One Chance: A Thrilling Christian Fiction Mystery Romance, page 1
by Daniel Patterson
www.facebook.com/DanielPattersonAuthor
A powerful romance suspense thriller about family, friendship, love, honor, and courage.
CHAPTER 1
Deputy Penelope Chance leaned back in her chair, and pulled her long, honey blonde hair into a high ponytail. She had just finished the paperwork for the vandalism case at the Jewish deli. Two young men had terrorized the owners three nights in a row by painting swastikas on the front windows. Not the type of crime their little community saw a lot of.
It hadn't taken her long to figure it out because the two kids were the only neo-Nazi types among the almost four thousand people living in Franklin, Florida. Thought they were real toughs doing their part for the pure race. She shook her head. Judge Dirksen would hear their case on Monday and Penelope was confident the two misguided young men would serve a month or two in the town jail, do some community service, and hopefully learn their lesson.
Dear Lord, she prayed, thank You for allowing me to help these good people and bring Your justice to my community. Help me be content with my job and my life. Amen.
The truth was, most of her cases were like this one. Little stuff. Nothing big ever happened here. And frankly, in spite of her prayers to God, she sometimes wished something bigger would cross her desk. There were deaths from accidents, sure, but anything like an outright murder case? Nope. Well, not in the last twenty-three years. Not since then.
She pushed that memory back down as deep as she could, because it hurt too much.
Penelope turned her attention to her current pending case. Mrs. Briggs' unlocked car had been stolen in the early hours that morning, and she was distraught. When Penelope had spoken to Mrs. Briggs earlier she had been nearly in tears wondering how she was going to get to the grocery store or to church on Sunday. Penelope hadn't been unable to find any witnesses because of the time the theft happened, but she assured Mrs. Briggs that as soon as the car was found she'd get some answers for her.
Then she had spent most of the morning driving around town, looking for the cherry red 2005 Buick LeSabre, but it was nowhere to be found. Nowhere within her jurisdiction, anyway. With no choice left, she had called the Florida Highway Patrol and issued a BOLO for the car.
At that moment, that was her biggest case, but she couldn't help wishing again that she would get something a little bigger. Something to get her blood pumping and give her brain a good workout.
Just then the phone rang. Penelope answered it while shuffling paperwork around. "Franklin Sheriff's Office. This is Deputy Chance."
"Hello ma'am," the man said, "I need to report a stolen car."
Another one? Penelope thought. "Okay," she said. "Let's start with your name and a description of the car, okay?"
"My name is Kyle Fredericks," the caller said. "My car is a burgundy 2010 Buick Regal."
Another Buick. Another red Buick. Penelope noted the similarity on the notepad as she jotted down Kyle Fredericks' information.
She asked for the address.
Mister Fredericks was at home on East River Street. Penelope told the man she would be there in a few minutes to start an investigation and write up a report. She wrote down the time of the call. Seven thirty in the evening.
Technically, her shift had ended a half hour ago. But the Franklin Sheriff's Office had only a few officers, and if she didn't stay to do this complaint she'd have to make the guy wait for the Florida Highway Patrol to have a free unit. She didn't like making the people in her community wait. And she didn't mind working over a little. Her boyfriend was at work himself, after all.
No. Fiance, not boyfriend, she corrected herself with a lopsided smile. She was still getting used to it.
As she left the Sheriff's Office building and headed to her cruiser, Penelope had a feeling this evening wasn't going to come out the way she expected. The sense that a change was just around the corner was almost a tangible thing.
There were times when she wished her gut feelings weren't quite so sharp. This was one of them.
*
Mister Fredericks was waiting on his porch and walked across the neatly manicured front yard toward Penelope as soon as she stepped out of her cruiser. Fredericks was an older man with graying hair getting thinner on top. The Florida sun had baked the man's skin to a deep brown, and his teeth showed whiter for it as he smiled at Penelope.
As she strode up the lawn to greet the man, Penelope noticed the lack of broken glass in the driveway where Fredericks had said the car had been taken. So, the car was either unlocked or whoever stole it had been able to bypass the lock somehow.
"Mister Fredericks? I'm Deputy Chance," she said, offering her hand. "When did you notice your car was missing?"
The man shook Penelope's hand and replied, "Just about a minute before I called you. My wife and I were planning to see a movie in Gainesville and when we came out to get in the car, it was gone."
"Car unlocked?"
"Yes ma'am, it was."
"Did you go near the driveway at all?" Penelope asked, taking out her little pad and a pen.
"No ma'am, I didn't," Fredericks answered. "As soon as I saw the car was gone, I went back inside and called the Sheriff's Office."
"Okay. When did you last see your car here?" Penelope asked.
The man thought for a moment, and then said, "Must have been about six when I got home from work tonight. The wife and I had dinner and afterwards we decided to go to a movie. But when it came time to leave we had no car."
After jotting down a few notes and facts, Penelope asked, "Did you hear your car's engine start up? Another vehicle? Anything like that?"
Mrs. Fredericks, shorter than her husband and a little rounder but just as deeply tanned, had walked out to them as they talked. Mister Fredericks looked at his wife. "I didn't. Did you, honey?" he asked her.
