He popped the chisel free, and I could feel the imprint of the teeth lingering in my skin.
“The door is where you left it,” he said. “Turn your asses around and find it again.”
17
__________
Rehabilitated?” Ken said as we walked to my truck. “Really?”
“Clean since the day he stepped out of prison, is what you said.”
“It’s the truth. But the man seems to have an edge, doesn’t he?”
“An edge,” I said. “Yeah. That’s the word.”
“He’s the only guy Harrison singled out, the only person he told us not to talk to. I wonder what he—”
“I’ll tell you what we need to be wondering about right now: Dunbar. That’s the name. You didn’t mention him to me before. Have you heard the name?”
“No.”
“Ruzity said he was FBI.”
“As far as I know, the FBI had nothing to do with the case.”
“They shouldn’t have,” I said, “but evidently they did.”
“Think we should track him down?”
“Until I hear otherwise from Graham, yeah. And guess what? Graham still hasn’t called.”
_________
John Dunbar had retired from the Bureau four years earlier, but fortunately for us he hadn’t left the Cleveland area. He was living in Sheffield Lake, a small town west of the city and directly on the shore of Lake Erie. I didn’t know the place well, but I’d been there several times, always to a bar called Risko’s Tavern. My father had been close with the guy who’d owned the place when I was a kid, and he used to make the drive out there on the weekend to sip a few beers, talk, and watch the water. Every now and then they’d have a clambake or a cookout outside, and he’d take me along. All I remembered of the place from those early visits was that they’d had a piranha tank inside and that my father always seemed to be in a hell of a good mood when he was there. The bar had changed hands since then, but I still stopped in occasionally to sit with a few drinks and some memories.
The waterfront property in the town had gone through a dramatic transformation in recent years, rich people buying up the old cottages that had lined the shore and tearing them down, building ostentatious temples of wealth in their place. When we got out there and I realized from the addresses that Dunbar’s property would be on the north side of Lake Road, right on the water, my first thought was one of suspicion—these places were going for several million, so how in the hell did a retired FBI agent afford one? Cop on the take?
Then we found his house and that suspicion faded. It was wedged between two brick behemoths but didn’t fit the mold. A simple home, white siding with blue trim, it had just enough room across the front for a door and two square windows on either side. To say the place was tiny didn’t do it justice—beside those sprawling homes, it looked like something made by Lionel.
What the house lacked in size, it made up for in location, though. The perfectly trimmed lawn ran all the way down to a stone retaining wall at the lakeshore’s edge, and beyond it the tossing, petulant gray water spread as far as you could see. There were some beautiful trees in the front yard, with flowers planted around their bases, but the backyard had been wisely kept free of visual obstructions, letting the lake stand out in all its power. The house was as well cared for as the lawn. When we pulled to a stop behind the carport—there was a Honda Civic parked inside—I could see that all the blue trim was fresh, and the roof looked new.
“Not much house, but I’d take the view,” I said.
“No kidding.” Ken popped open his door, nodding at the Civic. “We’re in luck, too. Looks like somebody’s home.”
We got out of the car and walked up a concrete path to the front door. There were iron railings beside the two steps up to the door, and those, too, were shiny with a fresh coat of black paint. I pulled open the storm door to knock, but the someone was already at the door, swinging it open.
“Can I help you?”
“Mr. Dunbar?”
“That’s right.” He was probably late sixties and seemed more like an engineer or a math teacher than a retired cop. Neatly parted gray hair, slight build, three mechanical pencils and one red pen tucked into the pocket of a starched white shirt that he wore with black suit pants but no jacket or tie, so that it looked like a waiter’s uniform.
“My name’s Lincoln Perry. I’m a PI from Cleveland. Used to be with the department out there.”
“Am I the target of your investigation or a potential source for it?” he said dryly, a hint of humor showing in the eyes.
“With any luck, a source.”
“Come on in.”
