Redemption Road

by John Hart

  “Is it late?”

  “I was hoping to speak with your daughter.”

  She blinked and swayed. Beckett thought she might fall, but she caught herself with a hand on the wall.

  “Who is it, Margaret?” The voice came from stairs in the main hall.

  The woman gestured vaguely. “My husband.” Channing’s father appeared in workout clothes and a full sweat. He wore boxing shoes and wraps on his hands. “He wants to talk to Channing.”

  The words slurred that time. Mr. Shore touched his wife’s shoulder. “Go on upstairs, sweetheart. I’ll handle it.” Both men watched her unsteady exit. When they were alone, Mr. Shore showed his palms. “We grieve in our own ways, Detective. Come in.”

  Beckett followed the man through the grand foyer and into a study lined with bookshelves and what Beckett assumed to be expensive art. Mr. Shore went to a sidebar and poured mineral water in a tall glass with ice. “Can I get you something?”

  “No, thanks. You box?”

  “In my youth. I keep a gym in the basement.”

  It was hard to not be impressed. Alsace Shore was midfifties, with thick, muscled legs and heavy shoulders. If there was fat on him, Beckett couldn’t see it. What he did see were two large adhesive bandages, one protruding from the sleeve of his shirt, the second high on his right leg. Beckett gestured. “Have you been injured?”

  “Burned, actually.” Shore swirled water in the glass and gestured toward the back of the house. “An accident with the grill. Stupid, really.”

  Beckett thought that was a lie. The way he said it. The play of his eyes. Looking more closely, he saw singed fingertips and patches on both arms where hair had been cooked away. “You said people grieve in different ways. What, exactly, are you grieving?”

  “Do you have children, Detective?”

  “Two girls and a boy.”

  “Girls.” Shore leaned against a heavy desk and smiled ruefully. “Girls are a special blessing for a father. The way they look at you, the trust that there’s no problem you can’t handle, no threat in the world from which you can’t protect them. I hope you never see that look of trust disappear from your own daughters’ eyes, Detective.”

  “I won’t.”

  “So certain.”

  “Yes.”

  Another difficult smile bent Shore’s face. “How old are they now, your daughters?”

  “Seven and five.”

  “Let me tell you how it happens.” Shore put down the glass and stood on the broad base of his trunklike legs. “You build your life and your redundancies, and you think you have it covered, that you know best and that you’ve built the defenses necessary to protect the ones you love. Your wife. Your child. You go to bed believing yourself untouchable, then wake one day to the realization you haven’t done enough, that the walls aren’t as strong as you think, or that the people you trust aren’t trustworthy, after all. Whatever the mistake, you realize it too late to make a difference.” Shore nodded as if seeing Channing at those same, young ages—seven and five, and full of faith. “Bringing a daughter home alive is not the same as bringing her home unchanged. Much of the child we knew is gone. That’s been difficult for us, and for Channing’s mother, in particular. You ask why we grieve. I’d say that’s reason enough.”

  The message seemed heartfelt and sincere, yet Beckett wasn’t sure he believed the performance. It felt a little practiced and a little pat. The sternness and disapproval. The jaw tilted just so. What he’d said was true, though. People grieved in different ways. “I’m very sorry for what happened.”

  Shore dipped his large head. “Perhaps, you could tell me why you’re here.”

  Beckett nodded as if he would do just that. Instead, he walked along a wall of books, then stopped and leaned in. “You shoot?” He pointed at a row of crackled spines. The books were old and well thumbed. Tactical Marksmanship. Surgical Speed Shooting. USMC Pistol Marksmanship. There were others, maybe a dozen.

  “I also skydive, kitesurf, and race my Porsche. I like adrenaline. You were getting to the point of your visit.”

  But Beckett didn’t like being rushed. It was the cop in him. Situational management, he called it, though Liz claimed it was alpha-male bullshit. Button pushing, she’d say. Pure and simple. Maybe, there was some of that, too. Beckett tried not to go too deep. The job and his family, old regrets and thoughts of retirement. Usually, that was enough. But he didn’t much care for lies or liars. “What it comes down to, Mr. Shore”—Beckett pulled a few of the marksmanship books and started flipping pages—“is that I’d like to speak to Channing.”

