The Prophet

by Michael Koryta

  “I don’t know if he’ll like the idea,” Kent said.

  “One way to find out.”

  So Kent called him. His brother seemed uncertain but said he’d make it. There was a woman’s soft voice in the background, and only after he’d hung up did Kent think that perhaps he should have extended the invitation to Chelsea Salinas as well. She probably wouldn’t have accepted, but he should have asked.

  One step at a time, though. That was fair.

  Adam arrived at seven, and when the doorbell sounded, Kent realized that he hadn’t reminded his brother not to bring the gun into the house when the kids were awake. It wasn’t there, though; he wore just a blue button-down shirt, and had a shopping bag in his arms. Lisa and Andrew approached hesitantly, and Adam’s smile seemed equally uncertain.

  “Hey, guys.”

  They both said hello, and he set the bag down and said, “Well, I’ve missed a couple of birthdays, haven’t I? Figured I’d do something about that.”

  “Adam, you didn’t need to—,” Kent began, but his brother cut him off.

  “Don’t worry, no money spent. I’m going cheap on them today.” He looked up at the kids and winked, and Lisa’s smile was genuine. She’d always liked him. She didn’t remember the day in the driveway. “Just some old stuff.”

  He reached into the bag, removed a weathered football, and extended it to Andrew.

  “Come on, big guy. Let’s see your grip.”

  Andrew beelined over. Adam was holding the ball easily in one of his massive hands, and Andrew had to cradle it in both arms.

  “Your father,” Adam said, “set a school record for touchdown passes with that ball. Hit a kid named Leo Fitzgerald on the slant, a fifteen-yard pass. Put it right in his hands, soft as I just gave it to you.”

  Kent was astounded that he remembered the play, let alone that he’d kept the ball. Kent remembered the pass, remembered the record—Lorell McCoy had broken it in week five of this season—but he’d never seen the ball, had no idea that Adam had claimed it.

  “Say thank you,” he told Andrew.

  Andrew thanked his uncle, dropped onto his butt on the floor, and began to study the football. Adam returned to his shopping bag, and this time he used both hands.

  “Lisa, this is for you. Your aunt made it a long time ago. I’m sure she’d like you to have it.”

  It was one of Marie’s stained-glass pieces. Fall leaves in brilliant reds and oranges, tumbling down from the wiry black outline of a tree. Kent watched his brother hand it to his daughter and he couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes, not even Beth’s.

  “It’s so pretty,” Lisa said. Almost whispered. “She made this?”

  “Yeah,” Adam said. “She was pretty good, right?”

  Lisa nodded. For a moment they were frozen there together, each of them with their hands on the stained glass, and then Adam released it and rose from the floor.

  “Dinner smells good,” he said. “What is that, spaghetti?”

  “Lasagna,” Beth said.

  “Ah, good stuff. I wanted to contribute something…” He’d removed a bottle of red wine from the bag, and now he looked down at it and gave an awkward smile. “Um… you guys don’t drink, though, do you? I’m sorry.”

  “I’d love a glass of wine,” Beth said. Kent didn’t recall her having any alcohol in years, not since the kids were born, and not often before that. She met his surprised stare and smiled. “I think it sounds great.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Thanks, Adam. Let’s eat, gang. I’m hungry.”

  He asked Beth to say grace before dinner. He wasn’t sure why, because he was always the one who said grace. She took the request in stride and offered a prayer and Adam sat with a bowed head and said a soft amen when she concluded with a request that Rachel Bond’s family be granted peace.

  It was a good meal. The kids, shy at first, grew more vocal as things went on. Adam joked with them easily. Beth and Kent each drank a small glass of wine. Then Beth took the kids upstairs to get ready for bed, and Adam began to load the dishes into the dishwasher.

  “She’s a great cook. Going to be harder for me to stay up tonight, after a meal like that.”

  “I’m sorry we haven’t done it before,” Kent said. “I hate that it took circumstances like this to get us here, but sometimes you can get to a really good place out of…”

  His voice trailed off because Adam had looked up with a hard stare. The gaze softened a touch, and Adam returned to the dishes and said, “Sometimes, yeah. I guess that’s the truth.”

