Redemption Road: A Novel (24 page)

“At the time?”

The lawyer’s eyes glinted in the night. “You came in from town, right? Crossed the river there?” He gestured right, where land fell away. “You crossed the bridge and turned directly into my drive?”

“I did.”

“Hmm.” He drew on the cigar, thin legs crossed at the knee. “If you look left”—he gestured to a gap in the trees—“you’ll see the land rise up to where the road follows the ridge. It’s distant, I’ll give you; but there’s a turnoff there from which you can see the house. Tourists find it from time to time. It makes a nice picture when the leaves peak.”

“What, exactly, are we talking about?”

“We’re not so much talking as waiting.”

“For…?”

“That. Do you hear it?”

She didn’t at first, and then she did: a car on the road. The noise grew from a whisper, then the car hit the bridge, and the old lawyer gestured left with his cigar. “Watch the gap.” She did what he asked, heard the car, sensed its lights as it climbed through the trees. “Do you see it?”

Lights rounded a bend, rose, and then leveled off. The car was on the ridge, the road shining beneath it. For three seconds, that’s all she saw. Then, the car sped past the gap, and Elizabeth saw a second car parked on the verge.

“You saw it?” Crybaby asked.

“I did.”

“And the men in it?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure.”

“What color was the car?”

“Gray, I believe.”

“Thank God.” The old lawyer leaned back, finished his drink. “After three cocktails and two hours of staring up that hill, I was beginning to think our troubled friend’s paranoia might be contagious.”

*   *   *

Elizabeth kept the headlights off until she reached the bottom of the driveway. When the road appeared, she clicked on the lights, and turned left. At the top of the ridge she stepped on the gas and hit the blues when the parked car appeared. It was a Ford sedan and fairly new, judging by the paint. She pulled in behind it and saw the outlines of men in the front, shapes changing as they turned to look back. She kept the lights bright, blues thumping behind the grille as she keyed the license plate on her laptop. What she saw made little sense, but there it was.

The number.

The registration.

Keeping one hand on the grip of her pistol, Elizabeth opened the door and exited, flashlight held high as she kept the weapon low and gave the car’s rear bumper a wide berth. Inside the car, both men held still, and she saw them plainly. They wore dark ball caps, the both of them. Elizabeth took in the heavy shoulders and blue jeans and dark shirts. Late thirties, probably. Maybe early forties. The driver kept his hands on the wheel; the passenger’s were out of sight. That brought Elizabeth’s weapon higher, kept it up as the window slid down. “Is there a problem, Officer?”

She stayed behind his left shoulder, watched the line of his jaw, his fingers on the wheel. “I want to see the passenger’s hands. Now.” Hands rose from the dark, then settled on the man’s lap. Elizabeth checked the backseat, leaned closer. No alcohol smell. Nothing obviously illegal. “Identification.”

The driver lifted his shoulders and dipped his head so the cap shielded his eyes against the light. “I don’t think so.”

The attitude bothered her. Something about his face did, too. It was partially obscured, but an arrogance was there, and an unpleasant softness. “License and registration. Now.”

“You’re a city officer five miles into the county. You have no jurisdiction here.”

“City and county cooperate when called for. I can have a sheriff’s deputy here in five minutes.”

“I don’t think so, seeing as how you’re suspended and under investigation. The sheriff won’t jump for you, lady. I doubt he’d even take your call.”

Elizabeth studied the men more closely. The hair was clipped short, the skin pale. The flashlight washed out their features, but what she saw of the driver seemed familiar: the rounded jaw, and drained-out eyes, the sweat just dry enough to make him look sticky. “Do I know you?”

“Anything’s possible.”

A smile underlaid the words, the same condescension and easy conceit. Wheels turned in Elizabeth’s mind, gears that wanted to mesh. “This vehicle is registered to the prison.”

“We’ll be leaving, now, Ms. Black.”

“Are you following Adrian Wall?”

“You have a nice evening.”

“Why are you watching this house?”

