Redemption Road

by John Hart

  Slipping a bolt, she opened a hinged plate and peered into the cell. For some reason she held her breath, and the silence seemed to radiate outward. No movement in the cell. No sound beyond a whisper.

  It was Adrian, in the corner, on the floor. He had bare feet. No shirt. His face was tucked into knees.

  “Adrian?”

  The cell was dark, dim light fingering its way past Elizabeth’s head. She said his name again, and he looked up, blinking. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s Liz.”

  He pushed himself up. “Who’s there with you?”

  “It’s just me.”

  “I heard voices.”

  “No.” Liz glanced down the hall. “No one else.” He shuffled closer. “Where’s your shirt? Your shoes?”

  He made a vague gesture. “It’s hot in here.”

  It looked it. Sweat glinted on his skin, beaded under his eyes. Parts of him seemed to be missing. The intellect. Much of his awareness. He tilted his head and sweat rolled on his face.

  “Why are you here, Liz?”

  “Are you okay, Adrian? Look at me.” She gave him time, and he took it. She noticed small twitches in the muscles of his shoulders, the single shudder that led to a cough. “Did something happen after they brought you in? I know it was rough, but were you mistreated? Threatened? You seem…” She trailed off because she didn’t want to finish the thought, that he seemed less.

  “Darkness. Walls.” He offered a difficult smile. “I don’t do well in small spaces.”

  “Claustrophobia?”

  “Something like that.”

  He tried to smile, but it turned into another round of coughing, another twenty seconds of the shakes. Her eyes moved down his chest, and across his stomach.

  “Jesus, Adrian.”

  He saw her looking at the scars and turned away. His back, though, was as bad as his chest. How many pale, white lines were there? Twenty-five? Forty?

  “Adrian…”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “What did they do to you?”

  He picked up the shirt and shrugged it on. “I said it’s nothing.”

  She looked more closely at his face and saw for the first time how bones did not line up as she remembered. Shadows filled the hollow place beside his left eye. The nose was not quite the same. She threw a glance down the hall. She had minutes. No more. “Have they questioned you about the church?”

  Adrian put his palms flat against the door and kept his head down. “I thought you were suspended.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Francis told me.”

  “What else did he tell you?”

  “To stay away from you. To keep my mouth shut and not drag you into my problems.” Adrian looked up, and for an instant the years faded. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t kill her.”

  He was talking about the church, the new victim.

  “Did you kill Julia Strange?”

  It was the first time Elizabeth had ever questioned his innocence, and the moment stretched as muscles tightened in his jaw and old wounds pulled apart. “I did the time, didn’t I?”

  His gaze, then, was clear and angry. Same Adrian. None of the weakness.

  “You should have taken the stand,” she said. “You should have answered the question.”

  “The question.”

  “Yes.”

  “Shall I answer it, now?”

  The words were flat, but the stare was so intent a throb began at the base of Elizabeth’s skull. He knew what she wanted. Of course, he knew. She’d waited every day of his trial for the question to be answered. There would be an explanation, she’d thought. Everything would make sense.

  But he never took the stand.

  The question was never answered.

  “It’s what it comes down to, isn’t it?” He watched her. “The scratches on my neck. The skin under her nails.”

  “An innocent man would have explained it.”

  “Things were complicated, then.”

  “So, explain it now.”

  “Will you help me if I do?”

  There it was, she thought. The convict Beckett had warned her about. The user. The player.

  “Why your skin was under Julia Strange’s nails?” He looked away, jawline clenched. “Tell me or I walk.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “A requirement.”

  Adrian sighed and shook his head. When he spoke, he knew how it would sound. “I was sleeping with her.”

  A pause. A slow blink. “You were having an affair with Julia Strange?”

  “Catherine and I were in a bad place.…”

  “Catherine was pregnant.”

  “I didn’t know she was pregnant. That came after.”

  “Jesus…”

  “I’m not trying to justify it, Liz. I just want you to understand. The marriage wasn’t working. I didn’t love Catherine, and she didn’t much love me, either. The baby was a last, desperate try, I think. I didn’t even know she was pregnant until she lost it.”

  Elizabeth took a step away; came back. The pieces were ugly. She didn’t want them to fit. “Why didn’t you testify about the affair? The DNA evidence convicted you. If there was an explanation, you should have given it.”

  “I couldn’t do it to Catherine.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Hurt her. Humiliate her.” He shook his head again. “Not after what I’d done to her.”

  “You should have testified.”

  “It’s easy to say that now, but to what purpose? Think about it.” He looked every inch a broken man, the face scarred, the eyes a dark stain. “No one knew the truth but Julia, and she was dead. Who would believe me if I claimed adultery as my defense? You’ve seen the trials same as me, the desperate men willing to lie and squirm and barter their souls for the barest chance of a decent verdict. My testimony would look like a string of self-serving, calculated lies. And what could I possibly get from it? Not sympathy or dignity or reasonable doubt. I’d open myself to cross-examination and look even guiltier by the end of it. No, I stared down that road more than once, thinking about it. I’d humiliate Catherine and get nothing for it. Julia was dead. Bringing up the relationship could only hurt me.”