  Silence followed, and Kent tried to break it by saying, “I’m going to watch some video on Saint Anthony’s. You want to have a look with me?”

  “Know what Saint Anthony represents?” Adam said, head still down.

  Kent was embarrassed to admit that he didn’t. It felt like the sort of thing he should know, but he was a Protestant, not a Catholic, and the notion of saints was a foreign thing.

  “I don’t.”

  “Patron saint of lost things,” Adam said, closing the dishwasher and turning to face Kent.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” Adam nodded, drying his hands on a towel. “I gave him a few tries once.”

  Kent didn’t know what to say to that.

  “I was going to watch film,” he began again. “You might see some things there that I—”

  “Watching film is your job,” Adam said. “Watching the street is mine.”

  They went into the living room then, and Beth came down to join them. Adam thanked her again for the meal while he stood and surveyed the darkness beyond. He said, “I’ll bring the gun in when the kids are asleep.”

  “Thanks for thinking about that,” Beth said.

  “Of course. I don’t want them to be scared.” Adam’s head was moving in a slow swivel, taking in the silent street. “I wish he would come.”

  “That’s the last thing we want,” Kent said.

  “I don’t mean that I’d like him to be here. But if he just came by and I could follow him to wherever the hell he’s hiding…”

  “You would call the police,” Beth said. “Right?”

  Adam didn’t answer. Kent was watching his wife’s face and knew that she was going to push the issue and for some reason he didn’t want her to, did not want her to derail his brother’s focus, despite knowing that it was a dangerous focus. He interrupted then, trying to change the direction the conversation had taken.

  “Funny you remember that pass was to Fitzgerald. He didn’t catch many, but he got open on that one. I wonder whatever happened to him. I think he joined the Army, but I could be—”

  “You remember if Rodney Bova had family down here?” Adam asked.

  Kent was confused. This was the second time Adam had brought the name up now, and it was hard to imagine a more irrelevant name from their playing days.

  “No,” he said, “I don’t. Why do you keep asking about him?”

  “He’s still around,” Adam said. “Got into some trouble, I came across him. I don’t remember him well, you know? I wish that I did. I just remember that he got sent to juvie, but I couldn’t come up with the details to save my life. You reminded me that he set fire to the car. I wouldn’t have been able to—”

  “He didn’t set fire to the car,” Beth said, and they both looked at her with surprise. She was standing between them with her arms crossed under her breasts, watching Adam with curiosity. “It was his brother. He tried to take the blame for it.”

  “How do you know that?” Kent asked.

  “Dad talked about it. He was disturbed by the whole thing. Police interviewed him, or a counselor maybe? Somebody interviewed him, and—”

  “His brother?” Adam said. His stare was heat-lamp intense, and Kent looked at him and said, “What’s this about? Why do you care so much?”

  Adam considered the question for a long time before he said, “I’m responsible for him now. So he matters to me.”

  “You posted bond for him?
”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did he do this time?”

  “Drug charges. Weapons possession.” Adam was looking at Beth again. “I didn’t remember that he had a brother.”

  “He was younger. Dad thought he was going to be real trouble. Said he seemed to influence Rodney, not the other way around. Which is strange, because the older brother usually”—she hesitated—“sets the tone.”

  “Usually,” Adam agreed. “But I thought Rodney went to a juvenile detention center.”

  “I don’t think so. Maybe he did. He went into the state’s care, somehow, some way. But when it came to that fire, it wasn’t him. His little brother did it, and Rodney took the blame. His story didn’t hold together very well, though. Dad went to see him, and I think he might have suspected it pretty early, just like the police did. He was just trying to protect his brother.”

  “I see,” Adam said, and then they were all quiet, and Adam waved a hand at the window. “Is it okay if I bring my gun in now?”

  “That’s fine,” Kent said. “You should probably have it.”

