The Redemption Game Read online

  He rolled to face me. The bedroom door was open, a light still on in the hallway—for the cats, he explained. It meant that I could see him, which I suddenly appreciated very much. He was handsome in a way I hadn’t even realized real men could be handsome, with the dark eyes and sculpted bones of a model. The bandage on his head, the scars and the self-consciousness and the lopsided smile, all made him slightly more accessible. Slightly.

  It was two a.m. The night outside was quiet. It felt strange, without the sounds of dogs barking or donkeys braying. No birds, frogs, or crickets. Rockland was hardly a metropolis, but it still felt alien to what I was used to.

  Jack reached out and touched my hair, brushing it back behind my ear. His eyes never left mine, a faint smile on his lips.

  “How’s your head?” I asked.

  “It’s fine. They gave me good drugs. I’m all right.”

  Of course, he hadn’t taken the drugs they gave him. I didn’t point that out. I thought suddenly of Albie’s words, and the look on my son’s face when he’d heard those words. I thought of the CD Ren had sent him.

  I thought of Brock, and closed my eyes when I felt his voice edging into my mind.

  How many reasons did I need to convince me this was a bad idea right now?

  When I opened my eyes, Jack was closer. He ran the back of his hand along my cheek, his touch so gentle it was barely a touch at all.

  We studied each other for a long moment, neither of us speaking. His thumb found my lips and brushed across the surface, still feather light. I don’t know which of us moved next—it could have been me. Probably was. I wasn’t breathing right. Every part of me ached, and it wasn’t from the day I’d had.

  Our lips touched. It was a gentle kiss at first—one I realized I had been waiting for from the moment we first met, up in Northern Maine while I helped him find the woman who would soon share his bed.

  His hand slipped to the back of my head, fingers twined in my hair, and I moved against him.

  It was another mutual thing when we parted, as though we’d both come to our senses at the same time.

  “You have a concussion,” I reminded him. My voice was husky. He smiled, I think at the sound.

  “And you’re exhausted.” He sighed. “So, we sleep tonight.”

  “We sleep tonight,” I confirmed, much as I hated to.

  He pulled me into his arms, and I went easily. I lay with my head on his chest, his arms around me, and listened to his heart. Everything had changed—except that it hadn’t, not really. Not yet. Everything was on the precipice, I realized as my eyes sank shut. It felt like the ground was shifting, like it could burst open, and I didn’t know where to stand or how to prepare myself when it finally did.

  I thought of Brock’s words.

  You’re too afraid to take what you want. Every time you get close to it, you run like a beaten dog.

  “Sleep, corazón,” Jack whispered to me. “Everything will be all right. We’ll deal with tomorrow when it comes.”

  I closed my eyes, and I made a choice that my mind fought with everything it had.

  I believed him.

  Chapter 21

  AGAINST ALL ODDS, I did actually get some sleep that night. Of course, I had to get up every two hours to make sure Jack wasn’t dead, but when he was right next to me in bed that proved to be pretty easy. My alarm would go off, I’d roll over and shake him awake, check his pupils and make sure he knew what year it was, and then we’d just go right back to sleep. At our seven o’clock check-in, he was the one to wake up first. I woke an instant later, and we just lay there for a minute, looking at each other across the pillow.

  “I could get used to waking up next to you,” he said. “It’s kind of nice.”

  It was kind of nice, which frankly scared the bejeezus out of me. I spent the first fourteen years of my life sharing a bed with my sisters—I was the third to last of eight kids living in a two-bedroom shack in rural Georgia. Seven kids, after my little sister Clara went missing when I was seven and never returned. Later, I spent a few years co-sleeping with Bear before he decided he preferred the company of dogs to the company of his mama. Since then, I’d gotten very attached to sleeping on my own.

  If I weren’t so comfortable, I might have gotten up and ended the conversation then and there. But Jack’s bed really was remarkable.

  Jack wasn’t so bad himself.

  “Do you know what year it is?” I asked.

