The Prophet

48

SHE WAS NOT WRONG.

Kent accepted that as he drove. His instinct was to defend himself, to rationalize. The only thing he’d ever said to Adam about killing Clayton Sipes was to tell him not to do it, not even think about it. Those had been his instructions, and he could hide behind them if he wished.

Just as he’d hidden behind Adam since the moment Sipes arrived.

He would not do that now. There are different layers of honesty—the truth of what you said and the truth of what was in your heart when you spoke the words. They did not always share a path.

There were things that stood out to him from the day he’d revealed Sipes’s identity to Adam. The photograph of his brother with another man’s blood on him. The bruised and swollen hand. The way he’d not so much as blinked when he declared his disappointment that he’d not had the chance to kill Gideon Pearce.

I knew what he would do if he could, Kent thought. I knew that.

He remembered the unease he’d felt watching the old game film with Colin Mears. He hadn’t been able to explain it at the time, or hadn’t wanted to search deeply enough and honestly enough to do so. The reason was clear to him now, though. He’d watched the way they’d played that game—put Adam out there in front and let him do the hitting, let him do the savage work, with the understanding that if you stayed behind him you’d be untouched and unharmed—and he’d seen the truth of what he was doing with his brother and turned away from it.

I didn’t know he could find him.

That much was true. But he’d known damn well what Adam would do if he did find him.

Chelsea had requested an alibi. Kent could offer that, but he thought that he could offer one better. He understood things that Adam did not, and in those things was a chance at making this right, at removing his brother from a hell that belonged to Kent. He’d brought Grissom here, Grissom and Sipes both, and it was time to own that. There would be no more running, there would be no more turning away from the conflict. Any hitting that was left to do, Kent would do himself, the way he always should have.

Adam didn’t have words for Marie today. He’d done all of the right things, had knocked twice, had lit the right candles in the right order, but he couldn’t call up any words.

So he just sat on the floor, thinking about all that he had done. Rodney Bova, framed for a felony. Clayton Sipes, shot and left dead by Lake Erie. These things had always been horrible, but they’d had purpose. They were required acts, the only means of atonement that carried any weight in this world. What he had done was brutal, but it was righteous.

Now he had been told it was the wrong man. What did that leave behind?

“I’m sorry,” he told Marie finally. They were usually the last words he had for her, but today they were the only ones.

Someone knocked downstairs. At first he thought police, but then the knock came again and he realized it was not the front door but the side door. His family had always come and gone from the side door; visitors came and went through the front door.

Kent was here.

He got to his feet and left Marie’s room without extinguishing the candles. Went downstairs and through the kitchen and pulled open the door and saw his little brother standing there and wished he couldn’t see him, because Kent looked that bad. Looked wounded.

“Chelsea talked to you,” Adam said.

“Yeah.”

Somehow Adam wasn’t surprised.

“What did she tell you?”

“All there was to tell, I think,” Kent said, stepping inside. Adam closed the door behind him and moved to sit at the kitchen table. Kent joined him, sitting where their father belonged. Adam had always tried to keep Kent away from those long night sessions at the kitchen table, Scotch disappearing like water, bloodshot eyes taking aim at impossible targets. Adam would tell his brother to get his ass down to the field or the weight room or Walter Ward’s house. The position opposite their father at the table on those nights was Adam’s place, Adam’s burden. He’d tried to keep Kent away from it, and for a long time, he thought he had succeeded. But here they sat. Their father was gone, and Kent was where he’d been once, and the realization made Adam sad.

“I wish you hadn’t done it,” Kent said. He didn’t ask whether Adam had done it. Clearly, Chelsea had left him no room for doubt. “Adam, you should have—”

“I know what I should have done,” Adam said. “And what I shouldn’t have done. I put a bullet in an innocent man’s head, Kent. That’s where it stands now, am I correct?”

Kent nodded.

“Great.” Adam took a deep breath. “He was a piece of shit. A predator. But I deal with the same kind of people all the time. I’m not putting a gun to all of their heads. I wanted him because of what he’d done. Only he never did it. So what I’m left with…” He ran a hand over his face, falling silent.

