Seeds of Evidence (9781426770838) (29 page)

She drove toward the Main Street house, her stomach churning, questions fluttering like butterflies through her mind. What would Connie do without Bob? Who killed him? How was David? Why did he have to go through this again?

Kit jogged up the front porch steps at her grandmother's old house. David invited her in without meeting her eyes. Her heart grew tender the minute she saw him. She wanted to ask him how he was doing after this latest encounter with death. What was he thinking? What was he feeling?

There was no time for any of that. Chris arrived seconds later, dressed, Kit thought, like a stockbroker—or an undertaker—in his black suit and fresh white shirt. He looked like it was the middle of the day, not 8:00 a.m. after a late night. “I brought breakfast,” he said, setting a box of doughnuts and cartons of yogurt down on the coffee table.

David had brewed coffee. Kit and Chris filled their mugs and returned to the living room where David waited. “I know who did it,” he said, running his hand through his hair. Energy emanated from him like an electrical field.

“Who?” the others said in unison.

David met Kit's eyes. “The cops asked me if Bob had said anything. I said ‘no' and that was true. But when I asked him if he knew who shot him he motioned with his hand, like this.” David traced a horizontal line across his right cheek. “I think that means a scar. I think . . . I think Hector Lopez shot him.”

Kit's eyes widened. “Why? Why would he?”

“For his truck. I've been thinking about this all night. The cops have the one from the scene of the trooper shooting, you know? Now Lopez needs a replacement. So he follows one, or he pretends to be broken down on the side of the road and signals one to pull over. Bob was goodhearted, right? So he stops, and Lopez shoots him. Now he has the truck he needs.”

Kit sagged back on the couch.

“Good theory,” Chris said.

“It's more than a theory.”

“But C&R has loads of trucks!” Kit protested.

David shook his head. “This is something extracurricular that Hector is doing. Something beyond what he's doing for C&R. Didn't you say the owner seemed straight up?”

“Yes, but . . .”

“But nothing. He needs a truck for his illegal activity . . . we think for trafficking people. Or running drugs. Now he has one. Or at least, the parts for one. He might run it through the chop shop.”

“What do we do now?” Kit asked. “We need proof he killed Bob.”

“Maybe something will show up on the forensics,” Chris suggested.

Kit grimaced.

“I'll get it out of Lopez. You wire me up. I'll get him to implicate himself,” David said.

“No, David . . .”

Chris interrupted. “Yes, it's time.”

Kit's head felt tight with tension. “What? No!” But the two men kept talking, batting around ideas for a recording device David could wear. Through her mind flashed the look on Connie Jester's face, her devastation at the loss of Bob, and her sobs. She thought about death and grief and loss and the inevitable separation all that caused.

If David wore a wire it would put him at even greater risk than he was in now. Because if Hector Lopez found out . . .

She zoned back in when she heard the word “iPod.”

“They've seen me with mine many times,” David was saying. “I think that would work.”

“All right, I'll take care of it.”

“Wait. I think we should see if we can get wiretap authorization without that,” Kit said again.

“No. Lopez has been talking with me about making a bigger run,” David said. His words jabbed at an invisible foe. “Twice, maybe three times the money. What's he talking about? Drugs? People? Who knows? Now he's got a truck. It's time to move.”

Chris interjected. “He's right. I'll go talk to the tech. I may have to get Quantico involved if modifying an iPod is beyond his capability, and that could take some time.”

Kit's face flushed. She was losing control of the conversation. “Maybe they can't even do it.”

“So let them tell me it can't be done.”

“It's an unnecessary risk!”

“It's going to be fine,” David said, with finality.

“I'll go get started now,” Chris left.

K
IT TURNED TO
D
AVID TO PROTEST AGAIN
. T
HEN HER CELL PHONE RANG
. She looked at the caller ID and felt a rush of surprise. She put the phone to her ear. “Ben!” she said, responding to the voice of her friend from D.C. “How are you?” She saw David's eyes shift away from her. Then he left the room, headed for the kitchen.

Kit pressed the phone to her ear. “I'm all right. Yes, it was horrible. What a shock.” Kit hesitated. “But how did you know?” She grew silent, listening, and every sentence Ben Heitzler spoke felt like a surgeon's knife cutting deeper and deeper, lancing some deep boil in her soul, releasing the poison. She felt her head grow tight. A strange mixture of fear and . . . and what . . . hope? . . . churned in her. She sat down on the couch, and pressed her hand to her forehead as she concentrated on her friend's words. Questions spilled out of her: when? how?

Then she quietly closed her cell phone.

She walked out to the kitchen. David stood with his two hands braced on the table, his head down. “Why didn't you tell me?” she said, softly.

He straightened up and faced her. “I didn't want you to think I did it for you.” He rubbed his hands on his pants like they were sweaty.

“Ben said you spent hours together. Over several days.” Her heart was drumming.

“That's what you wanted me to do, right?”

“Will you tell me about it?” When he didn't respond, she repeated herself. “Please?”

