Redemption Road(65)

Dyer meant DNA and skin and scratches. That was logical and fine, but the can was first-day evidence. Without Adrian’s prints at the scene there’d have been no court order subjecting him to a physical exam, no knowledge of the scratches on his neck, and nothing connecting him to the murder.

“Someone planted that can.”

“No one framed you.”

“It didn’t get there by itself.”

“You know what? We’re done.”

“I didn’t kill her, Francis.”

“Mention Julia again, and I’ll shoot you for real. I mean it.”

Adrian didn’t blink or back down. He held his ex-partner’s gaze and felt all the emotion behind it. “Do you really hate me so much?”

“You know why,” Dyer said; and looking in his black and bitter eyes, Adrian did.

Because Francis Dyer had always been jealous.

Because he’d loved Julia, too.

*

That certainty grew as Adrian walked out of his old partner’s neighborhood. The can was peripheral at trial, not a nonevent but almost an afterthought. By then, the prosecutor had scratches on Adrian’s neck and skin under Julia’s nails; he had prints in the house and Adrian’s own partner to testify against him. Those things made a case so strong the beer can at the church was a blip. But, that was the trial, and the early days of the investigation had been very different. Liz had found Julia’s body in the old church, and it was like marble on the altar, white and lifeless and clean. Adrian could still feel the rage and sadness that ripped through him when he got the call; he remembered every second—had lived them a million times: the drive to the church and the sight of her there, the love of his life gone lifeless, hardwood under his knees as he’d wept like a child, uncaring.

But, people saw: Francis and other cops. They saw and they wondered. Then a tech pulled Adrian’s print, and everything changed. Not just the doubts and dirty looks, but the court-ordered blood sample and the physical exam that found the scratches on his neck. After years behind the badge Adrian was on the outside, a suspect. He lost standing, trust, and, in the end, everything he’d ever loved.

Julia first.

Then life as he’d known it.

That his partner might have been jealous enough to plant evidence didn’t occur to Adrian until his first year in solitary. It was so out there and so extreme, a thought born of the smallest memory. Julia lay propped on an elbow, a sheet gathered at her waist. They were in a hotel in Charlotte, tenth floor. Light from the city spilled in, but all else was dark. It was a week before she died, and she was beautiful.

Are we bad people, Adrian?

He’d stroked her face. Maybe.

Is it worth it?

It was an old question between them. He’d kissed her, then, and said, Yes, it has to be.

But doubt was in the room, a dark conjuring.

I think your partner knows.

Why?

A look, she said. A feel.

Like what?

Like he watches more than he should.

That was it, a nothing in the night. But nothings grow when the world is eight by six and hours stretch forever. Adrian replayed the memory a hundred times, and then a thousand. Two days later, he added the can to see how the pieces fit. It seemed possible, he’d thought, which was not the same as probable. But the can was not probable, either.

Not with his prints on it.

Not at the church.

Francis had always been insecure, lost at times in Adrian’s shadow. That’s how it could be with cops. One was first through the door, and one was second. One got the media. One was the hero. But jealousy alone could not explain something as malignant as planted evidence. That required stronger emotions, the minting of a single coin, perhaps, with love bright on one side, and envy black on the other. Spin it fast enough, and what would you see?

A partner grown silent and strange?

A man who watched more than he should?

It still seemed possible, but there was no certainty on the roadside or under the high, dim stars. Nor did conviction present itself between the crumbled walls of his burned-out home. Adrian lit a fire as he’d done before and tried to pace the questions into ordered form. Who killed Julia, and why? Why the church? The linen? The violence that crushed her neck with such utter, irretrievable conviction?

Could someone else have planted the can?

In the end, such questions were voices lost in the throng. Adrian was not the same man, and he knew it. His thinking grew muddled, at times. Sometimes, he blanked out. That was a gift from the warden and the guards. Yet, clarity had not deserted him entirely. Open spaces and faces of good intent. These things made sense to him and offered hope of a sort. Liz was his friend—he believed that. So was the lawyer, this land, memories of what it meant to be determined and sure. Had that man gone? Adrian wondered. Had he been carved away in his entirety?

He paced another hour, then found a corner and sat. The night was dark and still, and then gone as if it too was only memory.

He was on a metal bed.

He was screaming.

*

“Hold him down. Get the arm!”

They got the free arm strapped again, cinched it down as he screamed into the gag, and edged metal flashed red. Adrian tasted blood; knew he was biting his tongue, the inside of his cheeks. The room smelled of bleach and sweat and copper. Blood streaked the warden’s face. The ceiling was rusted metal.