The Prophet

16

CHELSEA WAS IN THE YARD when Adam returned, pouring sunflower seeds into a birdfeeder, fumbling in the dark, spilling half of the seeds into the leaves as she struggled to balance the weight of the bag in one arm and the position of the feeder with the other. He braced the feeder for her and said, “Why in the hell couldn’t this wait until morning?”

“One died.”

“What?”

“It was on the porch. Flew into the window. You know how they do that sometimes.”

“So it flew into the window. It didn’t starve to death.”

She shrugged, indifferent to that logic. “All the same, I thought I should fill the feeders.”

She was wearing loose sweatpants and a tank top, nothing else, hadn’t bothered to put on a jacket before she stepped into the cold night. This wasn’t atypical. She liked the cold, embraced it. He’d found her on the porch one winter morning in the predawn wearing just jeans and a bra, exhaling long breaths and watching them fog. When he asked her what the hell she was doing, she just smiled and said there was nothing like lung-care advice from a smoker.

Once the feeder had been filled she turned to face him and said, “Where have you been?”

“Talking to my brother.”

“Really?”

He nodded, still looking at her standing there barefoot in the dead leaves, her nipples taut against the thin fabric of the tank top, and, as was often the case, he found himself overwhelmed with desire for her. It was one of those things that was supposed to wane over time, wasn’t it, that teenage hormonal rush? Somehow it never had, with her. And if he’d been able to control that back when he was a teenager, if he’d just taken care of his responsibilities…

“What did Kent have to say?” Chelsea asked.

“Not much.” Adam took her in his arms as she gave him a skeptical glance.

“Kent just wanted to have a casual talk?”

“Yeah.” He kissed her, and she returned it for a few seconds before breaking away.

“What did he really want, Adam?”

“To tell me not to get into trouble,” Adam said, and then he wrapped his fingers in her hair, a touch like satin, and pulled gently, forcing her head back in the way she liked, and put his lips to her throat.

“Don’t do that,” she said.

“Do what?” he whispered, tracing her collarbone with his tongue, his hands sliding down her back and over her hips, her body pressed against his.

“Try to distract me. It doesn’t work.” But her voice had gone softer and deeper and now she had her arms around him, too, her fingernails biting into his back, pulling him tighter.

“Thought you wanted my mind in other places. That’s what you said last night.”

“What I want right now,” she said, “is not your mind. We’ll get to that.”

He picked her up then, and she wrapped her legs around him and locked her ankles behind his back as he carried her into the house. She was light and he could have gotten her all the way to the bedroom easily, but they didn’t make it there. The living room floor was closer.

They made it to the bed eventually, though, and they were there, still sweat-covered and breathing hard, when she placed her palm flat on his chest, put her face just above his, her lips hovering so close he could feel her breath as she spoke, and said, “What changed?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your mood. I’m not complaining, trust me. But what changed?”

Purpose, he thought. I know where I’m running now. But he said, “I just need you. Okay? Don’t interrogate me about it.”

She didn’t respond, still searching his eyes.

“You’re usually tense after talking to your brother. Why not tonight?”

“Maybe because I had the good sense to drink first,” he said, and then, because a drink sounded like a hell of a nice idea, he got up and poured a Scotch and returned to bed.

“Let’s try this again,” she said. “And this time, why don’t you tell me the truth?”

It was silent for a moment. She took the whiskey glass out of his hand and took a swallow. He traced the tattoo she had just over her hip, low on a stomach that shouldn’t be so flat and taut on a woman in her late thirties. It was a cat’s eye, shaded golden and outlined in bold black. She hated cats. Loved dogs, hated cats, had a cat’s-eye tattoo. It made sense to her, if nobody else. She just liked the look of it, she said. It had a hold on him, but not an altogether good one. He knew the tattoo artist who’d done it—her husband—and there that eye was, watching him in the night. Reminding him at all times that he was in bed with a married woman, and that Travis Leonard was coming back eventually. Then what? Would Adam sit back and hold his breath, waiting for the good news that they’d caught Travis with a stolen car, that he was going back to jail, a good long bust? What a beautiful life he had. What a beautiful damned life.

Chelsea said, “You didn’t kill the girl, Adam.”

“Rachel.”

“What?”

