Redemption Road: A Novel (23 page)

“I never … I wasn’t…”

The old lawyer nudged her with a shoulder. “I imply no impropriety. And completely understand why a woman might feel that way. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”

She shrugged once, then shifted on the bench and wrapped her arms around a single knee. “How about you?”

“Visit? No. Never.”

“Why not?”

He sighed and stared at the courthouse as another man might stare at an old lover. “I tried at first, but he wouldn’t see me. Everyone hurt. There was nothing to say. Maybe he blamed me for the verdict. I never found out. After that first month, it became a matter of simple avoidance. I told myself I’d try again, then a week went by, and then another. I found reasons to avoid that side of town, the prison, even the road that would take me there. I made up lies and stories, told myself he understood, that I was old and done with the law, and that the relationship had been purely professional. Every day I whittled at the truth of my feelings, buried them deep because it hurt like hell, all of it.” He shook his head, but kept his eyes on the courthouse. “Adrian was there because of my inadequacy. That’s a hard truth for a man like me to accept. So, maybe I drank too much and slept too little. Maybe I turned from my wife and friends and all that ever mattered to me as a man and a lawyer. I lost myself in the guilt because Adrian was, perhaps, the finest man I’d ever represented, and I knew he’d never come out the same. After that, the hatred came like a thief.”

“He doesn’t hate you, Faircloth.”

“I was referring to myself. To the power of self-loathing.”

“Do you still feel that way?”

“Now? No.”

Elizabeth looked away from the lie. The old man had hurt for a long time. He still did. “How long until he’s out?”

“I’ll post the bond,” Faircloth said. “They’ll drag their feet on principle. A few hours, I imagine. He can come home with me, if he likes. I have room and spare clothes and life, still, in these old bones. He can stay as long as he likes.” The old man struggled to his feet, and Elizabeth guided him back to the sidewalk. “If you’ll help me to my car. It’s there.” He pointed with the cane, and she saw a black car with a driver by the rear door. They moved down the walk, but Faircloth stopped a few feet from the bumper, one hand white on the cane, the other still on her arm. “He did not seem well, did he?”

“No.” Elizabeth frowned. “He did not.”

“The perils of confinement, I suppose.” The driver opened the door, but the lawyer waved him off, a sudden twinkle in his eye. “Why don’t you come by the house tonight? Perhaps between the two of us we can make him feel less forgotten. Shall we say drinks at eight, dinner after?”

She looked away, and he said, “Please, do come. The house is large, and the two of us, alone, insufferably male. It would be so much livelier with your company.”

“Then, I’ll be there.”

“Beautiful. Excellent.” He tilted his head skyward and breathed deeply. “You know, I’d almost forgotten how it feels. Fresh air. Open sky. I should appreciate it more, I suppose, today being the first time in eighty-nine years I’ve risked my own involuntary confinement.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s illegal to practice law without a license, my dear.” He flashed a wink and an old man’s wicked grin. “Mine has been expired for ages.”

13

He watched the courthouse from a distance and recognized so many faces: the police, the lawyer, even some of the reporters. It was like that when you’d lived in a town as long as he had, when you knew people. He kept his eyes on the woman, though, on the way she moved and kept her eyes down and touched the old man’s elbow.

Elizabeth.

Liz.

So many years, he thought. So many times he’d laid up in the dark knowing it would end with her.

Did he have the strength to do it?

He rolled the idea around his mind, taking it apart, putting it back together. Everyone else had been a stranger. He knew the names, yes, where they lived and why he chose them: a multitude of women who, in the end, were as blank to him as water in a ditch.

Things now were getting complicated.

Same town.

Familiar faces.

He settled lower in the seat, watching the line of her jaw, the angle of her shoulders. When she put the lawyer in the limousine, she looked his way but didn’t see him up the street, safe in the car. He watched her walk away and pictured the girl who would be next. The thought made him sick, but it always did.

