Redemption Road

31

Elizabeth went to her parents’ house and found them pulling weeds from an overgrown flowerbed by the parsonage.

“Sweetheart.” Her mother saw her first and stood. “This is an unexpected surprise.”

“Mom.” Her father stood stiffly. “Dad.”

He pulled off work gloves and beat dirt against his pants leg. “I’ll leave you two to talk.”

“Actually, this concerns you, too. It’s about Harrison Spivey.”

The preacher’s eyebrows came together, but more worry was in his face than anger. Talk of Harrison rarely happened. They looked away instead. They judged and nursed wounds and pretended.

“I won’t talk about a parishioner behind his back unless it’s to his benefit. You know that.”

How many times had Elizabeth heard as much: togetherness and trust, a raft of days in the palm of God’s hand?

“What’s this about, sweetheart?” Her mother’s worry was impossible to miss.

But Elizabeth had little time for explanation. “Childhood. I remember something about Harrison Spivey and Allison Wilson.”

“Allison Wilson? What in the world…?”

“They dated?” Elizabeth said. “There was a fight?”

“They never dated, dear. And it was hardly a fight. He asked her to homecoming, as I recall-”

“And she laughed at him,” Elizabeth remembered. “She said he was churchbound and uptight and hopeless. Kids at school made fun of him.”

“He was quite obsessed with her, the poor boy.”

“What about me?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Obsession is a specific and powerful word.” Elizabeth pictured the photo found under the church, the tattered image of her as a seventeen-year-old girl, pale-skinned and aching and thin as a waif. “After it was all said and done-after Dad found me on the porch, after the hospital and prayers and recrimination-would you use that same word to describe his feelings for me? He raped me, after all. Held me down. Stuffed pine needles in my mouth-”

“Elizabeth. Sweetheart-”

“Don’t touch me.” Elizabeth stepped away, and her mother’s hand drew back. “Just answer the question.”

“You’re shaking.”

But Elizabeth would not be swayed. Dark wheels were turning; she felt them. “He worked at the church. On the grounds. In the buildings. You opened your home to him. You pray with him. You know him. Did he talk about me then? Does he talk about me now?”

“Tell me what this is about.”

“I can’t.”

“Then I’m not sure we can help you. We’ve worked so hard, you understand? To forgive the sins of youth, to build on the future. Harrison is not the boy you remember. He’s done such good things-”

“I don’t want to hear that!” Elizabeth couldn’t help the outburst. Even now, her feelings for her parents were complicated: pain and love, anger and regret. How could such things live side by side for so long?

Her father spoke as if he understood. “It wasn’t the choice you think, Elizabeth. I didn’t choose Harrison over you, but love over hate, hope above despair-the lessons I’ve taught you since birth: to embrace the difficult path, to accept hard choices and hard love, to be penitent and live in the hope of redemption. I wanted that for you and for him. Can’t you understand that? Can’t you see?”

“Of course I can, but it wasn’t your choice to make! To forgive or not was up to me! Your job was something different, and you didn’t do it. You didn’t protect me. You didn’t listen.”

“Nor did I walk away from my family, the church.”

“Actually, you did. You did walk away.”

“And this is God’s punishment,” he said. “To see my only daughter grown bitter and hateful and hard.”

“I’m not having this conversation.”

“You never do. You can barely look at me.”

“Mom? May I speak to you in private?”

“Sweetheart-”

“Over here. Away from him.”

Elizabeth walked away from her father, found a place in the shade where she could turn her back and not face a burning sun.

Her mother touched her shoulder. “Don’t think this is easy for him, Elizabeth. He’s a complicated man, and he grieves. We both do, but it’s a hard world full of hard choices. He’s not wrong about that.”

“Don’t make excuses for him.” Elizabeth stopped her mother with a raised hand. “Just tell me if Harrison Spivey owns a farm or commercial property. A hunting cabin, maybe. Anything not easily found.”

“Just the house on Cambridge, and it’s nothing grand.”

Elizabeth looked at the steeple, at the white paint and the gold cross that looked as cheap as foil. “Was he obsessed with me?”

“He prays for you, here and at home. He prays with your father.”

