Redemption Road: A Novel (32 page)

“Damn, Crybaby.”

She’d forgotten the magnitude of his success, the raw power he used to wield both in and out of court. Back inside, she studied photographs that stretched back six decades or more: Crybaby with past presidents, celebrities, the woman who’d been his wife. The distraction bought five minutes peace, then she moved onto the porch that faced the drive. It was fifteen feet deep and forty long. A dozen rocking chairs were turned upside down to protect them from the wind. Righting one, she dragged it to the low, stone wall that fronted the drive. The old lawyer would follow the drive, so that was the place to wait.

But, waiting was hard.

She sat. She paced.

The soft, warm day ate her alive.

*   *   *

The first sign of his arrival came midafternoon: a sudden stillness in the forest, then the hum of tires. By the time the limousine appeared in the clearing, Elizabeth was off the porch and in the drive. Her hand was on his door before the vehicle came to a complete stop.

“What?” She read his features the instant she saw them. “What went wrong?”

The old man extended a hand. “Help me, if you would.” She helped him from the car. He looked tired in the wrinkled jacket and put more weight on the cane than usual. “Are you hungry? We stopped for a few things.…”

“I’m not hungry. Where’s Channing?”

“Take my arm.”

“Faircloth, please.”

“Take it. Walk with me.” He firmed as he moved, guiding her to the shade of the porch. “Would you?” He gestured at a second chair, and she turned it over for him. Dropping into the chair, he told her, “Sit, sit.” She ignored the chair beside him, choosing instead to settle on the stone wall so their knees nearly touched. “We used to have such parties here. People would come from all over, you know. Europe and Washington and Hollywood.”

“Faircloth…”

“We thought it the ultimate expression of a life well lived. Powerful friends. A job that mattered. Look at it now, emptiness and dust, all those exciting people dead or close to it.” He craned his neck to look at the stacked-stone pillars, the massive beams. “I offered the place to my wife when she left. She refused to take it, though, knowing how much I loved it. She said it was a manly space and needed a man inside it. That was good of her, don’t you think? That kindhearted lie.”

“You’re stalling, Crybaby.”

“Perhaps.”

“It’s bad, then?”

“Your partner convinced her to do the noble thing.”

“Beckett? What?”

“He felt he had no choice, not with the indictment. He asked me to tell you as much in the hope you might find a way to forgive him.”

“Forgive him?” Elizabeth stood. The betrayal was too much. “He did exactly what I asked him not to do.”

“That may be so, but when I describe the young lady’s actions, I don’t use the word
noble
lightly. Channing confessed to make sure you were safe and well. No threats were made against her, no leverage or offers of leniency. She offered the truth for a splendid reason, and that is rarely a simple thing.”

“Is she in state custody or local?”

“Local for now. Charging decisions remain unmade.”

Elizabeth stared into the forest. Charging decision or not, she saw how it had to be. The girl would be in processing, now. Stripped of her clothes. Examined. Violated all over again.

“She wanted you to have this.” A piece of paper appeared in the old lawyer’s hand.

Elizabeth took the folded page. “Do you mind?”

“Of course not. By all means.”

Elizabeth walked to the far end of the porch. The note was in a beautiful hand, and brief.

Dear Elizabeth,

You told me wounds heal, but only if we’re strong and if we’re right. I try to be strong, and think maybe I can be, but nothing I do will ever make things right. You were in that basement because of me, and not in the way you think. Your partner can explain. He figured it out, and I know you would too, in time. The thought of that is more than I could bear, worse even than the memories of what we suffered together. Please, don’t hate me for telling the truth about what happened. I love what you tried to do, but I pulled the trigger and nobody else. It’s my fault, all of it. Please, don’t be angry. Please don’t hate me.

Elizabeth read the note a second time, then let her gaze fall to the lake. How could she hate her? They were sisters. They were the same.

“Are you quite all right, my dear?”

“I don’t think I am.”

Crybaby appeared beside her. “The indictment against you has been rescinded, and the state police have no further interest in you. I can take you home if you like. Your car will be fine until tomorrow.”

“May I stay for a while?”

