Redemption Road

9

Ellen Bondurant married young and well, then at forty-one learned a bitter truth about fading looks and selfish men. At first she was bewildered, then heartbroken and sad. In the end she was numb, so that when her husband presented papers, she signed them. Her attorney said she was being naïve, but that was not the truth, either. The money embarrassed her and always had: the cars and parties and diamonds as large as acorns. All she wanted was the man she thought she’d married.

But he was long gone.

Now, she lived with her dogs in a small house by a creek in the country, and her life had become a simple thing. She trained horses to make money and liked to walk the open spaces when she could: low country by the river if she was feeling contemplative; ridgelines to the old church and back if she wanted views.

Today, she chose the church.

“Come on, boys.”

She called the dogs, then set out on foot, the route taking her on a steep angle to a trail that followed a line of hills to the southeast. She felt light as she moved, and younger than her forty-nine years. It was the work, she knew, the early mornings in the saddle, the long hours with longe line and whip. Her skin was leathered and lined, but she was proud of what her hands could do, how they worked unceasingly in snow and rain and heat.

She stopped at the top of the first hill, her house, far below, like a toy dropped behind plastic trees. Ahead of her, the trail curled higher, then leveled for three miles as the ridgeline bent west and the earth fell away on either side. When the church appeared, its stark and stately beauty struck her as it always did: the granite steps, the iron cross, fallen and twisted.

Slipping a bit as the trail dipped into the saddle of the forgotten church, Ellen felt the difference without understanding it. The dogs were agitated, their heads low as they tracked an invisible scent and whined low in their throats. They went halfway around the church, then came back at a run, noses snuffling at the base of the broad steps as they crisscrossed each other’s path and fur lifted in strips between their shoulder blades.

She whistled for the dogs, but they ignored her. The largest one, a yellow Lab she called Tom, lunged up the stairs, his nails clicking.

“What is it, boy?”

Grass whispered on her legs, and she noticed tire tracks near the door. People did come here; it happened. But they usually parked on the dirt road or in the gravel lot. These tracks went all the way to the door.

She stopped at the bottom step and, peering up, realized what else was different. The doors were slabs of oak, the handles black iron as thick as her arm. For as long as she could remember, the handles had been chained together, but today the chain was cut, and the right-side door stood ajar.

Suddenly afraid, Ellen looked longingly up the hill. She should leave-she felt it-but Tom stood at the door, a whine in his throat. “It’s okay, boy.” She caught the dog’s collar and stepped through the door. Beyond the threshold, it was dim, the darkness cut by blades of light through boarded windows. The ceiling rose, vaulted and dark, but the altar held her. On either side, boards had been pulled from the windows so that light spilled in and lit it like a jewel. She saw white and red and black; and her first thought was Snow White. That was the feeling; a stillness that bordered on reverence, the hair and skin and nails stained red. It took five steps to realize what she was seeing, and when she did, she froze as if her body, entire, had turned to ice. “Sweet Lord.” She felt the world freeze, too. “Oh, my dear, sweet, merciful Lord.”

Beckett sipped coffee in the back booth of his regular diner. It was a favorite local joint, the booths filled with businessmen, mechanics, and mothers with young children. A plate of bacon and eggs was pushed off to the side, half-eaten. He hadn’t slept much and wanted to smoke for the first time in over twenty years. It was Liz’s fault. The worry. The stress. She liked to maintain a border between the personal life and the professional. Okay, fine. She wasn’t like other partners he’d had, didn’t want to talk about the opposite sex or sports or the difference between a good lay and a great one. She kept quiet about her past and her fears, lied about how much she slept and drank, and why she cared enough to be a cop in the first place. But, hey, that was cool. Space mattered-freaking boundaries-and that was fine until the lies went from small and harmless to scary, frightful, seriously fuckin’ dark.

She was lying.

Channing Shore was lying, too.

To make the problem very real, little birdies were telling him that Hamilton and Marsh had not left town. They’d been to the abandoned house and tried twice to meet with Channing Shore. They’d pulled every complaint ever filed against Liz and were, at that very moment, interviewing Titus Monroe’s widow. What they hoped to gain was beyond him, but that they were even having the conversation spoke volumes.

