“Only that he was wrong, sweetheart, and that he has sought forgiveness with all his heart. That’s what makes you right in your way, and your father right in his. It’s what makes this all so awful.”
After that, Elizabeth was alone. She had a theory, and it was tied so deeply to her own past that she had trouble looking at it straight on. Harrison Spivey had an intimate connection to the church, to her, and to her family. He could be violent, obsessed.
The victims looked like her.
Was Randolph right about that? She didn’t know. Maybe some of them. All she knew for sure was that Channing was gone, and the clock was ticking. Arrest. Death. They were out there, spinning. And if a voice spoke of caution, it did so from the deepest corner of her mind. Too many years led to this, too many sleepless nights and buried hurts. The word Providence rose, yet even that felt dangerous. This was not about her, she told herself, but about finding the girl.
Then why did that voice, too, sound so distant? It whispered in the drive and drowned in the rush of her blood. She was on the porch of Spivey’s house, but it could have been the quarry or the church or the back of her father’s car as the boy laid a finger on her skin as if daring her to look up or say a word about the thing he’d done. Elizabeth felt all of that, bottled it, and directed it. No one had to get hurt, and no one had to die.
But, goddamn, she felt it.
The feeling took her through the door without knocking; through the kitchen and into the living room, gun holstered, but warm under her palm. She saw the wife and children in the backyard, which was good, because she had no plan beyond making the man talk. She flicked a glance left; saw a dining-room table, framed photographs, golf clubs in the corner. The normalcy of it stoked the resentment. Could a killer kill and then play golf?
She felt the answer in her skin; heard an echo of the voice and tuned it out. Noise came from the back hall so she turned in that direction, her footsteps soundless on deep carpet. She found him behind a desk littered with papers, a broad, soft man with a pencil in one hand and fingers on an old-fashioned calculator that rattled and clicked. The sight was so pedestrian it pulled her from the moment long enough to see the danger of what she was doing. The obsession was hers, but when he looked up, he had the same eyes and lips, the same hands that had been so quick with pine needles and buttons and torn fabric. “Hello, Harrison.”
He took in the gun, and his first glance, after, was through the window and at his children. “Elizabeth. What are you doing?”
She stepped into the room; watched his face and his eyes, his hands on the desk. Behind him, two dozen photographs hung on the walclass="underline" Harrison at different groundbreaking ceremonies, a golden shovel in his hand; Harrison with a group of women, and others with suited men. Everyone was at ease and happy and smiling.
“Where is she?”
“Who?”
“Don’t fuck with me, Harrison.”
“I don’t know what’s going on, Liz.” He spread his hands. “I don’t know why you’re here with a gun, and I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please, don’t hurt my children.”
She stepped closer, emotion like a wind as she remembered sneaking from the house so she could spread her legs in a trailer park abortion mill and let the pervert who called himself a doctor push cold steel past her cervix. That’s what Harrison Spivey did for her. That’s what she knew of children. “Where is she?”
“You keep saying she. I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“I introduced you to her on the sidewalk. Channing Shore. I introduced you and now she’s gone.”
“What? Who?”
“They found Allison Wilson, too. Under the church. Murdered.”
“What in God’s name does that have to do with me?” He looked genuinely appalled, but psychopaths could do that. Dissimulate. Misdirect. Entire lives could be made of lies, with only the dark center holding.
Elizabeth wanted to see his center. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to leave quietly. Your family is outside; they won’t even see us. We’re going to find someplace private, you and I, and we’re going to have a discussion. What that discussion feels like is up to you.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
“Get up.”
“Maybe, this is how it had to happen.” He leaned back in his chair, and the strength surprised her. He seemed suddenly resolved, with none of the fear she saw on those rare occasions she went to his office or tracked him on the streets. “You really don’t know me at all, do you, Liz? What I’ve done with my life. How I’ve tried to atone.” He gestured at the wall behind him. “Do you even see what’s right in front of you?”
Elizabeth let her gaze run across the photographs, seeing how they were the same, but different, picking up detail she’d missed.
“Six clinics. In six different cities. A decade of work. Fifty cents of every dollar I’ve ever made, and this is just the beginning.”
Elizabeth looked at the construction sites and finished buildings, at Harrison with his golden shovel and smiling women. Her certainty wavered. “Those are…”
“Clinics for battered women.” He finished the thought when she trailed off. “Abused wives. Prostitutes. Rape victims. I don’t know why you think I took this girl, but I promise you I did not. I have a wife and daughters. They’re my life, Liz. I’d make yours different if I could. I’d take it all back.” Elizabeth’s confidence broke; none of this was expected. “Speaking of which…”
“Hi, Daddy.” A little girl stepped in from the hall. She was three or four, with a pretty voice and no fear at all of strangers with guns.
“Come here, sweetie.” The girl hopped on her father’s lap as a wave of dizziness threatened to sweep Elizabeth away. Harrison wrapped his arms around the child, clasped his hands, and pointed with fingers pressed together. “Guess who this is.” The girl pulled her legs onto her father’s lap. “This is the woman we pray for every Sunday. The one whose forgiveness we ask God to grant.”
“You told your children?”
“Only that Daddy did a bad thing, once, and was sorry.” He squeezed the girl harder. “Tell Detective Black your name.”
“Elizabeth.”
“We named her for you.”
“But you run from me when I see you on the streets. You barely speak.”
“Because you frighten me,” he said. “And because I am ashamed.”
Elizabeth stared at the little girl. The room was still spinning. “Why would you give that beautiful child my name?”
“Because some things should never be forgotten.” He smoothed the girl’s unruly hair. “Not if we hope to live better lives.”
He stayed off the streets as much as he could. Even then he worried someone might recognize the car, his face in the car. He’d never seen cops like this. They were everywhere. Local cruisers. Sheriff’s deputies. State police. They were on the streets and overpasses. There’d been talk of roadblocks, and that made him nervous. If they searched the car, they’d find tape and a stun gun and zip ties.
He couldn’t explain that.
How could he?
Pulling into a gas station, he threw away the tape and plastic ties. The stun gun he kept because some things needed keeping. The linen and silk ropes were someplace safe. Nevertheless, he sat low in the car as a line of state cruisers flashed by. Things were building, and he could feel them out there, the same endings and inevitabilities. There was a chance he’d walk away and continue, but he was tired of killing and carrying secrets. It had been with him for so long. The weight built, a woman died, and for months after he was depressed.