Redemption Road(103)

Channing looked from one wall to the next. She wanted to scream and run. The pillow beneath her fingers was slick and smooth and pink as a baby’s skin.

“Now,” her mother said, “how about some hot chocolate?”

*

Channing’s mother floated down the stairs and into the kitchen, where she turned knobs and opened cabinets. Gas stove on, cocoa and organic milk, the frosted cookies her daughter had always liked. It was her fault: Titus Monroe, the drugs, the hollow place in her daughter’s eyes. She’d brought those horrible men into their lives. But, she could make it right. Channing would forgive her.

Finishing in the kitchen, she balanced the tray and knocked once on her daughter’s door. “Sweetheart?” The door opened to her touch, but the room was empty. “Channing?” She put the tray on the bed and checked the bathroom.

Nothing.

No one.

“Baby girl?”

She listened carefully, but there was no sound in the house, and but a single thing that moved. So, she sat on her daughter’s bed and she watched it: the curtain by an open window, and the world like a painting beyond.

*

Channing knew every backyard and side yard in her block, so getting past the reporters was easy. Escaping the rest was a little harder.

Hot chocolate?

Pink sheets?

She darted through a formal garden, then slipped out a driveway and onto the sidewalk. With a last look up the road, she turned her back to the reporters and kept walking. She couldn’t go back because if she did, she’d be forced to play the game. People would shy from her eyes or pretend nothing bad had happened. There’d be luncheons and teas and stolen liquor. But, her father would never take her to the range again. He’d never share a joke or treat her like an adult. The fog would spread as court dates came and went and lawyers told her not to worry. She’d nod and be polite, and then one day split wide open. Only Liz could relate, but when Channing tried her cell, it went straight to voice mail. She tried again, then hung up and walked faster. Liz lived on the other side of town. By the time she got there, it was still early. Ten o’clock, she thought, or a bit later.

No one was home.

Beyond the glass, the house was dark, the broken door wedged in its frame. For a moment Channing felt dread like a flashback, the memory of shattered doors and rifles and screaming cops. The house felt unsafe, but she had nowhere else to go. Family. Friends. They could never understand what the Monroe brothers had made of her. Was she really this cold-blooded thing?

She looked at her hands, and they were steady.

What did that mean?

Rocking the door from its frame, she checked again for Liz, then lifted a glass from the cabinet and the same bottle of vodka from the freezer. Cops wouldn’t come this time—that part was done—but what about the rest of it? She was eighteen years old and looking at real time. Maybe the lawyers could save her and maybe not. Worst case, they said, was five years or seven. But she didn’t want to be somebody’s china doll, not even for a day.

Taking the bottle onto the porch, she choked down a fast glass, then sat and slowly drank another. She told herself Liz would come, that it was only a matter of time and that she would know what to do. But that didn’t happen. Cars passed. The sun walked up the sky. The truth was hard, but in an hour seemed softer. In another, she was pleasantly drunk. That’s why she was slow to stand when a beat-up car turned into the drive, and a man climbed out. That’s why she was unafraid, and that’s why she got caught.

*

He knew about Channing Shore. She’d been in the papers and on TV, so everyone did. More important, she mattered to Elizabeth, Liz, Detective Black. The names tripped through his mind as if a single word, and images followed: Liz when she was younger, then as she was today. Channing had a lot of Liz in her face. There was a connection, and he believed in connections. Mostly, though, it was the eyes, and the eyes were the windows to the soul. That wasn’t speculation or poetic fancy. He knew how to do it, to break a person down and hold them so long the eyes became windows, in fact. That was the moment that mattered. Breath fails; the heart slows. What rises then is the innocence, the soul.

He thought about that as he stared at the girl, alone on the porch. The first time he’d passed by, her eyes were downcast, so he’d driven past a second time and then a third. Eventually, he’d parked two houses away, where he could watch and wait and think about it. He’d allowed the cops to find the last two bodies, and that was part of the plan—because Adrian, too, should suffer. But, they’d found the bodies under the church. That was his fault because he’d not thought things all the way through. He’d been overconfident, and now the church was lost.

“I can still make this work.”

But it was simpler before: rise from bed, smile, say normal things. When the time came, he’d go to other towns, find other women. That kept things clean.

But this …

It was the media and the attention, all the cops and cop theories, and how big it all was. They were using words like serial killer and psychopath and insane. No one could understand the truth of it—that it wasn’t about hate, that he didn’t have to do it.

So, why was he looking at the girl and thinking of white linen?

Because God was like that sometimes.

Complicated.

*

Channing knew more than most rich girls did about junk cars, and the reasons for that were simple. She liked working-class boys. At school, the clubs. Even when she snuck out to college parties, she tried to find the part-timers and the scholarship kids. She didn’t like the buff-nailed, pale-skinned players who were like every boy she’d known growing up rich. She preferred the tattooed and rough-handed ones, those too raw and ready to care if her family had money or not. All those boys wanted were the good times, the escape; and she was the same way. That was before the basement, but she still knew the cars: the slick rubber and throaty engines, the rust buckets and the beaters.