The Silent Hour

24

__________

It took a while for me to determine anything was wrong. I lingered at the bar with Amy long after Ken left, and when we finally departed it was for her apartment and a night that began in the shower and ended in the bedroom. I was aware of her moving around the next morning but managed to tune it out and return to sleep, didn’t come fully awake until almost nine.

By the time I returned to my own apartment, showered, shaved, and dressed, it was nearly ten, and when I finally got to the office I expected Ken might be waiting. He wasn’t, but a voice mail from him was. His voice was hurried, almost breathless.

Lincoln, I think we’ve got something. You got us there, we just needed to see it. Last night, I finally saw it. I’m telling you, man, I think you got us there. I’m going to check something out first, though. I don’t want to throw this at you and then have you explain what I’m missing, how crazy it is—but stay tuned. Stay tuned.

I called him immediately. Five rings, then voice mail.

“What in the hell are you talking about?” I said. “Get your ass down here and tell me what you’ve got cooking.”

I hung up and sat and stared at the phone, both impatient and irritated. My excitement was up, certainly—or at least curiosity—but I also didn’t like being shut out so suddenly. He’d come all the way up here to ask for my help, practically beg for it, and against all better judgment I’d cooperated. Now he felt like he had a break and he’d gone off to field it solo? It was a greedy move, and I’d known some other investigators who pulled it when they had a chance for glory. This case was Ken’s baby—he’d been working it for twelve years, not me—but I still wasn’t impressed.

Thirty minutes passed. I called him again, got voice mail, didn’t leave a message. Waited an hour, called again, left another message, hearing the annoyance in my own voice and not caring. It wasn’t just a greedy move, I’d decided, it was a damned foolish one. With his total lack of experience on homicide cases, he could screw this up. Whatever this was.

Noon came and went, and I thought about lunch but didn’t go for it, not wanting to leave the office phone. I was seething over the fact that he’d called the office line instead of my cell anyhow. He’d wanted to be sure he got a head start on this thing by himself, which was bullshit. I didn’t give a damn who got the credit, supposing he had made a break—though that seemed like one hell of a long shot to me—but it was my ass that was on the line with Graham.

At two o’clock, Graham called. I recognized his number and hesitated before answering, part of me afraid he was already aware of whatever Ken was attempting and pissed off about it, another part thinking it was my job to warn him. Either way, it wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have, but I answered.

“I don’t know whether I should give you blame or credit,” he said, “but whatever you did to stir Harrison up, he’s in action again. That could be good or bad.”

“What do you mean, he’s in action?”

“I checked the phone call from last night. The one you mentioned.”

“Yeah?”

“He called Sanabria.”

Neither of us spoke for a minute, just sat there across the miles holding our respective phones and considering the possibilities.

“Okay,” I said. “That’s one call. Right after I left. Right after he’d told me to hang it up. Were there any others?”

“Uh-huh. One more, made day before yesterday, in the evening.”

Just before Harrison had called me to ask for a meeting.

“Sanabria told him to get rid of me,” I said.

“Possibly.”

“How did he know I was working with Harrison to begin with? You said there hadn’t been any other calls between them. Not since the body was discovered.”

“They don’t always have to use the phone, Linc. In fact, I’m surprised they do it this often.”

“I guess.”

“Another possibility is your buddy.”

“Ken? Are you crazy?”

“Linc, you remember how he found his way to you?”

I was quiet.

“Sanabria,” he said. “Right? Dominic Sanabria called him. That’s what he told you, that’s what he told me. So they’ve been in communication. Who says it stopped with that call?”

“Do you have any records saying it didn’t?”

“No.”

“Then I’m not—”

“Remember, there are plenty of other ways they could have had contact. Face-to-face, through an associate, e-mails, other phones. All I’m saying is let’s not rule Kenny out of the mix entirely. He around?”

“No.”

“Gone home?”

“No. He’s in the field.”

“In the field, you say? Doing what?”

“I have no clue.”

“Excuse me?”

I told him about the message and said it was the only thing I’d heard from him all day. He responded, as expected, by reaming me for letting Ken head off into unknown avenues of investigation. My patience wasn’t strong enough to take it today.

“I’m not his caretaker, Graham. I don’t know the guy any better than you do, and if you want somebody monitoring him, you better get an officer on it. Last night, I told him I was done. That it was time to back off. If he doesn’t do that, it’s your problem, not mine.”

The words sounded childish, petulant, and that only contributed to my growing anger. It had been directed at Ken originally, for cutting me out, now at Graham for blaming me for that, and only built after I hung up the phone. Another hour passed before I finally forced myself to admit that another emotion was bubbling beneath the surface: fear. I was beginning to hear the first drumbeats of dread. Where was Ken?

In the next hour, I called his cell six times and got voice mail every time. I left two messages, then called his hotel and asked to be put through to the room. Again, just rings and a voice mail option.