  “No one saw you together?”

  “Not in that way. No.”

  “No letters? Voice mails?”

  “We were very careful. I couldn’t prove the affair if I wanted to.”

  Elizabeth plucked at the edges. “It’s all very convenient.”

  “There’s more,” he said. “You won’t like it.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Someone planted evidence.”

  “For God’s sake, Adrian…”

  “My prints in her house, the DNA—that all makes sense. I get it. I was there all the time. We were intimate. But the can at the church doesn’t fit. I was never near the church. I never drank a beer there.”

  “And who do you think planted it?”

  “Whoever wanted me in prison.”

  “I’m sorry, Adrian.…”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Say what? That you sound like every convict I’ve ever met. ‘I didn’t do it. Someone set me up.’”

  Elizabeth stepped back, and it was hard to hide the disbelief. Adrian saw it; hated it. “I can’t go back to prison, Liz. You don’t understand what it’s like for me, there. You can’t. Please. I’m asking for your help.”

  She studied the grimy skin and dark eyes, unsure if she would help. She’d changed her life because of him, yet he was just a man, and seriously, perhaps fatally, flawed. What did that mean for her? Her choices?

  “I’ll think about it,” she said and left without another word.

  * * *

  It took two minutes to exit the building. Randolph stayed at her side, moving her quickly down one hall and then another. At the same low door on the same side street, he walked her onto the sidewalk and let the door clank shut behind him. The sky bu
rned red in the west. A hot wind licked the concrete as Randolph shook out two cigarettes and offered one to Elizabeth.

  “Thanks.”

  She took it. He lit them both, and they smoked in silence for half a minute.

  “So, what is it?” She flicked ash. “The real reason?”

  “For what?”

  “Helping me.”

  He shrugged, a misshapen grin on his face. “Maybe I dislike authority.”

  “I know you dislike authority.”

  “You also know why I helped you. Same reason I’d have helped you bury the Monroe brothers in the darkest woods in the deepest part of the county.”

  “Because you have daughters.”

  “Because fuck them for doing what they did to that girl. I’d have shot them, too, and I don’t think you should go down for it. You’ve been a cop for what? Thirteen years? Fifteen? Shit.” He sucked hard; blew smoke. “Defense lawyers would have put that girl through hell all over again, and some knee-jerk judge might let them go on a goddamn technicality. We both know it happens.” He cracked his neck, unapologetic. “Sometimes justice matters more than the law.”

  “That’s a dangerous way for a cop to look at things.”

  “System’s broken, Liz. You know it same as me.”

  Elizabeth leaned against the wall and watched the man beside her, how light touched his face, the cigarette, the knotted fingers. “How old are they now? Your daughters?”

  “Susan’s twenty-three. Charlotte’s twenty-seven.”

  “They’re both in town?”

  “By the grace of God.”

  They smoked in silence for a moment, the lean woman, the hump-shouldered man. She thought of justice and the law and the sound his neck made when he cracked it. “Did Adrian have enemies?”

  “All cops have enemies.”

  “I mean inside the system. Other cops? Lawyers? Maybe someone from the DA’s office?”

  “Back in the day? Maybe. For a while you couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing Adrian’s face on the screen beside one pretty reporter or another. A lot of cops resented that. You should really ask Dyer.”

  “About Adrian?”

  “Adrian, yeah.” James stubbed out the cigarette. “Francis always hated that guy.”

  * * *

  When Randolph went back inside, Elizabeth finished her cigarette, thinking. Thirteen years ago, did Adrian have enemies? Who knew? Elizabeth had been so young at the time. After the quarry, she’d managed her final year of high school and two years at the University of North Carolina before dropping out to become a cop. That made her twenty on her first day out of training, twenty and fired up and scared half to death. She wouldn’t have known the hatreds or politics; she couldn’t have.

  But, she was thinking about it, now.

  Following the sidewalk to the corner, she skirted a clump of pedestrians, then turned left and stepped into the street. Her car was parked a half block up on the other side. She thought about enemies; thought she was out clean.

  That lasted another dozen steps.

  Beckett was sitting on the hood of her car.

  “What are you doing, Charlie?” She slowed in the street.

  His tie hung loosely, shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow. “I could ask you the same thing.” He watched her cross the last bit of dark pavement. She gauged his face; it was inscrutable.

  “I just stopped by,” she said. “You know. Checking on the case.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Elizabeth stopped at the car. “Have you identified the victim?”

  “Ramona Morgan. Twenty-seven years old. Local. We think she disappeared yesterday.”

  “What else?”

  “Pretty but shy. No serious boyfriend. A waitress she worked with thinks she might have had plans on Sunday evening. We’re trying to pin that down.”

  “Time of death?”

  “After Adrian got out.”

  He dropped that on her like a rock; watched to see if she could handle it. “I want to talk to the medical examiner.”

  “That’s not going to happen, and you know it.”

  “Because of Dyer?”

  “He wants you isolated from anything to do with Adrian Wall.”

  “He thinks I’ll jeopardize the case?”

  “Or yourself. Hamilton and Marsh are still in town.”

