Redemption Road

by John Hart

  Jacks ignored Olivet. He collected the casings, then closed the bathroom door and pulled Olivet from the smoke-filled silence. “Get in.” He pushed Olivet at the sliding door. “Just get in and shut the hell up.”

  In the van and accelerating, Olivet skinned off the mask and watched the motel fade into the same, dull haze. He heard sirens rise and watched state police cars blow past in the other direction. There were four of them moving fast; and that’s how close it was, he thought.

  Seconds.

  By the time he turned around, Jacks had a cell phone to his ear. “It’s me, yeah. He wasn’t there.… No, I’m sure. Wrong motel, wrong room.” The needle crossed fifty-five, then sixty. “Tell your cop buddy the woman lied.”

  * * *

  Some people were blessed with the ability to forget bad things. Elizabeth lacked that particular skill, so if she chose to face the ugliness straight on, she could close her eyes and see the past with perfect clarity: the sounds, the slant of light, the way he moved. The memory was about after.

  It was about Harrison Spivey and her father.

  It was about the church.

  * * *

  Sunlight struck the cross, but it was rosy through the glass and made her think of blood: the blood in her skin, the memory of it between her legs. That color on the cross was wrong, but there it was, salvation and sin and the face of the boy who’d raped her. His reflection twisted in the metal, but it was real, like he was real, a hot-skinned, grass-smelling boy who used to play games and wink in church and be her friend. He knelt beside her as she listened to his lies and pretensions of remorse. He said the words because her father told him to; and like the follower she’d always been, Elizabeth said them, too.

  “Our father…”

  Damn you for letting this happen to me.

  She kept the last part to herself because that’s what her life had become, a veil of normalcy stretched across a well of hurt. She ate and went to school and allowed her father to pray by her bed, to kneel in the dark and ask God to forgive her.

  Not just the boy.

  Her.

  She lacked trust, he said. Trust in God’s purpose, and in her father’s wisdom. “The child you carry is a gift.”

  But, it was no gift, and the boy kneeling in her father’s church was no giver. She could see him from the corner of her eye, the beads of sweat on his neck, the fingers squeezed white as he repeated the words of prayer and pressed his forehead so hard against the altar she thought it, too, might bleed.

  They spent five hours on their knees, but there was no forgiveness in her.

  “I want the police.”

  She said it many times, a whisper; but her father believed in redemption above all things, so urged her to stillness and heart and greater prayer.

  “There is a path,” he said.

  But there was no such thing for Elizabeth. She had no God to trust, and no father, either.

  “Take his hand,” her father said; and Elizabeth did. “Now, look in his eyes and tell him you find it in your heart to forgive.”

  “I’m so sorry, Liz.” The boy was crying.

  “Tell him,” her father said. “Show him your eyes and tell him.”

  But she could not do it, not now and not ever, not if heat was salvation itself and she was offered all the fires of hell.

  * * *

  The painful memory filled Elizabeth with equally painful questions. She couldn’t see the whole picture, but possibilities were lining up: the church, the altar, the women who looked like her.

  Could a teenage rapist grow into something worse?

  Maybe.

  But, had he?

  After that day at the church, Harrison Spivey spent three summers working for her father. Mowing grass. Painting. Digging graves with the ancient backhoe. To him it was penance, and to her one more reason to leave. Yet he’d spent hours kneeling at that altar, knew every inch of the grounds and building. She needed to confirm something else, too—something to do with Allison Wilson. Elizabeth picked up her keys, surprised when she turned and bumped into James Randolph. She’d forgotten he was there.

  It was the memory.

  The burn.

  “I can’t let you go just yet.” His hand settled on her arm. She looked at it. “Please, you need to see this one last thing.” Her eyes rose to his face. He looked old, but alert and scrubbed and sincere. “Here,” he said. “Sit.”