She shook her head as Penelope wrote some more. "Is it possible," Penelope asked, "that one of your neighbors may have seen or heard something?"
Mrs. Fredericks said, "Mrs. Fitch across the street might have seen something. She sees almost everything that goes on in the neighborhood."
"That so?"
The woman nodded and whispered in a conspiratorial tone. "She's retired and has nothing else to do, you know."
Penelope nodded. "Okay, I'll go talk to her and see if she can help. Let me look over your driveway first."
She looked up and down the paved driveway, and along the sides in the grass. Nothing. There might have been an impression where the grass was bent over. If it was, it was too obscured to be of any use.
She smiled at the Fredericks, thanked them and turned around to walk across the street.
Mrs. Fitch had indeed seen what happened. A big white van pulled up in front of the house about five minutes before the couple came out, she told Penelope, sitting in a rocking chair on her front stoop and rocking in the evening warmth. A young man, she guessed him to be about nineteen or twenty years old, got out and went up to the Fredericks' car. In less than a minute, he had the car started and was gone.
"Can you give me a description of this young man?" Penelope asked her.
She nodded, her dark skinned face serious. "Sure I can, Deputy. The young man was just about six feet tall. He was, like, very thin with dark hair. Didn't get a good look at his face, but he looked to be a white boy with maybe some Hispanic parentage. Maybe from his momma."
Penelope wrote down everything she said in her little notepad. "Did you happen to call anyone to report this, Mrs. Fitch?"
"Well, 'course I did. Started to, anyways. But when the Fredericks done come out I hung up. No sense in both of us calling you, right?"
Then she told Penelope something that made her wonder if Mrs. Fitch was in complete control of her mental faculties. The reason she didn't get a good look at his face was because she couldn't stop looking at his chest.
"Why is that?" Penelope asked, her pen pausing.
"Well, it was the strangest thing," Mrs. Fitch said. "He was wearing a woman's brassiere outside of his t-shirt and it looked like he had stuffed it up with something. It musta done stood out nearly a foot in front of him."
Penelope looked at her questioningly.
Mrs. Fitch pursed her thick lips. "I know what you must be thinking, Deputy Chance," she said. "But I'm telling you what I done saw. I ain't lost my mind. I know what I saw."
"Oh, I'm not doubting your word, ma'am," she said. "But you have to admit it just seems very odd."
"That's what I thought, too," she replied, her hands fidgeting in her lap. "But that's what I done saw."
She thanked Mrs. Fitch for taking the time to speak with her, went back to her cruiser and headed back toward Main Street and the Sheriff's Office. She hadn't gone more than a block when she received a radio call from Florida Highway Patrol's dispatch to head over to the town clinic and interview the victim of an attempted murder.
Penelope asked them to repeat it before she believed it.
Finally, a challenging case. She was anxious to get started on it. Until she heard who the victim and prime suspect were.
CHAPTER 2
The Last Chance Tavern was just that for Doug Foster. The last opportunity to get a drink at the end of his day. It was at the east end of Main Street, just before he had to make a right turn onto the county road that would take him to the other end of tow n and home. He could never resist the urge to stop in for that one more beer, even though he knew it would more likely be four or five. Sometimes he lost count of how many he had. Tonight would be one of those times. Come the wee hours of the morning, his pickup would be the only vehicle left in the parking lot.
He always stopped in here before he began the long three mile drive home. Most people would have enjoyed the scenery on this route. Plenty of trees, with a field or two here and there. But Doug hated it. The sheer abundance of flora and fauna never failed to bore him near to death. And there was the empty lot across the T intersection from the Last Chance Tavern. The lot where a house used to stand. The memory it sparked was painful.
Most of his memories were painful these days.
His was the only house on South Riverside Avenue, all the way down at the very end. It was the first street off the County road south of the Franklin River, which was really nothing more than a sixty-five foot wide creek. No other streets crossed or connected to South Riverside and the town, as small as it was, never had the money to build another bridge. They felt that if only one person, him, would be using it regularly, well it just wasn't a major concern. That's why Doug was forced to circle all the way around the edge of town to get home. And his route took him past the Last Chance.
In reality, the drive didn't take long, it just seemed that way because he disliked it so much. What Doug hated most about it was that he had no choice in the matter. He should have known better than to buy that house, but it was the one his now ex-wife had wanted. Three years later she had divorced him, taken half his money, packed up their two year old son from daycare and run off with another man. Two years gone and he hadn't seen her since. Come to think of it, he had begun stopping into the Last Chance Tavern on a regular basis shortly after she had left.
With a little effort and the help of several beers he could push all that out of his mind. He didn't want to think about what Camille had done to him because the pain was still so fresh. Especially taking his little boy away. The thought of never seeing his child again ate away at his insides.
Doug got out of his 1956 midnight blue Ford F100 pickup truck, the red flame job on the side catching the light from the tavern's neon signs. He walked to the front door, his mind already on his first drink, never seeing the damage on the front of his truck. Shattered headlight. Broken plastic. He walked across the parking area and into the tavern where he was planning to drink his problems away for another night.
