Kennedy Stern Christian Suspense Complete Box Set (Books 1-9)

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 17

As soon as Dominic left, Kennedy plopped into her roommate’s beanbag chair with a groan.

Willow filled up an Alaska Chicks Rock mug. “Have some tea.” She passed it to Kennedy. “Man, I thought he’d never go. He’s got a lot of nerve just showing up like that.”

“How long was he here before I came?”

Willow sat down at her desk and kicked her feet up on the bed. “Not long. At first, I thought he might be coming to arrest you. Othello said something like this would probably happen, you know.”

“He did?”

Willow nodded and poured herself some tea. “Yeah. I guess he’s been following this police brutality stuff for quite a while now. Says that once they get pressured, the department does what it can to vilify the victims. It’s one thing for a cop to shoot an unarmed black kid. But if the kid has a criminal record, or if drug tests show he was high when he was murdered, most people go back to their day-to-day lives and assume he must have deserved it.”

“This is a little different than a shooting, don’t you think?” Kennedy took a sip of Willow’s bitter medicinal tea.

“Not really. The only difference was Reuben wasn’t killed. You’re lucky that way. It could have been a lot worse.”

Kennedy couldn’t believe she was just sitting here sipping tea while Reuben was probably paralyzed with fear in some jail cell. What would happen to him there? Kennedy didn’t even know what happened to American citizens who got arrested. What about an international student? Would they extradite him? Her mind was spinning like a pulsar star. Would she even see him again?

Willow let out a dramatic sigh. “Listen, I’m really sorry you’re going through this. It sucks no matter how you look at it.” She stood up and grabbed her hand-painted fashion scarf.

“Where are you going?” Kennedy didn’t want to admit how much she hated the thought of being left alone.

“I’m gonna go talk to Othello. He’ll want to know about this. Maybe he’ll find a way to help Reuben.”

“The only way to help Reuben is if another witness comes forward.” She hated the resignation she recognized in her own voice. Was it really that hopeless?

Willow passed her an almost empty container of raw honey. “Here, take as much as you want with your tea. I can always get more.”

Kennedy accepted the Mason jar, trying to find a way to ask Willow to stay with her without having to beg. For the first time, she wondered where she put her therapist’s business card with his after-hours phone number. She couldn’t just stay here like this. For a minute, she considered tagging along with Willow but remembered how uncomfortable she felt during the arguments around the Lindgrens’ dinner table. She couldn’t bring herself to get up from the oversized beanbag chair.

“You all right?” Willow put in her long, feathered earrings and stared at Kennedy’s reflection in her small desk mirror.

Kennedy lowered her face into the steaming mug. “I’ll be fine.” She hoped it wasn’t a lie.

Once Willow left, Kennedy dissolved two big spoonfuls of honey into the herbal concoction and thought about Reuben. It wasn’t fair. She almost wished Dominic had come and arrested her, too. Then at least she’d know her dad would do everything in his power to free her. If Kennedy was arrested, her dad would hire the best defense lawyers in the greater Boston area. The officer that assaulted them would be lucky if he could ever show his face in Massachusetts again. Who did Reuben have to advocate for him? Who would speak up for him?

She glanced at the time. It was already morning in Yanji. She grabbed her phone, grateful to see it still had plenty of charge. She was breathing faster than normal as the call connected. Would he be there?

“Hello?”

“Daddy?” Her voice squeaked. She swallowed down a little more tea. She couldn’t cry. Tears wouldn’t solve anything. They were just as useless and nearly as paralyzing as her anxiety. She had to get through this conversation. For Reuben.

“What is it, princess? What’s the matter?”

She had hoped the news would have already made it onto Channel 2’s website, which her dad kept up with more religiously than any locals Kennedy knew. She bit her lip, trying to form the words, afraid of the way they would confront her with their hideous reality once she gave them voice.

“They arrested Reuben.”

If she had been talking with her mom, she would have been blubbering by now, but with her dad it was different. He didn’t waste time asking about how Kennedy felt or worrying about her emotions. He bypassed all those fluffy preliminaries and jumped right into his formal, businesslike interview. “What did they charge him with?”

“I don’t know. Something about assaulting an officer, I think.” She took another scalding sip of tea, thankful to find her vocal chords weren’t too strained.

“Where are they holding him?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Have you talked to anyone else? Do you have any reason to believe you’ll be arrested next?”

“No. There was a policeman here just a minute ago. He’s the one who told me about Reuben.” She wanted to tell her dad more, but he was firing questions at her as fast as a proton slinging its way through a particle accelerator.

“Have you talked to anyone from the press?”

“No.”

“Good girl. You keep it that way, all right? I’m on Channel 2’s page. They’ve got the story right here. Looks like they still haven’t mentioned your name. That’s good. By the sound of it, if they wanted you too, they would have gotten you by now. I don’t think you need to worry, princess.”

Couldn’t he understand? How calloused did he think she was? “I’m not worried about me.” Her larynx tightened. She took a gulp of tea and focused on the feel of the honey sliding down her throat. “I need to know how to help Reuben.”