Elizabeth felt cold fingers in the shade. “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

“Only that he was wrong, sweetheart, and that he has sought forgiveness with all his heart. That’s what makes you right in your way, and your father right in his. It’s what makes this all so awful.”

After that, Elizabeth was alone. She had a theory, and it was tied so deeply to her own past that she had trouble looking at it straight on. Harrison Spivey had an intimate connection to the church, to her, and to her family. He could be violent, obsessed.

The victims looked like her.

Was Randolph right about that? She didn’t know. Maybe some of them. All she knew for sure was that Channing was gone, and the clock was ticking. Arrest. Death. They were out there, spinning. And if a voice spoke of caution, it did so from the deepest corner of her mind. Too many years led to this, too many sleepless nights and buried hurts. The word Providence rose, yet even that felt dangerous. This was not about her, she told herself, but about finding the girl.

Then why did that voice, too, sound so distant? It whispered in the drive and drowned in the rush of her blood. She was on the porch of Spivey’s house, but it could have been the quarry or the church or the back of her father’s car as the boy laid a finger on her skin as if daring her to look up or say a word about the thing he’d done. Elizabeth felt all of that, bottled it, and directed it. No one had to get hurt, and no one had to die.

But, goddamn, she felt it.

The feeling took her through the door without knocking; through the kitchen and into the living room, gun holstered, but warm under her palm. She saw the wife and children in the backyard, which was good, because she had no plan beyond making the man talk. She flicked a glance left; saw a dining-room table, framed photographs, golf clubs in the corner. The normalcy of it stoked the resentment. Could a killer kill and then play golf?

She felt the answer in her skin; heard an echo of the voice and tuned it out. Noise came from the back hall so she turned in that direction, her footsteps soundless on deep carpet. She found him behind a desk littered with papers, a broad, soft man with a pencil in one hand and fingers on an old-fashioned calculator that rattled and clicked. The sight was so pedestrian it pulled her from the moment long enough to see the danger of what she was doing. The obsession was hers, but when he looked up, he had the same eyes and lips, the same hands that had been so quick with pine needles and buttons and torn fabric. “Hello, Harrison.”

He took in the gun, and his first glance, after, was through the window and at his children. “Elizabeth. What are you doing?”

She stepped into the room; watched his face and his eyes, his hands on the desk. Behind him, two dozen photographs hung on the wall: Harrison at different groundbreaking ceremonies, a golden shovel in his hand; Harrison with a group of women, and others with suited men. Everyone was at ease and happy and smiling.

“Where is she?”

“Who?”

“Don’t fuck with me, Harrison.”

“I don’t know what’s going on, Liz.” He spread his hands. “I don’t know why you’re here with a gun, and I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please, don’t hurt my children.”

She stepped closer, emotion like a wind as she remembered sneaking from the house so she could spread her legs in a trailer park abortion mill and let the pervert who called himself a doctor push cold steel past her cervix. That’s what Harrison Spivey did for her. That’s what she knew of children. “Where is she?”

“You keep saying she. I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“I introduced you to her on the sidewalk. Channing Shore. I introduced you and now she’s gone.”

“What? Who?”

“They found Allison Wilson, too. Under the church. Murdered.”

“What in God’s name does that have to do with me?” He looked genuinely appalled, but psychopaths could do that. Dissimulate. Misdirect. Entire lives could be made of lies, with only the dark center holding.

Elizabeth wanted to see his center. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to leave quietly. Your family is outside; they won’t even see us. We’re going to find someplace private, you and I, and we’re going to have a discussion. What that discussion feels like is up to you.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“Get up.”

“Maybe, this is how it had to happen.” He leaned back in his chair, and the strength surprised her. He seemed suddenly resolved, with none of the fear she saw on those rare occasions she went to his office or tracked him on the streets. “You really don’t know me at all, do you, Liz? What I’ve done with my life. How I’ve tried to atone.” He gestured at the wall behind him. “Do you even see what’s right in front of you?”

Elizabeth let her gaze run across the photographs, seeing how they were the same, but different, picking up detail she’d missed.

