Sorrow's Anthem

CHAPTER 5

When my alarm went off at six that morning, I grabbed it, tore the cord from the outlet, and threw the clock into the closet. Then I remembered why I’d set the alarm so early in the first place. For a long moment I remained in bed, eyes squeezed shut, trying not to think about what I’d seen the previous night and what duty it had provided for me this morning. Sleep is a temporary shield, though, and I’d slipped from behind it. I got out of bed and went into the shower. Twenty minutes later I was out the door and on my way to break a heart that had been broken too many times already.

Allison Harmell lived in North Olmsted. Fifteen years earlier she’d lived on Scranton Road, a neighbor but not a classmate. Allison’s parents came up with the cash to send her to a Catholic school, but she’d hung out more with the West Tech crowd than with her friends from school.

She was an accountant now, recently resigned from one of the large national chains to work independently. I’d learned this in the same way I’d learned everything else that had happened in Allison’s life in the last eight years—through letters. We didn’t talk on the phone because the silences that inevitably slid between us never felt as comfortable as they should have between old friends. We used to meet for drinks occasionally, always at a hotel bar in Middleburg Heights, in a room filled with strangers, but now those meetings had gone by the wayside, as well. These were the rules of contact that had developed between us as the years had passed, and while they were always unspoken, they were also rigid.

She worked out of her house, I knew, so I didn’t have to rise so early simply to catch her at home. I was more interested in catching her before she turned on the television.

She came to the door within seconds of my knock, but she wore a robe and had her hair in a towel.

“Lincoln,” she said, lifting a hand to her temple. “What in the world . . .” Halfway through the question she answered it for herself. “Something’s wrong.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Something’s wrong.”

Seeing her again, I regretted that I’d designated myself as the messenger. I’d known it wouldn’t be any fun for me, but it had also seemed better than letting her hear it from some idiot television news reporter or as overheard conversation in a grocery store checkout line. Now I was struck by just how difficult the disclosure was going to be.

“He’s in trouble,” she said, stepping aside from the door. “I’ve already heard. But, Lincoln, he couldn’t have killed that woman. He couldn’t have.”

“He didn’t,” I said. “But that doesn’t matter anymore. Not where he’s concerned.”

I was inside the house now, following her through a tiny dining room and into a kitchen that smelled warmly of brewing coffee. Allison sat on a kitchen stool, the robe sliding off slim, bare legs.

“What are you talking about?”

“Ed’s dead.” I was standing in the kitchen doorway, tall and rigid, hands hanging at my sides.

“No. Dead? No. He’s just in jail, Lincoln. They were going to send him back to . . .” The attempt died then, and she shut up and stared at me.

“It happened last night,” I said. “I was there when he died. The cops came after him and he ran into the street. He was drunk and he couldn’t make it across. They hit him with their car.”

She didn’t say anything, just reached up and slowly unwound the towel from her long blond hair. It fell to her shoulders, some of the wetter strands sticking to her neck.

“Three years and seven months,” she said. Silence for a moment, and then: “That’s how long it’s been since I talked to him. I figured that out when I heard about the fire on the news last night. We saw each other once when he got out of jail, and then no more.”

There was another long pause before she said, “So then I shouldn’t be sad, right? Not really.”

She started to cry then, softly and without theatrics, just a quiet supply of tears that she’d occasionally wipe with the back of her hand. I didn’t move toward her. For a long time we remained like that—her crying on the stool, me standing with my hands at my sides in the doorway.

“Shit,” she said eventually, sniffing back the last of the tears and shaking her head. “He’s dead and I’m mad at him for that. Make any sense?”

“Yes.”

She barked out a laugh that was still wet with tears and shook her head again. “Good. I’d hate to seem crazy.”

The silence that followed lasted a few minutes. Then she took a long breath and said, “Now are you going to tell me how you ended up with him when he died? Because if it’s been almost four years since I talked to him, it had been a lot longer for you.”

“It had been longer.”

“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me why you were there, tell me how he looked, tell me what he said. Tell me how it was when he died.”

Thirty minutes later we were still in the kitchen. The coffee had finished brewing but sat unpoured, and Allison’s hair was air-drying and fanning out a bit with static. I was still standing in the doorway, refusing to cross the threshold and join her in the room.

“Did you believe him?” Allison asked.

“When he said he didn’t kill her?”

“Yes.”

“I believed that before he said a word. Ed was a lot of things, Allison, but a murderer wasn’t one of them.”

“People change. Especially when they . . .”

“When they spend years in jail,” I said for her. She winced, but it wasn’t because she’d stopped the sentence to protect my feelings. It was a whole lot more personal than that.

“Yes,” she said. “That changes a person.”

“Not that much. I don’t believe it changes someone that much. But then I’ve never been to jail.” I paused a second before saying, “For more than a night, that is,” as if that detail mattered.

“He hadn’t been in any trouble,” she said. “Nothing since he got out. I watch the papers for his name.”

“You have any idea what he was doing since then?”

She shook her head.

“Me neither,” I said, and something in those two words made her cock her head and frown at me.

“You’re going to find out, though, is that it?”

I shrugged.

“Are you?” she prompted.

“Would it be wrong if I did?”

She shook her head, her eyes watching me with a measure of pity. “No, Lincoln. But it’s too late to make amends.”

“You think that’s what it’s about? I don’t have to make amends, Allison.”

“Right,” she said. “We never did. But I’m not sure you ever believed that.”

“I did. I do.”

She smiled slightly. “So tell me again why you went after Ed last night?”

“I wanted to help a friend.”

“He wasn’t your friend, Lincoln. Not anymore. Hadn’t been for years.”