Sometimes even the best laid plans just don't come out right.
CHAPTER 3
Since gainesville was only a twenty-minute drive and housed three large hospitals, Franklin didn't require a hospital of its own. The victim in their attempted murder had been taken to the little town clinic instead of one of the hospitals over in Gainesville. Which meant his injuries weren't life threatening. Doctor Jacob Gordon, had all the equipment he needed, most of the time, for anything from a dog bite to a broken arm. A patient needing surgery or more advanced care was sent over to Grace Memorial Hospital.
When Deputy Chance walked in the front door of the clinic, she headed straight for the exam rooms at the rear of the building. Doctor Jacob heard her footsteps echoing on the tiled floor and came out to see who was there. He bumped into her as he rounded the corner.
"Oh!" he exclaimed. "Sorry, I didn't realize you were standing right there."
She grinned widely as the light danced in the Doctor's dark brown eyes. But her smile didn't stick.
"I got the call a couple minutes ago about a victim of an attempted murder. I can't believe it. I can't believe it's him," she said. "Is he still awake?"
"Yes," he replied, pointing back down the hall, concern in his voice. "He's in room two, on the left."
Penelope started to walk past him and he grabbed her arm. When she turned back to him, he said, "Penny, he's beat up really bad. I barely recognized him."
"He going to be okay?"
He shrugged. "Probably. After a while."
"Thanks for the warning," she said with a nod, steeling herself for what she was about to see.
In a few quick strides, Penelope was at the door of exam room two. She knocked lightly, opened the door and stepped in. Pete Lamb, the town drunk, lay in the bed looking like he'd lost a fight with a couple of pit bulls and a rabid alligator. He was nearly unrecognizable under all the cuts, scrapes, bruises and swelling on his face and upper body. His right arm was in a cast from wrist to elbow. And Penelope suspected that wasn't the worst of it.
"Hiya Pete," Penelope said, forcing a cheerful tone into her voice. "Rough night?"
"You could say that," Pete replied in a voice muffled by swollen lips.
Penelope pulled a chair closer to the bed and turned it around to sit with her arms crossed over the chairback. "Want to tell me what happened?"
One of Pete's eyes was swollen shut. He closed the other one now, and swallowed thickly. "Told Doctor Gordon already. Doug. He tried to kill me."
"Are you absolutely sure it was him who ran you down?" Penelope asked, knowing too well what the answer would be.
Pete opened that one pale blue eye again and regarded Penelope. "Deputy, you know as well as I do there's only one vehicle like that in this town. Everybody knows who owns it, too," he said. "Yes. I am absolutely sure who tried to kill me tonight. Have no clue why he would do it. I never did anything to him."
Pete winced, the exertion from talking so much costing him. The man was in obvious pain. And Penelope could smell the alcohol on him from where she stood.
"Where'd this happen, Pete? Where'd you get hit?"
"I was walking on the side of the county road, just down from my sister's place. Just up from the Last Chance. And we both know who's at the Last Chance every single night."
"Yeah, I do. Okay. I'll go have a look there later. You're sure it wasn't just an accident?" Penelope asked.
"Nope, not an accident," Pete said slowly. "Hit me the first time, then kept turning around and coming at me again and again. Must've been five...six times. Managed to brush me a couple more times. Finally had to roll off the road where he couldn't get me. Just laid there, pretending to be dead." After a brief pause and a few ragged breaths he added, "I mean, you know him as well as I do. Why would he hate me so much, Penny?" The very idea seemed to almost break Pete's heart.
"Trust me, Pete, he doesn't hate you," Penelope answered, but even as she said it doubt nagged at the back of her mind. She took a deep breath and sighed. "I'll go now and make out the report. Doctor Gordon will take care of you. I'll get your written statement when you're well enough to get out of here."
"Okay," Pete said, his voice sleepy. Either from the alcohol or the pain medication, Penelope didn't know. She got up out of the chair and went to the room's door.
"Sorry, Penny. Wish I could tell you it was somebody else."
"Thanks, Pete. But all I want is the truth, no matter what that is. No matter who it is," Penelope added quietly as she left the room.
She walked back up to the front of the clinic, wrapped her arms around the Doctor, kissed him tenderly on the lips, and released him. Penelope winked and whispered, "You and me, baby. I can hardly wait!"
It had been a long road for both of them to find the right person. Fiance might be a word she was only just getting used to, but she couldn't imagine using it with anyone other than Jacob.
She stroked his cheek as she smiled at him and then they both went back to their work.
She'd been right. It was going to be a long night.
CHAPTER 4
While she drove back to the Sheriff's Office, Penelope prayed silently.
Dear Lord, if it is Your will, please let this all be a big mistake.
Somewhere deep inside, however, she had a feeling she might not get the answer she was hoping for.
Pray for sun, but bring an umbrella, she reminded herself. If Doug had done this, like Pete said, then Penelope would have no choice but to do her job.
She just wouldn't like it.
Twenty minutes later, sitting at her desk and filling out the preliminary report, she felt she needed to do something, anything, but she wasn't sure what she could do. She searched her brain for an answer to no avail.
