The Prophet (22 page)

“No one else? You couldn’t call someone to, say, let you in if you were locked out?”

Adam started to answer, then stopped. Salter’s eyes glimmered at the hesitation, having seen Adam observe first the bait and then the trap.

“The letter went to Kent. Not to me.”

“Correct. But the football card came from your house. That’s your own statement, not mine. You believe it was in the desk.”

“Yes, it was.”

“Okay. So let’s stick with that. Who else has a key?”

“Chelsea.”

“Chelsea Salinas. Let’s talk about her a little, yes. She has access to the home?”

“It’s not worth discussing, Salter. This has nothing to do with Chelsea.”

“But she does have access to the home?”

“She’s got a key.”

“Now, we’re being honest here, so let’s avoid the bullshit and get this out in the open—Chelsea Salinas is a married woman, and you’re sleeping with her. And her husband is in jail. I believe you held bonds on him in the past?”

Adam felt a bristle of anger. “Travis Leonard is in jail,” he said. “You’re right about that. So he’s not a suspect, and this isn’t worth discussing.”

“Does he know that you’re sleeping with his wife?”

Adam stared at him. It was the first time anyone had directly challenged him on his relationship with Chelsea. Of course Salter would know, of course he’d have done that much checking, and it was not a hard thing to determine, but still it made Adam uncomfortable.

“Not to the best of my knowledge. She hasn’t told him. I haven’t told him.”

“We’ll have to look at it.”

“He’s in
jail,
” Adam repeated.

“He has friends who are not.”

“Friends who would kill a seventeen-year-old girl to, what, screw with my head? Punish me? No, Salter. No, that’s not the scent you want to chase. It’s the wrong direction.”

Salter didn’t respond.

“The letter,” Adam said, “went to Kent.”

“I understand that.”

“Rachel’s contact with her father started from Kent’s suggestion. Am I correct?”

Salter gave a small nod.

“Then why aren’t you interviewing Kent?”

“Other people are.”

“Who?”

“We have multiple investigators working on—”

“You’re the lead, Salter. And you’ve been at my house, and now you’re here with me. That’s a waste of time that you can’t afford. You should be talking to my brother.”

“The FBI is talking to your brother.”

Adam opened his mouth to say more, then shut it. He was finally understanding what Salter was looking for. He was not a dumb man, was Salter, he was probably a pretty damned good detective, in fact, far too smart not to understand that if Rachel Bond’s killer had wanted to antagonize Jason Bond or Adam Austin, he would have gone directly to them. Instead, he’d gone to Kent. It was about Kent. It had been from the start.

But why?

“They’re talking to him,” Salter said, watching Adam, “and you and I can talk about him. You have any thoughts on people who would want to take this sort of head shot at your brother?”

Adam nodded. “Sure. Pick a murderer. He’s made friends with plenty of them.”

“Sounds like that bothers you.”

“Yes. He started with Gideon Pearce. It bothered me then, and it continues to bother me.”

“My understanding is that you threatened to kill Mr. Pearce.”

“No,” Adam said. “I
promised
to do it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t given the chance.”

“Your feelings on that situation… who have you discussed them with? Who understood the depth of your feelings about him?”

“Who understood the depth of my feelings about the man who murdered my sister?” Adam stared at him. “You think I needed to
discuss
those feelings to have them understood?”

“I’m asking. Who did you talk about the idea with?”

“My father. Who is dead. And my mother. Who is dead.”

And my brother,
he thought,
who is not dead. And who is currently with the FBI. I’m not, but he is. So when the FBI floated in here and pulled rank, they went to Kent. Why? Because they think he’s of more importance than me.

“Do you know if anyone you’ve held bond on ended up meeting your brother in prison? On his, um, speaking tours?”

Adam studied him. “No. Was that indicated in the letter?”

“It was not.”

“But the prison visits are important to you?”

“It’s just a question, Austin.” But Salter’s eyes danced away when he said that.

