The Prophet

by Michael Koryta

  “Didn’t say suspect. Said we have sound reasoning for a search. Could have talked with you about it before now, if you’d answer the phone or return a call. We need to—”

  There were two officers moving through the kitchen and into the living room, and Adam had been watching them, but when he heard the sounds from upstairs he lost all track of Salter’s words, and the pulse was pounding behind his eyes again.

  “What are they doing up there?”

  “Their job. Let’s you and I step outside and talk. Or if you want to watch them now and then talk, fine. I won’t stop you from watching. But either way, we’re going to need a level of cooperation from you that we haven’t received to this point.”

  Adam started for the stairs. Salter moved to block him but Adam shrugged that off easily and kept on going. He could see that the door was open. Marie’s door. Salter’s voice was chasing him but it had no meaning, the words were part of a surrounding fog, the only clear shape in the gathering mist was Marie’s open door. KNOCKS REQUIRED, TRESPASSING FORBIDDEN!

  He reached the top of the stairs and turned and then he saw them in there, two of them, one taking pictures and the other kneeling beside Marie’s closet. He had blond hair and wore gloves and he was moving things out of the closet and stacking them on the floor. A tower filled with cassette tapes was in his hand. Her favorite on top, the one that had been released that summer, her last summer, the one that they’d all listened to, Adam and Marie and Kent, Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever. She’d loved that tape. “Free Fallin’,” “Love Is a Long Road,” “I Won’t Back Down.” The last was the song they blasted in the locker room from start to finish that championship season. You could stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won’t back down…

  “Free Fallin’,” though, that was Marie’s favorite. She had a decent voice but was too shy to sing in front of people, so Adam and Kent would constantly try to catch her at it, always embarrassing her to a flushed silence and a defensive What? It’s a great song!

  Now, twenty-two years later, Adam watched as the blond detective slipped the tape out, checking the ancient cassettes as if they were of value to his current investigation.

  “Put that down,” Adam said. Salter had caught up to him and was standing in the doorway, one hand on Adam’s arm, and the grip was supposed to be firm but the contact meant nothing to Adam. The blond detective on the floor looked up at them.

  “We’re just executing the warrant, sir. Lieutenant Salter can explain. Nothing’s—”

  “Put that the fuck down,” Adam said, and then he stepped through the door and into the room, dragging Salter with him, and though his words were soft and his steps were slow, the detective rose abruptly, saying, “Lieutenant?” in an uneasy voice.

  He still had Full Moon Fever in his hand. It did not belong in his hand. Adam reached for it, and when he did, Salter made the first truly aggressive attempt to keep him back, grabbing his bicep and pulling his arm down. Trying to, at least. Adam twisted free, and the motion frightened the cop who held the tape. He said, “Hey, hey, relax,” and then he took a fast step backward and banged into the bookshelf.

  On top of the bookshelf was Tito, Marie’s prize, the stained-glass turtle she’d spent weeks on her last summer, coming home with cut fingertips and pride as she worked those multicolored speckles into his oversized shell. The turtle tottered, fell forward, hit the hardwood floor.

  Shattered.

  It broke in one quick snap, but the sound did not end the same way in Adam’s brain. It came on and on in echoing waves, windows blowing out in a skyscraper, too many to count, too many to comprehend.

  All he heard was shattering glass when he broke the blond cop’s nose.

  As the cop went down the blood sprayed from his nose and found Marie’s bed. The new comforter, the one she’d had changed from pink to white, because she was becoming a woman and she wanted the room to look elegant, not childish. The one Adam hand-washed once a month even though nothing had so much as creased it in nearly two decades. Crimson bloomed across its surface as Stan Salter shouted for help and slammed into Adam’s back, trying to get some sort of combat hold on his arm and neck. He didn’t succeed. Adam shook free and took a handful of the blond cop’s shirt and jerked him back to his feet, then pivoted and threw him toward the door, wanting him out, needing him out, trespassers were forbidden in this room, couldn’t he fucking read? Another cop was already coming through the door, though, and they banged together and both of them went into the wall and then the blond one was down on his knees dripping blood on Marie’s floor.

  Just before he felt the first staggering jolt from the Taser, Adam became aware of his own voice, slow and soft, saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  He hoped that she could hear over the chaos. Then the volts found his spine again and climbed giddily up into his brain and he was falling and the world was falling with him, spinning down onto the floor, and despite the indescribable electric pain he felt a sliver of glass enter his palm, one of the shards from the stained-glass turtle, cutting deep, sinking fast.

  I’m sorry.

  25

  KENT SHOULD HAVE ANTICIPATED it. Should have prepared the police for his brother’s reaction. Or prepared his brother for the police visit. One or the other. Instead he’d just given them the key and sent them out there to look for the card. When his interview was interrupted by the news that Adam had been arrested for assaulting a police officer, he did not need details in order to understand.

  “They were in her room, weren’t they?” he said.

  “Whose room?”

  “My sister’s,” Kent said.

  TRESPASSING FORBIDDEN! THANKS, BOYS!

  “I’m not certain. Do you intend to bail him out?”

  Kent blinked at him in surprise. “That’s what he does.”

