Perfect Grave

Chapter Eighteen

A fter Jason looked at his grease-stained menu, with higher prices penned over lower ones, he counted four dead flies on the windowsill of his booth at Ivan’s.

He didn’t mind; it was his kind of place. A small, twenty-four-hour diner on a side street off Aurora. The smell of bacon, onions, and coffee mingled with the soft conversations of working people, weary night crews who’d just clocked out and sober-faced day crews about to punch in.

In one corner, a biker couple had fallen asleep. No one cared. No one needed their booth. Jason’s old man said he’d meet him here at 7:30 A.M. It was 7:50 A.M. Give him a bit more time, he was likely tied up in traffic.

Jason looked through the window’s grime to the street and thought, maybe this would be it? Maybe his dad would tell him whatever it was he was trying to tell him the other night at the Ice House Bar. Before the nun’s murder had eclipsed everything.

“You have to help me, son, I don’t know what to do here.”

Jason shuddered at the memory of his dad poised over a beer. It triggered a torrent of searing images from his life: his mother walking out, his old man showing up drunk in the newsroom that night a few years back. “Where’s my boy? How come you don’t call me, don’t I matter anymore, Jay?” The shame from the final humiliation had forced his old man to face his problem, to get help and to start turning his life around.

And was it all because of what had happened to him when he was a Seattle cop?

For years, Jason had secretly tried to learn more about his father’s past. He’d dug up a few scraps of information here and there but never enough to get a full sense of the events that had forced him off the job. His dad had refused to discuss whatever had happened. With anyone.

Ever.

All that Jason knew, sitting here this morning, was that he would do all that he could to help his father confront his demon, kill it, and bury it forever. Because his old man had already paid too great a price, had already come too far, to surrender to it now.

While waiting, Jason took his empty coffee cup to the counter.

The gum-snapping waitress topped it off with a “thanks, sweetie,” before Jason returned to his other problem: how to pursue the nun murder story today.

He studied this morning’s front page.

Okay, so he’d already used the knife angle in print. But he held back on how the guy who stole it from the shelter supposedly had some kind of heated discussion with Sister Anne.

Was that guy her killer?

Jason needed to dig up more, then consider taking it to Grace to see if he could leverage it into a major exclusive, so the Mirror would own the story. He entertained pleasant thoughts about her until his father arrived.

Jason ordered a BLT, milk, and more coffee.

“Just coffee,” Henry Wade told the waitress.

“I’m sorry that I kept blowing you off when you wanted to talk,” Jason said.

His old man shrugged off his apologies.

“You’ve got the big story, I understand.”

“All right, so let’s talk. Are you ready to finally tell me what happened to you when you were a police officer? Why you left the force?”

As his father rubbed his chin, Jason saw that he’d nicked himself shaving.

“This is all about the thing you wanted me to help you with, Dad, right?”

Henry looked out the window searching for the place to start. “I don’t expect the name Vernon Pearce to mean much to you.”

“He was your partner when you were a cop.”

“How did you know that?”

“Look, after all these years, all the crap our family, well, what’s left of it, has been through, do you think I was going to let you keep your secret locked up?”

“You know everything, then?”

“No. But I tried to learn everything, without you finding out. I dug wherever I could. I dug carefully because I didn’t want anything getting back to you because I thought you’d stop me.”

“So what more did you find out?”

“Not much, just that something happened because you quit and Vern kind of disappeared, or something.”

“Vern was a seasoned uniformed police officer. A Vietnam veteran. A diehard street cop who took me under his wing. He taught me everything about police work. How to handle myself when someone takes a swing at me, or if I was outnumbered. Taught me the basics of investigations, about police politics, how to make a judgment call, when to let somebody go with a warning, or when to be the meanest mother on the street.”

“You got along, then?”

“We were like brothers.”

“So what happened?”

“We’d been partnered for just over a year, in uniform and on patrol. In total command of our zone. Handling crap, the thin blue line. I loved my job and being Vern’s partner. God, it was good. Then one day we get called to an armed robbery in progress and-”

Henry rubbed his face.

“I’ve never really talked about this.”

“I know, Dad, take it easy.”

“The call went all weird on us. It ended with a person getting shot. The suspect was arrested and pleaded guilty.”

“Can you tell me who got shot, Dad?”

His father stared at him, his eyes clouded with fear.

“Can you tell me the date?” Jason pulled out his notebook.

“Put that away, son. Please and let me finish.”

“Why?”

“Please.”

Jason tucked his notebook away.

“More coffee?” the gum-chewing waitress asked.

They both accepted refills from her.

“Dad,” Jason said, after she left, “I looked through the old clippings from the time you were on the job, armed robberies, shootings. Your name never came up.”

“Not every cop who responds to a call gets named in the news reports,” Henry said. “All I can say is it was tragic.” He rubbed his lips. “It took a toll on me and it took a toll on Vern.”

“What happened?”

Henry stared into his black coffee.

“We gave so much to the job, we became the job. We put our lives on the line every time we went out. And in a split second, in a heartbeat, everything changes. Your life changes.”

“Dad, what happened?”

“Vern took things very hard. But he never said a word to me. So I never realized how things were eating him up, until that day.”

“What day?”

“The last day I saw him.”

“When was that?”

“One day, a few months later. Vern was late for work. I told the sergeant that his car had broken down, then I called Vern at his home. He answered. He was home alone. I told him I was swinging by to pick him up for our shift.”

“What did he say?”

“He said-” Henry stopped to blink several times. “He said sure, pal, come and get me. So I got to his place. Knocked. No answer, so I tried the door. It was unlocked. I got in and the first thing I heard was the loud static scratching of an old vinyl record that had played to the end. I called for Vern but heard nothing.

“The place was a mess. It smelled kind of bad, like nothing had been washed, or cleaned. Clothes were heaped, the TV was on but muted. Vern never had a hair out of place.

“I called for him again, heard a muffled sound from a bedroom. The door was half open. When I entered I saw Vern in his uniform and he had this strange look on his face. He was holding his off-duty gun, a Colt. I thought he was cleaning it or something. Vern looks at it, looks at me-says ‘sorry, Henry’-sticks the gun in his mouth, and pulls the trigger. A portion of his skull and brain matter splashed over his wedding photo on the wall.”

“Jesus.”

“I don’t recall what happened after that. They told me that when they found me, I was on the floor cradling his head in my lap.”

“Dad, I’m so sorry.”

“Maybe a piece of me died with Vern that day. I was finished as a cop.”

“Did he leave a note? What was he sorry for?”

“No note. His wife walked out on him. That call had taken a toll on Vern and me.”

“Well, what happened?”

“I don’t want to get into that. This is hard for me.”

“Sure. Sure.”

“The thing is, after I packed it in, I got a small disability pension and started drinking. I swore I never ever wanted to touch a gun again.”

“I understand.”

“Now here I am, a private detective with Krofton and he’s issued this order for all of his people to get themselves licensed to be armed. I’m having a very hard time with it all.”

“Are you going to do it?”

“It’s done.”

“It’s done? Wow. Well, think of it as a good thing, that you’re strong enough to stare this business down and put it behind you and hope you’ll never have to use the damned gun.”

Henry embraced Jason’s encouragement because it was what he needed to hear.

“That’s what I’ll do.”

Jason patted his father’s hand.

“Thank you for telling me this, Dad. I understand things now.”

“Thank you,” Henry said, “for not giving up on me, son.”

“Are you kidding? We’re partners.” Jason spun the newspaper around with his story on the front page.

“Maybe you could help me with this story, Dad?”

Henry looked at the headline and Sister Anne Braxton’s picture.

Jason ordered more coffee.