A Welcome Grave

by Michael Koryta

  Joe wore a deep frown as he continued flipping through documents, but he was also nodding. “Jefferson never went to the cops. He tried to hire Thor to kill whoever was threatening him. Doesn’t exactly smack of legitimacy, you know? So maybe we’re right. Maybe the reason he had to try to handle it with someone like Thor was because he knew Doran had him—and his son—by the balls.”

  “His son’s testimony was absurd. Showing up with his father to change stories a day after he found the body?”

  “It is weak, which is why it wouldn’t have convicted Doran. The girl’s underwear—”

  “Which could have been planted easily enough.”

  “Yes, but it was still more convincing evidence than anything Jefferson’s son said. Although he did point them in Doran’s direction, I suppose. He got it all moving.”

  “That time reference . . . it’s too clear. Paying the price for five years, he said—and then he comes after Jefferson and the son as soon as he gets out of prison. It’s also the exact same time Jefferson and the son developed their rift. I bet Jefferson pulled the son out of the fire and then cut him off. He wouldn’t want his image tarnished by a son who was a murderer, but he also wouldn’t want the kid around. Out of sight, out of mind.”

  “Maybe you’re right when you say it’s too clear, LP.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why would Doran make that reference to you? Seems like he establishes his identity a little too easily with that. Anybody who knew what happened with Matt Jefferson in that situation, or even looked into it on the surface like we have, would roll to the same conclusion.”

  “What does Doran care? It’s not like he has anything to lose—the day he runs into a cop, he goes right back to prison. He couldn’t give a shit if I turn more police attention onto him. He’s already a fugitive.”

  Joe thought about that and nodded.

  “If this guy isn’t Doran, I’ll be amazed,” I said.

  “I think I’m with you. Right now we’re guessing, though. No real reason to suspect he came after Jefferson other than that remark about the five years.”

  My cell phone vibrated in my pocket, interrupting us. I slipped the phone out, checked the display, and saw my gym’s number looking back at me. Odd, considering the gym was closed. I answered and got Grace.

  “Lincoln, I think you’d better get down here. There are some, um, people here to see you.”

  “I’m in the middle of something important,” I said, thinking that she was with the insurance company, an ordeal I didn’t want to tackle right now. “Why don’t you have them call me to set up a meeting instead of just showing up like that?”

  “It’s the police.” She had dropped her voice.

  “What?”

  “They’re at your apartment, and it looks like they’ve got a warrant.”

  22

  It took us an hour of fast driving to make it back, but they were still there when Joe pulled into my parking lot. I saw Targent’s Crown Vic and two squad cars. The door to the stairs was open, and Targent came through it as I got out of the car, rage boiling through my veins. There was a warrant in his hand.

  “This is bullshit,” I said when he gave it to me.

  “Judge didn’t seem to think so.”

  “Judge is going to be regretting that when I get an attorney to go after you guys for an unfounded warrant. You’ve got absolutely no evidence to suggest I’ve done anything, Targent. And the saddest thing is that the more you dick around with me, the less you’re accomplishing on this case.”

  “You go ahead and get your lawyer,” he said, moving for the door. “And we’ll be discussing that supposed lack of evidence in just a minute, Perry. Now stay out of our way until this is done.”

  He turned and walked back up the steps. Grace was standing inside the gym office with the door open, watching with concern.

  “I came down to help clean up,” she said. “They told me I could either unlock the door or they’d break it. I didn’t want them to break—”

  “It’s okay, Grace. This is no big deal. You did the right thing.”

  My words were calm, but they couldn’t hide the anger. Joe stopped to talk to Grace as I walked up the steps and into my apartment. Targent was speaking in a low voice to his team, offering instructions, but I couldn’t concentrate on the words. There’s a sense of total invasion and violation that comes with being served a search warrant, being required to open your door for a group of cops whose mission is to find something in your home that indicates your guilt in a crime. I’d exercised search warrants constantly when I’d been a cop and never really paused to think about it. Now I was getting a whole new perspective.