We walked inside, and I crossed through the cramped living room to stand at the back window and look out at the lake while Ken introduced himself. Everything in the house spoke of an exceeding level of care, but you could see the age in it, too—old-fashioned doorknobs and hinges, a Formica countertop in the little kitchen beside us.
“Hell of a location,” I said when Dunbar finished addressing Ken and they joined me in the living room.
His smile seemed bitter. “You have no idea how often I’ve heard that in the past few years.”
“Sorry.”
“No, no. It is a great spot, but you’ve seen what’s going up around it. Last fall someone offered me three-quarters of a million for the property. You know what my parents paid for it?”
“Fifty?”
He smiled. “Thirty-eight. We lived in Cleveland, and my father wanted a place on the lake for summer, and back then there was nothing out here.”
“You ever consider selling it?” Ken asked. “Money talks, is the rumor.”
“Money screams in your ear. No, I haven’t and I won’t. I’m retired, I live simply, and I cannot imagine being any happier than I am right here.”
Retired, and he was wearing a starched shirt and dress pants in his own home. Yes, the more I saw of him, the more he reminded me of Joe.
“Besides, I enjoy my legend in the neighborhood,” he said. “Would you believe that the garage next door is more than a thousand square feet bigger than my entire house? The garage.”
He laughed and turned away from the window, then went and sat on an overstuffed blue armchair and waved at the matching couch across from it.
“All right, if you’re not here to buy the house, then what is it? One of you from Cleveland and the other from Pennsylvania, this has to be interesting.”
“I’m basically riding shotgun on this one,” I said. “It’s Ken’s case, but I’m helping out with the Ohio end of it. We’re trying to find out what happened to a man named Joshua Cantrell. I don’t know if that name means anything to you.”
Even before I got that last part out, it was clear that the name meant plenty to him. The easygoing look went tense and, maybe, a bit sad.
“Oh, my,” John Dunbar said. “That one.”
“Yes,” I said. “That one.”
He was quiet for a moment, looking at the coffee table. “When you say you want to know what happened to him, you mean why was he killed. You mean, of course, what transpired that led to the man’s body being buried in the woods.”
“Yep,” Ken said. “That’s the gist.”
“Well, you came to the right place,” Dunbar said, and when he looked up at us there was no mistaking it this time—his face held sorrow. “I can tell you who I believe murdered him, but I can’t prove it. What I can prove, though, is who got him killed. There is a difference. Would you like to know who got him killed?”
Ken shot me a quick glance, eyebrows raised, and nodded. “We sure would.”
John Dunbar lifted his hand and gave us a child’s wave, all from the wrist. “Right here,” he said. “I got him killed, gentlemen. If you don’t mind, I might pour myself a drink before I tell you the story.”
18
__________
He went into the kitchen and opened a cupboard and withdrew a bottle of Scotch that was nearly ful
l. We waited while he opened another cupboard and spent a few seconds scanning the inside before selecting a juice glass. When he twisted the cap off the bottle it made a cracking sound, breaking a seal that had evidently enjoyed plenty of hardening time.
“Ken Merriman,” Dunbar said in a flat voice. “You’re the one the Cantrells hired.”
Ken raised his eyebrows. “How do you know that?”
“I was trying to assist with the investigation. The police side. I knew everyone who was involved, at every level. I never spoke with you because, frankly, I wasn’t interested in seeing a PI step into the case. Are you still working for them?”
“No.”
Dunbar waited, but Ken didn’t volunteer a client, so eventually he just nodded and sat down. He took one sip of the whiskey.
“We found you through a man named Mark Ruzity,” I said. “He told us you’d been sending police his way for years.”
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“Because he knows something that could help,” Dunbar said, and then he set the whiskey aside and got up and walked into another room, closing the door behind him. He was gone for maybe five minutes before he came back out and dropped a photograph in my lap.
