Redemption Road(5)

Home was a vacuum.

She couldn’t go to work.

Pulling into a dark lot on the dangerous edge of downtown, she turned off the engine and listened to the sounds the city made. Music thumped from a club two blocks away. A fan belt squealed at the corner. Somewhere, there was laughter. After four years in uniform and nine with the gold shield, she knew every nuance of every rhythm. The city was her life, and for a long time she’d loved it. Now it felt … what?

Was wrong the right word? That seemed too harsh.

Alien, maybe?

Unfamiliar?

She got out of the car and stood in the darkness as a distant streetlight flickered twice, then snapped and died. She made a slow turn, picturing every back alley and crooked street in a ten-block radius. She knew the crack houses and flophouses, the prostitutes and pushers, which street corners were likely to get you shot if you said the wrong thing or rolled up hot. Seven different people had been killed on this busted-up patch of broken city, and that was just in the past three years.

She’d been in darker places a thousand times, but it felt different without the badge. The moral authority mattered, as did the sense of belonging to something larger than oneself. It wasn’t fear, but nakedness might be a decent word. Elizabeth didn’t have boyfriends or lady friends or hobbies. She was a cop. She liked the fight and the chase, the rare, sweet times she helped people who actually meant well. What would remain if she lost it?

Channing, she told herself.

Channing would remain.

That a girl she barely knew could matter so much was strange. But, she did. When Elizabeth felt dark or lost, she thought of the girl. Same thing when the world pressed in, or when Elizabeth considered the real chance that she could go to prison for what had happened in that cold, damp hole of a basement. Channing was alive, and as damaged as she was, she still had a chance at a full and normal life. A lot of victims couldn’t say that. Hell, Elizabeth knew cops that couldn’t say it, either.

Grinding out the cigarette, Elizabeth bought a newspaper from a machine beside an empty diner. Back in the car, she spread the paper across the wheel and saw her own face staring back. She looked cold and distant in black and white, but it could be the headline that made her seem so remote.

“Hero Cop or Angel of Death?”

Two paragraphs in, it was pretty clear what the reporter thought. Even though the word alleged showed up more than once, so did phrases such as inexplicable brutality, unwarranted use of force, died in excruciating pain. After long years of positive press, the local paper, it seemed, had finally turned against her. Not that she could blame them, not with the protests and public outcry, not with the state police involved. The photograph they’d chosen told the tale. Standing on the courthouse steps and peering down, she looked cold and aloof. It was the high cheekbones and deep eyes, the fair skin that looked gray in newsprint.

“Angel of death. Jesus.”

Tossing the paper in the backseat, she started the car and worked her way out of the bad parts of town, driving past the marbled courthouse and the fountain at the square, then toward the college, where she slipped like a ghost past coffee shops and bars and loud, laughing kids. After that she was in the gentrified section, moving past condo lofts and art galleries and renovated warehouses turned into brewpubs and day spas and black box theaters. Tourists were on the sidewalks, some hipsters, a few homeless. When she found the four-lane that led past the chain restaurants and the old mall, she drove faster. Traffic was thinner there, the people’s movements smaller and more subdued. She tried the radio, but the talk channels were boring and none of the music fit. Turning east, she followed a narrow road through scattered woods and subdivisions with stone-columned entrances. In twenty minutes she was outside the city limits. In another five, she started climbing. When she reached the top of the mountain, she lit another cigarette and stared out at the city, thinking how clean it looked from above. For a moment, she forgot the girl and the basement. There were no screams or blood or smoke, no broken child or irredeemable mistakes. There was light and there was dark. Nothing gray or shadowed. Nothing in between.

Stepping to the edge of the mountain, she looked down and tried to find some reason for hope. No charges had been filed. She wasn’t looking at prison.

Not yet …

Spinning the cigarette into the blackness, she called the girl for the third time in as many days. “Channing, hey, it’s me.”

“Detective Black?”

“Call me Elizabeth, remember?”

“Yeah, sorry. I was asleep.”

“Did I wake you? I’m sorry. My mind these days.” Elizabeth pressed the phone against her ear and closed her eyes. “I lose track of time.”

“It’s okay. I’m taking sleeping pills. My mom, you know.”

There was a rustling sound, and Elizabeth pictured the girl sitting up in bed. She was eighteen years old, a doll of a girl with haunted eyes and the kind of memories no child should have. “I was just worried about you.” Elizabeth squeezed the phone until her hand ached and the world stopped spinning. “With all that’s going on, it helps to know you’re okay.”

“I sleep mostly. It’s only bad when I’m awake.”

“I’m so sorry, Channing.…”

“I didn’t tell anybody.”

Elizabeth grew suddenly still. Warm air rolled up the mountain, but she felt cold. “That’s not why I called, sweetheart. You don’t—”