“Six clinics. In six different cities. A decade of work. Fifty cents of every dollar I’ve ever made, and this is just the beginning.”

Elizabeth looked at the construction sites and finished buildings, at Harrison with his golden shovel and smiling women. Her certainty wavered. “Those are…”

“Clinics for battered women.” He finished the thought when she trailed off. “Abused wives. Prostitutes. Rape victims. I don’t know why you think I took this girl, but I promise you I did not. I have a wife and daughters. They’re my life, Liz. I’d make yours different if I could. I’d take it all back.” Elizabeth’s confidence broke; none of this was expected. “Speaking of which…”

“Hi, Daddy.” A little girl stepped in from the hall. She was three or four, with a pretty voice and no fear at all of strangers with guns.

“Come here, sweetie.” The girl hopped on her father’s lap as a wave of dizziness threatened to sweep Elizabeth away. Harrison wrapped his arms around the child, clasped his hands, and pointed with fingers pressed together. “Guess who this is.” The girl pulled her legs onto her father’s lap. “This is the woman we pray for every Sunday. The one whose forgiveness we ask God to grant.”

“You told your children?”

“Only that Daddy did a bad thing, once, and was sorry.” He squeezed the girl harder. “Tell Detective Black your name.”

“Elizabeth.”

“We named her for you.”

“But you run from me when I see you on the streets. You barely speak.”

“Because you frighten me,” he said. “And because I am ashamed.”

Elizabeth stared at the little girl. The room was still spinning. “Why would you give that beautiful child my name?”

“Because some things should never be forgotten.” He smoothed the girl’s unruly hair. “Not if we hope to live better lives.”

He stayed off the streets as much as he could. Even then he worried someone might recognize the car, his face in the car. He’d never seen cops like this. They were everywhere. Local cruisers. Sheriff’s deputies. State police. They were on the streets and overpasses. There’d been talk of roadblocks, and that made him nervous. If they searched the car, they’d find tape and a stun gun and zip ties.

He couldn’t explain that.

How could he?

Pulling into a gas station, he threw away the tape and plastic ties. The stun gun he kept because some things needed keeping. The linen and silk ropes were someplace safe. Nevertheless, he sat low in the car as a line of state cruisers flashed by. Things were building, and he could feel them out there, the same endings and inevitabilities. There was a chance he’d walk away and continue, but he was tired of killing and carrying secrets. It had been with him for so long. The weight built, a woman died, and for months after he was depressed.

He wasn’t supposed to be a killer.

Watching the state police fade, he sat straighter as a young father came out of the convenience store and lingered by his car. He had a child in his arms, a boy maybe six months old. He watched the father kiss the child and thought that’s how life was meant to be. But nothing was that pure anymore, so he drove for the road and looked once in the mirror as the kiss broke and both seemed to smile.

The father.

The son.

He turned into traffic, not eager yet, but accepting.

The silo was seven miles away.

Elizabeth saw the same cops and felt some of the same fear. Her thoughts, though, were very different.

Could it be an act?

She ran the question for the tenth time and came back with the same answer.

She didn’t think so.

He had daughters, a wife.

“My God.”

Her hands were still shaking. She’d been planning to steal the man from his children, take him to the woods, and break him. It wasn’t academic or some dark fantasy. She’d been minutes away from doing it. Cuffs. Car. Some wooded place.

She caught a glimpse of her eyes in the mirror; found them haunted and bruised. She felt out of control, dangerous. But Channing was still out there, and that, too, was real. What choice did she have but to walk the road?

She stopped at a traffic light, watched cops at a checkpoint.

What if the road disappeared?

What if she was already lost?

Gideon was shot, and Channing gone. Crybaby was alive or dead-she didn’t know.

And, there was Adrian.

Elizabeth turned away from the checkpoint, working the back roads toward her house. She needed to know if cops were there, or if Channing-by some miracle-had returned. She was two minutes out when the phone vibrated in her pocket. “Hello.”

“Is it true?”

“Adrian? Where are you?”

“Is it true they found my wife under the church?”

Elizabeth saw another marked car. They were everywhere. “Don’t come here.”

“Somebody killed her.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“She didn’t deserve that, Liz. We may not have worked at the end, but she was a gentle soul, and alone because of me. I can’t just sit here.”