He turned the key. The engine caught, and Elizabeth stepped back as gravel sprayed and the car surged onto smooth pavement. She watched it rise and fall and disappear beyond the next hill. Only then, alone on the road, did the last gear finally click.

Ms. Black …

She holstered the weapon; checked her math.

Yeah.

She knew the guy.

*   *   *

Adrian did not go to the farm. He followed the river, instead, and listened for a voice on the wind that refused to come. The water spoke. So did the leaves, the branches, the soles of his shoes. Everything that moved gave voice, but none of it offered him what he needed. Only Eli Lawrence knew the guards and the warden and the secret corridors of Adrian’s hurt. Eli kept him together in the dark and the cold. He was the steel that held Adrian straight, the steady hands that gathered the threads of his sanity.

“They’re following me,” Adrian said. “They were at the farm, I think. Now, they’re at Crybaby’s.”

No response came, no voice or touch or flicker of humor. Adrian was alone in the night. He picked his way along the trail, his feet finding the rocks and muddy places, the deadfalls and the moss and the slick, black roots. The bank dipped where a creek trickled in. Adrian held on to a sycamore, the branch of a pine. He splashed through the creek and climbed the bank on the other side.

“What if they’re still there? What if they hurt him?”

They won’t bother the lawyer.

Relief flushed through Adrian like a drug. He knew the voice wasn’t real—that it was an echo from prison and the darkness and a thousand horrible nights—but for years it was all he’d had: Eli’s voice and his patience, his eyes in the dark like dim, small suns.

“Thank you, Eli. Thank you for coming.”

Don’t thank anybody but yourself, son. This little delusion is all yours.

But Adrian didn’t believe that, entirely. “First day in the yard. You remember?” Adrian clambered over a fallen tree, then another. “They were going to kill me for being a cop. You stood them down. You saved my life.”

More years on the inside than I could easily count. There were still a few who listened to me.

Adrian smiled at the understatement. There were men alive today who would kill or die for Eli Lawrence. Dangerous men. Forgotten ones. Until the day he died, the old man had been a voice of wisdom in the yard, an arbitrator, a peacemaker. Adrian’s life was not the only one he’d saved.

“It’s good to hear your voice, Eli. Eight years since I watched you die, and it’s still good.”

You’re basically just talking to yourself.

“I know that. You don’t think I know that?”

Now, you’re bitching at yourself.

Adrian stopped where the river widened. People would find it strange, how he talked to a dead man. But the world had grown strange, too, and every sound reminded him of that: the slide of the river, the scrape of pines. He’d known this land as a boy, fished thirty miles in either direction, walked every trail and climbed a hundred trees that hung above the water. How could it be so foreign, now? How could it feel so wrong?

’Cause you’re a goddamn mess.

“Hush now, old man. Let me think.”

Moving down the bank, Adrian slipped his hand into the river. That was real, he told himself, and unchanged. But the sky felt too broad, the trees too tall. Adrian climbed back to the trail and tried to ignore the ugly truth, that only he was different, that the world spun as it always had. He walked and considered that and realized, once, that he’d been standing still long enough for the moon to rise. He held out a hand and watched light spill through his fingers. It was the first moonlight he’d seen in thirteen years, and thoughts of Liz came, unbidden. Not because she was beautiful—though she was—but because the same moon had risen on the night he’d found her at the quarry, and then again on the night she’d made her first arrest. He imagined her in the light. The moon. Her skin.

Jesus, son. The first pretty woman you see …

Adrian laughed, and it the first honest laugh he could remember.

“Thank you, Eli. Thank you for that.”

You’re still talking to yourself.

“I know I am.” He started walking. “Most of the time, I know.”

The river bent west, and the trail with it. When it twisted again a mile later, Adrian turned away from the low ground and worked his way upslope until he found a dirt road that trended in the right direction. That was good for half a mile. When it, too, turned away from his path, Adrian crossed a band of woods, then a farm with a small, white house, brightly lit. A dog barked twice from the porch, but Adrian knew how to stay quick and quiet, and the night swallowed him before the dog got a good scent. Beyond the farm was a road that took him to an intersection three miles farther. Left would take him into the city. Right would lead to a subdivision on the flats beneath the mountain.

