Redemption Road

11

Elizabeth left her partner on the street and drove west until the road crested a high ridge, and the sun flattened like a disk against the earth. Adrian was either lying or not, and Elizabeth could think of only one place to find the answer she needed. So she followed a two-lane out of town and ten minutes later turned onto the long, dark drive of a five-hundred-acre estate that bordered the river where it ran fast and white at the bottom of a tall bluff. Box bushes scraped paint as she pushed into the property. Branches hung low above the drive, and when it dead-ended, she climbed from the car. The house loomed beneath a dimming sky, and she felt the history of it as she stepped onto the porch. George Washington slept here, once. So did Daniel Boone, a half dozen governors. The current resident-though once equally impressive-came to the door in a poplin suit that looked slept in. He was unshaven, his face drawn beneath a cloud of thin, white hair that stirred as the door opened. He’d lost weight since she’d last seen him, seemed shorter, frailer, ancient.

“Elizabeth Black?” He was confused, at first; then smiled. “My God, it’s been a thousand years.” He squeezed her, took her hand. “Come have a drink. Have two.” The bright eyes twinkled. “Elizabeth Black.”

“Crybaby Jones.”

“Come in, come in.”

He turned into the house, muttering apologies as he cleared newspapers and law books from different pieces of grand, old furniture. Glass clinked as empty bottles and cut-crystal glasses disappeared into the kitchen. Elizabeth wandered the room, her gaze on walking sticks, oil paintings, and dusty guns. When the old man returned, his shirt was buttoned to the collar, his hair perfectly smooth and damp enough to stay put as he moved. “Now, then.” He opened a double-door closet that concealed a wet bar and a wall of bottles. “You don’t care for bourbon, as I recall.”

“Vodka rocks, please.”

“Vodka rocks.” His hands hovered by a row of bottles. “Belvedere?”

“Perfect.”

Elizabeth watched him fix her drink, then mix an old-fashioned for himself. Faircloth Jones was a lawyer, retired. He’d come from nothing, worked weekends and nights to put himself through school, and become-arguably-the finest defense attorney ever seen in the state of North Carolina. In fifty years of practice-decades of cases involving murder, abuse, betrayal-he’d only cried once in court, the day a black-robed judge swore him into the state bar, then frowned disapprovingly and asked the young man why he was so shiny-eyed and trembling. When Faircloth explained that he was moved by the grandeur of the moment, the judge asked that he kindly move his wet-behind-the-ears, crybaby self somewhere other than his court.

The nickname stuck.

“I know why you’re here.” He pushed the drink into her hand, sat in a cracked, leather chair. “Adrian’s out.”

“Have you seen him?”

“Since retirement and divorce, I rarely leave the house. Sit. Please.” He gestured to his right, and Elizabeth sat in a wooden-armed chair whose cushions were covered in faded, wine-colored velvet that had, in places, been worn white. “I’ve been following your situation with great interest. An unfortunate business: Channing Shore, the Monroe brothers. What’s your lawyer’s name, again?”

“Jennings.”

“Jennings. That’s it. A youngish man. Do you like him?”

“I haven’t spoken to him.”

“Young lady.” He lowered the drink onto the arm of his chair. “Water finds a level, as you know, and the state will have its pound of flesh. Call your lawyer. Meet with him tonight if need be.”

“It’s fine, really.”

“I fear I must insist. Even a young lawyer is better than none at all. The papers make your situation quite plain, and I don’t pretend to have forgotten the politics of state office. Were I not a million years old, I would have sought you out myself and demanded to represent you.”

He was agitated. Elizabeth ignored it. “I’m not here to talk about myself.”

“Adrian, then.”

“Yes.” Elizabeth slipped onto the edge of her chair. It seemed so small, the truth she needed. A single word, a few letters. “Was he sleeping with Julia Strange?”

“Ah.”

“He told me as much less than an hour ago. I just want verification.”

“You’ve seen him, then?”

“I have.”

“And you asked about the presence of his skin beneath Julia’s nails?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry…”

“Don’t say no.”

“I wish I could help you, but that information is a matter of attorney-client privilege, and you, my dear girl, are still an officer of the law. I can’t discuss it.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“I’ve dedicated my life to the law. How can I do less when the days that remain are so few?” He drank deeply, visibly upset.

