One Chance: A Thrilling Christian Fiction Mystery Romance (12 page)

She had always liked Pete, even though their paths didn't cross often when they were growing up. Penelope and Doug were typical kids doing typical kid stuff, but Pete was the loner type and kept to himself most of the time. Of course, the fact that Pete's father was an alcoholic, domineering tyrant could have had some influence on him.

Penelope and Doug were only nine and ten respectively, when they had met Pete for the first time. Shortly after that he had become an alcoholic himself at the young age of twelve. They never asked why he began drinking and Pete never volunteered the information.

CHAPTER 21

"No, Penny, I'm not sure when they'll bring Pete back," Jacob told her over the phone. She could hear Trevor in the background, talking to himself as he played some game. Jacob was still watching over the boy while his father was in the holding cell. "I got a call from Grace Memorial a little while ago and they said they sewed up some internal damage. There's no sign of brain swelling, so that's the good news."

"I like good news. Good news sounds, well, really good right now." She heard him laugh and just that little bit of warmth from him eased the tight knot her shoulders had become. She loved this man so much.

"Have you told his sister?" he asked Jacob.

"I called her as soon as I knew, but she didn't answer. Trevor, honey, don't play with that. Here. Use the tongue depressors and build a bridge for your cars, okay?"

Penelope smiled, getting the image of him and the young boy in his head. "You know, I got to talk to Donny Greene today. You remember him? He asked when you and I were going to have children."

"Uh, he's kind of jumping the gun, isn't he?" he said with a laugh.

"Yeah, well. Always good to plan ahead. Don't you agree, Doc?"

"I surely do, Deputy Beautiful. But now I'm living in your house and you're talking about having my babies, too. My, but the neighbors will think we're just scandalous."

She sighed. Back to the real world again.

"So, about that," he said, "Did Officer Marks find anything yet?"

"He should be finished checking for fingerprints soon. It's a long shot, but he likes to go that extra mile, I think. So hopefully we'll know something before too much longer." She paused, then asked, "What did you think of him?"

"What did I think of him?" She could almost feel Jacob calculating the weight of her question in his head. "Well. he seems like a competent enough police officer. And we talked for a bit."

She waited, knowing there was more. "And?"

He sighed. "And I got this weird feeling from him. Almost like he was sizing me up and deciding he was...I don't know. Better than me? Better looking? Something like that. It was probably nothing. You know how bad first impressions can be."

"Yeah. I do. But I also trust your judgment."

"You should," he said, the smile back in his voice. "I picked you, didn't I?"

"I love you, Jacob," she said to him.

"I love you back."

She hung up the phone.

Only to have it ring again.

"Franklin Sheriff's Office, Deputy Chance speaking," she said by rote.

It was Officer Marks. "Ma'am," he said, "you may want to come out to Jacob's house. There's something here I think you should see."

"What is it, Anthony?" she asked. More distractions, she thought to herself. Just what she didn't need. "You really need me there for this?"

God help me
, she prayed silently.

"I'd rather you see it for yourself," he insisted.

"Fine," she sighed, giving up on her idea of talking with Doug. "I'll be there in a few."

*

Officer Marks met Penelope at the driveway and motioned her around to the back of Jacob's house without a word. He pointed out the imprint of a shoe on the siding just below the window and all the fingerprints he was able to find and lift. Then he asked her to climb up the ladder he had been using to do his work so she could peek inside.

She eyed him suspiciously, but did as he asked. At the top of the orange step ladder, she looked inside the open window to the spare bedroom.

What she saw surprised her. Not only had someone been in the house, but they had stayed a while. The bed was unkempt, as though it had been recently slept in, and there were two empty plastic soda bottles along with candy bar wrappers on the dresser.

And around the mussed up blankets thrown onto the floor, were arranged the three photos that had been taken from Jacob's wall.

Penelope ground her teeth as she surveyed the room. She thought she probably knew exactly who had been staying here. She climbed down the ladder and looked at Officer Marks. "We can't tell him about this just yet," she said.

