The Silent Hour

23

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I called Graham as I drove away from Harrison’s building, got the phone out and dialed without pause because I knew if I stopped to think about it I’d delay calling him. He wasn’t going to be pleased with this.

It took about twenty seconds of conversation before he confirmed that idea, breaking into a burst of sustained profanity that might have impressed me had I not been its target. No, he wasn’t pleased.

“Graham, there’s nothing I would have done differently,” I said when he finally paused for a breath.

“Nothing you would have done—”

“No. There’s not. It was nothing I said that convinced him I was wearing a wire; he was already pretty sure of it. The way he went for my shirt, Graham—he knew I was wearing one. He was sure he’d find it.”

“Beautiful, Perry.”

“I don’t know what to say, Graham. Sorry it went like that, but it was your idea.”

“My bad idea,” he said. “I’ll readily admit that. I let you and your buddy get into this, and I shouldn’t have.”

I kept the phone pressed to my ear as I hammered the accelerator and pulled onto the interstate, took it up to eighty-five before letting off. It was silent for a while, Graham’s breathing heavy with irritation.

“Okay,” he said finally. “Okay, it’s done. It was a bad idea, and it didn’t work, and maybe it did some harm. We can’t really tell yet.”

“I’m more interested in what changed his mind.”

“What changed his mind was the fact that he knew you were trying to con him. What changed his mind was knowing you were taping every conversation.”

There was biting accusation in every word, as if he thought I’d gone into Harrison’s home with a microphone labeled police property in my hand and started asking him questions about Cantrell’s death. I gave it a few beats of silence again, not wanting to let this turn into a clash of egos.

“I warned you after our first attempt that I thought he saw through it,” I said. “Back then, you didn’t want to believe me. That’s fine. What I’m telling you tonight is, I don’t think that’s all there was to it. Something else rattled him.”

“That’s terrific, Linc. I’ll find out what it was. In the meantime, you—”

“He called somebody as soon as I left. You might want to check that.”

“How do you know?”

“He was standing with the phone to his ear when I drove away. Kind of curious who he felt deserved such an immediate call.”

“Could be somebody called him.”

“I didn’t hear the phone ring.”

“All right, look, I’ll see about that, but as I was saying, in the meantime, you go find Kenny and you send him home. I want you both off of this, immediately. Like I said before, I take some of the blame. Maybe it was a bad idea from the start, but now it’s done. I want you and him as far away from this as possible.”

“I’m not sure how easy it’ll be to convince Ken.”

“It’ll be damn easy when I arrest him for interference. You tell him that, and if he has a problem with it, you tell him to call me. He doesn’t have a client anymore, and he’s not licensed in Ohio. In other words, he’s mine, Linc. If I want to shut him down, I can.”

Not much was said after that. I disconnected, threw the phone onto the floor of the passenger seat, and drove back to the brewery. It was more crowded than when I’d left; I had to shoulder past people bottlenecked just inside the doors. Amy and Ken were where I’d left them, though, fresh pints on the bar in front of them. They were facing each other, and Ken was grinning at Amy’s animated words.

“Hey,” she said, turning when she saw Ken’s eyes go over her shoulder to me. “I was just explaining my favorite psychological phenomenon to Ken.”

“Which one is that?”

“The way the world’s most pathologically narcissistic people seem drawn to careers in newspaper management.”

Ken started to laugh, but then he stopped, eyes still on me, a frown replacing his smile. “Didn’t go well with Harrison?”

I shook my head and leaned on the bar in between them, gesturing at the bartender for a beer. “Didn’t go well, no.”

“What happened?”

I told them about it while I drank the beer. When I got to the part about Harrison finding the wire, Amy sighed and turned away from me, fear disguised as anger.

“Not your fault,” Ken said, shaking his head. “He didn’t have to find the wire. He already knew.”

“That’s exactly what I told Graham.”

“Oh, you already talked to him? What’d he have to say?”

I took a long drink of my beer, staring up at the TV. Indians had been up one when I walked in, and now they were down two.

“Well?” Ken said.

“He wasn’t happy. Spent a while swearing at me and calling me incompetent before he decided to man up and accept part of the blame, realized it was probably a silly ploy to try in the first place.”

