Presumption of Guilt (30 page)

“Yes, sir.”

Bill got too close, and Jimmy shouted, “Don't take another step or I'll shoot!”

Bill laughed again. “Go ahead, Jimmy. You're not even holding the gun right.”

Jimmy trembled as his finger tried to close over the trigger. It didn't budge. He squeezed harder. It was locked, and he didn't have a clue how to release it.

“Just give it to me,” Bill said calmly. “I'm not mad at you, Jimmy. In fact, I've missed you. Things haven't been the same around here without you.”

“Yeah? Is that why you've already put somebody else in my bed?” It was a stupid, irrational thing to say, and Jimmy knew it.

Bill shook his head. “Your bed is still empty. I put another kid's shoes there in case of an inspection. I didn't want them to know you were gone. I was afraid they'd come after you, lock you up. I was just protecting you.” He leaned over, still reaching for the gun. “Jimmy, give me that thing.”

“No.” Jimmy backed away, and Brad backed with him.

“You have to cock it,” Brad mumbled. Suddenly Bill's hand came down across Brad's face, knocking him down. The little girls screamed, and the others came running from down the hall to crowd around the door. Bill jerked Brad up off the floor and flung him back against the wall, and his fist came back to deliver another blow.

Jimmy cocked the gun and fired it.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

B
eth was watching Nick load her things onto a cart so that he could roll them out of the hospital when Lynda and Jake came in.

“Did you find him?” Beth asked the moment she saw them. B Nick swung around. “Is he all right?”

“No, we didn't find him, but we think we know where he is,”

Lynda said.

“Where?”

“We think he went back to the home to try to get Lisa out.”

“No!” Nick cried.

“Apparently, he did.” Lynda quickly recounted the story of the e-mail.

“Well, we've got to get over there!” Beth said.

“No, Tony and Larry are working on it. They made us promise to stay away.”

“But we
can't
stay away. What if they mess things up?”

“They won't. We just have to have faith. Tony's been trying to track down the prosecutor to get a warrant. As soon as he gets it, we can go in there and get Jimmy and Lisa out. Until then, Beth, you can come back to my house. Your things are there from the other night, anyway. You can stay until your house is rebuilt.”

A few minutes later, as Nick started the engine of Beth's car in the hospital parking lot, she looked uneasily at the shadows around them. “It's getting down to the wire,” she said.

“Yeah, it's getting pretty hairy.”

“He's going to kill somebody tonight,” she said. “Might be Jimmy. Might be me.” Beth closed her eyes. “What in the world have I started?”

“You didn't start it. Bill Brandon did.”

“But I could have let it go. And the worst those kids ever would have been guilty of was robbing people's houses and businesses. They might have been beaten a time or two, but they wouldn't have been killed.”

“Stop it. You're believing the lie that you did the wrong thing. You did the
right
thing, Beth.”

He pulled out of the parking space and shifted into drive. They drove slowly past a van, and she jumped as she noticed someone standing on the other side of it.
Just a hospital visitor,
she realized with relief—but it could just as easily have been Bill, or one of his cohorts. He could ambush her at any second, and he wouldn't hesitate if he got the chance.

She was trembling now, and she reached into her glove compartment to get her gun.

“Oh, no.”

“What?”

“My gun. It was here, but it's gone. Somebody's taken it.”

“But the doors were locked. It didn't look broken into.”

“Jimmy,” she said. “Bill taught us how to break into cars as well as buildings. Sometimes there were valuable things in cars. Laptop computers, stereos, cellular phones, money—guns. Jimmy knew I had the gun. He came after it. He was here.”

Nick braked and sat there for a moment, staring at her. Then he drove to the other side of the parking lot, where Lynda and Jake were standing and talking near Nick's car, which Jake had agreed to drive home for him. Nick rolled his window down.

“Jimmy was here,” Nick told them. “And he's got Beth's gun.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

W
hen Nick rushed through Tracy's hospital room door, panting and sweating as if he'd run all the way up, she knew that something was wrong.

