Redemption Road

by John Hart

  The girl’s father met Elizabeth at the door. “Detective Black. This is unexpected.” He was in his fifties and handsome, a fit man in jeans, a golf shirt, and loafers worn without socks. They’d met more than once, each encounter under difficult circumstances: the police station on the day Channing disappeared, the hospital after Elizabeth brought her out of the basement, the day state police opened an official investigation into the shooting of Brendon and Titus Monroe. A powerful man, he was unused to powerlessness and police and wounded daughters. Elizabeth understood that. It didn’t make him any easier to deal with.

  “I’d like to speak with Channing.”

  “I’m sorry, Detective. It’s early, still. She’s resting.”

  “She asked me to call.”

  “Yet, this appears to be a visit.”

  Elizabeth peered past him. The house was full of dark rugs and heavy furniture. “She very much wanted to see me, Mr. Shore. I think it’s important we speak.”

  “Look, Detective.” He stepped outside and closed the door behind him. “Let’s forget what’s in the news, okay. Let’s forget that you’re under investigation and that the state police are giving my lawyers hell trying to get to Channing, who for some reason doesn’t care to talk to them. Let’s put all that aside and cut to the chase. We appreciate what you did for our little girl, but your part in this is over. My daughter is safe at home. We’re taking care of her. Her mother and me. Her family. Surely, you understand that.”

  “Of course. That’s beyond question.”

  “She needs to forget the terrible things that happened. She can’t do that with you sitting next to her.”

  “Forgetting is not the same as coping.”

  “Listen.” For a moment, his face softened. “I’ve learned enough about you to know that you’re a fine person and a good cop. That comes from judges, other police officers, people who know your family. I don’t doubt your intentions, but there’s nothing good you can do for Channing.”

  “You’re wrong about that.”

  “I’ll tell her you stopped by.”

  He retreated inside, but Elizabeth caught the door’s edge before it could close. “She needs more than strong walls, Mr. Shore. She needs people who understand. You’re six feet and change, a wealthy man with the world at his feet. Channing is none of those things. Do you have any idea what she’s feeling right now? Do you think you ever could?”

  “No one knows Channing better than I.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Do you have children, Detective?” He towered above her, waiting.

  “No. I don’t have children.”

  “Let’s revisit this conversation when you do.”

  He pushed the door shut and left Elizabeth on the wrong side of it. His feelings were understandable, but Channing needed a guide through the bitter landscape of after, and Elizabeth knew those trails better than most.

  Looking up at high windows, she sighed deeply, then threaded between box bushes that rose like walls around her. The path twisted around giant oaks, and when it spit her out on the driveway, she found Channing seated on the hood of her car. Loose jeans and a sweatshirt swallowed the girl’s small body. A hood kept her eyes in shadow, but light touched the line of her jaw as she spoke. “I saw you pull up.”

  “Channing, hi.” The girl slid off the car and pushed hands into her pockets. “How’d you get out of the house?”

  “The window.” She shrugged. “I do it all the time.”

  “Your parents…”

  “My parents treat me like a child.”

  “Sweetheart…”

  “I’m not a child anymore.”

  “No,” Elizabeth said sadly. “No, you’re not.”

  “They say everything’s okay, that I’m safe.” Channing clenched her jaw: ninety pounds of china. “I’m not okay.”

  “You can be.”

  “Are you okay?”

  Channing let sunlight find her face, and Elizabeth saw bones that pressed too tightly against the skin, circles beneath the girl’s eyes that were as dark as her own. “No, sweetheart. I’m not. I barely sleep, and when I do, I have nightmares. I don’t eat or exercise or talk to people unless I need to. I’ve lost twelve pounds in under a week. It’s not fair, what happened in that house. I’m angry. I want to hurt people.”

  Channing pulled her hands free from her pockets. “My father can barely look at me.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “He thinks I should have run faster, fought harder. He says I shouldn’t have been outside in the first place.”

  “What does your mother say?”

  “She brings me hot chocolate and cries when she thinks I can’t hear.”

  Elizabeth studied the house, which spoke of denial and quiet perfection. “You want to get out of here?”

  “You and me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where to?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I guess not.”

  Channing got in the car, and Elizabeth drove them out of the historic district, past the mall, the car dealers, and day-care centers. She drove into the country, then to the gravel road that ran deep into the woods before turning up the face of the mountain that rose alone from the hills around the city. Air whistled through the car as they climbed, but neither spoke until they neared the top and the road flattened into a parking lot.

  “This is the abandoned quarry.” Channing broke the silence, but with little real curiosity.

  Elizabeth pointed at a gash in the woods. “Just up that trail. A quarter mile.”

  “Why are we here?”

  Elizabeth killed the engine and set the brake. She needed to do something, and it was going to hurt. “Let’s take a walk.”

  She led Channing into the shade, then up a winding trail that was beaten flat by all the people who’d walked it over the years. It grew steep in places. They passed bits of litter and gray-skinned trees with initials carved into the bark. At the top of the mountain, the trail emptied onto an overlook that offered views of the city on one side and of the quarry on the other. In places, trees grew from shallow soil; in others there was only rock. It was a stark and beautiful place, but the drop into the quarry was two hundred feet straight down.

