Redemption Road

28

Stanford Olivet let his daughter sleep in and started pancakes when he heard the shower run upstairs. It was just the two of them, and today he wanted to hold her close, spend a little time. The kitchen around him was neat and clean, a smell in the air of batter and coffee and gun oil. The.45 was beside the stove. Before that it was beside his shower, and before that, the bed. Olivet was terrified, and not of Adrian Wall.

“Good morning, sweetheart.”

“Pancakes. Yes.” His daughter moved down the stairs. She was twelve, a tomboy who loved archery and animals and sports cars. She kept her hair short, avoided makeup. Already, she could drive better than most adults. “Are you going to the range?”

She meant the gun. The.45 wasn’t his duty weapon, but a military-grade pistol he’d bought secondhand at a surplus store. “I thought I might.”

“How’s your face?”

She rounded the kitchen island and kissed him gently on the cheek. He had stitches, bandages. Four teeth were loose. “It’s okay.”

“I hate that your job is so dangerous.”

He let the lie stand: that two prisoners jumped him at bed check. Not that Adrian Wall had almost killed him, then inexplicably chosen to let him live. “What do you want to do this morning?”

“I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

He slid pancakes onto a plate, and she forked a bite.

“Car in the driveway.” She pointed with the fork.

He saw it, too. “Shit.”

“Daddy!”

“You stay here.” He went to the door and took the gun with him.

The warden was already out of the car. Jacks and Woods stayed by its side. “You’re supposed to be at work.”

“I thought-”

“I know what you thought.” The warden pushed into the house. “You thought a few bruises bought you a day off. This is not that day.”

Olivet closed the door and trailed the warden into the kitchen. His daughter stopped eating when the warden pointed. “Isn’t she supposed to be in school?”

Olivet placed the gun on the counter, but kept it close. “It’s okay, honey. Why don’t you take breakfast upstairs and watch TV.”

The girl disappeared upstairs, and the warden watched her go. “The limp is barely noticeable. How many surgeries was it? Four?”

“Seven.”

“Still in remission?”

“I don’t like it when you come here.”

“I’m offended.”

“I don’t like you bringing them here, either.”

“See, this has always been the problem with you, Stanford. You think you’re above this somehow, that your money and conscience are somehow clean. What’s your share, now? A half million dollars? Six hundred thousand?”

“My daughter-”

“Don’t use her as an excuse. How much did that boat in your driveway cost, or the watch on your wrist? No. You’re no kind of hero.” The warden dipped a finger in the syrup and licked it. “We’ve been doing this for a lot of years, you and I. The money and drugs, the dirty prisoners and their dirty little crumbs.”

“Don’t talk about that here. Jesus. My daughter is right upstairs.”

“I don’t give a shit about your daughter.” The voice was like ice. “You let Adrian Wall kill my best friend.”

“I didn’t let him do anything.”

“You didn’t stop him, either. How should I feel about that? Preston’s dead and you’re not. Are you a coward, Stanford? Did you beg and crawl as William Preston stood firm and died for the trouble?”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Then tell me how it was.”

The moment spooled out, and there was hatred there, years of it. Olivet broke first. “Adrian doesn’t know anything,” he said. “If he did, he’d have told us years ago. That makes following him not just needless, but stupid. He’s broken and unpredictable, and we’re the ones who broke him. You can’t control a situation like that, which means we should have never been on that roadside in the first place. If anything got Preston killed, it was you, your inflexibility and ego and greed.”

“Say that again.”

“You shouldn’t be in my house.”

“Here’s what’s going to happen.” The warden smiled a cold, bright smile and stepped close. “We’re going to find Adrian Wall, just the four of us. We’re going to hunt him down, and we’re going to kill him. Then I’ll decide if I need to kill you, too.”

Olivet glanced at the gun, but the warden was fast and sure, and the gleam in his eyes was like a dare.

Think of the girl.

Of living through the next two minutes.

“How do we find him?” Olivet cleared his throat and stepped away from the gun. “He could be in Mexico by now. Anywhere.”

“He was with the woman last night?”

“Yes.”

“He’s not in Mexico.”

The warden spoke with familiar arrogance. Olivet looked up the stairs and thought he saw a shadow on the wall-his daughter, listening. “Listen,” he whispered. “I’m sorry about what I said.”

