The Silent Hour lp-4

by Michael Koryta

  “I did confront him,” she said, “and we had a royal battle, a screaming raging fight, and it saved our marriage. It would have saved our marriage.”

  Her voice faded, tears rose in her eyes, and she dabbed them away gently without shame. She looked hauntingly beautiful in that moment.

  “That night was when the silence broke,” she said, “and everything that had been held secret was shared. He told me what he’d thought and what he’d done, and I told him how his silence had damaged us, and that night we made love like people in love for the first time in years—and we decided we were going to leave.”

  “For good?”

  She shook her head. “No. For a few months, maybe a year. Joshua had been talking about it for a long time, urging for a trip overseas, and at the time I’d refused because I thought it would set us back in what we were doing here. That night, I agreed to it, because I thought that we had to get away to find a shared life again, so we could come back. Otherwise we were going to lose each other. Maybe we would have anyhow, but I like to think differently.”

  She stopped talking then, and her mouth became a hard line. For a moment I thought she was angry, but then I realized the tears were gaining on her again and she was determined not to be overrun.

  “Joshua also thought we had to leave for safety. After what Parker told us, he thought we could be in danger.”

  “So you planned to leave,” I said, “but you never made it. Your husband never made it, at least.”

  She nodded. “We made calls about arrangements for the house, for the mail, all those things you need to do before going abroad. The last time I saw him, I was heading out to talk to a travel agent and asked if he wanted to come, too. He said he had things to do around the house and I should go alone. I was gone for maybe three hours. When I came back here, I found my husband’s body.”

  She was staring at the well house as if something were crawling out of it.

  “He was outside. Just in front of the door. He’d been shot, and there was blood all over the stone, and when I saw his body I was sure that my brother had killed him.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Dominic gave Joshua a present when we got married. It was a ring, this horrible ring with an enormous stone that surely cost a fortune but could not have been less like my husband. He was not a man who wore rings. My brother, at that time, was. He was loud and flashy and wore expensive jewelry and to him the gift meant something. Joshua hated it, though, and the only time he ever wore it was when my brother was around.”

  She folded her arms across her chest again, even though the wind wasn’t blowing and the sun was warm on us through the bare trees, and said, “The ring was lying on his chest. Right there in the blood. It had been dropped in the blood and I understood what it meant. The ring had been a symbol to my brother, a welcome into our family, and Joshua had betrayed that welcome. So my brother killed him, and even as he lied to me about it, he left that ring as a message.”

  “He was murdered here,” I said, “and his body was left at the door.”

  She nodded.

  “Then could you explain how he ended up in the woods in Pennsylvania?”

  She looked at me and then away, twisted her torso as if stretching her back, and spoke with her face turned from mine. “I took him there and I buried him.”

  “I’m glad you lied about that,” I said. “Because it tells me how bad a liar you are, Alexandra, and that’s going to help me believe the rest of what you’ve said.”

  She unfolded the stretch slowly, let her face come back around.

  “Parker Harrison buried him,” I said. “Now tell me why.”

  “To help me,” she said. “To save me. He’d been gone that afternoon, and when he drove back in, with the truck all loaded up with mulch, he found me sitting there beside Joshua.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police?”

  “The police wouldn’t bring him back, but they would ask me to stay here and face the investigation and the trial, to prosecute my brother, to deal with the media. All of that would happen if I stayed, and so much more. There were people like Parker, and like Nimir Farah and Mark Ruzity, and I knew the publicity would find them, and I thought that would be a terrible thing. I saw no good coming from it at all, and so much harm.”

  “What about justice for your husband?” I said. “That meant nothing?”

  “Of course it did. My response was one of shock, I’ll admit that. The idea of having to bear what would come . . . I decided I couldn’t do it. That may seem like cowardice to you, and you may be right. I’ll let you make that judgment.”

  “Mark Ruzity was seen with your brother after you disappeared, after Joshua was killed,” I said. “And Parker Harrison called him. Why?”

  “I asked Parker to pass along a message to my brother, to tell him that I was leaving, would never speak to him again, and that he should never look for me.”

  “What about Ruzity?”

  She frowned. “Mark is such a good soul, but he struggles with his anger. He really does. He and Parker were close, and I told Parker that he could tell Mark only that I was leaving because of my brother’s actions. I didn’t trust his reaction to the details. Even so, I suspect Mark might have . . . given a more direct message to Dominic.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  She looked up. “I suspect he threatened to kill him if he pursued me.”

  I thought of the chisel against my forehead, and then I thought of the photograph Dunbar had taken, the way Ruzity had clasped his hand around Sanabria’s neck, pulled him close, and whispered in his ear. There weren’t many people who would threaten to kill a mob boss, but Mark Ruzity seemed like he could be one of them easily enough.

  “Harrison took the body,” I said, “and you took off.”

  “Yes.”

  I shook my head, wondering now more than ever why he had decided to darken my door. He knew what had happened. What in the hell had he really wanted?

