Without the night vision goggles, all I had to light my way were sporadic bursts of lightning and the waterproof flashlight from my belt. As I walked toward the park, I pulled the Bushmaster from the canvas bag and tore off the plastic, then slipped the rifle’s strap back over my shoulder and stowed the extra ammo in my jacket pocket. Carefully, I stepped between the shards left from broken panes of glass, climbed over downed tree limbs, and skirted unidentifiable wreckage. All around me, I heard the shrill sounds of flying debris hitting the skyscrapers’ windows, thick glass shattering and falling to the concrete below.
From my holster I retrieved my Colt .45, double-checking to make sure it was loaded even though I knew it was, all the while concentrating on mentally reconstructing the layout of Sam Houston Park. I thought again of what Benoit had said, of where he’d built the pilings for the slaves quarters. I remembered the steep grade of the green space that culminated in the small pond and the landscape of the park bordered by the old restored homes. Above it towered the city’s massive skyscrapers. I considered what Benoit had planned. If his fantasy was to re-create his attempt at murdering the girl, he’d stake Joey out and then sit back and wait, watching as the water rose, minute by minute, the boy slowly drowning.
Where would he be? I thought about the pond and considered the structures closest to it, the places that offered shelter to hide from the brunt of the hurricane. Only one building came to mind, St. John Church, a white clapboard structure set on the hill above the pond. That had to be Benoit’s choice, the structure closest to the pond with the best view.
Picking my way with the narrow beam from the flashlight, walking as fast as my exhausted legs could carry me, I pulled together what I remembered of the simple, one-room church. I knew it well. Mom loved the building; it was her favorite in the park. While Maggie and I inhaled lunch, Mom reminisced about the many churches she remembered like it when she was a girl, small German Lutheran churches founded by Houston’s early settlers. I could picture the old black, white, and gold altar at the back of the church. We’d toured it so often, I remembered the translation of the stenciled German passage above the altar: “Blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it.”
On the opposite end, facing the pond, a steeple soared from the roof, high above the doors. An ear-to-ear grin on her face, Maggie had often stood in that very spot, under the steeple, pulling the thick rope that extended through the ceiling into the tower, over and over again ringing a centuries-old bell that once called a long-dead congregation to services. Over the front door, a second German passage read: “The Lord preserve your going out and your coming in. Amen.”
Another burst of lightning, and I noticed a dark SUV parked on the street and then the park and the church ahead. I crossed the street, aimed my flashlight’s beam, and saw the bumper sticker with the symbol, just as Crystal had described it—the two capital Es turned inward with an I in the center, resembling a butterfly. What did it mean? So much cluttered my mind, but I tried to remember. Then it came to me, Pempamsie, which translated to “strength that cannot be crushed.”
We’ll see, I thought.
Worried Benoit would notice its beam, I turned off my flashlight and headed to the park. From that point forward, as much as it was my enemy, the darkness was my friend. In a burst of lightning, I saw fallen trees, their strong limbs and trunks broken, lying like the skeletons of the dead along my path. I took a right, off the street, and walked toward the church, through an opening in the spear-topped black wrought-iron fence surrounding the park. It was then that I glimpsed a shaft of light glowing from the front of the church, a bright funnel that cut through the rain into darkness, illuminating a patch of grass near the pond. Only one person could be holding that flashlight, Peter Benoit. And he’d want to watch only one thing, the culmination of his plan, Joey Warner’s death.
“That he hasn’t left means the boy is still alive,” I whispered. From the direction of Benoit’s flashlight beam, he had to have the boy staked out as I’d suspected, on the bank of the pond directly below the church. All the while, the heavy rains pummeled me, and I thought of the floodwaters rising.
Fighting the urge to rush to free the child, since that would put both of us in the line of fire, I knew that before anything else, I had to rid the world of Peter Benoit.
The next revelation presented itself in yet another burst of light from the heavens, a mammoth oak tree uprooted, its trunk crushing the back corner of the small church’s south wall and part of the roof above it. I walked forward warily, holding my Colt .45, and once I reached it, I stood outside the church, looking in. I waited for the next burst of lightning, then peered inside but saw nothing but a brief flash of the church’s interior. Where was Benoit?