For the first time since he picked up the phone, her dad was quiet. She could picture his scowl as he stared at his computer screen.

“He’s an international student, right?” he finally asked.

“Yeah.”

“Well, there’s gonna be red tape. Bureaucracy. The good news is that means it will give him and his lawyer time to ...”

“He doesn’t have a lawyer.” Kennedy wanted to scream. For being such a business genius, her dad could be completely daft at times.

“He doesn’t have a lawyer,” Kennedy repeated with a little more restraint.

“Then the courts will assign him one ...” Her dad’s voice trailed off. Kennedy hoped he was finally grasping the seriousness of Reuben’s situation. She pictured him in his Yanji office, his desk strewn with paperwork, his urgent-message file cluttered to overflowing. He probably had a dozen pressing matters that needed his immediate attention, and she was asking him to ignore all that and help her find a way to get Reuben out of jail. Should she tell him everything? Should she tell him about the drowning, suffocating weight in her chest when she imagined him getting deported back to Kenya? All thoughts of romance aside, how could she make it through the rest of her semester without him? Reuben was the only good thing that had happened to her this entire school year. Everything else had been an anxiety-riddled headache at best, traumatizing torture at worst. Through it all, through kidnappings and murder attempts, through lab reports and research papers, Reuben had encouraged her. Supported her. How could she step foot into the chem lab Monday knowing that she had abandoned him?

She knew her dad. Knew he was probably getting ready to lecture her on the American justice system, how if you were patient enough, the truth would rise its way to the top like the most soluble substances on a paper chromatogram. After what she had seen, after talking to Dominic who had first-hand experience with the police force, she wouldn’t believe a single word of it.

How could she make her dad understand? How could she tell him how important this was to her? She felt like a petulant toddler, ready to stomp her foot and throw a fit until she got her way. But what else could she do to save Reuben? How else could she help him? Dominic had mentioned prayer, but what good was that when the entire justice system was willing to sacrifice an innocent student to protect the reputation of a corrupt cop? Back in Yanji, when the Chinese police came into her parents’ home to question them about their business, their visa paperwork, or any hint of missionary activities, Kennedy had hidden upstairs in her room wishing to be back home in the States, imagining life in a country where the police were there to protect you, not harass you. Had she really been that naïve? Had she really been that foolish?

She heard her dad let out his breath. “Give me a few minutes, sugar. I’ll call Jefferson and see if there’s anything he can do.”

Kennedy bit her lip, wondering if she should say what she was thinking. Would it make things worse, or would it be better for her dad to know the complete truth at the beginning? She took a choppy breath. “I don’t think his family has a lot of extra money for lawyers and things.”

Another sigh. Heavier this time and slightly more dejected. “He won’t have to worry about that, princess. Just hold on, and I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”

The small stream of relief that washed over Kennedy reminded her of a bright ray of sunshine in the middle of winter — enough to give you hope without warming you up at all. Still, it was a start. “Thanks, Daddy.”

“You’re welcome.” If they had been face-to-face, he would probably make some sort of joke about how Kennedy was responsible for his growing bald spot or his rapidly diminishing bank account. But there were no jokes this time, just the small clicking sound of her dad hanging up his office phone. Kennedy stared at her screen after the call ended. Her dad would try to help. There was nothing to do now but wait.

For the next several minutes, all Kennedy could think about was a video series for prospective medical students her dad had made her watch when she decided to apply to Harvard’s pre-med program. In one of the lectures, a doctor who survived cancer talked about medical testing from the patient’s perspective, how hard it is to wait for results that could spell life or death for yourself or your family member. His words hadn’t impacted Kennedy much at the time — she had been more interested in the immunologist’s speech on AIDS and other disorders that impacted the immune system — but it was all she could think about now while she waited for her dad to get hold of Jefferson. She tried not to think of how hard it would be to contact a lawyer at 8:30 on a Friday night. What if he didn’t return her dad’s call until Monday? What would that mean for Reuben? She didn’t know anything about jails or prisons. She didn’t know if they had visiting hours or any way for the inmates to interact with the public. Part of her worried that if she went to the jail to check on Reuben, someone there would recognize her from the infamous piggyback attack video and book her for the night as well.

Well, if that’s what it’d take to get the attention of her dad’s lawyer friend ...

She should probably be doing her own research, too. Wasn’t that what the internet was for? But she knew if she turned on her computer, she’d never get past all the news articles of Reuben’s arrest. It was too heinous to have a hundred different reminders bombard her from a hundred different websites. She remembered the way Othello had explained it. If the police wanted to keep their own reputation untarnished, it made sense they’d try to ruin Reuben’s. What would they say about him? Did he have his cell phone with him? Could she text him to see how he was doing?

All we can do is pray. Dominic’s words rang through her mind like the taunts of a playground bully. All we can do is pray. Wasn’t that the spiritual equivalent of a doctor telling her dying patient there was nothing left to do but discuss palliative care and make hospice arrangements?

