Renegade (2013) (11 page)

“Somebody’s gonna die?” Travis looked dismayed.

The boy’s question startled Heath, and Bekah knew that he hadn’t considered what Travis was going to think. He smiled reassuringly at the boy.

“No. Nobody’s going to die. I’m going to save him. He’s a good man.”

“Then why’s he on death row?”

“Travis.” Bekah tried to warn her son off the subject, thinking that Heath probably didn’t want to talk about it.

Heath answered anyway. “Because he made a mistake. He’s not a bad man, but he was bad once. He hurt somebody.” He rolled the
football over to Travis. “But it’s not something you need to worry about. Okay?”

“Okay.” Travis held on to the ball. “Want to throw the football some more?”

Heath grinned. “Sure.”

Later, when they were packing up the picnic things, Heath helped Bekah shake the grass and dirt off the blanket and fold it together. When they finished, their hands were touching and she was standing right there in front of him. She took in the scent of him, the lingering bits of the cologne he’d worn and the masculine sweat he’d worked up chasing Travis and the football.

“I’m sorry this evening didn’t work out. Hope you’re not too disappointed.”

Bekah studied him, thinking he was just being polite. “It’s okay. Granny sprang that ambush on me, too.”

“Oh.” Heath looked disconcerted and a little troubled.

“She means well, but I don’t want her thinking for me.”

“Understood.”

From his tone, Bekah didn’t think Heath understood. And then she realized she didn’t know what he thought he understood. That bothered her because suddenly she wanted to know. But she wasn’t going to ask. That would make everything that much more confusing.

“At least you’ll get to go fishing.”

“I will.”

“I didn’t know you liked fishing.”

“My granddaddy used to take me when I was younger than Travis. He liked to fish and tell stories. We didn’t always come back with fish, but I got to hear lots of stories. Some of them were the same, but I didn’t mind.”

Heath smiled. “Sounds nice.”

“It was. I miss that. It hurts me to know that Travis missed out. He was around for some of that, but he’s not going to remember.”

“Maybe he’ll surprise you.”

“I hope so.” Bekah took the blanket from him. “Can you get the picnic basket?”

“Sure.” Heath managed the task easily, following her to her truck and putting it in the bed. The Chevy pickup was over twenty years old and still showed primer and Bondo scars where she’d removed rusted places since she’d been home. She’d intended to paint the quarter panels, but the last few months had just been too busy.

Heath acted awkward and gave her a strange smile. “If it’s okay, I think I’ll head back now. Let you get to your fishing.”

“Yeah. That will be fine.”

“I’ll say my good-byes and go.”

She nodded.

Heath looked at her. “It was good to see you today, Bekah. I meant what I said about appreciating you asking me out for this.”

“Anytime.” Bekah stood with her back against the door of the truck, watched him tell Granny good-bye, then hug Travis briefly. Her son hung on to him tightly, squeezing Heath with fierce determination. That part almost broke Bekah’s heart. Her son wanted a daddy, and there wasn’t anything she could do about that.

Then Heath placed Travis in the car seat, didn’t have to listen to her son tell him that he was too big to use it, and walked to the sleek black Porsche Boxster. Travis had known what the sports car was called before Bekah did because he had bought a Hot Wheels car like it after seeing Heath’s.

Standing there beside her pickup, Bekah waved good-bye to Heath, certain that he was returning to a life she would never be able to comprehend. Or fit into.

AT 8:30 MONDAY MORNING,
Heath Bridger—attorney-at-law today, not Marine lieutenant—sat at a conference table in Oklahoma State Penitentiary. Nervous tension knotted his stomach as he waited for his client. The last few visits hadn’t gone well, and Heath was hoping to change that today. He didn’t know how long his deployment to Afghanistan would take, and he wanted to turn the corner on Darnell Lester’s case before he left.

