Redemption Road

2

Elizabeth should sleep-she knew as much-but the fatigue was more than physical. The weariness came from dead men and the questions that followed, from thirteen years of cop that looked to end badly. She played the movie in her mind: the missing girl and the basement, the bloody wire, and the pop, pop of the first two rounds. She could explain two, maybe even six; but eighteen bullets in two bodies was a tough sell, even with the girl alive. Four days had passed since the shooting, and the life that followed still felt foreign. Yesterday, a family of four stopped her on the sidewalk to thank her for making the world a better place. An hour later, somebody spit on the sleeve of her favorite jacket.

Elizabeth lit a cigarette, thinking about how it all came down to where people stood. To those who had children, she was a hero. A girl was taken and bad men died. To a lot of people, that seemed about right. For those who distrusted the police on principle, Elizabeth was the proof of all that was wrong with authority. Two men died in a violent, brutal manner. Forget that they were pushers and kidnappers and rapists. They’d died with eighteen bullets in them, and that, for some, was inexcusable. They used words such as torture and execution and police brutality. Elizabeth had strong feelings on the matter, but mostly she was just tired. How many days now with no real sleep? How many nightmares when it finally happened? Even though the city was unchanged and the same people inhabited her life, it seemed harder each hour to hold on to the person she’d been. Today was a perfect example. She’d been in the car for seven hours, driving aimlessly across town and into the county, past the police station and her house, out beyond the prison and back. But, what else could she do?

Home was a vacuum.

She couldn’t go to work.

Pulling into a dark lot on the dangerous edge of downtown, she turned off the engine and listened to the sounds the city made. Music thumped from a club two blocks away. A fan belt squealed at the corner. Somewhere, there was laughter. After four years in uniform and nine with the gold shield, she knew every nuance of every rhythm. The city was her life, and for a long time she’d loved it. Now it felt… what?

Was wrong the right word? That seemed too harsh.

Alien, maybe?

Unfamiliar?

She got out of the car and stood in the darkness as a distant streetlight flickered twice, then snapped and died. She made a slow turn, picturing every back alley and crooked street in a ten-block radius. She knew the crack houses and flophouses, the prostitutes and pushers, which street corners were likely to get you shot if you said the wrong thing or rolled up hot. Seven different people had been killed on this busted-up patch of broken city, and that was just in the past three years.

She’d been in darker places a thousand times, but it felt different without the badge. The moral authority mattered, as did the sense of belonging to something larger than oneself. It wasn’t fear, but nakedness might be a decent word. Elizabeth didn’t have boyfriends or lady friends or hobbies. She was a cop. She liked the fight and the chase, the rare, sweet times she helped people who actually meant well. What would remain if she lost it?

Channing, she told herself.

Channing would remain.

That a girl she barely knew could matter so much was strange. But, she did. When Elizabeth felt dark or lost, she thought of the girl. Same thing when the world pressed in, or when Elizabeth considered the real chance that she could go to prison for what had happened in that cold, damp hole of a basement. Channing was alive, and as damaged as she was, she still had a chance at a full and normal life. A lot of victims couldn’t say that. Hell, Elizabeth knew cops that couldn’t say it, either.

Grinding out the cigarette, Elizabeth bought a newspaper from a machine beside an empty diner. Back in the car, she spread the paper across the wheel and saw her own face staring back. She looked cold and distant in black and white, but it could be the headline that made her seem so remote.

“Hero Cop or Angel of Death?”

Two paragraphs in, it was pretty clear what the reporter thought. Even though the word alleged showed up more than once, so did phrases such as inexplicable brutality, unwarranted use of force, died in excruciating pain. After long years of positive press, the local paper, it seemed, had finally turned against her. Not that she could blame them, not with the protests and public outcry, not with the state police involved. The photograph they’d chosen told the tale. Standing on the courthouse steps and peering down, she looked cold and aloof. It was the high cheekbones and deep eyes, the fair skin that looked gray in newsprint.

“Angel of death. Jesus.”

