Redemption Road

  He bent at the waist, cramping; but the train rounded a bend and blasted light up the hill.

  It would have to slow, he thought.

  But it didn’t.

  It hit the hill like the hill was nothing. Three engines and a wall of metal, it blew past as if it could strip the air from his lungs. But more cars came onto the hill every second, and Gideon had a sense of it in the dark, of fifty cars and then another hundred, their weight dragging at the engines until he realized the train had slowed so much he could almost keep up. And that’s what he tried to do, running fast as the wheels sparked yellow and built a vacuum that sucked at the bones of his legs. He scrabbled at one car and then another, but the rungs were high and slick.

  He risked a glance and saw the last cars racing up behind him, twenty maybe, and then less. If he missed the train, he missed the prison. His fingers stretched, but he fell and smeared skin from his face, then ran and reached and felt a rung in his hand as agony burst in his shoulder and his feet thumped across wooden ties before the car, at last, was a shell around him.

  He’d made it. He was on the train that would carry him off to kill a man, and the truth of that pressed down in the dark. It wasn’t talk anymore, or waiting or planning.

  The sun would rise in four hours.

  The bullets would be real bullets.

  But so what?

  He sat in the blackness, determined as hilltops rose and fell and houses between them looked like stars. He thought of sleepless nights and hunger; and when the river glinted beneath him, he looked for the prison, seeing a bright light miles out across the valley floor. It raced closer, so he leaned out when the ground seemed flattest and least rocky. He looked for the strength to jump, but was still on the train as dirt flicked past and the prison sank like a ship in the dark. He was going to miss it, so he thought of his mother’s face instead, then stepped out and fell and hit the ground like a sack of rocks.

  When he woke, it was still dark, and though the stars looked dimmer, he had enough light to limp along the tracks until he found a road that led to a cluster of brown buildings he’d seen once from the back of a moving car. He stepped beneath a black-lettered sign that said CONVICTS WELCOME and studied the two-windowed, cinder-block bar on the other side of it. His face was a blur in the glass. There were no people or traffic, and when he turned to look south, he saw how the prison rose up in the distance. He looked at it for long minutes before slipping into the alley beside the bar and putting his back against a Dumpster that smelled like chicken wings and cigarettes and piss. He wanted to feel pleased for making it this far, but the gun looked wrong in his lap. He tried watching the road, but there was nothing to watch, so he closed his eyes and thought of a picnic they’d had when he was very young. The picture taken that day was in a frame on his bedside table at home. He’d worn yellow pants with big buttons and thought he might remember how his father held him high and spun him in a circle. He held on to the idea of that childhood, then imagined what it would feel like to kill the man who took it away.

  Hammer back.

  Arm straight and steady.

  He practiced in his head so he could do it right in person; but even in his mind, the gun shook and was silent. Gideon had imagined the same thing a thousand times on a thousand nights.

  His father was not man enough.

  He would not be man enough.

  Pressing the barrel against his forehead, he prayed for strength, then walked through it again.

  Hammer back.

  Arm straight.

  For an hour more he tried to steel himself, then threw up in the dark and hugged his ribs as if all heat in the world had been stolen, too.

  2

  Elizabeth should sleep—she knew as much—but the fatigue was more than physical. The weariness came from dead men and the questions that followed, from thirteen years of cop that looked to end badly. She played the movie in her mind: the missing girl and the basement, the bloody wire, and the pop, pop of the first two rounds. She could explain two, maybe even six; but eighteen bullets in two bodies was a tough sell, even with the girl alive. Four days had passed since the shooting, and the life that followed still felt foreign. Yesterday, a family of four stopped her on the sidewalk to thank her for making the world a better place. An hour later, somebody spit on the sleeve of her favorite jacket.

  Elizabeth lit a cigarette, thinking about how it all came down to where people stood. To those who had children, she was a hero. A girl was taken and bad men died. To a lot of people, that seemed about right. For those who distrusted the police on principle, Elizabeth was the proof of all that was wrong with authority. Two men died in a violent, brutal manner. Forget that they were pushers and kidnappers and rapists. They’d died with eighteen bullets in them, and that, for some, was inexcusable. They used words such as torture and execution and police brutality. Elizabeth had strong feelings on the matter, but mostly she was just tired. How many days now with no real sleep? How many nightmares when it finally happened? Even though the city was unchanged and the same people inhabited her life, it seemed harder each hour to hold on to the person she’d been. Today was a perfect example. She’d been in the car for seven hours, driving aimlessly across town and into the county, past the police station and her house, out beyond the prison and back. But, what else could she do?

  Home was a vacuum.

  She couldn’t go to work.

  Pulling into a dark lot on the dangerous edge of downtown, she turned off the engine and listened to the sounds the city made. Music thumped from a club two blocks away. A fan belt squealed at the corner. Somewhere, there was laughter. After four years in uniform and nine with the gold shield, she knew every nuance of every rhythm. The city was her life, and for a long time she’d loved it. Now it felt … what?

  Was wrong the right word? That seemed too harsh.

  Alien, maybe?

  Unfamiliar?