  “She doesn’t want to talk about what happened.”

  “I understand that. But, your daughter’s not the only one who came out of that basement changed. Perhaps, others grieve as well. Perhaps, there are larger issues.”

  “My responsibility is to my daughter.”

  “Yet, it’s not a zero-sum game, is it?” Beckett closed the second book on shooting, riffled through another, then leaned into the shelf where a Kama Sutra manual caught his eye.

  “Detective Black is your partner?”

  “She is.”

  “Family of a sort.” Beckett nodded, and Mr. Shore put down his glass. “Your partner killed the men who took my daughter, and part of me will always love her for that. But even she doesn’t talk to Channing. Not her. Not the state cops. Not you. Do I make myself clear?”

  The stare between them held. Big men. Serious egos.

  Beckett blinked first. “The state police will compel her testimony. It’s only a mater of time. You know that, right?”

  “I know they’ll try.”

  “Do you know what she’ll say when the subpoena comes?”

  “She’s the victim, Detective. She has nothing to hide.”

  “And yet truth, I’ve learned, can be a fluid business.”

  “In this case, you’re wrong.”

  “Am I?”

  Beckett opened three of the shooting manuals and left them spread on the desk. The inside jacket of each one showed Channing’s signature, beautifully made.

  “Those are my books.”

  The father choked as he said it, and Beckett nodded sadly.

  That was a lie, too.

  * * *

  Elizabeth woke unable to remember the dream that haunted her; only that it was dark and hot and close. The basement, she guessed.

  Or prison.

  Or hell.

  She shrugged off a weight of blankets and felt cool wood under her feet. At the window, she saw trees like an army in the fog. It was early, barely light. The road ran off into the mist, black and still, then fading, then gone. The stillness reminded her of a morning with Gideon six years ago. He’d called her after midnight. The father was out, the boy alone and sick. I’m scared, he’d said, so she’d collected him from the porch of that tumbledown house, brought him home, and put him between clean sheets. He was feverish and shaking, said he’d heard voices in the dark beyond the creek, and that they’d kept him awake and made him afraid. She gave him aspirin and a cool cloth for his forehead. It took hours for him to fall asleep, and as he drifted, his eyes opened a final time. I wish you were my mother, he’d said; and the words were light, as if raised from a dream. She’d slept in a chair after that and woke to an empty bed and wet, gray light. The boy was on the porch watching fog roll through the trees and down the long, black road. His eyes were dark when he looked up, his arms wrapped across his narrow chest. He was shivering in the cool air so she sat on the step and pulled him against her side.

  I meant what I said. His cheek found her shoulder, and she felt the warm spot of his tears. I never meant nothing so much in all my life.

  He’d cried hard after that, but it was still a favorite memory, and Elizabeth kept it close every day of her life. He never said the words again, but the morning was a special thing between them, and it was hard to look at fog without feeling love of Gideon like a pain in her chest. But this was a different day, so
she shook off the emotion and focused on what was coming in the next few hours. Adrian would face court, and that meant media, questions, familiar faces from better times. She wondered if he would seem as torn, and if the cops would have enough to hold him. The trespass charge was weak. Could they charge him with murder? She rolled the footage of his life and knew what she was doing as she did it, that it was easier to worry about Adrian’s future than her own. Large as he stood in the halls of memory, his suffering would remain his alone, at least until she faced her own conviction. Yet, that risk was out there, too, and it could happen now: cars in the mist, cops with weapons drawn. What would she say if Hamilton and Marsh suddenly appeared? What would she do?

  “You should run.”

  Elizabeth turned and found Channing awake. “What did you say?”

  The girl pushed up in the bed, her eyes catching light from the window, the rest of her dim and shapeless in the gloom. “If we’re not going to tell the truth about what I did, then you should leave. Maybe, we should leave together.”

  “Where would we go?”

  “The desert,” Channing said. “Some place we could see forever.”