Quickly, I scrambled a few feet up on the fallen tree trunk and again waited. Another bolt of lightning, and this time I had a better vantage point and enough light to fully search the inside of the church, through the opening the fallen tree had torn in the wall. I saw lines of pews, the altar, and a silent organ. What I didn’t see was Peter Benoit. Suddenly, I realized something else was missing. There was no sound coming from the steeple. The bell inside the tower should have been ringing, banging in the violent winds.
“That’s where Benoit is,” I whispered. “The bell isn’t ringing because he’s tied it up.”
In the glow of yet another bolt of lightning, I saw a ladder below the steeple, and I knew I was right. There were no other possibilities. I climbed higher on the trunk, toward the roof, but then stopped. I thought about the nearly two-hundred-year-old church, its wood siding and frame all but petrified by age. I thought about what that aged wood could do to the path of a bullet, how it would twist it and send it reeling off course. Needing to make sure every shot counted, I holstered my .45 and grabbed the Bushmaster from over my shoulder. Clutching it in my right hand, I used my left to hold on as I picked my way up the trunk of the fallen oak. In the darkness, with the deafening sound of the storm, I had a chance, one chance, to surprise Benoit.
As I felt for branches ahead of me, I fought to keep my tennis shoes from slipping on the wet bark, and my mind filled with images of arriving at the country crossroads and seeing Buckshot’s body in flames. Benoit owed David, and he owed me. He owed his father. He owed the little girl he’d tried to murder when he was still a child. But most of all, he owed Buckshot and Joey Warner.
Peter Benoit had an open account that needed to be paid.
My hands reached the pitched roof, and I used a tree limb to pull myself up, then held on to a higher limb, supporting myself while standing on the shingles as all around me bursts of pulsating lightning lit the skyline and the church’s tall, straight, silent bell tower. Benoit had knocked out the shutters, and I clearly saw his silhouette through a window, his back turned toward me. I climbed higher, still bracing myself against a thick, twisted branch, fighting the wind, and I thought about the excitement that must have been flooding through Benoit as he watched the culmination of his intricate plan, his fantasy played out in the form of the rising water creeping ever closer to his young victim.
Finally, I straightened up and stood, and I took aim at Benoit’s back.
Surrounded by the clamor of the storm, he couldn’t have heard me, but as if he sensed my presence, Benoit turned, and the beam from his flashlight found my face. Instantly, I let loose, pulling the Bushmaster’s trigger over and over, the rifle slicing easily through the old wood, splintering it into gaping holes, exploding out sections of the aged church steeple.
All I could think of was obliterating the monster inside.
When I stopped firing, the tower bell began to sound. Rocked by the howling wind and the relentless rain, it rang and rang as I crouched down, watching. I couldn’t see Benoit, and I wondered if he’d fallen or jumped into the church below. Hurrying down the tree, I slipped from one branch to the next, barely keeping my footing. Halfway down, I stopped and turned on my flashlight, peering into the church. Benoit lay crumpled on the floor beneath the bell tower, blood pooling near his chest. I started to go inside, then thought of Joey, and the sheets of rain falling, the water from the pond rising with each passing moment. I looked again at Benoit and made a decision. I turned and ran to the pond.
Rushing forward on the saturated earth, I scanned the ground with my flashlight, searching. I hadn’t gone far when I saw a series of brick-and-mortar pillars, the pilings for the slaves quarters. I followed those to where the earth sloped and saw a rope leading to a small figure, flush on the ground.
The boy’s arms and legs were tied to two of the pilings, and the water had already risen to his shoulders, covering his feet and legs, past his waist, collecting around his neck. With little time to spare, I ran to him, but my tennis shoes slipped out from under me and I fell, hitting my right hip hard. Instead of trying to stand in the rushing rainwater, I rolled over and slithered the rest of the way on my stomach. As I reached him, I grabbed one of the pilings to brace myself. The rain stung my skin as I pulled closer to the boy. His eyes shut tight to keep out the pounding storm, he didn’t see me and couldn’t hear me in the hurricane’s clamor.
