Redemption Road: A Novel (26 page)

Did he know Eli’s secret or not?

They doubted it because no one should be able to suffer as he had and still keep his mouth shut. Not after so many years. Not after the knives and the rats and seventeen broken bones. What they failed to understand were the reasons. He didn’t keep the secret for greed’s sake. The reasons were older than that, and simpler.

He did it for love.

And he did it for hate.

Kneeling on the verge, Adrian put his fingers on the tire tracks where they were clearest. He saw cigarette butts, a damp spot in the dirt that smelled of urine. They’d been gone for an hour, maybe more. Had they given up? He doubted it. Laziness, maybe. Maybe they needed cigarettes.

When he returned to the fire, he piled wood until flames leapt higher. Dense clouds had moved in to cover the moon, so even with a fire the darkness pressed in. Adrian watched the flames, but visions still gathered in the dark.

“Fuck those guys, and fuck Dyer, too.”

He held on to the anger because it pushed the darkness back. The dirt was real, the burned-out house and the fire. Anger kept all that bright, so he thought of the warden, the guards, how the whole thing could still end bloody. It worked for a while, but he blinked once and the fire burned away as if the eye blink were an hour. He’d drifted as he used to do, blinked and gone away. He tried to shake himself alert, but was heavy; everything was heavy. When he blinked again he saw Liz, distant at first and then close, a face across the smoke, the eyes liquid and troubled and impossibly deep.

“What are you doing here, Liz?”

She moved like a ghost and sat, soundless, on the dirt. The edges of her face were blurry, her hair as weightless and dark as the smoke around her. “Did you know I was going to jump?”

He tried to focus, but couldn’t; thought maybe he was dreaming. “You wouldn’t have done it.”

“So, you knew?”

“Only that you were frightened and young.”

She watched him with those impossible eyes. “Was it terrible? What they did to you?”

Adrian said nothing; felt heat in his skin. The eyes weren’t right. The way she watched and waited and seemed to float.

“I see the hollow place.”

She pointed at his chest and drew the shape of a heart.

“I can’t talk about that,” he said.

“Maybe, there’s some of you left. Maybe, they missed a piece.”

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“Doing what? It’s your dream.”

Her head tilted, a mannequin face on a mannequin body. He stood and looked down.

“You’re going to kill them, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Because of what they did to Eli?”

“Don’t ask me to let them live.”

“Why would I do that?”

She stood, too, then took his face and kissed him hard.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“What do the papers call me?”

“I don’t care if you killed those men.”

“Yet you dream of me,” she said. “You dream of a killer and hope we are the same.”

15

He liked morning light because it was so unused. Anything could happen with such soft, pink lips pressed upon the world, and he took a moment—just for himself—before dragging the girl from the silo. She fought harder than most, her skin filthy and her fingers torn bloody at the tips. She kicked and screamed, cuffs clanking on her wrists, both hands locked on a ridge of metal. He pulled until her hips rose off the ground, then sighed deeply and touched a strip of skin with the stun gun. When she went loose, he dropped her legs, then stepped away to blot sweat from his face. Normally, the silo made them easier to work with. Fear. Thirst. This one was a fighter, and he thought that might be a good sign.

When his breathing slowed, he rolled her onto a tarp, then removed her clothes and took his time cleaning her. This was a big part of it, and though she was beautiful in the light, he focused on her face instead of her breasts, on her legs rather than the place they joined. He cleaned dried blood from her fingertips and wiped her face with care. She moved once as the sponge slipped behind her knee, and then again when it touched the plane of her stomach. When her eyes fluttered, he used the stun gun a second time and after that moved more quickly, knowing how the light would harden and age her, how different she would appear if he waited too long. When her skin was scrubbed and dried, he used a silk cord to bind her ankles and wrists, then placed her in the car and drove to the church. Yellow tape sealed the door, but what did seals matter? Or police? Or worry itself?