They wanted Liz. That meant they’d get around to him eventually; try to trip him up or turn him. After all, he’d known Liz since she was a rookie. They’d been partners for four years. The problem for them, however, would be simple. Liz was a solid cop. Steady. Smart. Dependable.

Until the basement…

That thought stuck in his mind as he tried to figure out what Liz was thinking when she’d told the state cops who were out to hang her that the men she’d killed weren’t men, after all, but animals. It went beyond dangerous. It was self-destructive, insane; and the absence of an easy explanation troubled him. Liz was a special kind of cop. She wasn’t a numbers guy like Dyer or a gung ho head breaker like half the assholes he’d come up with. She wasn’t in it for the thrill or the power or because, like him, she was too used up for anything better. He’d seen her soul when she thought no one was looking, and at times it was so beautiful it hurt. It was a ridiculous thought, and he knew it; but if he could ask one question and get an actual answer, it would be why she became a cop at all. She was driven and smart and could have been anything. Yet, she’d thrown the interview, and that made no sense at all.

Then, there was Adrian Wall.

Beckett thought, again, of Liz as a rookie: the way she’d mooned over Adrian, hung on his every word as if he had some special insight every other cop lacked. Her fascination had an unsettling effect, not just because it was so obvious but because half the cops on the force hoped she’d look at them the same way. Adrian’s conviction should have ended the doe-eyed infatuation. Failing that, thirteen years of incarceration should have done the job. He was a convict, and broken in a hundred different ways. Yet, Beckett had watched Liz at Nathan’s, how she slid into the car with Adrian, the way her breath caught, and how her eyes hung on Adrian’s lips when he spoke. She still felt for him, still believed.

That was a problem.

It was all a giant, fucking problem.

Frustrated, Beckett pushed the coffee cup away and signaled for the check. The waitress brought it in a slow, easy step. “Anything else, Detective?”

“Not this morning, Melody.”

She put the check facedown as the phone in Beckett’s pocket vibrated. He dug it out, squinted at the screen, then answered, “Beckett.”

“Hey, it’s James Randolph. You got a minute?”

James was another detective. Older than Beckett. Smart. A brawler. “What’s up, James?”

“You know an Ellen Bondurant?”

Beckett searched his memory and came up with a woman from six or seven years ago. “I remember her. Divorce case gone bad. Her husband violated a restraining order; smashed up the house, I think. What about her?”

“She’s holding on line two.”

“That was seven years ago. Can’t you handle it?”

“What can I tell you, Beckett? She’s upset. She wants you.”

“All right, fine.” Beckett stretched an arm across the back of the booth. “Patch her through.”

“Hang on.”

The line crackled with static, then clicked twice. When Ellen Bondurant came on the line, she was calmer than Beckett had expected.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Detective, but I remember how nice you were to me.”

“It’s okay, Ms. Bondurant. What can I do for you?”

She laughed and sounded forlorn. “All I wanted was to take a walk.”

When Beckett hit the drive below the church, he had Detective Randolph back on the phone. “I’m not sure yet.” The car stuttered over washboard ruts, the church high above. “Just get everything on standby. Some uniforms, crime scene, the medical examiner. This may be a false alarm, but it doesn’t feel like it.”

“Is it the same?”

“I don’t know, yet.”

“Should I tell Dyer?”

Beckett considered the question. Dyer was a good administrator, but not the best cop in the world. He took things personally and tended to delay even if hesitation was dangerous. Then there was the location, the fact Adrian was fresh out of prison, and the chance it could actually be the same. In Beckett’s heart he thought Dyer had never fully recovered from his partner’s being a killer. Questions had rattled around the department for years.

How did Dyer miss it?

What kind of cop could he possibly be?

“Listen, James. Francis could get a little twitchy on this one. Let’s make sure what we’re dealing with first. Just sit tight until I call you back.”

“Don’t leave me hanging.”

Thirteen years had passed since Adrian killed Julia Strange in the same church, but Randolph felt it, too: the dark charge. This could change everything. Lives. The city.

