by John Hart
“It was dark.…”
Another photograph slid across the table. “Titus Monroe. Shot in both knees, both elbows.”
“Not intentional.”
“But painful. Nonfatal.”
Elizabeth swallowed, nauseous.
Marsh noticed. “I’d ask you to look at each photograph.”
“I’ve seen these.”
“These are not random injuries, Detective.”
“I thought they were armed.”
“Knees. Groins. Elbows.”
“It was dark.”
“Eighteen shots.”
“The girl was crying.”
“Eighteen shots placed to cause maximum pain.”
Elizabeth looked away. Marsh leaned back, his eyes blue and cold. “Two men are dead, Detective.”
Elizabeth turned her head slowly, her own eyes so flat and emotionless they, themselves, looked dead. “Two animals,” she said.
“I beg your pardon.”
Her heart beat twice. She spoke with care. “Two animals are dead.”
“Liz! Jesus!”
Marsh held up a hand as Dyer seemed to lurch forward. “It’s okay, Captain. Stand where you are.” He turned his attention back to Liz, hands spread on the table. “Did you torture these men, Detective?” He lifted a bloody photograph, placed it gently in front of her. Elizabeth looked away, so he put down two more. They were autopsy photos, close-ups. The wounds were immediate and full color. “Detective Black?”
Elizabeth stood. “We’re done here.”
“You’re not excused.”
She pushed back her chair.
“I’m not finished, Detective.”
“I am.”
She turned on a heel.
Hamilton stood, but Marsh said, “Let her go.”
Elizabeth pulled open the door and was outside before Dyer could touch her arm or say a word to stop her. She pushed through the crowd of watching cops, through friends and rivals and faces that seemed strange to her. The room faded to gray as people muttered words she didn’t care about or understand. Everything was the basement. It was stone and fabric, screams and blood. She heard her name, but it wasn’t real. The world was gun smoke and wire and the twine of Channing’s fingers.…
“Liz!”
Slippery skin and pain …
“Liz, damn it!”
That was Beckett, still distant. She ignored the brush of his fingers, and only in the fresh air did she realize he’d followed her down the stairwell. There were cars and black pavement, then Beckett’s fingers on her wrist.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Liz, look at me.”
But, she couldn’t. A car had leaked oil onto the tarmac. Sunlight turned the puddle into melted iron, and that was exactly how she felt: as if all the hardness had been drawn from her bones, as if she, too, were melting away. “Don’t call me, Charlie. Okay? Don’t call me. Don’t follow me.”
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know,” she said; but that was a lie.
“Maybe you should talk to Wilkins.”
“Don’t go there, either.” Wilkins was the department shrink. Every other day he called. And every other day she declined his services. “I’m fine.”
“You keep saying that, but you look like a strong wind will lift you off your feet.”
“I’m fine.”
“Liz…”
“I have to go.”
She got in the car and drove to the abandoned house where Channing had been held captive for forty long hours. She wasn’t sure why she’d come, but guessed it had to do with photographs and dreams and the way she avoided this bit of town. The structure was a shell under the darkening sky. It sat far back from the road, part of it crushed by a fallen tree, the rest of it obscured behind saplings, milkweed, and high grass. She could smell it through the open window, a whiff of rot and mold and feral cat. The house next door was empty. Three more on the street were dark.
The city was crumbling, she thought.
She was crumbling.
At the porch, she hesitated. Yellow tape fluttered at the door. The windows were boarded up. Elizabeth touched flaking paint and thought of all the things that had died on the other side of the door. Five days, she told herself. I can handle this. But her hand shook when she reached for the knob.
She stared at it, disbelieving, then snapped her fingers shut. She stood for a long minute, then retreated in disarray for the first time since pinning on a badge. It was just a place, she told herself. Just a house.
Then why can’t I go inside?
