Justice Denied by J. A. Jance Page B

her say something about how dare he do something or other, but I didn’t hear the rest of it.”
    “Could it have been related to Mr. Tompkins’s death?”
    Sister Cora shrugged. “I suppose so,” she said. “A few minutes later Sister Elaine came out and asked me to call her a cab. Then she left.”
    “Did she happen to mention to you where she was going or where the cab would be taking her?”
    Sister Cora shook her head. “She just said ‘Get me a cab,’ and I did. It was green, I think.”
    But I happen to know that cab companies have records. They keep track of where and when they pick up fares; they also know where they drop them off.
    “Tell me about Friday night,” I said. “Were you here at dinner?”
    Sister Cora nodded. “We all were. The only excuse for missing dinner is if you’re working at an outside job. With Brother LaShawn it was different, though. He was taking care of his mother, so that was all right. He had an excused absence, but everyone else was supposed to be here, and they were.”
    “How many people is that?” I asked.
    “Without Brother LaShawn and Sister Elaine, we’re down to thirty-six. We can hold forty max.”
    “The King Street Mission isn’t exactly on the beaten path. How do people find this place?” I asked. “How do they know to come here?”
    “My parole officer told me about it,” she said. “Praise God for that,” she added. “Otherwise I’d probably be dead by now.”
    But LaShawn Tompkins is dead, I thought. So that was small comfort.
    “How does this place work?” I asked.
    “Work?” she asked.
    “Do you pay rent, or what?”
    Sister Cora shook her head. “There’s no rent,” she said. “But we have to obey all the rules. If you break one, you’re gone—O-U-T.”
    “And the rules are?”
    “No booze. No drugs. No cigarettes. You do your assigned chores. You attend classes, work at the thrift store, do whatever needs to be done. We’re here to better ourselves. To learn to make better choices.”
    “How long do people stay?” I asked.
    “As long as it takes,” Sister Cora answered. “Sometimes it’s only a couple of months. Sometimes it’s longer. I’ll be leaving in another month or so, after I get my new teeth.”
    “New teeth?”
    “I get fitted for them next week. A dentist volunteered to fit me for free. I can hardly wait.”
    Without teeth Sister Cora looked like an old woman, although she was probably only in her midthirties. I tried to imagine how she’d look with new teeth. She’d most likely still look like she’d been rode hard and put up wet, but not as bad as she did right now.
    “What about money?” I asked. “If you’re doing all this volunteer work and taking classes and studying the Bible, what do you do for spending money?”
    “We don’t need spending money,” she said simply. “The Lord provides for our needs while we’re here. We earn credits for the chores we do and for however many classes we take. If we do work at outside jobs, we turn that money over to the treasurer, who holds it until we leave. Then, when it’s time to go, we have that money and whatever is in our credit account to use to get started outside—for an apartment deposit or whatever. It’s like a little savings account.”
    Yes, I thought. At the bank of Pastor Mark.
    I wondered what kind of interest rate the good pastor paid, or if he paid any at all. Sister Cora’s impending teeth notwithstanding, I kept trying to figure out if this wasn’t some kind of scam. Maybe King Street Mission was the sort of place where if Pastor Mark directed the residents to swill down a cup of arsenic-laced Kool-Aid, they would all say “Bottoms up” and guzzle away.
    The front door opened. A man in a suit and properly knotted bow tie slammed his way in through the door and then strode across the room. I had him pegged for an attorney long before he opened his mouth.
    “Is this man disturbing you, Sister Cora?” he demanded.
    She looked at