Tossing the paper in the backseat, she started the car and worked her way out of the bad parts of town, driving past the marbled courthouse and the fountain at the square, then toward the college, where she slipped like a ghost past coffee shops and bars and loud, laughing kids. After that she was in the gentrified section, moving past condo lofts and art galleries and renovated warehouses turned into brewpubs and day spas and black box theaters. Tourists were on the sidewalks, some hipsters, a few homeless. When she found the four-lane that led past the chain restaurants and the old mall, she drove faster. Traffic was thinner there, the people’s movements smaller and more subdued. She tried the radio, but the talk channels were boring and none of the music fit. Turning east, she followed a narrow road through scattered woods and subdivisions with stone-columned entrances. In twenty minutes she was outside the city limits. In another five, she started climbing. When she reached the top of the mountain, she lit another cigarette and stared out at the city, thinking how clean it looked from above. For a moment, she forgot the girl and the basement. There were no screams or blood or smoke, no broken child or irredeemable mistakes. There was light and there was dark. Nothing gray or shadowed. Nothing in between.

Stepping to the edge of the mountain, she looked down and tried to find some reason for hope. No charges had been filed. She wasn’t looking at prison.

Not yet…

Spinning the cigarette into the blackness, she called the girl for the third time in as many days. “Channing, hey, it’s me.”

“Detective Black?”

“Call me Elizabeth, remember?”

“Yeah, sorry. I was asleep.”

“Did I wake you? I’m sorry. My mind these days.” Elizabeth pressed the phone against her ear and closed her eyes. “I lose track of time.”

“It’s okay. I’m taking sleeping pills. My mom, you know.”

There was a rustling sound, and Elizabeth pictured the girl sitting up in bed. She was eighteen years old, a doll of a girl with haunted eyes and the kind of memories no child should have. “I was just worried about you.” Elizabeth squeezed the phone until her hand ached and the world stopped spinning. “With all that’s going on, it helps to know you’re okay.”

“I sleep mostly. It’s only bad when I’m awake.”

“I’m so sorry, Channing…”

“I didn’t tell anybody.”

Elizabeth grew suddenly still. Warm air rolled up the mountain, but she felt cold. “That’s not why I called, sweetheart. You don’t-”

“I did like you asked, Elizabeth. I didn’t tell a soul what really happened. I won’t. I wouldn’t.”

“I know, but…”

“Does the world go dark for you, sometimes?”

“Are you crying, Channing?”

“It goes a little gray for me.”

The voice broke, and Elizabeth could picture the girl’s bedroom in her parents’ big house across town. Six days ago Channing vanished off a city street. No witnesses. No motive beyond the obvious. Two days after that, Elizabeth led her, blinking, from the basement of an abandoned house. The men who’d taken her were dead-shot eighteen times. Now, here they were: midnight, four days later, and the girl’s room was still pink and soft and filled with all the possessions of childhood. If there was a message there, Elizabeth couldn’t find it. “I shouldn’t have called,” she said. “It was selfish of me. Go back to sleep.”

The line hissed.

“Channing?”

“They ask what happened, you know. My parents. The counselors. They ask all the time, but all I say is how you killed those men and how you saved me and how I felt joyful when they died.”

“It’s okay, Channing. You’re okay.”

“Does that make me a bad person, Elizabeth? That I was joyful? That I think eighteen bullets was not enough?”

“Of course not. They deserved it.”

But the girl was still crying. “I see them when I close my eyes. I hear the jokes they told between times. The way they planned to kill me.” Her voice broke again, and the break was deeper. “I still feel his teeth on my skin.”

“Channing…”

“I heard the same things so many times I started to believe what he said. That I deserved what they were doing to me, that I’d ask to die before they were done, and that I’d beg before they’d finally let me.”

Elizabeth’s hand went even whiter on the phone. Doctors counted nineteen bite marks, most of them through the skin; but Elizabeth knew from long discussions it was the things they’d said to her that hurt the most, the knowingness and fear, the way they’d tried to break her.

“I would have asked him to kill me,” Channing said. “If you hadn’t come when you did, I’d have begged him.”

“It’s over now.”

“I don’t think it is.”

“It is. You’re stronger than you think.”

Channing grew silent again, and in the silence Elizabeth heard the raggedness of her breath.

“Will you come see me tomorrow?”

“I’ll try,” Elizabeth said.

“Please.”

“I have to talk to the state police tomorrow. If I can make it, I will. If not, then the next day.”

“Do you promise?”

