Redemption Road

by John Hart

  She laughed and sounded forlorn. “All I wanted was to take a walk.”

  * * *

  When Beckett hit the drive below the church, he had Detective Randolph back on the phone. “I’m not sure yet.” The car stuttered over washboard ruts, the church high above. “Just get everything on standby. Some uniforms, crime scene, the medical examiner. This may be a false alarm, but it doesn’t feel like it.”

  “Is it the same?”

  “I don’t know, yet.”

  “Should I tell Dyer?”

  Beckett considered the question. Dyer was a good administrator, but not the best cop in the world. He took things personally and tended to delay even if hesitation was dangerous. Then there was the location, the fact Adrian was fresh out of prison, and the chance it could actually be the same. In Beckett’s heart he thought Dyer had never fully recovered from his partner’s being a killer. Questions had rattled around the department for years.

  How did Dyer miss it?

  What kind of cop could he possibly be?

  “Listen, James. Francis could get a little twitchy on this one. Let’s make sure what we’re dealing with first. Just sit tight until I call you back.”

  “Don’t leave me hanging.”

  Thirteen years had passed since Adrian killed Julia Strange in the same church, but Randolph felt it, too: the dark charge. This could change everything. Lives. The city.

  Liz …

  Beckett dropped the phone in a pocket, put both hands on the wheel, and stared through the windshield as the church humped up above him. Even now, the place disturbed him in a deeply fundamental way. The building was old, the grounds overgrown with dog fennel and horseweed and scrub pine. That wasn’t the problem so much as the history of the place. It started with Julia Strange. Her murder was bad enough, but even after the church was abandoned, the death lingered like an aftertaste. Vandals broke glass and toppled headstones; they spray-painted the walls and floors with profanity and satanic symbols. For years after that, vagrants moved in and out. They left bottles and condoms and the remains of cooking fires, one of which got out of control enough to burn part of the structure and topple the cross. But, you could see old glories if you looked: the massive stones and the granite steps, even the cross itself, which stood for almost two hundred years before being twisted in the fall. Beckett’s religious convictions had not entirely faded, so maybe his discomfort stemmed from guilt for all the wrongs he’d done. Maybe it was the contrast of good and evil, or perhaps from memories of how the church had been, of Sunday mornings and song, his partner’s life, before.

  Whatever the cause, he was unhappy enough to grind his teeth and clench the wheel. When his car crested the ridge, he saw the Bondurant woman standing in tall grass with two dogs at her side, one of them barking. He hit the brakes and slid to a halt. None of the wrongness dissipated.

  “They’re friendly,” she called.

  Beckett had yet to meet a Lab that wasn’t. He greeted the woman by name, then took in the church and the fields and the distant forest. “You walked up here?”

  “My house is that way.” She pointed. “Three miles. I walk here a few times a week.”

  “Did you see anyone?” She shook her head, and he gestured at the church. “Did you touch anything?”

  “The door handle on the right side.”

  “Anything else?”

  “The chain was already cut. I stopped long before I got to the … uh, uh…”

  “It’s okay.” Beckett nodded. “Tell me the last time you were up here.”

  “A few days. Three, maybe.”

  “Did you see people, then?”

  “Not then, but on occasion. I find trash, sometimes. Beer bottles. Cigarettes. Old campfires. You know how this place can be.” Her voice broke at the end.

  Beckett reminded himself that civilians didn’t see bodies the way cops did. “I’m going to go inside and take a look. You stay here. I’ll have more questions.”

  “It’s the same, isn’t it?”

  He saw fear in her eyes as trees rustled above the church, and one of the dogs pulled against its leash. “Sit tight,” he said. “I won’t be long.”

  Beckett left her where she stood and made for the church, stopping briefly to examine the tire tracks in the grass. Nothing remarkable, he thought. Maybe they could get an imprint. Probably not.

