I Will Find You(29)

He hurried over to the wall phone and lifted it.

“It’s Weston, sector four. I think we got a problem.”





Chapter

11



I can’t believe I’m in Philip’s car.

I look through the front windshield. It’s a gray morning. Rain will be coming soon—I can feel that in my face. I have heard of arthritis sufferers who can predict rainstorms by the pain in their joints. I can feel it, strange as this sounds, in my cheek and jaw. Both had been shattered in that first prison beating. Now, whenever a rainstorm is on the horizon, the bones ache like an infected wisdom tooth.

Philip starts the car up, puts it in reverse, and pulls out. I look out the window at the fortresslike edifice and I shudder. I won’t be back, I tell myself. No matter what. I won’t ever let myself come back here.

I turn to Philip. His big bushy eyebrows are lowered in concentration. His thick hands grip the steering wheel as though he’s preparing to rip it off.

“People are going to wonder how I got your gun,” I say.

He shrugs.

“You’re taking a big risk.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Are you doing this because of what happened last night,” I ask, “or because you believe me about Matthew being alive?”

The older man chews on that for a moment. “Does it matter?”

“I guess not.”

We fall into silence as Philip makes the turn into the circle. Up ahead, I can see the guard tower and exit gates we will soon be driving through. Less than a hundred yards away now. I sit back and try to stay calm.

It won’t be long now.

*



Sitting on the floor of the dark closet, Adam Mackenzie tried to make himself somewhat comfortable. If all goes well, he should be stuck in this dark closet for ten or eleven hours. He sat up against the back of the closet. He’d left his phone in his father’s car because there’d be no way “Crazed David Burroughs” would have let him keep it with him. Still. Ten or eleven hours sitting in the dark in this closet? Adam shook his head. He should have brought a flashlight and something to read.

He closed his eyes. Adam was exhausted. His father had called him after midnight to tell him about David’s incident with the guards and his bizarre claim about Matthew being alive. It was nonsense, of course. It had to be. He remembered when David asked him to be Matthew’s godfather, just as David’s father had once asked Adam’s father to do the same. It had been one of the proudest moments of Adam’s life. He’d always felt that way about his relationship with David. Proud, that is. David was special. He was that guy. Men wanted to be him, women fell for him, but there were demons there. It was why, when Adam first heard the speculation about David being the killer, sure, on the outside, Adam refused to believe it, but there was a small part of him, a little gnawing in the back of the brain, that couldn’t help but have doubts. David had a temper. There had been that fight during their senior year of high school. Adam had been the team’s leading scorer and rebounder, but still it was David, the role player, the guy who hustled, the gritty defender, who’d been voted captain by their teammates. It has always been that way. Adam the finesse player, David his more popular enforcer. Anyway, during their senior year, Revere High had lost to their rivals from Brookside, 78–77, when Adam, who’d scored 24 points, missed a layup with four seconds left to play. That missed layup haunted Adam. Still. Today. But it was later that night, when several guys from Brookside mocked Adam for the big miss, that David took matters into his own hands. He beat the shit out of two guys in an attack so filled with fury that Adam had to pull David away and get him in a car.

More than that, there was David’s father, Lenny. Lenny and Adam’s own father—what was the saying?

The sins of the father shall be visited upon the sons.

He should have been visiting his old friend all along. So why hadn’t he? At first, David refused any visitors. Yeah, okay, but Adam could have tried harder. He just gave up. He didn’t have the strength. That was what he told himself. The man incarcerated in this hellhole wasn’t his best friend. His best friend was gone. He had been bludgeoned to death and left for dead with his son.

Adam was about to shift his legs when he heard the door to his father’s office swing open.

A gruff voice said, “What the hell is going on?”

Oh shit.

Adam grabbed the ropes and began to wind them around his legs. He lifted the handkerchief up to his mouth so that it would appear to be a gag. The plan was simple. If anyone found him before his father got back, Adam was supposed to make it look like he was in the midst of escaping.

Another voice said, “I told you. He’s gone.”

Gruff Voice: “How the hell can he be gone?”

“What do you mean?”

“Where’s the inmate?”

“You mean he didn’t return him before he left?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“I work in that wing. I think I’d know if the inmate who tried to murder me was back in his cell.”

Adam stayed very still.

“Maybe another guy escorted Burroughs back.”

“No, that would be my job.”

“But you just said you were on break, right? Maybe the warden was in a rush, you know? Maybe he got one of the other guys to do it.”