I Will Fear No Evil (Psalm 23 Mysteries Book 10) (14 page)

“No, it isn’t, but, like I said, all tests have proved inconclusive. We have no idea why this man slipped into a coma and no idea why he’s stayed there.”

“If you can, Doctor, we’d like to get his roommate’s name and contact information.”

“I’ll give you what I have, but the guy graduated college in the spring. He had come by about once a week just to check in. I was there on his last visit. He’d been accepted to a graduate school back east. I think he left a number, asked to be notified if there was ever any change. I’ll see if I can find it for you.”

“We appreciate it,” Trina said.

The doctor walked off, ostensibly to track down the number for them. Trina turned and put her hand on Samuel’s forehead.

“What are you doing?” Mark asked.

“Thinking,” she said.

“You’ve got a strange way of thinking.”

“Would you be quiet for a second?”

She was getting weirder and it made Mark uneasy. He took a step backward even as he found himself wondering what her deal was. He watched as she closed her eyes. She kept her hand on Samuel’s forehead and her lips were moving ever so slightly. Maybe she was saying a prayer over him or something. He knew some people did that.

Finally she turned, removing her hand from the guy as she did so. “Do any of the local churches have faith healers?” she asked.

“Uh, I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” he said, taken aback. She must have been praying for the guy. “Why?”

“Can you find out for me? I want to get some people out here to pray over this guy.”

“Seriously?” he asked.

She raised one eyebrow. “You heard the doctor, medical science has no idea what’s wrong with him or how to fix him. Don’t you think it’s time to let someone else have a try?”

“Um, okay. I know some church people. I’ll ask them.”

“Ask them now,” she said, her voice lowering slightly.

He found himself pulling his phone out of his pocket almost before he knew what he was doing. He called Cindy at her work number.

“Hello?”

“Cindy, Mark. Strange question. Is anyone over there at First Shepherd into faith healing?”

She paused. “We’ve got a prayer chain and several of the people in it are definitely prayer warriors. I’ve never heard any of them claim to be healers, though.”

“Could you ask around and find out for me? There’s a guy here in the hospital who’s been in a coma for a couple of years. Doctors have no clue why. The F.B.I. agent I’m working with on this wants to see if any of the local churches have someone they can send out to pray over him, you know, just to cover our bases, I guess.”

“Well, I know I can send some people out to pray for him.”

“That might be good enough,” Trina spoke up, clearly overhearing.

“Good, could you do that, sooner rather than later? His name is Samuel Bannerman.”

“Okay, I’ll have some people out there this evening.”

“Thanks.”

He hung up the phone.

“She’s a good friend,” Trina noted.

“One of the best. Even when something scares her silly she’s still there, trying to help.”

“For a man who’s not religious you seem to have surrounded yourself with a circle of people who are.”

“Yeah, it’s funny how things work out sometimes,” Mark noted.

“I want to be here when they’re praying over him,” she said.

“Add your voice to theirs?”

“Something like that,” she said with a smile.

The doctor came back and handed them a piece of paper with the contact information for the roommate. Mark called, but had to leave a message on the man’s voicemail.

“Some people from First Shepherd will be coming this evening to pray over this man,” Trina informed the doctor.

He nodded. “Not much on prayer myself, but I have seen it do things I couldn’t explain, and this poor guy could use all the help he can get.”

Cindy made one phone call and was able to set in motion the prayer chain. Twenty minutes later she got a call back saying that about fifteen people would be there at 7 p.m. to pray for Samuel. She called back Mark and let him know. That done, she got back to work trying to get the information to Geanie that the other woman needed to put together the Sunday bulletin.

Wednesdays were the day that she put them together for the pastors to look over on Thursday before they got printed on Friday. Some weeks it felt a bit like an assembly line, but at least it got done. It was one job Cindy was grateful that Geanie took care of. She always managed to find enough room for all of the announcements without having to change the format or anything. Whenever she was out on vacation it was the one part of her job that Cindy dreaded doing.

She had just about sent Geanie everything when the phone on her desk rang. She could tell by the tone that it was an internal line. She glanced over and saw that Dave was calling. It rang a second time and then stopped.

She pulled her hand back and glanced over at Geanie. “Who was it?” the other woman asked, looking up, forehead crinkling in concern.

“Dave,” Cindy said, already standing up and heading for the door.

They had a policy that two rings and a hang up meant that someone needed assistance, but couldn’t necessarily talk on the phone for some reason. They used it kind of like an emergency paging system, but it was rare that it actually happened.

She made her way quickly to the youth room where he had his office. Once inside she saw that he was in the office sitting on the couch next to a teen girl who had buried her head in his shoulder. He looked up at Cindy as she entered the room, his eyes full of distress.

“Brenda, Cindy’s here,” he said.

The girl turned and Cindy recognized Brenda Parker, one of the highschoolers that she actually knew. The girl’s family was desperately poor and she was the only one of them who came to church. A couple of years earlier Cindy and some of the high school girls had been delivering Thanksgiving dinner to the Parker family, not realizing until it was too late that the reason Brenda insisted on staying in the car was because it was actually her family that they were delivering the charitable meal to.

Brenda stood up and crossed over to Cindy and threw her arms around her as she continued to sob.

Bewildered, Cindy held the girl while she cried and looked at Dave, wondering what on earth was wrong.

“She just found out that a friend of hers, Cheyenne, was killed a couple of days ago,” Mark said softly.