  Stepping across the fallen chain, he moved into the dark and heat. Ten feet in it was close to black, so he waited for his eyes to adjust. After a moment, the void gathered itself into a low-ceilinged, dim space with sconces in the walls, a stairwell to the left, and closet doors broken from their hinges. Stepping through the narthex, he fumbled his way to the double doors that led into the nave. Once beyond them, the ceiling soared away, and while it remained dim at his end of the church, light spilled through stained glass at both transepts to illuminate the altar and the woman on it. Colors were in the light—blues and greens and reds—and lines of shadow from iron in the glass. Otherwise, the light speared in like a blade to pin the body where it lay, to put color in the skin and on linen that was white and crisp and ran from feet to chin. Beckett’s first impression was of black hair and stillness and red nails, the image so familiar and haunting it transfixed him where he stood.

  “Please, don’t be the same.…”

  He was talking to himself, but couldn’t help it. Light lit her like a jewel in a case, but it was more than that. It was the tilt of her jaw, the apple-skin nails.

  “Jesus.”

  Beckett crossed himself from an almost-forgotten childhood habit, then worked his way past broken floorboards and lumps of rotted carpet. He made his way between tumbled pews, and with each step the illusion of perfection crumbled more. Color fell out of the light. Pale skin dulled to gray, and marks of violence rose as if by magic. Bruising. Ligature marks. Torn fingertips. Beckett took the last, few steps, and, at the altar, looked down. The victim was young, with dark hair and eyes shot through with blood. She was stretched on the altar as Julia Strange had been, her arms crossed on the linen, her neck blackened and crushed. He studied the choke marks, the eyes, the lips that were nearly bitten through. He lifted the linen to find her nude beneath it, the body pale and unmarked and otherwise perfect. Beckett lowered the sheet and felt a surge of unexpected emotion.

  The Bondurant woman was right.

  It was the same.

  * * *

  The sun burned through the trees as Elizabeth drove Channing down the mountain. It was quiet in the car until they approached Channing’s neighborhood. When the girl spoke, her voice was quiet, yet wound like a coil. “Have you ever gone back to the place it happened?”

  “I just took you there. I just showed it to you.”

  “You took me to the quarry, not to the place it happened. You pointed. You talked about it. We never went near the little pine where the boy knocked you down. I’m asking if you’ve ever stood on the exact spot.”

  They stopped in front of Channing’s house, and Elizabeth killed the engine. Beyond the hedge, brick and stone rose, inviolate. “I wouldn’t choose to do that. Not now. Not ever.”

  “It’s just a place. It doesn’t hurt.”

  Elizabeth turned in her seat, appalled. “Did you go back to the crime scene, Channing? Please tell me you did not go alone into that godforsaken house.”

  “I lay down on the place it happened.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Should I try to kill myself, instead?”

  Channing was angry, now, a wall going up between them. Elizabeth wanted to understand, but struggled. The girl’s eyes were bright as dimes. The rest of her seemed to hum. “Are you upset with me for some reason?”

  “No. Yes. Maybe.”

  Elizabeth tried to remember how it felt to be eighteen, to be stripped to the bone and held together with tape. It wasn’t difficult. “Why did you go back?”

  “The men are dead. The place is all that’s left.”

  “That’s not true,�
�� Elizabeth said. “You remain, and so do I.”

  “I don’t think I do.” Channing opened the door, climbed out. “And I think maybe you don’t, either.”

  “Channing…”

  “I can’t talk about this right now. I’m sorry.”

  The girl kept her head down as she walked away. Elizabeth watched her move up the drive and fade into the trees. She would make it into the house unnoticed or the parents who didn’t know what to do with her would discover her creeping through the window. Neither outcome would help the girl. One of them could make things a whole lot worse. She was still thinking about that when her phone rang. It was Beckett, and he was as twisted up as the girl.

  “How fast can you get to your father’s church?”

  “His church?”

  “Not the new one. The old one.”

  “You’re talking about—”

  “Yeah, that one. How fast?”