“I do,” Elizabeth said, though she knew nothing of fixing broken things.

When she got back in the car, Elizabeth still felt disconnected, and like other times in her life where she’d had nowhere to go and nothing to do, she ended up at her father’s church, a humble building that rose narrow and pale against the night sky. She parked beneath the high steeple, studied small houses lined like boxes in the dark, and thought for the hundredth time that she could live in a place like this. Poor as it was, people worked and raised families and helped each other. Neighborliness like that seemed rare these days, and she thought a lot of what made this place so special came from her parents. As much as she and her father disagreed on life and the living of it, he was a fine minister. If people wanted a relationship with God, his was a good path. Kindness. Community. He kept the neighborhood going, but none of it worked unless it was done his way.

Elizabeth lost that kind of trust when she was seventeen.

Following a narrow drive, she walked beneath heavy trees and ended at the parsonage where her parents lived. Like the church, it was small and plain and painted a simple white. She didn’t expect to find anyone awake, but her mother was sitting at the kitchen table. She had the same cheekbones as Elizabeth, and the same deep eyes, a beautiful woman with gray-streaked hair and skin that was still smooth in spite of long years of hard work. Elizabeth watched for a full minute, hearing dogs, a distant engine, the wail of an infant in some other far house. She’d avoided this place since the shooting.

Then why am I here?

Not for her father, she thought. Never that.

Then why?

But she knew.

Tapping on the door, Elizabeth waited as fabric whispered behind the screen, and her mother appeared. “Hello, Mom.”

“Baby girl.” The screen door swung open and her mother stepped onto the porch. Her eyes twinkled in the light, her features full of joy as she opened her arms and hugged her daughter. “You don’t call. You don’t come by.”

She was keeping it light, but Elizabeth squeezed harder. “It’s been a bad few days. I’m sorry.”

She stood Elizabeth at arm’s length and studied her face. “We’ve left messages, you know. Even your father called.”

“I can’t talk to Dad.”

“It’s really that bad?”

“Let’s just say I have enough judgment coming my way without the heavenly kind.”

It wasn’t a joke, but her mother laughed, a good laugh. “Come have a drink.” She led Elizabeth inside, put her at a small table, and fussed over ice and a half-empty bottle of Tennessee whiskey. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Elizabeth shook her head. She’d like to be honest with her mother, but had discovered long ago how a single lie could poison even the deepest well. Better to say nothing at all. Better to keep it in.

“Elizabeth?”

“I’m sorry.” Elizabeth shook her head again. “I don’t mean to be distant. It’s just that everything seems so… muddled.”

“Muddled?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, bullshit.” Elizabeth opened her mouth, but her mother waved it closed. “You’re the most clear-minded person I’ve ever known. As a child, an adult. You’ve always seen more clearly than most. You’re like your father that way, even though you believe such different things.”

Elizabeth peered down the darkened hall. “Is he here?”

“Your father? No. The Turners are having troubles again. Your father’s trying to help.”

Elizabeth knew the Turners. The wife drank and could get abusive. She’d hurt her husband once, and Elizabeth took the call her last month in uniform. She could close her eyes and picture the narrow house, the woman who wore a pink housecoat and weighed a hundred pounds, at most.

I want the reverend.

She had a rolling pin in her hand, swinging at shadows. The husband was down and bloody.

I won’t talk to nobody but the reverend.

Elizabeth had been ready to do it the hard way, but her father calmed the woman down, and the husband-again-refused to press charges. That was years ago, and the reverend still counseled them. “He never shies, does he?”

“Your father? No.”

Elizabeth looked out the window. “Has he talked about the shooting?”

“No, sweetheart. What could he possibly say?”

It was a good question, and Elizabeth knew the answer. He would blame her for the deaths, for being a cop in the first place. He would say she’d broken trust, and that everything bad flowed from that single poor decision: the basement, the dead brothers, her career. “He still can’t accept the life I’ve chosen.”

“Of course he can. He’s your father, though, and he pines.”

“For me?”

“For simpler times, perhaps. For what once was. No man wants to be hated by his own daughter.”

“I don’t hate him.”

“You’ve not forgiven, either.”

Elizabeth accepted the truth of that. She kept her distance, and even when they shared the same room, there was a frost. “How are you two so different?”

“We’re really not.”