  Daly and the two cops I didn’t know were taking books from shelves and opening drawers. Targent stayed near the door.

  “Let’s you and me sit down and have a talk about the reason we’re here,” he said. “Let the boys do their job.”

  I shook my head. “Not a chance, Targent. You think I’m not going to watch your guys at work? I wouldn’t be surprised to see a bloody knife appear under my pillow the moment I turned my back on them.”

  He scowled but didn’t argue. I followed the searchers through my apartment, clenching and unclenching my hands at my sides. They were doing a professional job of it, checking everything thoroughly but keeping it neat, replacing items as they found them. One of the younger guys located my guns in the extra bedroom and held them up to Targent with a questioning look, but I answered before his boss could.

  “Those aren’t leaving with you. The warrant is for Alex Jefferson’s homicide investigation, and he wasn’t shot. Put my guns back.”

  Targent didn’t tell the kid otherwise, so he replaced the guns in their case and moved on. Beneath the gun case, in the spare bedroom’s closet, they found another metal box, a fireproof thing that’s supposed to be used for important documents. The young cop pulled this one out of the closet and opened the lid, withdrew a large manila envelope, and shook out the contents.

  The first thing that fell out was a small felt box. The cop flipped it open to reveal the engagement ring inside. Karen had mailed it back to me shortly after I’d realigned Alex Jefferson’s nose. I’d thrown out the accompanying note but kept the ring, eating the cost of it because I couldn’t bring myself to walk back into the jewelry store and ask for a refund—and the pitying glances of the employees. Behind the ring box were notes and letters and photographs. Targent stooped and lifted a photograph that showed Karen standing on the balcony of my old apartment, her blond hair pulled back, wearing sunglasses and holding a can of beer and laughing at something. In the half-second glance I gave the picture, I remembered that we’d just come back from a picnic at Edgewater Park along the lake. She’d had a dog back then, an ancient, fat Lab that would waddle along with us for about two hundred feet before sighing and dropping to the ground, rolling over on his back in surrender.

  Targent gave me a raised eyebrow. “She looks familiar.”

  “I’d imagine.”

  “Interesting that you chose to hang on to all this.” He shuffled the photographs, tapped on the ring box.

  “I was engaged to the woman, Targent. I have a few artifacts to prove that. It doesn’t make me guilty of anything.”

  I was staring at one of the items that he’d left on the floor, a letter with a Boston postmark. I remembered that she’d been gone only a week, and I’d thought it was a hell of a long time. I reached down and picked the envelope off the carpet, opened it and slid out the letter, and read the short note filled with kind sentiments and soon-to-be-broken promises. Karen Grayson, the return address on the envelope said. Grayson. The name seemed not to fit her now. I imagined she felt the same way.

  “You pull this box out often?” Targent said. “Go through all the photos, think about what you lost?”

  “I haven’t opened the box since I put everything in it and threw it in the closet, Targent. Don’t get excited.”

  “Most men w
ould’ve burned all this shit.”

  “Most men are idiots.”

  They were at it for quite a while. I hadn’t been paying any attention to the clock, so I couldn’t say exactly how long it took, but they went through the place inch by inch and spent what seemed like an eternity going over all the paperwork on my desk. Nobody yelled “ah-hah” and held up a case-clinching find. I knew they shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help fearing they might. The guy who’d killed Jefferson had seemed pretty good. Good enough to slip past a few basic locks and plant something in my apartment, certainly. Nothing turned up, though, and by the time the cops had cycled back out into the living room, I was giving Targent hell again. He ignored me and told the two younger guys that they could go, leaving just him and Daly left in my apartment. Daly sat down at my kitchen table while Targent pulled out a chair and motioned for me to take it.