“As long as you wish. I made no joke about provisions. There’s food, liquor. Enough for a week, if you like.” She nodded, and he pressed closer. “Was there comfort?” he asked. “In the young lady’s note?”

“No. Not really.”

“Then let me tell you a thing I’ve learned in my eighty-nine years. This house, the friends and memories—I’d trade it all for a chance to do what that young woman just did: a noble act, freely undertaken. How many of us have such a chance? And how many the courage to take it?”

“You’re the kindest man I’ve ever known. I’m sure you’ve had many chances.”

“To put one’s freedom above my own? To risk my life for another I barely know?” He shook his head, serious. “What I see here is the rarest of things, and the loveliest: her sacrifice and yours, what you’ve tried to do for each other. One in a million would do the same. One in a hundred million.”

Elizabeth studied the keen eyes and white brows, the lines that furrowed his face as if to show every hard decision he’d ever made. “Do you really believe that?”

“With every ounce of my soul.”

She looked away and swallowed in a dry throat. “You’re a good man, Faircloth Jones.”

“I’m an old fart, actually.”

Elizabeth folded the note and took his arm. “You said something about liquor.”

“I did.”

“Is it too early for a drink?”

“Not at all, my dear.” Crybaby leaned on the arm and steered for the door. “I have found, in fact, that on days such as this the whiskey lamp is most always lit.”

20

Beckett didn’t go for a drive. He went to the gym in the basement of the precinct. It wasn’t much of a facility, but his wife had been after him about his weight, and the next hour came down to two possibilities: sling some steel or seriously hurt somebody.

Minutes. Seconds.

He was that close to losing his shit.

Opening the locker, Beckett stripped off his suit and put on gray sweats and old sneakers. He loaded steel plates on the long bar and didn’t worry about the noise as he grunted through more reps than he’d pulled in a long time. Curls, bench, squats. After that, he hit the machines. Triceps, lat pulls, leg extensions.

There was no peace, though.

Too many things moving.

A cold shower broke the sweat, but his mind was still hot as he took the stairs up and rounded into booking.

“Detective Beckett?” a voice called out, and Beckett saw the new girl brought in to work the phones. Laura? Lauren? She pushed past two bloodied men cuffed to a bench and met Beckett halfway across the room. “I tried your cell. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I was working out.”

“Two messages in the past hour. This is from the warden.” She handed him a pink slip with a number on it. “He wants you to call his cell. He said it’s his fifth message and that he expects to hear from you this time.”

Beckett crumpled the paper; tossed it into a can. “What else?”

“A call came into the tip line twenty minutes ago. No name. He asked for you specifically.”

Beckett processed that. The only active tip line he knew about had been set up for the Ramona Morgan case. The number was in the papers, on local TV. “What’d he say?”

She made air quotes as she spoke. “‘Tell Detective Beckett there was movement at the church.’”

“That’s it? Movement?”

“It was strange.”

“Any ID on the phone?”

“Disposable cell. The voice was muffled, definitely male. He said one other thing, but it was even stranger.”

Beckett looked the question.

She flinched a little. “Sorry. The connection broke so I missed part of it, but I think he said, ‘Not even the house of God requires five walls.’”

*   *   *

Five walls.
Beckett didn’t like the sound of that. Four walls to hold up the roof. What was the fifth?

Adrian Wall?

Beckett decided to take a drive, after all. He rolled down the windows to wash out the heat, then worked his way through downtown and past the sprawl. Tip lines had been known to cause more trouble than they were worth, especially in high-profile, violent cases. Nut jobs came out of the woodwork when the press got hot. False reports. Copycats. General hysteria. He’d been around long enough to see it all, but something about the tone of this one bothered him.

Not even the house of God requires five walls.

Beckett drove until he saw the church on a distant hill. When he crested the ridge, he circled the east side and parked where he’d parked before. Light slanted through the trees. A hot wind blew.

“Shit.”

The tape was down. The door stood open.

He got out of the car, and his hand settled on the butt of his weapon as he studied blank windows and blind corners, the dark trunks of massive trees. There
had been
movement at the church. No kind of doubt. He took the stairs, the sun hot on his shoulders. He met the same dark inside, the same smell. He pushed through the narthex, into the nave; and for an instant it was as if no time had passed, either.