“Use her name. She’s not the girl, she’s not a body in the morgue, she’s—”

“You didn’t kill Rachel,” she said, and that stopped him before the boil. He closed his eyes. The tattoo would never close its eyes, but he could close his.

“I know. But I didn’t help.”

“There’s a lot of difference. And you’re going to deal with it by, what, disappearing?”

“I’m not going to disappear. I’m going to make sure that he doesn’t.”

“He?”

“Whoever did it.”

“Let the police do their job.”

“I don’t want to do their job. I want to do one that’s a little different.”

“Adam…”

“Gideon Pearce should have been in jail the day he murdered Marie.”

“So you’re a vigilante now, that’s it? That’s the right thing?”

“If I’m going to pull a trigger, I’d rather the barrel be in his mouth than mine.”

She looked at him for a long time and said, “It’ll be in both at once.”

“Better than just the one of us.”

She lifted his chin with her index finger to make him look her in the eyes. It was dark in the room, though, and all they could exchange were shifting shadows.

“Get some help, Adam. Talk to someone.”

“I’m going to find him.”

“That’s not what I mean by help. I mean you need to find a—”

“A shrink, a priest, a doctor with an open prescription pad. Yeah, I know what you meant.”

She dropped her hand from his face, and for a moment it was quiet. Then she said, “It won’t take long for the police to learn what you’re trying to do. And then you’ll have problems.”

“I know it.”

“You can’t stop, though? Not even for a few days, not even for long enough to step back and realize that all of this—”

“No, Chelsea. I can’t stop.”

He took the whiskey back from her and finished it and they lay together in the silent dark.

Warm breath on his ear, a cool palm on his chest. Something whispered. Adam wanted to respond, but his brain clung to drunken sleep and reminded him that he was going to be hurting tomorrow, that he’d hit the Scotch a bit too hard before the end, and Scotch, as was its generous way, might have let him slip off into sleep tonight but would certainly make him pay the bill come morning, with interest.

Sleep on, then. Burrow deeper, darker.

The palm was on his shoulder now, and it grew fingers, and the fingers had nails, and they squeezed. The whisper again, rising, nearly a full voice.

“Baby. Adam.”

He tried to turn away, but Chelsea shook his shoulder and now she’d won, sleep was on the retreat.

“Let me be,” he said, or tried to say. His voice was hoarse and choked.

“It’s Rachel’s mother.”

He opened his eyes, turned to see that Chelsea was pressing his phone to her chest, the bluish light of the display spilling over her breast.

“What?”

“She called five times. I finally answered. She wants to talk to you.”

He sat up, the hangover already throwing a few experimental punches even though the alcohol was still too thick in his bloodstream to be called into the ring yet.

“Here,” he said, holding out his hand. His voice croaked again, and he cleared his throat, tasting the smoke from his last cigarette. She passed him the phone and he climbed out of the bed. The alarm clock said it was twenty past three. He walked out of the bedroom and into the living room, where the darkness faded to light from the heat lamps that sustained the snakes.

“Hello,” he said, and he was pleased with his voice—it sounded clear and sober enough to get by, at least.

“Didn’t want to wake you,” Penny Gootee said, “but figure if you were any bit as good as your word, you wouldn’t care. So it’s the right time to call, maybe. Just right.”

Hers was a voice that was not clear or sober enough to get by.

“It’s a fine time. Are you all right?”

“No, I’m not all right. You really just ask me that?”

“I’m sorry.”

He paused, waited.

“They bury my daughter this week,” she said. Her voice reminded him of her eyes the last time he’d seen her, shot through with misplaced blood.

“I know it.”

She let it go for a few seconds before she spoke again. This time she seemed to be trying harder, a drunk’s careful tightrope walk over the treachery of words, wielding a thick and clumsy tongue as the balancing rod.

“You meant what you said, didn’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“You think you can do it?”

“I’m going to.”

“You really going to find him? And kill him?”

“Yes. I’m going to kill him.”

He saw a shadow move, knew that Chelsea was in the bedroom doorway watching him, but he didn’t turn to face her. He watched the snakes in their slumbering coils and he waited to hear what Rachel Bond’s mother had left to say.

“Promise me something else,” she said. “Promise me that if you get him, you’ll tell me. Will you do that? Will you tell me?”

“I will get him,” Adam said. “And you will know when I do.”

She hung up before he could say another word. When Adam turned back to the bedroom, Chelsea was already gone, and the door was shut.