Elizabeth got back in the car and drove, houses flicking past, sun dropping behind the tallest trees. It was only as the road bent in a long, slow curve that she realized she wasn’t going home. The houses were wrong, the ridgelines and the views. But, she kept driving. Why? Because she needed something. A touchstone. A reminder of why she’d become a cop in the first place.
When she found Adrian, he was ten miles out of town in a burned-out building that used to be his home. It sat under tall trees at the end of a half-mile drive, a once-fine farmhouse now little more than ash-heap walls and a bone of chimney. She stepped out under a spinning sky, and the wind, on its lips, carried the faintest taste of smoke.
“What are you doing here, Liz?” He stepped from the gloom.
“Hello, Adrian. I’m sorry for just showing up like this.”
“It’s not really my house, is it?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then, what?”
“Prison. Thirteen years.” She ran out of words because Adrian was the one who’d made her what she was. That made him a god of sorts, and gods terrified her. “I’m sorry I didn’t visit.”
“You were just a rookie. We barely knew each other.”
She nodded because words, again, were inadequate. She’d written him three times in the first year of his incarceration, and each one said the same thing. I’m sorry. I wish I could have done more. After that, she’d had nothing else to offer.
“Did you know…?” She turned both palms to finish the sentence. Did you know your house was burned, your wife gone?
“I never heard from Catherine.” His face was a slash of gray in the gloom. “After the trial I never heard from anyone.”
Elizabeth rolled her shoulders against a final rush of guilt. She should have told him years ago that his wife had left, his house had burned. She should have gone to the prison and told him face-to-face. She’d been unable to bear it, though, the thought of him locked up, diminished. “Catherine left three months after your conviction. The house sat empty for a while, then one day it burned. They say it was arson.”
He nodded, but she knew it hurt. “Why are you here, Liz?”
“I just wanted to check on you.” She left the rest unspoken: that she was looking at murder charges of her own, that she was hoping for insight, and that she might have loved him, once.
“Would you like to come inside?”
She thought he was joking, but he picked his way through scrub and rubble until orange light touched his skin. It was the old living room, she saw. The floor was gone, but fire burned in the fireplace and made sounds as it settled. Adrian added wood, and the light spread. Around her, she saw ash, swept back, and a log dragged in as a seat. Adrian’s hands were stained, too; and Gideon’s blood still showed black on his shirt. “Home sweet home.” He said it flatly, but the hurt was there. His great-great-grandfather had built the house. Adrian grew up in it, then deeded it to his wife to cover his legal bills, if necessary. It had survived the Civil War, his bankruptcy, and his trial. Now, it was this shell, tumbled and damp beneath trees that had seen the sweep of its history.
“I’m sorry about your wife,” Elizabeth said. “I wish I could tell you where she was.”
“She was pregnant when the trial started.” Adrian sat on the log; stared at the fire. “She lost the baby two days before the verdict. Did you know that?”
Elizabeth shook her head, but he wasn’t watching her. “Did you see anyone out there?”
“Out there?” She indicated the fields, the drive.
“There was a car, before.”
He seemed adrift and vague. She squatted beside him. “Why are you here, Adrian?”
Something flickered in his eyes, and it looked dangerous. Anger. Intent. Something sharp and cruel, and then suddenly gone. “Where else would I go?”
He lifted his shoulders, and the vagueness returned. Elizabeth looked deeper, but whatever she’d glimpsed was gone. “A hotel. Some other place.”
“There is no other place.”
“Adrian, listen—”
“Did you see something out there?”
It was the same question in the same voice; but if he was worried about something in the night the worry didn’t show. The fire consumed his attention, even as Elizabeth stood. “Was it horrible?” she asked, and meant prison. He said nothing, but his hands twitched, and scars glinted like ivory in the light. Elizabeth thought of her youth, and of all the times she’d watched him move through the world: the way he stood at his desk and at the range, how he’d worked a witness, a crime scene, the bureaucracy. He’d worn confidence like a smile, and it was strange to see him so still and quiet, his eyes withdrawn beyond the smoke. “Would you like me to stay awhile?”