“We will keep you clean,” Kent said.

“Clean?” Adam looked up. “A bit late for that, Franchise.”

“I mean with the police. We can’t change what you did, no. We can change who knows about it, and what happens because of it. We can still control that much.”

“I don’t even know if I want to,” Adam said. “But regardless, I’ll take care of myself. Chelsea probably said you needed to help me. I’ve decided I don’t want that, though. Stay away from the wreckage, Kent. I’ll take care of—”

“If we can find him, we can keep you out of prison,” Kent said.

Adam stared at him. “Find who?”

“I know who it is, Adam. This time I really know. I spent the whole night with the FBI.”

“Tell me,” Adam said, and then he listened as his brother explained the whole thing, the sociopath who’d impersonated a minister, who’d walked in and out of the prisons in which he belonged and sought recruits. Found one. Clayton Sipes.

Adam lit a cigarette but couldn’t smoke it. The inhalations were too hard, so he set it back in the ashtray and let it burn itself out.

“They believe Grissom killed Sipes,” Kent said. “Right now, there’s not even a doubt in their minds. You’re not a suspect.”

“It’ll change fast. Bova was already suspicious, and if he starts talking, and at some point he will, they’ll get to me. When they realize I knew about the house where Sipes was staying, they’ll begin to press. Then it’s a matter of whether I can hold up against the pressure.”

“How long did you follow him before… before you killed him?”

“Bova?”

“Sipes.”

“I never followed him. I found him and I killed him.”

Kent frowned. “Sipes was staying in Cleveland.”

Adam shook his head.

“No,” Kent said. “I’m not wrong on this. They told me they got to Grissom through evidence found in an apartment in Cleveland. That’s where Sipes was living.”

Adam looked at him for a long time. Said, “He was in Cleveland?”

“Yes.”

“He had to have a place to operate here. Did they not mention that yet?”

“No. It’s not a long drive, Adam. He probably just—”

“How did they find the place in Cleveland?”

“I have no idea.”

“Find out.”

“Adam, why does it matter?”

“Find out.”

Kent called his contact with the FBI, got an immediate answer, and Adam listened to one side of the conversation. Kent played it well. Surprisingly well. Led with questions about Grissom, about the security plans for his family, said that no, he had not heard from Grissom, but, yes, he did have one question. How did they know where Sipes was staying? From his end, Adam couldn’t hear the answers, but he could get a sense that it had something to do with a phone. He hadn’t searched Sipes, not for a phone or a wallet, not for anything. Why would he have? There had been nothing left to hunt once Sipes was facedown in the rocks.

“Who did he call?” Adam asked when Kent hung up.

“Dan Grissom, for one. The same number I have for him, the one he only uses for messages. And his landlord. Promising money for rent. I guess they’d been threatening eviction. Maybe that’s why he came to Rodney Bova. Looking for cash?”

“That would be consistent,” Adam said, and his voice sounded distant even to his own ears. “So he was staying in Cleveland?”

“Yes.”

Adam got to his feet. Kent said, “Where are you going?” but he didn’t answer. He went outside, unlocked the Jeep, and found his camera. Came back inside, turned on the display and clicked backward through his recent photographs, then passed the camera to Kent.

“Is that him?”

It was a picture of the man who’d left the house at 57 Erie Avenue just before Adam began to drive away and spotted Sipes in the window. Sipes had been looking out at the street, and Adam had thought at the time he might be keeping an eye on things, checking his safety. Maybe not, though. Maybe he’d been watching his messiah depart.

Kent was staring at the display window of the camera.

“Is it him?” Adam repeated.

“Yes.” Kent’s voice was barely audible. He moved back through a few pictures, then went forward again, to the close-up of the man who’d left the house. “That’s Dan Grissom. When did you take a picture of him?”

“Thursday morning.”

Kent looked up. “Just before…”

“Yeah.”

“Where was he?”

“With Sipes. It’s the place where Sipes was staying.”

“Not in Cleveland.”

