“System’s broken, Liz. You know it same as me.”
Elizabeth leaned against the wall and watched the man beside her, how light touched his face, the cigarette, the knotted fingers. “How old are they now? Your daughters?”
“Susan’s twenty-three. Charlotte’s twenty-seven.”
“They’re both in town?”
“By the grace of God.”
They smoked in silence for a moment, the lean woman, the hump-shouldered man. She thought of justice and the law and the sound his neck made when he cracked it. “Did Adrian have enemies?”
“All cops have enemies.”
“I mean inside the system. Other cops? Lawyers? Maybe someone from the DA’s office?”
“Back in the day? Maybe. For a while you couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing Adrian’s face on the screen beside one pretty reporter or another. A lot of cops resented that. You should really ask Dyer.”
“About Adrian?”
“Adrian, yeah.” James stubbed out the cigarette. “Francis always hated that guy.”
When Randolph went back inside, Elizabeth finished her cigarette, thinking. Thirteen years ago, did Adrian have enemies? Who knew? Elizabeth had been so young at the time. After the quarry, she’d managed her final year of high school and two years at the University of North Carolina before dropping out to become a cop. That made her twenty on her first day out of training, twenty and fired up and scared half to death. She wouldn’t have known the hatreds or politics; she couldn’t have.
But, she was thinking about it, now.
Following the sidewalk to the corner, she skirted a clump of pedestrians, then turned left and stepped into the street. Her car was parked a half block up on the other side. She thought about enemies; thought she was out clean.
That lasted another dozen steps.
Beckett was sitting on the hood of her car.
“What are you doing, Charlie?” She slowed in the street.
His tie hung loosely, shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow. “I could ask you the same thing.” He watched her cross the last bit of dark pavement. She gauged his face; it was inscrutable.
“I just stopped by,” she said. “You know. Checking on the case.”
“Uh-huh.”
Elizabeth stopped at the car. “Have you identified the victim?”
“Ramona Morgan. Twenty-seven years old. Local. We think she disappeared yesterday.”
“What else?”
“Pretty but shy. No serious boyfriend. A waitress she worked with thinks she might have had plans on Sunday evening. We’re trying to pin that down.”
“Time of death?”
“After Adrian got out.”
He dropped that on her like a rock; watched to see if she could handle it. “I want to talk to the medical examiner.”
“That’s not going to happen, and you know it.”
“Because of Dyer?”
“He wants you isolated from anything to do with Adrian Wall.”
“He thinks I’ll jeopardize the case?”
“Or yourself. Hamilton and Marsh are still in town.”
Elizabeth studied Beckett’s face, most of it lost in shadow. Even then, she could see the emotion below the surface. Aversion? Disappointment? She wasn’t sure. “Does Dyer hate him?”
He understood the question. She saw it. “I don’t think Francis hates anybody.”
“What about thirteen years ago? Did he hate anyone then?”
A bitter smile cut Beckett’s face. “Did James Randolph tell you that?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe you should consider the source.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning James Randolph was everything Adrian was not. Plodding. Narrow-minded. He’s been divorced three times, for God’s sake. If anyone hated Adrian, it was Randolph.”
Elizabeth tried to work that piece into the puzzle.
Beckett slid off the car and thumped the fender, changing the subject. “I didn’t know you were still driving this rust bucket.”
“Sometimes.”
“What year is it again?”
She watched his face, trying to catch the angles. Something was happening, and it wasn’t about the car. “’Sixty-seven,” she said. “I paid for it working summer jobs. It was pretty much the first real thing I ever bought by myself.”
“You were eighteen, right?”
“Seventeen.”
“That’s right. Seventeen. Preacher’s daughter.” He whistled. “Lightning in a bottle.”
“Something like that.” She didn’t mention the rest: that she’d bought the car two weeks after Adrian Wall stopped her from jumping to her death in the cold, black waters of the quarry; that she would drive it for hours on end; that for more years than she cared to count, it was the only good thing in her life. “What’s with all the questions, Charlie?”
“There was this rookie, once.” The transition was seamless, as if they’d been speaking of rookies all along. “This would be twenty-five years ago, before your time. He was a nice enough guy, but all elbows and apologies. Follow? Not cop. Not street. Anyway, this poor bastard went through the wrong door on the wrong side of town and ended up with a couple junkies on his chest and the business end of a broken bottle against his neck. They were going to cut his throat, kill him right there.”
“Then you came through the door and saved his life. It was your first shoot. I’ve heard the story.”
“Give the lady a gold star. Do you remember the name of the rookie I saved?”
“Yeah. It was Matthew…” She looked down. “Shit.”
“Finish it.”
Elizabeth shook her head.
“Come on, Liz. I gave you the gold star. Matthew what?”
“Matthew Matheny.”
“The moral of the story is that a man like Matheny feels more loyalty to the man who saved his life than to the fifty-year-old version of some dumb-ass kid who got peppered in the leg with bird shot. Did you really think I wouldn’t find out?”
“Does Dyer know?”
“Hell, no. He’d burn this place to the ground and take you with it. The only thing between here and there is me.”
“Then why are you beating me up about this?”
“Because bright and early tomorrow this street will be elbow deep in news crews from as far away as DC and Atlanta. By sunset, it’s headline news from coast to coast. We’ve got dead women draped in linen, a murderer ex-cop, a shot-up kid, and a tumbledown church straight out of some goddamn gothic masterpiece. The visuals alone will take it national. You want to get sucked into that story? Now, when the AG already wants you for double homicide?”
“Who put Adrian in lockdown?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“He’s claustrophobic. Was it Dyer?”
“Goddamn, Liz. What is it with you and stray dogs?”
“He’s not a dog.”
“Dog. Convict. Lonely ass kid. You can’t save every little thing.”
It was an old argument that felt deeper than usual. “What if someone set him up?”
“Is that what this is? Seriously? I told you, Liz. He’s a convict. Convicts are players.”
“I know. It’s just-”
“It’s just that he’s wounded and alone, right? You don’t think he knows that’s your weakness?” Beckett looked suddenly resigned, the frustration draining away. “Give me your hand.” He took it without waiting, then used his teeth to pull the cap off a pen. “I want you to call this number.” He wrote a number on the back of her hand. “I’ll call him first. Tell him to expect you.”
“Who?”
“The warden. Call him in the morning, first thing.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re lost in the wasteland, Liz. Because you need a way out, and because you won’t believe the things he’ll tell you.”
11
Elizabeth left her partner on the street and drove west until the road crested a high ridge, and the sun flattened like a disk against the earth. Adrian was either lying or not, and Elizabeth could think of only one place to find the answer she needed. So she followed a two-lane out of town and ten minutes later turned onto the long, dark drive of a five-hundred-acre estate that bordered the river where it ran fast and white at the bottom of a tall bluff. Box bushes scraped paint as she pushed into the property. Branches hung low above the drive, and when it dead-ended, she climbed from the car. The house loomed beneath a dimming sky, and she felt the history of it as she stepped onto the porch. George Washington slept here, once. So did Daniel Boone, a half dozen governors. The current resident-though once equally impressive-came to the door in a poplin suit that looked slept in. He was unshaven, his face drawn beneath a cloud of thin, white hair that stirred as the door opened. He’d lost weight since she’d last seen him, seemed shorter, frailer, ancient.