Redemption Road(35)

Beckett reminded himself that civilians didn’t see bodies the way cops did. “I’m going to go inside and take a look. You stay here. I’ll have more questions.”

“It’s the same, isn’t it?”

He saw fear in her eyes as trees rustled above the church, and one of the dogs pulled against its leash. “Sit tight,” he said. “I won’t be long.”

Beckett left her where she stood and made for the church, stopping briefly to examine the tire tracks in the grass. Nothing remarkable, he thought. Maybe they could get an imprint. Probably not.

Stepping across the fallen chain, he moved into the dark and heat. Ten feet in it was close to black, so he waited for his eyes to adjust. After a moment, the void gathered itself into a low-ceilinged, dim space with sconces in the walls, a stairwell to the left, and closet doors broken from their hinges. Stepping through the narthex, he fumbled his way to the double doors that led into the nave. Once beyond them, the ceiling soared away, and while it remained dim at his end of the church, light spilled through stained glass at both transepts to illuminate the altar and the woman on it. Colors were in the light—blues and greens and reds—and lines of shadow from iron in the glass. Otherwise, the light speared in like a blade to pin the body where it lay, to put color in the skin and on linen that was white and crisp and ran from feet to chin. Beckett’s first impression was of black hair and stillness and red nails, the image so familiar and haunting it transfixed him where he stood.

“Please, don’t be the same.…”

He was talking to himself, but couldn’t help it. Light lit her like a jewel in a case, but it was more than that. It was the tilt of her jaw, the apple-skin nails.

“Jesus.”

Beckett crossed himself from an almost-forgotten childhood habit, then worked his way past broken floorboards and lumps of rotted carpet. He made his way between tumbled pews, and with each step the illusion of perfection crumbled more. Color fell out of the light. Pale skin dulled to gray, and marks of violence rose as if by magic. Bruising. Ligature marks. Torn fingertips. Beckett took the last, few steps, and, at the altar, looked down. The victim was young, with dark hair and eyes shot through with blood. She was stretched on the altar as Julia Strange had been, her arms crossed on the linen, her neck blackened and crushed. He studied the choke marks, the eyes, the lips that were nearly bitten through. He lifted the linen to find her nude beneath it, the body pale and unmarked and otherwise perfect. Beckett lowered the sheet and felt a surge of unexpected emotion.

The Bondurant woman was right.

It was the same.

*

The sun burned through the trees as Elizabeth drove Channing down the mountain. It was quiet in the car until they approached Channing’s neighborhood. When the girl spoke, her voice was quiet, yet wound like a coil. “Have you ever gone back to the place it happened?”

“I just took you there. I just showed it to you.”

“You took me to the quarry, not to the place it happened. You pointed. You talked about it. We never went near the little pine where the boy knocked you down. I’m asking if you’ve ever stood on the exact spot.”

They stopped in front of Channing’s house, and Elizabeth killed the engine. Beyond the hedge, brick and stone rose, inviolate. “I wouldn’t choose to do that. Not now. Not ever.”

“It’s just a place. It doesn’t hurt.”

Elizabeth turned in her seat, appalled. “Did you go back to the crime scene, Channing? Please tell me you did not go alone into that godforsaken house.”

“I lay down on the place it happened.”

“What? Why?”

“Should I try to kill myself, instead?”

Channing was angry, now, a wall going up between them. Elizabeth wanted to understand, but struggled. The girl’s eyes were bright as dimes. The rest of her seemed to hum. “Are you upset with me for some reason?”

“No. Yes. Maybe.”

Elizabeth tried to remember how it felt to be eighteen, to be stripped to the bone and held together with tape. It wasn’t difficult. “Why did you go back?”

“The men are dead. The place is all that’s left.”

“That’s not true,” Elizabeth said. “You remain, and so do I.”

“I don’t think I do.” Channing opened the door, climbed out. “And I think maybe you don’t, either.”

“Channing…”

“I can’t talk about this right now. I’m sorry.”

The girl kept her head down as she walked away. Elizabeth watched her move up the drive and fade into the trees. She would make it into the house unnoticed or the parents who didn’t know what to do with her would discover her creeping through the window. Neither outcome would help the girl. One of them could make things a whole lot worse. She was still thinking about that when her phone rang. It was Beckett, and he was as twisted up as the girl.

“How fast can you get to your father’s church?”

“His church?”

“Not the new one. The old one.”

“You’re talking about—”

“Yeah, that one. How fast?”

“Why?”

“Just answer the question.”

Elizabeth looked at her watch, and her stomach rolled over. “I can be there in fourteen minutes.”