At the altar, he laid her down and used the same cords to strap her flat, cinching the legs tight, pulling the arms down until the shoulder bones jutted. He moved faster now because she was stirring. He covered her with white linen, folding it just so, making it perfect. By then his vision was blurred, both eyes so full and brimming it was as if no time had passed, and all the years between then and now were glass. Her lips were parted; breath moved. And while some deep part of him recognized the illusion, the weeping part embraced it with profound and terrible joy. He touched her cheek as the eyes fluttered and the pupils dilated. “I see you,” he said, then choked her for the first time of what he knew would be many.

*   *   *

It took a long time for her to die. She was crying; he was crying. When it was done, he went under the church, dragging himself to the worn spot beneath the altar, and curling in the earth as he’d so often done. This was his special place, the church beneath the church. Yet, even there he could not hide from the truth.

He’d failed.

Had he chosen poorly? Was he somehow mistaken?

He closed his eyes until the grief passed, then touched one shallow grave after another.

Nine women.

Nine mounds in the earth.

They bent around him in a gentle curve, and it troubled him to take so much comfort from their presence. He’d killed them, yes, but there was such lonesomeness in the world. He touched the earth and thought of the women beneath it. Julia should be here, too, as should Ramona Morgan and the girl dead above. It was their place as much as his, their right to lie quiet beneath the church where each heart, in its turn, had slowly and painfully ceased to beat.

16

Beckett got two pieces of bad news in the first ten minutes of the new day. The first was expected. The second was not. “What are you saying, Liam?”

He was in the bull pen. Seven forty-one in the morning. Hamilton and Marsh were behind the glass in Dyer’s office. Liam Howe had just walked up from Narcotics. The place was a madhouse. Cops everywhere. Noise. Movement.

“I’m saying it sucks.”

Howe dropped into a chair across the desk, but Beckett was barely paying attention. He was watching the state cops, who’d left his desk sixty seconds ago. Now, they were giving Dyer the same earful they’d given him. No sound came through the glass, but Beckett knew enough to catch the big words like
subpoena
and
Channing Shore
and
obstruction.
Playtime was over. They were gunning for Liz and they were gunning hard. Why? Because she wasn’t talking to them. Because in spite of their attempts at understanding and moderation, she was still telling them the same thing, which basically amounted to
fuck off
. “You know what?” Beckett swung his feet from under the desk. “Let’s walk.”

He tossed a final, sour look at the state cops, then guided Howe out of the room and into the back stairwell. Outside, they stood in the secure lot, white sky going blue at the edges, heat stirring in the pavement. “All right, Liam. Tell me again, and give me details.”

“So, I did what you asked, right. I pulled some sheets; asked around. There’s no indication the Monroe brothers ever sold steroids. Alsace Shore may use them, but if so, he’s getting them somewhere else.”

Beckett chewed on that for a second, then shrugged it off. “That was a long shot, anyway. What’s the twist?”

“The twist is the wife.”

Something in the way Howe said it. “She’s a user?”

“Oh, yeah. Big-time. Prescription meds, mostly. OxyContin. Vicodin. Anything in the painkiller family. Cocaine on occasion.”

“Does she have a sheet?”

The drug cop shook his head. “Everything is scrubbed at the source: connections, favors, whatever. The few times she’s been implicated, the charges went away. I only know as much as I do because I took the question to some of the retired guys. Turns out a lot of wealthy housewives walk on the dirty side. The unspoken rule has been to look the other way. Too many frustrations over the years, too many powerful husbands, and too much weight.”

Beckett could see it because small towns were like that: connections and secrets, old money and old corruption. What’s the harm in a few stoned housewives? Forget the hypocrisy, that drugs were tearing half the city down. “Where did she get the dope?”

Howe shook his head, lit a cigarette. “The story doesn’t have a happy ending.”

“Tell me.”

“We’ll call it the story of Billy Bell.”

*   *   *

Beckett was at the Shores’ house by eight fifteen. Two kinds of bad news. Two different reasons. Alsace Shore knew about the first one. “I’ve already spoken to the state police, and I’ll tell you exactly what I told them. I don’t know where Channing is. Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. Fuck your implications and fuck your subpoena.”

The man looked huge in a tailored suit and glossy shoes. In the house beyond him, every light was burning. Beckett saw people in the study to the right: other suits, a woman, small and blond in pink Chanel.

