Silent Mercy

THIRTY-SEVEN

“MURDER’LL make you a black sheep in any town,” Mike said, after we excused Faith’s friends from her suite and closed the door to talk.

We had raced uptown with the siren blaring, Mercer and I fortifying ourselves for the long night ahead eating the sandwiches Max had ordered to the office before we left, while Mike drove.

“It wasn’t murder,” Faith said. “It was self-defense.”

It was my turn to get Mike to push back and let me talk. “Will you tell me what happened?”

“I should have done that this morning. There I was, worried about myself, and all the time it was Chat who was in danger.”

“You can’t go in reverse, Faith. Just tell us everything that might help to find her.”

We couldn’t know whether Chat’s abduction, if that’s what this was, was connected to her past. But if the killer was targeting pariahs, then he might have found another victim to suit his appetite.

“I’ve counseled a lot of women who’d been abused as teens. I should have seen the signals in Chat’s life, but I was too close to the situation.” Faith had dried her eyes and was trying to regain her composure.

While we talked, Mike had put the tech guys to work triangulating the cell activity from Chastity Grant’s phone. We had given them the number as we drove north to Union, and it wouldn’t be long before they could pinpoint the general location — from the signals sent to the closest surrounding cell tower — from which the call had been made.

“It was two years ago, right before Chat turned thirty. She’d been dating a guy she’d known all her life.”

Mike had called the lieutenant on our drive up to Union to ask him to pull Chat’s record — and photograph — from the state system in Kansas and the FBI crime reporting office.

“Did you know him too?”

“Yes.”

“What’s his name?”

“He’s dead, Alex. That hardly matters.”

I grimaced at her. I didn’t want resistance to my questions at this point and now she seemed to get it.

“I’m sorry, Alex. Kenny Trimble. My dad called him Trouble. Kenny Trouble. It suited him just fine.”

Mike was texting the name to Peterson. The more info we could pull up, the faster we could move.

“What happened between them?”

“They’d been dating on and off since they were kids. I think Kenny was the first guy Chat got involved with.”

I needed to fast-forward from the high-school romance, but Faith had things she wanted to say.

“He was always way too controlling, even then. Jealous and possessive. I remember a time Chat got a ride home from another boy and Kenny was jumping all over her. Still, when she ran away from home, odds were you could find her with Kenny. Off to Oklahoma for two weeks with him, my mother scared to death that we’d never see her again. Texas the next time. Like that over and over again.”

“Tell me about recently, Faith. Tell me what Kenny did.”

Kenny Trouble had fathered kids with two other women. He’d been in and out of jail for stealing and for assaulting the mothers of his boys. The pattern was as familiar to me as Mike Chapman’s blazer and jeans.

“Chat started dating a man — a really nice man named Jonas — while Ken was in jail. He was put away for almost two years, so she had a good chance for some stability. We were all so proud of her because we thought she’d broken the cycle. Never visited him once in the penitentiary, wouldn’t accept mail from him. First time ever that she got an order of protection for herself. Turns out it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.”

If I had a dollar for each time I’d heard that expression, I could find a cure for every disease on earth.

“The day Kenny was released from prison — the very same day — he came back to town. Spent the night at his favorite bar,’cause neither of the women he’d been roughing up wanted him back. Someone told him about Chat.”

“Told him what?”

“That she was happy, I guess. That she was in a healthy relationship for the first time in her life. Had a job,” Faith said, and couldn’t help but smile. “She was even going to church.”

“And then?”

“Kenny drove straight from the bar to the little house where Chat’s boyfriend lived. At daybreak, when Jonas left for work, Kenny let himself in. It’s the kind of town where nobody locks doors, if you folks can relate to that. Chat got out of the shower and he was waiting for her right there in the bedroom.”

“They struggled?”

“No,” Faith said with a frown. “There was no struggle.”

I had violated my own strict rules, suggesting an answer rather than waiting for my witness’s words. But I was anxious to get on with the search for Chat.

“She thought she could reason with Kenny. She was in somebody else’s home, and she was mortified that she had brought Trouble — with a capital T—into it.”

“I understand.”

“So Chat calmly started to put her clothes on, trying to talk Kenny down as she did, telling him how well his kids were doing, how he could get himself a fresh start. But I think he knew better than believing he could get anybody in that town to stand behind him. That’s when the fighting began.”

“What did Kenny do to her?”

“He had taken a butcher knife from the kitchen on his way into the house. After letting Chat exhaust herself trying to make him go away, he picked up the knife from the bureau and held it against her neck. That’s when he made her undress.”

Faith stopped and took a sip of water from the glass on her desk.

“She refused at first, but then he pressed the knife against her. Not hard enough to leave any marks. There wasn’t a bruise anywhere on her body, which is one of the reasons the cops didn’t like her story at first. It’s one of the reasons they arrested her.”

“It’s good she wasn’t physically injured.”

“I’m not sure the jury agreed with that.”

“Jurors never do, Faith. Makes their job easier to see black-and-blue marks, to count the number of stitches and feel the scars.”

“The first time he raped her, he only put the knife down on his pillow long enough to lower his pants. He held it against her neck the whole time he — he, uh — penetrated. Then he stopped for a while. Used a necktie to bind Chat to the headboard. Kenny got up from the bed, found her cell phone, and readied it to dial her boyfriend. He told her what to say.”

“What?”