  “For other people, yes. He might need help when the situation is reversed.”

  It was so obvious that it was embarrassing, but somehow Kent had just expected that Adam could handle the process on his own.

  “I guess he’ll need me to, yeah,” he said. But who was he supposed to call? Adam bailed people out; Adam was the one you called.

  Salter unlocked the handcuffs and tossed them on the table, then went and sat on the other side and ran a hand over his face and through his close-cropped hair.

  “The hell were you thinking, Austin? It was a damned search warrant, and we had permission from your brother, who is one of the homeowners. What were you thinking?”

  “That’s the wrong way to back me off,” Adam said. “You don’t like me doing what I’m doing, but trying to intimidate me by forcing bullshit warrants and—”

  “It was not a bullshit warrant.”

  “I suspect I’ll disagree on that point.”

  “Whoever killed Rachel Bond may have been in your home,” Salter said, voice quiet.

  Adam had always played football fast, had required a high motor, a sense of savagery. But there were times, few and far between, when the gears stuck. When everything went slow and syrupy. Those were the times when the offense fooled him completely, when he roared into a play expecting one thing only to be given another. Now, staring at Salter, he felt it again.

  “Explain that,” he said.

  “Someone wrote your brother a letter. Included in it were two items: your business card and a football card with your picture and what appears to be your sister’s handwriting.”

  Adam said, “Top left drawer of the desk.”

  “What?”

  “Top left drawer of the desk. That’s where it should be. Is it not?”

  Salter shook his head.

  Under the table, Adam folded his hands like a man in prayer, squeezed the left tightly against the right, trying to find the old ache, to use the pain to ground the electrical current of his rage. The bones had knitted so long ago, though, and he could not call up the pain now.

  “It was sent to Kent?” he said.

  “I
t was left for your brother, yes. We’re not prepared to say that it was from the killer, but we have to acknowledge—”

  “Yes, it was. You know damned well that it was.”

  Salter looked at him, tapping a pencil on the edge of the table, and said, “Who could have gotten into the house?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who is in it regularly, other than you?”

  “No one.”

  “Come on. Give me a starting point, no matter how vague. Friends, visitors. Who comes over to watch a ballgame or have a beer, who—”

  “No one,” Adam said again. “That house is not where I socialize.”

  “Your brother has a key.”

  “Yeah. The one he gave to you.”

  “No one else? You couldn’t call someone to, say, let you in if you were locked out?”

  Adam started to answer, then stopped. Salter’s eyes glimmered at the hesitation, having seen Adam observe first the bait and then the trap.

  “The letter went to Kent. Not to me.”

  “Correct. But the football card came from your house. That’s your own statement, not mine. You believe it was in the desk.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Okay. So let’s stick with that. Who else has a key?”

  “Chelsea.”

  “Chelsea Salinas. Let’s talk about her a little, yes. She has access to the home?”

  “It’s not worth discussing, Salter. This has nothing to do with Chelsea.”

  “But she does have access to the home?”

  “She’s got a key.”

  “Now, we’re being honest here, so let’s avoid the bullshit and get this out in the open—Chelsea Salinas is a married woman, and you’re sleeping with her. And her husband is in jail. I believe you held bonds on him in the past?”

  Adam felt a bristle of anger. “Travis Leonard is in jail,” he said. “You’re right about that. So he’s not a suspect, and this isn’t worth discussing.”

  “Does he know that you’re sleeping with his wife?”

  Adam stared at him. It was the first time anyone had directly challenged him on his relationship with Chelsea. Of course Salter would know, of course he’d have done that much checking, and it was not a hard thing to determine, but still it made Adam uncomfortable.

  “Not to the best of my knowledge. She hasn’t told him. I haven’t told him.”

  “We’ll have to look at it.”

  “He’s in jail,” Adam repeated.

  “He has friends who are not.”

  “Friends who would kill a seventeen-year-old girl to, what, screw with my head? Punish me? No, Salter. No, that’s not the scent you want to chase. It’s the wrong direction.”

  Salter didn’t respond.

  “The letter,” Adam said, “went to Kent.”

  “I understand that.”

  “Rachel’s contact with her father started from Kent’s suggestion. Am I correct?”

  Salter gave a small nod.

  “Then why aren’t you interviewing Kent?”

  “Other people are.”

  “Who?”

  “We have multiple investigators working on—”

  “You’re the lead, Salter. And you’ve been at my house, and now you’re here with me. That’s a waste of time that you can’t afford. You should be talking to my brother.”

  “The FBI is talking to your brother.”

  Adam opened his mouth to say more, then shut it. He was finally understanding what Salter was looking for. He was not a dumb man, was Salter, he was probably a pretty damned good detective, in fact, far too smart not to understand that if Rachel Bond’s killer had wanted to antagonize Jason Bond or Adam Austin, he would have gone directly to them. Instead, he’d gone to Kent. It was about Kent. It had been from the start.

  But why?

  “They’re talking to him,” Salter said, watching Adam, “and you and I can talk about him. You have any thoughts on people who would want to take this sort of head shot at your brother?”

  Adam nodded. “Sure. Pick a murderer. He’s made friends with plenty of them.”

