Redemption Road(68)

At the altar, he laid her down and used the same cords to strap her flat, cinching the legs tight, pulling the arms down until the shoulder bones jutted. He moved faster now because she was stirring. He covered her with white linen, folding it just so, making it perfect. By then his vision was blurred, both eyes so full and brimming it was as if no time had passed, and all the years between then and now were glass. Her lips were parted; breath moved. And while some deep part of him recognized the illusion, the weeping part embraced it with profound and terrible joy. He touched her cheek as the eyes fluttered and the pupils dilated. “I see you,” he said, then choked her for the first time of what he knew would be many.

*

It took a long time for her to die. She was crying; he was crying. When it was done, he went under the church, dragging himself to the worn spot beneath the altar, and curling in the earth as he’d so often done. This was his special place, the church beneath the church. Yet, even there he could not hide from the truth.

He’d failed.

Had he chosen poorly? Was he somehow mistaken?

He closed his eyes until the grief passed, then touched one shallow grave after another.

Nine women.

Nine mounds in the earth.

They bent around him in a gentle curve, and it troubled him to take so much comfort from their presence. He’d killed them, yes, but there was such lonesomeness in the world. He touched the earth and thought of the women beneath it. Julia should be here, too, as should Ramona Morgan and the girl dead above. It was their place as much as his, their right to lie quiet beneath the church where each heart, in its turn, had slowly and painfully ceased to beat.





16

Beckett got two pieces of bad news in the first ten minutes of the new day. The first was expected. The second was not. “What are you saying, Liam?”

He was in the bull pen. Seven forty-one in the morning. Hamilton and Marsh were behind the glass in Dyer’s office. Liam Howe had just walked up from Narcotics. The place was a madhouse. Cops everywhere. Noise. Movement.

“I’m saying it sucks.”

Howe dropped into a chair across the desk, but Beckett was barely paying attention. He was watching the state cops, who’d left his desk sixty seconds ago. Now, they were giving Dyer the same earful they’d given him. No sound came through the glass, but Beckett knew enough to catch the big words like subpoena and Channing Shore and obstruction. Playtime was over. They were gunning for Liz and they were gunning hard. Why? Because she wasn’t talking to them. Because in spite of their attempts at understanding and moderation, she was still telling them the same thing, which basically amounted to f*ck off. “You know what?” Beckett swung his feet from under the desk. “Let’s walk.”

He tossed a final, sour look at the state cops, then guided Howe out of the room and into the back stairwell. Outside, they stood in the secure lot, white sky going blue at the edges, heat stirring in the pavement. “All right, Liam. Tell me again, and give me details.”

“So, I did what you asked, right. I pulled some sheets; asked around. There’s no indication the Monroe brothers ever sold steroids. Alsace Shore may use them, but if so, he’s getting them somewhere else.”

Beckett chewed on that for a second, then shrugged it off. “That was a long shot, anyway. What’s the twist?”

“The twist is the wife.”

Something in the way Howe said it. “She’s a user?”

“Oh, yeah. Big-time. Prescription meds, mostly. OxyContin. Vicodin. Anything in the painkiller family. Cocaine on occasion.”

“Does she have a sheet?”

The drug cop shook his head. “Everything is scrubbed at the source: connections, favors, whatever. The few times she’s been implicated, the charges went away. I only know as much as I do because I took the question to some of the retired guys. Turns out a lot of wealthy housewives walk on the dirty side. The unspoken rule has been to look the other way. Too many frustrations over the years, too many powerful husbands, and too much weight.”

Beckett could see it because small towns were like that: connections and secrets, old money and old corruption. What’s the harm in a few stoned housewives? Forget the hypocrisy, that drugs were tearing half the city down. “Where did she get the dope?”

Howe shook his head, lit a cigarette. “The story doesn’t have a happy ending.”

“Tell me.”

“We’ll call it the story of Billy Bell.”

*

Beckett was at the Shores’ house by eight fifteen. Two kinds of bad news. Two different reasons. Alsace Shore knew about the first one. “I’ve already spoken to the state police, and I’ll tell you exactly what I told them. I don’t know where Channing is. Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. Fuck your implications and f*ck your subpoena.”

The man looked huge in a tailored suit and glossy shoes. In the house beyond him, every light was burning. Beckett saw people in the study to the right: other suits, a woman, small and blond in pink Chanel.

“I’m not here about the subpoena.”

“Then why?”

Channing’s father leaked aggression like an old tire leaked air, but again, it was hard to blame him. State cops had a subpoena for his daughter and tried to serve it when the sun was still below the trees. It was a cheap trick. Beckett would be angry, too. “She’s really not here, is she?”