“Of course you are. I understand.” The warden picked up the.45, dropped the magazine, and ejected the shell. “We all make mistakes, say things we don’t mean.” He pushed the.45 flat against Olivet’s chest, kept pushing until Olivet stepped backward and struck the sink. “But my friend is dead, and you’re not. That means no one walks away from this. You understand? Not you, not me, and sure as hell not Adrian Wall.”

Liz followed Adrian back to the mill, each with a jar of coins tucked in the crook of an arm. She slogged through the creek and did the math. Five thousand coins in thirty jars. One hundred and sixty-five to the jar. Maybe one seventy. What was that?

Two hundred thousand dollars per jar?

Liz couldn’t get her head around that. After thirteen years as a cop, she had $4,300 in the bank and $15,000 in a brokerage account. She didn’t care about money-that had never been her thing-but the thought of $6 million buried in a swamp made her head spin. People had died for it, and people had killed. That made it blood money. Did the stain adhere to Adrian?

She watched him move through the green: the muddy pants and narrow waist, the sure, steady movements.

“You okay back there?”

“Yes,” she said, and decided that she was. Eli Lawrence was dead, his crime paid for. William Preston deserved what he got, and who was she to judge, anyway? She’d lied about a double murder and harbored not one fugitive but two. “What do you plan to do, now?”

Adrian pushed beyond the last trees and waded through the stream that fed the mill. When he spoke, it was at the car. “Go away, I guess.” He took the jar from her hands and put it on the ground beside the other. “Find a place, some other life. It’s what Eli always wanted.”

Elizabeth let her gaze move across the swamp. Mist was burning off; light fingered through. “What about the warden?”

“I don’t need it anymore.” He smiled, and she knew he meant revenge.

“And the gold?”

“This’ll get me started.” He dipped his head at the two jars. “The rest will be there when I come back for it.”

Elizabeth looked away from the trust implicit in that statement.

“Come with me,” he said.

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not.”

“My life is here.”

“Is it really?”

That was a tough question because he knew the answer almost as well as she. The town had turned against her; the job was pretty much over. “It’s been a long time, Adrian, since we knew each other.”

“I’m not asking you to marry me.”

She smiled at the joke, but felt the undercurrent, too. Things between them had shifted, and she thought it had to do with what they’d endured the night before. Maybe it was a tenderness born of touch, or the simple warmth of mutual understanding. Maybe they were both quietly alone, and eager to be something else. Whatever the case, his eyes were less guarded, the smiles a bit quicker. She felt a quickening, too, but feared it was the childhood crush, the fever dream. He was grinning and wounded and handsome in the yellow light. And were it truly that simple, she might have been tempted.

Find a place, some other life…

“I don’t want to be alone,” he said; and it moved her to hear him speak that difficult truth. But others mattered, too. Gideon. Channing. Faircloth.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

But at the motel he said, “Reconsider.” The smile was back, but the recklessness and easy grace were gone. He seemed needful and nervous, and that was the bitter side of loneliness.

“I’m happy for you, Adrian. That you’re letting go.”

“But you won’t come with me?”

“I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“Is it because you saw me beat those men?”

“No.”

He looked away, stiff-featured. “Do you think I’m a coward? For leaving?”

“I think you’re allowed to move on.”

“Olivet said there were other prisoners with other secrets. What if that’s true? What if there are others suffering as I did?”

“You can’t go back,” Elizabeth said. “And it’s not just the murder warrant. No one will take your word over the warden’s. With the guards in his pocket, he’s unassailable. It’s the genius of what he’s doing.”

“Because prisoners lie and prisoners die.”

“Exactly.”

Adrian flushed, the dark eyes troubled as he watched cars blow past on the dusty road. “Maybe I should kill him.”

“Find a place,” she said. “Make that life.”

His chin dipped, but not in agreement. “No one outside the prison understands how dangerous the warden is. They don’t know what he does or the pleasure he takes in doing it. I’m not sure how I’ll feel about that a month from now, or a year. What if Eli was wrong?”

“Even if he was, it hardly matters. Every cop in the state is looking for you, and you need to think that through. If you get picked up for Preston’s murder, you’ll end up in the same prison under the same warden.” He shook his head, but she persisted. “Look at me. Adrian, let me see what I can do. If he’s made mistakes, we might get lucky. Some other prisoner. A guard willing to talk. Be patient. As it happens, I’ve recently met some people in the state police.”