  “Why?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  Elizabeth looked at her watch, and her stomach rolled over. “I can be there in fourteen minutes.”

  “I need you here in ten.”

  * * *

  Beckett hung up before she could ask another question.

  Ten minutes.

  He stood by the window in the north transept. Bits of colored glass had been broken out years earlier, but much of it remained. He peered through a hole and watched the world as if he could see the storm coming. Adrian had been out of prison for barely a day. When news of another murder broke, it would go viral. The church. The altar. It was too big, too gothic. The city would call for blood, and everything would come under scrutiny. The sentencing guidelines. The judge and the cops. Maybe even the prison.

  How did the system let another woman die?

  If news of Gideon’s shooting broke, too, the storm would spin out of control. Beckett saw how the papers would play it, not just as a story of murder and family and failed revenge, but of systemic incompetence as the first victim’s child slips through every crack in the system only to be shot in the shadow of the prison. Someone would figure out that Liz had been at Nathan’s, and that would make the cops look even worse. She was the angel of death, the department’s largest black eye since Adrian himself. The city was already turning against her. How bad would it get when people learned she’d worked to keep Gideon clear of social services? It was a royal mess, all of it. Dyer would never allow Liz on the scene.

  But, Beckett wanted her here. She was his partner and friend, and she still had feelings for Adrian. Beckett needed to fix that.

  “Come on, Liz.”

  He paced to the altar and back.

  “Come on, damn it.”

  Seven minutes later, his phone rang, and James Randolph’s number popped on the screen. Beckett didn’t answer.

  “Come on, come on.”

  At the ten-minute mark, Randolph called again, then again. When the fourth call made the phone burr in his pocket, Beckett ripped it out and answered.

  Randolph was frustrated. “What the hell, Charlie? I’ve got the ME on hold and eight cops staring at me like I’m crazy.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” Beckett heard voices in the background, the clatter of gear.

  “Are we rolling or not?”

  Beckett saw a car on the road. It crested the hill at speed, then slowed. He gave it a five count to make sure, then said, “You can roll, James. Call Dyer, too. He’ll be twitchy, like I said. Just tell him it’s my call. Tell him it’s the same.”

  “Goddamn.”

  “One other thing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Find Adrian Wall.”

  Beckett then walked outside to meet Liz on the worn, granite steps of her childhood church. Even at a distance, her unhappiness was unmistakable. She was moving slowly, her eyes on the great trees, the fallen steeple. It was going to get ugly, and Beckett hated that.

  “I never come here,” she said.

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  They met on the bottom step, and Beckett hated the way doubt colored every glance. The church had been the center of her life for years: the congregation, her parents, and childhood. Though it had never been a rich church, it had been old and influential. Most of that changed after Julia Strange died on the altar. She’d been married in the church; her son was baptized there. Most of the congregation never got past her death or the desecration of their church. The few who persevered insisted on moving to a new location. Elizabeth’s father fought the idea, and her mother, in the end, forced the issue: How can we pray where one of our own died alone and in fear? How can we christen our children? Marry our young people? Her impassioned pleas swayed even her husband, who broke, it was said, with exceptional grace. What followed was a clapboard structure on a skinny lot in a dangerous part of town. The church continued as best it could, but only a fraction of the congregation made the move. Most drifted off to join First Baptist or United Methodist or some other church. Liz’s life changed after that.

  Her parents descended into obscurity.

  Adrian Wall went to prison.

  “We don’t have much time,” Beckett said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because Dyer will arrest us both if he finds you here.”

  He pushed into the interior, and Elizabeth followed him through the darkened narthex and into the light beyond. She moved as if it hurt and kept her eyes down until the balcony passed above her head, and the ceiling rose up. Beckett watched her face as she took in the rafters and the char and the fixtures hung like iron crowns. She turned a bit, but kept her gaze from the altar, let it light first on windows and walls and a thousand shadowed places. He could not imagine her thoughts, and nothing on her face betrayed them. She held stoic and straight, and when she finally faced the altar, it took three seconds for her to acknowledge that she understood what she was seeing.