His eyes drifted shut, and she knew the answer was no. This was a communion, and she, in his mind, was just a kid he’d once known. “It was nice of you to come,” he said, but the words were false.
Go away, he meant.
Leave me to suffer in peace.
7
Ramona lost track of time in the blackness of the silo. Her world was damp earth and heat and concrete walls. The door was a metal square that gave a fraction of an inch before the lock outside clanked.
“Somebody…”
It was a whisper, her voice already broken.
“Help me.”
Something fluttered high in the silo, a bird maybe and trapped, too. Ramona lifted her face, then scratched at the door, her nails torn by rusted screws and cracks in the metal. Another hour passed, or maybe it was a day. She drifted and slept and woke to a spear of yellow light. It flicked the length of her body, and she saw grime on her hands and arms. Hope sparked in her chest, but died when he spoke.
“Time to go, Ramona.”
“Water…”
“Of course, you can have water.”
He pulled her through the door, her feet dragging. It was still night, but barely, the moon a hint of gray as headlights made shadows dance on the silo. She blinked, but his face was a blur.
“Here.” He gave her a bottle, and she drank too much, choking. “Let me help.” He guided the bottle to her lips, tilted it. She wanted to scream or run, but could barely move. He used a damp towel to wipe black soil from her face and arms. She watched in quiet terror as he lifted the hem of her dress and used the same towel to clean her legs, the touch intimate but chaste. “Better?”
“Why…”
“I’m sorry?” He leaned closer, one hand on the soft place behind her knee.
She licked cracked lips. “Why?”
He smoothed hair from her face and stared into her eyes. “Ours is not to wonder why.”
“Please…”
“It’s time to go.”
He pulled her up and guided her to the car with torn seats and cigarette burns in the vinyl. The cuffs clinked on her wrists, and he kept a grip on the chain as he belted her inside the car.
“Safe and sound,” he said, then walked through bright lights, his shadow rising and falling, then gone. She tugged at the seat belt, but was weak with hunger and heat. He slipped into the car and closed his door.
“I want to go home.”
The clock on the dash said 5:47. Beyond the glass, a pale light gathered in the trees.
“The more you cooperate, the easier this will be. Do you understand?”
She nodded, crying. “Where are you taking me?”
He said nothing as he turned on rough dirt and drove out of the woods. At the paved road, he cut the wheel right, color bleeding into the fields as they drove, the sun a dim eye rising.
“Please don’t hurt me.”
He said nothing, drove faster.
Four minutes later she saw the church.
8
Elizabeth dreamed, and the dream was memory. It was night and hot as she moved through the yard of the abandoned house on Penelope Street. A few lights simmered down the road, but they were far and dim. She crossed from the last tree to the side of the house, her feet slipping in wet grass as she pushed through overgrown bushes and pressed her back against ancient clapboards that were cracked and split and wet from the storm. Holding her breath, she listened for noises inside. The caller said he’d heard a scream. What Elizabeth heard was her breath, her heart, and water dripping from choked-out gutters. She pushed along the wall as wet leaves trailed across her face and hands, and streaks of lightning dropped far off in the fading storm. At the first window, she paused. It was below grade, painted black. Two steps past it a sound came and went so fast Elizabeth thought she could be imagining it.
A voice?
A cry?
On the porch, she thought for the last time about calling Beckett or Dyer or someone else. But Beckett was with his family and the city was burning. Besides, if people were inside the house, it would be kids smoking pot or screwing. How many calls like that had she taken in her uniform days? A dozen? A hundred?
She drew her weapon and felt the knob turn. Inside, it was pitch-black, the air heavy with the stink of mold and cat and rotten carpet. She closed the door and turned on her flashlight, sweeping the room.
Rainwater pooled on the floor.
The ceiling was a soggy mess.