  He took the other chair and looked out at the cops in the bull pen. He sat close enough for her to smell the aftershave, the mint on his breath. Were people watching? That was his concern. “There’s orders,” he said. “And then there’s orders.” His hand went into a jacket pocket. “You’re not supposed to see this. Dyer thinks you’ll freak or something, so he sent the word down. Me, I think you need to know. Safety and shit. Common sense.”

  Elizabeth waited. The hand stayed in the pocket.

  He flicked another glance through the glass, and when the hand came out, it held an evidence bag. Elizabeth couldn’t tell what was in it, but it was flat and small and looked as if it could be a photograph. “Beckett found this under the church. It was wedged behind a floor joist above the bodies. Only a few people know about it.” Randolph pressed slick plastic against her leg, said, “Keep it low.”

  He moved his hand, and Elizabeth trapped the plastic with three fingers. She saw the back of the photograph. The paper was yellowed, the edges tattered. “Under the church?”

  “Right above the bodies.”

  She turned it over; stared for long seconds. Randolph watched her face. She couldn’t move or speak.

  He gave her a moment, then tilted his head so he could look at it straight on. “I didn’t think it was you, but Dyer says it is. He says he knew you from church and childhood, that even that young and long-haired he knew it was you the second he saw it. I’m guessing you’re what? Fifteen?”

  “Seventeen.”

  The word was an exhalation of loss. The photograph was faded and cracked and water-stained. In it, she wore a plain dress with her hair drawn back and tied with a black ribbon. She was walking near the church. Wasn’t smiling. Wasn’t sad. She wasn’t there at all. Not really.

  “Do you remember this photograph?”

  She shook her head, and it was not a total lie. She’d never seen the photograph, but she knew the dress, the day. “Did you find fingerprints?”

  “No. We’re thinking gloves. Are you okay?” She said she was, but tears were on her face. “Jesus, Liz. Breathe.”

  She tried, but it was hard. She remembered the walk by the church.

  Five weeks after she was raped.

  The day before she killed her baby.

  * * *

  Elizabeth was still glassy-eyed when she stepped into the bull pen. In seconds, everyone was looking at her, but she barely noticed. She was thinking of a black ribbon in hair that hung halfway to her waist. As a girl, her ribbons had always been blue or red or yellow—the only real colors she was allowed. But she’d twined a black one in her hair that single day, and her thoughts were trapped there on that ribbon, as if she could touch it or take it back.

  “Liz!”

  She heard her name from across the room, and even that seemed faint.

  “Hey!”

  It was Beckett, working his big body through the room. She blinked, surprised by the urgency of his movements. He was bulling the crowd, and the crowd was angry. A buzz was in the air, and it wasn’t like before. The whispers were back, the distrustful looks.

  Shit … She knew what that meant, too.

  “Liz, wait—”

  But she didn’t wait. She couldn’t. The hallway door was twenty feet away, and she was moving—fifteen feet, then five, Beckett still coming. Her hand was on the knob when he caught up and took her arm. She tried to pull it away, but he didn’t let go. “Walk with me.” He pushed her into the hall and then into an empty stairwell. The door clanked shut, and it was just the two of them, Beckett squeezing hard, the look
on his face desperate enough to keep her quiet. He was frightened, and it wasn’t a normal kind of fear. “Just keep walking. Don’t talk to anybody. I mean it.”

  He led her down a flight, then into another hallway and to a side exit. He hit a metal door with his shoulder. It crashed against the wall, and they were outside. “Where are you parked?”

  She pointed, and he dragged her in that direction. “Dyer knows?”

  “That you lied about the motel, yeah.”

  “I guess word spreads fast.”

  “You think?”

  She looked up and saw faces in the windows, watching. A few men were on cell phones. One was snapping his fingers and pointing. “How bad is it?”

  “Dyer’s about to sign a warrant for your arrest. Obstruction. Accessory. You made him look like a fool.”

  Elizabeth saw it, of course. She’d lied about Adrian, and the lie had caught her out.

  “Tell me where he is.”

  “I don’t know,” Elizabeth said.