“No. So if he had a place in Cleveland, and Grissom is missing, then…”

Neither of them said anything for a minute. Kent was staring at the camera, and Adam thought that he was trying to place the house. Kent would not know that house, though. Kent would not know the street. They’d been on it a few times, when they were kids, when the steel mill was still alive and their father worked there. But in the years since, Adam doubted that Kent had ever had occasion to drive back through. He’d coached some fine players from the neighborhood—Erie Avenue was home to hitters, the kind Kent liked—but he would not recognize the houses. It was not his world.

“Do you know whether Sipes was staying there alone?”

“I don’t. Bova went there in the middle of the night. I was at your house, so I didn’t want to leave. I waited until morning and then I went to check the address out. This guy came out and drove away, and Sipes stayed behind. I got him then.”

The phrase made Kent grimace, but he said, “This has to be where he is. Sipes would have come to him, not the other way around.”

“You think?”

Kent nodded. “Control is big to Grissom, according to the FBI. It’s critical.”

“I wonder if he’s gone now. If I scared him off by killing Sipes.”

“Yeah,” Kent said. “I wonder.” He finally set the camera down, and now his attention was on Adam and his face was thoughtful. “Can I have that gun back?”

“Why?”

“Same reason I wanted it before. In case I need protection.”

“Bullshit, Franchise. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Kent was silent. Adam spread his hands. “Come on, Kent.”

“I’m thinking,” his brother said, his brother who was on the front page of today’s paper with his arms upraised, signaling victory, “that if Grissom is dead, he takes the Sipes case with him. They’re already assuming he’s responsible for that. If he’s around, they’ll have to investigate it hard, because he won’t admit to doing it. He may know damn well that you did it.”

Adam shook his head. “Stop.”

“I can do it,” Kent said. “I’m the right one to do it. In so many ways.”

“Stop talking like me,” Adam said. He’d never meant anything more.

“He’s taking pictures of my family, Adam. Last night I got home and found photographs of a murdered girl beside photographs of my daughter.”

Thirty minutes earlier, Adam had thought his ability to feel righteous fury had been extinguished, probably for good. He’d been sure of it. But it rose now like a rogue wave.

“Fuck it,” he said. “I’ll take him down. I went this far to do it, I might as well finish.”

Kent was shaking his head. “Let me.”

“Hell, no. Kent, look at what you’ve got to lose. Look at what I’ve got—it’s already lost.”

“I could get away with this. You can’t. After the night I’ve spent with the FBI, if I say he approached me and I killed him in self-defense, everybody buys it. Everybody.”

“Stop,” Adam said again.

Kent fell silent. They looked at each other for a long time, and then he said, “At least let me give the address to the police, Adam. Don’t let them get it from you. If it comes from you, everyone is looking at it different. If it comes from me, they’ll believe it.”

“How will you claim you got it?”

“I’ll say he called my cell. They’re hoping that he will. They don’t have it tapped, though, so they can’t record what’s said.”

“They’ll know whether a call came in.”

“Then I’ll call myself from somewhere. A pay phone, someplace in that neighborhood, whatever. What happens after that, they will believe.”

Adam felt sick, listening to him. He’d always hated their differences. He’d hated Kent for the way he approached Marie’s murderer, going into the prison and praying for the son of a bitch. It had seemed, back then, that no response could be worse. There was one, though.

This was worse.

“We’ll give the address to the police,” Adam said, “and let them take it from there.”

“That’ll end with you in prison. Maybe with Grissom there, too, but definitely you.”

“Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. But we’ll let them finish it.”

Kent leaned forward and rested his forehead on the edge of the table. He looked exhausted. Worse than that, actually. He looked beaten.

“It’s on me, Adam. The whole damn thing. I brought it all here, and you were right all along. I should have been like you from the start.”

“It’s here despite you. Look at what you’ve done with your life, Kent. Look at what you’ve built for yourself, for other people. You actually wish you’d gone my way? Then you’re a stupid son of a bitch.”

Kent looked up but didn’t say anything. Adam said, “I don’t begrudge you, Kent. What you did with Pearce. It turned out well for you. It was the right thing.”

“Turned out well? Look at where we are now!”