“I’m not here about the subpoena.”

“Then why?”

Channing’s father leaked aggression like an old tire leaked air, but again, it was hard to blame him. State cops had a subpoena for his daughter and tried to serve it when the sun was still below the trees. It was a cheap trick. Beckett would be angry, too. “She’s really not here, is she?”

“Like I told the state cops.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“No.”

“Do you know, at least, if she’s safe?”

“Safe enough.” It was grudgingly offered, possibly sincere. “Her mother got a text saying she was okay, but wouldn’t be home for a while.”

“Is that normal?”

“The text, no. But, she’s left home before. Parties in Chapel Hill. Clubs in Charlotte. There’ve been some boys. Teenage stuff she thinks is dangerous.”

Beckett sifted the words, came up satisfied. “May I come inside?”

“Why not? Every other cop in the county has.” Shore showed his back, knowing Beckett would follow. In the study, he lifted an arm. “These are my attorneys.” Three different men stood. “You remember my wife.”

She sat on a sea of dark velvet as if she’d been weighted and sunk there. Pink suit rumpled. Makeup smeared.
Stoned,
Beckett thought.
Numb.
“Mrs. Shore.” She did not look up or respond, and from the reactions of everyone else in the room her condition was obviously no surprise. “I’m glad you’re here. This concerns you.”

That was a bomb in the stillness.

“In what regard?” one of the lawyers asked.

He had white eyebrows and ruddy skin. One of the big firms in Charlotte, Beckett guessed. Five hundred an hour, minimum.

“Let’s call it a story for now.” Beckett kept his voice level, though he was angry deep down. “A story about dead brothers, bored housewives, and a town full of dirty little secrets.”

“I won’t allow you to question her.”

“I’ll do all the talking, and right now we’re talking about stories.” Beckett pushed past the lawyer, the husband; towered over the wife, instead. “Like all good stories, this one revolves around a central question, in this case the question of how two low-life brothers like Titus and Brendon Monroe ever came into contact with a girl like Channing. Drug dealers. Kidnappers. Rapists. I suspect you know this story.” Beckett was unflinching. Mrs. Shore was not. “I’m guessing that it started with drinks over brunch. Five years ago? Maybe ten? Brunch became afternoon wine, then cocktails at five, more wine with dinner. Four days a week became seven. There would be parties, of course. Weed from a friend, maybe. A doctor’s prescription or two. All harmless fun until we get to the stolen pills and the cocaine and the low-life dealers who go with it.”

That was his hardest voice, and she looked up, bewildered. “Alsace—”

“You have a gardener,” Beckett interrupted her. “William Bell. Goes by the name Billy.”

“Billy, yes.”

“The last time Titus Monroe was arrested for dealing drugs, he was selling OxyContin to your gardener, Billy Bell. That was nineteen months ago on a Tuesday. Not only did your husband post Billy’s bond, he paid for the lawyer that helped him stay out of jail.”

“That’s enough, Detective.” That was Mr. Shore. Close. Physical.

Beckett ignored him. “Channing wasn’t plucked off a street, was she?”

“You said no questions.” Shore’s voice was loud, but had nothing to do with anger. He was begging, pleading, as his wife sank more deeply into the sofa.

“It’s a common enough story.” Beckett lowered himself before the broken woman. “Except for the ending.” She didn’t move, but a tear spilled down a sunken cheek. “Do you know the Monroe brothers, Mrs. Shore? Have they been to this house?”

“Don’t answer that.”

Beckett tuned out the lawyer. This was about truth, responsibility, the sins of the parent. “Will you look at me?”

Her head moved, but the lawyer pushed between them. “This is a temporary restraining order signed by Judge Ford.” The attorney snapped a paper in Beckett’s face. “It protects Mrs. Shore from police questioning in this matter until such time as her attending physician is brought before the court and the matter is heard.”

“What?”

“My client is under a doctor’s care.”

Beckett took the paper, scanned it. “Psychiatric care.”

“The type of care is irrelevant until a judge rules otherwise. Mrs. Shore is in a fragile state, and under the protection of the court.”