“He’s my friend.”

“And you’re his,” she said. “That’s what you wanted to prove. To him, to Scott Draper, to anyone who ever knew the two of you. To the whole damn neighborhood, whatever’s left of it.”

I looked at the wall behind her.

“I’m not discouraging you,” she said. “I’m just reminding you of what you came here to tell me—he’s dead.”

“His name’s not. It’s still going strong right now, and headed in the wrong direction. You want the city to remember him as a killer?”

“No.”

We were quiet for a while, and then she asked if I ever saw anyone from the old neighborhood.

I shook my head. “Some people sent cards or called after my dad’s funeral. That was the old guard, though, most of them over fifty. As far as the kids we grew up with, no. You?”

She smiled at me the way you smile at someone who’s just asked an utterly absurd question.

“No, Lincoln. I’m not thought of too highly around there.”

“Neither one of us is, Allison.”

She tried to make her tone light. “We did what we had to do, right? Just didn’t work out the way anyone wanted it to. No regrets, Lincoln. No regrets.”

There wasn’t much more to say after that. I stayed in the kitchen with her a while longer. She finally poured the coffee. I drank mine while she cried over hers. She was dry-eyed again when I left.

“You look good, Lincoln,” she said as she walked to my truck with me. “It’s been a while since I saw you, too, you know.”

“I know.” I turned to her and gave her a hug. She squeezed me tightly and her fingernails bit into my back. I pulled away when I felt the first fresh teardrop on my neck.

“You’re still the most beautiful woman I never wanted to sleep with,” I said, and she laughed not because that was funny but because she knew it to be true.

She watched me climb into the truck, then motioned for me to put the window down. When I did, she said, “Call me, Lincoln. Tell me what you learn.”

Her voice held both a note of pleading and one of command. It was a blend I’d heard before.

The house is dark because the sun sets behind it, the long shadows in the room making it seem later than it really is. I’m on the couch. Allison is on her knees in front of me. Her elbows are braced against my thighs, her hands clasped. It’s as if she is praying to me, and in a sense she almost is. Tonight I have been called upon to be a savior.

“You know I’m right,” she says. “I’ve talked to him until I simply have run out of things to say. He’s not listening. And he won’t listen.”

“He might,” I lie. “You can’t give up on him this easily, Allison. He loves you the same as ever. He’s just . . .”

“He’s just killing himself,” she finishes for me. “You’re trying to turn a blind eye to that, Lincoln, but you know it’s true. You’re the one who told me what Antonio Childers is like.”

I turn away from her and stare at the wall. Antonio Childers is one of the great social menaces in our city, a drug dealer who is also a suspect in nearly a dozen unsolved homicides. For several months now, Ed Gradduk has been working for him. It started as petty shit, muling and couriering mostly, but it’s escalated. Ed’s in construction, had a run of bad luck with lost jobs and bad bosses, and apparently he found an alternative income source. I haven’t seen much of him recently; I’m working nights for the Cleveland police, putting in as much overtime as possible, trying to get noticed and get promoted. That’s how you make detective, I know, and that’s what I intend to do.

“He’s going to get killed,” Allison repeats, and I avoid looking down directly into her face.

“I know,” I say softly. Allison and I have had this conversation before. Ed and I have had this conversation before, too. He told me to keep my eyes on the other side of the street when I pass him in my cruiser, and otherwise things would be normal. I told him it couldn’t work that way. We haven’t spoken much since.

“He’s gone all the time now,” Allison says. “We’ve had calls at all hours of the night. Once a guy sat in front of the house in a van for hours, just waiting for Ed to come back.”

They still live on the near west side, which is part of the problem. Childers has recruited Ed because Ed knows the neighborhood well, knows who to talk to and who to avoid, and works the streets with all the familiarity you want from a foot soldier. For the life of me, I cannot reason out how this began, how Ed could possibly have allowed himself to get involved with Childers.

“There’s only one way to get him to listen,” Allison says, and she reaches out and squeezes my upper arms to emphasize her point. “You told me you could arrange things if it came to that. I’m telling you it has come to that.”

“Shit, Allison.” I shake my head. “He’s got to talk for it to work. If he doesn’t . . .”

“He will. Trust me, Lincoln. If it comes down to a choice between freedom and jail, between me and a cell, he will make the right decision. You know he will. But until he’s faced with that choice, I’m afraid he’s going to keep looking at it as a game.”

“He’s got to talk,” I repeat.

“He’ll talk. He may not care enough to save himself right now, but if we press him to that point, Lincoln . . . if we put his back to the wall, he’ll have to.”

“We’ll save him despite himself,” I say sarcastically, but she nods with an equal amount of sincerity.

“Yes,” she says. “That’s exactly what we’ll do. But I need your help. You have to be involved, have to make sure he has the options. Are you sure you can do that?”

I run my tongue across dry lips. “I’m sure. There’s a narcotics detective named Pritchard. Joe Pritchard. He’s got a good reputation, supposed to be a hell of a cop. And he’s got a serious hard-on for Antonio Childers. He’s not going to send a small player like Ed to jail when he could trade that conviction for information about Childers.”

“So you’ll do it.”

I take a long look at her face, then look back at the window, the glass dark with growing shadows.

“Lincoln,” she says, “Ed is losing his life here. He’s going to be killed or he’s going to get sent to jail by someone else, someone who will see that he’s kept there a long time. You know talking is not doing any good. We have to force to him to walk away from this.”

I swallow and get to my feet, step around her and into the middle of the living room, heading for the door.

“I’ll call Pritchard tonight.”