“That’s got nothing to do with it, and the only person who wants you to think that it does is the sociopath who’s responsible for all of this. Don’t start agreeing with him.”

Kent leaned back in his chair with a weary sigh. Rubbed his eyes, got to his feet, and said, “Can I please have the gun?”

“I thought we were going to the police.”

“We are. Well, I am. Let me come up with a way to tell them where you saw Grissom. Maybe they find him there, maybe not, but let it come from me.”

“Fair enough. What do you need the gun for, then?”

“Protection. Just in case. The guy’s a killer, Adam, and he’s here for me.”

“Just in case,” Adam echoed. “Okay. Sure.”

“You’ll give it to me?”

Adam nodded. “It’s still in my car.”

“All right,” Kent said. “You give me the gun and the address where you took this picture. I’ll make a phone call to myself, just to log one so the story holds up. Then I’ll go to the FBI and I’ll give them the address. Say he asked to meet me there. Hopefully, he’s still there. If he’s not, then it’ll still be a clue. It will be a lead. Evidence. Somewhere for them to start.”

Kent had never been much of a liar. Just didn’t have the capacity for it, even when he wanted to. Gave himself away so easily, because he simply could not look you in your eyes and tell you a lie. He wasn’t looking at Adam now.

“That’s what you’re going to do?” Adam said. “Give the address to the police? You’re not going to do anything stupid? Not going out there by yourself?”

“I’ll give it to the police. Meanwhile, though, you need to go find Chelsea. Or someone. Just find someone to be with today, all right?”

“Why?”

“So they can’t blame the phone call on you.”

“The phone call.”

Kent nodded.

“All right,” Adam said. “Sure.”

He went to the door, and Kent followed. They walked across the yard, mud and leaves clinging to their shoes, everything saturated from the previous day’s rains, and out to the Jeep. Adam got the Taurus Judge out of the glove compartment, checked the cylinder, and then passed it to his brother. Kent took it almost eagerly. It seemed as if he’d grown comfortable with the feel of the weapon. Adam had never expected to see that.

Kent said, “I’m sorry, Adam. For all that’s happened, for getting you into this, I’m—”

“That’s not allowed in our family,” Adam said. “If anybody knows that, it’s me.”

“What?”

Adam waved a hand back at their childhood home. “No apologies accepted in the Austin house, Kent. Nobody ever let me say it. Not you, not Dad, not Mom. Nobody. I drove off and left Marie and then nobody would even let me say I was sorry.”

“That’s because it wasn’t your fault.”

“I was supposed to bring her home, and I did not. Of course I didn’t know what was going to happen, but that doesn’t change anything. Instead we all sat around pretending I wasn’t to blame.”

“You weren’t.”

“I was supposed to bring her home,” Adam repeated. He slammed the Jeep door shut. “She’s the only one I’ve ever been able to say it to. The rest of you wouldn’t let me, but I can say it to her.”

Kent was staring at him, the gun in his hand, not saying a word.

“So don’t you apologize for a damn thing,” Adam said. “None of this is your fault, Kent. You didn’t ask this sick bastard to come to town. Stop acting like you did.”

“Okay.” Kent nodded, then looked down at the gun and said, “I’m going to need the address.”

Adam thought of Rachel Bond, the firm set of her jaw when she’d told him she didn’t need advice, she needed an address. He’d given her the address instead of advice, and away she’d gone.

“Adam?” Kent prompted.

“Take it to the police,” Adam said.

“I will.”

“Okay,” Adam said, and then he gave him the address. Kent repeated it, murmuring the numbers like a prayer, and then he said that it was time for him to go, and repeated his request that Adam go find Chelsea and stay close to her.

“We’ll talk soon,” Kent said.

“I hope so.”

“Be safe,” Kent said.

“You, too. Keep your head down, Franchise.”

His brother nodded, and then walked to his car, got behind the wheel with the gun in his hand, and drove off down the street. Adam watched the taillights disappear.

“I love you,” he said aloud, but the car was gone then and the street was empty.

He went inside to say good-bye to Marie and put out the candles.