The Prophet (12 page)

A brave girl, and a determined one.

“I’m working on it, Marie,” Adam whispered. “I’m working on it.”

It wasn’t until the words were out of his mouth that he realized he’d meant to say Rachel.

What next? Where else to look? There was the prison, possibly, but he doubted that Jason Bond would be willing to see him, and knew without question that approaching the man would trigger police attention to Adam’s quest that would only slow him down. Likewise with any effort to interview Rachel’s friends. But maybe it was time. There were not many other options.

He turned and gazed around the cottages with frustration. He’d been sure this was the right way to start. The kill site had not been random. Everything about it worked too well, from the isolation to the opportunity to send the letters from an active address but a vacant home. It had been carefully selected, and that required knowledge of the place, but none of the names Eleanor Ruzich had given him seemed promising. Who else might have known about the cottage? There were the neighbors, of course. He hadn’t pursued them yet. It would be hard to determine which cottages had actually been used recently, they were all so run-down. Except for Eleanor Ruzich’s. She had not exaggerated when she said she was alone in her efforts to keep the place in good shape.

He’d turned full circle, his back to the pond again, and was staring at the cottage.

I’ve kept ours up,
Eleanor had said. Yes, she certainly had. He called her from the dock and found her at home again. He told her he was still working on the Shadow Wood leads and was now searching for potential witnesses.

“You had some maintenance done recently,” he said. “The roof was replaced, isn’t that what you said?”

“Yes. Roof replaced this summer, the exterior painted last summer.”

“Do you recall what company did that work? It seems that the activity with your address began in the summer, so I was—”

“It wasn’t a company,” she said. “It’s a man who’s been our caretaker for years out there. He works for the hospital in some sort of maintenance job. My husband met him there.”

“What’s his name?”

“Rodney Bova,” she said. “That’s spelled B-O—”

“I know Rodney,” he said.

“You do? How?”

He hesitated, then said, “I played football with him once. A long time ago. Thanks, Mrs. Ruzich. Maybe Rodney will be able to help.”

R
ODNEY BOVA WAS A GHOST’S
name, an attachment to vague and receding memories. He’d been one of those kids who flitted around the periphery of Adam’s life but never stepped into focus.

His place among the memories had been etched by rumors and gossip. Adam couldn’t recall his face, his voice, his family, or even what position he’d played. He remembered only two things about Rodney Bova—he’d been on the team briefly, and he’d left it when he was sentenced to a juvie lockup. He had, for a short time the summer before Adam’s senior year, taken a starring role in the team’s conversation by getting himself arrested. There was a live-in camp every August, the first week of practice, the kids practicing twice a day and spending the nights in sleeping bags on the gym floor, a bonding-by-boot-camp exercise that Walter Ward designed. As Adam recalled, Bova was missing during live-in camp, and nobody was sure why, but some of the kids had heard rumors. Adam’s interest in the situation was minimal, Bova being a couple of years younger than him and not a starter. Had a contributor been arrested, had they lost a
playmaker, that would have been different. Bova was a nobody, though, and so his flare of fame had faded fast.

Rodney Bova, the caretaker at 7330 Shadow Wood Lane.

Maybe it shouldn’t have felt like so much. Maybe the mind was teasing him into believing this connection had value simply because it was the
only
connection he’d found, an unanticipated link to the past and to crime. Maybe the right thing to do was simply to give old Rodney Bova a call and ask the questions—when had he logged his hours at Shadow Wood this summer, who had he seen, which of the neighbors were talkative, which were suspicious.

Somehow, though, that didn’t feel like the move to make.

The voice that whispered in Adam’s head when he was chasing skips, the one that was usually right, was telling him to circle Rodney Bova, and do it quietly.

At least to start.

The team began approaching practice with distraction where passion belonged, and while Kent understood it, he also had to fix it.