“Laugh lines. Frown lines. Acceptance. Judgment. You’re so completely opposite I wonder how you’ve stayed together for so long. I marvel. I really do.”

“You’re being unfair to your father.”

“Am I?”

“What can I tell you, sweetheart?” Her mother sipped whiskey and smiled. “The heart wants what the heart wants.”

“Even after so many years?”

“Well, maybe it’s not so much the heart, anymore. He can be difficult, yes, but only because he sees the world so clearly. Good and evil, the one straight path. The older I become, the more comfort I find in that kind of certainty.”

“You studied philosophy, for God’s sake.”

“That was a different life…”

“You lived in Paris. You wrote poetry.”

Her mother waved off the observation. “I was just a girl, and Paris just a place. You ask why we’ve stayed together, and in my heart I remember how it felt-the vision and the purpose, the determination every day to make the world better. Life with your father was like standing next to an open fire, just raw force and heat and purpose. He got out of bed driven and ended every day the same. He made me very happy for a lot of years.”

“And now?”

She smiled wistfully. “Let’s just say that as rigid as he may have grown, my home will always be between your father’s walls.”

Elizabeth appreciated the simple elegance of such commitment. The preacher. The preacher’s wife. She let a moment pass, thinking how it must have been for them: the passion and the cause, the early days and the great, stone church. “It’s not like the old place, is it?” She turned back to the window and stared out at rock-lined gardens and brown grass, at the poor, narrow church wrapped in sunbaked clapboards. “I think about it sometimes: the cool and the quiet, the long view from the front steps.”

“I thought you hated the old church.”

“Not always. And not with such passion.”

“Why are you here, sweetheart?” Her mother’s reflection appeared in the same pane of glass. “Really?”

Elizabeth sighed, knowing this was the reason she’d come. “Am I a good person?” Her mother started to smile, but Elizabeth stopped her. “I’m serious, Mom. It’s like now. It’s the middle of the night. Things in my life are troubled and uncertain, and here I am.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Am I a taker?”

“Elizabeth Frances Black, you’ve never taken anything in your whole life. Since you were a child I’ve watched you give, first to your father and the congregation, now to the whole city. How many medals have you won? How many lives have you saved? What’s this really about?”

Elizabeth sat again and stared into her drink, both shoulders lifting. “You know how well I shoot.”

“Ah. Now, I understand.” She took her daughter’s hand, and creases gathered at her eyes as she squeezed it once and took the seat across the table. “If you shot those men eighteen times, then you had good reason. Nothing anybody ever says will make me feel different about that.”

“You’ve read the papers?”

“Generalities.” She made a dismissive sound. “Distortion.”

“Two men are dead. What else is there to say?”

“Baby girl.” She refilled Elizabeth’s glass and poured more in hers. “That’s like using white to describe a full moon rising, or wet to capture the glory of the oceans. You saved an innocent girl. Everything else pales.”

“You know the state police are investigating?”

“I know only that you did what you felt was right, and that if you shot those men eighteen times, there was a good reason for doing so.”

“And if the state police disagree?”

“My goodness.” Her mother laughed again. “You can’t possibly doubt yourself that much. They’ll have their little investigation, and they’ll clear your name. Surely you see that.”

“Nothing seems clear right now. What happened. Why it happened. I haven’t really slept.”

Her mother sipped, then pointed with a finger. “Are you familiar with the word inspiration? The meaning of it? Where it comes from?”

Elizabeth shook her head.

“In the Dark Ages, no one understood the things that made some people special, things like imagination or creativity or vision. People lived and died in the same small village. They had no idea why the sun rose or set or why winter came. They grubbed in the dirt and died young of disease. Every soul in that dark, difficult time faced the same limitations, every soul except a precious few who came rarely to the world and saw things differently, the poets and inventors, the artists and stonemasons. Regular folks didn’t understand people like that; they didn’t understand how a person could wake up one day and see the world differently. They thought it was a gift from God. Thus, the word inspiration. It means ‘breathed upon.’”

“I’m no artist. No visionary.”

“Yet, you have insights as rare as any poet’s gift. You see deeply and understand. You would not have killed those men unless you had to.”

“Look, Mom-”

“Inspiration.” Her mother drank, and her eyes watered. “Breathed upon by God himself.”

