"He lived with the victim at the time of the victim's disappearance."
"That's it—"
He didn't answer.
"Because I don't think that's enough. In fact, from what I've seen, there are plenty of other people worth your time and attention. Like the parolee who had a history of association with Sanabria, went to live with the Cantrells, and died soon after he left."
He nodded enthusiastically. "Oh, Bertoli's part of it, sure."
"Or her brother, shit, that guy—"
"Oh, yes, him, too." Still nodding.
"Seems to me there's more potential in those two areas than with Parker Harrison."
He stopped nodding, made a pained face, and then said, "No, I'm afraid I can't join you there. I was with you right up till the end, though."
"Why— What do you see in Harrison that makes him stand out from the pack—"
"I have my reasons."
"I'm going to need to have them, too, Graham, if you want my cooperation."
He was studying my face, and he kept his eyes hard on mine when he finally spoke again. "Only one of those parolees you mention ever had any direct contact with Dominic Sanabria," he said. "That was Parker Harrison. He made half a dozen phone calls to Sanabria in the same week the Cantrells left their home."
"Looking for information, maybe. Trying to track them down, just like he is now."
"Perhaps. Then there was a twelve-year gap between calls, which ended not long ago, when Harrison made two more calls to Sanabria. That was in December, Linc. Same time Harrison contacted you."
"Following up with him, seeing if he'd heard the news," I said.
"Most interesting thing about the timing of those two calls— Harrison made them a day after the body was discovered."
"So—"
Graham smiled, his teeth brilliantly white against his dark skin. "Took a while to identify the corpse, Linc. Harrison didn't call after the ID. He called after the body was found. A body that, at the time, was an unidentified pile of bones in another state."
I didn't respond to that.
"Let me ask you something," Graham said. "When you talked to Harrison, he say anything about being part Shawnee— Talk about his, uh, culture—"
"Yes."
"Not surprised to hear that," he said. "The folks at Harrison's prison told me he did a lot of reading on the subject. A lot of study."
"That has some significance to you—"
He nodded but didn't speak.
"Well—"
Silence.
"Graham, I'm going to say this again: If you want me to cooperate in whatever game you cook up for Harrison, I'll need to know everything that you do."
"If it leaks," he said, "it jeopardizes an already weak investigation. That cold trail we keep talking about, it's not making this thing easy."
"It's not going to leak," I said. "Not from this room."
He looked at Ken, waited for the nod of agreement.
"We held one detail back from the report on the discovery of Cantrell's body," Graham said. "A detail of potential value."
"What is it—" I said.
"Joshua Cantrell was buried in a grave that was about four feet deep, lined with bark, and laid carefully in an exact east-to-west fashion. Then poles were placed over his body, more bark laid over the poles, and dirt piled on top." He looked at Ken, then back at me. "Those are all elements of a traditional Shawnee burial."
* * *
Chapter Twelve
Something you learn early as a detective—your work is damn dependent on physical evidence and people who know things relevant to the crime. Have either of those, and you're going to get somewhere. Have neither— Not going far, at least not easily. Quinn Graham had spent six months determining he had none of the former and only suspicions of the latter.
Whatever physical evidence might have existed at Joshua Cantrell's grave at the time he went into it was gone by the time the body was discovered. The evidence techs worked it as thoroughly as they could and came back with nothing. The poles, bark, and arrangement of the grave were physical evidence, yes, but didn't link back to a killer.
"Except in circumstantial fashion," Graham told us, "and you both know that's not worth a shit in court. It's worth something to me, though. That grave and those phone calls to Sanabria, they're worth something to me."
Their worth, it seemed, had been a load of frustration. He'd attempted to talk to Dominic Sanabria and immediately been met by a team of attorneys. Then he'd shifted his focus to Harrison and found the same response. "Harrison lawyered up—" I said, the surprise clear in my voice. Graham swiveled his big head to me and nodded. "He's not confirming so much as his own name without his attorney present, Linc. That shouldn't surprise you."
It did. It surprised me because it didn't jibe with the Parker Harrison who'd given up on his letter campaign and come to see me in person, the Harrison who'd gazed at me with a mixture of sorrow and intensity as he implored me to find Alexandra Cantrell. Of course, Harrison hadn't mentioned he knew Joshua Cantrell was dead, either.
"The guy took a sentence for murder," Graham said. "If there's one thing he's not anxious to do these days, it's talk to a homicide detective. Does that imply guilt— Not necessarily, but it doesn't exactly clear his good name, either."
"How much did you push—"
"Interviewed him a few times, and it was an absolute bastard because he had this attorney with him, telling him exactly what to say and when to say it."
"You asked about the phone calls, though— And the burial—"
"Phone calls, yes, burial, no. Like I said, we decided to sit on that. We were hoping for a physical link between him and that grave. Didn't get it, but we're not done yet, either. Sent some of the stuff in for DNA testing months ago, still don't have results. You were on the job, you understand that."
"Cold case, out-of-state case, and a mile-long wait list at the lab."
"Check, check, and check."
