Chapter 21
He’d needed a quiet moment. The crowds…crowds were not something Melvin had ever been easy with.
Especially in these kinds of…situations.
He had stood in these halls so many times before, or ones just like it, through the last forty years.
He never forgot each one. Each…face. Each brother-in-blue.
Or sister, though he was certainly conflicted about those.
Women were to be…protected from the evil that was out there.
He had never fully agreed with women on the lines. Administrative, of course. Men were supposed to be the protectors of women. But if they put on the uniform, they did deserve the same protections and loyalty when the cards were down.
This was one situation he did not fully understand yet. He had known what was happening with that Opal Joy would lead to trouble. And it had. He had known, he had warned people to watch themselves. That getting in bed with that problem would only lead to more heartache later.
And now they were walking on eggshells, just hoping…
Melvin was praying the injured would survive. Go home to their families. All of them.
But now, too many things were coming to light that so many people wanted to remain buried. Including him. He would be a hypocrite if he denied that.
He had done things, things in the past that he was far from proud of.
Secrets that he had thought long behind him.
Secrets…that by only grace would the ones involved find redemption.
He had spent many hours now, studying the Word when it came to the concept of redemption.
He was far from perfect. He understood his own flaws.
He had studied them his entire life, after all. He was a changed man now.
He wasn’t the same as he was years ago.
“Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time.” He said the words to himself almost silently. It was from Amos. He would have to look it up to find the exact chapter and verse. He knew what it meant, though. It was wise for him…to keep his secrets now that he could.
But…his crimes were more those of omission, were they not? And he had found grace and redemption. He had repented. He was trying to do good now, to right what he had wronged.
He had first become a TSP officer over forty-five years ago for one reason: to help others. Melvin knew he had lost the way long, long ago. But he was getting back to that now. It was just taking time.
The miracle was that God had found him and saved him. And…that meant he had earned his way into Heaven to see his beloved Anita once again.
Maybe that was it, what was making him hurt so much tonight. Hospitals meant Anita. She had been sick for months. And it had almost destroyed him to watch how the gentle perfection that was his wife had just…faded into nothing. That would always hurt him. Haunt him.
He had loved that woman heart and soul.
Melvin stayed where he was, as Danny and Ernie and Joe discussed Heather Coleson and what kind of trouble that woman just somehow kept finding. She stumped them all. No one quite knew what to do with a woman like her.
Melvin certainly didn’t.
Heather Coleson. Melvin had dealt with her so many times before.
That beautiful, amazing, incredibly complicated young woman had given him fits the entire time she had worked under him.
He had vented about that girl to his Anita so many times.
Anita would just laugh and say how much she admired that girl when she’d see her at the station.
He had been relieved when he had been able to sign off on her transfer request. He had thought…
getting her away…from Wichita Falls would be good for them all, especially Heather.
He’d hoped it would give her a new start, with family around her in Finley Creek.
He’d thought he was helping.
She…was one of his secrets. One of his biggest regrets.
He had failed her, before. But…he was a different man now.
That was in the past. His sins had been erased.
Even though it was hard to look at that woman, or her children.
He was different now. He just wished Anita had lived to see it.
She had told him time and time again to deal with Heather Coleson with grace.
Sometimes, he thought that was exactly what he had not done.
It had weighed on him—but he hadn’t told Anita the full truth.
He had kept that secret, so he would not upset her back then.
His Anita had been so sensitive to the darkness in the world.
He would always miss her. He had not been a good man when he was married to her; that would be his largest regret of all time. Anita had not gotten the man God had wanted him to be.
He had lied, he had cheated. He had done things fully for his own profit and desire. His greed. Those were things he was not proud of. But that was behind him now.
God had washed him with the waters.
Melvin was a new man now.
He was sitting in the chapel when someone came in. Melvin looked at him. He was conditioned from years of working in law enforcement to assess any threat.
He relaxed.
The man standing in the doorway was no threat to him now. If anything, he was his mentor, his guide. "Adrian.”
Adrian Barratt looked unsettled. No wonder. It had been his brother’s family who had been harmed tonight. Melvin still did not know how it had actually happened. He did know that there would be some people extremely upset because of this. And…hurt.
"Hello, Melvin. It's been a bit of a rough one tonight."
"Yes, yes it has. Any word? About your family?"
Reverand Adrian Barratt was both a neighbor and was becoming a friend. More than that, he was the pastor of the church that Anita had attended weekly for years. Melvin had asked Adrian to help with her funeral. To just help him get through.
Adrian had stood by him throughout that long ordeal. Melvin would never forget that.
It was Adrian's family who had been hurt tonight. Melvin was still trying to gather all the details. But the Finley Creek post was playing it close to their chests. There was such division in the TSP now. Melvin just didn’t understand it.
"My brother is going to be okay, they said.
He took a hard knock to the head, but well Mason has always had an extremely hard head.
He'll be fine. His wife wasn't harmed physically.
Thank the Lord. But the trauma of this, it will be hard for her.
She's had some traumas in her background already.
So please say an extra prayer for her tonight. "
"I'll do that." Melvin thought for a moment. He had heard through the rumor mill that the girl involved with Erickson was a Barratt. "And Erickson?"
"He's in surgery now. My niece… She loves him a great deal.
She's already informed me I'll be performing the ceremony. As soon as he's back on his feet. And she’ll be making me a great uncle this September again. It'll be her first. Mason and Melissa’s first grandchild. There's nothing like a grandchild, Melvin. There just isn’t. I love being grandpa.”
