Dominion (75 page)

“We are all guilty for tolerating the evil of slavery,” she heard Wilberforce say to Parliament. “Never, never will we desist until we extinguish every trace of this bloody traffic, of which our posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times will scarce believe that it has been suffered to exist
so
long a disgrace and dishonor to this country.”

She watched as year after year Wilberforce endured sleepless nights, plagued by dreams of suffering slaves. Decade after decade his colleagues refused to pay attention to his words about the injustices of slavery. She watched in awe as in the middle of Parliament sessions Wilberforce reached under his chair and pulled out slave chains, draping them over himself as he spoke to his peers, dramatizing the inhumanity of slavery. She watched the distinguished parliamentarians roll their eyes, snicker, mock him, and call him a fool. But Wilberforce, she realized, was performing for a different audience, the audience of One. She wondered where the mockers were now. No, she knew where they were and shuddered at the thought.

Dani continued to watch the years go by. In 1807 Wilberforce finally wore down the opposition by refusing to be silent. Parliament voted to outlaw the buying and selling of new slaves. Wilberforce had overcome incredible odds. But the old slaves were not yet emancipated, and William could not rest. Dani saw him fight twenty more years, laboring to free existing slaves. She watched him in 1833, lying sick and exhausted in his bed. Then it happened—the Bill for the Abolition of Slavery passed its second reading in the House of Commons, bringing all slavery in England to its final end. Dani wept as three days later, his life’s mission finally accomplished, Wilberforce died.

Dani, stirred deeply by this life of which she’d known nothing on earth, thought about many things. She pondered how one man, born in privilege, could devote fifty years of labor to being mocked and vilified in the pursuit of God’s justice. She thought further, wondering what would happen if but one Wilberforce rose up in American politics today. What would happen if one representative or one senator would introduce over and over again measures and reminders of the reality that unborn babies were being killed by the millions? What if only one man or woman would pull out pictures of the unborn from under his congressional chair, would endure the ridicule and opposition, would tirelessly stand for justice, would speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, refusing to be silent? What if just one person, relentless, would live out his convictions not for the applause of his colleagues nor the approval of his generation, but for the audience of One?

Suddenly she heard, of all things, a harmonica. She turned to see Zeke playing “Steal Away, Jesus.” The clapping and singing began. Someone was strumming a Jew’s harp, twanging a steady beat. It was party time. Reunion time. Laughter time. Her great-grandfather started dancing with his friend Finney. Zeke whispered something to him, and they both laughed so hard that tears flowed.

The history lesson was over, yet Dani knew it had changed her. She had labeled white people as selfish and uncaring. Yet now she had witnessed many white people who had given up their convenience and wealth and reputations and freedom, and in some cases their lives, to help suffering black people. She wondered if she would have had the courage to do the same for others, whether black or white. Suddenly she looked up and saw a man talking with Lewis and Torel. She stared at him in a moment of disbelief. William Wilberforce. She ran to him like an unpretentious child.

“It’s a great honor to meet you, sir.”

“Do not call me sir, please, my lady. I am merely Elyon’s errand boy. It is I who am honored to meet you.”

Dani threw her arms around Wilberforce and cried without reserve, her tears mingling with his. She’d rarely hugged a white man. In his hug she felt healing. In her hug he felt reward. In their hug both felt praise to Elyon.

Ollie’s southeast Portland house was as comfortable and casual as his office, though thanks to his wife, Clarence assumed, not as messy.

Sue Keels extended her hand, and Clarence shook it. She was light skinned, blonde, petite, almost tiny. Jake looked at both his good friends, thinking the physical contrast between them couldn’t have been more pronounced.

“Jake’s told me all about you, Clarence,” Sue said. “And Little Finn went on and on about you. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I love your columns, especially on the pro-life issue. That one’s very close to my heart.” Clarence sensed her sincerity, to which he immediately warmed.

“Sorry to cut into everybody’s weekend,” Jake said, “but Janet and I were over at Sue’s last night and the case came up. Of course, there’s a lot I don’t know, but both of you,” he looked at Ollie and Clarence, “have filled me in on some of it. When we were talking last night one thing led to another and suddenly … why don’t you fill them in, Sue? First, give them some background.”

