“Can you tell us who that gentleman is?” Targent said.
Now it was me who couldn’t look at Karen. “You know who it is.”
“Right. And so do you, Perry. We’re sitting here looking at proof that you’ve lied to me. Remember what you told me this afternoon when we searched your apartment? You told me I needed to prove that you were lying. Consider it done. And lying to me is withholding information critical to a homicide investigation, and that can be considered a crime. You lied yesterday when I asked you about him, then lied again sitting here in front of your client thirty seconds ago.”
“You shouldn’t have that tape. I never gave—”
“I left an officer watching your gym today. For your own well-being. You know how guys sometimes like to drift back by the scene of a crime, check it out. Thought maybe we’d get lucky, and I guess we did. I just didn’t expect it to happen the way it did.”
“Your officer didn’t shoot that tape. It’s from my gym camera. That’s illegal search and seizure.”
“Perfectly legal. You gave me consent to the tapes in the presence of about five other officers.”
“That was for last night’s tape.”
“Really? Sorry, I forgot. Called your gym manager and told her I had one tape to return and one to pick up. We agreed that it would be best not to bother you. After all, you’d had a long night.” He cocked his head. “Tell me why Thor was there.”
“Dropped by to ask about a membership. Wants to get back in shape, he said.”
Targent’s face stayed neutral, but Karen’s flushed with anger. I looked at her and felt my shoulders tighten and the back of my neck go hot. Honesty matters deeply to me, and to sit here in front of Karen and lie was painful. I could tell them why Thor had been there, what information he had shared, but I wouldn’t. Even if I could disregard the fact that Thor had saved my life once, decide that wasn’t enough to earn my silence, I’d be a damn fool to talk. Send Targent back to Thor with the details of our conversation? I might as well start shopping for a headstone.
“I didn’t kill Alex Jefferson,” I said. “I didn’t hire someone else to kill him. All the rest of this is external, irrelevant crap. If you want someone to be guilty bad enough, you can find something that makes him look like a possibility.”
“True enough,” Targent said. “But I’d like to hear you explain something. Anything. Why is this guy going after you? Why did Jefferson’s son wait for you to arrive before capping himself? Why is Thor involved, and why are you lying about him? Can you give us one answer, Perry? That’s what I’m asking from you. One honest answer.”
“This is ludicrous, Targent. You really think I’m behind all of it? Karen came to me about finding Matt, not the other way around. Karen asked me to help with this. That’s why I’m involved.”
“He’s right,” Karen said.
“Terrific. She brought you into it. What does that explain? Which one of my questions does that answer?”
“That’s your job. I’m trying to help, but you won’t even hear me out on Andy Doran. Aren’t you even a little intrigued by the timing of his prison break and those first phone calls to Jefferson? Or do you think it’s more likely that I spent the past three years brooding and working up my nut to kill a guy for something that was such a minor offense?”
“Did you think it was a minor offense when you assaulted him?”
“That’s in the past, gone and forgotten. Stop trying to make it count.”
“I’ve seen some things that suggest maybe it isn’t gone and forgotten, Perry. Your little box of keepsakes . . .”
“I kept photographs of a woman I was engaged to and you think that’s evidence of some sort of obsession? Are you serious? It would be more psychotic if I didn’t have anything like that, if I’d purged it all.”
“My partner interviewed one of Alex Jefferson’s colleagues. This guy said Alex saw you at his wedding, parked on the street, watching the ceremony. He didn’t tell Mrs. Jefferson because he didn’t want to put a damper on their special day.”
Karen looked at me with surprise and sympathy, and I turned away.
“This is a cheap tactic, Targent. Throwing this shit in my face with her in the room.”
“Cheap tactic or not, I’d like you to explain your presence at their wedding. That seems, Perry, like the action of a guy who has not moved on. A guy who has an unhealthy obsession.”
I shook my head, not wanting to look at either of them.
“Well?” Targent said. “Can you explain?”
I laughed without humor. “Yeah, I can explain it. I missed her. Is that what you want to hear? That what you need me to say, you prick? I missed her. Was it unhealthy, to miss someone I loved? I don’t know. It was just the way it went, for a while. But it stopped going that way a long time ago.”
“I don’t think we need to be talking about this,” Karen said, and the pity in her voice wounded me.
“It’s all right, Karen. He wants to lay the pressure on, and that’s fine. The sad part is that it’s not helping you.”
“And you turning up in every corner we check, disrupting our investigation?” Targent said. “That’s helping?”
“I’m not turning up anywhere, Targent. Someone’s trying to give it that appearance, that’s all. But since you can’t recognize the truth when you hear it—”
“You know what? I’m done with you tonight. You’ve had your say, Perry. I’d like you to go on home.”
“I came for a few words alone with Karen, thanks.”
“You can have them later. I’m not through with my conversation with her, but I am through with you. Take off, Perry. You want to talk to her, you can call her later, although I will urge her not to take your call.”
“It’s okay, Lincoln,” Karen said. “I don’t know what’s happening, but I do know you. Don’t worry about this.”
