The Silent Hour

31

__________

Life, or the lack thereof, always seemed to me like something that had to be established medically, not legally, through beating hearts and functioning brains rather than notarized paperwork. That’s not always the case. The judge had ruled that the Cantrells were entitled to post legal notice of Alexandra’s presumed death, which would run in a variety of newspapers, and there would be a ninety-day period to contest the claim. Either Alexandra herself could appear, proving it wrong while welcoming the approaches of police, or someone else could bring forward proof of life. If those ninety days passed without either occurrence, the Cantrells could begin maneuvering to claim their share of the estate. Graham’s understanding was that they’d have to split the estate with Dominic Sanabria.

“He probably killed their son,” I said when I called him back the next morning, “and now they’re going to have to share the money with him?”

“That’s what the law seems to say.”

When we got back to Cleveland, I bought a paper in the airport and flipped through it to the public notice section while we stood beside the luggage carousel. There was the first notice of Alexandra Cantrell, buried amid pages of fine-print legalese. It seemed too quiet a way to announce the end of a life.

“You should do an article,” I told Amy. “If anything’s going to produce Alexandra or proof she’s alive, it won’t be this notice. It’ll take more publicity than that.”

She agreed with me, and a day later so did her editor. The story appeared on the following Sunday, front page and above the fold. The TV news picked it up by that evening, and several Associated Press papers around the country ran shortened versions of the “missing, presumed dead” story in the days to come. The story never gathered the national steam I’d hoped for—CNN, talk show features, that sort of thing—but for several weeks, Graham, the newspaper, and the Cantrell legal team were flooded with tips. I called Graham to see if anything was coming of it. Just the tips, he said, most crazy, none credible. If Alexandra was still alive, there was no sign.

I wrapped up what case work I had left when I got back to the city, then put out a memo to our core clients explaining that Joe and I were stepping aside from field investigations. I referred them to other people in town, brushed aside inquiries, and waited for the outcry of disappointment and anger. It never came. Perry and Pritchard Investigations wasn’t the community institution I’d believed it to be, evidently.

I listened to Ken’s message daily for a while. Then, a month after he’d been killed, the voice mail informed me the message would be deleted from the system. It had been there too long, evidently. You couldn’t keep it forever. Eventually the computer decided that the time elapsed required the message to go away even if I didn’t want it to. By the next morning, it was gone.

I invested thirty thousand dollars into new equipment for the gym. I paid for a larger phone-book ad and hired a friend of Amy’s to create a Web site. I did most of the work on the gym by myself, largely because it kept me busy. When I wasn’t working on it, I was working out in it. That summer I took thirty seconds off my time in the mile and added forty pounds to my bench press, got it back up to a max of three hundred and ten pounds, my all-time high and a mark I’d set when I was a rookie. My attention to diet changed, and I started taking amino acids and fish oils and any number of other things that were rumored to have some sort of health benefit. By August, if I wasn’t in the best shape of my life, I was damn close to it. My workouts had become feverish, almost obsessive. Do one more rep, Lincoln, run one more mile, take one more pill. You’ll be stronger, leaner, faster. You’ll have no vulnerability. None.

I’d been spending more and more nights at Amy’s apartment, and one evening I felt her eyes on me and turned to see her watching me with a frown from across the room.

“What have I done?”

“Quit your job,” she said.

“This is an unemployment lecture?”

“That gym won’t be enough for you.”

“You don’t know that. I could make plenty of money—”

“Not money, Lincoln. It won’t be enough for you. Don’t you get that?”

“You’re enough for me,” I said.

“Romantically speaking? I sure as shit better be. If I’m not, then you’re a cheating bastard. If you mean I’m enough, period, all you need . . . that’s not true.”

“Actually, it is.”

“Well, it shouldn’t be. You’re not enough for me.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Gee, thanks. You’re a sweetheart tonight.”

“I’m serious. I love you, but you don’t define my entire existence, either. You wouldn’t want to be around me if you did. So to sit there and tell me that I’m enough for you, that’s a lot of pressure, and when you finally realize it’s not the truth, I don’t want to be the one who gets hurt.”

“I’m not sure I follow your logic there, but I don’t intend to hurt you, Amy.”

She came over and kissed me, then leaned back and stood with her hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes.

“You just removed a large piece of yourself, and now you’re pretending that it was never there. It’s been a hell of a thing to watch, trust me. Impressive at times. You’re a master of denial, Lincoln, an absolute master—but I’m scared of where it’s going to take you.”

She kissed me again then and walked out of the room. I sat and watched her go and thought that I should follow and say more. I didn’t know what I would say, though. I really didn’t.

At the end of August, Graham called again, this time to tell me that he finally had his lab results on Joshua Cantrell’s grave. The backlog had loosened up, and he’d used Ken’s murder as a means to bump his request higher in priority.

“We got nothing,” he said. “No DNA results. Nothing that connects to Harrison, or anybody else. The only DNA they could find was Cantrell’s.”

I felt defeat sweep through me, realized just how much hope I’d been holding out.

“What next?” I said.

Graham was quiet.

“You’re done?”

“I’m not done, Linc, but it’s a cold case, and without new—”

“Ken Merriman was murdered in May, Graham. That’s not a cold case.”

“That’s also not my case. Talk to your boys in Cleveland on that one. I’m sitting here in Pennsylvania with a full caseload and a bunch of supervisors who don’t want me spending time in Cleveland. Look, nobody’s more disappointed about this than me. I come to a case with one goal—to close it. I haven’t done that on this one. I won’t deny that, but I also won’t bullshit you. My focus has to be out here, where I’m paid to work. I’d love to take Sanabria down, love to take Harrison down, but I can’t.”

“Somebody will,” I said. “In time.”

“Right,” he said, and then neither of us was comfortable with the other’s silence, so we said a hurried goodbye and hung up.