Liz…

Beckett dropped the phone in a pocket, put both hands on the wheel, and stared through the windshield as the church humped up above him. Even now, the place disturbed him in a deeply fundamental way. The building was old, the grounds overgrown with dog fennel and horseweed and scrub pine. That wasn’t the problem so much as the history of the place. It started with Julia Strange. Her murder was bad enough, but even after the church was abandoned, the death lingered like an aftertaste. Vandals broke glass and toppled headstones; they spray-painted the walls and floors with profanity and satanic symbols. For years after that, vagrants moved in and out. They left bottles and condoms and the remains of cooking fires, one of which got out of control enough to burn part of the structure and topple the cross. But, you could see old glories if you looked: the massive stones and the granite steps, even the cross itself, which stood for almost two hundred years before being twisted in the fall. Beckett’s religious convictions had not entirely faded, so maybe his discomfort stemmed from guilt for all the wrongs he’d done. Maybe it was the contrast of good and evil, or perhaps from memories of how the church had been, of Sunday mornings and song, his partner’s life, before.

Whatever the cause, he was unhappy enough to grind his teeth and clench the wheel. When his car crested the ridge, he saw the Bondurant woman standing in tall grass with two dogs at her side, one of them barking. He hit the brakes and slid to a halt. None of the wrongness dissipated.

“They’re friendly,” she called.

Beckett had yet to meet a Lab that wasn’t. He greeted the woman by name, then took in the church and the fields and the distant forest. “You walked up here?”

“My house is that way.” She pointed. “Three miles. I walk here a few times a week.”

“Did you see anyone?” She shook her head, and he gestured at the church. “Did you touch anything?”

“The door handle on the right side.”

“Anything else?”

“The chain was already cut. I stopped long before I got to the… uh, uh…”

“It’s okay.” Beckett nodded. “Tell me the last time you were up here.”

“A few days. Three, maybe.”

“Did you see people, then?”

“Not then, but on occasion. I find trash, sometimes. Beer bottles. Cigarettes. Old campfires. You know how this place can be.” Her voice broke at the end.

Beckett reminded himself that civilians didn’t see bodies the way cops did. “I’m going to go inside and take a look. You stay here. I’ll have more questions.”

“It’s the same, isn’t it?”

He saw fear in her eyes as trees rustled above the church, and one of the dogs pulled against its leash. “Sit tight,” he said. “I won’t be long.”

Beckett left her where she stood and made for the church, stopping briefly to examine the tire tracks in the grass. Nothing remarkable, he thought. Maybe they could get an imprint. Probably not.

Stepping across the fallen chain, he moved into the dark and heat. Ten feet in it was close to black, so he waited for his eyes to adjust. After a moment, the void gathered itself into a low-ceilinged, dim space with sconces in the walls, a stairwell to the left, and closet doors broken from their hinges. Stepping through the narthex, he fumbled his way to the double doors that led into the nave. Once beyond them, the ceiling soared away, and while it remained dim at his end of the church, light spilled through stained glass at both transepts to illuminate the altar and the woman on it. Colors were in the light-blues and greens and reds-and lines of shadow from iron in the glass. Otherwise, the light speared in like a blade to pin the body where it lay, to put color in the skin and on linen that was white and crisp and ran from feet to chin. Beckett’s first impression was of black hair and stillness and red nails, the image so familiar and haunting it transfixed him where he stood.

“Please, don’t be the same…”

He was talking to himself, but couldn’t help it. Light lit her like a jewel in a case, but it was more than that. It was the tilt of her jaw, the apple-skin nails.

“Jesus.”

Beckett crossed himself from an almost-forgotten childhood habit, then worked his way past broken floorboards and lumps of rotted carpet. He made his way between tumbled pews, and with each step the illusion of perfection crumbled more. Color fell out of the light. Pale skin dulled to gray, and marks of violence rose as if by magic. Bruising. Ligature marks. Torn fingertips. Beckett took the last, few steps, and, at the altar, looked down. The victim was young, with dark hair and eyes shot through with blood. She was stretched on the altar as Julia Strange had been, her arms crossed on the linen, her neck blackened and crushed. He studied the choke marks, the eyes, the lips that were nearly bitten through. He lifted the linen to find her nude beneath it, the body pale and unmarked and otherwise perfect. Beckett lowered the sheet and felt a surge of unexpected emotion.