  “Did he know where you went?” I asked. “Did you have any contact with him?”

  “No.”

  So maybe he’d just wanted to find her. Maybe he’d been honest about that much.

  “I had no contact with Parker,” she said, “until this May. Until the day before Ken was murdered. That day, I called Parker to tell him not to trust you.”

  “What?”

  “I told him that I was safe and well and that I knew he was looking for me but it would be dangerous for him to have any association with police and detectives. He’d buried my husband’s body. It was easy to imagine he could be blamed. I said if anything happened, all he needed to do was ask me, and I’d come forward.”

  The day before Ken was murdered. That was the same day Harrison had told me to quit, but then he’d asked that final question, asked who Ken really was.

  “Why didn’t you explain Ken to him?” I said.

  “Ken was the only person who knew how to find me, and had known for years. Couldn’t the police have charged him with something for that? I wanted to keep him out of anything negative.”

  “Out of anything negative,” I echoed. “He’s dead. Your decision to leave your husband’s murder unanswered is understandable, maybe even acceptable. This isn’t.”

  “I agree.”

  “Yet you haven’t contacted the police, haven’t taken any action.”

  “I didn’t know what action to take. I’ve been gone for twelve years. I have a new life, in a new place. I don’t want to destroy that in the way my old life was destroyed.”

  “But you’re the only person who knows anything.”

  “Here’s all I know: that on the morning before he died Ken Merriman left me a message—”

  “That’s another lie. He didn’t leave you a message, Alexandra. All the phone records were checked and rechecked.”

  “He didn’t use his own phone, or mine. He understood my reluctance to give that out, and so years earlier he created an account with a phone message
service, some anonymous thing, and he used pay phones and a calling card, just as I did. It was the only way we were in touch. Never in actual conversation, always through an exchange of messages. Now would you like to hear what he said that last day?”

  “Yes.”

  “He said that he believed the two of you were getting close to the truth of my husband’s murder, and that it had nothing to do with my brother, and more to do with a car.”

  37

  __________

  A car?” I stared at her, and I couldn’t speak. A car. What car?

  “You don’t know what that means?” she said.

  “No. I don’t know, because he cut me out of it, went off alone on whatever theory he had and got himself killed.”

  “He cut you out of it because he was waiting for my permission to tell you the truth. To give full disclosure. He thought you could be trusted.”

  “Would you have given it to him?”

  She was quiet for a while before saying, “I don’t know. I suppose so. I’ve told you the truth now.”

  “Only because I found you.” As I said it I realized Ken had told me how to find her. That constant insistence that she would return to the house if it were sold, that she’d have to see it one last time. Let me tell you, he’d said, the way he started so many sentences, if she’s alive, she’ll come back for one more visit before the place is sold.

  “You told him you’d come back here,” I said. “When you found out your in-laws were making a claim on the property, you told him you’d come back before it was sold.”

  “Yes.”

  He’d led me to her. Brought me here.

  “He’d known for years,” I said, “and kept the secret. Why?”

  “All I told him was what I’ve told you, only with far less composure. It was my first trip back to the house, and I was already a wreck when he found me. Then that sense of being caught . . . he calmed me down, and he listened to me, and I told him the same story, only without some of the information I have now.”

  “You told him all of this and then asked him to just go on and pretend he had no idea where you were.”

  She nodded. “You disapprove, and I’m not surprised. Most people would share your opinion, I’m sure. Ken Merriman was not one of them. He understood when I told him that everything had been taken from me. There were two great loves in my life—my husband and my mission here. They were destroyed. Do you think the state would have continued to work with me? I’d gotten a man killed rather than rehabilitated. My work was destroyed, my husband dead, my brother responsible. I ran from it. I ran, okay? It was wrong, maybe, and weak, certainly, but it is what I did.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “I begged Ken Merriman to let me leave, and he did,” she said. “He did.”

  This would have been after the newspaper articles and the public complaints of Joshua Cantrell’s parents. After immense damage to Ken’s reputation and to his career. He could have played the ultimate trump card by producing Alexandra, silenced every critic and bought himself some amount of fame. It was a hell of a story, a hell of a mystery, and he could have brought it to light. Instead he chose silence, went back to that career of infidelity cases and insurance work, of financial problems and low respect. I thought of the time he’d told me that his wife was right to leave him, what he’d said about making a decision that seemed absolutely right at the time, then seeing the way it affected your family and wondering if it was a selfish choice.

  “Do you appreciate the losses he took for you?” I said. “What he gave up?”

  “Of course I do. He damaged his own life to protect mine.”

  “It was the epitaph,” I said. “That’s what convinced him you’d come back?”

  She nodded.

  “Who did the carving?”

  “Parker. At my request, and after I was gone. I wanted to leave some sense of a memorial, and I wanted the words to speak to my brother. I wanted him to know that I knew he’d killed my husband. Ken Merriman suspected something close, and he thought that if I viewed the house as a memorial, I might return to it. Probably around the last date, April twelfth. So he waited, and he watched. Every day for three weeks.”

