Michael Koryta - The Prophet

“Rachel.”

“What?”

“Use her name. She’s not the girl, she’s not a body in the morgue, she’s—”

“You didn’t kill Rachel,” she said, and that stopped him before the boil. He closed his eyes. The tattoo would never close its eyes, but he could close his.

“I know. But I didn’t help.”

“There’s a lot of difference. And you’re going to deal with it by, what, disappearing?”

“I’m not going to disappear. I’m going to make sure that he doesn’t.”

“He?”

“Whoever did it.”

“Let the police do their job.”

“I don’t want to do their job. I want to do one that’s a little different.”

“Adam…”

“Gideon Pearce should have been in jail the day he murdered Marie.”

“So you’re a vigilante now, that’s it? That’s the right thing?”

“If I’m going to pull a trigger, I’d rather the barrel be in his mouth than mine.”

She looked at him for a long time and said, “It’ll be in both at once.”

“Better than just the one of us.”

She lifted his chin with her index finger to make him look her in the eyes. It was dark in the room, though, and all they could exchange were shifting shadows.

“Get some help, Adam. Talk to someone.”

“I’m going to find him.”

“That’s not what I mean by help. I mean you need to find a—”

“A shrink, a priest, a doctor with an open prescription pad. Yeah, I know what you meant.”

She dropped her hand from his face, and for a moment it was quiet. Then she said, “It won’t take long for the police to learn what you’re trying to do. And then you’ll have problems.”

“I know it.”

“You can’t stop, though? Not even for a few days, not even for long enough to step back and realize that all of this—”

“No, Chelsea. I can’t stop.”

He took the whiskey back from her and finished it and they lay together in the silent dark.

Warm breath on his ear, a cool palm on his chest. Something whispered. Adam wanted to respond, but his brain clung to drunken sleep and reminded him that he was going to be hurting tomorrow, that he’d hit the Scotch a bit too hard before the end, and Scotch, as was its generous way, might have let him slip off into sleep tonight but would certainly make him pay the bill come morning, with interest.

Sleep on, then. Burrow deeper, darker.

The palm was on his shoulder now, and it grew fingers, and the fingers had nails, and they squeezed. The whisper again, rising, nearly a full voice.

“Baby. Adam.”

He tried to turn away, but Chelsea shook his shoulder and now she’d won, sleep was on the retreat.

“Let me be,” he said, or tried to say. His voice was hoarse and choked.

“It’s Rachel’s mother.”

He opened his eyes, turned to see that Chelsea was pressing his phone to her chest, the bluish light of the display spilling over her breast.

“What?”

“She called five times. I finally answered. She wants to talk to you.”

He sat up, the hangover already throwing a few experimental punches even though the alcohol was still too thick in his bloodstream to be called into the ring yet.

“Here,” he said, holding out his hand. His voice croaked again, and he cleared his throat, tasting the smoke from his last cigarette. She passed him the phone and he climbed out of the bed. The alarm clock said it was twenty past three. He walked out of the bedroom and into the living room, where the darkness faded to light from the heat lamps that sustained the snakes.

“Hello,” he said, and he was pleased with his voice—it sounded clear and sober enough to get by, at least.

“Didn’t want to wake you,” Penny Gootee said, “but figure if you were any bit as good as your word, you wouldn’t care. So it’s the right time to call, maybe. Just right.”

Hers was a voice that was not clear or sober enough to get by.

“It’s a fine time. Are you all right?”

“No, I’m not all right. You really just ask me that?”

“I’m sorry.”

He paused, waited.

“They bury my daughter this week,” she said. Her voice reminded him of her eyes the last time he’d seen her, shot through with misplaced blood.

“I know it.”

She let it go for a few seconds before she spoke again. This time she seemed to be trying harder, a drunk’s careful tightrope walk over the treachery of words, wielding a thick and clumsy tongue as the balancing rod.

“You meant what you said, didn’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“You think you can do it?”

“I’m going to.”

“You really going to find him? And kill him?”

“Yes. I’m going to kill him.”

He saw a shadow move, knew that Chelsea was in the bedroom doorway watching him, but he didn’t turn to face her. He watched the snakes in their slumbering coils and he waited to hear what Rachel Bond’s mother had left to say.

“Promise me something else,” she said. “Promise me that if you get him, you’ll tell me. Will you do that? Will you tell me?”

“I will get him,” Adam said. “And you will know when I do.”

She hung up before he could say another word. When Adam turned back to the bedroom, Chelsea was already gone, and the door was shut.

17

RODNEY BOVA LIVED IN A rental house three blocks from the hospital where he worked as a maintenance supervisor. He was not home on Tuesday morning, and Adam walked the block twice, staring at every car. The possibility of police surveillance could not be ignored. No one appeared to be watching, though. It was for damn sure that no one had a view of the back of the house. He approached from that side, cleared the privacy fence, and used a thin metal carpenter’s ruler to shim the lock on the sliding glass door.

Wearing a pair of latex gloves and working methodically, Adam soon came to know a good deal more about who Rodney Bova had become in the years after he set his stepfather’s Cadillac on fire and disappeared from the halls of Chambers High. He followed horse racing, enjoyed pornography, and was an impulse shopper—there was a wide array of fitness equipment in the apartment, all of it the gimmicky shit they sold on late-night commercials for $19.99, and if you acted right now! you, too, could look like a Navy SEAL. According to photographs scattered around the house, Rodney Bova’s belly suggested he was well into his second trimester, so it seemed he was more inspired to buy the devices than to use them. That was the problem in shifting from viewing porn to viewing home fitness commercials. With twenty minutes a day on this discount device, I, too, could have a woman like those I was just watching…

Bova’s computer was password protected, and Adam didn’t have the faintest idea how to subvert even simple computer security. That was a shame, because the computer might be of use. For a while he entertained the idea of stealing it and finding someone who could get around that password, but in the end he ruled that out, at least temporarily. For the time being, it was better that Bova’s life not be rattled in any way. Adam needed him operating with a sense of comfort and security.

Instead he took a step backward in technology, digging through stacks of old mail and paperwork, scrutinizing the innocuous and irrelevant in hopes of finding something that spoke to a connection with Rachel Bond. He was just beginning to feel hopeless about his prospects when he opened a Visa bill from July and saw a $100 debit to Mansfield Correctional.

He stood there in Bova’s kitchen and stared at the bill in confusion, trying to figure out the charge. Too low for bail even if it had been a county jail, but it was a prison. You didn’t bond out of a prison, not for a million dollars, let alone a hundred. Then he got it: the commissary. You could mail funds to an inmate’s commissary account, so surely you could transfer money to one electronically as well. Long after he himself had been released, Rodney Bova had been making contributions to the prison’s commissary, supporting someone.