My legs had become stones, but somehow I managed to force them to bend, lift, move, and step by heavy step, propel me back to my house. I collapsed at the kitchen table, put my head on my folded arms, and prayed out everything in my heart. “I blew it, God. I know I blew it. This is my fault. I know I shouldn’t have covered up and lied in the first place. But, God, how could I not do everything in my power to give my son a chance? Wouldn’t you do everything in your power …” The rest of the thought died in my throat.
Somewhere deep inside me, I heard the ringing of the hammer against nail, the thud of nail against flesh, and the splitting of the wood as the nails were driven in. I saw a Son’s face, contorted in agony, awaiting a slow and painful death. I thought of the Father who didn’t save Him, although He could have done so with complete integrity. Instead, He left Him there to pay someone else’s penalty. Mine.
I, on the other end of the spectrum, had been willing to sacrifice someone else to save my son, the one who deserved the punishment. It was so against everything God stood for that I wondered He hadn’t knocked me dead by now.
“God, I’m so sorry. So very sorry. I’ve done everything wrong, everything the way that you wouldn’t want me to do it. Please forgive me. I’m so grateful your Son shed his blood so I could be washed clean from sins just like this. Please take care of Caroline. And Kurt. And Rick, too.”
I’d always heard people telling stories about things like this, and right about now they always said something to the effect of “The Spirit of God washed over me and filled me with complete peace,” but that’s not how it happened for me. There wasn’t a single ounce of peace anywhere to be found inside me.
I stood up, picked up my keys and purse, and walked out the garage door to where my car waited to take me to my fate. I pressed the garage door opener, climbed into the driver’s side of my car, and started the ignition. The song on the Christian radio station was something about being more than overcomers, but I reached over and flipped it off. I needed silence now.
Rap. Rap. Rap
The sudden knocking at the passenger-side window startled me. I looked over to see Lacey, her hair perfectly styled so that it gently rounded into a single curl just at her shoulder, completely absent of headbands, bows, or sequins. She was wearing a navy blue suit, and I could see what looked like the handle of a briefcase in her hand. I used the power button to roll down the window. “What are you doing here?”
“You paid me a retainer, remember? I’m your lawyer, and as such, I say you can’t go do this alone. Now, open the door and let me in. We’ve got an appointment downtown.”
I hit the power locks, but even as she was relaxing into her seat, I said, “You don’t have to do this, you know.”
“Of course I don’t. I want to. If ever there was a woman naïve as to the way the law works, it’s you. It would be like throwing Daniel into the lions’ den if I let you go down there alone.”
I looked at her and smiled. “I hate to break the news to you, Lacey, but it wasn’t a lawyer who saved Daniel, it was God.”
“Yeah, well, and if God wants to keep your mouth shut at the appropriate times like He supposedly did with those lions, then that will make my job all that much easier, now, won’t it?”
I reached across and hugged her. “You’re the best.”
“So they tell me.”
I backed the car out the driveway and started on the journey I did not want to take. I was glad that Lacey was in the car with me, in part just to answer the questions I thought I knew the answer to but wasn’t sure.
“What’s going to happen today? After I tell them, I mean? Will they arrest me and lock me up?”
“Well, that could go either way. They’ll likely turn it over to the DA for now, but there is the possibility they will go ahead and lock you up today, to use you as bait.”
“Bait?”
“You’re a tiny player in this whole big opera. They want the big dogs, and in this particular case the dogs don’t get any bigger than the boy who swung the bat. I’m guessing they will suppose that if they lock you up long enough, Kurt will be more willing to show his face at the station.”
I wondered where Kurt was now, if he had made it across one border or the other yet. I hoped he was far enough away that he would never find out I was bait. I didn’t want him to do anything because of me. He was gone, and I was here to face my part in this. That’s all I could do.
We parked on Garden Street and walked around the corner to the imposing three-story white building that housed the police department. I stood at the bottom of the long procession of concrete stairs that led up from the street level and took a deep breath. I looked at Lacey. “I’m ready.”
“Not quite, you’re not. You seem to be forgetting something. Or someone, that is.” Kurt’s voice came from behind me.
I spun around and faced him. “Kurt! What are you doing here?”
“I knew you were coming here this morning, so I’ve been sitting on a bench across the street just waiting for you. I’m going in there to face this with you.”
“But … I thought you were going to leave town.”
He shook his head. “And leave my mother to face this battle alone? Besides, Dad was always telling me I needed to man up. Well, if ever there was a time to man up, I’d say this is it. How about you?”
I reached out and hugged him. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yep. It’s what Nick would want me to do, don’t you think?”