“He say what comes next?”

“I assume it’ll be back to waiting on the lab work. He seems pretty convinced that’s where any break will come from.”

“What about us?”

I finished my beer, slid the glass across the bar. “We’re done.”

“What?”

“He told me in no uncertain terms that we are to stay away from this.”

“That’s not his decision.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Is it?” he said. “Lincoln? You want to let that guy back us off?”

“It’s not that simple, Ken. He can if he wants to. We don’t have a client anymore. If he wants to jump up and down and scream about interference and tampering, he can do that. I don’t think he wants to, but I also don’t think he’s going to let us keep digging on this without a fight.”

Amy was quiet, watching us, and I could imagine Ken’s expression from the concern in her eyes. This case mattered to him. I knew that by now; he’d made it damn clear. Still, I didn’t know what else to tell him.

“So you want to stop?” he said. “This is the end? Go home and forget about it?”

“I’m not saying that.”

“Yeah, you’re not saying anything. What do you think, Lincoln?”

I drummed my fingers on the bar, not looking at either of them for a minute. The bartender pointed at my empty glass and gave me a questioning eye, and I nodded at him. I didn’t speak again until the fresh beer was in my hand.

“I think that you care about this one too much to go home and forget about it—but I also want to point out that it’s been twelve years since they took off, and six months since his body was found. Plenty of time’s already passed, right? So I don’t see the harm, really, in letting it breathe for a few more weeks. Let Graham get his lab results. On a case this old, the breaks usually do come from the lab.”

“What if they don’t?”

“If they don’t, we figure out how to move forward, yet after talking to Graham tonight, I think it’s a good idea to let it breathe, Ken. At least for a few weeks. We want to assist the police investigation, not slow it down by fighting with them.”

He was quiet, clearly unsatisfied. He looked up at Amy as if searching for support, then flicked his eyes down when he didn’t find any there.

“So I head home,” he said.

“I’m not telling you that. Graham is. Although I think there’s probably more smoke than fire to that. Besides, he’s angry.”

“You just said you wanted to let it breathe.”

I shrugged.

“Basically, Graham wants me out of it. Right?”

“It wasn’t a one-person decree.”

He shook his head. “Maybe not, but I’m the one he doesn’t trust in it. What was it he said today? Something about how he’d essentially asked you to babysit me, make sure I didn’t cause any trouble. That makes sense, too. I can’t fault him for that. You’ve got the experience on a real investigation. I don’t. Hell, I’m the one who already had a shot at this and couldn’t come up with a damn thing to show for it, right?”

“Nobody else has, either.”

“I guess I can take comfort in being part of a group failure.” He sighed and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “So what’s your take, then? Should I listen to him and pull off?”

“Let’s figure it out tomorrow. Come to the office in the morning and we’ll talk.”

He nodded, but the energy had gone out of the night, all of us quiet now, flat.

“Hey.” I slapped the bar, got both of them to look up. “I think we should tie one on tonight. Go downtown, hit some bars. Got six innings left to play, we could even buy some cheap tickets and watch the end of the game. Drink to crazy graveyard groundskeepers and asshole cops.”

“And pompous, untalented editors,” Amy said, lifting her glass, trying to fall in line with my forced enthusiasm. “I’m game.”

Ken gave an empty smile and shook his head, standing and reaching for his wallet. “I’m out,” he said. “Sorry. Not tonight.”

“Oh, come on,” I said. “What else do you have to do?”

“Call my daughter, for one thing.”

“So call her, and then we’ll go out. Show you what this beautiful city of Cleveland is all about.”

“Not tonight, Lincoln. I think I’ll head back to the hotel and go over my case file, make some notes.”

“How many times have you been over that file? What’s going to be gained from one more look?”

“You never know. Maybe I’ll shake something loose yet. Convince Graham he’s making a mistake.” He tossed some money on the bar, then put out his hand. “We’ll talk tomorrow, right?”

“Absolutely,” I said, shaking his hand, then watching as Amy stood up to do the same. “Come on down to the office, and we’ll get things figured out.”

It didn’t feel like enough, though.

Last words never do.