  “You’re lying.”

  “What if I am?”

  “Tell me where Adrian is, and maybe I can make this go away. Talk to the state cops. Convince Dyer to rescind the warrant. You have to give me something, though. A real address. A phone number.”

  “Francis will settle down.”

  “He won’t.”

  “So I made him look foolish.” They reached the car. Elizabeth pulled her arm free. “I gave him a bullshit address. So what?”

  “People died.”

  “What?”

  “State police went to the motel you gave us. They found two people shot dead in the shower. The room still smelled of gun smoke. That’s how close it was.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Beckett took her keys, opened the car, and got her inside. “Tell me where to find him.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  Elizabeth kept her eyes straight ahead; felt the intensity of his stare.

  “I need him, Liz. You can’t understand how badly. But please. I need you to trust me.”

  Beckett was hurting. Was it jealousy? Anger?

  “Trust? What trust?” She started the car and let him twist. “You should have told me about the photograph.”

  “James Randolph.” Beckett’s jaw clenched. “He showed you?”

  “Yeah, he did. It should have been you.”

  “Liz—”

  “Partners, Charlie. Friends. You don’t think I had the right to know?”

  “Francis didn’t want you to know about the photograph. Okay? He said you were vulnerable and weak and that nothing good could come of it. He made a good argument, and I agreed with every bit of it. You’re not thinking straight. You’re a danger to yourself and everyone around you.”

  “You still should have told me.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Yeah, well”—she put the car in gear—“I guess that’s where we’re different.”

  31

  Elizabeth went to her parents’ house and found them pulling weeds from an overgrown flowerbed by the parsonage.

  “Sweetheart.” Her mother saw her first and stood. “This is an unexpected surprise.”

  “Mom.” Her father stood stiffly. “Dad.”

  He pulled off work gloves and beat dirt against his pants leg. “I’ll leave you two to talk.”

  “Actually, this concerns you, too. It’s about Harrison Spivey.”

  The preacher’s eyebrows came together, but more worry was in his face than anger. Talk of Harrison rarely happened. They looked away instead. They judged and nursed wounds and pretended.

  “I won’t talk about a parishioner behind his back unless it’s to his benefit. You know that.”

  How many times had Elizabeth heard as much: togetherness and trust, a raft of days in the palm of God’s hand?

  “What’s this about, sweetheart?” Her mother’s worry was impossible to miss.

  But Elizabeth had little time for explanation. “Childhood. I remember something about Harrison Spivey and Allison Wilson.”

  “Allison Wilson? What in the world…?”

  “They dated?” Elizabeth said. “There was a fight?”

  “They never dated, dear. And it was hardly a fight. He asked her to homecoming, as I recall—”

  “And she laughed at him,” Elizabeth remembered. “She said he was churchbound and uptight and hopeless. Kids at school made fun of him.”

  “He was quite obsessed with her, the poor boy.”

  “What about me?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Obsession is a specific and powerful word.” Elizabeth pictured the photo found under the church, the tattered image of her as a seventeen-year-old girl, pale-skinned and aching and thin as a waif. “After it was all said and done—after Dad found me on the porch, after the hospital and prayers and recrimination—would you use that same word to describe his feelings for me? He raped me, after all. Held me down. Stuffed pine needles in my mouth—”

  “Elizabeth. Sweetheart—”

  “Don’t touch me.” Elizabeth stepped away, and her mother’s hand drew back. “Just answer the question.”

  “You’re shaking.”

  But Elizabeth would not be swayed. Dark wheels were turning; she felt them. “He worked at the church. On the grounds. In the buildings. You opened your home to him. You pray with him. You know him. Did he talk about me then? Does he talk about me now?”

  “Tell me what this is about.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Then I’m not sure we can help you. We’ve worked so hard, you understand? To forgive the sins of youth, to build on the future. Harrison is not the boy you remember. He’s done such good things—”

  “I don’t want to hear that!” Elizabeth couldn’t help the outburst. Even now, her feelings for her parents were complicated: pain and love, anger and regret. How could such things live side by side for so long?