"How about the phone calls—" Ken said. "What was his response—"
"Says he called Sanabria after the couple took off, hoping to get in touch with them. Then, after the body was found, says he was merely doing the same thing, checking in again for an update. I pointed out that was a hell of a twist of timing, waiting twelve years to check in and then doing it the same damn week the body was found, but of course he and his attorney refused to go down that road."
"Sanabria confirm that—" I asked.
Graham's face went sour. "Through his attorneys, yes, he did. It's too perfect, man, too rehearsed. They remember these phone calls like they're looking at a transcript."
"Still," I said, "seems to me you've got something to work with there."
"No shit, Linc— Seems that way— Well, hell, buddy, I'm glad to hear you think so. Now let me remind you what my superiors have to say—"
"I get that," I said. "At least I get it from the Pennsylvania side. I'm amazed you haven't stirred somebody with the FBI up about Sanabria."
"That's another part of the problem. I did, but they didn't stir in the way you are thinking and I was hoping. Didn't come into the game looking to help. Instead, they came in warning me that we'd have a nightmare on our hands if we hassled Sanabria. They took their run at him, hard as they could, back in the nineties and didn't get much to show for it. A couple years on a bullshit charge—and they were looking at the guy for, what, five, six murders— Who knows what else— Sense I got from the boys who worked on him back at the time, Linc, was that they didn't want any piece of it. They've kept tabs on him, shit, maybe kept surveillance on him, and he hasn't stepped wrong in fifteen years. If he killed his brother-in-law or had him killed, they don't seem to care. There's one guy who felt different, but he's retired now, and what he says doesn't carry water."
We fell silent. Graham got to his feet and walked to the window and stared down at the street.
"If I find Alexandra, it will be put to rest," he said. "That simple. I'm sure of it."
"You've looked for her— Pushed hard—" I said.
"Yes, I've pushed hard," Graham snapped, "and so did your buddy here and a lot of other people before us. Nobody found her. Not me, not anybody else. Right—"
He was looking at Ken, who didn't answer, just stared back at him as if waiting for more. Graham turned away and went back to staring at the street.
"Fact is, I was pretty well distracted from it until today. Got us a couple of dead girls a few months back. Raped, beaten, strangled, and dumped off the highway. Two in two weeks. One was hitchhiking, one a runaway. Two in two weeks, both on my highways… yeah, ain't nobody talked about Mr. Cantrell in quite a while."
He turned from the window. "Now you call, and I don't know what the hell to do with what you've got. Don't know yet. All I do know is I'm going to think on it, going to get back in touch, and when I do— I'm expecting cooperation."
He was looking at me, not at Ken. Had himself one hell of a stare. I braved it for a few seconds before I had to nod.
The day after I'd thrown Parker Harrison's check in the trash and promised myself that would be the end of it, I stood in the parking lot below my office and assured a Pennsylvania police detective I'd be willing to cooperate with his investigation if he asked it. I hoped he wouldn't. If he did, I knew my cooperation would amount to baiting a psychopath. It would be a game in which Graham would man one side of the board and Harrison the other. Me— The pawn shuffling around in the middle. Yeah, wouldn't break my heart if he decided not to pursue that avenue.
"I've got to head home tonight," Ken said as we watched Graham's Ford Explorer pull onto Rocky River. "How about we grab a bite to eat first—"
It was closing in on four, and we hadn't eaten any lunch.
"We can do that," I said, "and now that you've managed to involve me in the police investigation, I'd say it should be your treat."
We went to Sokolowski's University Inn in Tremont. It was one of my favorite places in the city, a third-generation family-owned restaurant with an exceptional vantage point of downtown. When I was still with the police, Joe and I would stop in and sit at the bar and admire the view. Today, Ken and I walked directly to the back dining room and found a quiet, dark corner.
"Four different varieties of sausage on the menu," he said, dropping his tray onto the table. "This is Cleveland's idea of gourmet—"
"Shut up and taste it."
He bit into the bratwurst and raised his eyebrows. "Okay. Point made."
I'd gotten perch, but the lingering hangover dulled my appetite. Ken, on the other hand, seemed to make a full recovery at the first smell of food.
"Hell of an interesting talk with Graham," he said. "Got more out of him than I'd expected."
"Yeah, it was fantastic. Can't wait till he calls me and asks me to commence the game playing with Harrison."
"I don't know that he will." He cut into his potato pancake, forked about half of it into his mouth. "He gave us some starting points, that's for sure. I'd say it's safe to focus on Harrison."
I sipped some ice water and watched him eat, wondering if he'd stop when he got down to bare plate or just keep right on going until the tray was gone. I've known some people who could chase a hangover away with food, but I'm sure not one of them. Just watching him was making me queasy.
"Safe for him to focus on Harrison."
He finished the potato pancake, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and looked at me. "I've already told you. I want this one."
"Then talk to Graham about it."
"I intend to. You heard him bitching about how difficult this is for him when his other active cases are in Pennsylvania, how he's not getting the support he'd like. I think the man would appreciate the help."
"He also would have appreciated a phone call as soon as you heard from Sanabria. So if you're so eager to help him, why'd you wait on that—"
"I already told you, I wanted this one."
"So you've said. Yet you haven't done anything on it."
