The Prophet (21 page)

Dean scribbled on his pad and said, “The two cards, the football card and the business card. Why would he have sent those?”

“To make me suffer. He was fascinated by the idea that I said I’d found peace with my sister’s murder. He took issue with that.”

“You don’t believe it was designed to make you feel doubt?”

Kent paused. “Doubt in what?”

“Gideon Pearce’s guilt.”

The silence built and hung. Kent swallowed, leaned forward, and said, “I feel no doubt about the guilt of Gideon Pearce.”

“I didn’t ask what you felt. I asked if it was possible that’s what he was going for.”

“Perhaps.” The twenty-two-year-old football card was already haunting him, because it had come from one of two places: the evidence collection from Gideon Pearce’s case, or the inside of Kent’s childhood home. They’d printed a few thousand of those
cards in 1989, but there were only two in the world with the number 18 inked on the back in his dead sister’s handwriting. It was Kent’s number. There had been no football card for him in 1989 because he was not all-state, was not even a starter, but she hadn’t wanted him to feel left out, so she kept two of Adam’s cards and wrote Kent’s number on both. One had been in her room when she went missing. The second had been found with Gideon Pearce after she was murdered.

“So the recollections in the letter,” Dean said, “they’re accurate? This doesn’t strike you as a possible imitation?”

“Absolutely not. They’re accurate. I talk about forgiveness, faith, all of the things that were mentioned in the letter. About Gideon Pearce. I invite them to contact me if I can help.”

“What about your brother?”

“Pardon?”

“Do you talk about him during these visits? The cards are directly connected to him.”

“I don’t know if I used his name. I talked about what my family went through. And the card, I talked about that. The way it felt when we learned about Pearce.”

“Are you aware of any people you might consider enemies of your brother? Deep-seated problems, threats, things of that nature?”

“I don’t know what that has to do with Clayton Sipes.”

“Probably nothing. But we can’t just shut off all other possibilities. Clayton Sipes can be considered a suspect, but right now all we’ve got is your recollection of an odd conversation. So let’s look wider, please. Are you aware of anyone who has problems with your brother?”

“No. I’m sure in his business there have been some.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He brings people back to jail. I would imagine many of them resent that.”

“True. But that’s not a personal thing, is it?”

“No. I’m just saying… listen, I am not qualified to talk about my brother’s life.”

“You’re not close, I take it.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Kent felt his jaw clench. “Personal differences.”

“Any particular incident? Something to do with Gideon Pearce?”

The sound of the name put a chill through Kent. Always had, always would.

“Gideon Pearce is dead.”

“I understand that.”

“Then why would you ask—”

“Someone gave you a football card identical to the one found in his possession after your sister was murdered. He seems relevant.”

“Okay. All right. Yeah, it had to do with Pearce. I went to see him, in prison, long after he had been convicted. My brother didn’t approve. He came by my house to express that, and… we got into it pretty good.”

A scar along the left side of Kent’s lip, which stood out more when he smiled, a stark white line, testified to just how well they’d gotten into it. Nine stitches had been required. Beth still recalled it uneasily.
He could have killed you, Kent. I really thought he could have killed you.

“So Sipes would have been aware of the football card, your brother’s feelings about your visit with Pearce, all of that? You speak about this in your visits?”

“Yes. I describe how Pearce laughed it off.”

Kent could see the son of a bitch so clearly, the gap-toothed smile.
I forgive you,
Kent had told him.
I want you to understand what you have taken from me, and so many others, but before we
begin with that, I need you to understand that I forgive you, and I would also like to say a prayer.

The laughter had started then, and Kent remembered a drifting sensation, his anchors loosening and sliding free into a current of wild rage, and he’d bowed his head and prayed and waited for the anchors to catch again as Pearce laughed and laughed, a truly delighted sound.

“Coach?” Robert Dean said. “Mr. Austin?”

He lifted his head now, having bowed it again unaware, and nodded. “Yeah. I’m good.”