  “Why are we here?”

  Elizabeth stepped to the edge and peered down at the vast expanse of cold, black water. “My father’s a preacher. You probably didn’t know that.” Channing shook her head, and Elizabeth’s hair lifted in a breeze that rose up sheer walls like an exhalation from the water. “I grew up in the church, in a small house behind it, actually. The parsonage. Do you know that word?”

  Channing shook her head again, and Elizabeth understood that, too. Most kids could never understand church as a life, the prayer and dutifulness and submission.

  “The church kids would come here on Sundays after church. Sometimes there were a few of us, and sometimes a lot. A couple of parents would drive us up the mountain, then read the paper in the cars while we hiked up here to play. It was good, you know. Picnics and kites, long dresses and lace-up boots. There’s a trail that leads to a narrow ledge above the water. You could swim or skim stones. Sometimes we’d have campfires.” Elizabeth nodded; saw yellowed memories of a day like this, and of an unsuspecting, narrow-hipped girl. “I was raped under those trees when I was seventeen.”

  Channing shook her head. “You don’t have to do this.”

  But Elizabeth did. “We were the only two left, this boy and me. It was late. My father was in the car, down the hill. It happened so fast.…” Elizabeth picked up a rock, tossed it, and watched it fall into the quarry. “He was chasing me. I thought it was a game. It probably started out that way. I’m not really sure. I was laughing for a while, and then suddenly was not.” She pointed at the trees. “He caught me by that little pine and shoved needles in my mouth to keep me from screaming. It was fast and awful, and I barely understood what was happening, just the weight of him and the way it
hurt. On the walk down, he begged me not to tell. He swore he didn’t mean to do it, that we were friends and he was weak and it would never happen again.”

  “Elizabeth…”

  “We walked a quarter mile through those woods, then rode home in my father’s car, both of us in the backseat.” Elizabeth didn’t mention the feel of the boy’s leg pressed against her own. She didn’t describe the heat of it, or how he reached out once and put a single finger on the back of her hand. “I never told my father.”

  “Why not?”

  “I thought it was my fault, somehow.” Elizabeth lobbed another rock and watched it drop. “Two months later, I almost killed myself. Right here.”

  Channing leaned over the drop as if putting herself in the same place. “How close did you come?”

  “A single step. A few seconds.”

  “What stopped you?”

  “I found something larger to believe in.” She didn’t mention Adrian because that was still too personal, still just for her. “Your father can’t make it better, Channing. Your mother can’t make it better, either. You need to take charge of that yourself. I’d like to help you.”

  Emotion twisted the girl’s face: anger and doubt and disbelief. “Did you get better?”

  “I still hate the smell of pine.”

  Channing studied the narrow smile, looking for a lie, the shadow of a lie. Elizabeth thought she would lose her. She didn’t.

  “What happened to the boy?”

  “He sells insurance,” Elizabeth said. “He’s overweight and married. Every now and then I run into him. Sometimes, I do it on purpose.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because in the end only one thing can make it right.”

  “What?”

  “Choice.” Elizabeth cupped the girl’s face with a palm. “Your choice.”

  9

  Ellen Bondurant married young and well, then at forty-one learned a bitter truth about fading looks and selfish men. At first she was bewildered, then heartbroken and sad. In the end she was numb, so that when her husband presented papers, she signed them. Her attorney said she was being naïve, but that was not the truth, either. The money embarrassed her and always had: the cars and parties and diamonds as large as acorns. All she wanted was the man she thought she’d married.

  But he was long gone.

  Now, she lived with her dogs in a small house by a creek in the country, and her life had become a simple thing. She trained horses to make money and liked to walk the open spaces when she could: low country by the river if she was feeling contemplative; ridgelines to the old church and back if she wanted views.

  Today, she chose the church.

  “Come on, boys.”

  She called the dogs, then set out on foot, the route taking her on a steep angle to a trail that followed a line of hills to the southeast. She felt light as she moved, and younger than her forty-nine years. It was the work, she knew, the early mornings in the saddle, the long hours with longe line and whip. Her skin was leathered and lined, but she was proud of what her hands could do, how they worked unceasingly in snow and rain and heat.

  She stopped at the top of the first hill, her house, far below, like a toy dropped behind plastic trees. Ahead of her, the trail curled higher, then leveled for three miles as the ridgeline bent west and the earth fell away on either side. When the church appeared, its stark and stately beauty struck her as it always did: the granite steps, the iron cross, fallen and twisted.

  Slipping a bit as the trail dipped into the saddle of the forgotten church, Ellen felt the difference without understanding it. The dogs were agitated, their heads low as they tracked an invisible scent and whined low in their throats. They went halfway around the church, then came back at a run, noses snuffling at the base of the broad steps as they crisscrossed each other’s path and fur lifted in strips between their shoulder blades.

  She whistled for the dogs, but they ignored her. The largest one, a yellow Lab she called Tom, lunged up the stairs, his nails clicking.

  “What is it, boy?”

  Grass whispered on her legs, and she noticed tire tracks near the door. People did come here; it happened. But they usually parked on the dirt road or in the gravel lot. These tracks went all the way to the door.