When the nausea passed, he started the car, drove six blocks, and stopped at the curb. Beyond the glass, children ran and played under the gaze of the day-care staff. Most of the women were used up. They slumped on benches and smoked cigarettes under trees. The woman he’d chosen was not like that. She stood beside the slide, smiling as she held a little boy’s hand. He was six, maybe, small and happy even though his parents were at work, and none of the other children looked at him twice. He went down the slide, and the woman caught him when he hit the dirt, laughing as she spun him so hard his heels flicked up and showed the bottoms of his shoes.

If he had to say why he’d chosen her, he probably couldn’t. The look was wrong, except for the eyes, of course, and maybe the line of her jaw. But she lived in the same town as Adrian, and Adrian was part of this.

Still …

He watched for another minute. The way she moved, the eyelashes, black on her skin. She had a good laugh and was pretty and tilted her head a certain way. He wondered if she was smart, too, if she would see through his lies or understand the church as it rose in the distance.

In the end, it didn’t matter, so he pictured how it would be: the white linen and warm skin, the bow of her neck and the communion as she died. He felt sick again, thinking about it; but already his eyes were brimming.

This time, it would work.

This time, he would find her.

*   *   *

He waited until it was dark, and she was home alone. For an hour, he watched the lights in her house. Then he circled the block and watched for an hour more. There was no movement in the night. No walkers or porch-sitters or idle curious. By nine o’clock he was certain.

She was alone in the house.

He was alone on the street.

Starting the car, its lights off, he pulled forward, then backed into her driveway. The neighboring house was close on that side, but his car settled above an oily spot only ten steps from the porch. There were bushes, trees, pools of blackness.

On the porch, he saw her through the glass. On the sofa. Legs curled. He tapped on the glass and watched her eyebrows crease as she came hesitantly to the door. He lifted a hand so she saw it through the pane: a friendly wave from a friendly face. The door opened a few inches.

“May I help you?” A trace of doubt flickered, but she would overcome it. She was young and polite and Southern. Girls like her always overcame it.

“I’m sorry to bother you. I know it’s late, but it’s about the day-care center.”

The door opened another six inches, and he saw that she was barefoot in jeans, and that she’d removed her bra. The T-shirt was worn thin, so he looked away, but not before she frowned and the door’s gap narrowed.

“The center?”

“There’s a problem. I know it’s sudden. I can drive, if you like.”

“I’m sorry. Do I know you?”

Of course, she didn’t. He had nothing to do with the center. “Mrs. McClusky is not answering her phone or her door. I guess she’s out.” He smiled one of his good smiles. “I just naturally thought of you.”

“Who are you again?”

“A friend of Mrs. McClusky.”

She looked at her feet—a palm on each thigh—and it seemed as if it might be that easy. “I need shoes.”

“You don’t need shoes.”

“What?”

That was stupid. Stupid! Maybe he was more nervous than he thought, or more frightened of failure. “I’m sorry.” He laughed, thought it was good. “I don’t know what I’m saying. Of course, you need shoes.”

She looked past his smile and saw the car in the drive. It was dirty and dented and streaked with rust. He used it because he could burn it if he had to or drop it in the river. But it caused these problems.

“We should hurry.” He tried again because headlights rose two blocks down the street. Getting the girl in the car was taking too long.

The door closed another inch. “Maybe I should call Mrs. McClusky.”

“By all means. Of course. I’m just trying to help.”

“What did you say the problem was?”

She turned into the house, going for the phone. The headlights were a block away and would hit the porch in seconds. He couldn’t be there when it happened. “I didn’t exactly.”

She said something about waiting on the porch, but he was already committed. He caught the door, two steps behind her. The phone was across the room, but she didn’t go for the phone. She spun and hit the door and drove it into his face. He snatched at her shirt, caught fabric, and felt it tear. But she wasn’t running. She lurched sideways, one hand behind the door as she pulled a bat from the crack, then spun and swung it at his head. He threw up an arm, caught the blow on his elbow, and felt a burst of yellow heat. She tried again, but he stepped back, let it pass, then snapped a palm under her chin, clacking her jaw closed and making her eyes roll white.

