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“That makes sense, but why are you still carrying it around now that…” Kate paused.“After Brandon took his life?”
“I failed to stop him,” she said, harshly.“I deserve to be reminded of that.”
Kate had heard some lame excuses in her time.People “looking after” various quantities of drugs for complete strangers they’d recently met in bars.The guy who said the .44 Magnum revolver belonged to his six-year-old daughter.But Judith Montgomery’s explanation for carrying a knife could have been true.A slight, nervous, and wide-eyed woman sporting a roll-neck pullover and a large wooden crucifix, she clearly lived by different rules than most people.
And in Kate’s view, you could live by whatever rules you liked.But when you terrified a pair of little girls who’d just lost their father by appearing in their kitchen armed with a stun gun and a knife, you deserved to get locked up.On top of which, she thought, being locked up might actually be Judith Montgomery’s best chance of getting some help.
“I need to understand what you were doing there.”
The woman stopped muttering.She had a silvery page-boy cut, and one those faces, Kate thought, that could be any age, between twenty-five and fifty.“God spoke to me this morning.And He told me to go to see the man’s widow and comfort her.”
“You say you were there to comfort her, but can you see how walking into her home uninvited, when her two little girls are on their own… can you see how thatwouldn’tcomfort Mrs.Whitman?That it would actually terrify her?”
It seemed that Dr.Nardone, Whitman’s widow, had popped next door for a moment, leaving the girls eating pancakes in the kitchen, and the back door ajar.Judith Montgomery – possibly seeing the open door as encouragement from God – had simply walked in.On returning home and finding a stranger in the kitchen, Dr.Nardone had screamed so loud that the neighborhood security patrol came barreling in with their guns drawn.
“We have both suffered at the hands of that man.We have both lost.The Lord in His mercy gave me this task so that I might better understand His love.”
Kate sighed.Anyone who could lose a son to suicide and still talk about God’s love was a better believer than her.Or more deluded.
“But most people won’t believe your explanation.Most people would look at the evidence and conclude something different.They’d look at the fact that your son had a bad experience in Professor Whitman’s class, and that you blamed him for your son’s suicide.They’d look at that letter you wrote, in which you accused him of killing your boy, in which you also quoted the Book of Deuteronomy.‘Vengeance is mine.’”
“If you studied your Bible,” Mrs.Montgomery said, “you would know that the verse goes ‘Vengeance is mine,saith the Lord.’In other words, God will take revenge, not me or any other mortal human.God alone.”
Debating Bible verses in a downtown police precinct.Not what the FBI stand had promised at the careers fair.
“You also said ‘all sinners will be destroyed, there shall be no future for the wicked,’” Kate said.“I believe that’s Psalm 37.”
“Again.God’s work.Not mine.”
“What about ‘I intend to make you suffer as I have suffered?’I don’t believe that’s a Bible quote at all, Judith.It’s a clear threat.”
“For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.”
“Which means what?God doesn’t want us to be angry?I think you are angry, though, Judith, and I don’t blame you.Nobody would blame you.It’s what you decided to do with the anger.”
“I allowed it into my heart, and it clouded my sight.”
Was that from the Bible?Kate decided to change tack.
“Judith, where were you on the evening of the twelfth?”
Judith continued to mutter for a moment or two.“I was at home all evening.”
“Talk to anyone?Receive any visitors?”
“Virtue paid me a call.”
For a moment, Kate thought this was another scriptural quote.Or a song title.Then she remembered that the next door neighbor with the baby was called Virtue.
“She invited me to supper, but I didn’t want to see anyone.”
Kate felt momentarily glad that Judith had someone looking in on her.It was another reminder of how bizarre this case was turning out.She was interviewing a murder suspect.And yet she felt concerned for her welfare.
“What time was that?”
“Around seven.”
Based on temperature readings at the crime scene, forensics estimated the fire to have started at some point between nine and eleven in the evening.