  “Why are you showing me this?”

  “You know exactly why.”

  “Adrian didn’t do this.”

  “Same church. Same altar.”

  “Just because he’s out of prison…”

  Beckett took her arm and pulled her to the altar she’d known since birth. “Look at her.”

  “Who is she?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Beckett said it harsh and hard. “Look at her.”

  “I have.”

  “Look deeper.”

  “There is no deeper. Okay? She’s dead. It’s the same. Is that what you want to hear?”

  Liz was sweating, but it was a thin, cold sweat. Beckett saw enough on her face to understand what she was feeling inside: childhood and betrayal, the hard turns of an ugly disbelief. This was her church. Adrian was her hero.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked.

  “Because you’re not thinking straight. Because I need you to understand that Adrian Wall is a killer, and that your obsession with him is dangerous.”

  “There’s no obsession.”

  “Then stay away from him.”

  “Or what?” There was the spark, the heat. “Why do you hate him so much? He didn’t kill Julia Strange. He didn’t kill this one, either.”

  “Jesus, Liz. Listen to yourself.” Beckett frowned, frustrated by his inability to do this simple thing. Liz’s faith in Adrian Wall had burned a lot of bridges when she was a rookie. Cops distrusted her, thought her flawed and female and irrational. It took years for her colleagues to fully accept her, and longer still for her to walk the station without a chip on her shoulder. Beckett had seen it. He’d lived it. “Try to look at this like a cop. Okay?”

  “As opposed to what? An astronaut? A housewife?”

  He was making it worse. Same chip on her shoulder. Same bitterness.

  “He didn’t do it, Charlie.”

  “Damn it, Liz—”

  “I was with him last night.”

  “What?”

  “He wasn’t interested in something like this. He wasn’t interested in people, at all. He was …
sad.”

  “Sad? Do you even hear yourself?”

  “You shouldn’t have brought me here.” She turned and started walking. “It was a mistake,” she said, and Beckett knew she was right.

  He’d played it ten kinds of wrong.

  He’d lost her.

  10

  Elizabeth drove and tried to get her head around what had just happened in the church. Forget the body, the fact of another death. That was too big and too sudden. She’d need time to process what it meant, so she thought about Beckett instead. He wanted to help—she understood that—but she despised the church in a way he could never understand. It was old, that hatred, twined so deeply into Elizabeth’s soul that it was hard to stand before the altar of her youth and be objective about anything. She felt small there, and angry and betrayed. That was a tough combination; so, in the quiet of her car, she focused on the one thing that mattered now.

  Was she right to believe in Adrian?

  They’d never been close in any of the normal ways. He was the man who’d saved her life, a glow in the night of her bitter despair. Because of that, her feelings for him had never been rational. When she thought of him, she saw his face at the quarry, the steadiness and goodwill. Her faith in him only grew when she became a cop. He was bold and smart, cared about victims and their families. Yet, even when she was a cop herself, he’d maintained an aloofness. A smile here. A word there. The gestures were small and in passing, but she could not deny the feelings they’d stirred or the dangerous question such feelings raised.

  Was she obsessed?

  It was a difficult question, but only because she’d never asked it of herself. She was a cop because of Adrian; driven because he, too, had been driven. When his skin turned up under Julia Strange’s nails, Elizabeth had been the only one to doubt his guilt. Not his friends or peers or the jury. Even his wife seemed to fade at the end, sitting with her head down, unwilling to meet his eyes or show up for the sentencing. That thought bothered Elizabeth more now than it ever had. Why should she believe in Adrian when his own wife had not? Elizabeth disliked that kind of self-doubt, but her faith in Adrian had been blind. She’d been young, desperate to believe; and looking back, that all made sense. But was she blinded, now? Thirteen years had passed, but the murders looked the same. She could blink and lay Gideon’s mother on the same altar. What was different from one murder to the next?