  Elizabeth sat on the bed. The girl’s eyes looked so kaleidoscopic that anything seemed possible. Escape. The desert. Even a future. “Did you know what I was thinking just now?”

  “How would I know that?”

  Elizabeth waited half a beat, thinking the girl had known. “Go back to sleep, Channing.”

  “Okay.”

  “We’ll talk later.”

  Elizabeth closed the bedroom door, then took the hottest shower she could stand. Afterward, she tended the wounds on her wrists, then put on jeans and boots and a shirt with tight cuffs. She was in the living room when Beckett showed up at the front door.

  “Two things,” he said. “First, I was out of line last night. Way out of line. I’m sorry.”

  “Just like that?”

  “What can I say? You’re my partner. You matter.”

  “What’s the second thing?”

  “Second thing is I still want you to see the warden. He gets in early. He’s expecting you.”

  “Adrian has court.”

  “First appearances aren’t until ten. You have time.”

  Elizabeth leaned into the door, thinking she was tired and wanted coffee and that it was too early for her to be standing in the door and talking to Charlie Beckett. “Why do you want me to see him? The real reason.”

  “Same as before. I want you to recognize Adrian Wall for what he is.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Broken and violent and beyond redemption.”

  Beckett put a big period at the end of the sentence, and Elizabeth thought hard about what he wanted. The prison mattered in the county. It meant jobs, stability. The warden had a lot of power. “He’ll show me something I don’t already know?”

  “He’ll show you the truth, and that’s all I’m asking. For you to open your eyes and understand.”

  “Adrian’s not a killer.”

  “Just go. Please.”

  “Okay, fine. I’ll see the warden.”

  Elizabeth leaned on the door, but Beckett caught it before it closed. “Did you know she’s a shooter?”

  Elizabeth froze.

  “I looked it up last night. Channing is a competitive marksman. Did you know that?” Elizabeth looked away, but Beckett saw the truth. “It’s not in your report.”

  “Because nobody needs to know.”

  “Doesn’t need to know what? That she could strip your Glock in the dark, then put it back together and shoot the dick off a gnat? I dug up her scores. She can outshoot ninety-nine cops out of a hundred.”

  “So can I.”

  “She burned down her yard, yesterday. Did you know that, too? The fire marshal says the house could have gone up with it. The neighbor’s house, too. People could have died.”

  “Why do you push, Charlie?”

  “Because you’re my friend,” Beckett said. “Because Hamilton and Marsh are coming for you, and because we need an alternate story.”

  “There is no alternate.”

  “There’s the girl.”

  “The girl?” Liz leaned on the door until the center of a single eye was all that showed. “As far as you’re concerned, there is no girl.”

  * * *

  Beckett disagreed. The bullet placement was perfect. Knees. Elbows. Groins. Could the girl have done it? Taken the Monroe brothers out in near dark? Tortured them, first? She was eighteen, weighed all of ninety pounds. Beyond that, he didn’t know her at all, so he couldn’t say.

  But, he did know Liz.

  She treated Gideon like a son, the girl like a sister, and Adrian like some kind of fallen saint. She was a sucker for lost causes, and now there were these new questions.

  Could Channing have pulled the trigger?

  Whose blood was on the wire?

  The questions followed him into the precinct and upstairs. He checked the murder board on Ramona Morgan, but they didn’t have much. Burn marks from a stun gun were obvious, but they had no fingerprints, fibers, or DNA. No sexual assault occurred. Death was by strangulation, which apparently happened on or near the altar, and took a long time. There was no sign the body had been moved, but no sign was found of her clothing. Torn fingertips suggested that she’d been held elsewhere and tried hard to escape. Bits of rust had been scraped from beneath her nails and skin. There was no roommate or boyfriend, as far as her coworkers knew. Phone records showed three calls from a burner cell, which was interesting, but at the moment, useless. The medical examiner had promised a full report minus tox screen by the end of the day. In the meantime, the girl’s mother was pushing to claim the remains.

  “One thing.”

  The words were quiet, the rest of the thought unspoken.

  I need one thing to tie this to Adrian Wall.