At twenty till five, I got in my truck and drove to his hotel, went up to room 712 and pounded on the door. No answer. I took the elevator back down to the lobby, stood in the corner, and looked the reception desk over. Two clerks working, one male and one female. I’d talked to a guy on the phone, which meant he’d be more sensitive to Ken’s name. Ken had been there a few days, and there was a chance both of the clerks knew him by now, but it was a big hotel, busy, and I thought I’d take a chance. I waited until the guy took a phone call, then approached the woman with a rapid step, feigning great annoyance, and told her I’d locked my keycard in the room.

“Okay, sir, if you could tell me—”

“Room 712, the name is Merriman.”

“All right, 712 . . . I’ve got it. Now, can I see some ID?”

I gave her my best look of condescending patience, as if I were dealing with a child, and said, “Um, I’m locked out, remember?”

She stared at me.

“Wallet’s in the room,” I said. “I was just running down the hall to get some ice.”

No ice bucket in hand, but she didn’t seem likely to notice that or care.

“Well, I would have no way of knowing that, would I?” Snippy now, offended. She looked down at the computer screen, then over at her co-worker, who was still talking on the phone.

“I’ll just scan you another one. Hang on.” She grabbed a blank keycard, ran it through the scanner, hit a few keys, and passed it over. I thanked her and went back to the elevator, rose up to the seventh floor, and walked back to stand in front of the closed door to 712.

I knocked again, just in case. Nothing. Then I slid the key in, waited for the green light to flick on, and pushed the door open.

The so-called living room was in front of me, the bedroom beyond it, with the little kitchen jammed in between. Nothing seemed out of place—no corpse on the bed, no blood splatters on the walls.

Ken’s suitcase remained, a pair of pants and a sport coat draped over it. Tossed there casually, the way you would if you knew you were coming back soon. The air-conditioning was humming away even though it wasn’t much past seventy outside, turning the room into an icebox. I let the door swing shut, stepped into the cold room, and made a quick circuit through it, looking for anything noteworthy and finding nothing. Housekeeping had already made a pass through—the bed was made and the bathroom cleaned, with fresh towels and soap out. If anything had gone wrong in this room, word would have been out long before I conned my way into a keycard.

I saw a charging cord trailing from the bedside table to a wall outlet, and that made me wonder if he could have left his cell phone behind in the room, explaining why he hadn’t answered. I took my phone out and called his number, waiting hopefully as it began to ring, thinking I might hear it in the room. There was nothing, though.

As I stood there amid his things, I began to feel intrusive. I had no right to be there, not just from the hotel’s point of view but also from Ken’s. He’d been gone a few hours, that was all. Hadn’t returned my calls yet. That hardly gave me justification to break into his room and go through his things. Now that I was in here, away from Graham’s suspicions and Harrison’s questions and the collision those things had with my faith in Ken, the sense of urgency faded a bit. He’d turn up soon, and then I’d have to admit that I’d done this and hope he’d be more amused than angry. It would be an embarrassing moment for me. Right then, though, I was looking forward to that embarrassment. By the time I could feel shame over my actions, he’d be back.

I walked out of the bedroom and back toward the door, then stopped in the living room and looked down at the coffee table. His laptop sat there, closed but with a blinking green light indicating it was still on. There was a blank CD in a clear plastic case on top of the computer. I leaned over and picked it up, read the scrawled Peter Case, CTB written with a black marker across the disc. “Cold Trail Blues.” The song he’d promised to burn me, his surveillance song.

I put the CD into my pocket. Even the guilt I was feeling about breaking into his room didn’t give me pause. I don’t know why that was. Maybe it was just that I knew the CD was for me. Maybe it was something darker and more instinctive. Either way, I took it.

I’m glad that I did.

The day faded to evening, and I went back to my apartment and called Amy, asked her to come by. She picked up some Chinese takeout on the way, and while we ate that together I told her about Graham’s call and Ken being MIA. She put her fork down and looked at the clock, and her forehead creased with worry lines.

“He’s not obligated to call, Amy. He’s not our kid, staying out past curfew.”

It was forced nonchalance, though, and she knew it.

“You could call someone else, ask if they’ve heard from him,” Amy said.

“Who? His ex-wife?”

That silenced the conversation, but it shouldn’t have, because the idea wasn’t bad. His ex-wife did hear something before me, when she was called as next of kin and notified that Ken Merriman’s body had been found in one of the Metroparks with two small-caliber bullet wounds, one through his heart and one through his forehead.

The ex-wife heard first, and she gave the police my name. Apparently Ken had spoken of me to his daughter. It was eleven thirty when the phone rang. I was sitting on the couch with my arm around Amy, trying without success to focus on the TV, and for a few seconds before I got to the phone I was sure it would be Ken. They were a pleasant few seconds.

I wish I could have them back.