“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.
He wasn’t supposed to be a killer.
Watching the state police fade, he sat straighter as a young father came out of the convenience store and lingered by his car. He had a child in his arms, a boy maybe six months old. He watched the father kiss the child and thought that’s how life was meant to be. But nothing was that pure anymore, so he drove for the road and looked once in the mirror as the kiss broke and both seemed to smile.
The father.
The son.
He turned into traffic, not eager yet, but accepting.
The silo was seven miles away.
*
Elizabeth saw the same cops and felt some of the same fear. Her thoughts, though, were very different.
Could it be an act?
She ran the question for the tenth time and came back with the same answer.
She didn’t think so.
He had daughters, a wife.