Redemption Road: A Novel (6 page)

The small man shrugged, and Adrian knew from looking at his face that those particular guards made a lot of lives miserable.

“Let’s get you out of here.” The clerk pushed a paper across the slick surface. “Sign this.” Adrian dashed his name without reading. The clerk thumbed three bills onto the counter. “This is for you.”

“Fifty dollars?”

“It’s a gift from the state.”

Adrian looked at it, thought,
Thirteen years, fifty dollars
. The clerk pushed the bills across the surface, and Adrian folded them into a pocket.

“Do you have any questions?”

Adrian struggled for a minute. Other than Eli Lawrence, he’d not spoken to another soul in a long time. “Is anyone here for me? You know … waiting?”

“I’m sorry. I wouldn’t know that.”

“Do you know where I might find a ride?”

“Cabs aren’t allowed at the prison. There’s a pay phone down the road at Nathan’s. I thought all you people knew that.”

“You people?”

“Ex-cons.”

Adrian let that sink in. The guard who’d brought him from his cell gestured at an empty hall. “Mr. Wall.”

Adrian turned, not sure what he thought about all these strange words.

Mr. Wall …

Ex-con …

The guard lifted a hand, indicating a hallway to the left. “This way.”

Adrian followed him to a door that cracked bright and split wide. There were still fences and chain-link gates, but the breeze was warm on his cheek as he turned his face from the sun and tried to quantify exactly how it felt different from the one that shone in the yard.

“Prisoner coming out.” The guard keyed a radio, then pointed to a place where gates rolled on wheels. “Straight through the gate. The second won’t open until the first one closes.”

“My wife…”

“I don’t know anything about your wife.”

The guard gave a shove, and Adrian—like that—was outside. He looked for the warden’s office and found the right windows three floors up on the east wall. For an instant sunlight gilded the glass, then clouds slid across the sun and Adrian saw him there. He stood as he liked to stand. Hands in his pockets. Shoulders loose. For a moment the stare held between them, and with it enough hate to fill another thirteen years of Adrian’s life. He thought the guards would appear, too, but they didn’t. It was he and the warden, the slow tick of a dozen seconds before the sun burned through and mirrored the glass again.

Walk out proud, boy.

He heard Eli’s voice as if he were there.

Let them see you tall and straight.

Crossing the parking lot, Adrian stood on the edge of the road and thought maybe his wife would come. He looked once more at the warden’s office, then watched one car blow past, then another. He shifted from foot to foot as the sun walked up the sky, and the first hour stretched into three. By the time he started walking, his throat was dry and he’d sweated through his shirt. Staying on the verge, he kept one eye out for cars, and the second on a clutch of buildings dropped like blocks a half mile down the road. By the time he reached them, it was over a hundred degrees. Lots of shimmer coming off the road, lots of pale, white dust. He saw a pay phone next to a self-storage place, a shipping company, and a bar called Nathan’s. Everything looked closed but the bar, which had a sign in the window and a rusted-out pickup angled in near the front door. Adrian fisted his hand around the wad of bills in his pocket, then turned the knob and walked inside the bar.

“Uh-oh. Free man walking.”

The voice was rough and sure, the tone amused but not in a bad way. Adrian stepped closer to the bar and saw a sixtysomething man in front of rowed bottles and a long mirror. He was tall and wide, grizzled hair pulled back over a leather vest. Adrian limped a little closer and returned the half smile. “How’d you know?”

“Prison skin. Wrinkled suit. Plus I see about a dozen of you every year. You need a cab?”

“Can I get change?”

Adrian held out a bill, and the bartender waved it away. “Don’t sweat the pay phone. I’ve got ’em on speed dial. Take a load off.” Adrian sat on a vinyl stool and watched the man dial. “Hi, I need a cab at Nathan’s.… Yeah, out by the prison.” He listened for a moment, then covered the phone and said to Adrian, “Where to?”

Adrian shrugged because he didn’t know.

“Just send the cab.” The bartender hung up the phone and moved back down the bar. The eyes were gray under heavy lids, the whiskers yellow-white. “How long were you inside?”

“Thirteen years.”

“Ouch.” The bartender held out a hand. “Nathan Conroy. This is my place.”

