A Welcome Grave lp-3

by Michael Koryta

  “And wasted my breath.” I picked up the phone receiver. “Let me call Karen and get her in action on this public defender. What’s his name?”

  “Cole Hamilton.”

  It took Karen one ring to pick up. Probably close to the phone at all times, waiting for another call with instructions about a money transfer. Her voice was tight and unnatural when she answered, and it didn’t change much after I identified myself.

  “You okay? No calls, no contact?”

  “Nothing. It’s been quiet.”

  “Listen, the stuff Targent brought up last night—”

  “Don’t, Lincoln. You don’t have to explain it.”

  “I felt like I should have warned you about some of it. Particularly Thor. That’s my mistake.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Joe and I are working on this, and we’re getting somewhere. Andy Doran is more of a legitimate suspect than Targent wants to accept. I think we might have something that can change his mind, though, and I’m going to ask for your help. Can you contact your husband’s firm for us and verify the hiring date of one of their attorneys?”

  There was a long pause before she said, “Why?”

  “His name’s Cole Hamilton, and he could be very important to all of this.”

  “Why do you need this? Why is he important?”

  “He was Andy Doran’s public defender. We found out he’s since gone on to work with your husband’s firm.”

  “Which means what to you?”

  “It could be important, Karen. That’s all. Matt Jefferson was a key witness, and this attorney going to work for your husband . . . We need to connect the dots. That’s all I’m trying to do.”

  “You’re suggesting that Alex hired him because of what happened with that murderer? Doran? You’re suggesting that—”

  “That he might know information of importance, Karen. I just need to know the date he was hired.”

  “No. I want to hear what you think happened, Lincoln. It seems to me you’re accusing Alex of something horrible.”

  It was quiet. Ten seconds passed, maybe twenty.

  “Well?” she said.

  “Something you need to understand, Karen. Whoever killed your husband? He probably had a reason. Okay? He had a reason.”

  There was a pause, a second or two in which she said nothing, and I actually closed my eyes with regret, understanding how the statement must have sounded to her.

  “Do you know what they did to him?” she said. “Do you know the pain he had to have felt, the agony? Now you’re telling me that it was somehow justified?”

  “No, Karen. Damn it, that’s not what I said and not what I meant. It was a heinous, terrible crime, but whoever did it had a motive. That’s what I’m talking about.”

  “I should never have asked you to do this.”

  “Karen, I’m trying to help. I’m not concerned in the least with your husband, I’m just trying to show—”

  “That’s not true. You hated Alex. And I understand that, Lincoln, I do, but . . . I just shouldn’t have asked you to help. This is my fault, and I don’t blame you, but I also don’t think you need to be involved anymore. It’s not right. Not with the police considering you a suspect—”

  “You know that’s insane, Karen. You have to know that.”

  “Even so, you shouldn’t be involved. It’s not fair to you or to my husband. I should have understood that before, and I apologize for putting you in this position.”

  “You’re asking me to quit? Just go away? Karen, we’re close to the truth here. Closer than Targent by a mile. You don’t want to shut me out of this now. Not with this guy out there and the cops ignoring him.”

  “Detective Targent can handle the case. I think that’s who should handle it.”

  Joe was watching me, picking up on the ugly turn the conversation had taken. I looked back at him as if seeking help, even though he could only hear my side of it.

  “Would you at least find out about Cole Hamilton’s—”

  “No, I won’t. Do you not understand what I’m saying? This needs to stop. You need to stop. And, for the record? I know Cole, and he’s a good, honest man. Just like my husband was.”

  Her voice broke, and then she hung up.

  26

  I set the phone down and turned to Joe.

  “We just got fired.”

  “Targent’s idea?”

  “He’ll certainly be thrilled, but it was Karen’s move. She didn’t take well to the suggestion that her asshole husband could have earned the attention of the guy who killed him.”

  “Not a huge surprise.”

