A Welcome Grave

by Michael Koryta

  “You know he’s out now?”

  Donny stared at me for a minute, wet his lips, and nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Seems to me, one of two things has to be true. Either you told the truth to the police and Doran was just a first-rate dumb shit when it came to his alibi, or you lied to the police. And if the second is true, well, I’d imagine old Andy might want to pay you a visit. Don’t you think?”

  Donny crossed to the front door, opened it, and gestured with his free arm for us to step outside. Neither of us moved.

  “I’ve talked to him, Donny,” I said. “Good chance I’ll talk to him again, too. And I can tell you this—the man is angry. He told me he did five years in prison for someone else’s murder. One of the people he holds responsible? Man was killed, Donny. Tortured and killed.”

  Donny Ward removed his baseball cap and held it in his hands, flexing the bill and staring at the grinning caricature on the hat as if looking for reassurance.

  “I’ve got to make a decision,” I said. “Got to decide whether I believe that somebody set Doran up. If somebody did, then I think you’re a liar, Donny. And I need to know why. That’s all. Because I don’t think you made it happen. I don’t think you put all this in motion. But you can help me understand who did.”

  “I don’t have anything to tell you.”

  “More than fifty slashes, Donny. With a razor. All over the body. Pain like you or I cannot possibly imagine. That’s how it ended for the other guy Doran blamed for his prison stay.”

  He was still staring at his hat.

  “Son of a bitch shot my dog.”

  I looked at Joe and then back at Donny Ward.

  “Doran did?”

  He shook his head, slipped the baseball cap back on, and used his heel to swing the door shut.

  “Nah. The guy they sent to talk to me. I didn’t even know Andy’d been arrested yet. Hadn’t heard from the police. This guy, he got here first.”

  “Who was he?” Joe said.

  “Like I got his name? Like we exchanged business cards or somethin’?”

  “You don’t know who sent him?”

  He shook his head and walked into the living room, sat down on the couch beside the duct-taped arm.

  “Man showed up in the morning. Not a real big guy, dark-looking, Italian maybe? But strong. Stronger than a damned bull. He got out of his car and came up to the porch, and I let him inside. He told me the police would be coming to ask about Andy. Told me I should say I hadn’t been with him. That it’d be, you know, easier on me anyhow, not having to deal with going to court and all. I said he was shit-house crazy, thinking I’d lie like that when a man could go to jail. He got out this bag he had with him and started pulling out cash. I don’t know how much. Seemed like he’d never run out. He stacked it all up on the table over there and said, ‘You sure about that?’ ”

  Joe and I were still standing, but Donny Ward didn’t look like he was even aware of us. He was picking at the duct tape idly with his fingers, eyes on the wall.

  “And I told him, I said, ‘You get out of my house, get back in your car, and drive straight to hell.’ Because I wasn’t about to send a man to jail in exchange for some dollars, you know? I wasn’t. And this guy, he just piled the money back up and put it in the bag, had this little smile on his face. Once the money was all gone, he reached down into the bag and took out a gun. Stuck the gun up in my eye and reached out and grabbed me by the balls. You heard that expression, somebody’s got you by the balls? Well, this son of a bitch actually did it. Just reached out and took my nuts and squeezed, and I thought I was gonna die. Couldn’t breathe. He kept squeezing, and he kept the gun in my eye, and he asked . . . he asked how much I love my daughter.”

  Donny Ward looked up for the first time since he’d begun to talk, a quick jerk of his head. His eyes didn’t go to either of us, though, but beyond, to the wall where the photographs of the little girl with the gap-toothed smile hung.

  “I got a daughter, but she don’t live with me. Her name’s . . . well, that don’t matter. She’s my daughter, you know? She’s my daughter. And he said . . .”

  He stopped talking and wiped at his eyes and looked away. His hand was tight on the duct tape; a strip of it pulled loose and clenched between his fingers, leaving a sticky sheen on his skin.

