“Yeah.” Seventeen. A child. A corpse.
“Did you make copies?”
“No. She’d already done that. What she had, they were copies. I never saw the originals. And I saw only one of the letters. But there were others.”
“What did that letter say?”
“It was from her dad. He was—he’d been—in prison. Got out and then I guess he didn’t write anymore for a while. She was upset about that. Then he started back up, but he wouldn’t say where he was, wouldn’t give a return address or anything. So it was just, you know, a one-way street. She wanted to be able to respond. Asked me to find him. An address, I mean.”
“You’re qualified for this sort of work?”
“I’m a licensed PI, you know that.”
Salter didn’t respond.
“It’s what I do,” Adam said. “Same thing I do every day. People skip out on bond, and I go find them. I bring them back. You know this.”
“Nobody had skipped out on a bond here.”
“Skill set,” Adam said. “Same skill set.”
“I see. So you used that skill set, and you found an address?”
“That’s right.”
“Do you remember it?”
“No.”
“But you have records?”
“Yeah. Yes.”
“She didn’t give you a physical address? Just the phone number?”
“Just the phone number. She said she was a student at—”
“Baldwin-Wallace,” Salter said. “Yes. She say how she picked you for the job?”
“She said she had a referral.” Adam wished he’d stopped for a mint or some gum. He was breathing beer out with every word, and it made them seem flimsy, pathetic.
“We understand this part,” Salter said. “Her boyfriend told us. The referral, if we can call it that, came from him. He plays football for your brother.”
“Plays?” Adam said. “Like, right now? On this team?”
“Like right now,” Salter said, nodding. “Colin Mears? I gather he and his family are pretty close to your brother. There was some conversation about you, and I guess Colin understood you to be a detective.”
Adam let that glide by. Understood you to be, not understands that you are. Who cared? Who cared what Salter thought? What mattered here was a girl with glitter nail polish. What mattered was finding the sick son of a bitch who’d killed her, finding him and ending him. Because if you didn’t… if he just stayed out there…
“It’s a shame she lied to you,” Salter said, “and a shame you didn’t ask for any sort of identification. Because if you’d been operating with her real name, you’d have found her father easily. At Mansfield Correctional.”
Adam stared at him. “He never left?”
“Never left. He’s been there seven years. We’ve got people interviewing him right now. He says he wrote his last letter in August. So whoever kept writing? Whoever it is you found for her? We need to find him. Fast.”
“Makes no sense,” Adam said.
“What?”
“It doesn’t make sense, Salter. I saw the letter, okay? The guy who wrote it was trying not to see her.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. I read the damn—”
“You’ve told me that. But it seems like he was tossing a lot of breadcrumbs out for someone who didn’t want anyone following the trail. Telling her he was in town, then giving her his landlord’s name? This to a girl who was actively seeking contact with him? That doesn’t strike you as contradictory?”
These were fair points, but still Adam shook his head.
“He knew where to find her, clearly. So what’s the point in that kind of a game?”
“I’m not sure,” Salter said. “But games aren’t uncommon with stalking. Not at all.”
“It’s so patient, though,” Adam said. “Waiting to see if she’d respond? If she’d look for him? It’s too damn patient.”
“Maybe he wasn’t so patient. Maybe when she showed up at his door, it rushed him.”
Adam remembered the numbers then. They floated toward him on a black breeze: 7330. On Shadow Wood Lane, yes. That was the address, that was the door at which she’d arrived.
That was where he’d sent her.
6
WHEN BETH CAME DOWNSTAIRS to greet Kent, it was past two in the morning but she didn’t show any surprise. During the season, hours like this were no cause for alarm for a coach’s wife, and in the years before they’d had children, hours like this had been Beth’s norm. She’d been an ER nurse and intended to return to it once Lisa and Andrew were old enough. The night shift had never ebbed away from her; Kent sometimes found her making coffee at four in the morning simply because she knew better than to fight for a return to sleep.
Tonight, though, she’d been asleep. He could tell that from her foggy smile and the way her long blond hair was fuzzed out from the pillow. “Still perfect,” she said. “Nice work, babe.”
He’d opened the refrigerator to get a bottle of water and in the shaft of white light she saw something that made her say, “Hon?” in a concerned voice.
He took the water out and let the door swing shut and they were standing in darkness when he told her that Rachel Bond was dead.
“Someone killed that poor girl? Murdered her?” she said, her reflex response to bad news, stating the facts and considering them, the practiced reaction of someone who had been required to show poise in the face of crisis. Tonight it chafed. Scream, he wanted to say, cry, shout, break down, because no quality was so annoying in someone else as the very one you didn’t like in yourself. He’d spent the whole night trying to offer calm and strength and to repress emotion. He was tired of that.
Beth crossed the kitchen and took him in her arms then and the irritable edge that sorrow and fatigue had given him melted into her warmth. He held her while he told her about the police station, all that had been said, Stan Salter and Colin Mears and the news about Adam.
“Adam sent her to him?” Beth leaned back, searching his eyes. “Adam?”
