“I didn’t think it was the right thing, but I didn’t argue because I don’t know that there are many things more deeply wrong than one person telling another how to live. So I let you quit. Now, a few months later, you’re in here because you couldn’t quit.”
“Should be a little easier to make it stick now.”
Now it was his turn not to answer.
“You remember the way Dunbar looked when we went out there and showed him the Neloms connection?” I said. “You remember how he went into his bedroom and found his files, Joe? In his bedroom? A man who has been retired for years? He was obsessed. And wrong.”
“And a different man than you.”
“Yeah? I don’t know about that. Don’t know how different he is from you, either, if you hadn’t forced yourself to disappear, forced yourself to quit this work. He’s what waits at the end of the tunnel.”
“Something you need to understand, Lincoln? There are a lot of tunnels, and you do your own digging.”
Neither of us spoke after that. He stayed in the chair until a nurse came in and gave him an excuse to leave.
45
__________
We didn’t have another conversation like that. The next time I saw him, there were other people around and he was back to his forced cheerfulness. I’d never seen him so funny, in fact. He seemed like he should have his own late-night show.
I stayed at Amy’s apartment after I was released. The stairs were easier to negotiate there, and her place was more open, had better daylight. That sort of thing matters to you when you spend most of the day sitting around.
I was coming back fast. That’s what the doctors and the physical therapists told me. Coming back faster than I had any excuse to, in fact, largely because I’d been in outstanding shape at the time I’d taken the bullets. All those obsessive workouts were worth something, then. Good to know.
Amy and I talked about the shooting often, but always in a journalistic fashion—how strong the case against Darius was, what the potential legal ramifications for me might be, things like that. At first I wondered if she was keeping that sort of distance for my sake, and eventually I realized it was for hers. In the silence that grew after one of our conversations, I told her that I was sorry.
“You’re sorry?” she said. “For what? Getting shot?”
“For putting you through all of this.”
She gave a sad smile. “One of the last things you said to me, the night before you went over there, was that you had to do one last thing, and it had to be done alone.”
“I remember.”
“Look how well that turned out. In your head, I suppose you were protecting Joe. Probably me, too.”
“Oh, no, Joe’s shared his psychological insight with you.”
“You think he’s wrong?” she said. “You have the nerve to look me in the eye right now and tell me that Joe was wrong with what he told you in the hospital?”
I didn’t speak.
“Exactly,” she said. “You know that he’s right—and you know that if a bullet went just a few inches in a different direction, I’d be alone right now, remembering that last night we were together. You think that would be a good memory for me? I couldn’t stop thinking about it while you were in the hospital. I decided that it would have made a hell of a fitting epitaph for you. ‘He had one last thing to do—alone.’ Heaven knows it would be alone.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I don’t think I can explain just how that memory resonated with me while you were in the hospital,” she said. “How perfectly and tragically symbolic it seemed. If you had gotten killed out there, and you almost did, that moment would have stayed with me. You know why? Because it felt like you were telling me, ‘I have this one last thing to do—alone—and then I can love you without walls.’ ”
“Damn it, Amy, you know that I love you.”
“I do, but I’m trying to tell you something that you need to understand—you can’t protect everyone you love from harm. From the world. Trying to do that will break you, eventually. It will. And you know what? Something bad will still come for the people you love. You can’t stop that, and it’s not your job to try. It’s your job to be there for us when it does.”
It was quiet for a moment, and then she said, “Trust me, Lincoln, bad things will happen to the people you love. I’m staring at my boyfriend right now, and let me tell you, he’s a pretty pathetic sight. Bullet wound, all bandaged up, can’t even get off my couch under his own power.”
“I can, too.”
“Prove it,” she said and walked to the bedroom.
On one of those long days while Amy was at work and I was sitting in her living room alone, I got out a legal pad and a pen, and I sat down to try writing a letter to Ken’s daughter again. It came easier this time. I wrote five pages, five pages of apology and sympathy. Then I read through it and thought that it was all wrong, and I threw those away and started over. I left in a few paragraphs of the old stuff, but then I focused on the case. I told her as much as I could. I told her what sort of detective her father had been, how dedicated, how patient. How he had waited day after day to check out a hunch, and in the end the hunch had been right. I couldn’t tell her more than that, but I could at least explain that much.
He was a good detective, I wrote, because he stayed at it. Because he craved the truth above all else, above even himself. Certainly above himself.
This time, I mailed the letter.
Late in the week after my release, Joe called to say that Parker Harrison was leaving daily messages at the office. I took down his number and called him back. He asked if he could see me in person, and I gave him the address, and he told me he’d be out in twenty minutes.
It took fifteen. I’d already made my way down to the door and was sitting on the bottom step waiting for him. The steps were difficult. My right leg still screamed if it took the bulk of my weight. I opened the door when he arrived, and I shook his hand, and we went back upstairs. It was slow going. He followed me and didn’t say a word.
When we got up to the living room, I fell into my designated corner of the couch, and he sat on the chair across from me. He reached out and handed me an envelope.