  “I had a big old bluetick, best dog you ever seen. When this guy let up on squeezing me, he took his bag and opened the door and walked out on the porch. Otis was out there, waitin’ on me, way he always did. When he heard the door open he’d come running. And this guy, he just lifted the gun and shot him. Shot him right in the center of his head. Turned back to me, cool as anything, and said, ‘You think about your daughter, Donny.’ And then he started to walk away and before he got in the car he yelled back at me, said, “You best have that dog cleaned up before the police get here.’ ”

  Donny Ward’s voice broke at that point, and he stopped talking. For a long time he sat there picking at the duct tape. Joe and I let him sit. We didn’t look at one another.

  “We’re going to find this guy, Donny,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t want that, I was you.”

  “I do want it. And if I see Doran again, if I have a chance to talk to him, I’ll tell him that you weren’t a part of this.”

  He cleared his throat. “He already knows that.”

  “What?”

  “I did what I did because I was scared. Scared for my daughter. But that don’t mean it was easy to take. I watched Andy go to prison, and I knew he hadn’t killed that girl. That ate me up pretty good. Kept at it, too, didn’t just go away after a year or two, you know? Well, a while back my daughter’s mother moved. Went out of state, married this guy . . . He’s good to my daughter. I don’t know if I thought she was safer or not. I’m not about to go to the police, tell them what happened or anything. I’d still worry. Fact is, you go and get the cops and bring them back here, I’ll call you liars.”

  He looked at us with a challenge in his eyes, but Joe and I didn’t say a word. After a few seconds, Donny continued.

  “Time went by, and I kept thinking about Andy, and . . . I just felt like I needed to say something to him. Make him understand? ’Course he wouldn’t understand, sitting there in prison, but I had to try. So I got one of those blank cards and I wrote him a note. All I said was that I did it because they threatened my daughter. I didn’t sign it or nothing, but I figured he wouldn’t have trouble guessing who wrote it.”

  I looked at Donny Ward and thought about Alex Jefferson, about the handiwork with a razor and a lighter.

  “It’s probably a damn good thing you sent that letter,” I said.

  24

  It was dark when we left Donny Ward’s house in the woods. The dogs circled around us as we walked to the car. Two were friendly, but the third, that chewed-up hound, kept his distance and growled until Joe had the engine going. I wondered how old he was, if he’d been around the day Donny had been visited by a man with a gun and a bagful of cash. Might a dog remember something like that? I thought he probably would.

  Joe’s car bounced along the rutted lane, and then we came out onto the main road, and within a few seconds Donny Ward’s home was out of sight. It was raining now, a light mist that didn’t make a sound against the car but appeared in thin sheets on the windshield between swipes of the wiper blades.

  “We’ve got to give it to Targent,” Joe said. “I don’t believe Donny would do what he said, deny everything. He broke pretty easy with us, and I think that’s because he’s been breaking a little bit over it every day for a long time. He’d give it to the cops.”

  “Probably, but it doesn’t make the bridge between Doran and Jefferson. Not alone.”

  “Targent needs to hear it, though. Proves Doran was set up. By somebody who had plenty of money to spare.”

  “Yeah. We’ve just got to show that it was Jefferson. I want to get that prick.”

  Joe shot me a hard look. “That’s what this i
s about now?”

  “You heard what that guy said. About his daughter, and the dog . . . If Jefferson made all that happen, I intend to see that people know about it.”

  “The man’s dead.”

  “The people who need to know what happened aren’t.”

  “People like Karen?”

  I turned to him, but he had his eyes on the road.

  “I didn’t say that. I was thinking more of people like Monica Heath’s family. Like Andy Doran’s family.”

  Joe slowed, a stop sign ahead. “There’s an obvious problem with Donny’s story.”

  “I don’t see it.”

  “This guy who was sent to intimidate him came before the cops. How would anyone have known what Doran’s alibi was before the police?”