I
F CHELSEA SALINAS WAS ANY
happier to see Kent than he was to see her, she hid it well. There was a moment of frigid silence when she opened the door for him, and when he put out his hand, she hesitated. Held his eyes the whole time—she’d always been steady like that, so contained and cool, he remembered her at Marie’s funeral, remembered thinking,
I wish that bitch would at least cry—
but seemed not to trust his hand. Finally she took it, though, her grip stronger than half of his defensive backs’, and said, “He doesn’t want you to be involved, but you have to be.”

“It’s a felony, right? What he was charged with?”

“Right now.”

“It changes?”

“He can plead it down. He doesn’t want you to have to deal with it, but they set the bond high, and he’s got to put the house up. He can’t do that without you. Because you’re both—”

“I understand the situation with our house,” Kent said. He willed down the anger. He’d put so much behind him, he’d looked Gideon Pearce in the eye and told the man he was forgiven, and
somehow the idea of doing the same with Chelsea Salinas seemed an impossible challenge. Terribly unfair, he understood that and always had, but the heart was not a fair thing, that was why you had to fight it. The heart was not pure; it required resistance. Demanded it. Follow your heart, people said, but people were wrong. Control your heart. That was the rule.

Adam wouldn’t have left her before you were there,
Kent thought, studying the woman.
He had his head on straight until you came along, he made the right decisions, he was devoted to the right things. There was never a more protective older brother in the world than Adam. Then you arrived, and he drove past her with you in the car, he drove right past her in the dark and the cold and you sat and watched and let it happen. Caused it to happen.

But Chelsea had been seventeen, too. Why couldn’t he remember that?

“So what do I need to do?” he said.

She walked past him and around the desk. She still looked good, tall and lean and firm, and if she covered up the tattoos and took the damned rings out of her eyebrow she’d be a beautiful woman instead of having that sad look of the middle-aged trying to preserve a fading and forgotten youth.
You’re almost forty,
he wanted to say.
Why do you insist on looking like a roadie? It’s not even fifty degrees out and still you’re wearing a tank top?

She sat behind the desk, pushed her dark hair back over her ears, and said, “You really don’t like me, do you Kent?”

For some reason his first instinct was to tell her to call him Coach. Or Mr. Austin. Or sir. He simply didn’t like the sound of his first name on her lips.

Instead he said, “I don’t even know you.”

“You did once.”

“Not really. Now would you please tell me what I need to do?”

She looked at him for a moment, her gaze hardening, and
said, “I wish you didn’t have to do a thing. I should be able to cover it. I’d put up my own house, but…”

“But it’s not your house. It belongs to your husband.”

For the first time, her granite façade showed fissures, and she glanced away, began shuffling through paperwork on the desk.

“You’ll have to sign over your share of the house. It’s not as if anything will happen to it. You won’t lose anything unless Adam skips, and that won’t happen, obviously. They set the bond very high. Higher than I’ve seen for similar cases. It’s because of the publicity that will be around this, probably.”

“How high?”

“A hundred thousand. There’s a cash surety, too. Ten thousand. We’ve got enough liquid cash for that. We can’t cover the whole thing without the property, though. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. You didn’t punch a police officer in the face.”

She looked back up. “He’s struggling with this. Do you understand how much?”

“I haven’t seen him since it happened. I imagine he’s not real proud, or pleased.”

“I don’t mean what happened today. I mean with that girl, with Rachel Bond. He’s breaking under it. Do you realize that? Do you talk to him enough to see it?”

“I’m seeing it happen,” Kent said. “More clearly today than before. I’ve already told him what I can tell him. I guess I can repeat it, but he ignored it then and he will ignore it now.”

There was a moment, right then, when the look she gave him could have come from Beth. A soft scrutiny that seemed too knowing, too intimate.

“Right,” she said. “So, you want to sign papers and get on your way, is that it?”

“Unless there is something else for me to do.”

She began to slide papers across to him. “No. I guess there isn’t.”

“Anything I need to understand about what I’m signing here that I don’t already?”