I’d been dismissed. I got to my feet with the two of them sitting there waiting for me to leave, walked down the hall, and let myself out of the house, closing the door on soft voices discussing my potential as a murderer.
25
Confusion kills.
The words were written on a dry-erase board, with a marker that made a wince-producing squeak at the end of each letter, the old cop’s hand moving too fast, using too much pressure.
The training seminar was called “Critical Incident Response,” bureaucratic code that meant situations where people were going to shoot at us. I was one of a dozen cops in the room, listening to an instructor who’d trained SWAT teams all over the country for the better part of three decades.
Confusion kills. He read it aloud, then faced us.
“You must know your assailant, you must know your friend,” he said. “It sounds simple sitting here in this room. It will not be simple when it’s dark and loud and there are bullets searching for your heart. If you are properly trained, properly prepared, you will execute under fire, you will survive, you will accomplish your goals. If you are not, then the first thing those bullets will create is confusion. And confusion, gentlemen, kills.”
Matt Jefferson came home from a day in the apple orchard as the sun descended. Pulled his truck into the gravel parking lot beside the barn just as he did every evening, walked up the stone path to his apartment door, and stopped short. Read my note. A man from Cleveland was here to see him. Family business. The man would return.
A few short sentences, one meaning clear to me, another meaning clear to Matt Jefferson. While I sat in a small-town diner, eating pie and thinking about Amy, Matt pulled the note off the door and went upstairs, found a bottle of whiskey and a gun, and walked down to the gazebo to wait.
What a beautiful spot. It must have been something as the sun set, that pond catching whatever muted colors the overcast day allowed, then fading to a black sparkle as the sky darkened and the moon rose. I’d taken my time with dinner, driven slowly on the return to the orchard. He’d had some time to sit. Listen to the wind, watch the dead
leaves fall to the earth, taste the whiskey in his mouth and feel it burn down his throat, the stock of the gun cool and comfortable in his hand.
When I arrived, he knew me. While I banged on his door, within gun range, he knew me. With each echoing step I’d taken over the wooden bridge that brought me face-to-face with him on that gazebo, he knew me. And when he lifted the gun and twirled it and jammed it into his mouth and pulled the trigger, then, he’d known me most of all.
Confusion kills.
Brewer was right, looking at me for murder. In a way, I had killed him. It was my arrival, the sight of me there in the gazebo, my failure to clear the surprise and fear out of my brain fast enough to explain, that made him pull the trigger.
“The son believed me,” my attacker had said a few nights later. “He knew that his would be a welcome grave.”
True enough. Matt Jefferson had welcomed it, sent himself to that waiting grave, because he knew that what was in store—what I represented—was worse.
So who was I? In that moment that he’d known me, who the hell had I been, and why was I there?
At least he has a reason. You got nothing but greed.
Matt Jefferson believed he knew who I was and what I was after, and that confusion killed him. Back in Karen’s living room, the confusion was alive and well again, flourishing, with Targent nurturing it and some unknown participant—maybe Andy Doran, maybe not—validating it. This time, I had the opportunity for a few words of explanation, all that Matt Jefferson would’ve needed. This time, the words weren’t going to be enough. This time, that gun was going to stay pointed at me.
I went into the gym before my apartment, the late-night check such a habit now that I didn’t even think about it. The sight of the plastic sheet over the window surprised me for a second. Somehow, the damage to the gym had faded in my mind during the rest of the day.
The day. It had been just that morning that I’d stood in the gym and watched Thor step in through the window. That seemed impossible.
I locked the gym door—as if it mattered with the plastic sheet there instead of a window—and walked back through the office. The message light on the desk phone was blinking, but I didn’t stop to pick it up. There would be a message there from my insurance company, a call I absolutely should return, but I couldn’t make myself care about that right now. The insurance company wasn’t going to disappear, and neither was the damage to my building. I, on the other hand, might need to if Targent came up with any more finds.
There were more phone messages waiting for me at my apartment, most from the gym members who knew me well enough to have my home number, calling to express their concern and pry for details. I deleted them and dialed Amy’s number.
“I was waiting for some indication that you were alive,” she said when she answered. “I’ve never dated a guy who presented that problem—the need to check to make sure he was still alive.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve wanted to call you all day. Things got away from me a little bit. Starting with the gunfire and progressing to the cops exercising a search warrant on my apartment, then producing video evidence that I know Thor and lied about him before.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yeah.” I leaned against the wall and exhaled, worn out just from reciting the day’s synopsis. “Any chance I could see you?”
“I was hoping so. Why don’t you come here? No offense, but after last night, I’m not a real big fan of your building.”
“A little late-night gunfire and all of a sudden it’s a bad neighborhood?”
“Just come over.”
She met me at the door, barefoot, wearing a T-shirt that was four sizes too big and her glasses, which she never wore outside of the house. I loved her in the glasses.
“Wine?” She had a bottle in her hand.
“Definitely.”
We went upstairs. She poured two glasses of red wine and passed one to me, and then we went into the living room and sat down on the couch. I took a swallow of the wine and closed my eyes.