Elizabeth leaned closer, thinking perhaps he might feel the strength of her need. “Listen, Crybaby…”

“Call me Faircloth, please.” He waved a hand. “The nickname reminds me of better days that hurt all the more for their passing.” He settled into the seat as if a hand were pressing down.

Elizabeth clasped her fingers and spoke as if the rest of her words might cause pain, too. “Adrian believes someone planted evidence to implicate him.”

“The beer can, yes. We discussed that, often.”

“Yet, it was never challenged at trial.”

“For that, my dear, Adrian would have needed to take the stand. He was unwilling to do so.”

“Can you tell me why?’

“I’m sorry, but I cannot; and for the same reason as before.”

“Another woman has been killed, Faircloth, murdered in the same manner and in the same church. Adrian has been arrested. It will be in tomorrow’s papers.”

“Dear God.”

The glass trembled in his hand, and she touched his arm. “I need to know if he’s lying to me about the beer can, the presence of his skin beneath Julia’s nails.”

“Has he been charged?”

“Faircloth-”

“Has he been charged?” The old man’s voice shook with emotion. His fingers were white on the glass, spots of color in his cheeks.

“Not for the murder. He was picked up on a trespass charge. They’ll hold him as long as they can. You know how it works. As for the dead woman, I know only that she was killed after Adrian’s release from prison. Beyond that, I don’t know what evidence they have. I’m frozen out.”

“Because of your own troubles?”

“And because Francis Dyer doubts my intentions.”

“Francis Dyer. Phhh!” The old man waved an arm, and Elizabeth remembered the way he’d cross-examined Dyer. As hard as Faircloth had tried, he had never been able to discredit Dyer’s testimony. He was unshakable on the stand, utterly convinced of Adrian’s obsession with Julia Strange.

“They’ll hang him for this if they can.” Elizabeth leaned closer. “You still care. I can tell. Talk to me, please.”

He looked out from under bushy brows, the narrowed eyes very bright. “Will you help him?”

“Trust him or walk away. Those are my choices.”

The old man leaned back in the chair and looked small in the rumpled suit. “Did you know that my family and Adrian’s have been together on this river for two hundred years or more? No reason you should, of course, but there it is. The Jones family. The Walls. When my father was crippled in the First World War, it was Adrian’s great-grandfather who taught me to hunt and fish and work the land. He cared for my parents, and when the Depression came, he made sure we had butter and beef and flour. He died when I was twelve, but I remember the smell of him, like tractor grease and grass and wet canvas. He had strong hands and a lined face and wore a tie when he came for supper on Sundays. I grew up and followed the law and never knew Adrian that well. But I remember the day he was born. A group of us smoked cigars on the porch right there. His father. A few others. It’s good land on the river. Good families.”

“That’s a lovely sentiment, but I need something beyond simple faith. Can you tell me anything more? About Adrian? The case? Anything?”

The last word smelled of desperation, and the old lawyer sighed. “I can tell you that the law is an ocean of darkness and truth, and that lawyers are but vessels on the surface. We may pull one rope or another, but it is the client, in the end, who charts the course.”

“Adrian refused your advice.”

“I really can’t discuss it.”

The old man drained his drink, the cherry bloodred in the bottom of the glass. He declined to meet her eyes, and Elizabeth thought she understood. He knew about the affair. He could have used it to sow doubt in the minds of the jury, but Adrian wouldn’t allow it.

“It saddens me, child, to have you here while I have so little of value to say. I hope you can forgive an old man for such a frightful lapse, but I find myself weary.”

Elizabeth took his hand, the bones within it light and brittle.

“If you would be kind enough to fix another drink.” He retrieved his hand and offered the glass. “My heart aches from thoughts of Adrian, and my legs seem to have lost much of their feeling.” Elizabeth fixed the drink and watched him take it. “Did you know that George Washington slept here, once?” He gestured vaguely; seeming tired enough to be transparent. “I often wonder which room.”

“I’ll leave you alone,” Elizabeth said. “Thank you for speaking with me.”

She made it to the tall, wide doors before he spoke again. “Do you know how I got my nickname?”

Elizabeth turned her back to the curving staircase and the floor stained black by time. “I’ve heard the story.”