“Kenny told her to call and tell Jonas to come right back home. That she was scared because someone had broken into the house and she could hear him downstairs.”

“And she did it?”

“Yes, Alex. With the point of the knife held tight against her breast, she made the call. Then Kenny got on top of her again, untied her hand. Asked her how long before her boyfriend could get there from the factory. She told him eight, maybe ten minutes.

“That’s when Kenny told her his plan. That he’d be making love to Chat—‘making love’ is what he called it — when her boyfriend returned to the house. And when the guy came after him — or her — he’d stab both of them to death. No point either of them being happy when he couldn’t be. He tortured her for those eight minutes, telling her how he was going to make her die, slowly and painfully, after watching him slice Jonas into little pieces.”

“So Chat knew she was walking her boyfriend right into a death trap,” I said.

“Yes, she did. And she also knew that once again, people in town would accuse her of being the bad girl, the one who was always looking for trouble.”

“Understood.”

“Chat could hear the door open, then Jonas pounding up the steps three at a time, calling out her name. Kenny rolled onto his side and gripped the knife tight in his hand, telling my sister to smile her best smile. That’s when Chat reached down, under the bed.”

I could see the murder charge steamrolling down Interstate 70, headed straight for Chastity Grant.

“I’m not supposed to like this part of the story. It’s not very Christian of me, but I don’t mind telling you that it’s all just fine,” Faith said. “Chat’s been on the receiving end of bad business for way too long.”

“We understand that.”

“Jonas kept a gun on the floor, in a box beneath the bed. Locked and loaded, like they say back home. Chat picked it up — she’d been around guns all her life — and the minute Kenny pressed the knife back into her side and started to rape her again, my sister fired the gun.”

“Where?”

“No chance for a miss, Alex. One shot, right against Kenny Trimble’s ear.”

I was silent, steadying Faith’s trembling hand with my own.

“And she got cuffed for that?” Mike asked.

“Arrested, indicted, and tried for murder. Even Jonas turned on her. He couldn’t fathom why she hadn’t resisted, and why she was willing to drag him into her old feud with Kenny.”

“Willing? Resist a man who’s beaten you up before and now has at you with a butcher knife in your ribs?”

“People don’t really understand the crime of rape, do they?”

“No,” I said. “Most people don’t get it at all. Especially when it comes to an estranged lover. If the same story happened with a stranger as the assailant, the whole town would have thrown a party for Chat.”

“Thank God — and I do mean that — the jury listened to her, believed her, and finally acquitted her of all the charges.”

Mike checked his cell. “That’s why Peterson’s not coming up with any mug shots of her.”

“No, you won’t find those arrest photos. I hired a good lawyer for her. The entire record’s been expunged. It’s her only chance to start clean.”

“I hope she’s still packing heat right now, Faith,” Mike said, trying to add some good cheer to a dark situation. “Make my day if she gets our perp for us.”

“Then I’m sorry I’ve been such a good influence on Chat. All she packs now is a pocket-size copy of the Bible. Can that stop a madman?” Faith said, her spirits clearly flagging.

“You know better than I do. I’m sure you’ve saved your share of wretches like me — or worse. Just takes amazing Faith.”

“Grace,” she said softly as he drew a reluctant smile from her.

“My money’s on Faith. You stay strong for us today, you hear me?”

Her eyes locked on Mike’s handsome face, falsely reading in it a promise of some sort of hope from his fortitude and energy.

“I’ll do anything you tell me to do. You just find Chat.”

“Have you got a recent photo?” I asked. “Something more current than that newspaper picture with Ursula and Naomi that we can get out to the public?”

“Yes, of course. Right here on my computer,” she said, turning to her files to open a series of shots of Chat in the courtyard of the seminary. “I just sent them to my mother last week.”

“May I forward those to headquarters?” Mercer asked.

“Please,” Faith said, moving aside so he could get to her desktop. She picked up a slip of paper next to the computer. “And if it’s any help, Alex, the dean gave me the contact information for Jeanine.”

“Jeanine?”

“Yes, Reverend Portland — the ordained minister who’s also in the photo with Chat the night they went to Ursula’s play. You asked me about her this morning.”

I reached for the slip of paper and was startled to see the 508 area code, which was the same as the code for my home on Martha’s Vineyard. But the prefix for the phone number began with a two, not the six of all the Vineyard accounts.

“Is she at a church on Cape Cod?” I asked.

“Nantucket.”

“You’d better call, Coop. Let’s make sure she’s okay and see what she knows,” Mike said, jerking his thumb as a signal to Mercer to get moving.

Jeanine Portland needed to be warned — and perhaps assigned police protection — since she was the only one of the four women in the Christmas photograph as yet unharmed.

“Would it help if I come with you?” Faith asked, standing up with us.

“I need you to stay right here, no matter what temptation comes your way,” Mike said. “You can help your sister by doing what you do best. Give it every prayer you got, Faith.”

“But you don’t know where Chat is. It might be useful if I—”

“No offense, but I’ve got technology as reliable as you to lead me out of the wilderness,” Mike said, answering his vibrating cell phone. He turned his attention to the caller. “Loo? They pull up a hot spot?”

Peterson was telling Mike the general location of the cell tower that had transmitted Chastity Grant’s aborted phone call.

“We got the bridge, Coop. It’s the George Washington. Chat made her call from a rail yard in Secaucus, New Jersey.”