Without remorse - Tom Clancy [249]
'Doris, we all make mistakes. God made us imperfect. You have to accept that, and you have to try to do better all the time. We don't always succeed - but you did succeed. You're back now. The bad things are behind you, and with a little work you can leave them behind you forever.'
'I will,' she said with determination. 'I really will. I've seen ... and done ... such awful things ...'
Meyer was a difficult man to shock. Clergymen were in the profession of listening to stories about the reality of hell, because sinners could not accept forgiveness until they were able to forgive themselves, a task which always required a sympathetic ear and a calm voice of love and reason. But what he heard now did shock him. He tried to freeze his body into place. Above all he tried to remember that what he heard was indeed behind his afflicted parishioner as over the course of twenty minutes he learned of things that even he had never dreamed of, things from another time, since his service as a young Army chaplain in Europe. There was a devil in creation, something for which his Faith had prepared him, but the face of Lucifer was not for unprotected eyes of men- certainly not for the eyes of a young girl whom an angry father had mistakenly driven away at a young and vulnerable age.
It only got worse. Prostitution was frightening enough. What damage it did to young women could last a lifetime, and he was grateful to learn that Doris was seeing Dr Bryant, a wonderfully gifted physician to whom he'd referred two of his flock. For several minutes he shared Doris's pain and shame while her father bravely held her hand, fighting back his own tears.
Then it turned to drugs, first the use of them, then the transfer of them to other, evil men. She was honest through it all, trembling, with tears dripping from her eyes, facing a past to make the strongest of hearts quail. Next came the recounting of sexual abuse, and, finally, the worst part of all.
It became very real to Pastor Meyer. Doris seemed to remember it all - as well she might. It would take all of Dr Bryant's skills to drive this horror into the past. She told the story in the manner of a motion picture, seemingly leaving nothing out. That was a healthy thing, to put it all in the open in this way. Healthy for Doris. Even healthy for her father. But Charles Meyer necessarily became the recipient of the horror that others were attempting to cast away. Lives had been lost. Innocent lives - victims' lives, two girls not unlike the one before him, murdered in a way worthy of ... damnation, the pastor told himself in a voice of sadness mixed with rage.
'The kindness you showed to Pam, my dear, that is one of the most courageous things I've ever heard,' the pastor said quietly, after it was all over, moved nearly to tears himself. 'That was God, Doris. That was God acting through your hands and showing you the goodness of your character.'
'You think so?' she asked, bursting then into uncontrolled tears.
He had to move then, and he did, kneeling in front of father and daughter, taking their hands in his. 'God waited you, and saved you, Doris. Your father and I prayed for this moment. You've come back, and you won't ever do things like that again.' Pastor Meyer couldn't know what he hadn't been told, the things that Doris had deliberately left out. He knew that a Baltimore physician and nurse had restored his parisioner to physical health. He didn't know how Doris had come to that point, and Meyer assumed that she'd escaped, as the girl Pam had almost done. Nor did he know that Dr Bryant had been warned to keep all of this information close. That might not have mattered in any case. There were other girls still in the control of this Billy person and his friend Rick. As he had dedicated his life to denying souls to Lucifer, so also he had a duty to deny their bodies to him. He had to be careful. A conversation like this one was privileged in the ultimate sense. He could counsel Doris to speak with the police, though he could never force her to do so. But as a citizen,