  He grinned at me, like he knew I was changing the subject. “I do. I know the president, the day of the week, and my social security number, as well. How are my pupils?”

  I looked at them.

  They looked good, and I told him so.

  “I should get up,” I said. “Phantom probably has to pee.”

  “We didn’t get to bed until late,” he argued. “Wouldn’t she let you know if she needed to go out?”

  “Not if she thought I was sleeping. I think she’d let her bladder bust before she bothered me—it’s a matter of pride for her.”

  “Still… Get up if you need to, but she must be tired. We didn’t get to bed until two.”

  He was right about that. Phantom had put in a lot of hours and a lot of miles last night, too—she deserved some peace.

  “Fine,” I agreed after a half-hearted debate in my head. “I’ll give it a little while longer. Then I should definitely get up.”

  “Me, too,” Jack agreed. His eyes drifted shut. “Wake me when you get up. There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”

  That piqued my curiosity, but not enough to push him on the subject. Instead, I re-set my alarm and closed my eyes again. There was no way I would sleep until nine, I was sure. Since Jack’s bed did seem to have some kind of magical properties, however, I figured I should take precautions.

  As it turned out, those precautions proved unnecessary. At shortly before nine o’clock, my cell phone rang. Jack was still out, snoring softly. Cash and three of the kittens had found their way to us, and I had to work to extricate myself. I grabbed my phone and reluctantly left the warm bed, checking the display as I slipped from the room.

  “What’s up?” I asked Monty as I answered. Phantom rose to greet me, tail wagging. The two kittens who had adopted her protested—loudly. I searched for my shoes, since Phantom definitely had to pee by now. So did I, but I usually took care of the dog first. Or else, just took care of it at the same time.

  I probably shouldn’t do that outside Jack’s apartment building, though.

  “I don’t want you to panic,” Monty began.

  “That doesn’t sound good.” My shoes were by the sofa, but I saw no sign of my clothes. I didn’t want to make Phantom wait, though. I checked the bathroom, and took advantage of the opportunity to use the toilet. Phantom and the kittens followed me in, lingering in the doorway so it was impossible to close the door. I crossed my fingers that Jack wouldn’t come out, and scanned the room for any sign of my clothes.

  “What the hell did he do with my pants?” I muttered.

  “Well, that sounds promising,” Monty said.

  “Very funny.” I wiped and flushed with one hand, pulled up my shorts, and left the room with Phantom and the kittens on my heels.

  I managed to find Phantom’s leash, though there still seemed to be no sign of my pants. I gave up, and snapped the leash onto Phantom’s collar.

  “What’s going on, Monty?” I prompted. I had a brief flicker of concern, but there were a thousand reasons Monty could be calling me—many of them urgent, but few something to genuinely worry about. “Just spit it out.”

  “The police were just here,” he said.

  I was in the stairwell outside Jack’s apartment with Phantom, still dressed in his T-shirt and boxer shorts. I paused. That flicker of concern intensified. “Why?”

  He took a breath. Phantom whined, and I forced myself to keep moving. “They arrested Bear.”

  I froze. “They what?”

  “They got a warrant la
st night—this is a stunt, Jamie. They waited till Saturday morning so there’s no way to get him out until Monday. They want to scare him.”

  “What did they arrest him for?”

  “They’re saying he killed Nancy Davis.”

  I continued down the stairs and outside. Nine o’clock on a Saturday morning meant people in the parking lot, all of them wearing more than I was. I got some curious looks as I walked with Phantom over to a green space at the back of the lot. I couldn’t think straight. This shouldn’t be a surprise—I’d heard what Albie said the night before. I’d seen the look on Bear’s face.

  Why the hell hadn’t I gone home last night? I should have been there.

  “Before you start beating yourself up about not being here, stop,” Monty said, reading my mind. “It wouldn’t have made a difference. You should call a lawyer, though. They took him to the Knox County lock-up.”

