The Prophet

by Michael Koryta

  “You meant what you said, didn’t you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You think you can do it?”

  “I’m going to.”

  “You really going to find him? And kill him?”

  “Yes. I’m going to kill him.”

  He saw a shadow move, knew that Chelsea was in the bedroom doorway watching him, but he didn’t turn to face her. He watched the snakes in their slumbering coils and he waited to hear what Rachel Bond’s mother had left to say.

  “Promise me something else,” she said. “Promise me that if you get him, you’ll tell me. Will you do that? Will you tell me?”

  “I will get him,” Adam said. “And you will know when I do.”

  She hung up before he could say another word. When Adam turned back to the bedroom, Chelsea was already gone, and the door was shut.

  17

  RODNEY BOVA LIVED IN A rental house three blocks from the hospital where he worked as a maintenance supervisor. He was not home on Tuesday morning, and Adam walked the block twice, staring at every car. The possibility of police surveillance could not be ignored. No one appeared to be watching, though. It was for damn sure that no one had a view of the back of the house. He approached from that side, cleared the privacy fence, and used a thin metal carpenter’s ruler to shim the lock on the sliding glass door.

  Wearing a pair of latex gloves and working methodically, Adam soon came to know a good deal more about who Rodney Bova had become in the years after he set his stepfather’s Cadillac on fire and disappeared from the halls of Chambers High. He followed horse racing, enjoyed pornography, and was an impulse shopper—there was a wide array of fitness equipment in the apartment, all of it the gimmicky shit they sold on late-night commercials for $19.99, and if you acted right now! you, too, could look like a Navy SEAL. According to photographs scattered around the house, Rodney Bova’s belly suggested he was well into his second trimester, so it seemed he was more inspired to buy the devices than to use them. That was the problem in shifting from viewing porn to viewing home fitness commercials. With twenty minutes a day on this discount device, I, too, could have a woman like those I was just watching…

  Bova’s computer was password protected, and Adam didn’t have the faintest idea how to subvert even simple computer security. That was a shame, because the computer might be of use. For a while he entertained the idea of stealing it and finding someone who could get around that password, but in the end he ruled that out, at least temporarily. For the time being, it was better that Bova’s life not be rattled in any way. Adam needed him operating with a sense of comfort and security.

  Instead he took a step backward in technology, digging through stacks of old mail and paperwork, scrutinizing the innocuous and irrelevant in hopes of finding something that spoke to a connection with Rachel Bond. He was just beginning to feel hopeless about his prospects when he opened a Visa bill from July and saw a $100 debit to Mansfield Correctional.

  He stood there in Bova’s kitchen and stared at the bill in confusion, trying to figure out the charge. Too low for bail even if it had been a county jail, but it was a prison. You didn’t bond out of a prison, not for a million dollars, let alone a hundred. Then he got it: the commissary. You could mail funds to an inmate’s commissary account, so surely you could transfer money to one electronically as well. Long after he himself had been released, Rodney Bova had been making contributions to the prison’s commissary, supporting someone.

  Who?

  The rest of the bills told the same tale—a hundred dollars a month, every month, for as far back as Bova had bills, which was more than two years. He’d never missed a contribution. That was dedication. That was loyalty.

  The loyalty payments ended in August. Only two logical options there: either Rodney Bova had decided to stop making his diligent payments, or the recipient had left Mansfield.

  End of summer, start of the letters to Rachel. Maybe the inmate stayed with Rodney for a while. Maybe he worked with him, made a trip out to Shadow Wood Lane to nail shingles to a roof.

  “Who do you know, Rodney?” Adam whispered.

  He replaced the bills carefully, took a final pass through the house, making sure nothing looked disturbed, and then he exited and returned to his car and called Penny Gootee and asked if he could see her.

  “Fine,” she said. Her voice sounded sober today but hollowed out. “You can watch the police on TV like everybody else will be.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Press conference,” she said. “They’re going to tell everyone how my baby died. How she was killed.”

  She wore an oversized hooded sweatshirt and seemed to disappear inside it. She had to have slept at some point, but there was no indication. When he stepped inside, the television was on, an empty podium in the center of the screen. Penny said, “You can watch it. I don’t want to,” and then she went into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. Adam knew better than to pursue. He sat on the couch beside the comforter from Rachel Bond’s bed and watched Stan Salter step forward and occupy the podium, eyes grim as he adjusted the microphones, glanced at his notes, and then faced the cameras and provided the details that the public was so desperate to know, the ones they somehow felt they deserved. There had been a time, maybe, when Adam could have been able to get his head around that idea, the way a community could decide that the victim of a tragedy belonged to them, that because they were interested, they were a part of it, but that time was far gone.

  Today, though, with Rachel Bond’s case, he listened with the same interest shared by all the rest who considered the murder a spectator sport. Only he was no spectator.

  The autopsy results had been completed, Salter said. Rachel Bond had been asphyxiated, with marks on her neck indicating the use of a plastic bag wrapped in place with duct tape. The bag had not been found at the kill site, but they believed it to be of clear plastic.

