Deadlock by James Scott Bell Read Free Book Online

did not see the senator. Had he been too drunk to follow?
    Over the course of her judicial career, the one thing Millie Hollander had avoided was publicity. If a judge was making headlines, either through judicial opinion or personal transgression, she wasn’t doing her job.
    She was angry at herself for allowing this to happen. She should not have let her guard down, even for a moment. She was not cut out to be with men in any romantic situation, nor they with her. She’d made that decision years ago, after Marty Winters. She should have stuck with that decision.
    As she reached the sidewalk on the edge of the park, looking for the roof light that would indicate a taxi, she noticed a figure slowly making his way toward her, from the right.
    He was dressed thickly, as if in several layers of clothes. His hair and face were caked with dirt. Even in the dim light she could tell that this was one of the city’s homeless.
    She turned her back and started to walk slowly away from him. Her body buzzed with an adrenaline surge. Was this what it felt like to be mugged? She had been so long in an ivory tower, and suddenly she felt ashamed. Her judicial decisions affected people like this, all people, really. But how much did she know about what went on in their daily lives?
    She glanced back and saw that the man, in a slow but steady shuffle, was following her.
    Millie’s nerves crackled. She looked desperately to the street and saw a taxi coming her way. She put her arm up, more frantically than she wanted to, and waved stupidly at it. It passed by. She saw people sitting in the back. A man and a woman. They appeared to be laughing.
    She turned. The homeless man was only a few feet away now. For one moment she could not move.
    “You still have time,” the man said.
    He took another step toward her, and she could barely make out his eyes. They were wild yet full of some crazy earnestness. Pleading almost.
    “You still have time!” he shouted, jerking forward.
    Fear engulfing her, Millie stumbled backward. Her shoe caught the edge of the curb. Her body lurched into the street.
    She heard the squeal of tires, and suddenly light seemed all around her, coming from every angle, blinding her. And then every part of her body felt as if it had exploded as she was hit by a force that lifted her up for a sprawling moment. Then she felt herself falling, and the ground, unforgiving, slamming her head. And then the light turned to darkness.

CHAPTER TWO
     
     

     
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    No one would have faulted her for staying seated at her age, but Ethel Hollander had to kneel. Tonight she knew she had to pray on her knees.
    She and fifteen prayer warriors were at the church for the weekly prayer meeting. It started late, usually around nine o’clock, so Allard Jones could make it. He worked in Bakersfield, an hour north of Santa Lucia, and never wanted to be left out. Allard, like Ethel, had helped build Santa Lucia Community Church.
    The building was built by a congregation of twenty back in 1964. It was simple and boxy outside. But inside there was a history as full of warmth and life as anything the Lord had created.
    Ethel Hollander had over fifty years invested in this church congregation. She’d seen the good times and the bad. The old building went down in the earthquake of ’57. They built it right back up. And when they broke ground for the new building in ’64, they’d given the shovel to Ethel Hollander.
    If someone had asked her what held the church together, Ethel wouldn’t have hesitated to say prayer.
    She knew Pastor Holden agreed. He was such a man of prayer. He hadn’t been here long but he was already, in her mind, the best preacher they’d ever had. And he had a line on prayer, like his soul was attuned to things in a special way.
    It had to be, in part, because of what he’d gone through. Ethel knew only part of the story. He’d come to the valley to be restored. He was just over fifty, but he’d had enough tragedy for