“That flint-eyed judge was right about one thing. Lawyers are not to become emotionally involved. We are to be strong when clients are weak, righteous where they are flawed. It’s a simple conceit. Discipline. The law.” He looked up from the depths of his chair. “That worked for every client until Adrian.”

Elizabeth held her breath.

“We spent seven months prepping his case, sat side by side for long weeks of trial. I’m not saying he was perfect-God knows he was as human as the rest of us-but when he was convicted, it was like something inside me broke, like some vital, lawyerly organ simply stopped working. I kept my face, mind you. I thanked the judge and shook the prosecutor’s hand. I waited until the courtroom was clear, then I put my head on the defense table and wept like a child. You asked if there was anything I could tell you, and I guess that’s it. The last trial of Crybaby Jones.” He nodded at the liquor in his glass. “A sad old man and tears, like bookends.”

When Elizabeth returned to the police station, she marched through the front door without slowing. Adrian was telling the truth-that was the old man’s message. Now, she wanted to know what they had on him. Not the trespass. The murder. She wanted answers.

“What are you doing here, Liz?”

She rounded into the bull pen, still moving fast. Beckett worked his large body between the desks, trying to catch her as she narrowed the angle to Dyer’s door.

“Liz. Wait.”

Her hand found the knob.

“Don’t. Liz. Jesus…”

But the door was already opening. Inside, Dyer was standing. So were Hamilton and Marsh.

“Detective Black.” Hamilton spoke first. “We were just talking about you.”

Elizabeth faltered. “Captain?”

“You shouldn’t be here, Liz.”

Elizabeth looked from Dyer to the state cops. It was hours after dark, too late for the meeting to be random. “This is about me?”

“New evidence,” Hamilton said. “We’d like your take on it.”

“I won’t allow that,” Dyer said. “Not without representation.”

“We can keep it off the record, if you like.”

Dyer shook his head, but Elizabeth raised her hand. “It’s okay, Francis. If there’s new evidence, I want to hear it.”

“Off the record, then. Come in and shut the door. Not you, Beckett.”

“Liz?” Beckett showed his palms.

“It’s okay. I’m fine.”

She tried to tell herself that was true, but Dyer looked ruined. Even Hamilton and Marsh seemed burdened by some unseen weight. Elizabeth worked to hold on to her conviction and purpose. She’d come for Adrian because the old lawyer’s certainty was as compelling as any proof she’d ever seen. But the air in the close, crowded office tasted thick and sickly sweet. It was fear, she realized. She was barely three feet into the room, and already afraid. “Am I being charged?”

“Not yet.” Hamilton closed the door.

She nodded, but not yet meant it was coming, meant it was close. “What evidence?”

“Forensics on the basement.” Hamilton’s fingers touched a file on the desk. “Is there anything you want to tell us about what happened there?” His voice came from some distant place. “Detective Black?”

Everyone was looking at her, now, Dyer suddenly worried, the state cops so full of inexplicable pity they seemed grotesque.

“We ran DNA,” Hamilton said. “On the wire used to bind Channing Shore. The lab identified blood from two different people. One was from the girl, of course, which we expected.” He paused. “The second sample came from an unknown person.”

“A second person?”

“Yes.”

“One of the Monroe brothers,” Elizabeth said.

“Both brothers have been ruled out.”

“Then the blood came from some other crime. Cross-contamination. Old evidence.”

“We don’t believe so.”

“Then, some other explanation…”

“May we see your wrists, Detective Black?” Everyone looked at her sleeves, at the light jacket and buttoned cuffs. Hamilton leaned closer, his expression as soft as his voice. “We’re not incapable of sympathy…”

Elizabeth kept her hands perfectly still, though her skin seemed to burn. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“If there’s a reason you snapped-”

“I shouldn’t be here,” she said.

“If there are extenuating circumstances-”

“I shouldn’t be here at all.”

She hit the door at a fast walk, blood rushing in her ears, the skin still burning. She didn’t think about why because she was tired of thinking, same with feeling, remembering, talking. There was a time and a place, and not every goddamn thing mattered. That’s what everyone else refused to understand.

The basement was done.

Over.