  “You didn’t find anything,” I said. “So what are you doing sitting down in my home? I don’t want you here, and if you think I’m going to talk to you, you’re crazy. You guys would probably show up here tomorrow claiming I’d confessed to Jefferson’s murder, and maybe a dozen others. I get the feeling you have plenty of cases that aren’t closed.”

  Daly reddened at that, but Targent seemed oblivious.

  “How close did you look at that warrant?” he asked.

  “Why? You print it out on your home computer? I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Should have studied it a bit. You’d notice that we’re exercising the warrant in connection with a request made by the Indiana State Police.”

  “My old friend Brewer?”

  “You got it.”

  “Well, they must have pretty lenient requirements for a warrant in Indiana, because he doesn’t have any reason to search my property, or have you do it.”

  “No?” Targent leaned forward, bracing himself with his hands on the table. “Brewer didn’t get that warrant yesterday, when he arrested your PI buddy. He got it this morning, after he confirmed something I find very interesting. The ten grand in cash you allegedly sent that PI? Wrapped in two five-thousand-dollar bundles of fifty-dollar bills. This morning Brewer got a bank in Cleveland to confirm that the currency wrappers are identical to the ones they use. That bank? Cuyahoga Valley Credit Union, where Alex Jefferson withdrew fifty thousand dollars in cash a week before his death.”

  He stood above me, staring down into my face as that blade of grass in my throat worked its way into my stomach and bloomed large and cold, unfolding through my chest.

  “And, yes,” Targent said, “Jefferson’s withdrawal was made in bundles of fifty-dollar bills.”

  23

  There’s still no hard evidence connecting you to that money,” Joe said.

  “That’s the good news. They don’t have to believe someone impersonated you, but they do have to prove otherwise.”

  We were on the steps of my building, Targent and Daly gone.

  “Yeah? Well how much circumstantial evidence do you think it’ll take to produce an arrest warrant?”

  He didn’t answer that.

  “I thought these guys helped me out last night,” I said. “When they shot up my gym, I thought they actually helped. Even Targent would have to believe that I wasn’t fabricating all of this. But it doesn’t seem to be the case.”

  Joe shook his head. “It’s not, and that shouldn’t be surprising. Targent applied pressure to you yesterday, or at least Brewer did, with that arrest in Indiana. If you were lying, and wanted to convince him, you would have needed some kind of splashy evidence. Having a guy unload into your building wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it? The phone call about Karen’s money came at the same time they shot up the place with you inside. All right. But if I’m Targent, standing back and looking at it, what I see is an overcompensated effort to prove you’re distanced from these guys. And Targent’s right—why are these guys going through you to get to Karen? It’s illogical. Unless the goal is simply to pull you inside.”

  “Doran—if it even is Doran—he told me he had an associate who wanted to take me off the board. Gave me one chance to step away from it, and I ignored him. Maybe this is the reprisal. I passed on the chance to walk away, and now they’re going to cooperate. Bring me all the way inside.”

  “You say anything to Targent about Doran?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Probably not the worst thing. We need something direct to connect him to Jefferson, anyhow. Targent isn’t going to be impressed with what we’ve got now, because it’s all rooted in a comment that guy made to you, a comment nobody else can support.”

  I’d been sitting on the steps, and now I pushed off. Sitting felt useless. Targent and Brewer and people whose names and roles I didn’t even understand were active all around me, circling, tightening nets and laying traps, and I was doing nothing. Sitting on my ass in a parking lot, waiting for them to finish their work.

  “We’ve got to get somewhere with this, Joe. This thing in Indiana . . . what if it’s not the end? There’s no reason to think it will be. Once they commit to making moves like that, drawing the police pressure down on me, why would they stop? If they keep setting me up to look like a suspect, then I’d damn well better have another one to give the cops.”

  Joe nodded. “We’ll go back to the Doran case. Make something unravel. When it does, we’ll convince Targent to take him seriously.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “I’ll make sure your commissary account is well stocked with cigarette money.”