“This first,” he said. “I tried to bring it to you at the hospital.”
I opened the envelope and found a handwritten letter inside. It was a woman’s handwriting. Alexandra Cantrell. When I read it, I wanted to laugh. It reminded me so much of the letter I’d written to Ken’s daughter—the tone, the words, even some entire phrases. There was a lot of gratitude there, awkwardly expressed. There was also, I discovered when I turned the page over, a phone number and a promise.
If you need or want me to speak to the police, to the media, to anyone, I will do it. This number will reach me, and all you have to do is make the call. I owe you more than I can express, and I feel deeper guilt and agony over the things that have happened to you than you are probably willing to believe. If there is something I can make right, then this is the number to use.
I finished the letter and then folded it again and slipped it back into the envelope. Parker Harrison was watching me.
“I know what she offered,” he said, “and it was sincere. If you’d like her to come forward, she will. She wanted to at the start, but I talked her out of it. I told her to wait.”
I nodded.
“Will you ask her to come forward?” he said.
“I don’t really see the point. It wouldn’t give anyone who matters anything new. It would take some things from Alexandra, though. She’s already had a lot taken.”
That seemed to please him. He looked at the floor for a moment and then leaned forward and said, “Lincoln, the things that happened—”
I held up my hand. “Stop, Harrison. I don’t want or need apologies. You could explain some things to me, though.”
“Of course.”
“Why did you hire me to begin with? Were you worried about being connected to tha
t corpse and wanted to find Alexandra in case you needed a witness?”
He smiled. “Do you know how many times you’ve asked me the same question? How many times you’ve asked why I came to you? I told you the truth the first day.”
“Not all of it.”
“No, not all of it. I apologize for that. My reasons, though . . . those were honest.”
“Then why wait twelve years?”
“I’d thought about doing it earlier but always talked myself out of it. Then Joshua’s body was found, and I thought it was time. I wanted to speak to her again.”
“Ken tried to talk to you during his first investigation. He said you ducked him. Didn’t you remember who he was, though?”
He shook his head. “That was twelve years earlier, Lincoln, and I never spoke to him, just ignored the calls and messages. His name meant nothing to me. Then Alexandra made contact, told me that the police were focused on me, and that you were working with them, and she thought I should probably stay away from you.”
I recalled the day he’d fired me, how he’d gone straight to the phone when I left. It hadn’t been Alexandra that he called.
“You talked to Dominic throughout this. Why?”
“When she left, Alexandra asked me to give him a message.”
“To tell him that she wouldn’t speak to him again, and he shouldn’t look for her,” I said. “Yes, that’s what she told me. Why did Ruzity go to see him?”
“To threaten to kill him if he looked for her,” he said. “I hope you understand that promise didn’t come easily for Mark, or lightly. He loved Alexandra, though. The reason I didn’t want you to visit him to begin with was that I knew it could go badly, for everyone. He’s doing well, though. Ever since he left Alexandra, he has been doing well.”
“Why’d you talk to Sanabria after you fired me?”
“To tell him that you’d been working for me but were not any longer, and if any harm came to you I’d hold him responsible.”
He’d called, in other words, in an attempt to protect me.
“Quinn Graham said you two didn’t have contact for years, but then you did again when the body was found.”
He nodded. “I said that I wouldn’t go to prison for him. That I’d talk to the police if they came to me, regardless of his sister’s decision for silence. He told me then, as he had before, that he hadn’t killed Joshua. I found myself, for the first time, starting to believe him. I needed to know the truth, and I needed to talk to Alexandra. So I came to you.”
“Because you’d read about me in the papers.”
“Because I thought you were the right person for the job,” he said. “It’s the same thing I told you at the start—it was about how you viewed the guilty. I thought you would be able to look past the things that others would not.”
“I didn’t, though.”
He made a small shrug, as if it didn’t matter, and I shook my head.
“No, Harrison. I don’t think you understand how badly I failed to be what you hoped I would be. I distrusted you from the start. That never changed.”
When I said that, he dropped his eyes and looked at his clasped hands and was quiet for a time.
“I’ve never asked anyone to forget what I did,” he said. “I haven’t tried to forget it, either. It demands to be remembered. I carry it with me. I deserve that.”
“We all like the idea of rehabilitation,” I said. “I just don’t know how many of us actually believe in it.”
That made him smile, for some reason. “It only takes a few, Lincoln. Alexandra was enough for me.”
“Have you talked to her?”
“A few times. As I said, I talked her out of going to the police the day you were shot. I told her to wait.”
“I’m glad,” I said, and I meant that sincerely. I saw no gain from what would happen if she reappeared. Not for me, or anyone else. Let some mystery linger for the rest of the world. The world probably needed it.
“I have another question for you,” I said.
“Yes?”
“What happened to Joshua’s ring, the one Dominic left with the body?”
“It’s at the bottom of Pymatuning Reservoir.” He frowned. “You know, if Alexandra hadn’t made the decision she made, her brother might have gone to prison. It was a good way to frame him. It might have worked.”