Adrian went right.

Francis Dyer lived right.

When he got to Dyer’s house, he checked the name on the mailbox, then rang the doorbell. When no one answered, he peered through the window, saw lights inside and things he remembered: pictures of Dyer as a rookie and the day he made detective, leather furniture and Oriental rugs, rowed guns that looked the same as the last time they’d gone hunting together as partners and friends. That was hard to see because it reminded Adrian of laughter and hot sun, of quiet competition and bourbon drinks and dogs that lay panting and wet when the birds were rowed on the tailgate and the last gun put away in the back of the old truck. It drove home the sad fact that he and Francis had been friends, once; and it reminded him of the trial and disappointment, and of the unpleasant truth that had split them apart.

Everything Francis had said at Adrian’s trial was true. Julia had a face that could drive a man to do bad things, and Adrian was, in fact, obsessed. He’d fallen so hard and fast that even now the memory dizzied him. But, it was more than the face. It was visceral, electric,
needful
. They’d both been unhappy, and their first meeting delivered a shock of energy so strong it could have lit the city. Recognition. Desire. The need that even now he felt. They’d fought it, and not just because they were married. Her husband worked for the county and was helping with an embezzlement case that ran into the six figures. Money had been disappearing for years: $5,000 here, $10,000 there. The total was $230,000 at best count. Real money. A serious case.

After a week, it barely mattered.

After a month, he was lost.

Adrian slumped on the porch, feeling her death as if it had happened days ago and not years.

“Ah, Julia…”

It had been so long since he’d allowed the luxury of remembrance. It was hard in prison because it made him soft when he could not afford it. Besides, she was dead, and death was forever. So, where did that leave him now? Out of prison and alone, sitting before an empty house and suddenly full to bursting.

Thirteen years!

They filled him up, all those years, all the suffering and pain, the hours to think of things he’d lost and pieces that didn’t fit.

“Francis!”

He beat again on the door; knew it was pointless.

So, wait for him.

“That’s your advice, old man? Wait for him?”

’Less you plan to beat the door down or converse with an empty house.

Adrian took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. He was here for information, an exchange of words. That meant Eli was right. No violence.

“All right, then. We wait.”

Adrian found a dark place on the porch and sat with his back against the wall. He watched the empty street and tried to let the anger go. But what else was there?

Answers?

Peace?

You don’t look so good.

Adrian’s lips twisted in the dark. “I don’t feel so good, either
.
”

You can handle this, son. You’re bigger than this.

“I’m an ex-con talking to a dead man. I don’t know anything anymore.”

You know my secret.

“They’re watching me.”

Not right now they’re not. You can walk this very second. Go anywhere you want. Have anything you want.

“Maybe I want to kill them.”

We’ve discussed that.

“If I don’t kill them, they’ll find me.”

That’s the inmate talking.

“I don’t want to be alone, Eli
.
”

He’s coming
.

“Don’t leave me.”

Hush, boy.
The voice flickered, faded.
Motherfucker’s right there.

Adrian opened his eyes as Francis Dyer stepped onto the porch. The suit was dark gray; the shoes glinted. He kept a shooter’s stance, weapon level as he checked the corners, the yard.

Adrian showed his hands. “Just take it easy, Francis.”

“Who were you talking to?”

“Myself. It happens.”

Dyer checked the corners again. His weapon looked like the same revolver he’d always carried. “What are you doing here?”

“I have questions.”

“Such as?”

“Where’s my wife?”

Tension showed on Dyer’s face; turned his fingers white on the gun. “That’s why you’re here?”

“Part of it.”

Adrian started to push himself up, but Dyer didn’t like it. “You sit until I say. Hands, again.”

Adrian took his hands from the decking and showed his palms.

“This is my house, Adrian. My home. Convicts don’t show up at a cop’s home. That’s how they get shot.”

“So do it.” Adrian put his hands on the floor; slid his back up the wall until he was standing. It was a small victory. He took it. “Where’s my wife?”