“Long day?” she said.
I laughed.
“Funny question?”
“Yeah. Just a few minutes ago I was standing in the gym trying to figure out how many days had passed since it got shot up. Had trouble convincing myself that it was really just last night.”
I told her about Thor, Donny Ward, the private investigator in Indiana, and Targent’s video. It took a while to tell.
“He’s serious about this?” she said. “He actually considers you a suspect?”
“Considers me the suspect, Amy. And this thing with Thor . . .” I shook my head. “That hurts, no question. Because on the surface it does fit. It really does. This idea that it was a man with a grudge and a hired killer, well, Thor and I make a natural pairing for that. Thor showing up in my gym today makes it a lot worse, too. I can’t explain that.”
“Why not?”
“When a man like Thor tells you that a conversation is to stay confidential, you’d be well advised to pay attention.”
“But if it would clear you . . .”
“Which it wouldn’t. There’s no evidence that it’s true. Targent wouldn’t believe Thor, and all I would have accomplished would be to anger one of the deadliest men in the city.”
“So what can you do?”
“The job Targent should be handling. Finding a real suspect. If I can do that, show a strong case, they’ll have to redirect. Andy Doran could be the ticket.”
Amy was quiet. I looked at her and thought that this should be a good night. This moment, on the couch with her sharing wine and conversation one day after we first made love, should have been special, carefree. Instead we were talking about killers and cops.
“It has to stop soon,” I said. “Targent’s got to burn out with it. That’s what happens when you’re wrong—you run into the wall. There’s no evidence, nothing left to push with.”
“Well, when’s he going to hit that wall?”
“It had better be soon.” I reached out and rubbed her leg. “I’m sorry, Amy. We should be talking about something else. You shouldn’t have had to get up at three in the morning to stand around with a bunch of cops, either.”
“It wasn’t exactly a traditional first date.”
“I always try to provide women with something unusual. You know, stand out from the crowd.”
“Mission accomplished.”
I don’t know when the conversation slowed, or when it stopped. All I know is that at some point we both fell asleep on the couch, and when I woke up in the night and saw she was still there I was glad.
I was back in my apartment, getting dressed and drinking coffee, when Joe called.
“You planning to show up today?”
“It’s ten to eight, Joe.”
“You’re going to want to get down here.”
“Why?”
“While you were sleeping, I was working, And you will be thrilled to hear what I learned. Thrilled. ”
“What’s that?”
“Remember my problem with Donny Ward’s story?”
“How the guy got to him before the cops.”
“Exactly. Well, that problem is solved, LP, and the answer is going to make your day.”
“What is it?”
“Get down here, and I’ll tell you.”
Fifteen minutes later I walked into the office and found him behind the desk, a grim smile on his face.
“What do you have?” I said.
“That question ate at me all night, LP. I couldn’t put a scenario together to explain it unless Ward was lying or this guy had been following Doran the night Monica Heath was murdered.”
“You think that’s it?”
He shook his head. “Nope. I got up this morning at about five and read through the case file again, looking for something I missed. Found out that Doran refused a police interview and demanded an attorney. They gave him a public defender, and Doran talked to this guy before he ever told the p
olice his account of the night. The only person who would have known Donny Ward’s role at the start was Doran’s PD.”
“So he had to leak it.”
“Exactly. I thought I’d track him down and we could interview him. Learned he’s no longer with Ashtabula County. Moved into private practice. Guess where?”
I didn’t answer, just waited.
“Jefferson, Groff, and Associates,” he said.
I stood where I was and stared at him, watching his smile spread.
“You’re serious,” I said.
“Absolutely. He’s listed on the firm’s Web site and with the bar association.”
“He went to work for Jefferson. Sometime after he convinced Andy Doran to take a plea bargain that kept a weak case out of court scrutiny, he went to work for Jefferson.”
“That’s the story.”
“Son of a bitch,” I said. “We’ve got him. Jefferson rigged Doran’s case from the inside and outside. Intimidated his alibi into silence and paid off his attorney.”
“The fact that he works for Jefferson’s firm today is not proof of any wrongdoing in the Doran case.”
“But you know it’s there. How many public defenders from rural counties has Jefferson’s firm added in recent years, I wonder?”
“At least one.”
“Yeah. I’m guessing it wasn’t the strength of his résumé that landed him the spot.”
“We’ll have to confront him, but I don’t know how well that will go. Tough to imagine him being as forthright as Donny Ward. The guy’s an attorney; he knows what this means—loss of his license and probably jail time. If he undermined Doran’s offense, he’ll be petrified of us.”
“So he’ll deny it. Fine. It still gives us credibility with the Doran angle. Even Targent will have to pay attention.”
“I also called the prosecutor in Doran’s case, a guy named George Hilliard. He sounded leery, but he agreed to give us a few minutes this morning.”
“You have any reason to think he was involved with this, not just fooled by it?”
“Can’t say for sure, but there’s been no obvious indication he played a part.”
A Welcome Grave Page 18