T
HERE WERE FOUR CARS—
three cruisers and one unmarked detective’s car—parked on the street when Adam arrived. A photographer knelt on the sidewalk. He wasn’t in uniform, and he was keeping his distance from the cops. Media. As Adam exited the Jeep and went through the yard to the front door, one of the officers shouted at him, and a flash popped from the photographer and Adam ignored them both and went into the house. Stan Salter was waiting for him, warrant in hand.

“We tried to call you first. Let’s talk it through.”

“Talk it through? You’re in my house.”

“With legal authority and sound reasoning. Let’s talk about the reasoning.”

“You consider me a suspect?” Adam said. “You out of your mind?”

“Didn’t say suspect. Said we have sound reasoning for a search. Could have talked with you about it before now, if you’d answer the phone or return a call. We need to—”

There were two officers moving through the kitchen and into the living room, and Adam had been watching them, but when
he heard the sounds from upstairs he lost all track of Salter’s words, and the pulse was pounding behind his eyes again.

“What are they doing up there?”

“Their job. Let’s you and I step outside and talk. Or if you want to watch them now and then talk, fine. I won’t stop you from watching. But either way, we’re going to need a level of cooperation from you that we haven’t received to this point.”

Adam started for the stairs. Salter moved to block him but Adam shrugged that off easily and kept on going. He could see that the door was open. Marie’s door. Salter’s voice was chasing him but it had no meaning, the words were part of a surrounding fog, the only clear shape in the gathering mist was Marie’s open door.
KNOCKS REQUIRED, TRESPASSING FORBIDDEN!

He reached the top of the stairs and turned and then he saw them in there, two of them, one taking pictures and the other kneeling beside Marie’s closet. He had blond hair and wore gloves and he was moving things out of the closet and stacking them on the floor. A tower filled with cassette tapes was in his hand. Her favorite on top, the one that had been released that summer, her last summer, the one that they’d all listened to, Adam and Marie and Kent, Tom Petty’s
Full Moon Fever.
She’d loved that tape. “Free Fallin’,” “Love Is a Long Road,” “I Won’t Back Down.” The last was the song they blasted in the locker room from start to finish that championship season.
You could stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won’t back down…

“Free Fallin’,” though, that was Marie’s favorite. She had a decent voice but was too shy to sing in front of people, so Adam and Kent would constantly try to catch her at it, always embarrassing her to a flushed silence and a defensive
What? It’s a great song!

Now, twenty-two years later, Adam watched as the blond detective slipped the tape out, checking the ancient cassettes as if they were of value to his current investigation.

“Put that down,” Adam said. Salter had caught up to him and was standing in the doorway, one hand on Adam’s arm, and the grip was supposed to be firm but the contact meant nothing to Adam. The blond detective on the floor looked up at them.

“We’re just executing the warrant, sir. Lieutenant Salter can explain. Nothing’s—”

“Put that the fuck down,” Adam said, and then he stepped through the door and into the room, dragging Salter with him, and though his words were soft and his steps were slow, the detective rose abruptly, saying, “Lieutenant?” in an uneasy voice.

He still had
Full Moon Fever
in his hand. It did not belong in his hand. Adam reached for it, and when he did, Salter made the first truly aggressive attempt to keep him back, grabbing his bicep and pulling his arm down. Trying to, at least. Adam twisted free, and the motion frightened the cop who held the tape. He said, “Hey, hey, relax,” and then he took a fast step backward and banged into the bookshelf.

On top of the bookshelf was Tito, Marie’s prize, the stained-glass turtle she’d spent weeks on her last summer, coming home with cut fingertips and pride as she worked those multicolored speckles into his oversized shell. The turtle tottered, fell forward, hit the hardwood floor.

Shattered.

It broke in one quick snap, but the sound did not end the same way in Adam’s brain. It came on and on in echoing waves, windows blowing out in a skyscraper, too many to count, too many to comprehend.

All he heard was shattering glass when he broke the blond cop’s nose.