  It was a nice attempt at a joke, but neither of us laughed.

  Donny Ward lived six miles from the winery where Monica Heath had died. His house had a buckling roof and a sloped foundation, and four dogs roamed the yard, slinking through grass that was about three feet tall. A thin trail of smoke rose from an old barrel that, judging from the accompanying odor, was used for the legal and environmentally friendly practice of burning trash. Joe knocked on the front door while one of the dogs, a hound with tattered ears, growled from the base of the porch.

  “Good boy,” I said, and he bristled and snapped his jaws.

  “Nice touch with the animals,” Joe said.

  “You want to be the one to pet him?”

  Nobody came to the door, and there was no sound from the property other than the growling dog.

  “We can wait, or we can come back,” Joe said.

  “I’m a fan of the latter option.” I was watching the dog, who had gathered the courage to inch closer to the steps.

  We’d just turned from the door when a pickup truck came boiling down the lane, acrid black smoke puffing out of the exhaust pipe and rising above an old bed cover that didn’t match the blue truck. The driver pulled in just behind Joe’s car, and the dogs whirled around the truck with delighted yips and wagging tails. They were a mangy pack of strays, but they certainly loved this new arrival.

  “This would be Donny?” Joe said.

  “I’d imagine.”

  We waited on the porch while the driver got out of the truck and played with the dogs for a few seconds. He was a lean guy, all sinewy muscle, wearing a sleeveless shirt even though the temperature was hardly above fifty. There was an Indians cap on his head, tufts of dark hair hanging out beneath it. When he was done with the dogs, he straightened up, adjusted the cap, and squinted at us.

  “Mr. Ward?” I said.

  “Uh-huh.” He sauntered up to the porch. “You here ’bout the dogs?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” He got a key out and unlocked the door. “Bitch lives up the road keeps calling the county, says I got feral dogs. ’Cept that’s ridiculous, you know? They’ve all been neutered. Well, one was spayed, you know, because she’s a female. But the point is, they all been fixed, they all got their shots. I have six acres here, and be damned if I’m going to lock these old boys in a kennel. You ever seen a dog in a kennel? I mean, really looked at his face?
Breaks your heart, is what it does.”

  By now we were all inside. He hadn’t asked for an introduction, just kept talking as he stepped into the house, and Joe and I followed.

  “Breaks your heart,” he said again, tossing his keys onto a lamp stand beside the door. The house wasn’t as bad on the inside as I’d expected from the exterior. The couch had duct tape wrapped around one arm, probably to keep the stuffing in, and the ceiling showed water marks, but the place was clean enough. Past Donny Ward’s shoulder, a Crock-Pot and a bread maker sat on the counter, where I would’ve expected to see only a pyramid of empty Busch cans. There were framed photographs on the wall in front of us, all of them featuring a girl of maybe six or seven with a chubby face and a few missing teeth. More to Donny than initially met the eye, it seemed.

  “So,” he said, turning to fully acknowledge us for the first time. “What are you gents needin’?”

  “We’re private investigators,” Joe said. “From Cleveland.”

  Donny smiled good-naturedly. “Private eyes. Ain’t that exciting.”

  “Sure is. We hate to impose on you, dropping in unannounced like this, but we’ve got some pretty important questions about a man named Andy Doran.”

  The smile stayed on his face. His eyes moved to the door, which was closed now, and he exhaled out of his mouth without opening his lips, a hiss of air escaping out of that smile.

  “You remember Mr. Doran?” Joe said.

  “Fellas,” Donny took a few steps away from us and into the living room, “I’d love to help you. Really would. But I’m done talking about that.”

  “It seemed awful curious to us,” I said, “that Doran would claim you as a hard-and-fast alibi, when he hadn’t even seen you that night. Wasn’t like you two were good friends, either. You have any idea what the hell he was thinking?”

  Donny shook his head. “Nah, I don’t. But like I said, I’m done talking about that.”