Redemption Road(62)

She didn’t at first, and then she did: a car on the road. The noise grew from a whisper, then the car hit the bridge, and the old lawyer gestured left with his cigar. “Watch the gap.” She did what he asked, heard the car, sensed its lights as it climbed through the trees. “Do you see it?”

Lights rounded a bend, rose, and then leveled off. The car was on the ridge, the road shining beneath it. For three seconds, that’s all she saw. Then, the car sped past the gap, and Elizabeth saw a second car parked on the verge.

“You saw it?” Crybaby asked.

“I did.”

“And the men in it?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure.”

“What color was the car?”

“Gray, I believe.”

“Thank God.” The old lawyer leaned back, finished his drink. “After three cocktails and two hours of staring up that hill, I was beginning to think our troubled friend’s paranoia might be contagious.”

*

Elizabeth kept the headlights off until she reached the bottom of the driveway. When the road appeared, she clicked on the lights, and turned left. At the top of the ridge she stepped on the gas and hit the blues when the parked car appeared. It was a Ford sedan and fairly new, judging by the paint. She pulled in behind it and saw the outlines of men in the front, shapes changing as they turned to look back. She kept the lights bright, blues thumping behind the grille as she keyed the license plate on her laptop. What she saw made little sense, but there it was.

The number.

The registration.

Keeping one hand on the grip of her pistol, Elizabeth opened the door and exited, flashlight held high as she kept the weapon low and gave the car’s rear bumper a wide berth. Inside the car, both men held still, and she saw them plainly. They wore dark ball caps, the both of them. Elizabeth took in the heavy shoulders and blue jeans and dark shirts. Late thirties, probably. Maybe early forties. The driver kept his hands on the wheel; the passenger’s were out of sight. That brought Elizabeth’s weapon higher, kept it up as the window slid down. “Is there a problem, Officer?”

She stayed behind his left shoulder, watched the line of his jaw, his fingers on the wheel. “I want to see the passenger’s hands. Now.” Hands rose from the dark, then settled on the man’s lap. Elizabeth checked the backseat, leaned closer. No alcohol smell. Nothing obviously illegal. “Identification.”

The driver lifted his shoulders and dipped his head so the cap shielded his eyes against the light. “I don’t think so.”

The attitude bothered her. Something about his face did, too. It was partially obscured, but an arrogance was there, and an unpleasant softness. “License and registration. Now.”

“You’re a city officer five miles into the county. You have no jurisdiction here.”

“City and county cooperate when called for. I can have a sheriff’s deputy here in five minutes.”

“I don’t think so, seeing as how you’re suspended and under investigation. The sheriff won’t jump for you, lady. I doubt he’d even take your call.”

Elizabeth studied the men more closely. The hair was clipped short, the skin pale. The flashlight washed out their features, but what she saw of the driver seemed familiar: the rounded jaw, and drained-out eyes, the sweat just dry enough to make him look sticky. “Do I know you?”

“Anything’s possible.”

A smile underlaid the words, the same condescension and easy conceit. Wheels turned in Elizabeth’s mind, gears that wanted to mesh. “This vehicle is registered to the prison.”

“We’ll be leaving, now, Ms. Black.”

“Are you following Adrian Wall?”

“You have a nice evening.”

“Why are you watching this house?”

He turned the key. The engine caught, and Elizabeth stepped back as gravel sprayed and the car surged onto smooth pavement. She watched it rise and fall and disappear beyond the next hill. Only then, alone on the road, did the last gear finally click.

Ms. Black …

She holstered the weapon; checked her math.

Yeah.

She knew the guy.

*

Adrian did not go to the farm. He followed the river, instead, and listened for a voice on the wind that refused to come. The water spoke. So did the leaves, the branches, the soles of his shoes. Everything that moved gave voice, but none of it offered him what he needed. Only Eli Lawrence knew the guards and the warden and the secret corridors of Adrian’s hurt. Eli kept him together in the dark and the cold. He was the steel that held Adrian straight, the steady hands that gathered the threads of his sanity.

“They’re following me,” Adrian said. “They were at the farm, I think. Now, they’re at Crybaby’s.”

No response came, no voice or touch or flicker of humor. Adrian was alone in the night. He picked his way along the trail, his feet finding the rocks and muddy places, the deadfalls and the moss and the slick, black roots. The bank dipped where a creek trickled in. Adrian held on to a sycamore, the branch of a pine. He splashed through the creek and climbed the bank on the other side.

“What if they’re still there? What if they hurt him?”

They won’t bother the lawyer.

Relief flushed through Adrian like a drug. He knew the voice wasn’t real—that it was an echo from prison and the darkness and a thousand horrible nights—but for years it was all he’d had: Eli’s voice and his patience, his eyes in the dark like dim, small suns.