them to the body. Then if their phone wasn’t working, I would have upset them for no reason. The body wasn’t going anywhere – unless the wind really picked up – so I decided to follow Adam’s lead and not tell the Meyers.

As I darted for the truck, I was struck by some dreadful thoughts. Mr. Moretti had mentioned that Alicia was dating a cop. What if the big man on the floor was that cop? And what if the cop tried to arrest Adam? Did Adam shoot the cop to insure his escape? Did he force Alicia to go with him? I had known Adam for a lot of years, and even at his worst, he would have never done anything like that. There had to be another explanation. And where was Brandy? I hurried out of the driveway and drove in the direction Mrs.
Meyers had indicated.

I drove faster than I had earlier, but I still tried to stay cautious by avoiding standing water. When I reached the highway, there was still a good bit of traffic on the road. The rain was unrelenting, but luckily, Mr.
Meyers had new wiper blades on the truck. Even so, it wasn’t easy to see through the deluge. I stayed on the main road, as Mrs. Meyers had instructed, and I was soon within a few blocks of Brandy’s neighborhood. I started slowing down when I saw blue lights heading towards me. I didn’t have time to deal with law enforcement, so I quickly turned onto the next street and then pulled into the nearest driveway. The police cruiser continued down the highway – assuring me that I wasn’t the focus of his pursuit.

A couple of minutes later, I backed out of the driveway, intent on returning to the highway. But then I noticed what seemed to be some sort of trail on the opposite side of the street. The trail looked muddy, but it was angled uphill ever so slightly, preventing it, at least for now, from being flooded. Since the trail was in the direction of Brandy’s street, I quickly decided to follow the trail using the truck’s four-wheel drive. My luck held out, and the trail ended on the street that led to Brandy’s house. So far, I hadn’t seen the Jetta, so I assumed Adam and Alicia were already at the house.

Most of the homes on this street were deserted. The street itself was covered by water, but it wasn’t too deep to maneuver. I was driving slowly – not out of caution, but rather to insure that I didn’t miss the correct house. I was able to locate the house quite easily. The driveway was empty; Adam’s Volkswagen wasn’t here. All of the windows were boarded up, but I could see a sliver of light coming from beneath the front door. I pulled up close to the porch so we could easily get back to the truck when we were ready to leave.

I opened the truck door, and the wind yanked it out of my grasp. For a few seconds, I was in a fierce tug of war with the storm which ended with me slamming the door shut and then sprinting up on the front porch of the house. Just as I was about to knock, a woman’s scream cut through me. Her scream was coming from inside Brandy’s house, so it was safe to assume that it was Brandy doing the screaming. I swallowed the lump in my throat and braced myself as I used my shoulder to force the door. Being a hero was much harder than I had imagined
– and nothing like what you see on TV. The door didn’t give, but my shoulder was certainly going to have a bruise. I backed up a little and ran into the door again. This time it gave way and opened. I was on my way to being Rick Hartwood, Hero 
and 
Superstar…

The handcuffs bit painfully into my wrists, but I refused to acknowledge the pain
– I wasn’t going to give the detective the satisfaction. Besides, the pain in my heart was much worse than the pinching cuffs. Adam was going to come here eventually. When I failed to show up at the airport, he would try calling me. If this Jack person forced me to answer, I would warn Adam. Most likely, he wouldn’t let me answer. Out of concern, Adam would call my parents, and they would tell him I had gone to Alicia’s. When Adam showed up, Detective Jack-Ass would arrest him for murder. I could hardly bear to think about it. I had to think of a way to stop Adam from being arrested. Since I wasn’t versed in escaping handcuffs, I wasn’t really in a position to save Adam. If only I could come up with a reason for this guy to remove them. But I couldn’t think of a single thing that would compel the detective to set me free.

Alicia was on the verge of freaking out. She was trying to reason with the detective. She seemed to know him quite well, and I wondered what had transpired between the two of them since that night at Three Sheets. “Jack” wasn’t listening to Alicia, so whatever had taken place hadn’t had an emotional impact him. His job was still his top priority.

Lacking any other course of action, I decided to turn to God for an answer. In the past month, I had experienced salvation and had turned my life over to Jesus. I wasn’t exactly an expert yet – in fact, I was more like a preschooler – but I did know prayer could help in even the most impossible situation. I began praying for Adam. I knew he was innocent; I had spent the last several days with Adam, and he couldn’t have kept a secret like that from me. He had professed his love for me, and we were just embarking on a new relationship. He wouldn’t have jeopardized that by killing someone as inconsequential to our lives as Fisher Perry had been. So I prayed that the true culprit would be found before anyone could arrest my Adam.

I was unsure how much time passed, but it seemed to crawl as two storms brewed: Hurricane Ivan was building outside while Alicia and Jack’s dispute was building another storm inside. I remained silent, trusting that my prayer had been heard and would be answered.

