Michael Koryta - The Prophet

His eyes drifted from the gun to the cell phone.

Just call it in.

So simple. He could stay right here, right where he was, and he could call Stan Salter. They’d send out a SWAT team, they would not let Clayton Sipes escape from that house. He would be arrested, back behind bars before the day’s end.

Would he be convicted, though? Would they find evidence of a homicide inside that decrepit home, or would they find only a very smart and very evil man? He would serve some time, no question. How much time was harder to say. When would he walk back out? When would he return to the world?

That’s why you don’t call it in, Austin. That’s why you made the promise in the first place, and that’s why you have to come through on it now. Because if the system was worth a shit, your sister would have made it home, and so would Rachel Bond.

He started the engine and moved the Jeep, then went five blocks east until he was parked on the other side of the old steel mill. Out of the car and across the abandoned plant’s grounds, stepping through weeds and over old cinders as he followed the railroad tracks up to Erie Avenue. There he crossed the street quickly, keeping his head down, and entered a narrow alley four blocks down from the house where Clayton Sipes waited. There he turned left, the wind off the lake blowing gravel dust into his face, and slid behind a low concrete wall that separated the old homes. He followed that until he reached the back of 57 Erie Avenue, and then he broke across the small backyard without pause, went into the driveway and up to the side door.

The gun was positioned in the pocket of his sweatshirt so that the muzzle was pointed straight out from his waist, his right index finger curled around the trigger, as he knocked on the door with his left hand. The aluminum frame of a storm door still remained, but all of the glass had been broken out, so he had to reach through the frame to find anything solid. He rapped his knuckles off the wood in three calm strikes. Not aggressive, just clear and loud.

Come on down, Clayton, he thought. Or I can come in. It’s totally up to you.

Footsteps. Just like his knock—measured, steady, and clear. Sipes was not trying to hide his presence inside the house, and he was not trying to run. He was coming to the door. Adam’s breathing and heart rate had slowed at the sound of the approaching steps, and his finger tightened on the trigger, adding a few pounds of pull, bringing it to the brink.

You can hold him here. Hold him here and call the police, you’ll be a damned hero, everyone will see your picture in the paper again and this time they will think different things.

Then the door opened, and the slender man with the shaved head and the ring of tattoos around his neck looked at Adam and smiled, and any thought of holding him here and calling the police evaporated. Sipes was still shirtless—he had a sheen of sweat across his torso and his chest and arms were swollen, as if he’d been working out—and his smile was amused, taunting, and he held a gun in his left hand. Unlike Adam, though, he held his pointed down.

“He sent you instead of coming himself?” Sipes asked.

“You know who I am. Good for you.”

“Yes, Adam, I know who you are. Your brother sent you instead of coming himself. An interesting choice. Not a surprising one, but a little disappointing, don’t you think?”

If being discovered rattled him in the slightest, Sipes didn’t show it.

Adam said, “I would like to talk with you.”

“Weapons aren’t conducive to good conversation, Adam.”

“That didn’t stop you from using the same approach with my brother.”

“Come on in then. Enter, please.”

Adam shook his head. “We’ll walk together. The guns go away, and we walk.”

Sipes considered this, the two of them staring at each other through the empty storm door frame. Beyond him the chipped, mildewed linoleum stairs led up to darkness.

“Fine, Adam,” he said. “We will walk. If you’ll allow me to put on a jacket, then—”

“You’re good,” Adam said. “I think you can stand the chill, Sipes.”

The smile returned, and Sipes pushed open the storm door frame and stepped out to join him, Adam moving backward and keeping the gun up. He shut the door behind him, and then he tucked his pistol into the waistband of his pants, looked at Adam with mock reproachfulness, and said, “What was that promise about the guns?”

Adam slipped the Ruger back into the pocket of his sweatshirt but did not remove his finger from the trigger.

“There we go,” he said. “Let’s walk, Sipes. We’ll walk, and talk, and then you’ll leave.”

“I’ll leave,” Sipes echoed, leading the way out of the yard and to the sidewalk. When he was in front of Adam, the gun tucked into the back of his pants was visible for the first time. He made no move to reach for it, and offered no comment about it. A car passed but no one looked at them. “That sounds like an ultimatum.”

“It is.”

“How very Wild West. I like the touch. Your idea or the coach’s?”

“Mutual.”

They were moving north on Erie Avenue, the steel plant to their right, the dead end ahead, and the great gray lake beyond.

“My understanding was that you were not close with your brother.”

“We’re brothers,” Adam said. “It does not get much closer.”

“Are you proud of him?”

Sipes was three feet ahead of him and just to the left, walking exactly as Adam wanted him to without requiring any instruction. The butt of the gun protruded above the waistband of his jeans. Sweat ran down the small of his back toward it.

“I think you’re confused on a few things,” Adam said.

“How so?”

“I’m not here to answer your questions, Sipes.”

“I’m sure that you’re not. I assume your intent today is to threaten, perhaps to assault? Because you didn’t come here without the police to do anything within the bounds of the law, did you? That wouldn’t make much sense.”

They’d covered several blocks and the dead end was approaching. Sipes said, “I’ll need to know where we’re going, Adam.”

“All the way to the end of the street. Through the fence. I’d like to look at the lake.”

“Then let’s have a look.” They reached the end of the road, and Sipes stepped through the weeds and pulled loose one of the torn sections of chain link and ducked through. Adam kept the gun pointed at him while he did this, but Sipes made no move to reach for his own weapon. Adam was tensed as he slid through the fence himself—this was the best opportunity for Sipes to strike—but the man made no attempt, just stepped over a broken vodka bottle and continued on, out to the slabs of rock where the lake slapped and sloshed, some of the waves breaking high now and then and trapping themselves in puddles behind the stones.

“What interests me,” Sipes said, “is that he sent you and not the police. That seems so unlike him. Unless the fear is beginning to extract its pound of faith, of course. Unless the—”

“Kent did not send me,” Adam said.

“Forgive me if I call you a liar on that point.”

“Kent did not send me,” Adam repeated. “My sister did. And so did Rachel Bond.”

Sipes nodded in approval. “That’s wonderful stuff. Wonderful. I told your brother you might be more fascinating than him, and I think I was right. It’s a shame we haven’t met before.”

They were alone on the lakefront. A few miles out, a low shadow on the horizon, a freighter moved northeast for the Saint Lawrence Seaway and the ocean at its end. Sipes spread his arms wide.

“Here we are,” he said. “You have your view of the water. You have your captive audience. Let’s hear what you came to tell me, Adam. What you were sent to tell me.”