  That was a damn good question. I didn’t answer for a while, thinking of the possibilities.

  “Could it be a cop was involved? Jefferson paid one off?”

  Joe frowned. “Would have had to pay off more than one, don’t you think?”

  “That is a problem. I don’t know the answer, but I do believe Donny Ward. You’ve done thousands more interviews than me, Joe. Did you think he was telling the truth?”

  “Yes. But I still want to know how that guy appeared on Donny’s front porch with a bag of money before the police had talked to him.”

  “We’ll come back tomorrow. Talk to the cops, to the prosecutor, to Doran’s public defender.”

  “And tonight when you see Karen? What will you tell her?”

  I looked out the window at the shadowy forests around us.

  “I don’t know.”

  Targent was at Karen’s house when I arrived. I laid my hand on the hood of his Crown Victoria when I walked to the door and found it was cool to the touch. Great. Targent had been alone with Karen for a while, filling her head with theories that all pointed back to me.

  Karen answered the door and forced a smile that was as hollow as they come. Her face was drawn and strained, a mild but noticeable increase. It was as if a sculptor went back and added slight changes each night, a gentle buffing of tension and a few ridges of fear for display in the morning to come.

  “Hi,” she said. “Detective Targent is in the living room. I didn’t know he would be here. I told him you were on your way, and he wanted to wait.”

  “Grand. I’ve missed his wit and charm.”

  She didn’t respond, and I followed her into the living room.

  “Thanks for joining us,” Targent said. He was sitting on the low stone ledge that ran below the fireplace. Daly was missing in action.

  “I’ve got something for you,” I said. “While you’ve been busy getting useless search warrants, my partner and I have actually done some investigating.”

  “Oh?” His face didn’t change. Karen looked interested, though.

  “You ever heard of a man named Andy Doran?” I asked. I said it to both of them but watched Karen. The name didn’t seem to mean anything to her.

  “Nope,” Targent answered, and Karen shook her head.

  “He went to jail five years ago for murdering a girl out by Geneva-on-the-Lake. The first witness—only witness, actually—to identify him was Matt Jefferson. Matt called his father the night of the murder, then went back to the cops the next day and changed his account of the night in a way that implicated Doran, who was then arrested. Doran said he’d been set up but eventually took a plea for twenty years.”

  Targent wasn’t looking at me. He had his head down, tracing the edge of the stone shelf with his index finger.

  “So he’s in jail,” he said. “Makes it tough for him to wreak such havoc, don’t you think?”

  “He’s out, Targent. Broke out of prison by hiding on a garbage truck about a month ago. It was, in fact, immediately before Jefferson got his first disturbing phone call.”

  Targent rolled his head and looked at me. “So the idea is the guy was so pissed off that Jefferson’s son identified him that he came after him and his father as soon as he broke out? Give me a break, Perry.”

  “Maybe he’s not just pissed off that he was identified. Maybe there’s more to it than that.”

  “Such as?”

  I glanced at Karen. “He told police he’d been set up.”

  I could tell Karen didn’t like this. She saw where I was going with it and shook her head.

  “Doesn’t every criminal say they were set up?”

  “Exactly,” Targent said.

  “My partner and I have already uncovered some fairly appalling evidence of how corrupt the case against him was.”

  I hadn’t decided until that point that I would tell them about Donny Ward. Part of me still thought it was too early, but I’d also expected to receive at least a meager amount of interest from Targent. So far, I wasn’t getting that.

  “Doran told police he had an alibi,” I said. “Told them he’d been with a friend all night. When the cops interviewed the friend, this guy pretended to have no idea what Doran was talking about.”

  “He probably didn’t.”

  I shook my head. “Joe and I interviewed him this afternoon. He had plenty of reason to lie to the cops back then, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a lie.”

  I explained Ward’s story, but Targent’s expression didn’t change; there was still no trace of anything but skepticism and strained patience in his face.

  “Isn’t that enough for you, Targent? Don’t you think this is at least worth checking out?”