Thirty minutes later, Elizabeth drove back into the heart of downtown. The city was of a decent size for North Carolina, with a hundred thousand people inside the limits and twice as many spread across the county. It was still rich in places, but ten years into the downturn the cracks were starting to show. Storefronts were shuttered where none had ever been shuttered before. Broken windows went unfixed, buildings unpainted. She passed a place that used to be her favorite restaurant and saw a group of teenagers arguing on the street corner. There was more of that now, too: anger, discontent. Unemployment was twice the national average, and every year it got harder to pretend the best times weren’t in the past. That didn’t mean parts of the city weren’t beautiful-they were: the old houses and picket fences, the bronze statues that spoke of certainty and war and sacrifice. Pockets of pride remained, but even the most dignified people seemed cautious in expressing it, as if it might be dangerous, somehow, as if it might be best to keep one’s head down and wait for clearer skies.

Parking in front of the police station, Elizabeth stared out through the glass. The building was three stories tall and built of the same stone and marble as the courthouse. A Chinese restaurant filled a narrow lot on the side street to her right. The Confederate cemetery was a block farther, and beyond that was the train depot, with the tracks running north to south. When she was a kid, she’d follow those tracks into town, walking with her friends on a Saturday morning to see a movie or watch boys in the park. She couldn’t imagine such a thing, now. Kids on the tracks. Loose in the city. Elizabeth rolled down the window, smelled pavement and hot rubber. Lighting a cigarette, she watched the station.

Thirteen years…

She tried to imagine it gone: the job, the relationships, the sense of purpose. Since she was seventeen, all she’d wanted was to be a cop because cops didn’t fear the things normal people feared. Cops were strong. They had authority and purpose. They were the good guys.

Did she still believe that?

Elizabeth closed her eyes, thinking about it. When she opened them, she saw Francis Dyer walking down the wide stairs that stretched across the front of the station. He made a beeline across the street, his face familiar and frustrated and sad. They’d argued a lot since the shooting, but there was no bitterness between them. He was older and soft and genuinely worried for her.

“Hello, Captain. I didn’t expect to see you here this late.”

He stopped at the open window, studied her face and the car’s interior. His eyes moved over cigarette packs and Red Bull cans and a half dozen balled-up newspapers filling the backseat. Eventually, the gaze landed on the cell phone beside her. “I’ve left six messages.”

“I’m sorry. I turned it off.”

“Why?”

“Most calls I get are from reporters. Would you prefer I speak to them?”

Her attitude made him angry. Part of it was anxiety, and part was the whole cop-control thing. She was a detective, but suspended, a friend but not close enough to justify the kind of frustration he was feeling. The emotion was in his face, in the pinched eyes and soft lips, in the sudden flush that stained his skin. “What are you doing here, Liz? It’s the middle of the night.”

She shrugged.

“I’ve told you about this. Until your case is cleared…”

“I wasn’t going to come inside.”

He waited a few beats, the same angles in his face, same worry in his eyes. “Your follow-up with the state police is tomorrow. You remember that, right?”

“Of course.”

“Have you met with your attorney?”

“Yes,” she lied. “All set.”

“Then, you should be with family or friends, people who love you.”

“I was. Dinner with friends.”

“Really? What did you eat?” Her mouth opened, and he said, “Forget it. I don’t want you to lie to me.” He looked across the top of narrow glasses, then up and down the street. “My office. Five minutes.”

He walked off and Elizabeth took a minute to pull herself together. When she felt ready, she crossed the street and trotted up the stairs to where double glass doors reflected light from streetlamps and stars. At the desk inside, she forced a smile and made a hands-up gesture to the sergeant behind the bulletproof glass.

“Yeah, yeah,” the sergeant said. “Dyer told me to let you through. You look different.”

“Different, how?”

He shook his head. “I’m too old for that shit.”

“What shit?”

“Women. Opinions.”

He hit the buzzer, and the sound followed her into the stairwell and upstairs to the long, open space used by the detective squad. It was nearly empty, most of the desks pooled in shadow. For bittersweet seconds, no one noticed her; then the door clanked shut and a massive cop in a rumpled suit looked up from his desk. “Yo, yo. Black in the house.”

“Yo, yo?” Elizabeth stepped into the room.