Rachel Bond’s murder was in all of their heads, he knew that. Grief and gossip, faith and fear. The conversation inside the school would be swirling amidst those four cardinal directions right now, and it would be ceaseless. There were a few on the team—Colin Mears foremost among them—to whom the loss was truly and deeply personal. There were more to whom it was distant and would now be made personal. That strange magnetic pull of tragedy. Kent had known it too well, for too long. Classmates who’d never spoken to his sister began reminiscing over time spent with her. Strangers in town would approach him in the grocery store or at McDonald’s or on the street, tears in their eyes. Often, they wanted to touch him while they offered
their condolences. He was struck by the frequency of that—hands on the arm, pats on the back, awkward embraces. Seeking some contact with the tragedy, but minimal, of course. Minimal. As if somehow that offered a vaccination. If they got just the right amount of contact, incubated just the right amount of terror and horror in their own hearts, they’d be protected.

You had to find your refuge. The place of consistency in a world gone mad. For Kent it had been the football field. Walter Ward had understood so well what nobody else seemed to: Kent and Adam needed some level of normalcy. Had to have it. Kent did, at least. Adam started missing practices. Never missed a game, and never played better than he did down the stretch after Marie was killed, but until kickoff he was uninterested. Kent had gone the other way. Taken more reps, watched more film. Immersed himself. Ward had helped him to do that.

Now, twenty-two years removed, Kent watched Colin Mears in the receivers line, saw him glancing over his shoulder, and followed the boy’s look. Three of his teammates engaged in earnest, whispered conversation. Kent could guess the topic, if not the specifics.

He turned away, his cap pulled low, and chewed furiously on his whistle. It was a lifeguard’s whistle, soft, waterproof rubber, and he liked it because he could bite on the thing so hard that it was almost like having a mouthpiece back in, almost like having the helmet on and lining up under center with the crowd in your ears and the lights on your face.

We are going to lose,
he thought.
We are going to lose.

Byers was barking and pacing and cussing, but Byers always barked and paced and cussed, and so the kids paid him little mind. Kent watched his linebackers run through a drill, banging off the tackling sled with cursory attention, nobody coming close to earning a bruise, which made him furious—this point in the season, the point that mattered most, and they didn’t want
to hit? Then he swiveled his head and watched his offensive linemen execute what was supposed to be a zone-blocking scheme but looked like blindfolded kids being chased by bees, and he knew they were going to get beat.

Again.

Just like every other year.

Hickory Hills might not beat them, even if Chambers extended this passionless effort from the practice field to the game. But on the opposite side of the bracket waited Saint Anthony’s, a school Kent had never beaten, led by a coach, Scott Bless, Kent had never beaten. There was no team in the state he wanted to beat more desperately. In his two state championship appearances, Saint Anthony’s had marched off the field with the trophy two times.

Kent’s jaw was beginning to ache from chewing the whistle. He turned downfield, watched his receivers, who were working on snap counts, Steve Haskins trying to confuse them with a mix of cadences, making sure they’d jump only when they were supposed to, and Colin Mears bristled with energy, crisp on every play, then back in line, slapping helmets and demanding focus and providing reminders.

Kent blew the whistle, and most of the field went silent, but not enough of it. Not enough. His defensive secondary was laughing through their drill, and it was the worst kind of laughter to have on the football field. Cocky laughter. The kind that suggested they thought they’d already won, when they’d never walked off the field at the end of a season without a loss.

“This is funny to you?”
he screamed, and now he was walking toward them and everyone was backing up. “Practicing for the playoffs is entertainment? Is that what I’m to understand?”

A chorus of “no, sirs” came, but he was already turning away from them in disgust.

“Colin, Lorell, Damon! Get down here.”

In came his three senior all-state studs. When Kent stared them down, they all met the gaze, but Colin did it with hunger, almost as if he’d been hoping it would go this way. Kent understood. There was an excruciating fatigue that came when every pair of eyes that looked your way seemed to read a
FRAGILE: HANDLE WITH CARE
label on your forehead.

“What do you think of your team’s effort today?” Kent said.

There was a murmured “Not great” from Damon, a “Poor” from Lorell, and a nearly shouted “Awful, sir!” from Colin.

“So no one is impressed?”

Three heads shook.

“Anyone feel like we’re ready to win with this effort?”

