The Prophet

1

ADAM HAD HIS SHIRT LIFTED, studying the lead-colored bruise along his ribcage, when the girl opened the door. She turned her head in swift horror, as if she'd caught him crouched on his desk in the nude. He gave the bruise one more look, frowning, and then lowered his shirt.

"Want a lesson for the day?"

The girl, a brunette with very tan skin—too tan for this time of the year in this part of the world—turned back hesitantly and didn't speak.

"If you're going to tell a drunk man that it's time to go back to jail, you ought to see that the pool cue is out of his hand first," Adam told her.

She parted her lips, then closed them again.

"Not your concern," Adam said. "Sorry. Come on in."

She stepped forward and let the door swing shut. When the latch clicked, she glanced backward, as if worried about being trapped in here with him.

Husband is a good decade older than her, Adam thought. He hasn't hit her, at least not yet or at least not recently, but he's the kind who might. The charges probably aren't domestic. Let's say, oh, drunk and disorderly. It won't be costly to get him out. Not in dollars, at least.

He walked behind the desk, then extended a hand and said, "Adam Austin."

Another hesitation, and then she reached forward and took his hand. Her eyes dropped to his knuckles, which were swollen and scabbed. When she removed her hand, he saw that she was wearing bright red nail polish with some sort of silver glitter worked into it.

"My name's April."

"All right." He dropped into the leather swivel chair behind the desk, trying not to wince at the pain in his side. "Somebody you care about in a little trouble, April?"

She tilted her head. "What?"

"I assume you're looking to post a bond."

She shook her head. "No. That's not it." She was holding a folder in her free hand, and now she lifted it and held it against her chest while she sat in one of the two chairs in front of the desk. It was a bright blue folder, plastic and shiny.

"No?" The sign said AA BAIL BONDS. People who came to see him came for a reason.

"Look, um, you're the detective, right?"

The detective. He did indeed hold a PI license. He did not recall ever being referred to as "the detective" before.

"I'm… yeah. I do that kind of work."

He didn't think he was even listed in the phone book as a private investigator. He was just AA Bail Bonds, which covered both his initials and gave him pole position in the Yellow Pages as people with shaking hands turned pages seeking help.

The girl didn't say anything, but looked down at that shiny folder as if it held the secrets of her life. Adam, touching his left side gingerly with his fingertips, still trying to assess whether the ribs were bruised or cracked, said, "What exactly brought you here, April?"

"I'd heard… I was given a referral."

"A referral," he echoed. "Can I ask the source?"

She pushed her hair back over her left ear and sat forward in the chair, meeting his eyes for the first time, as if she'd summoned some confidence. "My boyfriend. Your brother was his football coach. We heard from him that you were a detective."

Adam said, "My brother?" in an empty voice.

"Yes. Coach Austin."

"Kent," he said. "We're not on his squad, April. We can call him Kent."

She didn't seem to like that idea, but she nodded.

"My brother gave you a referral," he said, and found himself amused somehow, despite the aching ribs and bruised hand and the sandpaper eyelids that a full week of uneven hours and too much drinking provided. Until she walked in, he'd been two minutes from locking the office and going in pursuit of black coffee. The tallest cup and strongest blend they had. A savage headache had been building, and he needed something beyond Advil to take its knees out.

"That's right." She seemed unsatisfied with his response, as if she'd expected the mention of his brother would establish a personal connection. "I'm in school at Baldwin-Wallace College. A senior."

"Terrific," Adam said.

"It's a good school."

"I've always understood that to be true." He was trying to keep his attention on her, but right now all she represented was a delay between him and coffee. "What's in the folder?"

She looked down protectively, as if he'd violated the folder's privacy. "Some letters."

He waited. Could this take any longer? He was used to fighting his way through personal stories he didn't care to hear about, used to deflecting tales of woe, but he did not have the patience to tug one out just so he could begin deflecting it.

"What precisely do you need, April?"

"I'd like to get in touch with my father."

"You don't know him?" Adam said, thinking that this wasn't the sort of problem he could handle even if it interested him. How in the hell did you go about finding someone who'd abandoned his child decades ago? It wasn't like chasing down a guy who'd skipped out on bail, leaving behind a fresh trail of friends, relatives, and property.

"I've met him," she said. "But he was… well, by the time I was old enough to really get to know him, he was already in prison."

Adam understood now why she'd gone to the trouble of telling him that she was in a good school. She didn't want him to form his understanding of her from this one element, the knowledge that her father was in prison.

"I see. Well, we can figure out where he's doing his time easily enough."

"He's done. He's out."

Damn. That would slow things down.

"What I've got," the too-tan-for-October girl said, "is some letters. We started writing while he was still in prison. That was, actually, your brother's idea."

"No kidding," Adam said, doing his damnedest to hide his disgust. Just what this girl needed, a relationship with some asshole in a cell. But Kent, he'd have found that a fine plan. Adam's brother had gotten a lot of ink for his prison visits over the years. DRIVEN BY THE PAST, one headline had read. Adam found that a patently obvious observation. Everyone was driven by the past, all the time. Did Kent's past play a role in his prison visits? Of course. Did that shared past play a role in Adam's own prison visits? Better believe it. They were just different sorts of visits.