"Why not? It's Jacob's house and he should know what's going on."

Penelope shook her head. "This is the way we do this, Officer Marks. And you will respect my decision on this. We don't tell Jacob anything about this yet. He's staying at my place now as it is and won't be back here. So, we're going to set up and watch the place, and when he comes back, we'll get him. Then we tell Jacob."

Anthony clenched his jaw and looked at the open window into the house.

"There's things going on here you don't understand, Anthony. And we need to keep focused."

There it was, she thought.
Thank you, God. I needed to remember to keep my focus and not get off on tangents.

Finally Anthony nodded. "You're the boss, Deputy. So we'll do it your way. Besides," he mumbled as he turned away, "get to spends some extra time with you."

Penelope let the comment go. He was expecting her to feed into it, and she knew the best thing to do for now was ignore him. She'd have to have a good talk with Sheriff Jackson when this was done about Anthony's future here.

Penelope helped him clean up the fingerprint powder from the window. She didn't want the intruder to know the police had been here. Especially if it was who she thought it was. What she wanted was to catch the guy inside the house when he came back again.

They picked up all traces that they had been there and then got into their separate cruisers. Penelope's plan was to leave the police cars at the office and come back in her personal car so that they wouldn't be obvious. One thing, after another. But at least this put them back on track to solving the mysteries that Doug seemed to keep getting entrapped in.

Because Penelope was very sure she knew who had broken into Jacob's house.

Not even a half hour later, they were back on Jacob's street, parked a few houses down in such a way that they had a good view of his back yard where the window to the spare bedroom was. If everything worked out, the trespasser wouldn't know they had been there. She'd sent Jim Saunders to check on Jacob's house last night, but she knew from reading Anthony's report that Jim had only done a drive-by and then a perimeter sweep of the house later in the night. There was no reason for an intruder to be spooked by that.

Anthony sat in the passenger seat of Penelope's Jetta. They drank from styrofoam cups of coffee and watched out the windshield as the day wore on. They'd picked up sub sandwiches from a convenience store on their way through, and lunch was eaten in relative silence. And still there was no sign of the intruder.

Penelope was used to doing this kind of work. It was a lot of what police work was actually like, in the real world. A lot of sitting and waiting and praying things worked out. However, it was obvious that Officer Marks was more used to action than waiting.

"Gah!" he exclaimed, putting the remains of his sandwich back in its paper bag sleeve. "This is insane. Can't we set up a camera or something to do this?"

Penelope nodded, slowly. "We could. And by the time we figured out he was back and rushed here, he could be gone again. This is the best way."

He was silent for a time and then laid a hand over her knee. "Can't we at least...you know...entertain ourselves?"

Penelope pressed her lips firmly together with a prayer for more patience than she was already showing. She took hold of his hand, gently, and moved it to his own leg. "So what made you become a police officer?" she asked him.

He snorted and shifted in his seat, turning away from her. "You don't have to worry about me telling Jacob. It would just be between us."

"Stuff like that is never just anything. It gets complicated. I've seen it happen. And besides, like I told you, I'm engaged and happy about that. I don't want to ruin it. So, tell me, why did you become a police officer?"

Penelope saw him roll his eyes. "Why do you want to know, Miss Virtuous?"

He had meant to insult her with that moniker. She took it as a compliment instead. "I want to know, because I'm curious. People become police officers for all sorts of different reasons. Some people want the power that authority gives. Some people think they'll get rich from it. Some people have a martyr complex and want to burn themselves out in civil service. Other people have an honest desire to do good things for other people. There's lots of reasons, and not all of them are good. If you're going to come work for us here in Franklin, I'd like to know what we're getting." She turned and looked him squarely in the eyes. "So what's your reason?"

"Well, Deputy Chance, I suppose the smart answer is to say that I have an honest desire to do good things for other people. Right?"