“It’s straightforward. Financial guarantee that he makes his scheduled appearances. As far as the court is concerned, you’re now responsible for him. Your brother’s keeper.”

He signed the last three pages faster, an illegible scrawl.

By the time Chelsea got Adam released, darkness had settled and the streetlights were on and a chill wind whistled through town. He was wearing only the T-shirt he’d had on that afternoon, when the sun was high and the fall air was warm. Chelsea had brought his jacket, handed it to him without a word. He pulled it on and started to zip it up but she slipped her arms inside the jacket and wrapped them around him and held him, put her head on his chest. For a moment he stood there awkwardly, wanting to step away from her touch, wanting to show that he did not need it, that he could bear this alone just fine, but the warmth of her and the smell of her hair got to him and he returned the embrace and lowered his face until his cheek rested against hers.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have gone there with you. I shouldn’t have let you go alone, not when I knew they were at the house.”

He tried to tell her not to worry about it, but words weren’t coming easily, and so he just stood there and breathed in the smell of her and did not speak. They swayed a little, and for a moment they could have been dancing together, cheek to cheek and happy and in love, somewhere far from here. It would have to be somewhere far from here. Then a door banged open behind them and he knew it was one of the cops and so he released her and began to walk.

“They set it awfully high,” he said. “I figured they would go fifty, not one hundred.”

“I know.”

“How’d you cover it?”

“Your house. I can’t sign over mine. I pay for it, but it’s still—”

“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

“Your brother came down. He called me; I didn’t have to call him.”

Somehow this surprised Adam. They reached her battered car, an old Corvette that had so much rear-wheel-drive torque that it was absolutely impossible to drive in northeastern Ohio winters, a decision that said—
Chelsea!—
in flashing neon lights. It had been July when she bought it, and in July it worked great, so why worry about winter?

“I’m going to need to talk to him,” Adam said as she gunned the big motor to life.

“He didn’t put up any of the cash. Just signed what he needed to for the house.”

“I’m not worried about that. It’s about the reason all of this shit came down today. Whoever killed Rachel Bond doesn’t have interest in her father. He has interest in Kent.”

She turned to him. “In
Kent?
”

“The guy is contacting Kent for a reason.” In the side view mirror Adam could see a cop standing outside the jail, watching, and he said, “Let’s get out of here.”

“You want to go home?”

“Eventually. First I want to see my brother.”

There were countless reasons that Kent loved his wife and that he’d been attracted to her from the start, but central among them was strength. The calm kind of strength, the most rare and most difficult to obtain. She’d fostered it in her career, of
course, but it had been there for as long as Kent had known her. She was unflappable.

That night he came up the stairs and found her standing on the threshold of Lisa’s room, her hand tight on the doorframe and her head bowed. He knew the nature of the prayer, saw it in every tense muscle. She was praying against fear.

“They’ll find him, Beth,” he said.

She kept her head down for a moment, then lifted it and stepped away, leaving the door cracked open even though their daughter was adamant about sleeping with the door closed.

“I know they will,” she said. She had moved to Andrew’s door, and Kent joined her there, watched his sleeping son. A nightlight kept a dim glow, shadows around it. Earlier that fall, Kent had been talking on the phone while Andrew played in the driveway with a basketball that was far too big for him. It was getting on toward evening, and when Kent turned to the window he saw his son on the pavement with pools of blood spreading away from his head.

He dropped the phone in mid-sentence, and the plastic case cracked when it hit the tile floor. Was out the door with a scream in his throat when Andrew sat up and smiled at him.

It had been shadows, nothing more. The way he was lying there in the fading light, they’d looked like blood all around him. Kent carried Andrew in, picked up the phone, and apologized, tried to joke it off. “You’ve seen the kid’s balance—it was a reasonable concern.” Then he excused himself, went into the garage, and sat on the workbench stool until his hands stopped shaking.

Not my children,
he’d thought that night, a desperate plea,
not mine, not mine, not mine. Tragedy will make its daily appearance, I know that, but please, God, not at my door. Not again.

“What are you thinking?” Beth said.