Save Her Child by CJ Lyons (best historical biographies txt) 📗

for help, he wouldn’t even think of telling his daughter the police officer, much less answer Luka’s questions. The Reverend was above questioning, his judgment final. “He would have been embarrassed, humiliated to be suspected of any wrongdoing,” she explained. “Not to mention, the church is where he wields power—he would have felt in command.”

Luka eyed her appraisingly. “So I learned. I brought him here for a formal interview. Beth didn’t appear to be coerced when she left the hospital. But clearly they know each other, which means your father knows more than he’s saying. We have no evidence of an actual crime—and he knows it. Legally, he could walk at any time. Which is why I need you—”

“To interrogate him? But if he tells me anything that points to a crime, it will never hold up in court.”

“Right now I don’t care about court, I care about saving a child’s life.” He paused, obviously waiting for her to defend her father. Harper was torn, feeling pulled in impossible directions. But Luka was right, a life was at stake. “I need you to get him talking, learn anything you can about who Beth is, where she might be going. You up for it?”

“Yes, sir.” She swallowed and nodded, then scraped back her chair to return to the interview room. How to talk to a man she’d never been able to talk with? Would confronting him with the evidence loosen his tongue? Or reinforce his silence?

When she entered the interview room, she found the Reverend sitting at the scarred wooden table. His posture was rigid, and Harper could tell he’d lost his patience.

“So.” He acknowledged her entrance with a scowl, as if disappointed that the police couldn’t find someone better suited to the job. He’d arranged his body to sit on the very edge of the lightweight vinyl chair, to have contact with the least amount of contaminated atoms as possible. “They sent you—am I meant to crumble with sentimentality?”

He would be expecting her to hammer him about Beth and her baby, but Luka had already tried that so she chose a different tack. “Tell me the truth about Spencer. I know you’re hiding something. Something that might help me stop a killer.”

His lips tightened and once again his hands relaxed into his favorite position: clasped together as if in prayer. “It’s privileged.”

“Not everything you and Spencer spoke about falls under attorney-client privilege,” she challenged him. The very fact that he didn’t question her about her use of the word “killer” or Spencer’s supposed suicide told her that he knew much more than he let on. He’d been on the phone with Spencer during the time frame of his death—had he heard the killer? Did he know who it was? If so, why was he protecting them?

“I can’t tell you anything because it’s privileged under the seal of confession. I won’t betray that. I can’t betray it. Not for you, not for anyone.” He didn’t seem apologetic—he appeared defiant. “Instead of trying to force me to betray my vows, you need to decide whose laws you’re beholden to: man’s or God’s.”

“This isn’t about the law. There are lives at stake.”

He shook his head, his expression blanking. “Did it ever occur to you, Naomi, to trust me? I know what the right thing to do is, even if you don’t. By keeping my silence, following God’s law, I’m saving lives. And that’s more important than any of your laws.”

“And what about Beth’s baby’s life? He could die—you know that, right?”

“Your sergeant said something. I’m not at all certain I believe him. You say that being a police officer is about finding the truth, yet you use deception and coercion to create your own truth. So how can I believe anything any of you say?”

They sat in silence as she considered her options. He shifted in his seat, frowning at the obscene graffiti carved into the table between them, covering it with his pristine handkerchief so that he would be spared the sight. Finally, he shook his head and scoffed, “This, this den of inequity, this is why you turned your back on your Church, your God, your family?”

The Reverend’s trump card. She was surprised he had played it so soon. The leader of Holy Redeemer considered no sinner unworthy of redemption. No sinner except his own daughter.

That was what had kept her away for years. It was only recently that she’d started seeing her family again. Jonah had shepherded her way back to the family dinner table, but she still hadn’t found her way back into her father’s good graces. After yesterday, when the Reverend had appeared to show some interest in her job, she’d actually hoped that the wound was beginning to heal.

He pursed his lips—as close to a disdainful eye-roll as the Reverend ever got. “I’m sure you appreciate this irony.”

“What? That a man of God is sitting in jail?” Harper asked.

“No. Of course not. I have many sins, but hubris isn’t one of them.” He folded his hands together on the table. “No. The irony that they sent you.” He nodded to the door. “As if the agent of my redemption would be the child who was so willful and—”

“And unredeemable.” Now it was her turn to shake her head, but in frustration, not disdain. “You never will forgive me for letting you down, tarnishing your image.”

“My image?” His voice rose. “You think I was worried about myself? Did you even think about your mother? What your little drunken, lustful escapade cost her? How humiliated she was?”

His words were more forceful than a slap. She leaned back, putting space between them, space to think. Eleven years and this was the first time they’d spoken about what happened when she went away to college. Eleven years she’d waited to tell her side of the story, to face the pain, to be forgiven. Forgiven for a seventeen-year-old’s naivety, for being stupid, careless, but not… “Drunken? Lustful? You have no idea what