“Well,” Sue said, “I’m very involved in pro-life work. I go down a couple of afternoons a week to an abortion clinic to do sidewalk counseling, you know, where I talk to girls coming in for abortions. I tell them about the baby’s development, show them intrauterine photos, give them options, offer financial help, tell them about adoptions, that sort of thing. Well, anyway, in late August I was at the Lovepeace Abortion Clinic, and a girl came up by herself. That’s a little unusual. Most come in with a girlfriend, boyfriend, sister, mother, somebody. Well, this girl was really broken. When I showed her the pictures of the babies, she started crying. I asked her if she really wanted an abortion. She shook her head. I invited her to come down the street and sit in my car and talk. She did. Before I go further, I should explain that normally I treat these conversations as totally confidential. But there’s a reason I’m making an exception this time.

“Anyway,” Sue continued, “we talked for nearly an hour, so she missed her abortion appointment. I really liked her. She was a very sharp girl. Articulate. Pretty. Poised. She said she didn’t want an abortion, but she was being pressured to get it. That’s common, of course. You’ve got a lot of girls who don’t want the abortion, but they get herded in by someone who does. I asked if the pressure was coming from her parents, and she said no, they didn’t even know she was pregnant. She said if they knew they’d be really disappointed in her. And she wondered how it would affect her plans to start college in just a few weeks.

“She said she’d been given the money to get an abortion, and someone had made the appointment for her. I asked her if it was the father of her child. She hesitated and didn’t really answer. Later I said something about how boyfriends often push girls to get abortions, but then the girl ends up carrying most of the guilt and going through the post-abortion trauma and all that. Then she told me she didn’t have a boyfriend, which I thought was a little strange. This girl definitely wasn’t a hooker, and she didn’t strike me as someone who would sleep around. In fact, she finally told me through tears that she’d only had sex a half-dozen times, all in late June I think. She was really distraught.”

Ollie and Clarence both leaned forward, listening intently and wondering where this was going.

“Well,” Sue laughed, “I guess I’m babbling on, but—”

“No, Sue,” Jake said. “It’s important. Tell them what happened next.”

“Well, she said she didn’t want her baby to suffer for her mistake, and she thanked me for talking to her. I gave her the Crisis Pregnancy Center phone number, offered financial help, told her she needed to talk to her parents and if there were any problems at home she could come stay with me, all of that. She said actually her parents had always been supportive, and she felt sure they’d stand by her after the initial shock.

“We really hit it off. She reminded me of my daughter Angela. I called her the next couple of days to check up on her. She said whoever had made the appointment for her found out she didn’t show up, and now she was getting a
lot
of pressure to abort. I encouraged her again to tell her parents because they really needed to know. Actually, I was optimistic things were going to turn out okay. In fact, we were scheduled to meet for lunch that Saturday afternoon. I was really looking forward to it. Then it all happened.”

“What happened?” Ollie asked.

“I’m watching the late news Friday night. The lead story comes on and they show a girl’s picture. All of a sudden they’re interviewing her friends, her principal, all of them are raving about what a wonderful girl she was, and they’re crying. I just sat there staring at the picture.” The dampness in her eyes turned to drizzle. “It was her. Just like that, this sweet young girl I liked so much, who I was going to have lunch with the next day … she was dead.”

Ollie and Clarence turned toward each other and spoke the same words at the same moment. “Leesa Fletcher.”

“Clarence Abernathy? This is Miles Ferguson, your brother Ellis’s attorney.”

“What’s going on? Is Ellis okay?”

“He’s fine. But they wouldn’t let him call you. So he called me. He says you need to come see him. He’s got some information. Says you need to talk with an inmate who goes by the name Big Dog. His real name’s Ken Gold. Ellis says you should talk to him right away.”

Ollie and Clarence drove south toward Salem, headed to the state penitentiary.

“We ran the plates and got some interesting results,” Ollie said. “Found out the Lexus was in Sacramento the afternoon of September 3. In fact, it’s still there.”

“What?”

“They sold it. Actually, they traded it in for a brand new car.” Ollie glanced down and caught a peek at his notes. “A Mercedes SL 500, sport model, with all the trimmings. Midnight blue. Bought by one Jerome Rice. Accompanied by a friend. No doubt our Robert Rose. And are you ready for this? They paid
cash.
”

“For a Mercedes SL 500? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I talked to the guy who made the sale, Fred somebody. He’s still pumped about it. At least, he was until he found out I’m a homicide detective. He gave them forty-thousand-dollars trade-in on the Lexus. Can you imagine that? That’s what I paid for my house twenty years ago. And that was the
old
car. To get the Mercedes they produced another thirty-two thousand. All in circulated hundred dollar bills.”

Clarence whistled. “Thirty-two thousand cash? Wow. I can’t believe they carried that kind of money to and from Portland.”

“Neither can I. So here’s a thought for you. They didn’t.”

“But you said—”