He nodded. “You remember the night that Colin asked me about him? Saw him in the team photo from the championship year and asked where he’d gone? Well, I told him he was still here, and I said… I said he was a private detective. He remembered that, apparently. And when Rachel decided to try and find her father…”
“She went to Adam.”
“Yes.”
They were silent. Kent finished his water. Neither of them turned on the lights.
“She was such a beautiful girl,” Beth whispered. “In every way. Too mature. You know I used to tell you that. Like she’d never been a girl, always had to be an adult.”
“I know.”
Beth wiped tears from her eyes with her fingertips. “She was going to do so much, Kent. She was one of those… you could just tell that she was going to do so much.”
Her voice trailed off and he reached out and stroked her hair as she took a shaking breath, folded her arms tightly around herself, and said, “By tomorrow morning, people will have heard what happened. Maybe before practice.”
“We won’t practice. I’ll say a few words, send them home.” He leaned against the counter and removed his baseball cap and ran a hand through his hair. “They’ll try to connect it to football. Make her a symbol, start dedicating games to her. I wish they wouldn’t.”
“They’re just boys.”
“It’s not going to be only the boys. It’ll be the parents, the fans, the guys on the radio. It’ll be the cheerleaders and the teachers and the janitors and even the police. All of a sudden a bunch of kids playing a game are going to represent something they should not.”
“Maybe that won’t happen.”
“Trust me,” he said. “It will.”
The police had finished with him before three, but Adam didn’t make it home until the sun was up. He went to his office—a convenient trip from the police station—and then he drove north to the lake. There,
on the tumbled slabs of rocks that formed the breakwater, in the shadow of an empty mill that had once produced steel and now stood as a tired symbol of an age that had been gone for generations but that people still mourned as if it had just ended, he sat in the cold and drank from the bottle of whiskey he’d removed from his office. It was very good whiskey. Auchentoshan Three Wood, a fine Scotch. He kept only good stuff around his home and office. You didn’t drink the good stuff as fast, couldn’t afford to.
He drank it fast now.
Didn’t get much of it down.
As the moon went pale and then faded beneath the dawn’s lead light, Adam Austin vomited fine Scotch into Lake Erie and then he let himself weep, slipping down until one arm and one foot were in the frigid water, the wind heedless and unforgiving. This would make him sick, being both unprepared for the cold and unwilling to step out of it. It would infect him in time.
Why again? he thought. Why wasn’t bearing it once enough? How can it not be? He crawled back up the rocks and stared out at this lake that touched three other states and one other country in places he couldn’t see, this lake that was always cold, when you needed it to be and when you didn’t. Watched the horizon take shape and then, when it was bright enough or as close to bright as this day seemed inclined to get, he returned to his car and drove home. It was the only home he’d ever known, the home his parents had brought him to from the hospital, their firstborn son, firstborn child, eldest of three. He’d remodeled when he could afford to, replaced what he cared to. Other than the basics of the structure, there wasn’t much left to the house that recalled what it had once been. He’d changed almost everything.
Except for one room.
He walked to it now, stood in the dim upstairs hallway, and reached for the knob. Laid his hand on the chill metal and read the handwritten sign: MARIE LYNN AUSTIN LIVES HERE—KNOCKS REQUIRED, TRESPASSING FORBIDDEN! THANKS, BOYS! He shook his head. Not yet. He couldn’t enter like this, nothing more to show her than a drunk man with wet shoes and bile on his shirtsleeve and blood on his hands. More blood.
Instead, he went down the hall and peeled off his clothes and turned on the shower, looking into the mirror as the old water heater took its time limbering up and preparing for action. His eyes were dry now. They’d stay that way. He knew that.
“I’m coming for you,” he whispered, and then he thought that was a strange thing to tell your own reflection, and turned away.
7
WORD SPREADS FAST IN Chambers, Ohio. There was nothing in the morning newspaper, but his kids already knew, anyhow, and Kent was not surprised. It is a small town, close-knit. Or invasive. You picked the word depending on your role in it, the way it impacted you. The familiarity, the way everyone knew everyone else, either wrapped warm arms around you or pried with cold, cruel fingers. One of the boys on his team had a father with the police. Another had an uncle with the coroner’s office, a third had a mother who worked as an emergency dispatcher. It would have started with one of the three. Or maybe one with a connection he didn’t even know about, and it ultimately didn’t matter; somewhere, somehow, one of them would have heard, would have issued a late-night call or text message or e-mail, and that would have spawned a dozen like it, and most of the town probably woke to the news.
The weight of it was visible on them as they took to the field, parents walking down with their sons, parents who would ordinarily have sent their sons out into the cold day alone. This was one of the things that he liked about Chambers. It was small enough that people considered everything a shared experience. There was a positive to that. There was also a darkness. Those who never knew Rachel, who wouldn’t have recognized her in a grocery store checkout line, would today claim to remember her quick laugh and generous smile and kind spirit.
Except for the truly dark ones. For those exist in Chambers, too, make no mistake. Kent remembered them well. By noon today, someone would have voiced the first rumor—She was a little slut, you know. Or maybe it would be even worse, tinged with more of the things they attach to disaster in their private moments—I heard she was running around with some Mexican boy.