  At one thirty that morning, as he sat on his brother’s couch in the dark, Adam’s phone alarm went off, notifying him that his GPS tracker was in motion.

  He logged in to the program and watched the dot move away from Rodney Bova’s house and could not decide what to do. He wanted to go after him, because this sort of movement, so late at night, was interesting. To pursue him, though, would require leaving Kent’s house unguarded.

  “Damn it,” he said aloud, and set the phone down, torn. This could be it. This could be the meeting with Sipes, his first chance and perhaps his only chance.

  But upstairs, his only brother slept with his family. Adam’s niece and nephew were in their rooms. If Bova was not meeting Sipes, if Sipes was on his way to their home right now…

  No, he could not leave. He could investigate the location tomorrow, but he could not leave his post tonight.

  The dot was sliding across town and toward the steelyards. A rundown area, one Adam knew well, home to more than a few of his clients. It stopped at 57 Erie Avenue.

  “That you, Clayton?” he whispered. “Is that where you’re hiding?”

  Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. Twenty. Adam continued to refresh the screen, keeping the display lit. It was hard not to move, he wanted so badly to drive out there and see what was happening. A glance up his brother’s staircase, to where his family slept, calmed him, though. He could not leave, and he would not.

  At ten past two, after a half-hour stay, Rodney Bova left 57 Erie Avenue and went into motion again, this time heading southeast. Back home.

  Adam set the phone down, kept his hand on his gun, and waited for dawn.

  39

  BY THE TIME ADAM WAS BORN, there were only two steel mills still going in Chambers, and now there were none. Many of the structures remained, though, including the old Robard Company plant, which had once employed Hank Austin. Its blast furnace carved the skyline with ancient smokestacks, and at its base, rows of abandoned rails, rusted and overgrown and untouched by a train’s wheels in years, ran like the lingering scars of an old addiction. To the east and west of the plant, the streets made a slow shift from industrial to residential, brick and iron giving way to narrow wood-framed houses. The sidewalk had been jackhammered out in a three-block stretch but not yet replaced, lined by orange plastic fencing, footpaths worn into the weeds beside it. A low-rent district in a low-rent town.

  Number 57 Erie Avenue had boards over the ground-floor windows, but the glass upstairs was exposed and unmarred by blinds or curtains. At first glance most people would say that the house had not been occupied in many years. There was plywood over the broken windows and weeds protruded through torn porch boards, no car parked outside, no lights on inside. But Adam had found plenty of people staying in less hospitable-looking places, and Rodney Bova had visited this address in the middle of the night and stayed for thirty minutes.

  He parked across the street, took a series of photographs of the property, and then sat with the engine off as the chill seeped into the car, staring at the house and trying to determine his next move. Did he go in, or did he wait to see if someone came out?

  Sometimes you could enter a place easily enough and leave without a trace, as he had at Bova’s house, but Sipes was on guard. This was a hiding spot for him, a safe house, and he would likely be attuned to any signs of danger checking for intruders. The last thing Adam wanted was to put him on the run again if in fact he was staying here.

  He decided to give it time. If Sipes was in there, he’d have to move at some point, and if he was already gone, with luck he might return.

  This decision meant a grudging pact to settle in for a lengthy wait, but it didn’t take long. Just twenty minutes after Adam arrived, the side door of the house opened and a man stepped out and walked down the driveway to the sidewalk, then up the road to a white Buick Rendezvous. Adam’s adrenaline spiked at the sight of him, then fell. It was not Clayton Sipes. Not even close. Too heavy a build, a head of thick dark hair instead of a shaved scalp, no tattoos. Adam took five photographs of him as he got into his car, then decided to follow. It would be good to know who Rodney Bova had visited in the night. It had not been Sipes, but maybe it was someone connected to him. You had to chase the leads you found.

  Still, he couldn’t help feeling defeated. It had seemed like a promising chance, and now that it hadn’t panned out, he had to consider the possibility that it might never pan out, that Rodney Bova could be a dead end. He started the engine and pulled down the street, wondering how long he should pursue this. The glance he gave the house at 57 Erie was a distracted, indifferent flick of the eyes.