  Three weeks. I wouldn’t have lasted that long. I remembered now what Casey Hopper had told me when I called to ask him about Ken—You know I was a sniper in Vietnam. So when I say somebody is patient . . .

  “You didn’t come back on the twelfth?”

  She shook her head. “I wanted to, but then I was afraid that might be expected. So I came later.”

  “He was still waiting.”

  “Yes. He said everyone told him how important this place was to me, how much hope and excitement I’d held for it, and between that and the epitaph he became convinced I’d come back.”

  “The house was almost new,” I said, “and worth a fortune. You intended to just leave it empty forever?”

  “There was nothing left for me here. There was no way I could continue to live here—but sell the house? I could never have done that. Never.”

  “It’s gone now,” I said. “I doubt you can reclaim it. It might be too late.”

  She nodded. “I won’t try to stop it. Let them have their money. I owe them that much, surely.”

  “They did great damage to Ken’s career.”

  “I know, and when he left a message telling me that you’d be inquiring about the house, I said I wanted to hire him to find out who you were working for. I was afraid it was them again, and that Parker would be at risk. I didn’t imagine he was the client.”

  “When you found out, you asked Ken to hang around and keep an eye on things?”

  “No. That was on his own. He’d evidently grown doubtful of my brother’s guilt.”

  “You have no contact with your brother?”

  “None. As I said, for so many years I believed he killed Joshua. Then Ken left that final message and said he thought I was wrong.”

  “And that the police needed to pay attention to a car,” I said.

  She nodded again.

  “It needs to be finished,” I said. “You have to realize that.”

  “Will the police be able to finish it?” she said. “After all this time?”

  “I’ll be able to,” I said. “Hell, according to Ken, I already did. Now I just have to figure out how I did.”

  We stayed for another hour, sat there as the sun rose higher and our muscles stiffened, and she told me more of her story but nothing that compared to what I’d already heard. Eventually I asked her where she had been for the past twelve years. She gave more of an answer than I expected.

  “I live in a small town not in this country but not so far away, either.” She laughed. “How difficult of a riddle is that? Fine, so I live in a small Canadian town. I live under a different name, and I’ve worn a wig for so long that it feels like part of me. I make a modest living in modest ways and it’s all that I need. In my new life, it’s more than I need. I’ve never remarried, and I doubt that I ever will. I have friends whom I treasure, people who mean more to me than I can express, and none of them, not a soul, understands my past. I haven’t lied to them, I’ve just asked for no questions, and they have respected that. Those closest to me have, at least.”

  I had so many questions myself, but it became clear that she had fewer answers, and after a time the conversation became stagnant and then disappeared altogether. I didn’t want to let her go. I also knew we couldn’t stay.

  “I could hold you here,” I said, “and call the police. There are many of them who would like to talk to you.”

  She didn’t answer. Just held my eyes in silence.

  “I’m not sure I want to do that,” I said. “Maybe I will, soon, but not yet. I’m equally certain it would be a mistake to let you leave.”

  “Give me your phone number,” she said. “I’ll call you in a day. I promise I will do that. Whatever you want from me, I’ll offer it.”

  “Including coming forward?”
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  Again, the silence.

  “Ah,” I said. “Whatever I want, except that.”

  “Maybe that. I’m not sure. I’ve been gone for many years, and I have a new life that would be sacrificed. Surely you know that’s not a snap decision.”

  “No decision that takes twelve years to make is—but I’m not sure it’s your decision to make, Alexandra.”

  We sat and looked at each other for a while, and then I got to my feet. My legs felt foreign. We’d been sitting for a long time.

  “I can accept all of this as the truth, and a week from now realize it was a lie and feel a fool for believing you,” I said.

  “It isn’t a lie.”

  “It may be,” I said. “If it is, you can know this—I’ll chase you. For as long as it takes me, and as far as it takes me, I’ll chase you.”

  She stood as well, brushed off her jeans, and then stepped forward and offered her hand. I clasped it and held it and looked into her eyes as she said, “I’ll say this one more time—it isn’t a lie.”

  She walked away from me then, walked to that short ridge of stone that marked the rear wall of the house and looked down at the pond. She stood there with her hands in the pockets of her jeans and her shoulders hunched, looking down. I gave her a few minutes before I followed.

  “I wish you could have seen it,” she said when I was beside her.

  “I can imagine what it looked like.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “You can’t. When Parker was tending the grounds, when everything was at its best, it was beyond what you can imagine. In the spring, when it was all in bloom . . . no, you can’t imagine what that looked like.”

  She took her hands from her pockets and turned away. “It was everything I’d dreamed of. We could have done so much here. We could have done so much.”

  38

  __________

  I walked up the drive with her, and neither of us spoke. When she reached her rental car, she turned and faced me.

  “I’ll call tomorrow,” she said, “and we’ll figure out how to move forward. You may not believe me, but it is the truth. If I don’t call, keep your word. Start the chase.”