“I started to leave, but I thought you should know,” he said. “We figured out where Jimmy is. We think he went back to the home to rescue Lisa.”

She sat up abruptly and jerked the oxygen mask off her face.

“Somebody's got to stop him.”

“That's what we plan to do,” he said. “I just thought you should know. He could still come here, if we're wrong, and if he does, you have to call us, okay?” When she'd promised, he nodded and ran out.

It took Tracy less than a minute to get the IV out of her hand and pull off the other monitors and cords. She got to her feet and wobbled to the window. Down in the illuminated parking lot, three cars caravanned out—probably Nick and his friends. What if they couldn't stop him?

She stood there for a moment, feeling totally helpless, completely alone, realizing just how badly she had failed her children so many years ago. But she hadn't been herself then. She hadn't understood what was happening. She hadn't cared.

She cared now.

In the closet of her room, she found the dirty clothes she had worn into the hospital. They were filthy, but they were all she had, so holding the counter to steady herself, she pulled them on.

When she'd dressed, she sat abruptly on the edge of her bed because she was so dizzy. It didn't matter. She was determined to get out of here. She had to find her son and her daughter and save them if she could. Maybe then she could redeem herself with them. Maybe for once in their young lives, they could believe that their mother cared about them.

How she would get there she had no idea, but she made her way to the elevator, punched the button, then flopped against the corner and waited for it to hit the first floor, feeling as if she would pass out at any moment. Her lungs felt as if a great weight sat on them, keeping her from breathing, but she pressed on. When the doors opened, she stumbled off and walked out into the parking lot.

Where would she go? How would she get there?

She looked around at the hundreds of cars lining the parking lot and wished one of them was hers. She did have one, sitting out in front of her apartment, though all but one seat was torn out and it had a rusted fender and was missing a door. If she could just get to it, she could drive it. The engine was one of the few things that still worked.

She saw two people walking out to their car, and she made her way toward them. “Excuse me,” she said, then had a fit of coughing, which caught their attention. She struggled to catch her breath, supporting herself against the fender of a car.

“Are you all right?” the elderly lady asked her.

“Yes. I've just got a cold,” she said, breathless. “Listen, I have a flat tire, and I really need to get home. Could you give me a ride?”

The woman set a maternal hand on Tracy's forehead. “Honey, you're burning up! Have you seen a doctor?”

“Yes, just now. I'm fine, really. I just have asthma—probably the stress of the flat tire brought it on. I have to get home. I don't live that far, I don't think.”

“Certainly we can give you a ride,” the man said.

“I don't have any money.”

“We don't need any,” he said. “Come on, dear. Let's get you out of this night air.”

She tried to look stronger than she was as she sat in the backseat, but they kept looking over their shoulders with concern. They were nice people. Grandparent types. She wished Jimmy and Lisa could have people like them in their lives.

She gave them directions until they came to her corner, and she started to get out.

“Thank you very much.”

The old man reached back across the seat to stop her. “Miss, are you sure you want me to let you off here? It doesn't look very safe.”

“It's better than it looks,” she said. “Bye now.”

She closed the door and headed for her apartment steps.

The couple sat in their car, watching her. She knew they wouldn't leave until she had gone in. But she had no intention of trying to climb those stairs. Instead, she just stepped into the shadows and stood still until, apparently assuming she was safe inside a downstairs apartment, they pulled away.

She made her way slowly and with great effort down the block to where her car was parked on the road. The key was where she had left it, hidden between the vinyl and foam rubber of the torn visor. She pulled it out and jabbed it into her ignition. It coughed, then died. She tried again; finally, on the third try, it caught.

She sat behind the wheel, trying to wait out the dizziness.
Jesus, help me. My children need me. Let me act like a mother just once in this pathetic life of mine.

The vertigo seemed to clear, and she pulled the car forward, trying to remember where the children's home was located.