"How is the baby? Your grandchild, I mean."
"Serenity is beautiful. Just absolutely beautiful. She takes after Annie, her mother. Her three big brothers dote on her like crazy. She’s going to be spoiled rotten.
” Of course Adrian had photos. The little girl really was a beautiful baby, and the three older boys were good-looking children, too.
Adrian was holding them proudly in the photos.
Melvin looked at the precious baby girl, and imagined. He could be a grandfather someday. He had one child he adored more than words could say—a daughter.
She was a student at FCU: MED. She insisted she’d be paying him back for her tuition one day.
They saw each other so rarely; it was time he called her again.
She was a bit stubborn like her mother, that child.
He looked at her sometimes and saw her mother.
She looked like her mother, right down to the freckles across the bridge of her nose.
He would call her tonight. Check to see if she needed anything.
Melvin had messed up with his daughter so badly through the years. He wanted so badly to fix that. His daughter…she was reticent, of course. She didn’t trust him now. He understood. And he prayed for their relationship and hers with God every single day.
Adrian excused himself to go find his sister-in-law.
Melvin could see how concerned the other man was about his family.
Adrian was lucky—he was from a rather large, extremely affluent family.
Melvin just had his daughter now, and what he had worked for his entire life.
His investments. He’d won a lottery of four hundred thousand dollars in his mid-forties.
He and Anita had used it wisely. Built their retirement funds and investments so that their daughter Skylar could have a real future someday.
He wished he had been able to give Skylar a bigger family than what he had, but he and Anita had both been only children. And their parents hadn’t had large families, either. It was just what it was.
He had his church family now.
Melvin wanted the same for Skylar. If something were to happen to him, his daughter wouldn’t have many people in her life.
She just wouldn’t. That worried him, no denying that.
How could it not? He was her father; he wanted her taken care of.
That was all he really wanted. Her to be taken care of, eternally.
He was still sitting there in the chapel when someone else came in. He looked up.
A young woman was standing there. For a moment, he couldn't place her. Then it sank in who she was. The forensic tech. One of the women shot during the choir hall shooting almost a year and half ago. The McAlister girl.
One of those girls abducted by Steve Wilson several weeks ago.
One of the girls shot in the children’s theater a few years ago, as well.
It surprised him, that she hadn’t quit already.
After such traumas, most…forensic science wasn’t a field that paid well, especially under those types of situations. She was a strong girl, apparently.
"Dr. McAlister." It was just an acknowledgment that he did recognize her.
He studied her. She still wore the TSP polo with forensics written across one side of her chest. She had her hair pulled up in a high ponytail.
It was an interesting color somewhere between red and brown.
Her eyes were a lighter brown that was unusual.
She was young, maybe less than thirty. A very beautiful girl, though that was understated.
"Sergeant Stillman, I just came in here to get away from the noise for a moment."
"Have there been any more updates?”
She just shook her head. "Now we’re just waiting. They said it could be several more hours."
"Sometimes the waiting is the hardest part. I've been through this a few hundred times before. Waiting to hear, it never gets easier. It just doesn't.”
“No, I guess it doesn’t. I…if you’ll excuse me…I…need to find my friends. Make sure everyone is okay.”
It was obvious she wanted to leave, but didn’t want to offend. Melvin wanted to smile. For the first time tonight.
She had that aura about her that Anita had always had. That grace and an odd sense of stability, really. The thing that said “I can handle whatever you throw at me.”
He missed that woman. So very much.
The girl in front of him gave a slight—polite—smile. She had an extraordinary smile. He had never realized that before.
This young woman had been through utter hell.
Some of that…maybe a part of it had been his fault, as well.
If he had done something about Steve Wilson sooner, maybe…
some of what this girl had been through wouldn’t have happened.
James 4 put it best: Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.
Had Melvin sinned by not stopping what that man had done to Heather Coleson four years ago?
He probably had. He could have protected those women from Wilson.
If he had chosen to do the right thing, instead of the easy, out of desire for money.
Out of loyalty to those he considered friends. Loyalty did not always mean right.
Regrets…they weighed a man down. His burdens at times…they were heavy. His sins.
He was learning to accept that.
Steve Wilson, that young fool. As arrogant as his father without the intelligence to be cautious in all things.
He’d lost his head over Lieutenant Coleson.
Let the evil inside himself out, simply because of that woman.
Yes, Heather was a beautiful, intelligent, engaging, rather phenomenal young woman.
He had known she stirred up the men in Wichita Falls.
It was rather hard to miss, and inevitable.
He had tried to keep her as hidden as he possibly could.
It had been for her own well-being as well. If she hadn’t been there to tempt the men they worked with, some of the problems would have been eliminated. And they had.
Until Steve Wilson. That young man had taken one look at Heather and lost his head completely. A modern-day Samson and Delilah story, he supposed. Or…David and Bathsheba. Either narrative would fit. Men…destroyed because of their lust for a woman.
Lust…it brought problems. Many men did not learn that until it was too late. Melvin hadn’t.
Melvin’s warnings to that fool to leave her alone hadn’t mattered at all.
Now, Wilson was in a coma—the wages of his sin, not death in this instance. But perhaps something far worse.
Melvin stayed where he was and thought about what he could have done differently years ago. And whether it would have prevented where they were now. If he could have prevented good men—and women—from being harmed.
Maybe he could have. He prayed for forgiveness for those sins, too. For some sort of absolution.
It took him a long time to move. He just stayed where he was. And prayed.