"Yes. And it was a wonderful idea. I mean, I learned to forgive him, you know? And then to understand that he wasn't this monster, that he was someone who made a mistake and—"

"He stopped writing when he got out?"

She stuttered to a stop. "No. Well, he did for a while. But it's an adjustment."

"It certainly is," Adam said, thinking That's why most of them go right back. She was so damn young. This was what college seniors looked like? Shit, he was getting old. These girls seemed to be moving backward, sliding away from him just as fast as he aged away from them, until their youth was an impossible thing to comprehend.

"Right," April said, pleased that he'd agreed. "So some time passed. Five months. It was frustrating, but then I got another letter, and he told me he'd gotten out and explained how difficult it was, and apologized."

Of course he did. Has he asked for money yet?

"So now he writes, but he hasn't given me his address. He said he's nervous about meeting me, and I understand that. I don't want to force things. But I'd at least like to be able to write back, you know? And I don't want him to be… scared of me."

Adam thought that maybe he didn't need coffee anymore. Maybe he needed a beer. It was four in the afternoon. That was close enough to happy hour to count, wasn't it?

"You might give him some time on that," he said. "You might—"

"I will give him time. But I can't give him anything more than that if I can't write back."

That's the point, honey. Give him nothing but time and distance.

"He explained where he was living," she said. "I feel like I should have been able to find it myself, honestly. I tried on the Internet, but I guess I don't know what I'm doing. Anyhow, I'd love it if you'd find the address. All I want to do is respond, right? To let him know that he doesn't need to be afraid of me. I'm not going to ask him to start being a dad."

Adam rubbed his eyes. "I'm more of a, uh, local-focused type. I don't do a lot of—"

"He's in town."

"Chambers?"

She nodded.

"He's from here?"

She seemed to consider this a difficult question. "We all are, originally. My family. I mean, everyone left, like me to go to college, and…"

And your father to go to prison. Yes, everyone left.

She opened the folder and withdrew a photocopy of a letter.

"In this, he gives the name of his landlord. It should be easy to come up with a list, right? He's living in a rental house, and this is the name of the woman who owns it. It should be easy."

It would be easy. One stop at the auditor's office and he'd have every piece of property in this woman's name.

"Maybe you should let things take a natural course," he said.

Her eyes sparked. "I have plenty of people who actually know something about this situation who can give me advice. I'm asking you to give me an address."

It should have pissed him off, but instead it almost made him smile. He hadn't thought she had that in her, not after the way she'd crept so uneasily into his office, scared by the sound of the door shutting behind her. He wished she'd come in when Chelsea was working. Not that Chelsea had a gentle touch, but maybe that was why it would have been better. Someone needed to chase her out of here, and Adam wasn't doing a good job of that.

"Fair enough," he said. "May I see the letter?"

She passed it over. A typed letter, the message filling barely a quarter of the page.

Adam read through it and handed it back to her. He didn't say what he wanted to—Let it breathe, don't force contact because it will likely bring you nothing but pain—because that argument had already been shot down with gusto. The landlord's name made it cake, anyhow. Ruzich? There wouldn't be many.

"I just want to write him a short note," April repeated. "Tell him that I'm wishing him well and that he doesn't need to be worried about my expectations."

Definitely beer, Adam thought. Definitely skip the coffee and go right to beer.

"Can you get me an address?" she asked.

"Probably. I bill for my time, nothing more, nothing less. The results of the situation aren't my responsibility. All I guarantee is my time."

She nodded, reached into her purse. "I'm prepared to pay two hundred dollars."

"Give me a hundred. I charge fifty an hour. If it takes me more than two hours, I'll let you know."

He charged one hundred an hour, but this would likely take him all of twenty minutes and it was good to seem generous.

"All right." She counted out five twenty-dollar bills and pushed them across the desk. "One other thing—you have a policy of being confidential, don't you? Like a lawyer?"

"I'm not a lawyer."

She looked dismayed.

"But I also am not a talker," Adam said. "My business is my own, and yours is your own. I won't talk about it unless a police officer walks in this door and tells me to."

"That won't happen."

She had no idea how often that did happen with Adam's clients.

"I just wanted to be sure… it's private, you know," she said. "It's a private thing."

"I'm not putting out any press releases."

"Right. But you won't even say anything to, um, to your brother? I mean, don't get me wrong, I really respect Coach Austin, but… it's private."

"Kent and I don't do a whole lot of talking," Adam said. "What I will do is find some potential addresses and pass them along to you. The rest is between you and your dad."

She nodded, grateful.

"How do I get in touch with you?" he said.

She gave him a cell phone number, which he wrote down on a legal pad. Beside it he wrote April and then looked up.

"Last name?"

She frowned, and he knew why she didn't want to give it. If she still carried her father's name, and he was betting that she did, then she was afraid Adam would look into what the man had done to land in prison.

"Harper," she said. "But remember, this is—"

"Private. Yes, Miss Harper. I understand that. I deal with it every day."

She thanked him, shook his hand. She smelled of cocoa, and he thought about that and her dark skin and figured she'd just left a tanning bed. October in northern Ohio. All the pretty girls were fighting the gathering cold and darkness. Trying to carry summer into the winter.

"I'll be in touch," he said, and he waited long enough to hear the engine of her car start in the parking lot before he locked the office and went to get his beer.