A Welcome Grave

10

The day passed slowly. We had some work, but nothing that required a particularly high level of effort or thought. Computer jobs, mostly, a few skip traces and some property records research. I cut out at five, drove back to my building, changed clothes, and went down to the gym.

After an hour of work with the weights, I left and went for a run. October is one of my favorite months for running, the air cool enough to feel energizing but not cold enough to squeeze your lungs. I ran for about thirty minutes, across Rocky River Drive and down the hill into the park, then up to the bridge. I touched one of the iron arches on the bridge lightly with my hand, as I did every time I crossed it: a recognition of the time my partner almost died in the river beneath; a thank-you that he didn’t. I made it back to the gym with a good sweat going, breathing hard, and rounded the corner of the building to see Amy’s car in the parking lot.

I slowed to a walk, my heart thumping and chest heaving. I was happy to see her, but I was also immediately on edge, too. The last time I’d seen her she’d been angry—frustrated, at least—and we hadn’t spoken since.

She must have been watching the mirrors, because she opened the door and stepped out of the Acura before I reached it. She was wearing jeans and a button-down shirt over a white tank top, looking small and trim, as always. Looking good, as always.

“Hey,” I said. I’ve got a knack for slick opening lines.

“Hi.” She was holding a piece of paper in her hand, watching me with a frown. “Sounds like I made the right call passing on the Indiana trip, huh?”

“You talk to Joe?”

“No.”

“So what’ve you heard, then?”

“This.” She passed the paper to me. It was a printout with ASSOCIATED PRESS across the top. A dateline said “Morgantown, Ind.” There was no headline, but the lead sentence gave a clear idea of the article.

The only witness to a violent suicide near Morgantown Thursday night was a private investigator from Ohio who has ties to the victim’s recently murdered father.

I looked up at her, matched her frown. “Where’d you get this?”

“It’s on the wire, Lincoln. We’re running the story tomorrow.”

“What?”

She nodded. “I knew you’d be upset, but there’s no way I could talk my editor out of running this. Not with Jefferson’s murder being such big news. This reporter from Indiana must be in good with the cops down there, because she got a lot of information. Hell, suicides usually aren’t news, unless the victim was famous or an elected official or something. It’s one of the few areas where we media types have any respect for privacy.”

I groaned and read through the rest of the article as we stood there in the parking lot. Yes, some reporter from Indiana was in good with the cops, indeed. There weren’t any quotes, just a lot of generic “police said” attribution, but I knew the source had to be Brewer. The story named me and explained that I’d been detained overnight and cited for operating without an Indiana PI license, but that could have come from anyone in the department. The details about my relationship with Karen and my assault on her husband, though, reeked of Brewer’s personal touch.

“He probably asked her to make sure the AP spread it around.” I crumpled the paper. “He wants me to feel the heat. The asshole actually thinks I’m involved in this.”

“What asshole?”

I sighed and rubbed my eyes. “Yeah, I’ve got to catch you up on all of it, I guess. Let’s go inside.”

We went up to my apartment, and I told her what had happened while I drank a bottle of water, leaning against the wall while she sat on the couch. She listened with interest, but she was too quiet, offering no questions when usually I would’ve had to shut her up just to finish my story.

“You mind if I take a shower real quick?” I said when I was done. The sweat from my workout and run was drying, and I wanted to get cleaned up and into fresh clothes.

“Go ahead.”

I went. When I came back, she was still on the couch. The television was on with the volume turned off, but she wasn’t watching it, choosing instead to stare at the wall.

I walked over to the couch, but there was an aura there, a kind of pulsing defense field that told me I probably shouldn’t sit down right beside her. Instead, I sat on the floor and put my back against the couch, tilted my head so I could see her face.

“You all right?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I probably owe you an apology, though. I needed to let some things out the other day, but I don’t know if I went about it in the right way.”

“It’s okay, Amy.”

She shrugged but didn’t say anything else.

“You need to say what’s on your mind, when it’s on your mind,” I said. “That’s the only way to live, Ace.”

“Oh, yeah? Then why don’t I ever know what’s on your mind?”

“Because I’m a shallow, stupid man. Nothing’s ever there.”

She laughed. “Good argument.”

It was quiet for a minute. I wondered if she was hoping I’d take the lead, direct things back to the conversation she’d started in the parking lot the morning I’d left for Indiana. I didn’t say anything, though. If there’s one thing I’m worse at than handling a relationship, it’s discussing a relationship. A conversationalist who doesn’t want to converse about the real important things. So what did that make me? A shallow, stupid man? Uh-oh, maybe I hadn’t been joking.

“Rough couple of days for you,” Amy said then, probably just to fill the silence.

“Oh, yeah.” I sat with my head down and took a long, deep breath. It had been a hell of a couple of days, at that.

She reached down to me, her cool fingers sliding across my neck, and began to massage the spot where my upper back muscles joined my neck muscles. I sighed gratefully and tilted my head back and to the side, feeling tension drain away. Her hands were small and delicate, but strong. Every other part of my body seemed to disappear, and I existed only in about one square inch just above my shoulder blade. That slight touch was reminding me—not for the first time, or even the five hundredth—just how bad I wanted her.

