Solomon's Porch (25 page)

“Now they were not the all-American couple, but neither were they Bonnie and Clyde. They helped run a methamphetamine lab, a rather large one. As part of the conspiracy, they were criminally liable for the lab’s entire production which amounted to a life’s sentence for Carl, twenty years for Liz.”

“Gabriel showed me images of them together, holding hands and feeding ducks in a park, going to the movies, cuddling in bed. They were planning a future, one without drugs or a criminal lifestyle. Both had stopped using. They wanted to, and were, changing.

“But to me they were nothing more than fodder for my cannon, disposable objects to be used to maximize the size and strength of our case. I justified this thinking always by saying ‘they’re criminals’ and ‘they get what they deserve.’

“Carl plea bargained down to twenty-five years, Liz to probation. I considered this merciful, as if by destroying their lives I was somehow being kind.”

“Mr. Tim, meth is the devil’s own tool. Seen it ruin people quick. What we supposed to do, let people make the trash and sell it with no penalty? Ice is pure poison, Mr. Tim, just like that nasty crack.” That Malik Graham was expressing anti-drug, pro law enforcement sentiments would have floored anyone who knew him before Parkersboro.

“I could not agree with you more, Mr. Graham,” Tim responded, “but recognizing that truth leads us to miss a far greater one if we are not careful.”

“Mercy combined with chastening,” Peter said. “God commands us to be merciful, as the Scriptures you had us quote confirm. That does not mean sin, or specifically crime, is or should be consequence free.”

“Well put, Panos. Let me apply this principle to Carl and Liz. All of us on the prosecution team knew what and who we were dealing with. In fact, a new agent, a female, brought this to our attention during a strategy session. Amanda, that was the agent’s name, said ‘Carl and Liz have had a rough life. They’ve come clean. Why don’t we consider dropping her and recommending two years for Carl? Let’s give them a chance.’”

“What was your response?” Peter asked.

“When Amanda said this everyone looked to me, of course. I was the lead agent and the man with the rep. Rather than thinking and listening, I set out to embarrass my young FBI associate and gave her a boorish and cruel recital of sterile stats on criminal behavior and drug trafficking recidivism. Made her look naïve, like a fool for even bringing up the suggestion.”

“Did you believe in what you were saying?” Larry asked.

“Yes and no. Yes, in the general sense that I wasn’t lying about the facts or even my spin on them. No, in as much as I could also see what Amanda saw, that it would not be unjustified to cut Carl and Liz a break.”

“But I didn’t give a damn about Carl and Liz, or Amanda either. My reputation was built on seeing the maximum possible penalties applied in all cases. Super Agent Tim Austin does not cut you a deal unless you earn it by informing on your friends and family, and in this case, what help Carl gave did not merit further prison time reduction consideration.”

“What happened to them?” Saul wanted to know.

“Gabriel showed me. Once Carl realized his life was over for the next twenty years, and that he and Liz would never be together again, he gave up. Carl did not know Christ, he did not draw on God’s strength for help, so he hung himself in his cell by his shoelaces. Gabriel made me watch him die. Liz took a handful of pills and never woke up once she heard about Carl.”

“Lord have mercy,” Peter prayed.

“There were many, many more ‘Carls,’” Tim confessed. “For every unrepentant, violent, and predatory man I helped send away for a decade or more, two or three lives that could have been redeemed were needlessly destroyed for no other reason than mine, and my FBI colleagues, cold evil hearts and selfish career ambitions.

“A prison chaplain once asked me if I ever considered the fact that the men I sent to the penitentiary all had lives and families too, and that everyone, including myself, was a sinful, struggling human being.”

“He was trying to open your heart to the wisdom of God’s mercy,” Peter said.

“Yes, he was,” Tim acknowledged, “but I was not interested. My self-righteousness was always at the ready to respond to such assaults. I told him, “I enforce the law, chaplain. You can save their souls after I’ve made sure they are no longer a menace to society.”

“Well, Gabriel finished what that chaplain at least tried to start. He held me there against that wall for no more than a minute, but it seemed like hours to me. One after another I was made to see, to somehow experience, the unnecessary suffering I caused hundreds of my fellow men and women through my unmerciful judgments.”

“You got a crash course in perspective and empathy,” Kenny related. “Been through that myself.”

“What about the victims of crime?” Larry asked. “Where do they fit in? Many of my homeless brothers and sisters are cruelly abused by others just because they are weak. Don’t they deserve justice?”

“What is justice?” Tim asked.

“That’s a profound question, brother,” Peter answered. He was now better understanding the direction the Lord had taken Tim and its inevitable conclusion. “Man defines it one way, God another.”

“That is the heart of the matter, Panos, at least for me. I never realized that I was accountable to a code of conduct that supersedes any human legal standards. Thank Christ, Gabriel showed me. Otherwise I had surely punched my ticket for hell.”

“The victims of crime,” Austin expounded, “are called upon to both hold the one who wronged them accountable and to be merciful and to forgive their transgressor. People think that these goals are mutually exclusive. Thanks to the Lord’s mercy I know now that they are not.”

Tim paused for a minute and stood, reflecting on his experiences and how they helped shape the “new man” he’d become.

“Before God touched my heart, gentlemen, I never stopped to consider the awesome and simple majesty of His creation,” Tim admitted, arms folded behind his back as he slowly paced between the concrete boundaries of the porch as he spoke. “He gave us a beautiful home and everything we need to prosper. What does the Scripture say?”

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, and comes from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning,” Kenny quoted.

“I’m not at all surprised you chose that passage, brother,” Austin said, as he stopped walking and touched Kenny on the shoulder. “The truth found in St. James’ words now guide my life, leading me toward the grace and mercy of the Savior.