I thought about my older son, his penchant for absolute honesty, even when it got him in trouble. I nodded at Kurt. “Let’s go man up together.”
We walked arm in arm up the steps, Lacey by my side. About halfway up, she grasped my arm. “Hold on. Need a quick rest.” Her breathing was shallow and wheezy.
“Lacey, are you all right?” Kurt asked.
She smiled at him and nodded. “Police stations always have this effect on me.”
He smiled, but I could see he was scared, too.
She leaned forward and put her hands on her knees, taking deep breaths. After a full minute she straightened up and nodded. “Let’s do this.”
We finished the climb and pushed through the glass doors that led to the lobby. I walked to the only open window. It said Records above it, but I didn’t much care at this point whether we were at the right spot. “We’re here to see Detective Thompson. He’s expecting us.” I looked over my shoulder at Kurt. “Some of us, at least.”
“Have a seat. I’ll tell him you’re here.”
We went and sat together in a row of blue plastic seats. An angry-looking Hispanic man sat directly across from us, and a woman who I assumed to be his wife sat crying in the seat beside him. They were speaking Spanish, but my immediate assumption was that they had a son in trouble. I’m sure it’s the same way Rick and I had looked on several occasions.
“Mrs. Stewart?” Detective Thompson’s voice came from somewhere to the left.
We all stood and walked to the open door. He looked from me to Kurt to Lacey. “You’ve brought some friends, I see.”
“We’ve got some things to tell you.”
“Please, come right this way.” He held the door open and smiled, a cat that had all three blind mice lined up right there for the taking.
“There are several detectives at their desks right now. Shall I take us somewhere that we can have a little more privacy?” Detective Thompson stopped at the end of the hallway, waiting for our answer. Just past him I could see staircases heading both up and down. I wondered which direction led to the booking room—or whatever they call it.
“Privacy would probably be a good idea,” I said.
“Well, there’s the big conference room downstairs, but I think they’re having some sort of meeting in it right now. Shall we just go sit in one of the interview rooms?” The gleam in his eyes told me more than I wanted to know about this suggestion. He knew something big was up, and he was ready to pounce with full force.
I understood that this was his job, to get to the truth. I just wished he hadn’t been quite so happy about our impending demise. “Sounds good.”
Lacey got between Kurt and me as we retraced our steps down the hallway. “Anything you say from here on out is likely to be recorded. Think before you speak. Got it?”
We both nodded as we turned down another hallway with several doors on the left side. Detective Thompson stopped outside a door that looked as though it might lead to your basic classroom at your basic high school. It was painted white, but where there might normally have been a Classroom 15 sign at a school, here there was a small red plastic sign with white letters, Interview Room 3.
The hallway began to tilt around me, and I reached for the wall with my right hand, taking deep gulps of air. I tried to put my focus somewhere other than the door that was opening beside me. A little up ahead of us, I could see a room off to the right. I could only see part of it, but I could see enough to know that it was covered in Plexiglas and bars. That’s when dark spots started popping like paint balls before my eyes.
“Alisa, Alisa, are you all right?” The voices were coming from somewhere, I couldn’t tell where. All I knew for sure was the deepening blackness and the strength draining from my legs until I could no longer feel them. Maybe I fell, I don’t know.
The next thing I remember, I was lying on the floor in the middle of what could only have been Interview Room 3. Worried faces hovered all around me. I sat up and rubbed my head, which pounded with the movement. “I’m okay, I’m okay.”
I made to stand up but felt a restraining hand on my shoulder. I looked up to see Detective Thompson. “Don’t try to get up just yet. Give your body a little time to get the blood flowing in the right direction again.”
I looked at the worried face of my son, and I knew the worry I saw was for me, not for himself, not for what he was about to go through. “Sorry about that.” I looked up at Detective Thompson and tried to smile. “I guess you’re thrilled you agreed to this appointment now, huh?”
He grinned. “Believe me, I’ve seen worse. A lot worse.”
In an effort to restore my bearings, I began to look around the room and study my surroundings. It wasn’t like you see on TV. Those rooms are always large, with a big table where the defendant is always leaning on his elbows, smoking cigarettes and looking nervous. This room was hardly the size of my closet. In fact, I wasn’t quite sure how someone had fit through the door while carrying me. And as for the table, it was more like a small shelf, stainless steel and attached to the wall. Barely bigger than the tray on an airplane. Certainly no place to lean on and smoke, even if you wanted to.
I pushed myself up into one of the white plastic chairs, which put me shoulder-to-shoulder with Kurt and Lacey. Detective Thompson was in the chair on the other side of the room, but if we all stretched out our legs we could have touched his chair. No wiggle room here.
“Well, I guess it’s time I tell you why I wanted to talk.”