“Jesus Christ.”

Beckett crossed himself from old habit and pushed deeper into the nave, thinking,
Wrong, wrong, this is so fucking wrong
.

The woman was dead on the altar and hadn’t been that way for long. No flies or discoloration; the hair still shone. Even then, he caught the first hint of a sour smell. It was oily and familiar, a death smell; but that’s not what made Beckett’s stomach turn. He tried to lift one of the victim’s arms; found her in full rigor with no sign of dissipation. Three hours at least. No more than fifteen. He lifted the linen to confirm she was nude beneath, took a final look at her face, then pushed outside to find fresh air. The stairs were worn smooth, yet he almost fell going down. From the bottom, it was a twenty-yard stumble, the Johnson grass and dog fennel as high as his waist, the day already different from what it had been. Beckett drew in a breath that burned, then bent as if he might vomit. He closed his eyes, but the world kept spinning. It wasn’t the church that made him sick. It wasn’t the red eyes or crushed neck, or even its being the third woman dead on the same damn altar.

Beckett knew the girl.

He knew her really well.

*   *   *

Forty minutes later, he had the same team back at the church: techs, medical examiner, even Dyer.

“What do we think about this?” Dyer had already asked the same question a dozen times. “Why the church? Why this church?”

Beckett had been there a dozen times, too, as if repeating the same thing over and over might offer some magical revelation. He shrugged. “It was Adrian’s church.”

“It was mine, too. Same with five hundred other people. Hell, I saw you here once or twice.”

“I don’t have snakes in my head. I’m thinking Adrian does.”

Dyer didn’t respond. He circled the body as if unsure what to do. Even now, he had the team on hold outside. He wanted Beckett, alone in the church. The two of them. The body.

“This could start a panic,” Dyer said. “You realize that.”

“Maybe.”

“There’s no maybe. The town is already on edge. Any chance we can keep this quiet?”

Beckett thought of all the people outside. Fifteen? Maybe more? “I don’t see how.”

“So we make no mistakes. We go by the book.”

“’Course.”

“You say you knew her?”

“Lauren Lester. She worked day care at St. John’s, lived on a side street in Milton Heights. She used to watch my kids. My youngest still talks about her.”

“Are you too close to this, Charlie?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Tell me again about the caller. ‘Five walls’? He had to mean Adrian.”

Beckett shrugged. “Or wants us to think he did.”

“It’s the closest thing we have to an ID.”

“‘Five walls. House of God.’ It’s not an ID, Francis. It’s crazy talk.”

“Whoever called knew there was a body.”

“Or put it there.”

“I want Adrian in for questioning.”

“Amen to that.”

“Tell me what you need.”

“Everything, Francis.” Beckett dropped a hand on Dyer’s shoulder and squeezed. “I want everything.”

*   *   *

Beckett got the cadaver dog an hour before sunset. It came in the back of a marked cruiser, a black Lab named Solo on loan from the SBI office in Charlotte. “Hey, Charlie. Sorry about the holdup.” The handler was a young woman named Ginny. Early thirties. Athletic. She opened the back door and let the dog out. “You know that helicopter crash up in Avery County?”

“The tourist thing?”

“We’re still pulling bits and pieces off the mountainside.”

“Jeez…”

“Yeah, I know. Quite the production you have here.”

Beckett examined the scene with fresh eyes. Nineteen cars. Two dozen people. The body was gone, but crime-scene techs were scouring the church even as uniformed officers combed the grounds.

“Where’s Captain Dyer?”

“I don’t know,” Beckett said. “Some kind of PR push, probably. You understand what’s happening here?”

“Just that you found another body.”

“I want to make sure it’s the only one. Dog’s not too tired, is he? The crash and all?”

“You kidding? Look at him.”

Beckett did. The animal was bright-eyed and eager.

Ginny seemed eager, too. “Just tell me when.”

Beckett studied the sky, the line of dark trees. The sun would be down soon. The dog whined. “Do it,” he said.