All we can do is pray. Was that the Christian way of saying there was no hope whatsoever?

She bowed her head over Willow’s half empty mug. Even the sight of the tea leaves reminded her of Bow Legs, how he had made such a big deal of that stupid Ziploc bag in the glove compartment. She stared at her phone. If it had just taken the video like she’d told it to, none of this would be happening. Bow Legs would be the one behind bars, and she and Reuben would be at the library studying calculus or at the student union finishing up their lab report.

Why had God allowed her phone to fail her? Had he stopped paying attention for those few seconds? Was he too busy helping believers on the other side of the world? But it didn’t work like that, did it? Kennedy knew there were people suffering more than she was, but still, did that mean God thought her problems weren’t significant enough to waste his energy on? Had he simply forgotten to intervene?

She thought about Carl and Sandy, about all the injustices they suffered in the past. How did they remain so loving and hopeful? What was the secret and the source of their joy? What did Kennedy have to do to discover that same sense of peace she always felt with them?

Her heart leapt like an electron jumping up an energy level when her phone rang. Her dad. Was it a bad sign that he was calling back so soon? He couldn’t have gotten a hold of the lawyer, explained everything to him, and come up with a plan to save Reuben in five minutes, could he?

“Hi, Daddy.”

“I just got off the phone with Jefferson.” No greeting, no Hi, princess. What did that mean? Was her dad calling with bad news? Had the lawyer already looked into the case and agreed that the only thing left to do was pray?

Thankfully, her dad didn’t waste words. “He said the same thing as yesterday. Without more evidence or some key witness coming forward, there’s not much to do. I know it’s too late for it now, but if you ever find yourself in that sort of situation again, it’d be a good idea to turn on your phone’s video camera and ...”

Kennedy fought the urge to throw her cell across the room. “I did take a video.” She wasn’t trying to yell, but she couldn’t help it. “I started recording at the very beginning when he handcuffed Reuben. It’s the stupid phone. There wasn’t enough memory ...”

She choked back tears of frustration. Why had she ever left Yanji? Why had she ever gone to Harvard? She could have gotten her college degree online without ever having to leave her parents’. What had she been thinking?

“Calm down, sweetie.” It was just like her dad to say something like that. He didn’t even bother telling her to pray. He knew how hopeless the situation was. So that was it. Reuben would spend a few weeks or months in jail, go to trial, and get deported back to Kenya in disgrace. Never complete his studies. Never tell Kennedy the secret he’d planned on sharing Thursday night. In a way, this was all her fault. Why had she suggested they go see Aida? Why couldn’t they have just spent the evening in the library like normal?

“I’m sorry about the phone, princess. I’ll do some research. Maybe there’s someone in your area who can retrieve the memory for you. You say that you got the entire confrontation recorded?”

“Everything. It was in my pocket, so you can’t see it all, but you can hear what was going on.”

“And you think the recording would be enough to prove Reuben’s innocent?” There was a hint of doubt in her father’s voice.

“Of course he’s innocent. I already explained to you, that officer ...”

“I remember what you told me last night,” her dad interrupted. “I’m just saying that sometimes people remember certain events in different ways ...”

Kennedy had heard enough. “I told you already, he didn’t do anything wrong. Neither of us did.” She was starting to understand why Dominic had warned her to drop the entire case in the first place. If the media could skew events until her own dad doubted her, how could she expect the general public to take her side?

“All right,” he conceded. “If you think the video will help, I’ll see if there’s somewhere you can take your phone to try to get the memory retrieved. It’s probably a long shot, but without more evidence, Jefferson says there’s not much of a case.”

“So he’s just going to let Reuben get deported?” She couldn’t believe this was happening. She couldn’t believe the country that boasted such liberty and freedom could arrest someone as kind and considerate as Reuben to keep a corrupt officer out of trouble.

“I didn’t say that.” She sensed the tension in her dad’s voice and remembered why she had been so eager as a high-school student to leave home. “All I said was he didn’t think there was much of a case. I hired him to look into it for us anyway, and if you have evidence on your phone that might make a difference, we need to pursue it.”

Kennedy was ashamed of her outburst. She injected what she hoped was enough humility into her voice and said, “Thanks, Daddy.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I’m no Atticus Finch.”

Kennedy smiled at her dad’s reference to one of her favorite novels. “I’m really glad you’re at least trying.”

“Well, I know a certain young lady who can be pretty persuasive when she wants to be. And I figure it must be a special boy to have caught her heart like that.”

Kennedy felt the warmth radiating up to her cheeks. “It’s not like that, you know.”

“Well, whatever it is, I’m glad I’m able to help. Let me jump online and see what I can find about your phone. I’ll call or text you when I have more information.”

Kennedy was used to sudden waves of homesickness crashing over her without warning. She choked down a large sip of tea and thanked her dad one more time.

“Yeah well, I just hope this Reuben fellow understands how lucky he is that you care so much about him.”