She swayed, and for a split second he was amazed by the quiet ferocity of her attack. No screaming or crying.

But it was over.

He caught her with one arm and felt the tiny waist, the flutter. Mosquitoes whined as he moved down the stairs to open the hatchback and make space. Back inside, he wiped every surface he’d touched: the edge of the door, the bat. When it was done, he checked the street and carried the girl to the car.

She fit perfectly.

Candy in a box.

14

At eight o’clock Elizabeth found Faircloth Jones on the porch of his grand old house. He was alone, with a drink in one hand and a cigar in the other. “Elizabeth, my dear.” He rose to press a papery cheek against her own. “If you are looking for our friend, I fear time and circumstance have stolen him away.” The porch was dark but for open windows and squares of light. Long-untended box bushes pressed against the rails. Down the bluff, the river moved with the sound of a whispering crowd. “May I offer you something? I know it’s not the evening I promised, but I’ve opened a fine Bordeaux, and there’s Belvedere, of course. I also have a lovely Spanish cheese.”

“I don’t understand. Where has Adrian gone?”

“Home, I fear, and on foot.” Faircloth tilted his head down the hill. “It’s only a few miles if you know the trails that follow the river. I dare say he knows them well.”

Elizabeth sat in a rocking chair, and the old lawyer did the same. “You mentioned circumstance.”

“Tight spaces and paranoia, my dear. I brought our friend home as intended, but he was unwilling to remain under my roof or between my walls. Nothing uncivilized, mind you. Lots of thanks and kindness; but, he wasn’t going to have it. Apparently, he has every intention of sleeping beneath the stars, and the risk of another trespass charge is no deterrent. Love of place. I believe Adrian suffers unduly.”

“He’s also claustrophobic.”

“Ah, that’s very good.” The lawyer’s eyes narrowed as he smiled. “Not many people ever figured that out.”

“I saw him in lockdown.” Elizabeth pressed her hands between her knees. “It wasn’t pretty.”

“He spoke to me of reasons, once, and I had nightmares for a year, after.”

“Tell me.”

“Adrian had family in some farm town up in Pennsylvania. His mother’s parents, I believe. It was a little place, regardless, all cornfields and trucks and dusty brawls. He was six, I think, or seven, wandering about on a neighbor’s farm when he went down an abandoned well shaft and wedged tight at sixty feet. They didn’t find him until lunch the next day. Even then, it took another thirty hours to get him out alive. There’re newspaper accounts out there somewhere if you care to dig them up. Front-page stuff. The pictures alone would break your heart. The most blank-eyed, traumatized look I’ve ever seen on a child. I don’t think he spoke for a month, after.”

Elizabeth blinked and saw Adrian as he’d been in the lockdown cell, shirtless in the dark, scarred and sweat-slicked and talking to himself. “Jesus.”

“Indeed.”

“I think I’ll have that drink.”

“Belvedere?”

“Please.” He shuffled into the house and returned with a glass that clinked as he handed it to her. “You mentioned paranoia.”

“Oh, yes.” The lawyer reclaimed his chair. “He thought we were followed from the jailhouse. A gray car. Two men. He was very agitated about it. Told me he’d seen the same car on three prior occasions. I pushed him for motive or cause, and though he refused to discuss it, he did act as if, perhaps, he knew what it was about.”

Elizabeth perked up. “Did he elaborate?”

“Not at all.”

“Was he believable?”

“His concern was. He was stoic about it, of course, but more than eager to be on his way. He did allow me to find clothes that fit, but I couldn’t coax him to linger for love or money. He stripped where we sit; asked me to burn the clothes he’d been wearing, even suggested I consider leaving for my own protection. Wanted me to stay in a hotel for a few days. The very idea.”

“Why did he think you unsafe?”

“I know only that my obstinacy upset him. He kept staring off that way.” Crybaby pointed left. “And calling me a stubborn fool of a man who was old enough to know who to trust and not. He said I should leave with him. Or, barring that, call the police. At the time, I thought his behavior the height of foolishness.”