"Okay, that would be the good answer in a job interview." She used a pair of hunting binoculars and scanned around Jacob's house. "Now, what's the real reason?"

"You really want to know?" He sounded angry now, like she had insulted him somehow.

"I wouldn't be asking if I didn't want to know."

"Fine. Here's the story. I grew up in a neighborhood where everyone was a criminal. Gangs, petty thieves, drug users, just the worst that Florida has, all in one place. I saw my momma die an early death from it. Never knew my dad. My younger brothers and my sister went into foster care when momma died. That left me. And I promised myself I'd get out of there. This seemed like the best way to do it. It was this, or a gang."

Penelope nodded. She didn't comment.

"Well?" he said, waiting. "You wanted to know, so there it is. You don't want to judge me on what you heard, Miss Too-good-for-me?"

This might have been a mistake, Penelope realized. She probably should have grabbed one of the other deputies for this. But she had wanted to get a better read on Anthony. She figured time alone in a small space like this would do it. And it certainly was.

"I'm not interested in judging you. And, thank you for telling me about that part of your life. Couldn't have been easy, I'm sure. I wanted your reasons, you told me."

"Yes, Miss Calm-and-Cool, but is it a good enough reason for you?"

Was that a shadow behind the house? Penelope focused the binoculars again. "It's a reason. And it's your reason. The only one who can tell if it's a good reason, besides God, is you. Your situation is unique. You'll make of it what you will. Good? Bad? That's up to you. You're not into it for the money, or the authority, and those are the worst reasons to do it." Yes, definitely a shadow. "So I guess you'll show us what kind of police officer you are in your own time. We've got movement now. Get ready."

Anthony stared at her, his mouth open. If he'd been expecting her to run him down or cast aspersions on his intentions, she'd surprised him, obviously. Penelope thought she saw something shift in his focus, in the way he looked at her, but it might have just been the excitement of the moment.

The man who had broken into Jacob's house was doing it again.

CHAPTER 22

Police training was a funny thing.

Most of what a police officer trains for are things that might happen. Circumstances that might arise. Police had to be trained to use their firearm, for instance, but very rarely in an officer's career do they ever have the need to use it. Police have to be trained in emergency operation, just in case they get in a car chase. Things like that. It was a big game of what if.

As Penelope and Anthony approached Jacob's house from opposite sides, her training kicked in. Stay low. Draw your weapon but keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. Use your cover. In this way, they ended up at opposite corners of the front of the house. Silently, she motioned for him to take a position under the window they had seen the suspect enter. Penelope had gotten only a glimpse of him through her binoculars. But it was enough to be sure.

Michael Findley was the intruder.

She prayed quickly to God for her safety and Anthony's safety, and that no one here would be hurt.
God help me do what I have to do
, she added.

Once she was confident Anthony was in place, she silently opened the front door to Jacob's house with a key he had given her a few months back. The door squeaked, once, softly, and she winced and held still, waiting and listening. Nothing. So she started forward, gun held at low ready, stepping across the carpeted entryway to Jacob's house, then along the living room wall, then down the hallway to the spare bedroom. She was silent like a mouse.

Until the floorboard creaked.

She'd been in Jacob's house any number of times, and each time she'd commented how squeaky his old house was. She was surprised she'd made it this far.

Apparently Michael Findley was surprised too. He stuck his head out of the door to the spare bedroom a few dozen feet down the hallway still, and his jaw dropped as he spotted Penelope.

Penelope brought her gun up, pointed at Findley. She didn't forget that California had a want out for this guy for very serious crimes. "Michael Findley," she said, in a loud voice so that Anthony would hear it outside. "Put your hands up where I can see them. Now!"

Michael Findley did not put his hands up. Michael Findley ducked back into the bedroom.

"Seriously?" she said to herself. Then, she quick-stepped down the hallway. "Michael Findley! Stop there! Let me see your hands!"

There were sounds of scrambling, and objects scattering. Penelope moved quicker, just in time to see Findley crawling out the window.