  She got out of the car and stood in the darkness as a distant streetlight flickered twice, then snapped and died. She made a slow turn, picturing every back alley and crooked street in a ten-block radius. She knew the crack houses and flophouses, the prostitutes and pushers, which street corners were likely to get you shot if you said the wrong thing or rolled up hot. Seven different people had been killed on this busted-up patch of broken city, and that was just in the past three years.

  She’d been in darker places a thousand times, but it felt different without the badge. The moral authority mattered, as did the sense of belonging to something larger than oneself. It wasn’t fear, but nakedness might be a decent word. Elizabeth didn’t have boyfriends or lady friends or hobbies. She was a cop. She liked the fight and the chase, the rare, sweet times she helped people who actually meant well. What would remain if she lost it?

  Channing, she told herself.

  Channing would remain.

  That a girl she barely knew could matter so much was strange. But, she did. When Elizabeth felt dark or lost, she thought of the girl. Same thing when the world pressed in, or when Elizabeth considered the real chance that she could go to prison for what had happened in that cold, damp hole of a basement. Channing was alive, and as damaged as she was, she still had a chance at a full and normal life. A lot of victims couldn’t say that. Hell, Elizabeth knew cops that couldn’t say it, either.

  Grinding out the cigarette, Elizabeth bought a newspaper from a machine beside an empty diner. Back in the car, she spread the paper across the wheel and saw her own face staring back. She looked cold and distant in black and white, but it could be the headline that made her seem so remote.

  “Hero Cop or Angel of Death?”

  Two paragraphs in, it was pretty clear what the reporter thought. Even though the word alleged showed up more than once, so did phrases such as inexplicable brutality, unwarranted use of force, died in excruciating pain. After long years of positive press, the local paper, it seemed, had finally turned against her. Not that she could blame them, not with the protests and p
ublic outcry, not with the state police involved. The photograph they’d chosen told the tale. Standing on the courthouse steps and peering down, she looked cold and aloof. It was the high cheekbones and deep eyes, the fair skin that looked gray in newsprint.

  “Angel of death. Jesus.”

  Tossing the paper in the backseat, she started the car and worked her way out of the bad parts of town, driving past the marbled courthouse and the fountain at the square, then toward the college, where she slipped like a ghost past coffee shops and bars and loud, laughing kids. After that she was in the gentrified section, moving past condo lofts and art galleries and renovated warehouses turned into brewpubs and day spas and black box theaters. Tourists were on the sidewalks, some hipsters, a few homeless. When she found the four-lane that led past the chain restaurants and the old mall, she drove faster. Traffic was thinner there, the people’s movements smaller and more subdued. She tried the radio, but the talk channels were boring and none of the music fit. Turning east, she followed a narrow road through scattered woods and subdivisions with stone-columned entrances. In twenty minutes she was outside the city limits. In another five, she started climbing. When she reached the top of the mountain, she lit another cigarette and stared out at the city, thinking how clean it looked from above. For a moment, she forgot the girl and the basement. There were no screams or blood or smoke, no broken child or irredeemable mistakes. There was light and there was dark. Nothing gray or shadowed. Nothing in between.

  Stepping to the edge of the mountain, she looked down and tried to find some reason for hope. No charges had been filed. She wasn’t looking at prison.

  Not yet …

  Spinning the cigarette into the blackness, she called the girl for the third time in as many days. “Channing, hey, it’s me.”

  “Detective Black?”

  “Call me Elizabeth, remember?”

  “Yeah, sorry. I was asleep.”

  “Did I wake you? I’m sorry. My mind these days.” Elizabeth pressed the phone against her ear and closed her eyes. “I lose track of time.”

  “It’s okay. I’m taking sleeping pills. My mom, you know.”

  There was a rustling sound, and Elizabeth pictured the girl sitting up in bed. She was eighteen years old, a doll of a girl with haunted eyes and the kind of memories no child should have. “I was just worried about you.” Elizabeth squeezed the phone until her hand ached and the world stopped spinning. “With all that’s going on, it helps to know you’re okay.”

  “I sleep mostly. It’s only bad when I’m awake.”

  “I’m so sorry, Channing.…”

  “I didn’t tell anybody.”

  Elizabeth grew suddenly still. Warm air rolled up the mountain, but she felt cold. “That’s not why I called, sweetheart. You don’t—”

  “I did like you asked, Elizabeth. I didn’t tell a soul what really happened. I won’t. I wouldn’t.”

  “I know, but…”

  “Does the world go dark for you, sometimes?”

  “Are you crying, Channing?”

  “It goes a little gray for me.”

  The voice broke, and Elizabeth could picture the girl’s bedroom in her parents’ big house across town. Six days ago Channing vanished off a city street. No witnesses. No motive beyond the obvious. Two days after that, Elizabeth led her, blinking, from the basement of an abandoned house. The men who’d taken her were dead—shot eighteen times. Now, here they were: midnight, four days later, and the girl’s room was still pink and soft and filled with all the possessions of childhood. If there was a message there, Elizabeth couldn’t find it. “I shouldn’t have called,” she said. “It was selfish of me. Go back to sleep.”