With the man, not the judge. In this instance, the man was the problem, not the legal system. Heath felt certain he could swing the commutation. He just wanted Darnell’s permission to push for the change. He didn’t
need
the permission. As the man’s defense attorney, Heath was required by law to give Darnell the best representation he could. But it would be better if they were in agreement as to what that representation entailed.

The door opened. Heath sat up straighter and squared his shoulders. Today he wasn’t there to listen to what Darnell wanted to do. Today he was going to tell the man what he needed to do to save what was left of his life.

“Good morning, Counselor.” Dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, wrists chained to his waist and his ankles shackled, Darnell shuffled through the door under the prison guard’s watchful gaze.
He carried a worn Bible in his right hand. There were no bookmarks. Darnell knew his Bible.

“Good morning, Darnell.” Heath glanced at the guard. “Take the cuffs off.”

The guard was young, probably continuing to feel the self-importance of his role as protector of the innocent and punisher of the evil. There was evil in prison. Heath had seen it. His father had represented some of those men—and women. Heath had been tangentially involved in some of his father’s cases with those people, but Lionel Bridger didn’t let anyone touch defenses where he chose to be lead counsel.

“That probably wouldn’t be a good idea. They told me this guy killed a cop.”

Darnell ignored the comment. He had killed a police officer, and he’d been sentenced to death for it. Hearing it spoken out loud like that clearly wasn’t new to him anymore. He wasn’t going to show any sensitivity to that declaration. His guilt was a private thing, and Heath had noticed that.

“Guard.” Heath put his military voice into play, assuming instant authority. “I’m here to see my client. Either you take those cuffs off or I’ll get your supervisor to do it.”

The guard cursed and took out his key. Evidently he didn’t want to bother his supervisor. “It’s your funeral.”

Darnell swapped looks with Heath and smiled a little at the guard’s rough prediction, but he didn’t let the guard see the look of amusement. Guards could sometimes exercise a lot of control behind bars and make a bad stay even worse.

Cuffs in hand, the guard left the room.

Heath stood and waved Darnell to the seat on the other side of the narrow table. “Sorry about that.”

“He’s a pup. Got a lot of bark on him. He stays in here long
enough, it’ll get sanded off. Prison don’t just break the prisoners. Breaks the guards, too. Seen it happen.” Darnell put his Bible on the table, then sat and studied Heath with idle curiosity. He laced his fingers together in front of him. “Surprised to see you this morning.”

“You didn’t have me penciled into your schedule.”

Shaking his head, Darnell smiled faintly. “No, Counselor, I did not.”

“I’m glad you could make time for me.”

Darnell grinned broadly. At fifty-four years old, the man still had a lot of life ahead of him, good years if he wanted them, but the last fourteen years of incarceration had nearly crushed him. He’d been a soldier in the United States Army during the First Gulf War, and he’d come away shattered by the things he’d seen.

The US military had fared well in that encounter, didn’t have losses like they did in the Second Gulf War, but the men had seen things over there that had scarred them for life. Heath knew about those things, and he’d seen for himself the changes a soldier went through when encountering violence and an implacable enemy.

Then, after all that carnage, a soldier was supposed to reenter into society and integrate more or less on his or her own. That didn’t work a lot of the time, and that integration had failed miserably with Darnell.

The man had come back to find himself divorced and jobless, untrained for anything that would make him a decent living, surrounded by people who had no understanding of what he’d gone through. The only thing he’d clung to in those years had been his daughter, Deshondra. He’d maintained contact with her, providing love and comfort for her to the best of his ability and even a home for her during her junior high and high school years when living with her mother was no longer an option. During those years, Darnell had functioned better. It was after Deshondra left for college that Darnell
had fallen again. He’d learned to live right for her and couldn’t do it for himself.

In Heath’s book, Darnell was a good man. At least, the man he’d met in prison was. The one before had been broken and without a core.

