A Welcome Grave

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 would’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.”