Redemption: A Jo Walker Mystery

Karen Starkins
Copyright 2022 by Karen Starkins
All rights reserved
ISBN: 979-8-9873582-0-7
First edition: October 4, 2023

Prologue

Angela stepped forward, hurrying down the alley, and out across the street. She stopped two blocks away from the cathedral. The late news tumbled in muted voices from apartment buildings nearby. Doors slammed as waiters carried the last of the trash to the alley dumpsters. The city was closing for the night. Time was slipping away from her. Yet still she huddled immobile against a wall in the darkness just beyond the circle of light cast by a street light.

Blue–white light pulsated from each passing car. A couple approached along the sidewalk. She edged forward. They were old, older even than her mother and father, she thought. They talked softly, leaning into each other. The girl ached to run to them begging help. She took a tentative step forward, barely touching the ring of light, her body still, in shadow, only her face lit by the streetlight. She folded her arms around her slender frame. She stood mute. She didn’t know the language. The plea tumbled through her in the fluid waves of her native tongue. But it did not escape her.

The girl watched from the dark as her chance slid by in soft voices. It was her only chance, but she didn’t know that. She still hoped she would find help at the cathedral, visible now, silhouetted by the city lights. In her home, the church was a place of refuge. The men that took her, they said no one would help her if she ran, that the Americans didn’t care. They would throw her in prison. But wasn’t God the same here as He was at home? The priests would help her.

Even if the priests couldn’t help, she had his phone. She could make a trade with it. Its owner would want it back, desperately, she thought. It was dangerous, she knew. She had taken pictures with it and she had stolen it. To get it back he would help her. He bragged of how powerful he was. And she believed him because she saw how the other men treated him. But she knew full well that she would need someone else’s help to negotiate the trade. She couldn’t do it by herself.

She stepped out between two parked cars. She thought she heard scuffing steps behind her. But when she looked, there was only the dark alley.

Ahead on the next street corner was a blue mailbox, squat and ugly under a dim streetlight. In her mind she made this a temporary goal, to reach this mailbox . . . a waypoint on her desperate journey.

She was nearly breathless by the time she came to the box, and leaned against it, panting for air. Then she brushed past it and moved on.

Moments later she was running up to the cathedral steps. She crouched beside a young tree. Barren of leaves, it offered no cover. She feared the bright lights that lit the cathedral entrance. She was close, so close.

She gathered her courage for a final push and sprinted up the concrete steps. She grabbed the handle of the giant golden door and pulled. It didn’t move. She pulled again. Still it didn’t open. In rising panic she ran from one door to the next pulling frantically on each. None opened. She heard a soft scuffle back from where she had crossed the street. Panicked, she ran, away from the cathedral, away from the sound. She was in a small garden that nestled against the cathedral’s eastern side. She ran past a statue of Mary, the Virgin’s arms translucent in the dim light, lifting toward heaven in supplication. The girl prayed to Mary as she ran. Or was it to her own mother that she cried out? Anyone, anyone who would offer salvation from what pursued her.

She heard him running behind her as she exited the garden. She didn’t turn to look and didn’t call out again for help. She just ran breathless and sobbing. She was halfway across the parking lot when he caught her, grabbing her throat from behind. She felt her head jerk as he yanked her backwards, his fingers clawing into the soft skin of her neck, twisting her head. She passed out seconds before her neck snapped.