“Adrian Wall.”

“Well, Adrian Wall”—Nathan tilted a glass under the tap, then slid it on the bar—“welcome to the first day of the rest of your life.”

Adrian stared at the glass of beer. It was such a simple thing. Moisture on the glass. Cool when he touched it. For an instant, the world seemed to tilt. How could things change so much so fast? Handshakes and smiles and cold beer. He found his face in the mirror and couldn’t look away.

“It’s a bitch, isn’t it?” Nathan put his elbows on the bar and brought the smell of sun-cooked leather with him. “Seeing what you are and remembering what you were.”

“You did time?”

“Vietnam POW. Four years.”

Adrian touched the scars on his face and leaned closer. Prison mirrors were made of polished metal and not so great for showing a man his soul. He turned his head one way, then another. The lines were deeper than he’d thought, the eyes wider and darker. “Is it like this for everybody?”

“Thoughtful making? Nah.” The bartender shook his head and poured brown liquor into a shot glass. “Most just want to get drunk, get laid, or start a fight. I see most everything.” He knocked back the shot, clacked it on the bar as the door grated and light flashed in the mirror. “Don’t see much of that, though.”

Adrian dragged his gaze from the mirror in time to see daylight spill around a skinny kid. He was thirteen or fourteen, one arm shaking from the weight of the gun in his hand. Nathan slipped a hand under the bar, and the kid said, “Please don’t.”

Nathan put his hand back on the bar, and everything about him got serious and quiet and still. “I think you’re in the wrong place, son.”

“Just … nobody move.”

He was a small boy, maybe five and a half feet tall with fine bones and uncut nails. The eyes were electric blue, the face so familiar that Adrian felt sudden pressure in his chest.

It couldn’t be …

But it was.

It was the mouth and the hair, the narrow wrists and the line of his jaw. “Oh, my God.”

“You know this kid?” Nathan asked.

“I think I do.”

The boy was attractive, but drawn. His clothes might have fit two years ago but at the moment showed dirty socks and a lot of wrist. His gaze was wide and terrified. The gun looked huge in his hand. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.”

He stepped inside, and the door swung shut behind him. Adrian slipped off the stool and showed both hands. “Jesus, you look just like her.”

“I said don’t move.”

“Just take it easy, Gideon.”

“How do you know my name?”

Adrian swallowed hard. He’d not seen the boy since he was an infant, but would know his features anywhere. “You look like your mother. God, even your voice…”

“Don’t act like you know my mother.” The gun trembled.

Adrian spread his fingers. “She was a lovely woman, Gideon. I would never hurt her.”

“I said don’t talk about her.”

“I didn’t kill her.”

“That’s a lie.”

The gun shook. The hammer clicked twice.

“I knew your mother, Gideon. I knew her better than you think. She was gentle and kind. She wouldn’t want this, not for you.”

“How would you know what she’d want?”

“I just do.”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“Of course you have a choice.”

“I made a promise. It’s what a man would do. Everybody knows that.”

“Gideon, please…”

The boy’s face pinched up, and the gun shook harder as his fingers tightened on the grip. His eyes grew bright, and Adrian, in that instant, didn’t know whether to be terrified or sad.

“I’m begging you, Gideon. She wouldn’t want this. Not you and me. Not like this.”

The gun rose an inch, and Adrian saw it all in the boy’s eyes, the hatred and fear and loss. Beyond that, he had time for a single thought, and it was the name of the boy’s mother—
Julia—
that slipped, once, through Adrian’s mind before thunder spat out from behind the bar and slapped a red hole on the boy’s chest. The impact pushed Gideon back a step as his gun hand dropped and blood spread thick as oil through the weave of his shirt.

“Oh.” He looked more surprised than hurt, his mouth open as he found Adrian’s eyes, and his knees failed.

“Gideon!” Adrian crossed the room in three strides. He kicked the gun away and dropped to his knees beside the boy.

Blood pulsed from the wound. The kid looked blank-eyed and stunned. “It hurts.”

“Shhh. Lie still.” Adrian stripped off his jacket, balled it against the wound. “Call 911.”

“I saved your life, brother.”

“Please!”