Until I wrapped my arm around him, Joey didn’t realize I was even there. I braced myself by wrapping my legs around the higher of the two pillars and pulled out my pocketknife to cut him free, the ropes on his feet first. The boy’s eyes opened, terrified, for just a moment, then snapped shut in the driving rain. Frightened, he squirmed in my grasp. I strained to cut through the final rope, releasing his hands, and the child responded by wrenching his small body away from me. I held tight, reminding myself that he had no way of knowing who I was or why I was there.
My arms tight around him, I carefully eased up onto my knees. As exhausted as my body was, I dragged the boy with me as I crawled up the hill. When I had solid footing on level land, I stood and leaned over to pick him up. The boy felt bone thin but continued to fight with surprising strength to break my hold.
As I made my way back toward the church, I reminded myself to check Benoit, to be sure he was dead. I climbed the steps to the church’s front door and put down the boy. Before I could even try to explain, he turned and ran down the stairs. When I grabbed his arm, I shouted, “I’m a police officer.” If he heard me in the deafening noise of the storm, he didn’t believe me. Again he turned to run, and I clutched his hand tight. I couldn’t hold the boy and the gun and open the door at the same time, and I decided my best option was to return to the hole in the south wall. My shoulders aching, I picked up the boy and carried him.
Fighting the driving wind, I walked along the front of the church, head bowed to keep the rain from my eyes. Just as I neared the corner of the church, there was another burst of lightning so close that for a moment the park glowed as if in daylight, followed by an earsplitting clap of thunder. Frightened, Joey kicked and flailed his arms, at the same time burying his head against my chest. Confused, he didn’t appear to know if he wanted to break free or hide in my arms. As I rounded the corner, I saw what the lightning had hit, a large branch off a second oak tree that lay crossways on top of the tree trunk I’d climbed to the roof.
Still carrying Joey, I hurried to the side of the church. At the foot of the fallen tree, I put the boy down but held him by the hand. Again I shouted, “Joey, I’m a police officer. Can you hear me? I’m a police officer.”
Again, he tried to wrench away, either not hearing me or not understanding. Realizing what I had to do, I pulled the Velcro that held up the flap on the front of my jacket, and the badge painted in yellow dropped. I shone the flashlight on it, pointed at it, and again shouted, “I’m a police officer!” At first, the child looked confused, but then I saw a glimmer of understanding as he realized the badge identified me as someone who could help. Sobbing, he threw his arms around my leg, holding on tight.
Gently, I pushed the boy back until he was beside the church wall, unwrapped his arms from my left shin, and motioned for him to wait. With my Colt .45 in hand, I carefully made my way up the fallen tree trunk, looking for a way into the church. The climb was treacherous as the branch slipped and rocked atop the tree trunk. The higher I climbed, the more obvious it became that the first tree and the newly fallen branch combined to form a tight web, one that blocked my way. I couldn’t squeeze through to get inside the church. Again I focused my flashlight on the floor, directly under the steeple. To my relief, Benoit lay there, still as death.
All around us the storm raged, torrential rain and fierce wind. Another round of ear-shattering thunder and ragged branches of lightning sliced through the black sky. Beneath me, Joey wrapped his arms around his head and screamed, in a state of near panic. Fearing he’d turn and run, I decided I had no choice but to quickly get the boy to safety.
“It’s okay, Joey,” I shouted above the storm as I slid down the tree and grabbed him. “We’ll be okay.”
Once again in my arms, his small body tensed against mine. He hugged my neck tight, and his head tucked into my shoulder. In another blast of lightning, the boy shuddered, and I surveyed Houston’s skyline, wondering where to take him to hide from the storm. We needed to be on higher ground, somewhere protected from the rain and the wind.
Ahead of us stood Heritage Plaza, a monolithic skyscraper with the relief of a Mayan temple at the crest. It was one of Houston’s tallest buildings and would certainly be locked, but I carried the boy, fighting the wind, across the street toward the building. All the while, trash blew past us, and broken window glass crunched under my tennis shoes. Running as fast as I could, I worried that a window-pane would drop from above us, showering us with shards of glass.