As the cop went down the blood sprayed from his nose and found Marie’s bed. The new comforter, the one she’d had changed from pink to white, because she was becoming a woman and she wanted the room to look elegant, not childish. The one
Adam hand-washed once a month even though nothing had so much as creased it in nearly two decades. Crimson bloomed across its surface as Stan Salter shouted for help and slammed into Adam’s back, trying to get some sort of combat hold on his arm and neck. He didn’t succeed. Adam shook free and took a handful of the blond cop’s shirt and jerked him back to his feet, then pivoted and threw him toward the door, wanting him out, needing him out, trespassers were forbidden in this room, couldn’t he fucking read? Another cop was already coming through the door, though, and they banged together and both of them went into the wall and then the blond one was down on his knees dripping blood on Marie’s floor.

Just before he felt the first staggering jolt from the Taser, Adam became aware of his own voice, slow and soft, saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

He hoped that she could hear over the chaos. Then the volts found his spine again and climbed giddily up into his brain and he was falling and the world was falling with him, spinning down onto the floor, and despite the indescribable electric pain he felt a sliver of glass enter his palm, one of the shards from the stained-glass turtle, cutting deep, sinking fast.

I’m sorry.

K
ENT SHOULD HAVE ANTICIPATED
it. Should have prepared the police for his brother’s reaction. Or prepared his brother for the police visit. One or the other. Instead he’d just given them the key and sent them out there to look for the card. When his interview was interrupted by the news that Adam had been arrested for assaulting a police officer, he did not need details in order to understand.

“They were in her room, weren’t they?” he said.

“Whose room?”

“My sister’s,” Kent said.

TRESPASSING FORBIDDEN! THANKS, BOYS!

“I’m not certain. Do you intend to bail him out?”

Kent blinked at him in surprise. “That’s what he does.”

“For other people, yes. He might need help when the situation is reversed.”

It was so obvious that it was embarrassing, but somehow Kent had just expected that Adam could handle the process on his own.

“I guess he’ll need me to, yeah,” he said. But who was he
supposed to call? Adam bailed people out; Adam was the one you called.

Salter unlocked the handcuffs and tossed them on the table, then went and sat on the other side and ran a hand over his face and through his close-cropped hair.

“The hell were you thinking, Austin? It was a damned search warrant, and we had permission from your brother, who is one of the homeowners. What were you thinking?”

“That’s the wrong way to back me off,” Adam said. “You don’t like me doing what I’m doing, but trying to intimidate me by forcing bullshit warrants and—”

“It was not a bullshit warrant.”

“I suspect I’ll disagree on that point.”

“Whoever killed Rachel Bond may have been in your home,” Salter said, voice quiet.

Adam had always played football fast, had required a high motor, a sense of savagery. But there were times, few and far between, when the gears stuck. When everything went slow and syrupy. Those were the times when the offense fooled him completely, when he roared into a play expecting one thing only to be given another. Now, staring at Salter, he felt it again.

“Explain that,” he said.

“Someone wrote your brother a letter. Included in it were two items: your business card and a football card with your picture and what appears to be your sister’s handwriting.”

Adam said, “Top left drawer of the desk.”

“What?”

“Top left drawer of the desk. That’s where it should be. Is it not?”

Salter shook his head.

Under the table, Adam folded his hands like a man in prayer,
squeezed the left tightly against the right, trying to find the old ache, to use the pain to ground the electrical current of his rage. The bones had knitted so long ago, though, and he could not call up the pain now.

“It was sent to Kent?” he said.

“It was left for your brother, yes. We’re not prepared to say that it was from the killer, but we have to acknowledge—”

“Yes, it was. You know damned well that it was.”

Salter looked at him, tapping a pencil on the edge of the table, and said, “Who could have gotten into the house?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who is in it regularly, other than you?”

“No one.”

“Come on. Give me a starting point, no matter how vague. Friends, visitors. Who comes over to watch a ballgame or have a beer, who—”

“No one,” Adam said again. “That house is not where I socialize.”

“Your brother has a key.”

“Yeah. The one he gave to you.”