CHAPTER SIXTY

T
he gunshot still rang in the air, and everyone froze. Jimmy had shot at the floor, but now he raised the gun toward Bill. “I told you I could do it,” he said in a high-pitched voice that sounded as if it came from someone else. “Next time my aim is gonna be better.” He looked down at the boy lying on the floor of the girls' room, half-propped against the wall where Bill had dropped him. “Are you all right, Brad?”

Brad stumbled to his feet, holding his ribs with one hand and his face with the other. “You gotta take me with you, Jimmy,” he pleaded. “Please!”

Visibly shaken by the gunshot, Bill pointed at Jimmy with one hand and with the other gestured around the room at everyone else. “Everybody out,” he said quietly, his voice trembling slightly. “Now!”

The ones clustered in the doorway scattered, and the girls in the room slid off their bunks and ran crying into the hall. Lisa stayed in her room hunkered behind her brother, and Brad stood next to Jimmy, facing Bill.

Jimmy kept the gun trained on the man who had exploited and abused him.

“You know, Jimmy, you may think I'm some terrible person,” Bill said, trying to speak in gentle, soothing tones, “but that's only because they've brainwashed you, wherever you've been. Probably Beth Wright has been working her evil on you. But there's something you should know about Beth, Jimmy. That's not even her real name. She's really Beth Sullivan, and she killed my sister. But her wickedness will catch up with her. The Good Book even describes her in detail. It says, ‘She has haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil. She is a false witness who pours out lies and stirs up dissension among brothers.' She's like that, Jimmy, and the Lord finds those things detestable. But he knows my heart, and so do you. I forgive you for straying, Jimmy, because you're young and easily influenced. But in your heart, you know I've always thought of you as a son. My son.”

Jimmy's cheeks mottled red, and he kept the gun aimed. Bill took a step toward him, but he backed up.

“Jimmy, if you do this, every child here will be farmed out to foster homes. Some of those homes are bad, Jimmy. Really bad. And those of you who have committed crimes will be locked up until you're so old that you'll never have kids of your own, or families. There won't be any hope for any of you. You kids are spoiled by all the nice things here, but you won't have that there. You and Lisa will be split up, for sure—since they don't jail men and women together—and you may never see her again.”

“No!” Lisa cried. “Jimmy, is that true?”

Jimmy held his breath for a moment. “I don't know.”

“But Jimmy! I thought we were gonna be together! I thought you said—”

“Listen to her, Jimmy,” Bill cut in. “Do you want to hear your sister's screams as they drag her away from you? Do you want to wonder every night whose care she's in—and just what they're doing to her?”

Jimmy swallowed. He was getting confused. The thought of Lisa being placed in some foster home—or worse, a juvenile detention center or jail—where he didn't know who would be taking care of her, made him sick. Sure, Beth and the others had assured him that he and the other kids wouldn't go to jail, but he couldn't really trust what they'd said. They'd been wrong about other things. Still—“At least she won't be raised a thief or an arsonist or a bomb smuggler,” Jimmy said. “Or even a murderer!”

“You've been watching too much television, Jimmy. You have a very loose grasp on reality.”

“Like Beth?” he asked through lips stretched thin. “You almost killed her! And you did kill her dog. Dodger never did anything to you.”

“It was just a warning, son,” Bill said. “It wasn't meant to hurt anyone. I just wanted to put a scare into her to keep her from telling those lies.” He bent over, his face too close to Jimmy's. “Jimmy, listen to me. All this time you were gone, I didn't report it, because I didn't want you to have to go to jail. Now you can just come back and pick up like you never left. No one will know. We'll just go on like we were . . .”

Bill's voice was mesmerizing, and Jimmy wanted so much to believe that he meant the things he said. Suddenly all that was familiar about Jimmy's life at the home began to call out to him—spending time with Brad and Kevin, his own bed, being able to watch over Lisa and protect her . . .

He lowered the gun slightly . . .