  But it was enough to see the man in the window.

  Somehow he avoided hitting the brakes. It was his first instinct, and it was strong, but he overrode it and managed to keep on driving.

  The man had been watching the street from the upstairs window, the one that had neither boards nor curtains, and the view of him was clear. He had a shaved head and he stood shirtless in front of the glass and colored tattoos ran the length of his left arm.

  Adam drove to the end of the block, reached the stop sign, and stared in the rearview mirror. He could still see the house but not the figure in the window, not from this distance. He turned right, heart hammering, and lapped the block, sliding into a new parking spot on the other side of the street. Unholstered his gun and set it in his lap.

  He’d found him. Clayton Sipes was inside that house.

  Watching and waiting no longer felt like the best option. Not at all. Not with the son of a bitch so close, not now that Adam had actually laid eyes on him. The patience he could force himself to have on the hunt was evaporating, because he’d seen the prey, he’d seen the target. The hunt was over. All that remained was finishing it.

  I will find him and I will kill him.

  That was the promise. He had not wavered when he spoke the words. He could not waver when the chance to deliver on the promise came. Should not, at least. But it was on him fast now, the hunt had reached a sudden end, and after all the days of hungry anticipation, he found himself unprepared for it, uncertain.

  Kill him? He was really going to kill him?

  Yes, damn it. Do what you promised you would do.

  He removed the holster with his Glock and put on a pair of thin black cotton gloves. Then he retrieved a new weapon, this one from under the seat, another gun he’d stolen from a skip, similar to the piece he’d left in Rodney Bova’s truck. It was easy to acquire guns from skips if he caught them armed; most of them knew damn well the possession charge might add years to their jail stay. Often the guns were cheap, poorly maintained crap, but this was a Ruger .45-caliber in mint condition. He preferred the Glock, but the Glock was registered to him. The Ruger was not.

  He ran his gloved thumb over the stock of the gun. He was so familiar with them and yet not truly familiar at all. He’d shot them, cle
aned them, oiled them, experimented with ammunition and shooting stances and grips and speeds. He’d done everything one could possibly do with a gun except the one thing for which it was designed.

  He ejected the magazine and checked its load even though he knew it was full. Slipped it back in, racked the slide, and heard the click of a round chambering. One trigger pull away.

  His eyes drifted from the gun to the cell phone.

  Just call it in.

  So simple. He could stay right here, right where he was, and he could call Stan Salter. They’d send out a SWAT team, they would not let Clayton Sipes escape from that house. He would be arrested, back behind bars before the day’s end.

  Would he be convicted, though? Would they find evidence of a homicide inside that decrepit home, or would they find only a very smart and very evil man? He would serve some time, no question. How much time was harder to say. When would he walk back out? When would he return to the world?

  That’s why you don’t call it in, Austin. That’s why you made the promise in the first place, and that’s why you have to come through on it now. Because if the system was worth a shit, your sister would have made it home, and so would Rachel Bond.

  He started the engine and moved the Jeep, then went five blocks east until he was parked on the other side of the old steel mill. Out of the car and across the abandoned plant’s grounds, stepping through weeds and over old cinders as he followed the railroad tracks up to Erie Avenue. There he crossed the street quickly, keeping his head down, and entered a narrow alley four blocks down from the house where Clayton Sipes waited. There he turned left, the wind off the lake blowing gravel dust into his face, and slid behind a low concrete wall that separated the old homes. He followed that until he reached the back of 57 Erie Avenue, and then he broke across the small backyard without pause, went into the driveway and up to the side door.

  The gun was positioned in the pocket of his sweatshirt so that the muzzle was pointed straight out from his waist, his right index finger curled around the trigger, as he knocked on the door with his left hand. The aluminum frame of a storm door still remained, but all of the glass had been broken out, so he had to reach through the frame to find anything solid. He rapped his knuckles off the wood in three calm strikes. Not aggressive, just clear and loud.