  Adam thought about that, and what it meant. The sick bastard had wanted to watch her go. That had been important to him, to see it happen. No guns, no knives, no bludgeoning, not even any blood.

  Just a slow, horrific expiration, a final gasp that found no oxygen, the sudden removal of one of those universally promised things: you will have air to breathe.

  In the end, she had not. That had been taken from her.

  Salter explained that the property owner was not a suspect, that the house was vacant. He explained that Rachel had gone there in hopes of reuniting with her estranged father, and that someone had been impersonating her father in a series of letters. He said the investigating team was gathering leads and analyzing forensic evidence and would reveal more information when it was prudent to do so. Adam found the remote and turned off the television. When the volume was gone, the bathroom door reopened and Penny Gootee appeared.

  “Heard enough?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  She came back down the hallway and sat on the couch at his side and wrapped Rachel’s blanket around her.

  “I want you to do it,” she said.

  “I know. I’m going to need your help.”

  “Just tell me how.”

  “Do you know more than they just shared? Have they asked you about suspects?”

  “They’ve asked me if I have ideas. I don’t. They haven’t shared any names with me.”

  “No questions about people who were in Mansfield with your husband?”

  “Jason was never my husband. Don’t call him that. I don’t have his name.”

  “Did they ask you any questions about people who were in prison with Jason?”

  She shook her head.

  “Does the name Rodney Bova mean anything to you?”

  A frown, then another shake of the head. “No. Why? Who is he?”

  “Just a guy who might have crossed paths with Jason,” Adam said. “Probably nothing more.” He didn’t want her to focus on the name, not yet, so he did not tell her that Bova also was connected t
o the house where her daughter had been killed. Instead, he asked her if she’d seen any of the letters.

  “Yeah. That’s all they’ve shown me. I’ve got photocopies.”

  They would have wanted her to spend time with the letters, to read them and consider them and see if, through prolonged study, any suspects suggested themselves.

  “Can I see them?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She rose again and returned with a small stack of papers. “That’s Jason,” she told him, isolating two of the photocopies, moving an ashtray aside to spread the documents out. “I can recognize him, no problem. Can smell the shithead rising right off the page.”

  The first letter had been innocuous enough:

  Thanks for writing, your mom probably doesn’t know you did, does she? I bet you’ve never heard a good word about me, not from her at least, so I’m sure she doesn’t know. Glad to know you are turning into such a great girl. Hope life keeps going your way. Don’t waste your time worrying about me. This isn’t a place I’d like you to visit, and I don’t know what I could tell you that you haven’t already heard from other people. Not proud of myself, and sorry if you’ve grown up ashamed of your father. Can’t go back, though, Rachel, I can’t go back and make anything right, so I’ll just say I’m sorry and you take care of yourself. Sounds as if you make lots of good choices. Keep on doing that.

  Jason

  “Shithead,” Penny proclaimed again.

  The second letter was even shorter. A curt thanks, a reminder that Rachel’s mother wouldn’t like any contact between the two of them, a repeated request not to visit, and then an instruction to get good grades in school and be careful with boys.

  It was the third letter that Penny deemed someone else’s work.

  “See how he starts acting sincere?” she said. “Jason can’t fake sincere. Jason doesn’t give a damn about anyone, and he doesn’t care enough to fake it.”

  The tone was different, yes, but only slightly. There had been no rush to suggest contact, just a careful building of the relationship. Patient, that was the word that kept rising to mind; whoever had taken up writing as Jason Bond had been very patient.

  The next letter raised the cautious suggestion that he would soon be released.

  Bet your mother didn’t tell you, and maybe you shouldn’t tell her. She and I shouldn’t see each other again. I need you to understand that. For her if not for me.

  That had been the first test. If Rachel had been paying close attention herself, or if she’d had anyone else looking out for her, she’d have known that he wasn’t eligible for parole yet. Whatever she wrote back, though, had clearly established that she was in this alone, and was accepting his news without verifying it.

  None of her letters existed. Jason Bond had discarded the two that reached him, which said everything Adam needed to know about him. The others might still exist—in fact, they probably did; whoever killed her was the sort who kept souvenirs—but there was no way to know what Rachel had written. You could guess at some of it from the responses, but it was impossible to know for sure. The only person she’d discussed the matter with, apparently, was her boyfriend. And Kent.

  His brother was even referred to in the later letters.

  I’m so glad you decided to begin writing, Rachel. It was a very good idea. You should tell the football coach that I appreciate his understanding, his encouragement. There aren’t many men who would do that. He’s something special.

  “He could have told me,” Penny said. “Your damned brother could have thought to talk to her mother before he encouraged her to do something like that.”

  Adam didn’t argue. “Did she tell anyone else about these? Beyond Colin Mears and my brother? Who else would she have trusted?”

