“Jesus.”
Beckett crossed himself from an almost-forgotten childhood habit, then worked his way past broken floorboards and lumps of rotted carpet. He made his way between tumbled pews, and with each step the illusion of perfection crumbled more. Color fell out of the light. Pale skin dulled to gray, and marks of violence rose as if by magic. Bruising. Ligature marks. Torn fingertips. Beckett took the last, few steps, and, at the altar, looked down. The victim was young, with dark hair and eyes shot through with blood. She was stretched on the altar as Julia Strange had been, her arms crossed on the linen, her neck blackened and crushed. He studied the choke marks, the eyes, the lips that were nearly bitten through. He lifted the linen to find her nude beneath it, the body pale and unmarked and otherwise perfect. Beckett lowered the sheet and felt a surge of unexpected emotion.
The Bondurant woman was right.
It was the same.
*
The sun burned through the trees as Elizabeth drove Channing down the mountain. It was quiet in the car until they approached Channing’s neighborhood. When the girl spoke, her voice was quiet, yet wound like a coil. “Have you ever gone back to the place it happened?”
“I just took you there. I just showed it to you.”
“You took me to the quarry, not to the place it happened. You pointed. You talked about it. We never went near the little pine where the boy knocked you down. I’m asking if you’ve ever stood on the exact spot.”
They stopped in front of Channing’s house, and Elizabeth killed the engine. Beyond the hedge, brick and stone rose, inviolate. “I wouldn’t choose to do that. Not now. Not ever.”
“It’s just a place. It doesn’t hurt.”
Elizabeth turned in her seat, appalled. “Did you go back to the crime scene, Channing? Please tell me you did not go alone into that godforsaken house.”
“I lay down on the place it happened.”
“What? Why?”
“Should I try to kill myself, instead?”
Channing was angry, now, a wall going up between them. Elizabeth wanted to understand, but struggled. The girl’s eyes were bright as dimes. The rest of her seemed to hum. “Are you upset with me for some reason?”
“No. Yes. Maybe.”
Elizabeth tried to remember how it felt to be eighteen, to be stripped to the bone and held together with tape. It wasn’t difficult. “Why did you go back?”
“The men are dead. The place is all that’s left.”
“That’s not true,” Elizabeth said. “You remain, and so do I.”
“I don’t think I do.” Channing opened the door, climbed out. “And I think maybe you don’t, either.”
“Channing…”
“I can’t talk about this right now. I’m sorry.”
The girl kept her head down as she walked away. Elizabeth watched her move up the drive and fade into the trees. She would make it into the house unnoticed or the parents who didn’t know what to do with her would discover her creeping through the window. Neither outcome would help the girl. One of them could make things a whole lot worse. She was still thinking about that when her phone rang. It was Beckett, and he was as twisted up as the girl.
“How fast can you get to your father’s church?”
“His church?”
“Not the new one. The old one.”
“You’re talking about—”
“Yeah, that one. How fast?”
“Why?”
“Just answer the question.”
Elizabeth looked at her watch, and her stomach rolled over. “I can be there in fourteen minutes.”
“I need you here in ten.”
*
Beckett hung up before she could ask another question.
Ten minutes.
He stood by the window in the north transept. Bits of colored glass had been broken out years earlier, but much of it remained. He peered through a hole and watched the world as if he could see the storm coming. Adrian had been out of prison for barely a day. When news of another murder broke, it would go viral. The church. The altar. It was too big, too gothic. The city would call for blood, and everything would come under scrutiny. The sentencing guidelines. The judge and the cops. Maybe even the prison.
How did the system let another woman die?
If news of Gideon’s shooting broke, too, the storm would spin out of control. Beckett saw how the papers would play it, not just as a story of murder and family and failed revenge, but of systemic incompetence as the first victim’s child slips through every crack in the system only to be shot in the shadow of the prison. Someone would figure out that Liz had been at Nathan’s, and that would make the cops look even worse. She was the angel of death, the department’s largest black eye since Adrian himself. The city was already turning against her. How bad would it get when people learned she’d worked to keep Gideon clear of social services? It was a royal mess, all of it. Dyer would never allow Liz on the scene.
But, Beckett wanted her here. She was his partner and friend, and she still had feelings for Adrian. Beckett needed to fix that.