“What?” He leaned back in his chair. “I can’t do street?”

“I’d stick with what you’ve got.”

“And what’s that?”

She stopped at his desk. “A mortgage, kids. Thirty extra pounds and a wife of what, nine years?”

“Ten.”

“Well, there you go. A loving family, thick arteries, and twenty years to retirement.”

“Funny. Thanks for that.”

Elizabeth took a sour ball from a glass jar, cocked a hip, and looked down at Charlie Beckett’s round face. He was six foot three and running to fat, but she’d seen him throw a two-hundred-pound suspect across the top of a parked car without once touching paint. “Nice hair,” he said.

She touched it, felt how short it was, the spiky bangs. “Seriously?”

“Sarcasm, woman. Why did you do that to yourself?”

“Maybe, I wanted something different in the mirror.”

“Maybe you should hire somebody that knows what they’re doing. When did that happen? I saw you two days ago.”

She had vague memories of cutting it: four in the morning and drunk; lights off in the bathroom. She’d been laughing about something, but it was more like crying. “What are you doing here, Charlie? It’s after midnight.”

“There was a shooting at the college,” Beckett said.

“Jesus, not another one.”

“No, not like that. Some locals tried to beat the crap out of a freshman kid they thought was gay. Gay or not, it turns out he’s a big fan of concealed-carry laws. They chased him into the alley by the barbershop at the edge of campus. Four on one, and he drew down with a.380.”

“Did he kill anybody?”

“Shot one through the arm. The others split when it happened. We’ve got the names, though. We’re looking for them.”

“Any charges on the student?”

“Four on one. A college kid with no priors.” Beckett shook his head. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s just paperwork, now.”

“There’s that, I guess.”

“Guess so.”

“Listen, I’ve got to go.”

“Yeah, the captain said you were coming in. He didn’t look happy.”

“He caught me lurking outside.”

“You are suspended. You remember that, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re not exactly helping your cause.”

She knew what he meant. There’d been questions about the basement, and she’d been short on answers. Pressure was mounting. State cops. Attorney general. “Let’s talk about something else. How’s Carol?”

Beckett leaned back in his chair, shrugged. “Working late.”

“Some kind of hair-salon emergency?”

“There are such things, believe it or not. A wedding, I think. Or a divorce party. Deep conditioning tonight. Cut and style in the morning.”

“Wow.”

“I know. She still wants to set you up, by the way.”

“With who, the orthodontist?”

“Dentist.”

“Is there a difference?”

“One makes more money, I think.”

Elizabeth hooked a finger over her shoulder. “I think he’s waiting.”

“Listen, Liz.” Beckett leaned in, lowered his voice. “I’ve tried to give you space on the shooting. Right? I’ve tried to be a partner and a friend and understanding. But state cops are tomorrow-”

“They have my statement. Asking the same questions won’t get them different answers.”

“They’ve had four days to look for witnesses, talk to Channing, work the crime scene. They won’t ask the same questions. You know that.”

She shrugged. “The story’s the story.”

“It’s political, Liz. You get that, right? White cop, black victims…”

“They’re not victims.”

“Look.” Beckett studied her face, worried. “They want to nail a cop they think is racist, unstable, or both. As far as they’re concerned, that’s you. Elections are coming up, and the AG wants an in with the black community. He thinks this is it.”

“I don’t care about any of that.”

“You shot them eighteen times.”

“They raped that child for over a day.”

“I know, but listen.”

“Wired her wrists so tight it cut to the bone.”

“Liz-”

“Don’t Liz me, goddamn it! They told her they were going to smother her when they were done with her, then toss her body in the quarry. They had a plastic bag and duct tape all ready. One of them wanted to screw her while she died. He called it a white-girl rodeo.”

“I know all that,” Beckett said.

“Then this conversation should not be happening.”

“But it is, isn’t it? Channing’s father is rich and white. The men you shot were poor and black. It’s politics. Media. It’s already started. You’ve seen the papers.” He held up a thumb and forefinger. “It’s this close to going national. People want an indictment.”

She knew whom he meant. Politicians. Agitators. Some who thought the system was genuinely corrupt. “I can’t talk about this.”

“Can you talk to the lawyer?”

“I already have.”

