The Silent Hour

by Michael Koryta

  I nodded. "I'm going to. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.,. but he…" The words left me then, and my strength seemed to go with them, and suddenly standing seemed difficult.

  "I'll burn your lies down," I said to Harrison. "All of them. Every lie you've told and every secret you have. Understand that. Tell Sanabria." I could hear the sirens when I drove out of the parking lot.

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-six

  I went to the office, walked upstairs, and logged on to the computer. For a moment I stared at the phone, thinking of calling Amy. The last time I'd talked to her had been after the police released me and before I'd gone to Mill Stream Run to see the place where Ken's body had been found. She'd been awake then, and I had a feeling she'd be awake now.

  I also knew what she'd tell me. She'd tell me to go home, tell me to wait on the police, tell me to do anything but drive out to see Dominic Sanabria. I left the phone untouched while I ran a database search for his address.

  A few minutes later, back in my truck with a printed-out map of Sanabria's neighborhood in Shaker Heights beside me, I reached over to the glove compartment, opened it, and took out my gun. It felt good in my hand. Too good. I sat there for a while, caressing the stock with my thumb, and pleasure spread through me and filled my brain and circled around my heart. When I put the gun back, I made sure I locked the glove compartment. Wouldn't want the wrong person getting in there. The sort of person who would use a weapon without need, who'd pull the trigger for reasons of rage and vengeance rather than self defense. No, I didn't want anybody like that getting ahold of my gun.

  It was a slow drive out to Shaker Heights, fighting the build of rush-hour traffic. The house turned out to be in a gated community, which gave me a few seconds of pause, sitting just outside the main drive with my truck idling while I wondered how to get through. I decided it was always a better bet to try the straightforward approach first, so I pulled up to the gate and put my window down and told the kid in the security uniform that I was here to see Dominic Sanabria. I doubted Sanabria had many house calls at eight in the morning, but you never know.

  The kid nodded at my request, asked for my name, and then waved me ahead, but he was looking at me strangely as he put the gate up. I kept my eyes in the mirror as I pulled forward and saw that he reached for the phone even before the gate was down. Standard procedure, or was this something he'd worked out with Sanabria, always to call if somebody showed up— Most of the gated communities I'd been through wouldn't let you pass until it had been cleared by the resident. I'd expected him to call before he let me through, not after.

  That curiosity stayed with me as I followed the curving road to the right, past dozens of ostentatious homes that all looked generally alike. A few people were out on the sidewalks, walking small dogs that yipped hysterically at my truck. Sprinklers hissed here and there in the perfect lawns, and every car I saw was high-end, lots of Lexus and Mercedes SUVs, one Jaguar sedan. It was a place where most people went off to work each day in law firms or brokerage houses, maybe showing commercial real estate. Sanabria was probably their favorite neighbor. Nothing made better conversation at a cocktail party than saying you had a mob player living in your gated community.

  According to my map, Sanabria's house was four right turns—or right curves, really—from the gatehouse, and I made it through all of them before I finally understood why the kid had waved me in and then picked up the phone. The police were waiting.

  There was a single cruiser parked on the street across from Sanabria's house, and even before I slowed my truck they hit the lights without turning the siren on. Yeah, they had a description of my vehicle.

  I brought my truck to a stop facing the cruiser, and both doors opened and two police in uniform got out. The one behind the wheel was a woman, tall, close to six feet, and her partner was a young guy with a ruddy, freckled face. He hung back while she approached, and when I started to put the window down she shook her head and motioned with her hand.

  "Step out, please."

  I took a deep breath, put the truck in park, and got out, giving the cruiser another look as I did. Shaker Heights Police Department. All right, they hadn't come here from Harrison's. They'd been sent to wait for me.

  "There's no problem," I said as I got out. "I just came here to talk to him."

  The cop smiled. She was young, couldn't be thirty yet, but she had cool, no-bullshit eyes.