  She stopped at the bottom step and, peering up, realized what else was different. The doors were slabs of oak, the handles black iron as thick as her arm. For as long as she could remember, the handles had been chained together, but today the chain was cut, and the right-side door stood ajar.

  Suddenly afraid, Ellen looked longingly up the hill. She should leave—she felt it—but Tom stood at the door, a whine in his throat. “It’s okay, boy.” She caught the dog’s collar and stepped through the door. Beyond the threshold, it was dim, the darkness cut by blades of light through boarded windows. The ceiling rose, vaulted and dark, but the altar held her. On either side, boards had been pulled from the windows so that light spilled in and lit it like a jewel. She saw white and red and black; and her first thought was Snow White. That was the feeling; a stillness that bordered on reverence, the hair and skin and nails stained red. It took five steps to realize what she was seeing, and when she did, she froze as if her body, entire, had turned to ice. “Sweet Lord.” She felt the world freeze, too. “Oh, my dear, sweet, merciful Lord.”

  * * *

  Beckett sipped coffee in the back booth of his regular diner. It was a favorite local joint, the booths filled with businessmen, mechanics, and mothers with young children. A plate of bacon and eggs was pushed off to the side, half-eaten. He hadn’t slept much and wanted to smoke for the first time in over twenty years. It was Liz’s fault. The worry. The stress. She liked to maintain a border between the personal life and the professional. Okay, fine. She wasn’t like other partners he’d had, didn’t want to talk about the opposite sex or sports or the difference between a good lay and a great one. She kept quiet about her past and her fears, lied about how much she slept and drank, and why she cared enough to be a cop in the first place. But, hey, that was cool. Space mattered—freaking boundaries—and that was fine until the lies went from small and harmless to scary, frightful, seriously fuckin’ dark.

  She was lying.

  Channing Shore was lying, too.

  To make the problem very real, little birdies were telling him that Hamilton and Marsh had not left town. They’d been to the abandoned house and tried twice to meet with Channing Shore. They’d pulled every complaint ever filed against Liz and were, at that very moment, interviewing Titus Monroe’s widow. What they hoped to gain was beyond him, but that they were even having the conversation spoke volumes.

  They wanted Liz. That meant they’d get around to him eventually; try to trip him up or turn him. After all, he’d known Liz since she was a rookie. They’d been partners for four years. The problem for them, however, would be simple. Liz was a solid cop. Steady. Smart. Dependable.

  Until the basement …

  That thought stuck in his mind as he tried to figure out what Liz was thinking when she’d told the state cops who were out to hang her that the men she’d killed weren’t men, after all, but animals. It went beyond dangerous. It was self-destructive, insane; and the absence of an easy explanation troubled him. Liz was a special kind of cop. She wasn’t a numbers guy like Dyer or a gung ho head breaker like half the assholes he’d come up with. She wasn’t in it for the thrill or the power or because, like him, she was too used up for anything better. He’d seen her soul when she thought no one was looking, and at times it was so beautiful it hurt. It was a ridiculous thought, and he knew it; but if he could ask one question and get an actual answer, it would be why she became a cop at all. She was driven and smart and could have been anything. Yet, she’d thrown the interview, and that made no sense at all.

  Then, there was Adrian Wall.

  Beckett thought, again, of Liz as a rookie: the way she’d mooned over Adrian, hung on his every word as if he had some special
insight every other cop lacked. Her fascination had an unsettling effect, not just because it was so obvious but because half the cops on the force hoped she’d look at them the same way. Adrian’s conviction should have ended the doe-eyed infatuation. Failing that, thirteen years of incarceration should have done the job. He was a convict, and broken in a hundred different ways. Yet, Beckett had watched Liz at Nathan’s, how she slid into the car with Adrian, the way her breath caught, and how her eyes hung on Adrian’s lips when he spoke. She still felt for him, still believed.

  That was a problem.

  It was all a giant, fucking problem.

  Frustrated, Beckett pushed the coffee cup away and signaled for the check. The waitress brought it in a slow, easy step. “Anything else, Detective?”

  “Not this morning, Melody.”

  She put the check facedown as the phone in Beckett’s pocket vibrated. He dug it out, squinted at the screen, then answered, “Beckett.”

  “Hey, it’s James Randolph. You got a minute?”

  James was another detective. Older than Beckett. Smart. A brawler. “What’s up, James?”

  “You know an Ellen Bondurant?”

  Beckett searched his memory and came up with a woman from six or seven years ago. “I remember her. Divorce case gone bad. Her husband violated a restraining order; smashed up the house, I think. What about her?”

  “She’s holding on line two.”

  “That was seven years ago. Can’t you handle it?”

  “What can I tell you, Beckett? She’s upset. She wants you.”

  “All right, fine.” Beckett stretched an arm across the back of the booth. “Patch her through.”

  “Hang on.”

  The line crackled with static, then clicked twice. When Ellen Bondurant came on the line, she was calmer than Beckett had expected.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Detective, but I remember how nice you were to me.”

  “It’s okay, Ms. Bondurant. What can I do for you?”