Redemption Road(42)

“I couldn’t do it to Catherine.”

“Bullshit.”

“Hurt her. Humiliate her.” He shook his head again. “Not after what I’d done to her.”

“You should have testified.”

“It’s easy to say that now, but to what purpose? Think about it.” He looked every inch a broken man, the face scarred, the eyes a dark stain. “No one knew the truth but Julia, and she was dead. Who would believe me if I claimed adultery as my defense? You’ve seen the trials same as me, the desperate men willing to lie and squirm and barter their souls for the barest chance of a decent verdict. My testimony would look like a string of self-serving, calculated lies. And what could I possibly get from it? Not sympathy or dignity or reasonable doubt. I’d open myself to cross-examination and look even guiltier by the end of it. No, I stared down that road more than once, thinking about it. I’d humiliate Catherine and get nothing for it. Julia was dead. Bringing up the relationship could only hurt me.”

“No one saw you together?”

“Not in that way. No.”

“No letters? Voice mails?”

“We were very careful. I couldn’t prove the affair if I wanted to.”

Elizabeth plucked at the edges. “It’s all very convenient.”

“There’s more,” he said. “You won’t like it.”

“Tell me.”

“Someone planted evidence.”

“For God’s sake, Adrian…”

“My prints in her house, the DNA—that all makes sense. I get it. I was there all the time. We were intimate. But the can at the church doesn’t fit. I was never near the church. I never drank a beer there.”

“And who do you think planted it?”

“Whoever wanted me in prison.”

“I’m sorry, Adrian.…”

“Don’t say that.”

“Say what? That you sound like every convict I’ve ever met. ‘I didn’t do it. Someone set me up.’”

Elizabeth stepped back, and it was hard to hide the disbelief. Adrian saw it; hated it. “I can’t go back to prison, Liz. You don’t understand what it’s like for me, there. You can’t. Please. I’m asking for your help.”

She studied the grimy skin and dark eyes, unsure if she would help. She’d changed her life because of him, yet he was just a man, and seriously, perhaps fatally, flawed. What did that mean for her? Her choices?

“I’ll think about it,” she said and left without another word.

*

It took two minutes to exit the building. Randolph stayed at her side, moving her quickly down one hall and then another. At the same low door on the same side street, he walked her onto the sidewalk and let the door clank shut behind him. The sky burned red in the west. A hot wind licked the concrete as Randolph shook out two cigarettes and offered one to Elizabeth.

“Thanks.”

She took it. He lit them both, and they smoked in silence for half a minute.

“So, what is it?” She flicked ash. “The real reason?”

“For what?”

“Helping me.”

He shrugged, a misshapen grin on his face. “Maybe I dislike authority.”

“I know you dislike authority.”

“You also know why I helped you. Same reason I’d have helped you bury the Monroe brothers in the darkest woods in the deepest part of the county.”

“Because you have daughters.”

“Because f*ck them for doing what they did to that girl. I’d have shot them, too, and I don’t think you should go down for it. You’ve been a cop for what? Thirteen years? Fifteen? Shit.” He sucked hard; blew smoke. “Defense lawyers would have put that girl through hell all over again, and some knee-jerk judge might let them go on a goddamn technicality. We both know it happens.” He cracked his neck, unapologetic. “Sometimes justice matters more than the law.”

“That’s a dangerous way for a cop to look at things.”

“System’s broken, Liz. You know it same as me.”

Elizabeth leaned against the wall and watched the man beside her, how light touched his face, the cigarette, the knotted fingers. “How old are they now? Your daughters?”

“Susan’s twenty-three. Charlotte’s twenty-seven.”

“They’re both in town?”

“By the grace of God.”

They smoked in silence for a moment, the lean woman, the hump-shouldered man. She thought of justice and the law and the sound his neck made when he cracked it. “Did Adrian have enemies?”

“All cops have enemies.”

“I mean inside the system. Other cops? Lawyers? Maybe someone from the DA’s office?”

“Back in the day? Maybe. For a while you couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing Adrian’s face on the screen beside one pretty reporter or another. A lot of cops resented that. You should really ask Dyer.”

“About Adrian?”

“Adrian, yeah.” James stubbed out the cigarette. “Francis always hated that guy.”

*

When Randolph went back inside, Elizabeth finished her cigarette, thinking. Thirteen years ago, did Adrian have enemies? Who knew? Elizabeth had been so young at the time. After the quarry, she’d managed her final year of high school and two years at the University of North Carolina before dropping out to become a cop. That made her twenty on her first day out of training, twenty and fired up and scared half to death. She wouldn’t have known the hatreds or politics; she couldn’t have.