  Phantom peed, then crouched and I realized I had no bags on me for clean-up, and no keys to get into my truck for more. A couple of people were watching me, and I saw no sign of a doggie-bag dispenser anywhere.

  “I don’t…” I shook my head. “This is unbelievable. I should have come home. Do you know where the jail is?”

  He gave me the address and directions, then added, “It’s not a bad facility, James. They were good to him—polite. He’s scared, but he’s okay. Just get down there. He’ll be okay.”

  My vision blurred. I guess the apple didn’t fall far from the tree after all, Brock whispered in my ear. What felt like a knife point pierced my skull, nearly taking my knees out from under me.

  “Are you going to clean that up?” an elderly woman asked, eyes narrowed as Phantom finished her business.

  “I’ve got it,” Jack said, appearing from nowhere with a plastic produce bag.

  “We’ve got everything under control out here,” Monty said, on the other end of the line. “Just go take care of the kid. Give me a call if there’s anything I can do.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll call you when I know more.”

  I ended the call. Jack had bagged Phantom’s poop, and was talking to the old woman. I watched him, detached. Brock wasn’t talking anymore, but I could still feel him there. Waiting for me.

  Bear was in jail.

  I kept seeing that look on his face when Albie had said the words last night. I saw him kill my mother. There had been guilt there—no doubt.

  You knew he had it in him, Brock said.

  “Jamie?” Jack said.

  I shook my head, trying to clear it. “It’s Bear.”

  “I heard,” he said. I looked around, but the old woman had gone and was nowhere in sight. When had she left? “Come on—come upstairs and get dressed. I’ll go with you. We should talk.”

  #

  “You had no right to take the case without calling me first,” I said, barely ten minutes later. I was dangerously close to shouting. Dangerously close to violence, for that matter.

  “He’s eighteen, Jamie. It was his money. He came to me—you really would have had me turn him away?”

  “No. That’s not what I’m saying.”

  We were on Route 1 headed back to Nancy’s house so Jack could get his car, with me behind the wheel. Saturday in July meant sixteen lawn sales on every side road all the way there, so the journey was painfully slow.

  “What are you saying, then?” Jack asked. “I’m not clear on what you would have me do. I was bound by client privilege—I promised I wouldn’t say anything.”

  “So why are you telling me now?” I bit out, still seething.

  “Because I’m worried about him. He fired me—technically he’s not my client anymore. He needs you to know what’s going on.”

  “It would have been nice to know before he got arrested for murder.”

  He grimaced. “I know. I’m sorry, I didn’t think the police would have a case pulled together so quickly.”

  “Well, apparently they do.”

  Silence fell between us. I finally made it to the Thomaston bridge and headed across into Cushing, grateful when the road opened up and the lawn sales dwindled. It was a beautiful day outside, but I was having a hard time appreciating it at the moment.

  “He’ll be all right, Jamie,” Jack finally said.

  “You don’t know that.” When he offered no response, I dialed back my irritation and tried to get my head on straight again. I glanced at him. “Tell me more about the case. How do we figure out who the real killer is? I have a bad feeling that the police might have decided they’ve got their man.”

  “It’s possible,” Jack agreed reluctantly. “Does this mean I have a sleuthing partner now?”

  “Just this once. I’ve got enough on my plate; I don’t have any interest in starting a new career now.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  He proceeded to run down the details of both cases he was working, so far as he understood them:

  Three bodies, plus Nancy. Fred’s ex-girlfriend, Nancy’s husband, and a third victim killed within the past two months.

  “And the most recent victim was an ex-con,” I repeated, when he had finished.

  “That’s what Sophie said. No connection that we could find to Nancy or her kids.”

  “What about her animals?”

  I felt his eyes on me again, before he returned his attention to the road. “What do you mean?”

  “So far, pretty much everyone with a motive to kill Nancy ties back to her treatment of the animals. Barbara Monroe thinks Nancy killed her husband because of them, right? So… It makes sense that maybe the guy in the basement had something to do with them, too.”