She cleared the living room and kitchen, the back rooms and the hall. The stairwell going up was rotted through, so she ignored the second floor and located the stairs to the basement. She kept the flashlight low, her back against the wall. Eight steps down she found a narrow landing, a turn, and then a door that scraped when it opened.
Elizabeth led with the gun. The first room was empty: more water on the floor, mounds of rotted cardboard. She followed a hallway into a square space that felt dead center of the house. Channing was to the right, facedown on a mattress. Beyond her was another hallway, doors to other rooms. A candle burned on a crate.
She should back away; call it in. But Channing was looking at her, eyes desperate and black.
“It’s okay.”
Elizabeth crossed the room, weapon up as she checked doors, the hallway beyond. The place was a warren of passages, closets, blind corners.
“I’m going to get you out of here.”
Elizabeth knelt by the girl. She untwisted the wire where it cut her skin, first one wrist then the other. The girl cried out as circulation returned to her hands.
“Be still.” She tugged the gag from Channing’s mouth, watched the doors, the corners. “How many? Channing? How many?”
“Two.” She sobbed as Elizabeth removed wire from her ankles. “There are two of them.”
“Good girl.” Elizabeth hauled her to her feet. “Where?” Channing pointed deeper into the maze. “Both of them?”
Channing nodded, but was wrong.
Terribly, awfully wrong.
* * *
Elizabeth woke with the girl’s name on her lips, and her fingernails dug into the arms of a chair. The same dream came every time she fell asleep. Sometimes, she woke before it got really bad. Sometimes, it went the distance. That’s why she drank coffee and paced, why she never slept unless it crept up to drag her down.
“That was fun.”
Elizabeth scrubbed both palms across her face. She was soaked in sweat, her heart running fast. Looking around, she saw hospital green and blinking lights. She was in Gideon’s room, but didn’t remember taking off her shoes or closing her eyes. Had she been drinking? That happened
, too, sometimes. Two in the morning, or three. Tired of coffee. Tired of memories.
It was dim in the room, but the clock said 6:12. That meant a few hours sleep, at least. And how many dreams? It felt like three. Three times down the stairs, three times in the dark.
Finding her feet, Elizabeth moved to the bed and stared down at the boy. She’d come in late and found Gideon alone in his room. No sign of his father. No doctors at such a late hour. The night nurse filled her in and said she could stay if she wanted. It broke a few rules, but neither of them wanted Gideon to wake alone. Elizabeth had held his hand for a long time, then sat and watched long hours walk up the face of the clock.
Leaning over the bed, she pulled the sheet to Gideon’s chin, flicked the curtain, and looked outside. Dew hung on the grass, and the light was pink. She’d see Channing today, and maybe Adrian. Maybe, the state cops would come for her at last. Or maybe, she’d get in the car and leave. She could take the Mustang top-down and drive west. Two thousand miles, she thought, until the air was dry and the sun rose red over stone and sand and views that went forever.
But Gideon would wake alone.
Channing would be without her.
Elizabeth found a different nurse at the station beyond the door. “You were here yesterday, weren’t you?”
“I was.”
“What happened to Gideon’s father?”
“Security escorted him from the building.”
“He was drunk?”
“Drunk. Disruptive. Your father took him home.”
“My father?”
“Reverend Black was here most of the day, and half of last night. Never left the boy’s side. I’m surprised you missed him.”
“I’m glad he could help.”
“He’s a generous man.”
Elizabeth handed the nurse a card. “If Mr. Strange causes problems again, call me. He’s too pitiful for regular cops, and more trouble than my father should have to handle.” The nurse looked a question, and Elizabeth waved it off. “It’s a sad story. And an old one, too.”
* * *
Elizabeth spent another twenty minutes with Gideon, then drove home as the sun broke above the trees. She showered and dressed, thinking again of the desert. By nine o’clock she was deep into the historic district, twisting down shaded lanes until she reached the street where Channing lived in a centuries-old mansion that towered over gardens and hedgerows and wrought-iron fencing.