“Mom, you don’t have to say anything. I’m here to do the talking for me. There’s no reason for you to say anything.” Kurt looked at Detective Thompson. “I’m the one who killed Rudy Prince. Not Gary Singer.”
Detective Thompson set a pad of paper on the small table and pulled a pen out of his pocket, clicking the ballpoint out of its protective case. “Tell me about it.”
“I owed him money, as you already know. He came to me one night down at De La Guerra Plaza. I was sitting against a wall, stoned out of my mind, and he started yelling about paybacks.”
Detective Thompson nodded. “Did he threaten you in any way?”
“Rudy always threatened people. That was the way he operated. He swung that stupid bat around, telling me how he was going to let me have it if I didn’t pay.”
“But he never actually hit you?”
Kurt shook his head. “I don’t think so. The memories have been coming back in flashes, but I’m pretty sure he never got too close to me.” He stared at the wall for a minute before he continued. “There was this homeless guy named Mike—skinny, harmless as can be—who was always sitting on the bench right near where we were.” Kurt rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head. “I keep seeing the smirk on Rudy’s face when he stood right over the old man and swung as hard as he could. I think he must have killed him, because I can still hear the sound of the wood cracking against the guy’s skull. Then he looks up at me and goes, ‘That’ll be you tomorrow night if you don’t come back with my money.’ And he started laughing. Laughing.”
“And that’s what set you off?”
“Well, yeah. He was still standing over Mike, and I thought he was maybe going to hit him again, and then somehow I thought it was Nick lying there.” Kurt closed his eyes. “I charged him with every bit of the hate I felt inside. I was so angry nothing could stop me. I managed to get the bat out of his hands, and in my mind, I could see the guy who’d killed Nick. I was hitting him after watching him laugh over Nick’s body. I hit and I hit and I hit, until I couldn’t swing the bat another time. But I wasn’t seeing Rudy, I was seeing Lonnie Vandever.”
I looked at Detective Thompson, wondering then if he was going to ask who Lonnie Vandever was. Then I remembered all his little visits to my conferences and the church, and realized he probably knew more about that case than I did. “What happened then?”
Kurt shook his head. “I’m not really sure. The next thing I remember was waking up in my bed and seeing the bloody baseball bat lying there. I picked it up and carried it to the sink and tried to wash the blood off it. It had already been stained by then. I dropped back down on my bed, hung-over and still a bit confused about exactly what had happened. I tossed the bat under the bed and called this rehab place I’d heard about, and they told me they had a spot for me. I got in my car and drove down there and checked myself in.”
“What happened to the bat?”
“Somewhere during the middle of the detox process, I realized that I’d left it back at the cabin where I was living. I planned to come home and see if it was really there, because by that time I had begun to convince myself that maybe the whole thing was a drug-induced hallucination. By the time I got out of rehab, the Brooks family had sold the place and the cabin had been demolished.”
“So the bat went down with the cabin, so to speak?”
“I guess so.” Kurt made a point not to look at me. I knew what he was doing. He was turning himself in for the real crime, telling the truth about his part. He figured there was no reason to give more information that would only get me in trouble.
I looked at Lacey, who nodded almost imperceptibly. She knew what he was doing and agreed, as well. Kurt was giving me an out. All I had to do was take it.
What came first to mind was a story from the Old Testament, when Joshua was leading the Israelites into the Promised Land. They surrounded Jericho, walked around it every day for seven days, and the walls fell. They had the victory, just like God had promised.
Except, there was a problem.
God had told them not to take any spoils for themselves. None. Nada.
When the army went up against the small group from Ai, whom they should have defeated without even a thought, they were routed.
Turns out, one of the men from Israel, Achan was his name, had seen a few things in Jericho that he really wanted: some gold, some silver, and a beautiful robe, so he took them. None of the people of Israel knew that he had done this, but God knew. When they went into battle, God withdrew his hand of protection and let them suffer a humiliating defeat.
Here I sat, having the opportunity to walk away from this room without any repercussions at all. I had burned the bat, but no one would need to know. My son had confessed to the crime; the guilty party was going to be punished. I wanted to walk out of here a free woman, to go home and see my daughter this afternoon and tell her it had all been a mistake after all. But what kind of example would that set for her about honesty? And what if, just like in the time of Achan, God poured out His displeasure on my son during his trial because I tried to hide the truth?
I looked at Detective Thompson. “There’s something else that you need to know.”
“No!” Lacey and Kurt yelled the word in unison.
I turned to Lacey first and then Kurt. “Yes.” I looked back at Detective Thompson. “Now, where was I?”
“You were just about to tell me something I need to know.”
“Yes, I was.”