14
At eight o’clock Elizabeth found Faircloth Jones on the porch of his grand old house. He was alone, with a drink in one hand and a cigar in the other. “Elizabeth, my dear.” He rose to press a papery cheek against her own. “If you are looking for our friend, I fear time and circumstance have stolen him away.” The porch was dark but for open windows and squares of light. Long-untended box bushes pressed against the rails. Down the bluff, the river moved with the sound of a whispering crowd. “May I offer you something? I know it’s not the evening I promised, but I’ve opened a fine Bordeaux, and there’s Belvedere, of course. I also have a lovely Spanish cheese.”
“I don’t understand. Where has Adrian gone?”
“Home, I fear, and on foot.” Faircloth tilted his head down the hill. “It’s only a few miles if you know the trails that follow the river. I dare say he knows them well.”
Elizabeth sat in a rocking chair, and the old lawyer did the same. “You mentioned circumstance.”
“Tight spaces and paranoia, my dear. I brought our friend home as intended, but he was unwilling to remain under my roof or between my walls. Nothing uncivilized, mind you. Lots of thanks and kindness; but, he wasn’t going to have it. Apparently, he has every intention of sleeping beneath the stars, and the risk of another trespass charge is no deterrent. Love of place. I believe Adrian suffers unduly.”
“He’s also claustrophobic.”
“Ah, that’s very good.” The lawyer’s eyes narrowed as he smiled. “Not many people ever figured that out.”
“I saw him in lockdown.” Elizabeth pressed her hands between her knees. “It wasn’t pretty.”
“He spoke to me of reasons, once, and I had nightmares for a year, after.”
“Tell me.”
“Adrian had family in some farm town up in Pennsylvania. His mother’s parents, I believe. It was a little place, regardless, all cornfields and trucks and dusty brawls. He was six, I think, or seven, wandering about on a neighbor’s farm when he went down an abandoned well shaft and wedged tight at sixty feet. They didn’t find him until lunch the next day. Even then, it took another thirty hours to get him out alive. There’re newspaper accounts out there somewhere if you care to dig them up. Front-page stuff. The pictures alone would break your heart. The most blank-eyed, traumatized look I’ve ever seen on a child. I don’t think he spoke for a month, after.”
Elizabeth blinked and saw Adrian as he’d been in the lockdown cell, shirtless in the dark, scarred and sweat-slicked and talking to himself. “Jesus.”
“Indeed.”
“I think I’ll have that drink.”
“Belvedere?”
“Please.” He shuffled into the house and returned with a glass that clinked as he handed it to her. “You mentioned paranoia.”
“Oh, yes.” The lawyer reclaimed his chair. “He thought we were followed from the jailhouse. A gray car. Two men. He was very agitated about it. Told me he’d seen the same car on three prior occasions. I pushed him for motive or cause, and though he refused to discuss it, he did act as if, perhaps, he knew what it was about.”
Elizabeth perked up. “Did he elaborate?”
“Not at all.”
“Was he believable?”
“His concern was. He was stoic about it, of course, but more than eager to be on his way. He did allow me to find clothes that fit, but I couldn’t coax him to linger for love or money. He stripped where we sit; asked me to burn the clothes he’d been wearing, even suggested I consider leaving for my own protection. Wanted me to stay in a hotel for a few days. The very idea.”
“Why did he think you unsafe?”
“I know only that my obstinacy upset him. He kept staring off that way.” Crybaby pointed left. “And calling me a stubborn fool of a man who was old enough to know who to trust and not. He said I should leave with him. Or, barring that, call the police. At the time, I thought his behavior the height of foolishness.”
“At the time?”
The lawyer’s eyes glinted in the night. “You came in from town, right? Crossed the river there?” He gestured right, where land fell away. “You crossed the bridge and turned directly into my drive?”
“I did.”
“Hmm.” He drew on the cigar, thin legs crossed at the knee. “If you look left”—he gestured to a gap in the trees—“you’ll see the land rise up to where the road follows the ridge. It’s distant, I’ll give you; but there’s a turnoff there from which you can see the house. Tourists find it from time to time. It makes a nice picture when the leaves peak.”
“What, exactly, are we talking about?”
“We’re not so much talking as waiting.”
“For…?”