  Elizabeth studied Beckett’s face, most of it lost in shadow. Even then, she could see the emotion below the surface. Aversion? Disappointment? She wasn’t sure. “Does Dyer hate him?”

  He understood the question. She saw it. “I don’t think Francis hates anybody.”

  “What about thirteen years ago? Did he hate anyone then?”

  A bitter smile cut Beckett’s face. “Did James Randolph tell you that?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe you should consider the source.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning James Randolph was everything Adrian was not. Plodding. Narrow-minded. He’s been divorced three times, for God’s sake. If anyone hated Adrian, it was Randolph.”

  Elizabeth tried to work that piece into the puzzle.

  Beckett slid off the car and thumped the fender, changing the subject. “I didn’t know you were still driving this rust bucket.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “What year is it again?”

  She watched his face, trying to catch the angles. Something was happening, and it wasn’t about the car. “’Sixty-seven,” she said. “I paid for it working summer jobs. It was pretty much the first real thing I ever bought by myself.”

  “You were eighteen, right?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “That’s right. Seventeen. Preacher’s daughter.” He whistled. “Lightning in a bottle.”

  “Something like that.” She didn’t mention the rest: that she’d bought the car two weeks after Adrian Wall stopped her from jumping to her death in the cold, black waters of the quarry; that she would drive it for hours on end; that for more years than she cared to count, it was the only good thing in her life. “What’s with all the questions, Charlie?”

  “There was this rookie, once.” The transition was seamless, as if they’d been speaking of rookies all along. “This would be twenty-five years ago, before your time. He was a nice enough guy, but all elbows and apologies. Follow? Not cop. Not street. Anyway, this poor bastard went through the wrong door on the wrong side of town and ended up with a couple junkies on his chest and the business end of a broken bottle against his neck. They were going to cut his throat, kill him right there.”

  “Then you came through the door and saved his life. It was your first shoot. I’ve heard the story.”

  “Give the lady a gold star. Do you remember the name of the rookie I saved?”

  “Yeah. It was Matthew…” She looked down. “Shit.”

  “Finish it.”

  Elizabeth shook her head.

  “Come on, Liz. I gave you the gold star. Matthew what?”

  “Matthew Matheny.”

  “The moral of the story is that a man like Matheny feels more loyalty to the man who saved his life than to the fifty-year-old version of some dumb-ass kid who got peppered in the leg with bird shot. Did you really think I wouldn’t find out?”

  “Does Dyer know?”

  “Hell, no. He’d burn this place to the ground and take you with it. The only thing between here and there is me.”

  “Then why are you beating me up about this?”

  “Because bright and early tomorrow this street will be elbow deep in news crews from as far away as DC and Atlanta. By sunset, it’s headline news from coast to coast. We’ve got dead women draped in linen, a murderer ex-cop, a shot-up kid, and a tumbledown church straight out of some goddamn gothic masterpiece. The visuals alone will take it national. You want to get sucked into that story? Now, when the AG already wants you for double homicide?”

  “Who put Adrian in lockdown?”

  “What does that have to do with anything
?”

  “He’s claustrophobic. Was it Dyer?”

  “Goddamn, Liz. What is it with you and stray dogs?”

  “He’s not a dog.”

  “Dog. Convict. Lonely ass kid. You can’t save every little thing.”

  It was an old argument that felt deeper than usual. “What if someone set him up?”

  “Is that what this is? Seriously? I told you, Liz. He’s a convict. Convicts are players.”

  “I know. It’s just—”

  “It’s just that he’s wounded and alone, right? You don’t think he knows that’s your weakness?” Beckett looked suddenly resigned, the frustration draining away. “Give me your hand.” He took it without waiting, then used his teeth to pull the cap off a pen. “I want you to call this number.” He wrote a number on the back of her hand. “I’ll call him first. Tell him to expect you.”

  “Who?”

  “The warden. Call him in the morning, first thing.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re lost in the wasteland, Liz. Because you need a way out, and because you won’t believe the things he’ll tell you.”

  11

  Elizabeth left her partner on the street and drove west until the road crested a high ridge, and the sun flattened like a disk against the earth. Adrian was either lying or not, and Elizabeth could think of only one place to find the answer she needed. So she followed a two-lane out of town and ten minutes later turned onto the long, dark drive of a five-hundred-acre estate that bordered the river where it ran fast and white at the bottom of a tall bluff. Box bushes scraped paint as she pushed into the property. Branches hung low above the drive, and when it dead-ended, she climbed from the car. The house loomed beneath a dimming sky, and she felt the history of it as she stepped onto the porch. George Washington slept here, once. So did Daniel Boone, a half dozen governors. The current resident—though once equally impressive—came to the door in a poplin suit that looked slept in. He was unshaven, his face drawn beneath a cloud of thin, white hair that stirred as the door opened. He’d lost weight since she’d last seen him, seemed shorter, frailer, ancient.

  “Elizabeth Black?” He was confused, at first; then smiled. “My God, it’s been a thousand years.” He squeezed her, took her hand. “Come have a drink. Have two.” The bright eyes twinkled. “Elizabeth Black.”