Nathan lowered a small, silver pistol and picked up the phone. “You remember that when the cops come.” He cradled the receiver, and dialed 911. “I shot that boy to save your life.”

4

Elizabeth’s house had always been a sanctuary. Neat and trim, it filled a narrow lot on the historic side of town, a small Victorian under spreading trees that kept the lawn shaded and green. She lived alone, but the place was such a perfect reflection of what she loved about life that she never felt lonesome there. No matter the case or the politics or the collateral damage, stepping through the front door had always allowed her to turn off the job. She could study the oil paintings on the walls, trail her fingers along rowed books or the woodcarvings she’d collected since she was a girl. The house had always been an escape. That was the rule, and it had worked every month of her adult life until now.

Now, the house felt like wood and glass and stone.

Now, it was just a place.

Thoughts like that kept her up most of the night, thoughts of the house and her life, of dead men and the basement. By four o’clock, it was all about Channing, and those feelings spun mostly on the things Elizabeth had done wrong.

She’d made so many mistakes.

That was the difficult truth, and it pursued her until finally, at dawn, she slept. Yet, even then she dreamed and twitched and woke with a sound in her throat so animal it frightened her.

Five days …

She felt her way to the bathroom sink, splashed water on her face.

Damn.

When the nightmare let go, she sat at the kitchen table and stared at a manila file that was old and thumbed and dangerous enough to get her fired if it was ever found in her house. She’d spent three hours with it the day before, a dozen more the week before that. She’d had it since Adrian Wall’s conviction. Except for newspaper clippings and photographs she’d taken herself, it was an exact copy of the Julia Strange murder file that was stored, now, somewhere in the district attorney’s office.

Flipping to a sheaf of photographs, she took out a picture of Adrian. He was in dress blues, younger than she was now. Handsome, she thought, with the kind of clear-eyed determination most cops lose after a few years. The next shot was of Adrian in plainclothes, then another of him on the courthouse steps. She’d taken that one before his trial and liked the way light hung on his face. He looked more the way she felt now, a little worn and a little jaded. But still handsome and straight, she thought, still the cop she’d always admired.

Elizabeth flipped through newspaper coverage and got to the autopsy photos of Julia Strange, a young woman whose murder rocked the county the way few other murders ever had. Young and elegant in life, her beauty was stripped away by bloodlessness, a crushed throat, and the morgue’s bright lights. But she’d been lovely once, and strong enough to put up a fight. Signs of it were all over the kitchen: a broken chair and an upended table, a spray of shattered dishes. Elizabeth riffled through photographs of the kitchen, but saw the same things she always saw: cabinets and tile, a playpen in the corner, photographs on the fridge.

There were the usual reports, and she knew them thoroughly. Lab work, fingerprints, DNA. She skimmed the family history: the wife’s early days as a model, Gideon’s birth, the husband’s job. They’d been a perfect family in so many ways: young and attractive, not rich, but doing okay. Interviews with family friends said she was a wonderful mother, that the husband was devoted. Only one witness statement was in the file, and Elizabeth had read that a hundred times as well. An elderly neighbor heard an altercation around three in the afternoon, but she was bedridden, infirm, and not much help beyond establishing a basic timeline.

Elizabeth was a rookie when the murder happened—a uniformed officer four months into the job—but she had discovered Julia’s body on the altar of a church seven miles from the edge of town. That it was Elizabeth’s childhood church was an uncomfortable but otherwise irrelevant fact. It was a body in a building, a crime scene like any other. Elizabeth couldn’t know the effect its discovery would have on her own life. On her parents. Her church. Elizabeth had come that day to see her mother and discovered the body of Julia Strange, instead. She’d been choked to death in the most violent manner, the body undressed, then laid out on the altar and draped to the chin in white linen. No signs of sexual trauma were found, but skin discovered beneath her fingernails contained Adrian Wall’s DNA. Further investigation discovered Adrian’s prints on one of the shattered glasses in the kitchen and on a beer can found in a roadside ditch near the church. A court-ordered medical exam discovered scratches on the back of his neck. Once the prosecutor established that Adrian knew the victim, it was a hard, fast slide to conviction. He had no alibi and no explanation. Even his own partner testified against him.