Darnell was thin and long, underweight for his build. Heath had seen pictures of the man from when he was younger. That Darnell Lester, the one who had stood so proudly in his Army uniform, was a buff guy. The wreckage of what had been remained in the knobby shoulders and broad chest. Time had turned his hair cottony gray and left him bald on top. His right eye was pale blue, contrasting sharply with the one on the left. Burn scarring mottled both his arms, marking the black skin pink and white in splotchy patches. He’d come home wounded, gotten hooked on pain meds, and lived with that monkey on his back for years before he killed a police officer during a convenience store robbery.

“Gotta admit, I was curious why you set up this meeting. Thought we had everything wrapped up last time.”

“
You
had everything wrapped up the last time we met. Not me.”

Sighing wearily, Darnell shook his head. “If this is about that sentence commutation—”

“It is.”

“—then I don’t want to hear it.” Some of Darnell’s good-natured demeanor dropped away. “I been in here for fourteen years, Heath. I’m ready to go home to my Lord now. I got no fear of that needle. Gonna pay for taking that man’s life an’ be done with all of this.”

“Because you want to get out of prison?”

“Ain’t just prison, Counselor.” For the first time, Darnell had an edge in his voice. Anger smoldered in his good eye. His other eye had been blinded in the violence that had occurred during his arrest all those years ago. “I got innocent blood on my hands. Time to wash it off.”

“How can you have blood on your hands?” Heath stayed on the attack, not backing down. Part of him was afraid he was going to break the man, though. He didn’t want that. Darnell had made his peace with his life inside prison. Ripping that away would be horrific and inexcusable.

But if he had to bruise the man, fracture him, and even come close to destroying him to save his life, Heath was going to do it.

“I got blood on my hands the day I killed that man. Shot him deader than dead.”

“You carry your Bible around, and over the months I’ve known you, you’ve quoted Scripture at me time and again. Seems to me you’ve mentioned that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. That whatever evil we did in this life was paid for by his blood once we accepted him.”

“It is.”

“Have you accepted Christ?”

“As my blessed Savior, of course I have.” Indignation underscored Darnell’s retort.

“Then what makes your sin so special that you figure you get to hang on to it?”

“I ain’t hanging on to it. What’s done is done. There ain’t no correcting it.”

“True. I’m not here to try to absolve you of that shooting. You killed a man, and there’s no court I know of that will reverse the decision to punish you. But I believe they will reverse what form your punishment should take. I’m here to stop the lethal injection the state is getting ready to hot-line into your arm.”

Darnell squinted his good eye at Heath. “That was ordered in a court of law.”

“Yeah, and I think I can get it commuted in another court of law.”

“I told you, I don’t want you to do that.”

“Because you want to die.”

“Everybody dies, Counselor. That’s the price we pay for being born. I ain’t afraid to die.”

Heath was silent for a moment; then when he spoke again, it was in a soft voice. “I know you’re not afraid to die, Darnell. I see that in you. But I also think maybe you’re afraid of living.”

Darnell snorted derisively and started to get up. “Too early in the morning for this. Even in here, I got better things to do with my time.”

“You say you found Jesus in here.”

Half out of his seat, Darnell froze. “I did.”

“Then you need to walk the walk.”

Darnell’s nostrils flared in anger. His fists clenched on the tabletop. “You’re pushing too hard.”

“Am I? I talked to your daughter about this, and she’s in agreement with me. She doesn’t want you to die any more than I do. She says she needs you in her life.”

Darnell’s voice turned hoarse. “I ain’t in her life. I’m in
here
.”

Heath nodded. “And being in here is hard. I know that. I can’t imagine what it’s been like living here for fourteen years, being around the kind of men you have to be around, guards as well as prisoners. That kind of hard living takes a toll.”

“Then you should understand why I’m ready to get out of here.”

“I do, and under other circumstances—if you didn’t have Deshondra and your grandchildren who want to have you in their lives—maybe I’d agree with you. But they
do
want you, and I think you deserve better than you’ve gotten.”