Very suddenly, I had a good reason for Jack to remove my handcuffs: I needed to use the bathroom. This was just about the time that Alicia’s voice had reached a crescendo. I feared that she was going to hit Jack if he didn’t start seeing things her way, so I stood up to get their attention. Alicia kept yelling, but Jack turned around – probably to see if I was trying to escape. When Alicia realized that Jack wasn’t listening any longer, she shut up too.

“I really need to go to the bathroom,” I said.

“Sure you do,” Jack said sarcastically.

“No, really. I’ve got to go
– now!”

Alicia came to my rescue
– sort of, “There aren’t any windows she can fit out of in there. Let her go.”

Jack considered for a moment, and then he walked over to the bathroom to check it out. When he was satisfied that my size XL body wouldn’t fit through the size S window, he consented to removing the cuffs and letting me pee. I was hoping he would give me a few minutes to catch my breath and review the situation, but after two minutes, Jack was knocking on the door telling me to hurry up. As I washed my hands, I heard a loud ruckus coming from the living room. Something was happening and I feared that Adam had showed up. I quickly dried my hands on Alicia’s monogrammed towel and rushed to open the bathroom door. I was immediately confused by the events in progress.

The front door was standing wide open, and Terry, my roommate, was standing in front of Alicia and Jack who were no longer bickering. I heard Terry ask, “Where is Brandy?” and then I noticed that he was holding a gun in his hand. I couldn’t fathom why he had a gun at all, much less why he was holding it on Alicia and Jack.

Instinctively, I said, “I’m over here.”

Terry looked in my direction, and Jack lunged towards him. Terry quickly corrected and threatened Jack with the gun. Jack moved back, but he looked ready to pounce again if he got the chance.

“Brandy, come on. We’re leaving,” Terry said.

“Terry, put that gun away,” I responded. “What do you think you are doing? I’m not going anywhere with you.”

Terry was not happy. He turned his gun towards Alicia and said, “You can come or I can shoot Alicia in the head. It’s your choice.”

Everything seemed so surreal, but if I didn’t go with Terry, we would all find out just how real it actually was. Before I could speak, Jack swiftly pulled his gun from somewhere inside his jacket. The dreamlike sequence continued to unfold, and I believed that Jack was going to shoot Terry and save Alicia. At that point, I would wake up to discover that I had fallen asleep on Alicia’s toilet. But this time I wasn’t having a crazy dream.

Despite Jack’s attempt to take control of the situation, Terry quashed his efforts by proving to still have some of the speed that had earned him a slot in the NFL. While Jack was still lifting his gun, Terry had turned his gun on Jack. A thunderous boom exploded in my ears. It may have been impossible, but I swore I saw the bullet leave the barrel of Terry’s gun. Jack was thrown back as blood flowered from a gaping hole in his chest. Alicia screamed, but I was unable to utter a sound or move a muscle. I couldn’t take my eyes off Jack even though I knew Terry was still armed and dangerous. Jack managed to wrench himself over onto his stomach, and he desperately tried to take aim at Terry. Unfortunately, Terry’s bullet took its toll on Detective Jack. He had a bead on Terry, but he no longer had the strength to pull the trigger. Unable to do anything but pray for Jack’s soul, I watched helplessly as Jack’s life slipped away. Then I remembered that Alicia and I were still in danger.

I pulled my gaze away from Jack’s lifeless body. Terry had shoved Alicia onto the couch, and he was heading around behind her. Alicia was hysterical and Terry was trying to get her to calm down by threatening to shoot her too. It wasn’t working, but Terry didn’t seem to want to shoot Alicia. As he moved behind her, he paused at a small arrangement of books on a shelf. He carefully removed a bookend. I realized what he was going to do and ran to stop him. My feet weren’t fast enough. Terry smashed the heavy looking wooden bookend into Alicia’s head. Some blood oozed out of the spot where the bookend impacted, and Alicia was silent at last. She slumped over onto the couch as I watched in horror.

“You killed Alicia!” I screamed at Terry.

Terry was now holding the gun on me. He reached over and felt for Alicia’s pulse. “She’s not dead. I didn’t hit her that hard. I just wanted her to shut up. If she’d alerted her parents to the situation, I would have had to kill them too. Now let’s get out of here.”

Terry grabbed hold of my arm. I tried to struggle my wrist free, but his grasp was too tight. He wrenched my arm behind my back and shoved me towards the front door. Just before we stepped out into the storm, he noticed the handcuffs and their key lying on the couch where Jack had left them. Terry took both, slipping one of the cuffs around my wrist and shoving the key into his pocket. Once we reached his car, he handcuffed me to the door handle on the passenger’s side.

When Terry got into the driver’s seat, I said, “What is this all about? Why are you doing this?”

“That jerk is the one, isn’t he? Or should I say, wasn’t he? He’s the reason you decided to move out.”

“What?” Could this really be about Terry having to find a new roommate?

“He’s been looking for you all week. There was that other guy too, but he gave up after one try. So this big guy, he’s your new boyfriend? I guess he’s your dead boyfriend now.” Terry snickered as he said the part about Jack being dead.