Ken moved so he could look over my shoulder, and we studied the picture. It showed Dominic Sanabria and Mark Ruzity standing together on a sidewalk bordered by a wrought-iron fence. They both looked much younger. Ruzity was saying something to Sanabria, speaking directly into his ear. Whispering, perhaps. He had one hand clasped on the back of Sanabria’s neck, and Sanabria was leaning forward and listening with intense eyes.
“They knew one another?” Ken said. “How?”
“I’m not certain,” Dunbar said, “but you’ll be interested in the date that photograph was taken. It came a matter of days after the Cantrells disappeared.”
“Why do you have it?” I asked. “What’s your connection to their case?”
“You don’t know my personal history with Dominic?” he said, sounding genuinely surprised.
“John, we really don’t know much at all,” I said. “We’re not as far around the curve as you think. More lucky than good, maybe.”
“Oh, I doubt that. Still, in the interest of having us all caught up, let me explain. I assumed you read some articles about Dominic, the charges he always managed to slide out from under. I had the bastard once. Had him.”
“How so?” Ken said.
Another drink of Scotch, little more than a sip. He hadn’t offered us any, which wasn’t a problem but confirmed that he wasn’t much of a drinker. This glass was for him while he told his story, and it didn’t even cross his mind that anybody else would want a drink in the middle of the day.
“There was a motel out on the east side—a big old place with lots of separate units—that Dominic and his team were using. The owner of the place was a sleaze, and he knew they were dirty, but they paid well and tipped better, and so he kept his eyes wide shut to everything they did. Well, I put some energy into turning him, put some pressure on, and he agreed to cooperate with us. The idea was that he’d be a pretty general snitch. I wasn’t asking him to do anything out of line, just tip us to comings and goings. I wanted to do some wiretaps out there—the whole reason they were using the place for meetings was to avoid wiretaps—but they were smart enough to get different units every time, and the judge wouldn’t sign off on a warrant for the whole damn place. Even if he had, we couldn’t have gotten that much equipment. It just wasn’t practical.
“So instead I’m using the guy as a source of information on movement, nothing more. About a month after I turned him, I get a call from him. A page, actually—back then we were still using pagers. I call him back, and the guy’s frantic. Says Sanabria and another guy had just checked into the motel, and that there were blood splatters on Sanabria’s shirt and that he looked all disheveled and out of breath, like he’d just come out of a fight or something. They asked for a unit all the way in the back of the place and then pulled the car up right outside the door, and when they go in Sanabria carries a handgun in with him. This is good news, because he’s a convicted felon and not allowed to have a handgun.”
This time, Dunbar took more than a sip of the Scotch.
“I haul ass out to the motel. When I get there, the owner tells me somebody else showed up at the room and then drove away, but the car Sanabria and the other guy came in originally is still parked out front. So I go down there, with the owner, and bang on the door, and this guy named Johnny DiPietro answers. Remember that name. He’s the guy that checked into the motel with Sanabria. I badge him and tell him I’ve got the owner there. I stand there in the door, and I say to the owner—this is your property, and I have consent to search. Right? He says yes. All this, DiPietro hears. So then I turn back to him, and I say, okay, you heard that, now are you going to make trouble? He shakes his head and steps aside, and then I say to him, I repeat it carefully, I say—do I have your permission to search the room, then? He tells me that I do, he tells me this in front of the hotel owner, who has also given consent, and, you know, it’s his property anyhow.”
Dunbar paused again. There was a flush building in his face.
“I search the room and find a gun and a shirt that’s soaking in the shower, has blood on it. DiPietro is panicking now, but Sanabria is gone. He left with the other guy. We arrested him eventually, first for the handgun charge, and then later we got his fingerprints off the gun and a ballistic match to the homicide of a kid named Lamarca, who had just been shot that day. After that, we even got a blood match—Lamarca’s blood was on Sanabria’s shirt. We had that confirmed by the lab. Ballistic and blood evidence tying Sanabria to a homicide, and if nothing else we’ve got him on the gun charge.”
