Michael Koryta - The Prophet

Who?

The rest of the bills told the same tale—a hundred dollars a month, every month, for as far back as Bova had bills, which was more than two years. He’d never missed a contribution. That was dedication. That was loyalty.

The loyalty payments ended in August. Only two logical options there: either Rodney Bova had decided to stop making his diligent payments, or the recipient had left Mansfield.

End of summer, start of the letters to Rachel. Maybe the inmate stayed with Rodney for a while. Maybe he worked with him, made a trip out to Shadow Wood Lane to nail shingles to a roof.

“Who do you know, Rodney?” Adam whispered.

He replaced the bills carefully, took a final pass through the house, making sure nothing looked disturbed, and then he exited and returned to his car and called Penny Gootee and asked if he could see her.

“Fine,” she said. Her voice sounded sober today but hollowed out. “You can watch the police on TV like everybody else will be.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Press conference,” she said. “They’re going to tell everyone how my baby died. How she was killed.”

She wore an oversized hooded sweatshirt and seemed to disappear inside it. She had to have slept at some point, but there was no indication. When he stepped inside, the television was on, an empty podium in the center of the screen. Penny said, “You can watch it. I don’t want to,” and then she went into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. Adam knew better than to pursue. He sat on the couch beside the comforter from Rachel Bond’s bed and watched Stan Salter step forward and occupy the podium, eyes grim as he adjusted the microphones, glanced at his notes, and then faced the cameras and provided the details that the public was so desperate to know, the ones they somehow felt they deserved. There had been a time, maybe, when Adam could have been able to get his head around that idea, the way a community could decide that the victim of a tragedy belonged to them, that because they were interested, they were a part of it, but that time was far gone.

Today, though, with Rachel Bond’s case, he listened with the same interest shared by all the rest who considered the murder a spectator sport. Only he was no spectator.

The autopsy results had been completed, Salter said. Rachel Bond had been asphyxiated, with marks on her neck indicating the use of a plastic bag wrapped in place with duct tape. The bag had not been found at the kill site, but they believed it to be of clear plastic.

Adam thought about that, and what it meant. The sick bastard had wanted to watch her go. That had been important to him, to see it happen. No guns, no knives, no bludgeoning, not even any blood.

Just a slow, horrific expiration, a final gasp that found no oxygen, the sudden removal of one of those universally promised things: you will have air to breathe.

In the end, she had not. That had been taken from her.

Salter explained that the property owner was not a suspect, that the house was vacant. He explained that Rachel had gone there in hopes of reuniting with her estranged father, and that someone had been impersonating her father in a series of letters. He said the investigating team was gathering leads and analyzing forensic evidence and would reveal more information when it was prudent to do so. Adam found the remote and turned off the television. When the volume was gone, the bathroom door reopened and Penny Gootee appeared.

“Heard enough?” she said.

“Yeah.”

She came back down the hallway and sat on the couch at his side and wrapped Rachel’s blanket around her.

“I want you to do it,” she said.

“I know. I’m going to need your help.”

“Just tell me how.”

“Do you know more than they just shared? Have they asked you about suspects?”

“They’ve asked me if I have ideas. I don’t. They haven’t shared any names with me.”

“No questions about people who were in Mansfield with your husband?”

“Jason was never my husband. Don’t call him that. I don’t have his name.”

“Did they ask you any questions about people who were in prison with Jason?”

She shook her head.

“Does the name Rodney Bova mean anything to you?”

A frown, then another shake of the head. “No. Why? Who is he?”

“Just a guy who might have crossed paths with Jason,” Adam said. “Probably nothing more.” He didn’t want her to focus on the name, not yet, so he did not tell her that Bova also was connected to the house where her daughter had been killed. Instead, he asked her if she’d seen any of the letters.

“Yeah. That’s all they’ve shown me. I’ve got photocopies.”

They would have wanted her to spend time with the letters, to read them and consider them and see if, through prolonged study, any suspects suggested themselves.

“Can I see them?” he asked.

“Yes.” She rose again and returned with a small stack of papers. “That’s Jason,” she told him, isolating two of the photocopies, moving an ashtray aside to spread the documents out. “I can recognize him, no problem. Can smell the shithead rising right off the page.”

The first letter had been innocuous enough:

Thanks for writing, your mom probably doesn’t know you did, does she? I bet you’ve never heard a good word about me, not from her at least, so I’m sure she doesn’t know. Glad to know you are turning into such a great girl. Hope life keeps going your way. Don’t waste your time worrying about me. This isn’t a place I’d like you to visit, and I don’t know what I could tell you that you haven’t already heard from other people. Not proud of myself, and sorry if you’ve grown up ashamed of your father. Can’t go back, though, Rachel, I can’t go back and make anything right, so I’ll just say I’m sorry and you take care of yourself. Sounds as if you make lots of good choices. Keep on doing that.

Jason

“Shithead,” Penny proclaimed again.

The second letter was even shorter. A curt thanks, a reminder that Rachel’s mother wouldn’t like any contact between the two of them, a repeated request not to visit, and then an instruction to get good grades in school and be careful with boys.

It was the third letter that Penny deemed someone else’s work.

“See how he starts acting sincere?” she said. “Jason can’t fake sincere. Jason doesn’t give a damn about anyone, and he doesn’t care enough to fake it.”

The tone was different, yes, but only slightly. There had been no rush to suggest contact, just a careful building of the relationship. Patient, that was the word that kept rising to mind; whoever had taken up writing as Jason Bond had been very patient.

The next letter raised the cautious suggestion that he would soon be released.

Bet your mother didn’t tell you, and maybe you shouldn’t tell her. She and I shouldn’t see each other again. I need you to understand that. For her if not for me.

That had been the first test. If Rachel had been paying close attention herself, or if she’d had anyone else looking out for her, she’d have known that he wasn’t eligible for parole yet. Whatever she wrote back, though, had clearly established that she was in this alone, and was accepting his news without verifying it.

None of her letters existed. Jason Bond had discarded the two that reached him, which said everything Adam needed to know about him. The others might still exist—in fact, they probably did; whoever killed her was the sort who kept souvenirs—but there was no way to know what Rachel had written. You could guess at some of it from the responses, but it was impossible to know for sure. The only person she’d discussed the matter with, apparently, was her boyfriend. And Kent.