“No, you haven’t.” Beckett leaned back, watching her. “He calls here, looking for you. He says you haven’t taken a meeting and won’t return his calls. State cops want you for double homicide, and you’re screwing around like you didn’t empty your magazine into two unarmed men.”

“I had a good reason.”

“I don’t doubt you did, but that’s not the issue, is it? Cops go to prison, too. You know that better than most.”

His gaze was as pointed as his words. Elizabeth didn’t care. Even after thirteen years. “I’m not going to talk about him, Charlie. Not tonight. Not with you.”

“He gets out of prison tomorrow. I assume you see the irony.” Beckett crossed his hands behind his head as if challenging her to argue the basic facts.

Cops go to prison.

Sometimes they get out.

“I’d better go see the captain.”

“Liz, wait.”

She didn’t. She left Beckett and knocked twice before opening the captain’s door. Inside, Dyer was sitting behind the desk. Even this late, the suit was crisp, the tie drawn tight. “Are you okay?”

She waved a hand, but couldn’t hide the anger and disappointment. “Partners. Opinions.”

“Beckett only wants what’s best for you. It’s all any of us want.”

“Then, put me back to work.”

“Do you really think that’s the right thing for you?”

She looked away because his question hit so close to the mark “The job is what I do best.”

“I won’t reinstate you until this thing runs its course.”

She dropped into a chair. “How much longer will that be?”

“That’s not the right question.”

Elizabeth stared at her reflection in the window. She’d lost weight. Her hair was a mess. “What is the right question?”

“Seriously?” Dyer lifted both palms. “Do you even remember the last time you ate?”

“That’s not relevant.”

“How about the last time you slept?”

“Okay. Fine. I’ll admit that the past few days have been… complicated.”

“Complicated? For God’s sake, Liz, you have circles under your eyes that look painted on. You’re never home, best any of us can tell. You don’t answer your phone. You’re riding around in that broken-down car.”

“It’s a ’67 Mustang.”

“That’s barely street legal.” Dyer leaned forward, laced his fingers. “These state cops keep asking about you, and it’s getting harder and harder to say you’re solid. A week ago, I’d have used words like judiciousness and brilliance and restraint. Now I don’t know what to say. You’ve gone edgy and dark and unpredictable. You’re drinking too much, smoking for the first time in, what, ten years? You won’t talk to the counselor or your colleagues.” He made a gesture that took in her ragged hair and pale face. “You look like one of these Goth kids, like a shadow-”

“Can we discuss something else?”

“I think you’re lying about what happened in the basement. How’s that for something else?”

Elizabeth looked away.

“Your timeline’s off, Liz. The state police aren’t buying it, and neither am I. The girl is squirrelly with details, which makes me think she’s lying, too. You’re missing an hour. You emptied your weapon.”

“If we’re finished…”

“We’re not.” Dyer leaned back in his chair, unhappy. “I called your father.”

“Ah.” A world of meaning was in the sound. “And how is the Reverend Black?”

“He says the cracks in you are so deep God’s own light can’t find the bottom.”

“Yeah, well”-she looked away-“my father has always had a way with words.”

“He’s a good man, Liz. Let him help you.”

“Attending my father’s service twice a year doesn’t give you the right to discuss my life with him. I don’t want him involved, and I don’t need help.”

“But, you do.” Dyer put his forearms on the desk. “That’s what’s so heartbreaking. You’re one of the best cops I’ve ever seen, but you’re a slow-motion train wreck, too. None of us can look away. We want to help you. Let us help you.”

“May I have my shield back or not?”

“Get your story straight, Liz. Get it straight or these state cops will eat you alive.”

Elizabeth stood. “I know what I’m doing.”

Dyer stood, too, and spoke as her hand reached for the door. “You drove by the prison this afternoon.”

She stopped with one hand on the knob. When she turned, her voice was cold. He wanted to talk about tomorrow and the prison. Of course, he did. Just like Beckett. Just like every cop out there. “Were you following me?”

“No.”

“Who saw me?”

“It doesn’t matter. You know my point.”

“Let’s pretend I can’t read minds.”

“I don’t want you anywhere near Adrian Wall.”

“Adrian who?”

“And don’t play dumb with me, either. His parole came through. He gets out in the morning.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

But she did, and both of them knew it.