  Her father spoke as if he understood. “It wasn’t the choice you think, Elizabeth. I didn’t choose Harrison over you, but love over hate, hope above despair—the lessons I’ve taught you since birth: to embrace the difficult path, to accept hard choices and hard love, to be penitent and live in the hope of redemption. I wanted that for you and for him. Can’t you understand that? Can’t you see?”

  “Of course I can, but it wasn’t your choice to make! To forgive or not was up to me! Your job was something different, and you didn’t do it. You didn’t protect me. You didn’t listen.”

  “Nor did I walk away from my family, the church.”

  “Actually, you did. You did walk away.”

  “And this is God’s punishment,” he said. “To see my only daughter grown bitter and hateful and hard.”

  “I’m not having this conversation.”

  “You never do. You can barely look at me.”

  “Mom? May I speak to you in private?”

  “Sweetheart—”

  “Over here. Away from him.”

  Elizabeth walked away from her father, found a place in the shade where she could turn her back and not face a burning sun.

  Her mother touched her shoulder. “Don’t think this is easy for him, Elizabeth. He’s a complicated man, and he grieves. We both do, but it’s a hard world full of hard choices. He’s not wrong about that.”

  “Don’t make excuses for him.” Elizabeth stopped her mother with a raised hand. “Just tell me if Harrison Spivey owns a farm or commercial property. A hunting cabin, maybe. Anything not easily found.”

  “Just the house on Cambridge, and it’s nothing grand.”

  Elizabeth looked at the steeple, at the white paint and the gold cross that looked as cheap as foil. “Was he obsessed with me?”

  “He prays for you, here and at home. He prays with your father.”

  Elizabeth felt cold fingers in the shade. “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  “Only that he was wrong, sweetheart, and that he ha
s sought forgiveness with all his heart. That’s what makes you right in your way, and your father right in his. It’s what makes this all so awful.”

  * * *

  After that, Elizabeth was alone. She had a theory, and it was tied so deeply to her own past that she had trouble looking at it straight on. Harrison Spivey had an intimate connection to the church, to her, and to her family. He could be violent, obsessed.

  The victims looked like her.

  Was Randolph right about that? She didn’t know. Maybe some of them. All she knew for sure was that Channing was gone, and the clock was ticking. Arrest. Death. They were out there, spinning. And if a voice spoke of caution, it did so from the deepest corner of her mind. Too many years led to this, too many sleepless nights and buried hurts. The word Providence rose, yet even that felt dangerous. This was not about her, she told herself, but about finding the girl.

  Then why did that voice, too, sound so distant? It whispered in the drive and drowned in the rush of her blood. She was on the porch of Spivey’s house, but it could have been the quarry or the church or the back of her father’s car as the boy laid a finger on her skin as if daring her to look up or say a word about the thing he’d done. Elizabeth felt all of that, bottled it, and directed it. No one had to get hurt, and no one had to die.

  But, goddamn, she felt it.

  The feeling took her through the door without knocking; through the kitchen and into the living room, gun holstered, but warm under her palm. She saw the wife and children in the backyard, which was good, because she had no plan beyond making the man talk. She flicked a glance left; saw a dining-room table, framed photographs, golf clubs in the corner. The normalcy of it stoked the resentment. Could a killer kill and then play golf?

  She felt the answer in her skin; heard an echo of the voice and tuned it out. Noise came from the back hall so she turned in that direction, her footsteps soundless on deep carpet. She found him behind a desk littered with papers, a broad, soft man with a pencil in one hand and fingers on an old-fashioned calculator that rattled and clicked. The sight was so pedestrian it pulled her from the moment long enough to see the danger of what she was doing. The obsession was hers, but when he looked up, he had the same eyes and lips, the same hands that had been so quick with pine needles and buttons and torn fabric. “Hello, Harrison.”