  “I’ll check it out, because that’s my job, but my perspective right now is that this is more than a stretch. You’re forcing it. Even if everything you’ve told me is true, I don’t see the connection between this and Alex Jefferson.”

  “It’s there. Trust me, it’s there. The guy who attacked me on the street told me Jefferson and his son had—”

  “Hang on.” Targent held up his hand to interrupt me. “This is all fascinating stuff, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve got a few points to make before we get lost in this. What did you just say?”

  I frowned. “That the guy who attacked me—”

  “No. Before that. You said the connection was there, and then you said . . .” He waited.

  “Trust me.”

  He nodded. “That’s the one. That’s what I was looking for. You said, ‘Trust me.’ As if you’re a reliable source of information to this investigation. As if you’re not lying to me now, haven’t been in the past.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Okay. Let’s all keep that statement in mind while we watch a movie.”

  “What?”

  “Mrs. Jefferson and I were about to watch a movie when you joined us. I’m glad you’ll be here for the viewing. I think that’s most appropriate.”

  Karen was seated in the far corner of the couch, tucked back into it, as far away as she could get from both Targent and me.

  “Mrs. Jefferson and I have talked about last night’s events,” Targent continued. “We both agree that it’s unusual that this, um, predator has chosen to go through you if all he wants is money from her. Why pull you off the street before he’d even contacted her? Why shoot up your gym?”

  I looked at Karen, and there was a quality in her eyes that I didn’t understand. Was it an apology or an accusation? More like something in between, I thought, and then I got it. She was suspicious. Targent had actually pulled that off. Karen was suspicious of me. She didn’t want to be, felt bad about it—that was the touch of apology I saw in the look—but she was, anyhow.

  “Karen,” I said. “You know this is insane.”

  “I know you have nothing to do with this,” she said. “I’m just confused. I don’t understand why someone is making it seem like you do. This man in Indiana who said you hired him—”

  “You told her that?” I said to Targent.

  “It’s relevant to the investigation. I’m trying to keep her up to date.”

  I shook my head, disgusted. “I don’t know what to tell you about that,
Karen, except that it’s a lie. I never hired that guy.”

  “I believe you.”

  “Back to my movie,” Targent said.

  “You’ve got to at least hear me out on Doran. There’s more here than you understand.”

  “I’m sure there is. I find it fascinating that you’d locate this suspect with a grudge so quickly after I informed you—and Mrs. Jefferson—that Brewer had heard something along those lines in Indiana. That’s a real neat trick of timing, Perry. As was that violent incident at your gym last night.”

  “You’ve seen the tape of that. You know what happened, and you know it wasn’t some elaborate façade.”

  For a long moment, he just sat and looked at me. His eyes flicked to Karen for an instant, as if to make sure she was watching, and then back.

  “I’ve been talking to Mrs. Jefferson about the fingerprint we found in her husband’s car. This man named Thor.”

  Shit. That was the last thing I wanted Karen to know about.

  “Met with Detective Swanders again today, as well as one of the organized crime guys at the FBI,” he continued. “There are people down there who are pretty disgusted with you. People who think you withheld some very important information about the Russians. Some believe you might have interacted directly with Dainius Belov when all that was going on. This Thor guy, they told me, he probably would have been around. Sounds like he’s Belov’s top lieutenant. I asked the guy at the bureau to give me odds on you knowing Thor, and he said ten to one.”

  Karen would not meet my eyes. She was watching Targent and would not turn my way.

  “You want to tell Mrs. Jefferson how you’re acquainted with Thor?”

  “Already told you, I don’t know the man.”

  Targent picked up a remote control and turned to the big plasma television beside him. He turned it on and then punched a few buttons on the remote, and the screen turned to a grainy black-and-white image of my gym. It was from my own security cameras, and it showed the front of the weight room, where I stood by the blown-out window with a curl bar in my hands and Thor in front of me.