  "I'm sure that's the case," she said, "but we got a call from Cleveland city, said they didn't want you talking to him, Mr. Perry. Said they want to talk to you, and then they'll talk to him."

  "I've got every right to knock on the man's door."

  She shook her head. "I'm going to have to bring you in to talk to city, Mr, Perry. They have a complaint. Woman says you assaulted her neighbor."

  "I didn't assault anyone."

  "I'm sure you didn't. Still, like I said, they have the complaint."

  "They sent you out here—"

  "That's right. They said you threatened Mr. Sanabria."

  I started to object again, started to say I'd never threatened anyone, but the energy went out of me then, and I sighed and nodded.

  "Call them," I said. "Tell them I'll come in to talk. You don't need to take me.

  She frowned. "I was asked—"

  "To arrest me, or to keep me from bothering Sanabria— Doesn't look like you're arresting me."

  "No."

  "Then tell them I'll come in. Tell them I'm cooperative and I'll come in."

  She studied me for a moment, then shot her partner a glance and nodded. "Okay. Do me a favor and go wait in your truck. Let me see what they say."

  I turned back to my truck, and my eyes passed over it and went up to the house, and I saw for the first time that Dominic Sanabria was standing in front of the door. He hadn't been there when I pulled up, must have come outside when he saw the police lights go on, but now he was standing on his front step wearing workout pants and a fleece jacket, holding a cup of coffee in his hand. I stopped short when I saw him, and when he realized he had my attention he lifted the cup of coffee at me and nodded his head. A neighborly greeting. I was too far away to see if he was smiling, but I imagined he was.

  "Mr. Perry—" There was a warning in the female cop's voice, and when I looked at her I saw that she was watching Sanabria, too. "Get in the vehicle, please."

  For a moment I didn't move, and then she spoke in a gentler tone. "I know who he is, Mr. Perry. I don't know the details of your situation, but I know who he is. All the same, though, I need you to get in the vehicle."

  I nodded without speaking, and I got into the truck, and while I waited on her to come back I did not let myself look at Sanabria. Or at my glove compartment.

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Things didn't get ugly until Graham got to town. The first few hours I spent with the Cleveland cops who'd responded to Harrison's house and the Metroparks Rangers, getting everyone updated. Nobody arrested me, and it seemed Harrison's version of events had been largely sympathetic. When Graham arrived around noon, I let him have a short briefing and then asked if I could speak to him alone. I wanted it to be just the two of us when I told him about the mistake I'd made, the one I hadn't even considered until I was driving back through the gatehouse of Sanabria's neighborhood.

  "You had anything to eat—" he said when the other cops left the room. "Any breakfast, lunch, cup of coffee—"

  I shook my head.

  "Let's get out of here, then. Go somewhere, grab a sandwich."

  He was calm, contained, but he'd never had trouble meeting my eyes before, and today he did. Anger, maybe, but probably some guilt in there, too. Ken was dead, and Graham had been in charge.

  We left the station and drove back to my office, Graham following behind me, then walked across the street to Gene's Place. It was close and it was comfortable, and only after we walked through the doors did I remember that it was also where I'd gone for lunch o
n the day Harrison came to see me and I agreed to take his case. That weird, warm day, when all I'd wanted to do was stand outside and drink in the air, feel the sun and the wind and the knowledge that we'd finally shaken winter.

  Graham got a cheeseburger, and I had a cup of soup and picked at a club sandwich while I went through cup after cup of coffee, the fatigue slamming me now. I told him everything I could tell him. He listened and ate his burger and didn't look at me often.

  When I was done talking, he leaned back from the table, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and said, "I'm sorry."

  "Yeah. Both of us. We're sorry, and he's dead."

  His chest filled with air, and he shook his head. "Maybe we didn't do everything perfect, but… well, let me correct that, Linc. I know we didn't do everything perfect, know that I didn't, but we also didn't kill the guy. We didn't get him killed, either."

  The waitress came back and refilled my coffee yet again. "You'll be bouncing off the walls today," she said and laughed. Yeah. Bouncing off the walls.