He lifted an eyebrow, and his mouth tilted. “Is that a joke?”

“Maybe.”

There it was again: the smile, the unexpected flutter. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll go.”

“Good.”

“But I’ll wait a day in case you change your mind.”

“I won’t.”

“Here. This motel.”

“Adrian-”

“It’s a lot of money, Liz. You can have half of it. No commitments. No strings.”

She held the gaze for a lingering moment, then rose to her toes and kissed his cheek.

“That feels like good-bye,” he said.

“That was for luck.” She took his face and kissed him long on the lips. “That’s the good-bye.”

The drive out was hard. She told herself he’d be fine, that he’d manage. But, that was only half the problem. She tasted the kiss, the way he’d kissed her back.

“You barely know him, Liz.”

She said it twice, but if knowing was in a kiss, then she knew him pretty well-the shape of his mouth, the softness and small pressures. He was just a man, she told herself, a loose end from the distant past. But her feelings for him had never been that simple. They showed up in dreams, lingered like the taste of his kiss. Even now they worked to confuse her, and that was the thing about childhood emotions: love or hate, anger or desire-they never stayed in the box.

It took time to leave the low country and cross the sand hills, heading west. By the time she reached the center of the state, she’d channeled the confusion into a narrow space behind the walls of her chest. It was an old space, and her feelings for Adrian filled it from long practice. Life now was about the children and Crybaby and what remained of her career. So she took a deep breath and sought the calm center that made her such a good cop. Steadiness. Logic. That was the center.

Problem was, she couldn’t find it.

Everything was the kiss and wind and thoughts of her hands on his skin. Adrian didn’t want to stay locked away. She didn’t want him locked away, either.

“Pull yourself together.”

But she couldn’t.

The carousel was turning: Adrian and the kids, Crybaby and the basement. Whom was she kidding when she said life could go back to what it had been?

Herself?

Anyone at all?

When she crossed the city line, she stopped at a strip mall to replace her cell phone. The clerk recognized her face from the papers, but didn’t say anything about it. His finger rose once. His mouth opened and closed.

“I don’t need a smartphone. Cheapest thing you have as long as it calls and texts.”

He set her up with a flip phone made of gray plastic.

“Everything’s the same? Passwords? Voice mail?”

“Yes, ma’am. You’re good to go.”

She signed the receipt, returned to the car, and sat beneath blue sky and a pillar of heat. Punching keys, she called voice mail. Seven were from reporters. Two were from Beckett and six more from Dyer.

The last was from Channing.

Elizabeth played it twice. She heard scraping sounds and breathing, then three words, far and faint but clear.

Wait. Please. Don’t.

It was Channing’s voice. No doubt. Faint as it was, the girl sounded terrified. Elizabeth played it again.

Wait.

Please…

She didn’t hear the third word that time, disconnecting the phone instead and gunning out of the lot. Channing would have bonded out by now-as wealthy as her father was, there could be little question of that-but where would she go?

Elizabeth called Channing’s cell phone and, when she got no answer, steered for the rich side of town. Her father’s house had tall walls, privacy. He’d want to keep her there and buttoned down. Maintain control. Avoid the media.

The last part was a joke. Elizabeth saw the news trucks from two blocks out. It wasn’t the A-list talent-they’d be at the church or the station-but it was a lot of energy, even for a double killing. It was the optics of race and politics, of torture and execution and Daddy’s little girl. No one recognized Elizabeth until she turned for the drive, then the shouting started.

“Detective Black! Detective!”

But, she was through the line before anyone got organized. Fifty feet up the drive she hit private security. Two men. Ex-cops. She recognized them both. Jenkins? Jennings? “I need to see Mr. Shore.”

One of the men approached the car. He was in his sixties; wore a decent suit. A four-inch Smith rode his belt. “Hey, Liz. Jenkins. Remember?”

“Yeah. ’Course.”

He leaned into the window, checked the seats, the floorboards. “I’m glad you’re here. Mr. Shore’s pretty upset.”

“About what?”

“Your timing.”

“That makes no sense.”

