“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.