Do you know what it means when your friendship starts making a thwackity thwack sound that progresses to a clankity clank? Yes. It means you screwed up. And how to fix it? Stop being scared.

She worked on my back for a few more minutes, then stopped, running her nails gently up my neck before pulling her hand away. I twisted my head and looked up at her.

“Thank you.”

“Sure. Looked like you needed it.”

“More than you know.”

I put the heels of my hands against the floor, pushed myself upright, and slid onto the couch beside her. She was curled up against the armrest, watching me. I looked back at her and tried to remember why I’d always avoided making a move with her, what I’d been waiting for. My basic logic had seemed sound enough at first: My track record of sustaining romantic relationships was poor at best, and Amy was too good a friend to risk losing. Maybe Grace had a point, though. Maybe I should stop worrying about what could go wrong with it and see what could go right. Maybe the moment was now.

I’d actually started to lean toward her when she said, “I’ve got to stop thinking of you as a relationship possibility.”

I stayed where I was at first, caught in that awkward half lean, and then I pulled back and raised my eyebrows.

“I’m sorry?”

“It wouldn’t work, you know? We’d be at each other’s throats. We are half the time anyhow, and that’s in a friendship. Too many similarities. We’ve made the right decision, or maybe you made it for both of us, and I just need to do a better job of being grateful for that. I apologize. Good friends are hard to find, and painful to lose, Lincoln. I don’t want that to happen here.”

I hadn’t actually made the move to kiss her, but I felt like I had, and now I was struggling to connect with the sudden turn in the conversation.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” I fumbled.

“I let some emotions get away from me the other day, that’s all. The questions I asked you, like how many successful relationships I’ve managed since I met you, those should have been questions I directed at myself.”

“Actually, I was thinking—”

“Damn!” Her eyes had gone to her watch.

“What?”

“I was supposed to meet a friend for coffee twenty minutes ago. I didn’t realize how long I’d been here. I just wanted to drop off that article and apologize, that’s all.”

She was on her feet, gathering her purse.

“Let’s not cut off this conversation here and forget about it,” I said.

She gave me a hurried nod as I followed her to the door. “Sure, we’ll come back to it, but I really do have to run out of here. Sorry, Lincoln. I’ll talk to you soon.”

“I hope so,” I told the door as it swung shut.

A minute later, I went down to the parking lot as if to catch her, even though I’d heard her drive away. The lot was empty, none of the night owls hitting the gym tonight. I stood with my hands in my pockets, braced against the October wind, and stared at nothing for a while. It was cold, but I didn’t want to go back upstairs. I closed the door and locked it, then walked around the corner of the building and started west down Lorain.

I’d known Amy for a year and a half, spending more and more time with her with each passing month, and I’d never instigated anything beyond friendship. Then, the night she explains that she’s accepted that as a permanent—and appropriate—situation, I’m ready to make a move. Perfect. I’m a master of timing.

I hung a left on Rocky River, went down to Chatfield, and then walked east, taking as close to a circular route as you can get in a city where everything’s laid out in rectangles. A car swung in beside me and parked at the curb in front of a house with a giant inflatable witch on a broomstick, her face glowing a bright electric green under the pointed black hat. Halloween was one week away. I was headed for Joe’s house, but unintentionally. He’d probably still be up, watching whatever old game was being aired on ESPN Classic tonight, but I didn’t know if I really wanted to drop in on him and hit him with this news. Maybe because I didn’t want to bother him so late, and maybe because as the weeks stacked up he was starting to feel less like my partner and more like a guy I used to work with.

Several other houses along Chatfield were decked out in the holiday spirit, grinning jack-’o-lanterns in the windows and gleaming skeletons hanging from the trees. All holidays are bizarre when you think about where they started and what they became, but Halloween may be the strangest.

My breath fogged out in front of me as I walked, moving quickly, my hands still in my pockets, keeping my arms pressed against my sides for warmth. My wet hair soaked in the chill, made me shiver a bit. Just begging to catch a cold. Maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing, though. I’d have to stay home, stay in bed, stay out of the world and all of the twists it could throw at you.

The attacker ran through the grass instead of on the sidewalk, so I didn’t hear his footsteps behind me until the last second. A car door had opened and closed, but I’d assumed it was the people who’d pulled up in front of the house with the witch decoration, and I hadn’t bothered to glance back. I was half turned to see what was coming when he hit me, a tackle that lifted my feet off the sidewalk and slammed my shoulder against a tree before I fell heavily to the ground.

I landed on my back, which put me in the best position to defend myself against the next attack from a man I saw only as a dark shape, his face obscured by the shadows and a baseball cap pulled low on his head. I pushed myself off the ground as he swung at me, ducked, and lunged toward him as the blow missed by inches. From the sound his hand made as it passed by my ear, I knew he was holding a weapon, something with some weight to it. He stepped back deftly and quickly at my move forward and, instead of collecting himself for another swing, he simply reversed his body and momentum and threw his right hand at my head again, this time in a smooth, fluid backhand, like a tennis player. He did it so fast and so hard that I thought I tasted the blood in my mouth before I was knocked into a black oblivion.