Redemption Road(36)

“I need you here in ten.”

*

Beckett hung up before she could ask another question.

Ten minutes.

He stood by the window in the north transept. Bits of colored glass had been broken out years earlier, but much of it remained. He peered through a hole and watched the world as if he could see the storm coming. Adrian had been out of prison for barely a day. When news of another murder broke, it would go viral. The church. The altar. It was too big, too gothic. The city would call for blood, and everything would come under scrutiny. The sentencing guidelines. The judge and the cops. Maybe even the prison.

How did the system let another woman die?

If news of Gideon’s shooting broke, too, the storm would spin out of control. Beckett saw how the papers would play it, not just as a story of murder and family and failed revenge, but of systemic incompetence as the first victim’s child slips through every crack in the system only to be shot in the shadow of the prison. Someone would figure out that Liz had been at Nathan’s, and that would make the cops look even worse. She was the angel of death, the department’s largest black eye since Adrian himself. The city was already turning against her. How bad would it get when people learned she’d worked to keep Gideon clear of social services? It was a royal mess, all of it. Dyer would never allow Liz on the scene.

But, Beckett wanted her here. She was his partner and friend, and she still had feelings for Adrian. Beckett needed to fix that.

“Come on, Liz.”

He paced to the altar and back.

“Come on, damn it.”

Seven minutes later, his phone rang, and James Randolph’s number popped on the screen. Beckett didn’t answer.

“Come on, come on.”

At the ten-minute mark, Randolph called again, then again. When the fourth call made the phone burr in his pocket, Beckett ripped it out and answered.

Randolph was frustrated. “What the hell, Charlie? I’ve got the ME on hold and eight cops staring at me like I’m crazy.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Beckett heard voices in the background, the clatter of gear.

“Are we rolling or not?”

Beckett saw a car on the road. It crested the hill at speed, then slowed. He gave it a five count to make sure, then said, “You can roll, James. Call Dyer, too. He’ll be twitchy, like I said. Just tell him it’s my call. Tell him it’s the same.”

“Goddamn.”

“One other thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Find Adrian Wall.”

Beckett then walked outside to meet Liz on the worn, granite steps of her childhood church. Even at a distance, her unhappiness was unmistakable. She was moving slowly, her eyes on the great trees, the fallen steeple. It was going to get ugly, and Beckett hated that.

“I never come here,” she said.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

They met on the bottom step, and Beckett hated the way doubt colored every glance. The church had been the center of her life for years: the congregation, her parents, and childhood. Though it had never been a rich church, it had been old and influential. Most of that changed after Julia Strange died on the altar. She’d been married in the church; her son was baptized there. Most of the congregation never got past her death or the desecration of their church. The few who persevered insisted on moving to a new location. Elizabeth’s father fought the idea, and her mother, in the end, forced the issue: How can we pray where one of our own died alone and in fear? How can we christen our children? Marry our young people? Her impassioned pleas swayed even her husband, who broke, it was said, with exceptional grace. What followed was a clapboard structure on a skinny lot in a dangerous part of town. The church continued as best it could, but only a fraction of the congregation made the move. Most drifted off to join First Baptist or United Methodist or some other church. Liz’s life changed after that.

Her parents descended into obscurity.

Adrian Wall went to prison.

“We don’t have much time,” Beckett said.

“Why not?”

“Because Dyer will arrest us both if he finds you here.”

He pushed into the interior, and Elizabeth followed him through the darkened narthex and into the light beyond. She moved as if it hurt and kept her eyes down until the balcony passed above her head, and the ceiling rose up. Beckett watched her face as she took in the rafters and the char and the fixtures hung like iron crowns. She turned a bit, but kept her gaze from the altar, let it light first on windows and walls and a thousand shadowed places. He could not imagine her thoughts, and nothing on her face betrayed them. She held stoic and straight, and when she finally faced the altar, it took three seconds for her to acknowledge that she understood what she was seeing.

“Why are you showing me this?”

“You know exactly why.”

“Adrian didn’t do this.”

“Same church. Same altar.”

“Just because he’s out of prison…”

Beckett took her arm and pulled her to the altar she’d known since birth. “Look at her.”

“Who is she?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Beckett said it harsh and hard. “Look at her.”

“I have.”

“Look deeper.”

“There is no deeper. Okay? She’s dead. It’s the same. Is that what you want to hear?”