  He needed Adrian to be the killer and felt the need in a way few could understand. But, there was nothing. They’d canvassed neighbors, coworkers, people who liked the same bars as Ramona, the same coffee shops and restaurants and parks. No one could put Adrian and the victim together.

  Could I be wrong?

  The thought was unpleasant. If Adrian didn’t kill Ramona Morgan, then maybe he didn’t kill Julia Strange, either. That meant his conviction was flawed and that every cop who’d hated him for so long and with such passion was full-on, absolutely wrong.

  No.

  Beckett shook off the doubt.

  That was just not possible.

  Beckett poured coffee and carried it to his desk, his thoughts already spinning away from the murder case and back to Liz and the girl. The distraction was a problem, but Channing mattered to Liz, and Liz mattered to him. So, he started at the beginning. Why was the girl taken? Not why, really. Why her? Why at that time and place? Abduction was rarely as random as most wanted to believe. It happened, yes—a pretty girl in the wrong place at the wrong time—but more often than not, abduction scenarios involved people known to the victim: a workman at the house, a friend of the family’s, a neighbor who always seemed so quiet and polite. He pictured Channing, her house, the case. He replayed his conversation with Channing’s father.

  “Hmm.”

  Beckett keyed up the sheets on Brendon Monroe and his brother, Titus. They were pretty standard. Weapons charges. Assault. Drugs. Some traffic offenses, two cases of resisting an officer. There were no sex convictions, though Titus had been charged twice with attempted rape. Beckett knew all that, so he keyed on the drug charges. Crack. Heroin. Meth. There was some pharmaceutical stuff, some weed. Beckett didn’t see what he wanted, so he rang down to narcotics. “Liam, it’s Charlie. Good morning.… Look, I see your name all over the Monroe jackets.… What?… No, no problem. Just a question. Was there ever any noise about them selling steroids?”

  Liam Howe was a quiet cop. Solid. Dependable. Young. He worked undercover because he looked too fresh-faced to carry a badge. Dealers thought
he was a college kid, a rich man’s son. “If there was money to be made, they’d sell it; but I don’t remember anything about steroids.”

  “Is there much of that in town these days? Weight lifters? Jocks?”

  “I don’t think so, but steroids have never been high priority. Why do you ask?”

  Beckett pictured Channing’s father, sweat-soaked and massive. “Just a thought. Don’t worry about it.”

  “You want me to ask around?”

  Beckett’s first instinct was to say no, but Channing’s father had lied to him twice. “Alsace Shore looks like a juicer. Fifty-five, maybe. Built like a truck. I just wonder if he might have known the Monroe brothers.”

  “Alsace Shore.” The drug cop whistled, low and deep. “I’d use a long stick to poke that bear, especially if you’re implying some kind of involvement with the Monroe brothers.”

  “All I want is information, maybe enough to squeeze him.”

  “About?”

  His daughter, Beckett thought.

  The basement.

  “Just ask around, will you?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “And, Liam?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe, keep it quiet.”

  * * *

  Liz left Channing a note and the keys to the Mustang.

  Make yourself at home.

  Car’s yours if you need it.

  It felt strange sliding into the unmarked cruiser, as if some part of her was no longer a cop. The awkward sensation clung as the sun edged above the trees, and she drove past the old Victorians on her way to the outskirts of town. When she got to the prison, most of it was still shrouded in gloom, only the highest walls dappled pink, the high wires glinting. At the public entrance, a uniformed guard met her at the door. He was early forties, with washed-out eyes and a pale, wide body that had few hard corners. “Ms. Black?”

  Not Detective or Officer.

  Ms. Black …

  “That’s me.”

  “My name is William Preston. The warden asked me to bring you in. Do you have any weapons? Contraband?” Elizabeth’s personal weapon was in the car, but a rumpled pack of cigarettes rode in a jacket pocket. She pulled it, showed it to the guard. “That’s fine,” he said, then walked her to a visitor processing area. “I need you to sign in.” She signed, and he slid the paperwork to an officer behind the bulletproof divider. “This way.” She went through a magnetometer, and Preston stood close as a two-hundred-pound woman administered a thorough pat down.