The Silent Hour

32

__________

The same day Graham gave me the news about the lack of lab results from the grave, he gave it to John Dunbar, who, evidently, had continued his regular calls asking for updates and offering his help. I hadn’t heard from Dunbar since I’d asked him to leave my apartment, but at noon on the day after Graham’s call he showed up again.

I was on a ladder in the gym, applying paint to a band around the ceiling I’d decided to make a different color than the rest of the wall. It was an aesthetic effect, completely unnecessary, but I’d decided to do it anyhow, because it was good to stay busy. I was finding all sorts of ways to stay busy.

Grace told him where to find me, and he came and stood quietly beneath the ladder and watched me paint until I felt his presence and turned and looked down.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

“Wanted to buy you a beer.”

“I don’t drink in the middle of the day.”

“A cup of coffee, then.”

“I’m off caffeine.”

“A bottle of water.”

He never blinked, just stood with his hands in his pockets and an even stare on his face, watching me. I gave it a moment, and then I sighed and came down off the ladder.

“Let me rinse out the brush.”

We walked up the street to an Irish pub that had gone in on the corner. Neither of us spoke. Once inside, I went to a table across from the bar and ordered a beer.

“Thought you didn’t drink in the middle of the day,” Dunbar said.

I didn’t answer.

“So you’re not happy to see me,” he said. “I get it.”

“I just don’t know why you came. Why you’re not willing to make phone calls instead of personal visits, at least.”

“Tougher to blow me off in person,” he said. It was a line straight out of Joe’s mouth, one of his guiding principles for detective work—you wore out shoe leather before you burned up the phone lines.

“I’ll give you that much,” I said.

They brought my beer, and he asked for a Jameson and water, and we waited while they poured that and brought it over.

“I talked to Graham,” he said after taking an experimental sip.

“As did I.”

“Pretty disappointing news.”

“It was.”

“It’ll go back to where it was twelve years ago now,” he said. “Go back to nobody looking or even thinking about looking. It’ll be unsolved, and forgotten.”

I drank some beer.

“Ken Merriman’s case is open,” he said. “You talked to anybody on that?”

“Not lately.”

“I have. I was calling a couple times a week. Guy I’ve talked to down there got tired of it, though. Asked me to stop. Said he’d let me know if they got an update. So in my professional opinion, that one’s moving along about as well as the Cantrell investigation. Which is to say, it’s not.”

“That could be an unfair assessment.”

“You think?”

“The rangers aren’t bad at what they do, Dunbar. Give them time.”

“Time.” He nodded and turned the glass with his fingers. “Twelve years of time, that’s what we’ve had on Cantrell. I don’t want to see Ken Merriman’s case go another twelve.”

“I know it.”

“But you’re not doing anything to help,” he said, “and I don’t understand that. Somebody else, sure, they’d feel hopeless and useless and I’d get that. I’ve read about you though. I’ve talked to people. Your reputation as a detective is extraordinary, Perry. Good instincts, they tell me, good experience, a real natural—but what people talk about most? It’s how damned dogged you’ve been. How determined. How relentless.”

I blew out a breath, looked away.

“I see you’ve closed your office,” he said, “and now it’s the middle of the week and you’re in the gym, painting. Is that the new you?”

“What if it is?”

“I’d say that’s a shame. I’d say that’s as much of a shame as anything I’ve heard in a long time, because the world is full of evil, and there aren’t enough people who can do something about it.”

He paused. “Dominic Sanabria is a killer. He has gone unpunished for that. He sits around in his fancy house drinking afternoon cocktails and smiling about it. I cannot let that last.”

When I didn’t answer, a glow of anger came into his face, and he took a deep breath and looked away, as if he couldn’t stand the sight of me.

“You remember the kid Sanabria killed, Lamarca?” he said after a while. “I told you about him. It’s the case we had him for at the motel if the son of a bitch had only rented his own room.”

“I remember.”

“The reason he was killed? Sanabria thought the kid was talking to an informant. Thought he was. In truth, he wasn’t, but that didn’t matter to Sanabria. When Joseph Lamarca’s body was found, seven of his fingers were broken. Smashed. Bone showing.”

It was quiet. He said, “That’s what he did to someone he thought betrayed him, Perry. Then Joshua Cantrell. Then Ken Merriman. It all goes back to the same place, every single one of those bodies goes back to the damned motel room that he didn’t rent. It’s about atonement. You bet your ass I’m looking for it, buddy. You better believe it.”

I finished my beer, and we sat in silence for a while and watched the TV without really seeing it. Then I ordered another beer and asked if he wanted a second whiskey, and he shook his head. Most of his first was still in the glass.

“I got upset the last time I talked with you,” he said eventually, voice soft. “I thought you were being a bastard, to be honest. You said some very cutting things.”

“I was having a bad day.”

“That doesn’t matter. The things you said were cutting, but I know that’s because they were true. I screwed that situation up, Perry, I screwed it up bad, and a man died. A man was murdered, and I have that blood on my hands. Do you understand that? His blood is on my hands.”

His eyes were red, and his voice sounded thin.

“I’ve got to live with that,” he said, “and all I can do, the only way I know to cope with it, is by looking for atonement. Because while his blood might be on my hands, I didn’t kill him—and if I can see that whoever did kill him is punished? Perry, that’s the closest thing I’ve got to redemption.”

I’d lost my taste for the beer now.

“I know Joshua Cantrell doesn’t mean anything to you,” he said, “but Ken Merriman should. So think of him, and help me. Let’s see it through.”

“What Ken Merriman means to me,” I said, “is that it’s time for me to walk away. What you’re asking for, I just cannot do. I’m tired of being in the game. Tired of having to spend my days immersed in some filthy, foolish crime, trying to determine what son of a bitch killed a good man and dumped his body in a park where children play. It’s not for me anymore. I’m sorry.”

“I understand that you’re tired,” he said, “but I’m trying to tell you that you can’t afford to be. Because there are too many people saying they’re tired. The whole world is tired now, the whole damn world doesn’t have the energy to set anything right. We want to wait on somebody else to do it, and yeah, maybe we believe that it should be done, but we just don’t have it in us to try anymore. We’re a sideline species these days, Perry. We turn the news on and see some tragedy or crisis and shake our heads and say, ‘Boy, hope somebody gets to that. It is just outrageous that nobody’s addressed that one yet.’ Then we put on American Idol and go to bed.”

“You watch American Idol?” I said.

“Don’t be an asshole.”

It was quiet then, and he waited a while, and eventually I said, “Dunbar, good luck. Really and truly—good luck—but I’m out.”

His face fell and he looked away from me. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a bill and dropped it on the table. He got to his feet and shook my hand silently, and then he went to the door and stepped out into the wind, shoulders hunched and head down and alone.