“I had a doctor's appointment in D.C. I still had that piece of paper you gave me, the one with Ben's name on it. On impulse I called him. Told him you'd given me his number. Told him I had a lot of questions about God and all. He had tickets to a Redskins preseason game and he invited me to go with him.” David looked down and traced an invisible pattern on the kitchen table with his forefinger.

“And?”

“It was a great game. 'Skins won, 21-18.”

Kit waited, blood pounding in her temples.

“We talked during the game, after the game, in the car, at his house. We were up most of the night, talking about God. What he said made sense to me, Kit. More than sense. It brought everything into focus for me.”

Her heart grew tight. What was he saying? What had happened?

David's eyes were shining. “It's like this: when you're working a homicide, you have bits and pieces of information. Solving it is like putting together a puzzle. That's what Ben did for me. He put together the puzzle.”

“What do you mean?”

“I've been pretty churned up inside. Upset that I shot that kid. That seemed to stir up a lot of other stuff: anger toward my stepfather, anger toward my mother.

“Ben's a good guy. I started telling him about all this and he just took it all in, you know? I thought he'd be judgmental, but no. He listened. He understood.

“And then he started talking to me about sin and how we all struggle with it. We hurt other people . . . other people hurt us. I could see how this sin nature he talked about was real, and it had been driving me.

“My stepfather,” David tapped his finger on the table, “when he was drunk, he'd beat my mother. The last time he tried to do it, I was seventeen. I nearly killed him.” David looked at Kit, as if gauging her reaction. “The judge gave me a choice: the Navy or juvenile detention. I took the Navy.”

“I'm so sorry,” she said, a tremor in her voice.

“I've been carrying around hatred for that man all these years. I knew it was wrong, but I didn't know what to do about it, you know? There, at his house, Ben explained the cross to me. I'd never understood that before. He told me God could forgive me for that hatred, if I confessed it. But do you know what else he said? He nailed it. He told me that, at some point, I needed to not only let go of my anger, but forgive my stepfather. For my own sake, if nothing else.

“He said he'd read a quote somewhere.” David closed his eyes, trying to make sure the words came out right. “ ‘Unforgiveness is a poison you drink hoping someone else will die.' ”

Kit's stomach tightened.

“My stepfather was an inadequate man desperately trying to control his world through violence and alcohol. I knew enough to stay away from booze, but anger was controlling me. Ben told me how to stop that cycle of destruction. We prayed. Asked God to take care of it. Told him I'd trust him. And then, it was . . . it was amazing. It all just fell away.”

She paced now, agitation rising within her. “It could come back.”

“Ben told me that it might, but that every time I give it to God, it'll have less power over me.” David cleared his throat. “I was so tired of being angry! For the first time in my life, I tasted something,” he groped for words, “something pure and peaceful. I want more of it, whatever it is. I've talked to Ben at least once a day ever since then. I have a thousand questions. I can keep Ben busy for a long, long time.”

“You told him about Bob.”

“I called him at six o'clock this morning.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and stared out of the window. “I've seen a lot of death. Last night was different.”

Kit saw that his eyes were wet with tears.

“Last night, when Bob lay there dying, I prayed for him. Out loud. Everything was slowing down, his breathing, his heart . . . but when I said the name ‘Jesus,' he squeezed my hand, and he got this look . . . so I kept praying and he squeezed my hand again, and then he was gone.”

Kit's heart pounded.

“There was a supernatural peace in his death. I was there. I felt it. I saw it.” David faced her. “What happened last night was terrible. But Kit, Jesus showed up on the side of that road. He was there. I knew it, and Bob knew it, too.”

As she drove back to the offsite office, David's words gripped her. Had he really become a believer? He said he had. What's more he said now, he felt so different. “All these years, it's like I've been numb,” he'd said. “Now, it's like someone turned on the lights. I can feel again. It started with you, Kit. Now I know where that was leading.”

The thought gained momentum in her mind, like a stone tumbling downstream.

But you know, she argued with herself, as she negotiated the causeway, it's one thing to forgive a parent who's dead. And David's stepfather wasn't a believer. But Eric! Good grief . . . how many Bible studies had they been in together? How many worship services? How many service projects had they worked on? He had betrayed all of his promises. Walked away from her . . . and from God, for all she knew.

The worst of it was, all Eric had to do, she knew, was ask for God's forgiveness and he'd be off the hook. Completely. Where was the justice in that? Didn't God care about her pain? Her abandonment?

She hit the steering wheel in protest. Then, unexpectedly, tears welled in her eyes.

“Quantico's going to FedEx it to me in the next couple of days,” Chris told her the next day. “They can modify an iPod. Meanwhile, did you hear? Hector Lopez wants to meet with David.”

Kit's stomach tightened. “For what?”

“Not sure yet.”

“When?”

“Tonight. David said he'd call you when he knew the details.”

“Not tonight! That's when I'm meeting with Sam Curtis!” Kit had made arrangements to interview Curtis again, this time at his house. She wanted to get a different view of the man, and get some more questions answered.

“We can handle it.”

But when Kit heard the specifics from David she had her doubts.

“He wants me to meet him at 9:00 tonight at the tomato processing plant.” David's voice on the phone was tight.