“No, sir.”

“All right then. We’re going to keep at it down here, and while we do, you can hit the bleachers to demonstrate the sort of effort that you want, as captains. Move.”

They moved—off the field and through the fence and into the bleachers and began to run, six feet hammering on the aluminum in unison.

“When they see enough from you,” Kent said, turning back to his team but shouting loud enough for the benefit of the three running the bleachers, “they’ll come back down to join us.”

He saw heads turning from him, eyes drifting away, and for an instant he was enraged—they were
still
not going to give him focus?—but then he saw the police uniform by the fence, and he, too, was distracted. It was Stan Salter.

“Coach Byers, get these boys fired up,” Kent said, and then he walked over to Salter.

“How’s your team doing, Coach?”

“Could be better. How’s your investigation going?”

“Could be better.”

Kent nodded and waited. Salter had sunglasses on, and he looked from Byers up to the rattling bleachers. Damon Ritter
stumbled, slipping in the burgundy leaves that were raining silently down. That would be perfect, wouldn’t it? Kent’s best defensive player blowing out a knee running sprints to make a point to the team.

“That the Mears boy you got running?” Salter asked.

“It is.”

“How’s he holding up?”

“This will help him.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Salter nodded, took a deep breath, and said, “You spoken to your brother?”

“I have not.” Kent was still staring into the bleachers.

“I could use your help with him.”

“He’s not going to be any more cooperative with you if I’m the middleman. If anything, it will make things more difficult for you.”

“You don’t know that he’s investigating Rachel Bond’s murder, I take it.”

Kent turned to Salter, seeing his own reflection in the cop’s sunglasses.

“Investigating?”

Salter nodded. “I got a call today from a woman of… potential value to the investigation. Seems your brother went out to interview her yesterday morning, then called again today. Told her he was a private investigator. She didn’t think much of it at the time, because his name didn’t resonate with her. Then she talked it over with a friend this afternoon and realized how disturbing an answer he’d given her when she asked who he was working for.”

“Who
is
he working for?”

“His sister,” Salter said. “That’s what he told her, at least. He said he was working on behalf of his sister.”

Kent leaned on the fence, tightened his right hand around the chain link. “He said that?”

“Yes.”

Neither of them spoke then. Behind them the coaches shouted instructions and the kids grunted with effort and the tackling sleds slapped and rattled on their frames. Beside them the bleachers shook and Colin Mears screamed out encouragement as he took the steps—
Come on, show them something, show them how we do this!
The wind was pushing across the field in strong gusts, fat orange and crimson leaves tumbling.

“I would like,” Stan Salter said, “for your brother not to jeopardize my investigation. I understand that the two of you are not close. But I need you to understand that I can’t have him doing what he’s doing.”

“On behalf of his sister,” Kent repeated. “That’s what he told her?”

“Yes.”

“And what did his sister want, Lieutenant?” Kent’s voice was choked, the whistle back in the corner of his mouth now, teeth grinding against it. “Do you know?”

“Suspects.”

“Suspects.” Kent nodded. Spit the whistle out. Looked away. “Tell you what, Lieutenant. You let me talk to my brother.”

“Thought you didn’t do much of that.”

“I don’t. But it’s time.”

I
N THE YEARS SINCE HE’D
faded into the mists of memory, Rodney Bova had drifted out of Chambers County and then returned, with stops at three jails and one prison in between.

The first bust—at least the first available to the public, his juvenile record was protected—had been in 1994, for selling weed. He did thirty days in jail in Sandusky and then got out and migrated back east, pausing in Cleveland to be arrested for trafficking with an inmate at the Cuyahoga County Jail and sentenced to three months. Back out again, long enough to sniff the fresh air and decide he didn’t like the smell, and then through the revolving door and into the Lorain County Jail for a three-count conviction involving assault, drug possession, and an unlicensed firearm after he was arrested during a bar fight. The judge in that case had less patience with young Rodney and sent him to prison for an eighteen-month stay. Mansfield Correctional had been his home from the autumn of 1998 to the spring of 2000.