“Yes. It might have.”
There was a brief silence, and then he reached in his jacket and withdrew something wrapped in newspaper and passed it to me. It was heavy in my palm.
“What is this?”
“Mark Ruzity wanted you to know he could do other things with a chisel than what he showed you the first time. I think it’s his version of a thank-you. Maybe even an apology.”
I tore the paper loose and found a beautiful, small piece of granite. Across the front, carved in small but clear letters, it said, Lincoln Perry, PI.
“It’s for your desk,” Harrison said.
“Yeah.”
When he got to his feet I started to do the same, but he waved me off.
“Don’t make that trip down the stairs for me.”
“The trip’s good for me, Harrison. It’s no fun, but I need it.”
I followed him down the stairs, and when we reached the bottom I put out my hand and shook his.
“Thank you,” he said. “For what it’s worth, Lincoln . . . everything I hoped about you at the start, I still believe now.”
He left then, and I turned and took a deep breath and started up the steps again. Back in the living room, I sat down and read the letter from Alexandra one more time, then picked up the nameplate Mark Ruzity had carved and held it in my hands.
Lincoln Perry, PI.
For my desk, Harrison had said. That’s what Ruzity had in mind when he carved it, at least. I wondered, though, if it wasn’t really the smallest headstone he’d ever done.
46
__________
It was three more weeks before I went to see John Dunbar. By then I was moving better and had some of my weight back. I’d lost almost twenty pounds in the aftermath of the shooting, and it was depressing as hell to consider how weak I’d be when I could finally get back in the gym. I’d been at a strength peak before, and now I’d bottomed out. That’s how it goes, though. That’s always how it goes.
It was late November when I made the drive, and the lake was hard and cold and whipped into a fury by a strong front out of Canada. Winter on the way, and with it would go Joe. I hadn’t been surprised when he told me he was planning on another departure in January, but I was surprised to hear it would be back to Florida, and not Idaho. It seemed Gena was stepping aside from her position and heading south to join him. I remembered what she’d told me about neither of them wanting to be selfish, and how the best thing might be to pick a place that was new to both of them. Florida would be that, and it was also the place where they’d found each other. Maybe they’d stay. Maybe he’d convince her to spend some of the year in Cleveland. It was too early to tell.
Sheffield Lake was quiet; not so many people interested in heading to the lake come November. When I got out of the car and walked to Dunbar’s door, the wind was difficult to move through. It seemed to find the bullet wounds somehow, slip through them and carry the chill to the rest of my body.
Dunbar was home, and happy to see me. Ushered me in and took my coat and got me positioned in a chair by the fireplace. It was gas, not wood, but it threw some heat and made the tiny house seem like the perfect place to sit out a howling storm.
“You better let me get you some coffee,” he said. “Maybe put in a touch of whiskey, too? Just a warmer. Today’s a day for it, if ever there was one.”
I said that sounded fine, and then he went out to the kitchen and fixed the coffee, and I sat and watched the storm. When he came back we drank the coffee together, and I listened while he talked about the case, offering updates and theories and connections I might not have heard.
Eventually he bur
ned himself out and set his coffee aside and said, “Well, what brought you out here on a day like this? I’m sure it wasn’t for my coffee.”
“How sure are you that Alvin Neloms killed Joshua Cantrell?” I said.
He blinked. “Quite sure. How could I not be, at this point? I’ve heard your tape—he all but confessed. Then Darius provided the details. Why do you . . . I mean, you’re sure of it, too. Right? You don’t think something else?”
“If I had to guess,” I said, “if I had to put every dime I have down on one bet, I’d say he did it, yeah.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“I believe that because of what I saw. Because of how he reacted when I said Cantrell’s name. Sometimes, though, I get things wrong. Sometimes I make an assumption based upon what I’ve seen, and it’s wrong.”
He was frowning at me, quiet.
“So here’s what I have to ask you,” I said. “Did you kill Joshua Cantrell, or did you just leave the ring?”
I waited a long time. He did not speak, did not move. Did not look away, either.
“Probably wouldn’t have bothered me if I hadn’t gotten shot,” I said. “Or if it had bothered me, it would have slipped by easier. Since I did get shot, I’ve had a lot of time to sit around and think. I thought about the way Neloms had his uncle shoot me, the way he dumped Ken’s body, the way he threw Bertoli off a roof. He was not a man who was interested in subtleties. He was interested in making people dead and moving on. Didn’t care who got arrested for it, didn’t care about framing people.”
I leaned forward, feeling a tug in my chest but not the radiating pain that had once been there.
“Alexandra thought her brother killed him, or had him killed. She thought that because of the ring. It’s why she left. While I can understand why she thought that, I can’t imagine why in the hell Dominic would have left it. As a message? That would have served no purpose. She wasn’t a mob rival, she was his sister, and she mattered dearly to him. If he had killed her husband, he wouldn’t have left a calling card.”
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