  “Should have trusted me. But she didn’t, and it’s my fault. She knew how I felt about Jason. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so harsh, you know? Maybe I should have… you got to understand, he’s a hurtful man. Hurt me worse than anyone ever had, until this. And I just wanted to… shield her. I didn’t want him to have the chance to hurt her the way that I knew he would. But maybe I should have said, Rachel, let’s go see your dad. Let’s talk about all the reasons you need to stay away from that man. Maybe—”

  Her voice was rising, tears chasing behind, and she lowered her face, fingered the zipper on the sweatshirt. “I could have told her, you know? But she hid the letters. Because she knew I wouldn’t like it. That was Rachel, she never wanted to upset me.”

  Adam watched a tear fall onto the back of her hand. He made no move to reach for her.

  “Tell you the truth?” she said, looking up again, her eyes bright with tears. “I’m pretty shitty at a lot of things. Drink too much, smoke too much, can’t hold on to a decent job, don’t keep the house up the way I should. But something I was always good at? Loving that girl. Might be a lot of people who don’t see it that way, who don’t see me as a good mother, but—”

  “She loved you,” Adam said. “You know that. You just said it. She was trying to protect you, and you were trying to protect her. There’s no blame inside these walls, and the only things that happened between you happened because you were trying to take care of each other. Remember that, Penny. You need to remember that.”

  She used the blanket to wipe away tears and said, “I keep thinking it’s done. Keep thinking I’m dried out, there’s none left.”

  He was silent. She wouldn’t dry out. She’d think she had, and then she’d find herself down in the frigid waters of Lake Erie weeping into a cold dawn. He let her sit and cry while he lit a cigarette and smoked in silence.

  18

  IT WAS MATT BYERS WHO first expressed concern with Colin’s approach to practice. They were halfway through drills when the defensive coach sidled over to Kent and spoke in a low tone.

  “He’s going to burn himself out in ten more minutes like this, Coach. Look at him.”

  Kent had been looking at him. They were running no-contact drills—as the playoffs lengthened, as he hoped they would, contact would be less and less common in practice as he tried to protect fatigued bodies—but still the kid was burning jet fuel, smoking through every pattern and then returning to his spot at the rear of the line to run in place or do jumping jacks or push-ups. It was a cool afternoon but the sweat dripped out of his helmet.

  “He may need to burn himself out, Matt.” Kent was fairly certain that he did, in fact. Today, Colin was coming off a sleepless night after hearing the details of his girlfriend’s murder. Today, every one of his teammates and classmates was whispering about what they’d learned. They all knew how she had died, and if Colin had not shown up at practice, Kent would almost have been relieved.

  Colin was trying to sweat it all out. To empty himself of all that he carried, and while it was not possible, it might help. If he broke himself down enough to sleep through the night, that might help.

  “He’s freaking these guys out,” Matt said.

  Kent looked at him, the bills of their caps close together, voices still low. “He’s not what’s freaking any of them out. They understand it, Matt. They know. Let him give what he can today. When he’s done, I’ll stop him. Okay?”

  Byers nodded.

  Over in the receivers line, Colin, never a vocal leader, had begun to shout. Demanding faster feet, better hands, more effort. Slapping helmets as his teammates went by, and, yes, all of them looked a little shaken. No one more so than Lorell McCoy, who threw a few awkward passes, his always-polished release hurried, responding to Colin’s frenetic energy.

  Kent left them there and walked down to the other side of the field, where the offensive and defensive lines were working on their splits. Hickory Hills ran an option offense, and did very little with it except pitch the ball to the fastest kid on the team and try like heck to open a hole for him, rarely with much success. This meant their offense would play with wide gaps, trying to spread out the Chambers front line, and hope they could get around the end faster than the Cardi
nal defenders.

  They could not. He was sure of that, but he was also sure that his defense would see the same option plays, the same veer approach, soon enough, and there would be much greater speed to it then. Hickory Hills was in many ways a perfect opponent, because they would give Chambers a chance to polish fundamentals before running into a higher level of talent.

  Kent was pacing, nudging at the feet of his offensive linemen, when he heard Steve Haskins, the receivers coach, shout for a trainer.

  Kent turned then and saw that Colin Mears was on his hands and knees on the fifty, throwing up.

  He did not rush to him. Every one of the kids was watching anxiously, and Kent tried to communicate calm to them through patient motion. By the time he reached midfield there was already a trainer with Colin, wiping his face down with a towel and offering a bottle of Gatorade. Colin took a sip, swished it in his mouth, and spit it back onto the turf. His chest was heaving.

  Kent knelt and laid a hand on his back.

  “You all right?”

  Colin nodded. Retched again, brought nothing up, and then spoke between gasps.

  “Good to go, Coach. Good to go.”

  “Go sit down. I’ll tell you when you’re good to go.”

  “No, sir. I’m fine. I’m—”

  “Son, you want to tell me what you just said?”

  Colin spit again, then turned back to him. “I said that I’m fine, I’m ready to—”

  “Let’s take another look at this situation, a little slower. I told you what I wanted from you. And you did what?”

  Colin’s breathing was beginning to steady, but his eyes were confused.

  “You did what?” Kent said again, making sure his voice was clear enough to be heard by others, trying his best to stare the boy down the way he would have at any other practice, any other day.

  “Argued,” Colin said.