“The police are looking for you.”

“You, too,” he said. “Your face is all over the news. They’re linking you to the dead guard. They say you’re an accessory to murder.”

Elizabeth went silent. She didn’t think it would really happen. Not Dyer. Not this fast. “Stay away from me,” she said. “Stay away from this place.”

She disconnected before he could argue, then made the last turn before her neighborhood. Parking a block away from her house, she worked through a line of trees, approached from the rear, and slipped inside. She knew at once the house was empty, but checked it anyway. Every room. Every door. A dozen messages clogged her machine, but none were from Channing.

What to do?

The cops could be a mile away, engines wide open. If they found her, she’d face jail and trial and prison. That meant she had to move, and do it now. So, she collected cash and clothing and spare weapons. She stuffed it all into a bag, working faster because speed kept her safe from the truth: that she had nowhere to go, and no way to find the only thing that really mattered.

Channing…

That was the arrow that brought her down, and she felt it as if it were real, a sudden pain that made her sit on a kitchen chair, hands open and upturned, eyes wide but not really seeing. Channing was gone, and Elizabeth had no way to find her.

Two minutes later a car rolled into the drive.

It wasn’t Channing.

Beckett’s illusions fell apart when the warrant hit the wires. Until then he’d believed the world might still correct. They’d catch the killer, and Liz would come home. The warden would somehow disappear. Never mind the dead couple in the motel, or that he’d gotten them killed. That was too big, and he had nowhere to put the guilt.

How could he know Liz would lie?

He couldn’t.

But, the couple was still dead. That was still on him.

“Where’s Dyer?” He grabbed the first cop he saw, a uniformed officer plying the crowded halls same as him. State cops. SBI. It was as if someone had kicked apart a nest of ants. Everyone was angry and full of grim intent. Serial killer. Guard killer. People felt it same as Beckett, long falls and acceleration.

“Dyer’s gone,” the uniform said. “Thirty minutes, maybe.”

“Where?”

“No idea.”

Beckett let him go and checked Dyer’s office for the third time. He wanted the warrant quashed before Liz got hurt. But the office was empty. No answer on the cell. He tried Liz, but she wasn’t answering, either. She was angry; didn’t trust him.

Shit, he couldn’t blame her.

“I’m on my cell.” He flung the words at one of the switchboard operators. “Tell Dyer to call me if he shows up.”

Beckett pulled the coat off his chair and shrugged it on as he stepped outside, taking in the news crews and cops and all the bright, moving colors. Forces were gathering against him. Old pressures. Old sins. He needed something, and it had nothing to do with the job.

Taking the steps down, he ate up the sidewalk in long strides, took the car across town, and stepped out at the hair salon two blocks from the mall. Inside, it smelled of chemicals and lotions and blown hair. Beckett nodded at the receptionist, then walked past mirrored stations and long looks and found his wife wrist deep in hair the size of a basketball. “Can I talk to you?”

“Hey, baby. Everything okay?”

“I just need a moment.”

She patted the woman in the chair. “Give me a sec, sugar.” Beckett led his wife to a quiet space beside the rear wall. “What’s up?”

“I was thinking of you and the girls, that’s all. I wanted to hear your voice.”

She studied his eyes, sensing something. “Are you okay?”

“Things are coming together. The case. Some other things. I wasn’t sure when we’d talk.”

“You could have called, silly man.”

“Maybe. But I couldn’t do this over the phone.”

He kissed her, and she leaned back, embarrassed but not unhappy. “Goodness.” She looked at the crowded room and smoothed herself. “You should come here more often.”

He ran a hand across her cheek and left his deepest thought unshared, that the kiss was in case he never returned at all. He gave a smile that said he’d loved her as long as he’d known her, that he accepted her and all her faults, and that he, too, was imperfect. He said all those things with a single smile, then tilted her back and kissed her again. Was it a forever good-bye? He didn’t know, but wanted her to feel it just in case. So he kissed her as he hadn’t done in a dozen years. He made sure the touch lingered, and by the time he left her breathless and flushed, half the ladies in the place were whistling.