  "No," I said when she was gone, "we didn't get him killed. Sanabria did, I think, and Harrison's involved."

  "The phone calls suggest that, at least."

  "Speaking of which, why don't you have a damn wiretap on these guys—"

  "Don't have the probable cause, and you know that. Maybe I can get it now, but not before."

  "Great," I said. "Ken's made a break in the case. That's all the poor bastard wanted to do. Don't think he wanted to die to get it, though."

  Graham sighed again. "Linc, how's your head—"

  "What, the coffee—"

  "No, not the coffee. The way you went at it today, brother… I can't have you doing that. You're lucky Harrison's not pressing charges. He may change his mind. Either way, I can't afford to have you—"

  "I screwed up with him."

  "No shit you screwed up with him, and I'm just saying—"

  "No." I shook my head. "You don't understand, Graham. I don't mean in general terms. I mean specifically. In the heat of the moment, when I had him out there in the parking lot, I said something I shouldn't have."

  He looked at me like a man who was waiting for a diagnosis and wasn't optimistic.

  "I told him you know about the burial," I said. "The Shawnee elements."

  Diagnosis delivered, and the result was what I'd expected—a flash of shock, replaced quickly by anger. Deep anger. He stared at me and then turned and looked down at the table and blew his breath out between his teeth.

  "You told him we know about the burial. The one thing we've got hope on, waiting on those damn lab results—"

  "If you get the lab results, it doesn't matter that he knows. Maybe it doesn't anyhow. How can he prepare to deal with that, Graham— How can that knowledge really help him—"

  I was arguing out of a natural sense of self-defense, but I still knew it had been a mistake, and a potentially damaging one. The detail of the grave was the one card Graham had to play on this one, the only thing he'd held back from the media and the only firm link he had to Harrison. It wasn't all that firm—the definition of circumstantial, actually—but it was what he had.

  "That's beautiful," he said, shaking his head. "That is just beautiful, Linc."

  "Graham, I'm sorry. Like I said, heat of the moment."

  "Yeah, heat of a moment you shouldn't have been in. You were police, you know better than that." Another head shake. "No, it's on me. It's on me, damn it, I know that, I see that, I got him dead and you knocking suspects around and divulging information and driving out to Sanabria's with intentions I don't even want to guess at… yeah, Linc, I made the wrong play when you boys called me. I did. No question."

  I didn't say anything to that, didn't want to argue anymore, wanted to try to retain some dignity. Graham and I were feeling a lot of the same things, really. We'd both made some mistakes we'd be thinking about for a long time to come.

  "So he knows," Graham said eventually. "He knows what I know now. Level field now, right— Level field."

  "It's not level. He knows a hell of a lot more than you do."

  He looked up at me then, held my eye for a moment, then nodded. The waitress came back and dropped a check off and Graham reached out and took it and folded it.

  "Linc, there's something I need to ask of you."

  "You want me out."

  "Oh, yeah. Wanted you out yesterday, you know that, but after this morning, the way you went driving around, stirring shit up—that cannot continue."

  "Let me head you off here," I said. "I am out."

  He leaned back and gave me a bemused look, not buying it.

  "That's a promise, Graham. The minute you and I finish this talk, I'm done. When I say that, I mean it."

  "Why—" he said.

  "Why do I want out— Because it's got nothing to do with me."

  "Never did, though."

  "I know it, and I should have paid more attention to that. Ken showed up and asked, and I went along with him because it is what I do, Graham. This is what I know how to do. He gave me a case and said here is what we know and here is what we need to know, and I couldn't stop myself from joining up. I've done it for too long to stop, evidently. Until today. Because I'll tell you something—I went down to see the spot where his body was found. I stood down there and I thought about my girlfriend's body ending up there instead, or my partner's. They've both come close over the last two years. I stood there and I realized what you just said: that it never did have anything to do with me, and that I can't make a decision to put people in danger for things that aren't personal. Call it a revelation, an epiphany, whatever you'd like. Here's what I'm promising you: I will not put other people at risk for a case anymore. I'm done with it. If I'd sent that poor bastard back to Pennsylvania the day he arrived, he'd be alive, too."

