Redemption Road(34)

That was a problem.

It was all a giant, f*cking problem.

Frustrated, Beckett pushed the coffee cup away and signaled for the check. The waitress brought it in a slow, easy step. “Anything else, Detective?”

“Not this morning, Melody.”

She put the check facedown as the phone in Beckett’s pocket vibrated. He dug it out, squinted at the screen, then answered, “Beckett.”

“Hey, it’s James Randolph. You got a minute?”

James was another detective. Older than Beckett. Smart. A brawler. “What’s up, James?”

“You know an Ellen Bondurant?”

Beckett searched his memory and came up with a woman from six or seven years ago. “I remember her. Divorce case gone bad. Her husband violated a restraining order; smashed up the house, I think. What about her?”

“She’s holding on line two.”

“That was seven years ago. Can’t you handle it?”

“What can I tell you, Beckett? She’s upset. She wants you.”

“All right, fine.” Beckett stretched an arm across the back of the booth. “Patch her through.”

“Hang on.”

The line crackled with static, then clicked twice. When Ellen Bondurant came on the line, she was calmer than Beckett had expected.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Detective, but I remember how nice you were to me.”

“It’s okay, Ms. Bondurant. What can I do for you?”

She laughed and sounded forlorn. “All I wanted was to take a walk.”

*

When Beckett hit the drive below the church, he had Detective Randolph back on the phone. “I’m not sure yet.” The car stuttered over washboard ruts, the church high above. “Just get everything on standby. Some uniforms, crime scene, the medical examiner. This may be a false alarm, but it doesn’t feel like it.”

“Is it the same?”

“I don’t know, yet.”

“Should I tell Dyer?”

Beckett considered the question. Dyer was a good administrator, but not the best cop in the world. He took things personally and tended to delay even if hesitation was dangerous. Then there was the location, the fact Adrian was fresh out of prison, and the chance it could actually be the same. In Beckett’s heart he thought Dyer had never fully recovered from his partner’s being a killer. Questions had rattled around the department for years.

How did Dyer miss it?

What kind of cop could he possibly be?

“Listen, James. Francis could get a little twitchy on this one. Let’s make sure what we’re dealing with first. Just sit tight until I call you back.”

“Don’t leave me hanging.”

Thirteen years had passed since Adrian killed Julia Strange in the same church, but Randolph felt it, too: the dark charge. This could change everything. Lives. The city.

Liz …

Beckett dropped the phone in a pocket, put both hands on the wheel, and stared through the windshield as the church humped up above him. Even now, the place disturbed him in a deeply fundamental way. The building was old, the grounds overgrown with dog fennel and horseweed and scrub pine. That wasn’t the problem so much as the history of the place. It started with Julia Strange. Her murder was bad enough, but even after the church was abandoned, the death lingered like an aftertaste. Vandals broke glass and toppled headstones; they spray-painted the walls and floors with profanity and satanic symbols. For years after that, vagrants moved in and out. They left bottles and condoms and the remains of cooking fires, one of which got out of control enough to burn part of the structure and topple the cross. But, you could see old glories if you looked: the massive stones and the granite steps, even the cross itself, which stood for almost two hundred years before being twisted in the fall. Beckett’s religious convictions had not entirely faded, so maybe his discomfort stemmed from guilt for all the wrongs he’d done. Maybe it was the contrast of good and evil, or perhaps from memories of how the church had been, of Sunday mornings and song, his partner’s life, before.

Whatever the cause, he was unhappy enough to grind his teeth and clench the wheel. When his car crested the ridge, he saw the Bondurant woman standing in tall grass with two dogs at her side, one of them barking. He hit the brakes and slid to a halt. None of the wrongness dissipated.

“They’re friendly,” she called.

Beckett had yet to meet a Lab that wasn’t. He greeted the woman by name, then took in the church and the fields and the distant forest. “You walked up here?”

“My house is that way.” She pointed. “Three miles. I walk here a few times a week.”

“Did you see anyone?” She shook her head, and he gestured at the church. “Did you touch anything?”

“The door handle on the right side.”

“Anything else?”

“The chain was already cut. I stopped long before I got to the … uh, uh…”

“It’s okay.” Beckett nodded. “Tell me the last time you were up here.”

“A few days. Three, maybe.”

“Did you see people, then?”

“Not then, but on occasion. I find trash, sometimes. Beer bottles. Cigarettes. Old campfires. You know how this place can be.” Her voice broke at the end.