  “But we’ve got the right guy, Joe. I don’t care what she doesn’t want to hear about Jefferson, shouldn’t this be the most important issue?”

  “She loved him, Lincoln. Doesn’t matter if the man is dead now, she’s not going to enjoy having him maligned.”

  I pushed my chair back from the desk and shook my head. Karen had dragged me into this despite my reservations, convinced me to go along with her on a mission that brought me head-on into a battle with cops in two states, and I’d agreed to it because I wanted to help. Thought that I should. Now she was telling me to stop? Saying I shouldn’t be so involved? I hadn’t wanted to be so involved when some bastard masqueraded as me and hired a PI in Indiana, but where was Karen then? Sitting back in her fancy house waiting for me to help. She’d been accepting enough of that help until the moment I suggested her husband could have been anything other than pure.

  “I wish she could see him for what he was,” I said. “I saw him for that, and Doran definitely got a more painful picture than I did. Doesn’t mean Doran’s not an evil bastard, but he saw the real Jefferson. Karen’s never been able to.”

  “She saw the side you and Doran never did.”

  “Saw the façade, maybe. I don’t believe she ever saw the real man.”

  Joe’s eyes were sharp as he gazed at me. “So there can’t be multiple sides to the guy? He’s all bastard, through and through?”

  “He sent an innocent man to jail. You’re saying that’s just the bad side? That he could have been a pretty decent human being, other than that little issue?”

  “We don’t know all the circumstances yet. Okay? We’re not done with this.”

  “According to Karen, we are.”

  “So that’s it? You’re stepping away, with the cops still on your ass?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “We’ve got an interview set up with the prosecutor in Doran’s case,” Joe said. “You want me to cancel it, trust Targent to sort this out on his own?”

  “What time’s the interview?”

  “In an hour and a half. He emphasized that it would be short.”

  I stood up. “Better make it count, then.”

  The Ashtabula County prosecutor, George Hilliard, looked less like an attorney and more like a guy who would own a Christmas tree farm and make furniture with his own hands during the summer months. He was about six-three, with a body that was a chunk of undefined muscle mass, no taper to it at all, and a full beard. He had a suit on, but the jacket was tossed over the back of his chair, and the knot in the tie was awful, the sort of thing a ten-year-old kid tries in place of a clip-on. Joe and I sat side by side in chairs that were about ten inches off the ground, leaving us to look up at Hilliard as if he were seated upon a throne. I wondered if he’d had the chair legs sheared in half to create just this effect.

  “Of course I remember Doran’s case,” he said after I’d made my initial pitch. “I’ve been in this office seven years and handled just five murder cases. They tend to stand out in my memory.”

  “Were you aware of Doran’s jail escape?” Joe asked.

  Hilliard nodded. “I heard about it, yes. Nobody’s contacted me, though, and I don’t know why anyone would. My knowledge of Mr. Doran has been outdated for quite a while. That’s why I’m a little surprised that you think I can help you.”

  “Can I ask
why you offered the plea agreement?” I asked. “If you get only five murder cases in seven years, as you said, then it seems to me you’d want to go all the way with them when they do arrive on your desk.”

  Hilliard leaned back in his chair, and it creaked ominously beneath him. From what I could see it was an odd-looking wooden swivel chair, the finish seeming heavier on one arm than the other. Maybe Hilliard really did make his own furniture. His face was set in a frown, but he shrugged.

  “What the hell, I guess I can say it. I offered the plea agreement because I didn’t think the conviction would stand on appeal—if I could even get the conviction. The plea was a better alternative than going into court and getting my ass beat.”

  “Why didn’t you think you could get the conviction?”

  “You saw the case file. There was plenty to prosecute on, but in the face of intense scrutiny—the kind you get in court—there would have been some obvious holes, holes that I couldn’t fill. Sure, they found the girl’s panties at Doran’s place, but they couldn’t get a DNA match off them, which left the door open to say they’d been planted. Then our key eyewitness had wavered on his testimony.”