The Bondurant woman was right.

It was the same.

The sun burned through the trees as Elizabeth drove Channing down the mountain. It was quiet in the car until they approached Channing’s neighborhood. When the girl spoke, her voice was quiet, yet wound like a coil. “Have you ever gone back to the place it happened?”

“I just took you there. I just showed it to you.”

“You took me to the quarry, not to the place it happened. You pointed. You talked about it. We never went near the little pine where the boy knocked you down. I’m asking if you’ve ever stood on the exact spot.”

They stopped in front of Channing’s house, and Elizabeth killed the engine. Beyond the hedge, brick and stone rose, inviolate. “I wouldn’t choose to do that. Not now. Not ever.”

“It’s just a place. It doesn’t hurt.”

Elizabeth turned in her seat, appalled. “Did you go back to the crime scene, Channing? Please tell me you did not go alone into that godforsaken house.”

“I lay down on the place it happened.”

“What? Why?”

“Should I try to kill myself, instead?”

Channing was angry, now, a wall going up between them. Elizabeth wanted to understand, but struggled. The girl’s eyes were bright as dimes. The rest of her seemed to hum. “Are you upset with me for some reason?”

“No. Yes. Maybe.”

Elizabeth tried to remember how it felt to be eighteen, to be stripped to the bone and held together with tape. It wasn’t difficult. “Why did you go back?”

“The men are dead. The place is all that’s left.”

“That’s not true,” Elizabeth said. “You remain, and so do I.”

“I don’t think I do.” Channing opened the door, climbed out. “And I think maybe you don’t, either.”

“Channing…”

“I can’t talk about this right now. I’m sorry.”

The girl kept her head down as she walked away. Elizabeth watched her move up the drive and fade into the trees. She would make it into the house unnoticed or the parents who didn’t know what to do with her would discover her creeping through the window. Neither outcome would help the girl. One of them could make things a whole lot worse. She was still thinking about that when her phone rang. It was Beckett, and he was as twisted up as the girl.

“How fast can you get to your father’s church?”

“His church?”

“Not the new one. The old one.”

“You’re talking about-”

“Yeah, that one. How fast?”

“Why?”

“Just answer the question.”

Elizabeth looked at her watch, and her stomach rolled over. “I can be there in fourteen minutes.”

“I need you here in ten.”

Beckett hung up before she could ask another question.

Ten minutes.

He stood by the window in the north transept. Bits of colored glass had been broken out years earlier, but much of it remained. He peered through a hole and watched the world as if he could see the storm coming. Adrian had been out of prison for barely a day. When news of another murder broke, it would go viral. The church. The altar. It was too big, too gothic. The city would call for blood, and everything would come under scrutiny. The sentencing guidelines. The judge and the cops. Maybe even the prison.

How did the system let another woman die?

If news of Gideon’s shooting broke, too, the storm would spin out of control. Beckett saw how the papers would play it, not just as a story of murder and family and failed revenge, but of systemic incompetence as the first victim’s child slips through every crack in the system only to be shot in the shadow of the prison. Someone would figure out that Liz had been at Nathan’s, and that would make the cops look even worse. She was the angel of death, the department’s largest black eye since Adrian himself. The city was already turning against her. How bad would it get when people learned she’d worked to keep Gideon clear of social services? It was a royal mess, all of it. Dyer would never allow Liz on the scene.

But, Beckett wanted her here. She was his partner and friend, and she still had feelings for Adrian. Beckett needed to fix that.

“Come on, Liz.”

He paced to the altar and back.

“Come on, damn it.”

Seven minutes later, his phone rang, and James Randolph’s number popped on the screen. Beckett didn’t answer.

“Come on, come on.”

At the ten-minute mark, Randolph called again, then again. When the fourth call made the phone burr in his pocket, Beckett ripped it out and answered.

Randolph was frustrated. “What the hell, Charlie? I’ve got the ME on hold and eight cops staring at me like I’m crazy.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Beckett heard voices in the background, the clatter of gear.

