Michael Koryta - The Prophet

“You want to say something about the circumstances, get it out now,” Kent said. “Go on and tell me that if I didn’t go parading into prisons with a Bible, none of this would have happened. Go ahead and tell me that and whatever else—”

“Shut up, Kent.”

Kent looked at him, watched Adam exhale a wreath of smoke.

“You’re thinking it,” he said. “And in this case, at least, you’re not wrong.”

“All I am thinking,” Adam said, “is that a man who killed a seventeen-year-old girl is out there, free. And he walked into my home—into our home—and removed our sister’s property. That’s what I’m thinking.”

Kent didn’t answer. The sun hadn’t so much as creased the clouds but still he had his Chambers High cap pulled very low over his eyes.

“Do what you say,” Kent told him, “take precautions, stay vigilant. But the other ideas… Stay away from those thoughts, Adam.”

“It’s hard to stay away from thoughts, Kent. They have a way of chasing you down, you know? It’s awfully hard to relocate from your own mind.”

It was quiet for a moment. Adam blew smoke into the wind, and then he said the name again, soft. “Clayton Sipes.” He nodded, and he looked calm when he rose to his feet and offered Kent his hand. “You did the right thing, telling me.”

“I hope so.”

“Trust me,” Adam said. “You did the right thing.”

34

CLAYTON SIPES HAD EARNED his sentence at Mansfield for sexual assault and stalking. He’d been twenty-nine when he went in, was thirty-four when he walked out.

And vanished.

August. The same month Rachel Bond’s supposed father had contacted her to inform her of his release.

While he read about Sipes, Adam smoked four cigarettes in the time he usually allotted for one, not realizing it until he picked up the pack and was startled to find it empty. There was a tightness along the back of his skull. Too much nicotine, too fast.

The tightness didn’t go away when he stopped smoking, though. It spread into his neck as he sat at the computer and studied the newspaper accounts. Sipes was from Cleveland, and had been arrested there, a janitor at Case Western Reserve who’d taken an unhealthy interest in a twenty-one-year-old engineering student at the school. The first complaint from the victim had been made three years prior to the final arrest, proving that it was not a passing fancy. Clayton Sipes, the Gideon who’d tracked Rachel Bond, was a patient man. Devoted, diligent. Kent was not likely wrong in his assessment of the man’s guilt. Sipes fit the profile.

After multiple unsettling encounters with Sipes, the victim had finally contacted the campus police, saying she felt intimidated. Sipes was warned to keep his distance, but he was not charged. Five months later, having failed to keep his distance, he was fired from the school and charged with harassment. The charges were dropped, but Clayton’s interest in his victim was not. Over the following two years, he appeared again and again. Calls were made to the police, investigations were conducted, but Sipes had alibis, and no further charges were filed. It wasn’t until three years after he first showed interest in the woman that he was finally arrested on her porch, carrying a .357 and wanting to talk to her about the way she was ignoring her destiny, while fondling her breasts and smelling her hair. She managed to hit redial on her cell phone while it was in her pocket; a friend picked up and, thankfully, amazingly, listened instead of dismissing it as an accidental call. Heard enough to hang up and dial 911 and the police found them there on the porch. Sipes was charged with violating a restraining order, sexual assault, stalking, and attempted kidnapping. The last charge was dropped, and he was sentenced to eight years, which meant with good behavior he’d walked in five.

Adam’s first step was this background gathering. He had to understand Sipes before he began to hunt; that was imperative. He had to know as much as possible about the man. There was a hot anger in his blood as he looked at the booking photographs, saw the smirking, taunting eyes projecting indifference to the camera.

Lost him, he thought. They lost him.

How? How could you take your eyes off a sick son of a bitch like that? How could you just let him wander away, show no real concern over it until a girl was dead in a ditch?

He could not set things right. He understood that was beyond his grasp; there was no way to make such a thing right. But there was penance, and there was punishment, and those things he could administer.

He wanted to begin the search now, but by the time he’d finished his information gathering, it was edging toward dusk and he knew he needed to be at his brother’s house. Days he would hunt, nights he would stand guard. And if Sipes would cooperate and make another appearance, then the hunt wouldn’t even be necessary.

Come to me, Adam thought as he slipped on a shoulder holster and put a Glock semiautomatic into it. Chelsea watched with unsettled eyes.

“You think this is a good idea?” she asked.

“The son of a bitch showed up at their house already, Chelsea. He may come back. I will not leave them alone to face that. I can’t.”

She accepted that with a nod, then kissed him and held him. A little too tight, a little hard. Not happy that he was leaving, and he understood that, but there was nothing else to be done.

“I’ve got to go,” he said, pulling free from her. “I’m sorry.”

That night Beth kept calling Kent back to bed.

“Please,” she said. “You’re just making me more nervous when you pace like that.”

He wasn’t pacing, he was trying to make sure they were prepared. He checked the alarm, he checked the windows, he watched the yard. Stood on the porch with his fingers wrapped tightly around the rubber grips of the Judge—he had not shown it to Beth; she was opposed to firearms and he doubted even in this situation would be accepting of one in their home—and stared into the shadows, listening to the dry leaves whisper over the boards of the privacy fence, every one of them sounding like a potential footstep at first, and then, when he realized it had not been, more like a soft, taunting laugh.

“I won’t sleep ten minutes if you keep wandering the house,” she said. “The police are making their patrols. Trust them.”

Right. The only problem with that was he’d observed only two passes from a police car in the last three hours. They were present, sure—Salter had been good to his word on that—but the gaps in between patrols went thirty or forty minutes. That was so much time. Kent, who spent his life watching games decided in a matter of seconds, who had once lived with his sister only a ten-minute walk from their own high school, understood just how little time it took for things to go terribly wrong.

“Get some rest,” Beth told him.

He promised her that he would, and then he lay beside her and watched the bare limbs cast dancing shadows over the windows and kept his eye on the jacket pocket in which he’d left the Judge. When he could tell from Beth’s breathing that she was asleep, he slipped out of the bedroom once more, went downstairs, and called Adam.

“You out there?”

“I’m here.”

“Nothing’s happening?”

“Police cruise by pretty often. If they’re aware of me, they aren’t bothering to stop and talk. If they’re not aware of me… well, that’s hardly encouraging.”

“I appreciate it,” Kent said. “Really. The extra presence is a good idea.”

“I’d have been here regardless of whether you agreed to it. You make sure you’re carrying that gun from here on out, though.”

“I just want it at night.”