  "Can't put all that on yourself, Linc."

  "Oh, I'm not. Some of it's on you, and plenty is on him. Then there are the guys who actually, you know, killed him. They probably require a bit of blame, too. What I'm saying, though, is that I'm not going to be involved in any attempt to settle up with them. I burned that desire out this morning, and screwed things up for you while doing it. Now I'm just going to apologize and step aside. So save whatever speech you have prepared."

  He was watching me with a deep frown, and now he braced his forearms on the table and leaned close, eyes on mine.

  "I'll close this case," he said. "Word as bond, Linc, I'll close it."

  "I hope so, Graham. You have to try, at least. It's your job—but you know what— It doesn't have to be mine. I'm finally understanding that." I stood up and tossed some money on the table. "I wish you luck, and if you have more questions, you know how to reach me. Otherwise, though, save yourself any worry on my part. I'm gone."

  John Dunbar came by my apartment that afternoon. I'd been waiting for Amy, but when I heard a knock instead of a key turning I grimaced, knowing it wouldn't be good. I let him up, and he sat in my living room, loosened his tie, and told me that we had to get to work.

  "Look, Perry, I understand how you feel right now. The anger, the sense of futility. You feel that way because you know who's responsible and yet he's walking around free. Sanabria's done that too long. We can't let it continue. We can't."

  "Did you ever consider," I said, "that you might be responsible for this—"

  "What—"

  "Everything that happened with the Cantrells. Think about it. Do they ever leave that house if you don't conceive of the brilliant idea of planting Bertoli there— Does anyone ever get killed— Or are they still living in that place and helping people, Dunbar—"

  He shook his head. "I'm not going to let you put that at my feet. I didn't invent the trouble they had as a couple, didn't even come to Joshua with the idea. He came to me. I don't regret what we tried to do."

  I stayed silent and made a point of looking at my watch. Anytime you want to leave, Dunbar…

  "Your idea," he said, "would be that if we just
gave up on justice, fewer people would get hurt— If we just let Sanabria run wild, without persecution or prosecution, the rest of us are fine— That's a pretty selfish idea,

  Perry. He killed other people before your friend, and he'll kill other people again."

  "How long have you been chasing him—"

  He couldn't hold my eyes. "A long time."

  "How many years—"

  "Twenty. About twenty."

  "And you've done nothing but add to his body count."

  "I don't have to listen to—"

  "If you want him that bad, why didn't you just kill the son of a bitch, Dunbar— You'd have had an easier time doing that and getting away with it than you would have getting anything useful with Bertoli and that half-assed sting attempt."

  He got to his feet slowly, his jaw tight. "That's not how it's done. I do it right."

  "You haven't yet."

  "I will," he snapped. "I will. I'm retired, Perry, and still I'm here, asking for your help. That doesn't mean anything to you— Doesn't tell you anything about me—"

  "It means something to me," I said, "but not what you want it to."

  He stood there for a moment and stared at me, and I saw contempt in his eyes.

  "You could do something about this," he said. "A real detective would."

  He left my apartment then. I thought about what he'd said, and thought that a year ago the words would have been coming out of my lips. A year ago, I wouldn't be back in my apartment right now or for many hours yet to come, I'd be chasing every lead, believing that I could do something to set things right. Why didn't I now—

  It stacked up on you, after a while. The violence. If you kept your distance, maybe you could avoid that; if every corpse and every crime scene photograph you looked at represented somebody else's friend, somebody's else's brother, somebody else's daughter, maybe you could hold that distance. It wasn't working that way for me anymore, though. I sat in my living room after Dunbar left and I began to see the ghosts, Ken Merriman and Ed Gradduk and Joe before the bullets found him that day by the bridge over