For an instant, she sensed Beckett behind her, his voice in the stairwell, then on the street. She moved faster, slid into the car, then gunned it, seeing his face as a white blotch, his hands rising and then down. She drove fast and let the car do the talking. Rubber at the corners. Engine on the flats. Her skin still burned, but it was more like shame and rage and self-loathing.

DNA on the wire.

Her hand hit the wheel.

She wanted to move and keep moving. Barring that, she wanted to get drunk. She wanted to be alone in the dark, to sit in a chair and feel the weight of a glass in her hand. The memory would still be there, but the colors would dim; the Monroe brothers would fade; the carousel would stop.

Beckett, however, had other ideas. His car hit the driveway twenty seconds behind her own. “What are you doing here, Charlie?”

“I heard what they said.” Beckett stopped at the bottom step. “Through the door, I heard it.”

“Yeah. So?”

“So, I don’t know what to do.” He looked as ruined as Dyer as he tried and failed to keep his eyes off the place her hands joined her arms. “Liz, Jesus…”

“Whatever they’re talking about has nothing to do with me. I’m a cop. I’m fine.”

“If something happened-”

“I shot them like I said. I don’t regret it. I would do it again. Beyond that, there’s no story. Good guys won. The girl’s alive.”

“And if the girl was talking? If Hamilton and Marsh could get through her father’s lawyers?”

“She’d say the same thing.”

“Maybe that’s the problem. The way things are with you two.” He tilted his large head, and shadows moved on the broken landscape of his face. “You make it easy to believe the worst.”

“Because we look out for each other?”

“Because when you talk, you use the same words. You should look at your statements. Put them side by side and tell me what you see. Same words. Same phrasing.”

“Coincidence.”

“Show me your wrists.”

“No.”

He reached for her arm, and she slapped him so hard the sound itself was like a shot. They froze in the silence that followed. Partners. Friends. Momentary enemies.

“I deserved that,” Beckett said.

“You’re goddamn straight.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just-”

“Go away, Charlie.”

“No.”

“It’s late.”

She fumbled with keys, and Beckett watched from the fog of his discontent. When the door closed between them, he raised his voice. “You should have called me, Liz! You should have never gone in alone!”

“Go home, Beckett.”

“I’m your partner, damn it. We have procedures.”

“I said, go home!”

She put her weight on the door, felt the crush of her heart and wood against her skin. Beckett was still outside, standing and watching. By the time he left, she was shaking and didn’t know why.

Because people suspected?

Because her skin still burned?

“Past is past.” She closed her eyes and said it again. “Past is past and now is now.”

“Is that how you do it?”

The voice came from a dark corner beyond the sofa, and Liz’s hand touched checkered wood before she cataloged it. “Damn it, Channing.” She took her fingers off the pistol grip, flipped on an overhead light. “What the hell are you doing?”

The girl’s feet were pulled up in the well of a deep chair. She wore jeans and chipped polish and canvas sneakers. The same hooded sweatshirt framed her eyes. Bright as they were, the girl still looked haunted, her narrow shoulders rolled inward, a kitchen knife in the knot of a single hand. “I’m sorry.” She put the knife on the arm of the chair. “I don’t do well with angry men.”

Elizabeth locked the door. Crossing the room, she collected the knife and put it on the kitchen table. “How did you get in here?”

“You weren’t home.” Channing hooked a thumb. “I jimmied the window.”

“Since when do you break into people’s houses?”

“Never before tonight. You should have set your alarm, by the way.”

“Would it have stopped you?”

“I feel safe with you. I’m sorry.”

Elizabeth ran water in the sink, splashed some on her face. She didn’t know if the girl was sorry or not. In the end, it didn’t matter. She was hurting. Like Liz was hurting.

“Do your parents know where you are?”

“No.”

“I’m facing indictment, Channing. You’re a potential witness against me. It would be… unwise.”

“Maybe I’ll run away.”

“No, you won’t.”

“I could do it, you know.” Channing stood and walked along a row of books. “Run away. Check the hell out.” The profanity seemed wrong in such a young and flawless mouth, and the girl spoke as if she could see Elizabeth’s thoughts. “Tell me you don’t think about it. Tell me you weren’t just thinking about it.” Channing flicked fingers toward the door, meaning Beckett and the conversation and the mantra that bordered on prayer. “Leaving this place. Disappearing.”