Cindy’s heart constricted when she heard that and she could feel tears forming in her own eyes. Brenda’s life was hard enough without having to deal with such a tragedy at her age. Cheyenne was the girl who had been murdered in the basement of that terrible house. It wasn’t even like she’d been killed in a car accident. No, what had happened to Brenda’s friend had been unspeakable and there was a good chance that Brenda would carry the scars of that the rest of her life.

Cindy couldn’t hold back her own tears. She knew what it was like to have sudden death rip away childhood innocence. They sat back down on the couch and cried together. Cindy quietly, tears streaming down her face, Brenda sobbing with wild abandon, the cries of a breaking heart.

Dave just hovered over them, distress on his face.

After several minutes the sobs started to let up and finally Cindy heard Brenda say a single word.

“Why?”

She looked up at Dave, at a loss as to what to say. He crouched down next to them and put a hand on Brenda’s shoulder.

“Evil exists in this world, Brenda. It’s a terrible thing, and things happen that make no sense to us. Sometimes we get answers, but other times we have to live with the uncertainty. God knows what happened to Cheyenne, and He knows why. All I can say is that if it’s important for you to know why it happened, why her, then He will let you know. And if it’s not important for you to know the answer, then you need to trust that He has a reason for not telling you.”

Cindy wasn’t sure that was what she would have gone with, but then again, she had struggled with that same question over her sister’s death for years. Maybe if someone had been able to say to her what Dave had just said to Brenda it would have helped. She didn’t know.

“I know it feels like the world is ending right now,” she said softly. “But it’s not. You’ve had someone taken from you, and I’m so sorry you had to experience that, but for every great loss in our life there is healing, for everyone that leaves us, no matter why or how, someone new comes into our lives.”

Sometimes that process could take years. It had with her, but if Brenda was open to the possibility maybe she wouldn’t close herself off from people for years like Cindy had and her healing could happen faster.

Dave nodded to her. He thought she had said something right which was a bit of a relief.

Brenda sat up slowly, drying her eyes. “I got your shirt all wet,” she said dully.

“It’s no big deal,” Cindy said.

“Did Cheyenne go to your school?” Dave asked, pulling up his chair and sitting down.

“She used to, but her mom pulled her out to start homeschooling her at the end of last year. She was upset about it, too. She was looking forward to some of the senior activities. Not that her mom would have let her do any of them. She was always real strict. I was Cheyenne’s only friend. We still managed to hang out sometimes the last few months, but it was hard.”

Cindy knew from talking with Mark that Cheyenne’s parents hadn’t been able to shed any light on her death. She realized, though, that she might have an opportunity to find out more than he had, but she didn’t want to hurt Brenda more in the process. She said a quick prayer for guidance and the right words.

“Brenda, I know the police are trying to find out what happened to her, but they’re having a bit of a hard time finding out anything about her from her parents.”

“Of course they are. Her dad’s never around and her mom refused to see anything but a little clone of herself. Sometimes I think that’s why she was so hard on Cheyenne. That, and she was afraid Cheyenne would end up like her sister.”

Cindy blinked, latching on to that little bit of information. She schooled herself to be calm, gentle, and not push too hard. “She had an older sister?”

“Yeah, Lacey. She’s in college. She’s a psycho, a total mess.”

“How so?”

“When we were Freshmen and Lacey was a Senior she was always getting into trouble, dating guys who were just scary, you know. She smoked and drank at school even. She always talked about how much she hated her family, hated Pine Springs and one day she was going to be a big shot and have everything she ever wanted. Because of her teachers were always hard on Cheyenne at first until they realized that she was nothing like her sister.”

“Did they get along?”

Brenda shook her head. “Lacey hated Cheyenne because she thought their parents loved her more and she was always picking on her, doing things to hurt her that Cheyenne could never prove, or was too afraid to talk about. She was so glad when Lacey moved into the dorms. Even though she was only twenty minutes away she never came back home, not even for Christmas I don’t think. She didn’t get that their parents were so hard on Cheyenne, so strict and mean because they didn’t want her to be like Lacey. I always thought they loved Lacey best because they always gave her a pass. Instead of punishing her, they’d just get stricter with Cheyenne. It was unfair, you know?”

Brenda dashed away fresh tears that had started to flow.

Cindy’s brain was working overtime. she had one more question she wanted to ask, but she had to be delicate about it. “You said that Lacey would do things to Cheyenne. You don’t think she’d ever really hurt her, do you?”

Brenda looked up and there was anger blazing in her eyes. “Cheyenne had two broken fingers the last quarter of our Freshman year. She told everyone that she’d tripped off a curb, but I knew the truth. Lacey broke them because she was mad at her. She just grabbed them and snapped them like she was snapping twigs, and she didn’t even care. And she told Cheyenne that if she told the truth she’d break the rest of her fingers. Cheyenne believed her. Lacey wouldn’t hesitate to hurt her. I wouldn’t even be surprised to find out Lacey killed her.”

12

“Think what you’re saying,” Dave urged Brenda after he and Cindy exchanged a look.

“I don’t have to think about it. Lacey was mean and scary and she hurt Cheyenne a lot. No one will tell me how she died, just that she was murdered. And when I heard that, the first thing I thought was that it had to be Lacey. Cheyenne was so quiet and timid, no one else would ever want to hurt her for any reason.”

Brenda began crying again and Cindy put her arms around her. “Thank you for telling us,” Cindy said softly.

“If I can help in any way I will,” Brenda said, her words muffled.

“You’ve already helped quite a bit,” Cindy reassured her.

It took another hour before Brenda was ready to go home. Dave offered to drive her so she wouldn’t have to take the bus back, but she insisted on taking the bus. “My family doesn’t really understand why I come to church,” she said sheepishly.