“Are we rolling or not?”

Beckett saw a car on the road. It crested the hill at speed, then slowed. He gave it a five count to make sure, then said, “You can roll, James. Call Dyer, too. He’ll be twitchy, like I said. Just tell him it’s my call. Tell him it’s the same.”

“Goddamn.”

“One other thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Find Adrian Wall.”

Beckett then walked outside to meet Liz on the worn, granite steps of her childhood church. Even at a distance, her unhappiness was unmistakable. She was moving slowly, her eyes on the great trees, the fallen steeple. It was going to get ugly, and Beckett hated that.

“I never come here,” she said.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

They met on the bottom step, and Beckett hated the way doubt colored every glance. The church had been the center of her life for years: the congregation, her parents, and childhood. Though it had never been a rich church, it had been old and influential. Most of that changed after Julia Strange died on the altar. She’d been married in the church; her son was baptized there. Most of the congregation never got past her death or the desecration of their church. The few who persevered insisted on moving to a new location. Elizabeth’s father fought the idea, and her mother, in the end, forced the issue: How can we pray where one of our own died alone and in fear? How can we christen our children? Marry our young people? Her impassioned pleas swayed even her husband, who broke, it was said, with exceptional grace. What followed was a clapboard structure on a skinny lot in a dangerous part of town. The church continued as best it could, but only a fraction of the congregation made the move. Most drifted off to join First Baptist or United Methodist or some other church. Liz’s life changed after that.

Her parents descended into obscurity.

Adrian Wall went to prison.

“We don’t have much time,” Beckett said.

“Why not?”

“Because Dyer will arrest us both if he finds you here.”

He pushed into the interior, and Elizabeth followed him through the darkened narthex and into the light beyond. She moved as if it hurt and kept her eyes down until the balcony passed above her head, and the ceiling rose up. Beckett watched her face as she took in the rafters and the char and the fixtures hung like iron crowns. She turned a bit, but kept her gaze from the altar, let it light first on windows and walls and a thousand shadowed places. He could not imagine her thoughts, and nothing on her face betrayed them. She held stoic and straight, and when she finally faced the altar, it took three seconds for her to acknowledge that she understood what she was seeing.

“Why are you showing me this?”

“You know exactly why.”

“Adrian didn’t do this.”

“Same church. Same altar.”

“Just because he’s out of prison…”

Beckett took her arm and pulled her to the altar she’d known since birth. “Look at her.”

“Who is she?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Beckett said it harsh and hard. “Look at her.”

“I have.”

“Look deeper.”

“There is no deeper. Okay? She’s dead. It’s the same. Is that what you want to hear?”

Liz was sweating, but it was a thin, cold sweat. Beckett saw enough on her face to understand what she was feeling inside: childhood and betrayal, the hard turns of an ugly disbelief. This was her church. Adrian was her hero.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“Because you’re not thinking straight. Because I need you to understand that Adrian Wall is a killer, and that your obsession with him is dangerous.”

“There’s no obsession.”

“Then stay away from him.”

“Or what?” There was the spark, the heat. “Why do you hate him so much? He didn’t kill Julia Strange. He didn’t kill this one, either.”

“Jesus, Liz. Listen to yourself.” Beckett frowned, frustrated by his inability to do this simple thing. Liz’s faith in Adrian Wall had burned a lot of bridges when she was a rookie. Cops distrusted her, thought her flawed and female and irrational. It took years for her colleagues to fully accept her, and longer still for her to walk the station without a chip on her shoulder. Beckett had seen it. He’d lived it. “Try to look at this like a cop. Okay?”

“As opposed to what? An astronaut? A housewife?”

He was making it worse. Same chip on her shoulder. Same bitterness.

“He didn’t do it, Charlie.”

“Damn it, Liz-”

“I was with him last night.”

“What?”

“He wasn’t interested in something like this. He wasn’t interested in people, at all. He was… sad.”

“Sad? Do you even hear yourself?”

“You shouldn’t have brought me here.” She turned and started walking. “It was a mistake,” she said, and Beckett knew she was right.

He’d played it ten kinds of wrong.

He’d lost her.