Michael Koryta - The Prophet

He drove with the windows down and the radio off and he prayed aloud, as was his habit when he drove in the darkness. He prayed for Rachel Bond and her family and for Colin Mears and for the police tasked with the investigation. Prayed for everyone he could think of except himself, because of all the people deserving, he was well down on the list.

Prepared for this, he told himself, flicking a glance at the mirror. You are unusually, terribly prepared for this. Every horror has its purpose, and this…

He prayed for his sister then, and her name rose through him and passed his lips like a strand of cold barbwire tugged from a coil within. Marie Lynn. How it hurt to let that go, as if by saying it aloud he was releasing her into a world that would not return her, and he knew that but did it anyhow. Memories of the dead. You wanted them close; you needed them far.

The police station was bright, clean limestone, the sidewalk marred by scattered leaves. Kent crunched through them and went up the steps to where the Mears family waited.

Looking for a leader, he reminded himself. It was important to know that people were watching. You carried yourself differently when you remembered that, carried yourself better. There under the bright lights when the crowd was watching, you could become a different man, the one you knew you should be. How much better would the world be if everyone operated under the lights and before the crowd, if they were not granted moments alone in the dark?

The police led him through a hall and into a room where Colin Mears and his parents sat at a small round table. Colin’s face was a winter pallor with anguished and unbelieving eyes. Kent said, “Let’s do what we have to do to help her, son. Let’s do that first.”

He meant doing this: the police station, the questions. He meant holding his head above the waters of grief for just a little longer. The boy understood.

“Yes, sir,” Colin Mears said. “I’m trying.”

Kent reached across the table and laid a hand on his shoulder, gave it a squeeze, and Colin’s mother, Robin, said a soft “Thank you for coming.” Kent nodded and stepped back and looked at the police officer who’d brought him in, a Lieutenant Salter.

“Anything you need from me, or my staff, I can get you immediately. Beyond my statement, and verification that he was with our team, what can we offer that will—”

“Hang on, Coach,” Salter said. “We don’t need any of that from you. We know where Colin was, and we understand that can be verified several hundred times over. What we need is a little more personal to you.”

“Personal?” Kent said, and he thought, Here it begins, the shared experience. They will want you to tell the boy how to carry this weight, because you had to once before.

“Yes,” Salter said. “Do you have any idea how we might get in touch with your brother?”

Kent swiveled his head a quarter turn, as if he’d had his ear in the wrong place and missed the question.

“My brother.”

It wasn’t Lieutenant Salter who answered but Colin.

“He helped her, Coach. But she wasn’t… I don’t think she was honest with him.”

“Helped her,” Kent said. “My brother helped Rachel.”

He was squinting at the boy now.

“You have a number for him?” Salter asked. “We haven’t been able to reach him. Sent someone out to his house, but he’s not there.”

“Probably a little early for that.”

“It’s past midnight.”

“Yes,” Kent said, and then he looked at Colin, catching up now. “You went to him for help with her father?”

“He wrote to her that he was out of prison. She wanted to find him. She believed him. We both believed him. And so I suggested…”

His words were swept away from him then like flimsy things in a gust of wind, and Kent said, “What do you mean, you believed him?”

Salter answered for the boy.

“Rachel’s father never left prison, Coach. We don’t know much yet, but that part is clear. So whoever your brother found for her… well, it was not her father.”

“She didn’t tell me she was going alone,” Colin said, the tears spilling now. “I wouldn’t have let her do that. She promised me I could go with her. I got a message just before the game, she said she was going to see him and would meet me at the game, but she wasn’t there. She was missing at the start and she…”

Was missing at the end. Kent didn’t need the boy to finish that sentence. He thought of the fumbled kickoff, the kid standing there alone waiting on a football to float through the air to him and trying to tell himself that it mattered. Why hadn’t he told anyone? What might have been avoided if he’d spoken?

But of course he wouldn’t have said anything. Kent’s demands on the field were consistent: total focus. Total.

“The place where… where she was located,” Salter said, choosing his words with gentle care, “is not where she was sent. This is why we need your brother. To find that place.”

Kent lifted a hand, squeezed the bridge of his nose, and told himself to focus. He could not think of the full weight of it yet, could not allow himself to consider the scope of this night, the way it was spreading away, seeping into corners he’d never imagined it would touch.

“I can give you his cell phone number,” he said. “I just can’t guarantee that he’ll answer.”

Salter took the number and left to make his call and then, for a few minutes, it was just Kent and his star receiver and the boy’s parents. Kent said, “Tell me how we got here, son.”

It started in the summer, Colin explained, and this much Kent already knew. Rachel was around their house often because she was their regular babysitter and because Kent’s wife, Beth, had taken a special interest in her. Mostly, Kent left her to Beth. The exception was in the situation with her father, who’d never been a figure in her life and was currently in prison. She was interested in Kent’s prison visits, asked about them often, from details of the cells to what he thought of the men inside. She told him that she wanted to see her father again. It had been nearly ten years since their last encounter, when he stopped by to drop off a birthday card days after her seventh birthday, a crumpled ten-dollar bill inside, and Rachel’s mother, a woman named Penny Gootee, chased him off. Kent’s advice was to start with a letter. He warned her not to expect an answer.

She’d received one.

Short, curt, and to the point. Jason Bond was sorry they did not have a relationship. He appreciated her taking the time to write. He hoped her mother was well. Things for him were as good as could be expected. She was to stay in school, take care of herself, and make better decisions than he had.

Kent remembered this letter. He also remembered that the four Rachel sent back went unanswered. He’d tried to counsel her through that, tried to remind her that she represented guilt to the man, and that you could not rush a relationship along, could not force one into existence.

He was unaware of other letters. He hadn’t pressed after learning that those beyond the initial attempt had been ignored. Then the season began, and while he was focusing on football, she was focusing on her father. Letters had been exchanged regularly, according to Colin, who had seen most of what Rachel’s father had to say: apologies, always couched in the warning that he did not want to fail her again and perhaps they should not be in contact. There was talk of guilt, talk of almost everything Kent had explained to her earlier in the summer.

There was also talk of a pending release.

By September the letters were more frequent, and more detailed. Jason Bond said he was back in Chambers, close enough to tantalize the daughter who wanted to meet with him. But he would not be rushed. He urged her to understand that one-way communication was best, urged her not to discuss the situation with her mother because that was another relationship that he was not ready to handle just yet, if ever.