The vehicle was a black Expedition with state plates. For a second it sat, silent; then doors opened and four men stepped out. Elizabeth knew two of them, so checked the weapon at her back before stepping onto the porch. “That’s close enough.”

The warden stopped fifteen feet from the bottom step. The man to his right had a battered face, and a limp. Stanford Olivet. She recognized him. The other men were in plainclothes, but probably guards. Jacks and Woods, she guessed, both of them armed.

“Detective Black.” The warden spread his hands. “I’m sorry to be here under such trying circumstances.”

“What circumstances would those be?”

“I know you’re friends with the lawyer, and with Adrian Wall.” He turned his lips down and shrugged. “I know there is a warrant for your arrest, and one, of course, for Adrian.”

Elizabeth felt the rail against her hips and kept a hand near the concealed weapon. She knew the warden now, what he was.

“I don’t know where Adrian is.”

“Is that right?”

“I assume that’s why you’re here.”

The warden stepped closer, looking up through dark lashes. “Did you know that William Preston stood up at my wedding eighteen years ago? No, of course not. How could you? Nor could you know that I am the godfather to his children. They’re twins, by the way, and fatherless, of course. I love them like my own, but it’s not the same, is it?”

Elizabeth said nothing.

“So, tell me, Detective.” He took another step. “Was my dear friend alive when you left him beaten and bloody on the roadside?”

“I think you should leave.”

“The coroner says he aspirated four teeth, and half a pint of his own blood. I try to imagine how that would feel, to drown on blood and road grit and teeth. The doctors say he might have lived had he made it to the hospital at the same time as the lawyer. It troubles me that he died for want of a few minutes, so let me make my question very plain. Was it your decision to abandon him to such a horrible death?” He was seven feet from the porch, then five. “Or did that choice belong to Adrian Wall?”

The gun appeared in Elizabeth’s hand.

“Four on one, Detective.”

His voice was soft, but Elizabeth saw Jacks and Woods move closer, too. They wanted Adrian and intended to get him. Whether they sought revenge for Preston’s death or a chance to finish what they’d started in prison, she didn’t know or care. A wild disregard had taken root inside her. It was the arrogance and corruption, the readiness of his smile. “Adrian told me what you did to him.”

“Prisoner Wall is delusional. We’ve established this.”

“What about Faircloth Jones? Eighty-nine years old and harmless. Was he delusional?”

“The lawyer is irrelevant.”

“What?”

“Immaterial,” the warden said. “Of no real meaning or worth.”

Elizabeth’s hand tightened on the pistol, all confusion gone. Nothing burned inside but sudden anger, and that was all right. He’d said four on one but was unarmed, himself, and Olivet looked broken. That made Jacks and Woods the immediate threats, and she’d play those odds all day long. The gun was in her hand; clear lines of fire. The warden was still smiling because he thought she was a cop and would behave as one. But, that’s not what she was. She was Adrian’s friend and Faircloth’s, an exhausted woman on the narrow edge of something bloody.

“I want the man who killed my friend.”

He made it a threat, but Elizabeth ignored it. She’d take the one on the right first because he looked eager, and she tracked better right to left. She’d drop the second before his gun cleared the holster, then take Olivet and the warden. All she needed was a reason.

“Last time, Detective. Where is Adrian Wall?”

“You tortured him.”

“I deny that.”

“You carved your initials into his back.”

“That sounds difficult to prove.”

He was baiting her, smiling. She kept her eyes on Jacks and Woods. She wanted a twitch.

Please, God…

Give me a reason…

“Is everything all right over there?”

That was the neighbor, Mr. Goldman. He stood by the hedge, nervous and worried. Behind him was the same ’72 Pontiac station wagon, and beyond that, his wife. She stood on the porch with a telephone in her hand and a look on her face that said she was a heartbeat away from calling 911. Elizabeth kept her eyes on the guns because things could go downhill fast, and if the slide started, it would start there.

“Last chance, Detective.”

“I don’t think so.”

The warden looked at the neighbor, the wife with the phone. “You can’t hide behind an old man forever.” He showed flat eyes and the same white teeth. “Not in a town like this.”