He paused then, and it was quiet for a moment before Ken said, “So how the hell did he walk?”
I answered for Dunbar.
“DiPietro didn’t rent the motel room.”
Dunbar raised his eyebrows, then gave a short nod and lifted his glass to me. “Well done, Detective.”
“You had ballistic and blood matches that you got through a good-faith search, though,” Ken said, incredulous.
“He wasn’t a cop,” I told Dunbar. “Doesn’t know the lovely law of the exclusionary rule.”
“Fruit of the poisonous tree,” Dunbar said, nodding. “Sanabria, piece of shit that he is, is legally entitled to privacy in a motel room that he rented. If he wants to leave a homicide weapon and a bloody shirt in that room, he’s allowed to do that in private. It’s his reasonable expectation. Fourth Amendment right.”
Ken looked shocked. “You had consent from an occupant and the property owner.”
“I know,” Dunbar said. “I thought that would be enough. I really did. I knew there was a chance the owner might not be able to grant consent to a rented room without a warrant—honestly, I wasn’t sure about that, which I probably shouldn’t admit, but then I’m not a lawyer. That’s why I used him to bait DiPietro into opening up, though, because I figured DiPietro had to believe it was the owner’s right. What I didn’t count on was DiPietro being a visitor and not the registered guest. It was Sanabria’s room, legally. That means nobody else could give consent.”
“So he walked?”
“Yes.”
Dunbar put the glass down on the coffee table. “Well, I suppose you don’t care about that. I suppose that’s not relevant. What you’re interested in, I imagine, is how I happened to get Joshua Cantrell killed.”
He said this through his teeth, eyes still on the glass. Ken and I were silent.
“So I had Sanabria once and couldn’t deliver,” Dunbar said. “There’s your background. That’s all that really need be said. The details, well, the details are mine to worry about, not yours. The point is, we went back after him again. I went back after him. I also went to Joshua Cantrell.”
“As an informant?” I said.
“That was the original idea. It didn’t go wel
l. Not only did he refuse to talk with us about Sanabria, he insisted he didn’t know anything about the man. Said he only knew what his wife told him, and that was old news. His impression was that we knew more of the family he’d married into than he did.”
“Did you believe him?”
“Actually, I did. In any event, it was clear he wasn’t going to cooperate, so we didn’t waste any time on him. I kept tabs on him, though. Made the occasional call. We did that sort of thing with the idea of keeping the pressure up, both on Cantrell and Sanabria. We wanted Sanabria to know that we were always around, always talking to the people who surrounded him, looking for a chink in the armor.”
“Was Alexandra a part of this?” Ken asked.
He shook his head. “She wouldn’t have anything to do with us. Joshua, though, was almost as scared of us as he was of Sanabria. So while he didn’t help, he also didn’t refuse to communicate. He was afraid to do that. Now, as I said, we’d check in with him every so often. I caught him alone one day when I came out to their house to show him some photographs. No reason at all that he or Alexandra would be able to ID anyone in the photos, but we wanted to rattle Sanabria’s cage a little. He hated it when we talked to his family, but we could pretend it was necessary investigation, not harassment. Truth was, we just wanted him sweating.
“So this time, Joshua seemed a little different. He looked at the photographs, told me he didn’t recognize any of the people in them, which was of course true, but he was cooperative, too, and as I was leaving he made a remark about wishing he could help, and it sounded genuine, and almost angry. We talked for a while, and he told me about the new houseguest they had, a guy who’d done a long stretch for murder. Mark Ruzity.”
“Are you saying he wasn’t in favor of the hands-on approach his wife brought to the mission?” I said.
“I’m saying he was absolutely opposed to it. The phrase he used was ‘she’s bringing them into our home.’ Apparently against his strongest objections.”
The Silent Hour lp-4 Page 13
