Redemption Road(120)

Elizabeth looked at the construction sites and finished buildings, at Harrison with his golden shovel and smiling women. Her certainty wavered. “Those are…”

“Clinics for battered women.” He finished the thought when she trailed off. “Abused wives. Prostitutes. Rape victims. I don’t know why you think I took this girl, but I promise you I did not. I have a wife and daughters. They’re my life, Liz. I’d make yours different if I could. I’d take it all back.” Elizabeth’s confidence broke; none of this was expected. “Speaking of which…”

“Hi, Daddy.” A little girl stepped in from the hall. She was three or four, with a pretty voice and no fear at all of strangers with guns.

“Come here, sweetie.” The girl hopped on her father’s lap as a wave of dizziness threatened to sweep Elizabeth away. Harrison wrapped his arms around the child, clasped his hands, and pointed with fingers pressed together. “Guess who this is.” The girl pulled her legs onto her father’s lap. “This is the woman we pray for every Sunday. The one whose forgiveness we ask God to grant.”

“You told your children?”

“Only that Daddy did a bad thing, once, and was sorry.” He squeezed the girl harder. “Tell Detective Black your name.”

“Elizabeth.”

“We named her for you.”

“But you run from me when I see you on the streets. You barely speak.”

“Because you frighten me,” he said. “And because I am ashamed.”

Elizabeth stared at the little girl. The room was still spinning. “Why would you give that beautiful child my name?”

“Because some things should never be forgotten.” He smoothed the girl’s unruly hair. “Not if we hope to live better lives.”

*

He stayed off the streets as much as he could. Even then he worried someone might recognize the car, his face in the car. He’d never seen cops like this. They were everywhere. Local cruisers. Sheriff’s deputies. State police. They were on the streets and overpasses. There’d been talk of roadblocks, and that made him nervous. If they searched the car, they’d find tape and a stun gun and zip ties.

He couldn’t explain that.

How could he?

Pulling into a gas station, he threw away the tape and plastic ties. The stun gun he kept because some things needed keeping. The linen and silk ropes were someplace safe. Nevertheless, he sat low in the car as a line of state cruisers flashed by. Things were building, and he could feel them out there, the same endings and inevitabilities. There was a chance he’d walk away and continue, but he was tired of killing and carrying secrets. It had been with him for so long. The weight built, a woman died, and for months after he was depressed.

He wasn’t supposed to be a killer.

Watching the state police fade, he sat straighter as a young father came out of the convenience store and lingered by his car. He had a child in his arms, a boy maybe six months old. He watched the father kiss the child and thought that’s how life was meant to be. But nothing was that pure anymore, so he drove for the road and looked once in the mirror as the kiss broke and both seemed to smile.

The father.

The son.

He turned into traffic, not eager yet, but accepting.

The silo was seven miles away.

*

Elizabeth saw the same cops and felt some of the same fear. Her thoughts, though, were very different.

Could it be an act?

She ran the question for the tenth time and came back with the same answer.

She didn’t think so.

He had daughters, a wife.

“My God.”

Her hands were still shaking. She’d been planning to steal the man from his children, take him to the woods, and break him. It wasn’t academic or some dark fantasy. She’d been minutes away from doing it. Cuffs. Car. Some wooded place.

She caught a glimpse of her eyes in the mirror; found them haunted and bruised. She felt out of control, dangerous. But Channing was still out there, and that, too, was real. What choice did she have but to walk the road?

She stopped at a traffic light, watched cops at a checkpoint.

What if the road disappeared?

What if she was already lost?

Gideon was shot, and Channing gone. Crybaby was alive or dead—she didn’t know.

And, there was Adrian.

Elizabeth turned away from the checkpoint, working the back roads toward her house. She needed to know if cops were there, or if Channing—by some miracle—had returned. She was two minutes out when the phone vibrated in her pocket. “Hello.”

“Is it true?”

“Adrian? Where are you?”

“Is it true they found my wife under the church?”

Elizabeth saw another marked car. They were everywhere. “Don’t come here.”

“Somebody killed her.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“She didn’t deserve that, Liz. We may not have worked at the end, but she was a gentle soul, and alone because of me. I can’t just sit here.”

“The police are looking for you.”

“You, too,” he said. “Your face is all over the news. They’re linking you to the dead guard. They say you’re an accessory to murder.”

Elizabeth went silent. She didn’t think it would really happen. Not Dyer. Not this fast. “Stay away from me,” she said. “Stay away from this place.”