  “You mean between the first night with the police and the story he brought forward the next day?”

  Hilliard shook his head, rolling it slowly from side to side, like a bear.

  “Nope. That was bad enough, but then he sent me a letter sometime in early fall and said he wasn’t going to testify in the trial. Said he’d plead the fifth or claim he didn’t remember a damn thing anymore, and that we’d have to send someone out to bring him in because he wasn’t going to honor a subpoena.”

  “That didn’t put up any red flags for you? Make you think that maybe his testimony had been bogus from the start?”

  Hilliard’s lip curled. “Sure, it made me wonder. But the case was already under way, and we still had the panties and no alibi for Doran. Who, I might add, is one dangerous son of a bitch. Felt good about locking him up back then, and I still do.”

  “Even if he didn’t do it?”

  “If he didn’t kill her, then he shouldn’t have taken the plea. Look, I wasn’t the one who came up with the plea idea in the first place. I was counting on going to trial, and feeling bad about my chances. Then Doran’s attorney starts floating into my office every other day talking about this new scenario with autoerotic asphyxiation, saying he killed her by accident, blaming it on all the drugs and shit in his bloodstream. I ask him if that’s where he’s going to go with his defense, and he counters by saying that if it is, then maybe we can avoid a trial. Says maybe he could get Doran to cop to a plea agreement if I drop the murder to manslaughter. Hell, it sounded good at that point.”

  I looked at Joe, and he nodded. This was more confirmation. Doran’s own defense attorney had suggested the plea, the means of keeping a case with large holes out of the courtroom, out of heavy scrutiny and further investigation and media attention. The same defense attorney now living large with Alex Jefferson’s firm.

  “Did the public defender know about Matt Jefferson’s letter?” Joe asked.

  “No, but I wasn’t required to tell him yet. I mean, we still could have subpoenaed the kid and brought him in. I hadn’t even had a chance to try to convince him that we really needed his court appearance. I wasn’t positive his testimony was gone.”

  “When Matt Jefferson called the police to change his story, he came with his father.”

  “I remember him.”

  “What did you think?”

  “That he was protecting his kid, that’s all. Only problem I ever had with the father was his involvement with the victim’s family.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “He had the family convinced that he was helping the investigation. Fenton Brooks owned that winery—he’s dead now, but he had more money than Fort Knox—and Jefferson was one of his lawyers. Well, I guess Jefferson convinced Fenton Brooks it would be a good idea to talk to the family, see if he could act as liaison between them and law enforcement. Brought one of his investigators in, some ex-cop from Cleveland. Brooks felt guilty about the girl being killed on his property, at his party, I guess. I had a talk with him, told him outsider involvement could only undercut our investigation, particularly when his attorney’s son was a key witness. He apologized. Said he’d been encouraged by Jefferson, for liability reasons.”

  “You do know,” I said, “that Alex Jefferson was recently murdered?”

  He scratched his beard and studied me, rocking gently in the chair, which continued to creak like an old oak tree in heavy winds. “I am aware of that. Are you suggesting that’s related to the Doran case?”

  “Doran’s out, and Jefferson’s dead, Mr. Hilliard. That’s what I’m considering.”

  “So Jefferson was in that house? With one of his investigators?” Joe said.

  “Yes,” Hilliard said.

  “Interesting.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, Doran always said the girl’s underwear had been planted, and it didn’t have any DNA match except the girl’s. Supposing you wanted to find some evidence to plant that wouldn’t have any other match, where do you think you’d come up with it?”

  Hilliard didn’t answer, but I did.

  “In her home.”