“My problems are not yours, Channing. You’re so young. You can do anything, be anyone.”

“But, it’s not about age anymore, is it?”

“It can be.”

“It’s too late to go back or stay the same.”

“Why?”

“Because I burned it all.” A spark flared in Channing’s eyes. “The stuffed animals and posters and pink sheets, the photographs and books and notes from little boys. I burned it in the garden, a great, giant fire that almost took everything else with it.” She dropped the hood to show cherry-red skin and hair burned away at the tips. “The garden was burning, two of the trees.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Why did you get so close to the quarry’s edge?”

It was softly said, but broke Elizabeth’s heart.

“My father tried to stop me. But I ran when I saw him. I think he hurt himself going over the fence. He was screaming, angry maybe. Whatever the case, I can’t go home.” The girl’s defiance dwindled to desperation. “Tell me I have to leave, and you’ll never see me again. I’ll burn the world. I swear it.”

Elizabeth poured a drink and spoke with her back turned. “Your parents should know you’re okay. Text them, at least. Tell them you’re safe.”

“Does that mean you’ll let me stay?”

Elizabeth turned and smiled wryly. “I can’t have you burning the world.”

“Can I have one of those?” Channing pointed at the drink. “If it’s not about the age…” Elizabeth poured a single finger in a second glass and handed it over, wordlessly. The girl swallowed it, choking a little. “I saw a bathtub…”

She let it hang, and Elizabeth pointed down the hall. “Towels are in the closet.”

Elizabeth watched her down the hall, then poured another drink, turned off the lights, and sat in the dark. Twice her cell phone vibrated, and twice she let it go to voice mail. She didn’t want to talk to Beckett or Dyer or any of the reporters who found their way to her number.

For another hour, she sat and drank and held herself still. When she finally stood, the bath was empty and the guest-room door was closed. Elizabeth listened, but there was no noise beyond the tick and creak of an old house finding its way deeper into the earth. She checked the locks, anyway. The doors. The windows. Stepping into the bathroom, she locked that door, too, then removed her shirt and examined the cruel, thin cuts on her wrists. They went all the way around and were deeper in some places than in others. Red lines, partly scabbed. Memories. Nightmares.

“Past is past…”

She took off the rest of her clothes and filled the tub. She was hiding the truth, yes, but there were reasons. That should make her feel better, but reason was just a word.

Like family was a word.

Or faith or law or justice.

She slipped into the tub because hot water seemed to help. It warmed her through and made her weightless. Water was good like that, but it was water’s nature to rise and fall and rise again; that was its purpose, so that when she closed her eyes, the world fell away, and she felt it again: the basement around her, like fingers on her throat.

The man was choking her, one arm locked around her neck, his hand tight on her wrist, smashing her gun hand into the wall. Channing was a doll on the floor, screaming as the gun struck concrete three times, four times, then skittered into the dark.

Elizabeth felt the gun go, tried to turn.

Who was he?

Who the fuck…?

She could tell he was massive and unwashed, but that was it. He was an arm around her neck, a scrape of whiskers as he squeezed harder and blackness crowded in. She kicked down, looking for the instep, the shin. She flung her head back, but the contact was small and weak.

“Shh…”

Breath found her ear, but she was fading. No blood getting through. Eyes tight.

She clawed at his arms, and in the dark there was movement. The second man, broad and hunched. Channing saw him, too, her heels scrabbling in the grime, her back finding the wall.

Channing…

No sound came out. Elizabeth saw her own hand outstretched, the fingers doubling as her vision blurred.

Channing…

The second man snaked big fingers into the girl’s hair, dragged her across the floor and into the dimness of another room.

Where was the gun?

Elizabeth was forced to her knees, saw high-top sneakers and grimy jeans, the place her fingers smeared mold on the floor. His weight settled on her back, pushing her forward, pushing her down. Whiskers ground into her neck, and the same breath licked her ear.

“Shhhh…”

It was longer that time.

Then fading.

Then blackness.

In judo, it was called a blood choke or a carotid restraint or a sleeper hold. Cops called it a lateral vascular neck restraint. The name didn’t matter. The purpose and function did. Simultaneous compression of the carotid and the jugular could render an adult unconscious in seconds. Do it right, and it didn’t take much strength. Do it wrong and it fails or somebody ends up dead. It’s not like the movies. You have to know what you’re doing to do it right.