“What can I say?” Jenkins keyed the radio, told the house she was coming. “Everything’s a bitch when your kid goes missing.”

“What?”

He stepped back rather than answer the question.

Missing kid?

That couldn’t be good.

“Straight up to the house. Mr. Shore’s waiting for you.”

Elizabeth took her foot off the brake, the drive twisting past statuary and formal gardens. The short distance felt longer. By the time Elizabeth parked, Alsace Shore was on the bottom step. He wore jeans and another expensive golf shirt. Twenty feet out, she could see the flush in his neck. “How dare you wait so long?” He stormed across the cobbled drive. “I called the department three hours ago!”

Elizabeth climbed from the car. “Where’s Channing?”

“You’re supposed to tell me that.” He was coming undone. No question. Behind him, his wife huddled in the open door.

“How about we start at the beginning?”

“I’ve explained this twice, already.”

“Do it again.” His mouth snapped shut because she was cold and hard, and people rarely used that tone with him. Elizabeth didn’t care. “Tell me everything.”

It was difficult for him to do, but he swallowed his pride and told her about the drive from court and the awkwardness between them, about the pink room, the hot chocolate, and the open window. “She’s not thinking right. It’s like she’s a totally different person.”

“I think she is.”

“Don’t be flip.”

“She’s snuck out before,” Elizabeth said.

“Yes, but not like this.”

“Explain.”

He struggled, and other emotions broke through. “She was in a dark place, Detective. Resigned. Untouchable. It was as if she’d given up on everything she’d ever been.”

“She’s in shock. Are you surprised?”

“Jail, I suppose. The threat of prison.”

“It’s not just jail, Mr. Shore. I warned you about this before. She was abused until she broke, then killed two men in defense of her own life. Did you think to tell her you understood? That maybe you’d have done the same thing?”

He frowned, and she knew he had not. “You’ve seen the photographs?”

“I don’t need to see them, Mr. Shore. I was there. I lived it.”

“Of, course. I’m sorry. This day…”

“Did she take anything with her?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Leave a message of any kind?”

“Just the open window.”

Elizabeth studied the girl’s window, remembering her own childhood room and the one time she’d gone down the tree beside it. “She’s not a minor, Mr. Shore. The police won’t consider her missing until she’s been gone for at least twenty-four hours. If anything, they’re worried she’s jumping bail, which means any looking they do is the kind you probably don’t want.”

“I don’t care. I just want her found.”

Elizabeth held his eyes and saw that he was begging. “Do you have any idea where she might have gone? Friends? Places? Something she kept secret or didn’t want you to know about?”

“Honestly, Detective, the only person or thing she seems to care about is you.”

Elizabeth saw it then, so clearly.

“I love her, Detective. I may not show it, not with the houses, the career, the issues with my wife. I may not show it, but my daughter is my life.” He put a palm across his heart, the red now in his eyes. “Channing is my life.”

Elizabeth had seen it a thousand times before: people taking others for granted until the others were gone. He was close to tears when she left, a large man, breaking.

She felt the smallest sympathy.

Back at the street, reporters collected at the end of the drive, cameras up and the questions louder. Three of the boldest blocked the exit, and Elizabeth accelerated so there would be no confusion about her intent.

There wasn’t.

When she was through she moved faster, skirting the center of town this time, then turning down a narrow one-way street lined with white picket and wisteria. That was the back way into her neighborhood, and it shaved a few minutes off her time, the old car complaining at the first ninety-degree turn. The next street was hers-a shaded lane-and she raced its length without apology or regret. Everything felt wrong, not just Channing’s message but Elizabeth’s choices, too. She should have kept the girl closer, never left town. Explanations rose in her mind, the possibility of lost phones or resentments or miscommunications. But, nothing was that clean.

Wait.

Please.

Don’t.

Elizabeth made the driveway and left the car running. She found a broken bottle on the porch, and a glass turned on its side.

“Channing?”

The door grated on its broken hinge, and she moved through the empty house, calling the girl. She checked the backyard, then searched the house again. No note. No sign. Back outside, she took her time on the porch, finding a flowerpot out of place and a dark smear she knew was blood. She touched the stain, then tried Channing’s cell again and found it ringing in a bush beside the porch. She stared at it, disbelieving, then broke the connection.

The girl was gone.