“He was never my boyfriend. He had nothing to do with my decision to move out. I never even met him before today.”

“Then why the hell was he looking for you?”

I almost told the truth – my new found faith proclaimed that Jesus was the truth, and I fully embraced that declaration. But I wasn’t dealing with a stable person, and telling Terry about Adam would only result in Terry wanting to make Adam as dead as Jack now was. So I lied.

“He thinks
– um, thought – I killed the man that vandalized my car. He was a cop from Mississippi. Terry, you murdered a cop.”

“You should be thanking me. Now he can’t arrest you for something you didn’t do.”

“He didn’t have to die. I could have proved that I didn’t kill Fisher Perry.”

“Well, now he won’t arrest me.”

“You don’t think other cops will come looking for you? You killed one of their own.”

“I had to protect you, Brandy. I need to prove to you how much I love you.”

“Love me? Where on earth did that come from? We’ve been roommates for years and you’ve never revealed your love for me. Why now?”

“I guess I never realized my true feelings for you until that night you told me about your car. You were so upset, and I couldn’t bear to see you like that. I had to take care of it.”

“Yes, you took good care of me that night. I’m very thankful to you for that. But I’m not in love with you, Terry.”

“I took care of you and I took care of that man,” Terry said. I thought he meant Jack, but then he added, “He should have been jailed for what he did to your car.”

After seeing Terry gun down Jack, I hadn’t believed that anything else could ever shock me again, but the realization that Terry had killed Fisher stunned me into silence. I remained quiet as Terry turned onto Highway 98 towards his house. The rain was intense and the last place we needed to go was towards the Bay or the Gulf.

“Terry, where are we going?”

“I’m taking you home where you belong.”

“You are aware that there’s a hurricane bearing down on us, right? Your house is almost certain to be affected. At the very least, it will flood the neighborhood.”

“We’ll be together, at least.”

“You mean we’ll die together. You need to think about this.” I was trying to rationalize with a crazy person, but I hoped a sane Terry was still in there somewhere.

“I have thought about it. I’m going to die anyway. I’ve murdered two people – one of them a cop. Alicia’s going to alert the police as soon as she can after she regains consciousness. That may be after the hurricane but that still means my time is short. You and I can spend the end of our lives together. If the hurricane doesn’t take us, I’ve still got a loaded gun…”

I stopped listening to Terry’s crazy reasoning. By now I should have realized just how hopeless my situation was, but I kept reminding myself that God was in control. I had to acknowledge to myself that God had answered my prayers about Adam. Adam didn’t show up and get arrested by Jack. And now he would never be arrested because Alicia would tell the police the truth. I had never dreamed that I’d die today, but if it was God’s will, I was ready. Still, I prayed for God to send help before it was too late.

A few blocks before we got to our subdivision, Terry pulled down a side road. He pulled into the driveway of an old abandoned house and parked. We both knew this area well; we had walked and explored the entire neighborhood many times in the years we had lived there. “We’ll walk the rest of the way,” Terry said. He came around to my side of the car and unlocked my handcuff from the car door. He then cuffed it to his wrist and wrestled me out of the car. We set off across an empty lot which had been almost transformed to a swamp from all of the rain. Terry pulled me along, and eventually we made it to a street that led to our house.

While walking through the neighborhood, two cars passed us on their way to the main road. Terry grabbed my hand so that we appeared to be a couple, and he pointed the gun into my side to make sure I didn’t try to flag them down. The cars were loaded to the point that it looked like the occupants were moving to a new home. The driver of the second car
– a middle-aged man – gave Terry and me a long look as we walked back into the already flooding subdivision. He clearly believed that we were crazy. He was half right.

Once we reached the house, Terry removed his handcuff and dragged me inside. I was wet and cold, but he didn’t seem to notice. He shoved me into a kitchen chair and cuffed me to the side of it. I sat there shivering and wondering just how long it would be until Terry shot me in the head.

Terry kept rattling on and on about how much he loved me and how he was protecting me from all the other men in the world – the ones that would simply use me. I couldn’t stand to listen to one more word, so I filled my head with prayers to God. I thanked Him for letting me find and accept Jesus. I also thanked Him for the days I had spent with Adam and for keeping Adam away from Alicia’s house that morning. I thanked Him for my entire life – the good and the bad. I also asked God to forgive my many transgressions – some that I was blindly unaware of and others that I had blatantly repeated almost daily. I found myself praying for Rick and Alicia – praying that if they hadn’t found salvation and peace with Jesus yet, that they would before it was too late. That’s when I thought about Terry. I knew he wasn’t saved, and if he died today, he would spend eternity in Hell. I prayed for Terry, and then I knew what I had to do.

“Terry?” I called softly. He was still ranting and raving, but he stopped when he heard my voice.

“Yes?”

“I need to talk to you about something. It’s very important. I should have talked to you about it before now, but based on where today is going, it has become imperative that we talk about this.”