  The line hissed.

  “Channing?”

  “They ask what happened, you know. My parents. The counselors. They ask all the time, but all I say is how you killed those men and how you saved me and how I felt joyful when they died.”

  “It’s okay, Channing. You’re okay.”

  “Does that make me a bad person, Elizabeth? That I was joyful? That I think eighteen bullets was not enough?”

  “Of course not. They deserved it.”

  But the girl was still crying. “I see them when I close my eyes. I hear the jokes they told between times. The way they planned to kill me.” Her voice broke again, and the break was deeper. “I still feel his teeth on my skin.”

  “Channing…”

  “I heard the same things so many times I started to believe what he said. That I deserved what they were doing to me, that I’d ask to die before they were done, and that I’d beg before they’d finally let me.”

  Elizabeth’s hand went even whiter on the phone. Doctors counted nineteen bite marks, most of them through the skin; but Elizabeth knew from long discussions it was the things they’d said to her that hurt the most, the knowingness and fear, the way they’d tried to break her.

  “I would have asked him to kill me,” Channing said. “If you hadn’t come when you did, I’d have begged him.”

  “It’s over now.”

  “I don’t think it is.”

  “It is. You’re stronger than you think.”

  Channing grew silent again, and in the silence Elizabeth heard the raggedness of her breath.

  “Will you come see me tomorrow?”

  “I’ll try,” Elizabeth said.

  “Please.”

  “I have to talk to the state police tomorrow. If I can make it, I will. If not, then the next day.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “I do,” Elizabeth said, though she knew nothing of fixing broken things.

  * * *

  When she got back in the car, Elizabeth still felt disconnected, and like other times in her life where she’d had nowhere to go and nothing to do, she ended up at her father’s church, a humble building that rose narrow and pale against the night sky. She parked beneath the high steeple, studied small houses lined like boxes in the dark, and thought for the hundredth time that she could live in a place like this. Poor as it was, people worked and raised families and helped each other. Neighborliness like that seemed rare these days, and she thought a lot of what made this place so special came from her parents. As much as she and her father disagreed on life and the living of it, he was a fine minister. If people wanted a relationship with God, his was a good path. Kindness. Community. He kept the neighborhood going, but none of it worked unless it was done his way.

  Elizabeth lost that kind of trust when she was seventeen.

  Following a narrow drive, she walked beneath heavy trees and ended at the parsonage where her parents lived. Like the church, it was small and plain and painted a simple white. She didn’t expect to find anyone awake, but her mother was sitting at the kitchen table. She had the same cheekbones as Elizabeth, and the same deep eyes, a beautiful woman with gray-streaked hair and skin that was still smooth in spite of long years of hard work. Elizabeth watched for a full minute, hearing dogs, a distant engine, the wail of an infant in some other far house. She’d avoided this place since the shooting.

  Then why am I here?

  Not for her father, she thought. Never that.

  Then why?

  But she knew.

  Tapping on the door, Elizabeth waited as fabric whispered behind the screen, and her mother appeared. “Hello, Mom.”

  “Baby girl.” The screen door swung open and her mother stepped onto the porch. Her eyes twinkled in the light, her features full of joy as she opened her arms and hugged her daughter. “You don’t call. You don’t come by.”

  She was keeping it light, but Elizabeth squeezed harder. “It’s been a bad few days. I’m sorry.”

  She stood Elizabeth at arm’s length and studied her face. “We’ve left messages, you know. Even your father called.”

  “I can’t talk to Dad.”

  “It’s really that bad?”

  “Let’s just say I have enough judgment coming my way without the heavenly kind.”

  It
wasn’t a joke, but her mother laughed, a good laugh. “Come have a drink.” She led Elizabeth inside, put her at a small table, and fussed over ice and a half-empty bottle of Tennessee whiskey. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Elizabeth shook her head. She’d like to be honest with her mother, but had discovered long ago how a single lie could poison even the deepest well. Better to say nothing at all. Better to keep it in.

  “Elizabeth?”

  “I’m sorry.” Elizabeth shook her head again. “I don’t mean to be distant. It’s just that everything seems so … muddled.”

  “Muddled?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, bullshit.” Elizabeth opened her mouth, but her mother waved it closed. “You’re the most clear-minded person I’ve ever known. As a child, an adult. You’ve always seen more clearly than most. You’re like your father that way, even though you believe such different things.”

  Elizabeth peered down the darkened hall. “Is he here?”

  “Your father? No. The Turners are having troubles again. Your father’s trying to help.”

  Elizabeth knew the Turners. The wife drank and could get abusive. She’d hurt her husband once, and Elizabeth took the call her last month in uniform. She could close her eyes and picture the narrow house, the woman who wore a pink housecoat and weighed a hundred pounds, at most.

  I want the reverend.

  She had a rolling pin in her hand, swinging at shadows. The husband was down and bloody.

  I won’t talk to nobody but the reverend.

  Elizabeth had been ready to do it the hard way, but her father calmed the woman down, and the husband—again—refused to press charges. That was years ago, and the reverend still counseled them. “He never shies, does he?”