  27

  Jerry and Anne Heath lived in a modest ranch house at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in Geneva. There was a flagpole in the front lawn and a big F350 diesel parked in the driveway in front of a two-car garage. Jerry Heath was raking leaves when we pulled in behind his truck, and he gave us a long look but didn’t stop raking right away. He finished the stretch between the driveway and the pile he was accumulating and then walked into the garage and hung the rake up on a peg. He was a tall man, wide through the shoulders, with gray hair that hung over the back of his neck and a mustache that hooked down to touch his chin on each side. He wore a plaid flannel work shirt and olive cargo pants and boots. Joe and I were out of my truck and standing in the driveway, but he didn’t say a word, just walked past us and hung the rake up and took off his gloves. Then he came back outside and squinted at us.

  “You the detectives?”

  We’d called after leaving George Hilliard’s office.

  “Yes, sir. Joe Pritchard. I spoke with you on the phone.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, let’s go on inside. Mother’s waiting. She’d like to talk to you.”

  Somehow it was clear that he was referring to his wife, and it didn’t seem at all demeaning to call her “Mother,” simply appropriate in an old-fashioned way. He took us in through the garage, walking past neat rows of tools and an old but spotless Buick sedan, and then we entered the house. He stopped and dusted his feet off carefully on the mat inside the door, and Joe and I did the same. The house smelled of potpourri, and there were handmade baskets hung on the walls. We walked through the hall and past the kitchen and out into the living room. A petite blond woman was washing windows with her back to us, spraying Windex on the glass and wiping it clean with a cloth, entirely focused on her work and unaware of strangers in the room.

  “Those detectives are here, Anne.”

  Anne Heath turned to us and smiled, set the Windex and the cloth down in a plastic bucket at her feet, and walked across the room to shake our hands and exchange greetings. She had strong hands, and her face was creased with laugh lines.

  We sat on one couch, and they sat together on another. The furniture was worn but comfortable and clean, which went for the rest of the house as well. Everything spoke not of money but of a high level of care.

  Joe took the lead, since he’d already spoken to Jerry Heath on the phone, and explained again that we’d become interested in Andy Doran’s background through a case unrelated to their daughter’s death.

  “There are some people we’re curious about,” he said. “People who were involved in the investigation a few years ago. I know it must be a difficult topic for you, but if you could tell us what you remember about these ind
ividuals—”

  “We wanted her to go to college, you know.” Anne Heath smiled at us. “Her grades were good, and she could have gone. Money might have been a little tight there for a while, but that’s how it goes with college. We had some savings. But she said no. She said she couldn’t go sit in a classroom again, not so soon. So we agreed that she’d take a year or two off, take a break and work and save some money, and then she’d go back to school.”

  She was talking more to Joe than to me, and I was glad of that. He had an ability in these situations that I’d never had, a way of talking to victims that comforted them somehow, and it wasn’t through anything excessive or dramatic, no tears or hand-holding or blundered sympathies. It was just a quality he had, maybe a quality he’d always had, of looking people in the eye and letting them know that he understood.

  “I’m sorry she didn’t have that chance,” he said now, and Anne Heath smiled again and nodded.

  “Thank you. I think she would have done well with it. But God took her, and we’ve made our peace with that. Have to do it again each day, you know, but we do.”

  I looked at Anne Heath and then back around the house, and I pictured a twenty-year-old girl growing up here, nurtured and cared for and living clean, and I could understand the desire for a touch of rebellion, smoking a little pot and dating an older guy like Andy Doran and feeling like it’d never catch up in any way that really counted. In fact, if Joe and I were right, dating Doran hadn’t. Not in the way her parents thought, at least. Not in the way the police had decided.

  Jerry Heath put his hand on his wife’s knee and said, “Who was it that you had questions about?”

  “There was an attorney who came to see you,” I said. “A man named Alex Jefferson.”

  Jerry and Anne nodded in tandem.

  “He came with Fenton Brooks,” Anne said. “They brought flowers, and Mr. Brooks was so kind. He told us how awful he felt about it happening at his party, and how he was going to put all the resources he could behind the investigation.”

  “Jefferson brought a detective,” her husband added. “The attorney suggested that he could, you know, help the police out and keep us aware of what was happening.”