“Keep your eyes closed,” I shouted as I covered the boy’s head with one hand, holding him in the crook of the elbow of the other arm. My eyes barely open, I felt my way around the building. Once I saw an entrance to the garage ahead, I hurried, pushing myself forward. I skirted the wooden arm blocking the entry and climbed the ramp. When I got far enough inside, where the rain wasn’t boring down on us, exhaustion took over and my knees began to buckle. Perhaps feeling my weakness, Joey pulled away from my shoulder and looked at me, his face a blotchy mass of red bruises from the beating it had taken in the storm.
“Can you walk?” I asked.
The boy nodded. He appeared stunned and still riding on the edge of fear, but he understood.
I put him down carefully on the parking structure’s concrete floor, then took his hand, and we slowly walked up the ramps and farther up into the garage, looking for a way into the building with the beam from my flashlight. At each deserted floor, we stopped at the entrances to the building, but all were locked. On the garage’s third floor, I tried to break the thick industrial glass insert in the door with the Bushmaster’s barrel, but the rifle merely bounced off.
On level four, I found three vehicles parked against the interior wall, two pickups and an old black Jeep Cherokee. I left Joey standing in an alcove at a door into the building, protected from the wind. I searched the bed of the first pickup, found nothing to help, then the second, and again came away empty-handed. It took two attempts with my rifle barrel to break the Jeep’s window. Once I did, I flipped the locks and opened the back. The alarm went off, and I waited a few moments, but no one came. I pulled up the mat in the back of the Jeep, found the tool kit, and took out the jack. Back at the door, I moved Joey away from the panel of glass in the small window. With the jack’s handle, I struck the window over and over again.
Nothing. Not even a crack in the glass.
After so many tries, my entire body throbbed with pain and exhaustion. I returned to the pickup trucks, broke the glass with the jack handle, and rifled through both. In the second, I discovered a glass-break, a metal tool with a point on the end designed to allow those inside to break a car window to escape if caught in water. “Now this would have come in handy a little earlier,” I said, looking at Joey, who stared up at me questioningly, undoubtedly wondering about the strange woman who’d emerged out of the storm to save him.
It took four hits to shatter the door’s glass insert. I reached in and was flooded with disappointment when I realized it had a keyed lock, not one with a lever I could flip to get inside. I’d nearly given up when a security guard came around a corner into the hallway leading to the door, his gun drawn. He looked as frightened as I was.
“I’m a Texas Ranger,” I shouted, aiming the flashlight on the badge on my jacket and my face, hoping to put him at ease. “I’ve got a little boy here who was kidnapped. We need help.”
The cell phones weren’t working, but the building had a generator running, fueling limited lights and the telephones and cameras in the security office, which was how the guard spotted me. I considered calling Evan Warner, to tell him I had his son, but I didn’t know his parents’ phone number, and directory assistance led to a fast busy. Instead, I put in a call to the Rocking Horse.
“Are you all right?” I screamed into the headset. “Is everybody okay?”
“Yeah, Mom,” Maggie said. “Are you all right?”
“Maggie, I’ve got Joey,” I reassured my daughter. “We’re safe. It’s all right. Everything’s all right.”
All I could hear was my daughter sobbing. Mom took the telephone and said, “We’re fine, Sarah. Everything is fine.”
An hour later, the security guards shared their stash with us, and Joey and I each consumed a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and drank a can of orange pop. Our clothes were soaked, and afterward, one guard found a maintenance uniform for me to wear. Another took off his white cotton undershirt for Joey. Then they opened an office for us, a law firm’s posh reception area with two big, soft leather couches. I laid Joey on one couch and then claimed the other, my battered body sore. Moments passed and I’d started to drift into sleep when I felt the boy slip onto the couch with me, nesting his small body against mine, looking for comfort. I said nothing, only held him. We’d both been through so much, but he was alive. He’d have the opportunity to grow up, to one day be a man.
As I felt myself finally give in to my overwhelming fatigue, Joey said his first words to me, and I thought my heart might break.
“Did my momma send you?” he asked. “When the storm’s over, can we call her to come get me?”