Only some of them would have memories of Rachel, but all of them would have a theory.
He stood in the center of the field as they gathered. There were a few nods exchanged, a few whispers, but no one actually said words of substance. They were waiting on him.
Remember Walter Ward, he thought, and he wished his old coach were here so bad it stung him, a child’s need, desperate and weakening. Take this one for me, Coach Ward, take this one and handle it the way you did once before, please.
But Walter Ward had been in Rose Hill Cemetery for six years now. By then he was more than an ex-coach, he was family, Kent’s father-in-law, and Kent had stood beside the open earth and delivered the eulogy. That earth would not offer his old coach back today. Kent had accepted the job from Ward, and all that came with it. This was one of those things. He’d never imagined it would be, and yet somehow he felt as if he couldn’t be surprised. Everything circled. Everything with teeth, at least, everything that snapped and bit and drew blood.
When the full team was gathered, he spoke. The crowd was well over a hundred deep. Lots of adults. Parents, mostly, but there were faces in the group he didn’t recognize.
“I expect most of you have heard,” he said, “but just in case you have not, let me explain that there will be no practice, and why not.”
And so he told them the news they had already heard. One of their own had been taken from them. The word choice was key. He would never forget the way the word lost had seared him when used with Marie, as if she had been misplaced, a set of car keys, a remote control, a pair of shoes. No, she was not lost.
She was taken.
“We know,” he said, “that this game is of the barest importance. This morning we are all reminded of that in a way I hoped we never would be. Let’s remind ourselves of something else now: we draw strength from one another. Sometimes, we need to take more than we can offer. You boys have to be aware of that now. There will be those—Rachel’s family, her friends, your teammate Colin—who will need more than they have within them. They will need it from you, from me. We have to remember that, and offer it.
“We’ve spent months—years—discussing what this game represents, and what it does not. Today, it represents nothing. Understand that. Be clear on it. And remember… There is no fear or loss so mighty that it can break faith.”
A chorus of agreement, one of the loudest coming from a man in the back of the crowd, and when Kent’s eyes flicked his way the man dipped his head immediately. He was wearing a baseball cap and now his face was down but he was familiar. For a moment Kent stuttered, then looked away and refocused.
“No practice today, no football. Be with your families, be with your friends, be with your thoughts. Make sure those thoughts are directed toward the people who need them.” He paused, then said, “I’ll say a prayer now for those who would like to stay for it.”
They all stayed.
Kent hoped to make it home without comment to the press, but Bob Hackett, the community’s venerable sports editor, three decades on the job and still going, caught him at his car. He’d been there when they won their state title in Kent’s freshman year, he’d been there when they lost the title game with Kent at quarterback his senior year, he’d been there through everything that had happened in between.
Today he was waiting beside Kent’s Ford Explorer, and they leaned together against the car and stared at the ball field that had mattered so much only a few hours ago.
“I’m sorry,” Hackett said.
“Lots of people are deserving of sympathy right now, but I’m not among them.”
“Kent? Someone is going to want to talk with you about it soon enough,” Hackett said. “And I’ll tell you this: it’s easier if you talk to me. If I write it first, the AP will grab it. Then when somebody else calls, you can say you gave your one interview on the topic a
nd want to leave it at that. If you don’t give any, though, everyone will get to bend it their own way.”
So let them, Kent wanted to snap. It’s got nothing to do with anything, it’s so long ago, so far away.
But that wasn’t true. It wasn’t far away, never would be.
“You know me well enough to understand I’m not hunting for the scoop,” Hackett said. “If you don’t want to say a word about her then I’ll—”
“No,” Kent said. “Let’s get it done. Let’s talk about my sister.”
Hackett looked away, and Kent appreciated the man’s genuine discomfort. He didn’t always agree with the sportswriter’s columns, but he always appreciated the way he went about his job. He didn’t treat it as writing about coaches and athletes and games. He treated it as writing about people.
“Go inside?” Hackett said.
Kent shook his head. “Why don’t we sit on the bleachers.”
It was maybe thirty-five degrees, the morning sun not yet doing much to warm the gray day, and Hackett didn’t have a hat covering his bald head, but he nodded and led the way.
8
CHELSEA CALLED AROUND noon.
“I just heard,” she said, no preamble, no questions about why Adam hadn’t returned to her in the night, why he was not at the office now, Saturday mornings traditionally being busy.
“From who?”
“Police. Came to get the file on her. There wasn’t much to it. They had a little trouble believing that.”
“They’re hopeful. I don’t blame them. I wish there was more in it, too. I wish…” He couldn’t continue, and he hoped she thought he was drunk. Somehow, that seemed better. Safer, less vulnerable. Adam? He’s not broken, he’s just drunk. Worthy of your scorn, sure, but don’t waste pity or sympathy on him, please.
“Where are you?” she said. Her voice very soft.
“Home.”
“Your home.”
“Only one I’ve got.”
“Yeah?”
He was silent. He’d spent maybe thirty nights in a row at her place. Maybe forty.
The Prophet Page 5