Titus Monroe knew what he was doing.

Elizabeth played it over for the millionth time: how it started and ended, the minutes in between. Channing was off the mattress, and they were backing out of the room, the girl’s hand hot and wet and twisted into Elizabeth’s own. Elizabeth kept her gun trained deeper into the basement. She would shoot if necessary, but the door was empty, the basement quiet behind them. They managed three steps before the girl stumbled and went down, but that was okay. Elizabeth’s gun was up, and the last hall was ten feet away. There were some closed doors, some stairs; but they were going to make it.

Elizabeth never heard the door open behind her, never heard him at all; she felt the rush of his arm around her neck, his fingers on her wrist. She felt him and fought and failed, went down into the black, and woke wired to a mattress with her clothes stripped off and her mouth clamped shut. His tongue moved on her ear, her neck; and she fought like an animal would fight, screamed behind his sweaty hand as a red candle burned and his fingers moved across her skin. He was going to rape her, maybe kill her. But even as she fought, she felt as if she were falling, his rough touch fading, the candlelight winking twice, then gone. She heard a voice that was her own, but younger.

Not again, not again…

The fall could have taken her all the way down, so deep she would not have come back the same or even close. He was going to pound her into the dark and leave her there…

Elizabeth settled deeper in the tub, cold and hot and shaking. She’d lost herself when it mattered most. Thirteen years of cop and she’d broken like a plaster mask.

It took Channing to save her.

The girl.

Who was only eighteen.

He was a million pounds of sweat and hair, of muscle and fat and thick, hard fingers.

“Fine bitch…”

His skin slid on hers, but there was little breath in her lungs. She breathed out; he pushed down.

“Fine, sweet, hot fucking bitch…”

Elizabeth was all but gone when gunshots blew the dark world into bright, shiny bits. She heard screams and followed them up, eyes blinking as the big man rolled to his feet, shouting something she later understood to be his brother’s name.

No answer came beyond the screams, which were agonized and terrible and afraid. They rose from the room next door, ricocheted off concrete walls, and Elizabeth-even now-had no idea how Channing got her hands on the gun. She was simply there, pale in the door, and naked, the gun impossibly large in her tiny hand. Elizabeth saw it slow and clear, but like the dream of a dream; as if it had happened to some person she may have known once upon a distant time.

The first shot blew his knee to mist. He was still falling when the second knee disappeared, too. He jerked right and left, then dropped where he’d stood, the ruined bones slapping concrete with a heavy, wet sound she would never forget. His screams joined his brother’s before turning into a tortured version of barely recognizable words.

“Bitch!”

He writhed.

“Fucking… Ahh! Fuck!”

Channing shuffled across the floor, a broken mask on her face, too. The eyes looked dark and swollen, the mouth open and soundless. The gun pulled her arm down, so she staggered once, then stopped above the screaming man.

“Channing…”

The name fell from Elizabeth’s mouth, but Channing raised the gun, her face utterly still as the screams ramped louder, and tears tracked through the grime beneath her eyes. She was in shock and filthy, blood running from her wrists to drip off her fingers.

“Channing…”

Elizabeth stopped struggling. The girl stared at the wailing man.

“Channing…”

It took forever to use all eighteen bullets: seconds that stretched to minutes, minutes that felt like hours. In reality, it could have been no time at all. Elizabeth was not the one to say. She kept her eyes on Channing when she could; saw the wounded blankness of all who are ruined young. In the end, it was a simple thing. The gun spoke. Men screamed. When they were dead, Channing stood for a long time before Elizabeth’s words made any kind of impression.

The shots will have been heard.

Police will come.

Smoke still hung in the air, and already the world was torn wide open. Even as sirens rose in the distance, and wire bit more deeply into her wrists, Elizabeth understood that the police were now on one side of the rift, while she and Channing stood, forever, on the other.

That’s how fast she made her decision.

How fast her old life ended.

Elizabeth wanted to be done, but images spun out of the dark: Channing’s fingers, shaking red as they stripped off wire, and sirens drew close. The gathering of clothes and the wiping of the gun, the story repeated as Elizabeth held the child and forced her to say the words.

Channing was on the mattress.