“I’ve got all I need.”

Heath returned the older man’s gaze full measure. “Since the first day I met you, you told me you were a believer. That you’d gotten in here and found your faith.”

“I did. And you need to be careful about what you say next.”

“All that quoting led me to the Bible myself.”

Darnell smiled, and some of the smoldering anger dissipated. “Ain’t that a blessing.”

“Are you familiar with Psalm 37:23?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Darnell sat down and started to open his Bible.

“Look it up if you want, but I can tell you what it says.”

Darnell stopped searching through the Bible and looked at Heath.

“The psalm says, ‘The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and He delights in his way.’”

Stubbornly, Darnell turned his attention back to the Bible and found the psalm. He read silently, lips moving as he tracked his forefinger across the page.

“That passage says God wants to guide a person’s steps after that person has gone to God for assistance. It says if you’re going to follow the will of God, then God will be happy. It doesn’t say the way will be easy. Just that the way will be there.”

Darnell sat there quietly.

“You weren’t following God’s path when you killed that police officer, Darnell, but since you’ve been in here, since you’ve come to your faith, you’ve tried to follow the course laid out for you. You’ve gotten closer to your daughter, been the kind of father—she tells me—that she can count on. You’ve been the best grandfather you could be under your circumstances. Your grandchildren love you. The warden tells me you’ve helped a lot of fellow inmates with their own struggles and to find the faith they need to get them through their time here. You . . . have made a difference while you’ve been living in these walls. That’s the man I want to save. That’s the man Deshondra asked me to save.”

Unshed tears glimmered in Darnell’s good eye.

Heath reached into his briefcase and took out the file he’d prepped. Flipping it open, he revealed a still that had been taken from inside the convenience store that morning when Darnell killed the off-duty police officer who’d tried to stop the robbery.

The Darnell in the photograph was down to skin and bone, burned out on the drugs he’d been using and by his inability to take care of himself. The photograph was black-and-white and grainy, but it was still clear enough to see the wide-eyed fear on the younger Darnell’s face. The image had been taken only seconds before Darnell fired the shot that killed Keith Jointer. The scars on Darnell’s arms showed as plain as day.

“This man—” Heath tapped the photograph—“was lost and without direction that morning. He was still trapped back in that war. He wasn’t going anywhere . . . except to prison. This is the man that jury gave the death sentence to.” He paused. “That’s not the man here in this room with me.”

Darnell shook his head. “You don’t know how hard it is in here.”

“No, I don’t. But this is the way you’ve been given, Darnell.”

Looking up at Heath, Darnell remained silent for a moment, but his gaze brimmed with challenge. “Do you believe this is God’s will for me? To stay in this place an’ be miserable?”

“It’s not up to me to believe. It’s about what you believe. You know, I can cite a number of case-law studies on nearly every legal matter that might come up. I’m good at what I do. But that’s the first time I’ve ever consulted the Bible about one of my cases.” Heath willed the man to believe him.

Silence hung thick and palpable in the conference room.

“So what do you believe, Darnell? Do you think God has truly made a difference in your life? Do you think he wants you to be a father to Deshondra? A grandfather to Trashae and Keywon?”

Darnell looked at his Bible and gently smoothed the scuffed
cover. “I’m still a relatively young man, Heath. Still got a big part of my three score and ten years ahead of me. I could be in this place another twenty years. That’s hard time.”

“Twenty years.” Heath spoke softly. “Time enough to see your grandchildren through college, time enough to make a difference in their lives the way you have in Deshondra’s. Time enough to be there in your daughter’s life when she needs you. Maybe even time enough to become a great-grandfather.”

“I’d just be a shadow to Deshondra’s family.”

“Darnell, have you ever looked at your shadow in the early morning or the late evening, when the sun sits on the edge of the world? When you look at it then, your shadow gets awfully long, bigger than you ever thought it could.”