“In that incredibly brief period of time Gabriel held me there against that wall, the Lord infused my mind and soul with the reality of His existence and His ever presence in the world. Literally in an instant He changed forever the way in which I think, view myself, and all of creation. It was like being plugged into a divine super computer and receiving a massive download. To tell you brothers the truth, I’m still trying to sort all of it out, but His purpose for my life was forever burned into my heart and spirit that day. That’s why I’m here.”

“I can directly relate to what you experienced, Tim. To say what happened to you was a life changing event doesn’t begin to do it justice. I know how a direct link, however brief, to the Absolute Power can forever change a man, humble him, and force him to admit the error of his ways.” As Peter said this he recalled his own vision in the library. His awakening seemed now to have happened a lifetime ago, yet less than a year had passed since God first touched him.

“When Gabriel released me, he was no longer a homeless drunk, but rather a glorified angel. His brightness was so intense, so purely white, it was blinding. I looked around and saw other people walking by not ten feet away. They were oblivious to us, as if Gabriel and I did not exist. I realized that no one else had shared my experience.

“Before Gabriel disappeared, he showed me this prison, this circle, and he told me about you, Panos. ‘The Lord’s Messenger,’ he called you. Again it took me days, weeks really, to organize all of this in my mind. You should see it, gentlemen. I have notebooks filled with Scriptures, ideas, comments.”

“Sounds like at first you were confused,” Larry observed.

“Again, yes and no. Gabriel ‘flashed out,’ disappeared into a dense cloud of bright points of light. I found myself standing there alone on that New York sidewalk a totally different man than I had been just moments before. After Gabriel left the vomit was gone too, I was completely clean. People could see me again. I was back in the world.

“But I knew, more certainly than I had ever known anything in my life, that God exists, that my vision was real, and that I must discern and follow His call. The details were incomplete, but my transformation was absolute.”

“I had accumulated over six months worth of unused vacation time through my workaholic ways, so I told the FBI I needed a break, nothing more. Led by the Spirit, I drove up to Massachusetts to a small coastal village just north of Boston. It was quiet and serene. The town has a two-hundred-year-old Catholic parish. For days I walked, sat, prayed, and wrote, communicating only with the local priest who is an older and very spiritual man. While I did not share my vision with him, I told him that God had called me to His service and that at forty-seven years of age, I was quitting the FBI. He understood, he said, but he did not pry.”

“God sends us help in many ways, Tim. He uses people to fulfill His purpose, much of the time without their conscious knowledge,” Peter explained.

“As I prayed and walked and talked to Father Reilly, that’s the priest’s name, some of my confusion dissipated as my vision came into sharper focus. I’m here, brothers, first and foremost to be obedient to the Lord and through him to you, Panos, but I’m also here to try and put a stop to the unmerciful destruction of human life caused by our ungodly judicial system. The Lord has given me some profound inspiration as to how we, as a society, can vastly improve our efforts in these matters.”

“No doubt those ideas involve unpopular concepts like bringing God’s word to every inmate, pursuing compassion rather than revenge, and true efforts at rehabilitation,” Jose said.

“Yes, General Vargas, just as we have discussed,” Tim answered.

“I have to tell you, gentlemen,” Alex said, as he walked out from behind the camera and on to the “stage” of the library porch, “what I’m hearing all of you say, collectively, is that you want nothing less than a radical transformation of our culture, a movement away from our materialistic, violent, and self-centered ways toward a world based more upon the values each of you espouse through your testimonies: honesty, generosity, forgiveness, tolerance, love, and cooperation.”

“That is the essence of the revelation that the Lord gave me last summer, Alex, right over there in that library, not twenty paces from where you’re standing now,” Peter confirmed. “These men are the instruments of God’s plan, His willing servants. I believe the Lord intends for us to bring His message to the world directly and boldly.”

“To rid the world of hunger, disease, violence, prisons, and hate? You aren’t trying to accomplish very much, are you, Mr. Carson.” Alex was playing the role of on-camera interviewer.

“With God nothing is impossible, Mr. Anderson, as you and the rest of the world shall soon bear witness to. We are challenging mankind to realize its potential, to become all our Creator intended us to be. As the Lord said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’ It is through Him that we shall advance, for without Him, we shall surely fail.

“The Lord granted us free will, Mr. Anderson. He gave us this beautiful home and all its riches. We are being held accountable by Him to use these gifts for the betterment and salvation of all humanity.”

“So that’s what this is all about, Mr. Carson, the betterment of humanity?” Alex asked.

“Indirectly, yes,” Peter answered. “But what this is all about is the Creator reminding the created that He is sovereign. Man is not above his Maker. We have become too proud, convinced that we reign supreme in the universe. But we are not gods, there is but one God.”

“It’s about humility then,” Alex probed.

“Yes, and through true humility, the ability to use God’s power in the ways He intended it to be used. We must stop wasting precious lives and time by indulging evil.”

“We proclaim to the world a better way to live, one in accordance with man’s true nature, one ordered by God.”

Fifteen

“That does not surprise me,” Peter said, as they walked around Parkersboro’s track. He and Alex were enjoying the fresh morning air and the peace and quiet that can best be found at dawn.

“How so?” Alex asked.

“According to the Orthodox calendar, this year June nineteenth is the Pentecost, the day God gave the Holy Spirit to the Apostles,” Peter replied.

“Interesting.” Alex’s inclination was still to offer explanations of events in worldly terms. “The network told me we could get June nineteenth from eight to nine p.m. because otherwise they would be rerunning some medical drama. That I promised them the show of their dreams, a ‘unique and unforgettable event,’ didn’t hurt either.”

“Worried?” Peter asked.

“Only that you’ll do exactly what you’ve promised to, Panos, and then God help us all.”

“We may need some of that help right about now,” Peter said, pointing across the prison grounds.