Elizabeth shot them in the dark.

“Say it again, Channing.”

“I was on the mattress. You shot them in the dark.”

At two o’clock, Elizabeth finally climbed into bed. She barely slept, and when she did, she woke soaked in sweat. The third time it happened, she followed an unfamiliar noise and found Channing curled on the bathroom floor. The only light was a flicker from the girl’s room, but it was enough to see the bruises and the bite marks, the bandages on her wrists.

“I thought I was going to be sick. I’m sorry if I woke you.”

“Here.” Elizabeth ran cold water on a washcloth and handed it to Channing. “Let me help you.” She helped the girl up. They stood at the counter and in the mirror looked very different, Elizabeth narrow and lithe, the girl shorter, more gently curved. The girl was crying, but seemed unable to move. “Let me.” Elizabeth took the washcloth and pressed it against the girl’s skin. She wiped away tears and smoothed hair from the pale, cool forehead. “There.” She turned Channing to face the mirror. “Better?”

The girl stared at her own face, then at Elizabeth’s. “We have the same eyes.”

Elizabeth lowered her face until it was even with the girl’s, their cheeks almost touching. “So we do.”

“It’s my fault,” Channing said. “What happened in the basement, what happened to you.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“What if it were, though? Would you still be my friend?”

“Of course.”

The girl nodded, but seemed unconvinced. “Do you believe in hell?”

“Not for you, I don’t.” Elizabeth squeezed Channing’s shoulders, her voice fierce. “Not for this.”

The girl looked down, and the bright eyes closed. “I shot the little one the most because he liked to hurt me the most. That’s what the dream was about: his fingers and teeth, that whisper he had, the way he’d hold my eyes open as he hurt me, that deep-down, forever stare.”

“He got what he deserved.”

“But, I made the choice,” Channing said. “The smaller brother was the worst so I shot him the most. Eleven bullets. That was me. My choice. How can you say there’s no hell?”

“You can’t look at it like that.”

“I barely sleep, and it’s not for fear of dreams. It’s because there’s this one second when I wake, this one instant, where I don’t remember.”

“I know that second.”

“But there’s another one behind it, isn’t there? Another second, and everything comes down so hard it’s like being buried alive. I go to bed in fear of that second. I’m eighteen years old, and I’ve done this thing…”

“What thing?” Elizabeth hardened her voice because the girl needed hard. “You saved my life. You saved us both.”

“Maybe I should tell somebody.”

She meant the police, her parents, a shrink. It didn’t matter. “You can’t tell anyone, Channing. Not ever.”

“I tortured them.”

“Don’t say that word.”

“We could say it was self-defense.”

A sliver of hope touched Channing’s face, but no juror could understand the truth of what happened. They would have to have been there, to see Channing, naked and filthy in the candlelight, see the blood dripping from her fingers, see her face, shattered, the teeth marks in her skin.

Eighteen shots…

Torture…

The trial would force her to live it again, in public and on record. Elizabeth had seen enough rape and murder trials to understand the power of their deconstructive nature. Testimony would last for days or weeks, and the process would eviscerate any innocence the girl had left. She’d be marked for life, possibly convicted.

Elizabeth could hear the prosecutor, now. Eighteen shots, ladies and gentlemen. Not three or four or six. Eighteen shots, placed to wound and hurt and punish… They’d pursue her for the politics of it, the visuals. “Promise me, Channing. Swear you won’t talk about it.”

“I don’t know who I am.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Can I sleep with you?”

“Anything.” Elizabeth hugged her, her emotions undone. “Everything.”

She led Channing to the large bed in the corner bedroom on the left side. There was no tough girl left, no anger or pretense or wounded pride. They were survivors-sisters-and as such climbed wordlessly into the same bed.

“Are you crying?” Elizabeth asked.

“Yes.”

“Everything will be all right. I promise.”

Channing reached out an arm and laid two fingers on Elizabeth’s back. “Is that okay?”

“It’s fine, sweetheart. Go to sleep.”

The touch must have helped because Channing did, her breathing shallow at first, then rhythmic and slow. Elizabeth felt the girl’s closeness, the heat of her skin. She felt the stillness of those two fingers, and her own breathing eased. It took a long time, but the room fell away.

Her aching heart slowed.

The carousel stopped.