  “He had a long rap sheet,” Jack said. “Domestic violence, theft...” He hesitated. “Animal abuse.”

  My heart rate kicked up a notch. “Where was he from?”

  “Down South. Mississippi.”

  I looked at him excitedly, thinking of the tattoo on Reaver’s belly; my feeling that the dog had been trained for some kind of work. What had Albie said?

  We saved him from down South. They would have killed him for sure.

  That was possible. I’d heard stories about dog fighting rings looking for military dogs and police K-9s to train in the ring—there was a certain cachet to having a dog like that tear another dog to pieces, apparently. They’d steal the dog, then burn off any identifying marks and surgically remove any tracking device that might have been implanted.

  I told Jack this, and he considered my theory for a full minute or more before I finally broke the silence.

  “If Nancy killed all three people in her basement on her own, that doesn’t do anything to clear Bear,” I pointed out. “The police could just as well decide her death had nothing to do with the bodies in the basement.”

  “There’s no way she could have taken out that ex-con on her own. And someone clearly wanted to wipe out some evidence that was in the house last night, and get rid of me in the bargain.”

  We reached Nancy’s place, and I slowed to a stop beside Jack’s car. The house really had been flattened in the blaze—it looked surreal, the once-beautiful Victorian home now nothing but a few charred boards and a gaping black hole in the ground. Jack and I both stared at it for a moment.

  “You saved my life last night,” he said quietly. “Thank you for that.”

  I looked at him. His eyes were dark and serious, but his lips were quirked up in an almost-hesitant smile. Despite everything else going on, I found myself returning the smile.

  “You’re welcome.”

  I thought of the dream or vision or whatever it was, that I’d had years ago of one day saving his life. Jack had once been obsessed with the idea, but he didn’t even mention it today. Things got still between us, and I wondered for a moment if he was going to kiss me. In a normal relationship, that’s what we would do. He would lean across the console, and kiss me. Tell me to have a good day; we’d talk later.

  This wasn’t a normal relationship, though. Hell, I w
asn’t sure it was a relationship at all.

  “I’ll go,” he said, “and let you get over to Bear’s. Give me a call if you need anything.”

  “I will. Thanks.”

  I looked straight ahead as he got out of the truck, and waited until he was safely in his car before I drove away. As I was leaving, I glanced in my rearview mirror and found that he was still in the parked car, staring out in the direction of the Davis house. I wondered what he was thinking, and I wished I had some idea how to ask.

  And then, I drove away.

  #

  It was just past ten o’clock when I reached the Knox County Jail, where Bear was being held. I walked through the steel doors, claustrophobia setting in the second the door slammed closed behind me.

  Bear stood on the other side of a long steel table, his gaze fixed on the floor. He looked thin—had he lost weight recently? How had I not noticed that? Not only that, but he looked completely exhausted.

  “Hi,” I said. I wasn’t clear on what else to say. Where do you even begin, when your only kid is behind bars on suspicion of murder?

  “Hey,” he said. “Is Casper okay? He was pretty shaken up when they took me away?”

  My heart twisted. This was the boy I knew—the boy who would think of the dog first, forever and always. No matter what he might be going through himself.

  “I haven’t seen him,” I confessed. “But I’m headed home after this. I’ll give him some extra TLC.”

  “Good. Thanks.”

  He fell silent, his gaze shifting to the floor now that the most pressing business was taken care of.

  “Do you want to sit?” I asked.

  He shrugged, and sat in the plastic chair provided for him with a heavy sigh.

  “Doug will be here soon,” I said. Doug was our lawyer—the same lawyer I had used when police were investigating Brock’s death. “We’ll figure this out. This is all just plain nuts—the police will see that.”

  He grunted noncommittally, and anxiety ran through me in a wave.

  “It is nuts, isn’t it, Bear?” I asked. Another shrug. He had yet to look at me, his eyes now on his hands. I wanted to reach across the table and shake him. “What were you doing out that night?”