His face darkened. He looked at the table and slid a thumb along the edge of his knife. "I had some other things going on in my life at that time. Distractions."
"Like—"
"Like losing my daughter," he said and looked up. "My divorce was finalized in January. The ex had a new husband—and my daughter a new stepfather—by March. You do the math on that, Detective."
I nodded, drank some more water, waited.
"So here I am," he said. "Doing something about it, a few months too late—and I've got to thank you for wandering into this by mistake and pissing Sanabria off, because that led to the phone call that got me off my ass. I intend to push it as far as I can, Lincoln. With or without your help and with or without Graham's approval, I intend to do that. Know what I said about being distracted this spring— Well, summer's rolling on in now, buddy, and I'm looking for a distraction. This one fits fine."
His easy, amused manner had lost its grip and tumbled free, leaving behind a sheen of bitterness. I could sympathize with some of it—I'd lost a fiancee to another man—but what he was going through as a father was not an experience I knew. Or wanted to know.
"You know why I want that distraction—" he said, his hand returning to the knife. "Because when I have to sit around and think about what's happened in my life in the past year, nine times out of ten I conclude that my wife was right to go, and that my daughter's better off for it." He pressed his thumb into the blade. "That's the truth of it, but as you can imagine, it's not a truth I want to have to spend a hell of a lot of time considering."
"Why do you think it's the truth—"
"Sometimes you make decisions, Lincoln, that seem absolutely righteous at the time. Like there is no other possible option, you know— None. Then the years tick by and you see the way your decisions affected your family, and you wonder if it was a selfish choice."
He didn't offer any more details, and I didn't ask any more questions. There was a piano player in the corner of the room—seemed Sokolowski's always had a piano player—and for a while we just sat and listened to him play "Night Train" and didn't talk. When the song ended, Ken pushed the knife away. There was a hard white line down the middle of his thumb.
"All right," he said. "You've heard me out, and that's more than I had any right to ask, but I'll push it a bit more. I've been up-front with you, at the risk of bruising my ego, and admitted that I've never worked a homicide case. I know my way around an investigation, and I'm good at it, but I don't have the experience or the knowledge on a homicide, and you do. You also have some local credibility, which is going to be important. Those things are why I made the drive. I can move forward on this without you, and I will if I have to, but I'd rather have the help. So I'll ask you just once, with no pressure: Would you be willing to back me up on this—"
The piano player was into something upbeat and jazzy now, the sun was coming in warm through the windows behind him, and it had been many days since Dominic Sanabria stood in my living room. Easy to feel good about things. This one also felt like the sort of job that could get you into trouble, though, and generally you take those only when they're high-paying or personal. I didn't have that kind of excuse this time.
"Graham's assessment didn't exactly encourage me that this is something I want to be involved in, not even in a backup capacity," I said.
"You think he's going to leave you alone now—"
"I can make him. Police can solicit informant help, Ken, but they can't force it."
He shrugged.
It was quiet, and then he smiled, a cajoling, fraternal grin, and said, "Come on, Lincoln. This is what you are."
"Yeah," I said, but I couldn't match the smile. "It is."
"So—"
"Back you up. That was what you said, and it's what I'll hold you to. It's your baby, Ken, but I'll help you in whatever way I can, at least until it seems like that'll get me killed."
He smiled. "Can you ask any more of a man than that—"
&nb
sp; * * *
Chapter Thirteen
Joe didn't like it. That was hardly a stunner. He grumbled and grunted and offered dire predictions and then told me I was an ass for not checking Ken's background out before agreeing to help him. When I explained that I had, he just grumbled and grunted some more.
"You had one of Ohio's last major mob figures standing in your apartment after one afternoon of work on the case, LP. That wasn't a clear enough warning sign to you—"
"Warning sign, sure. Stop sign, no."
"I knew there was a reason I always drive when I'm with you."
"Well, why don't you put that damn Taurus in gear and point it north, come back and run the show again."
"In time," he said. "In time."
Amy was a bit more receptive. That, too, wasn't exactly surprising—Amy's curiosity level can generally override her good judgment, a trait that Joe no longer shares. Or never shared. As a kid, he probably did background checks on the neighbors before trick-or-treating at their houses. Still, while Amy was at least lukewarm to the idea, her normal enthusiasm was tempered, and I understood that. It hadn't been so long ago that one of my cases invaded her life in a horrifying way. We rarely spoke of it now, and her typical bravado remained, but I'd also seen the pepper spray she'd added to her purse, and I'd heard the new steel security bar fasten behind me each time I left her apartment. Those were good things, maybe, the sort of precautions that would have pleased me had I not known that I was the reason for them.
"It's a bizarre story, and I can see why you're intrigued, but I also understand what Joe's telling you about the risks," she said as we sat on my roof that night, after Ken Merriman left for Pittsburgh. We had the Indians game on the radio and a bottle of pinot noir within reaching distance. I'd swept up the broken glass from the previous night. Found plenty of dust on the roof, but nothing as black as what had come from Parker Harrison's shattered bones, and no silver coin. Reassuring.
"I understand that, too, Amy, but I only agreed to help the guy. Give him some advice."
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