  “Sounds like that bothers you.”

  “Yes. He started with Gideon Pearce. It bothered me then, and it continues to bother me.”

  “My understanding is that you threatened to kill Mr. Pearce.”

  “No,” Adam said. “I promised to do it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t given the chance.”

  “Your feelings on that situation… who have you discussed them with? Who understood the depth of your feelings about him?”

  “Who understood the depth of my feelings about the man who murdered my sister?” Adam stared at him. “You think I needed to discuss those feelings to have them understood?”

  “I’m asking. Who did you talk about the idea with?”

  “My father. Who is dead. And my mother. Who is dead.”

  And my brother, he thought, who is not dead. And who is currently with the FBI. I’m not, but he is. So when the FBI floated in here and pulled rank, they went to Kent. Why? Because they think he’s of more importance than me.

  “Do you know if anyone you’ve held bond on ended up meeting your brother in prison? On his, um, speaking tours?”

  Adam studied him. “No. Was that indicated in the letter?”

  “It was not.”

  “But the prison visits are important to you?”

  “It’s just a question, Austin.” But Salter’s eyes danced away when he said that.

  26

  IF CHELSEA SALINAS WAS ANY happier to see Kent than he was to see her, she hid it well. There was a moment of frigid silence when she opened the door for him, and when he put out his hand, she hesitated. Held his eyes the whole time—she’d always been steady like that, so contained and cool, he remembered her at Marie’s funeral, remembered thinking, I wish that bitch would at least cry— but seemed not to trust his hand. Finally she took it, though, her grip stronger than half of his defensive backs’, and said, “He doesn’t want you to be involved, but you have to be.”

  “It’s a felony, right? What he was charged with?”

  “Right now.”

  “It changes?”

  “He can plead it down. He doesn’t want you to have to deal with it, but they set the bond high, and he’s got to put the house up. He can’t do that without you. Because you’re both—”

  “I understand the situation with our house,” Kent said. He willed down the anger. He’d put so much behind him, he’d looked Gideon Pearce in the eye and told the man he was forgiven, and somehow the idea of doing the same with Chelsea Salinas seemed an impossible challenge. Terribly unfair, he understood that and always had, but the heart was not a fair thing, that was why you had to fight it. The heart was not pure; it required resistance. Demanded it. Follow your heart, people said, but people were wrong. Control your heart. That was the rule.

  Adam wouldn’t have left her before you were there, Kent thought, studying the woman. He had his head on straight until you came along, he made the right decisions, he was devoted to the right things. There was never a more protective older brother in the world than Adam. Then you arrived, and he drove past her with you in the car, he drove right past her in the dark and the cold and you sat and watched and let it happen. Caused it to happen.

  But Chelsea had been seventeen, too. Why couldn’t he remember that?

  “So what do I need to do?” he said.

  She walked past him and around the desk. She still looked good, tall and lean and firm, and if she covered up the tattoos and took the damned rings out of her eyebrow she’d be a beautiful woman instead of having that sad look of the middle-aged trying to preserve a fading and forgotten youth. You’re almost forty, he wanted to say. Why do you insist on looking like a roadie? It’s not even fifty degrees out and still you’re wearing a tank top?

  She sat behind the desk, pushed her dark hair back over her ears, and said, “You really don’t like me, do you Kent?”

  For some reason his
first instinct was to tell her to call him Coach. Or Mr. Austin. Or sir. He simply didn’t like the sound of his first name on her lips.

  Instead he said, “I don’t even know you.”

  “You did once.”

  “Not really. Now would you please tell me what I need to do?”

  She looked at him for a moment, her gaze hardening, and said, “I wish you didn’t have to do a thing. I should be able to cover it. I’d put up my own house, but…”

  “But it’s not your house. It belongs to your husband.”

  For the first time, her granite façade showed fissures, and she glanced away, began shuffling through paperwork on the desk.

  “You’ll have to sign over your share of the house. It’s not as if anything will happen to it. You won’t lose anything unless Adam skips, and that won’t happen, obviously. They set the bond very high. Higher than I’ve seen for similar cases. It’s because of the publicity that will be around this, probably.”

  “How high?”

  “A hundred thousand. There’s a cash surety, too. Ten thousand. We’ve got enough liquid cash for that. We can’t cover the whole thing without the property, though. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault. You didn’t punch a police officer in the face.”

  She looked back up. “He’s struggling with this. Do you understand how much?”

  “I haven’t seen him since it happened. I imagine he’s not real proud, or pleased.”

  “I don’t mean what happened today. I mean with that girl, with Rachel Bond. He’s breaking under it. Do you realize that? Do you talk to him enough to see it?”

  “I’m seeing it happen,” Kent said. “More clearly today than before. I’ve already told him what I can tell him. I guess I can repeat it, but he ignored it then and he will ignore it now.”

  There was a moment, right then, when the look she gave him could have come from Beth. A soft scrutiny that seemed too knowing, too intimate.

  “Right,” she said. “So, you want to sign papers and get on your way, is that it?”

  “Unless there is something else for me to do.”

  She began to slide papers across to him. “No. I guess there isn’t.”