A Welcome Grave

I held his eyes while I shook my head.

“You didn’t,” Targent said, and now that low voice had the full force of his rising fury behind it. “You were approached—no, attacked—by a man you had every reason to believe was involved in a homicide, and you didn’t feel it necessary to inform the police? Is that what I’m understanding?”

“I wanted to talk to Karen.”

“She’s running the homicide investigation?”

“No.”

“So you are?”

“No.” I paused but spoke again before he could jump in. “The last time we talked, you were full of shit, Detective. You blocked me in the driveway and gave that entertaining speech about the movie plots and generally wasted my time. You think I was in a hurry to sit down with you again?”

“I’d like to think you would be in a hurry to see this crime solved. Holding back information like this is not a help, Perry. It’s a crime. You were a cop, you know that.”

“Look, Targent, if I’d come to you last night it wouldn’t have helped. The guy was gone, and what lead would my story have given you? Nothing. All he left me with was vague talk and a collection of bruises.”

“You held back critical information in a homicide investigation—”

“I’m giving it to you now. You think you would’ve broken this case if I’d called you at two in the morning? Come on. I’m giving it to you now, and that’s enough. We can spend the rest of the day arguing about it, but if you’re so interested in getting this case closed, like you say, you’ll be smart enough to realize that’s not going to help. If you’re more worried about winning some sort of macho pissing contest with me, then go ahead. We can waste as many hours as you like.”

“Okay,” he said. “We won’t argue about that, but I’m not ready to leave yet, either. There’s a matter I think you’re going to want to discuss with us.”

“You don’t have anything I want to discuss.”

“No?” His eyes had changed, the anger replaced by the hard glint of a poker player sitting on a hand he was sure the others at the table weren’t anticipating.

“No.”

“Not even a Russian by the name of Thor?”

I looked at him for a long time, trying to keep my face impassive and hoping nobody could hear the thudding increase in my heart rate.

“You don’t know a Russian named Thor?” he said. “I’d try the last name, but there’s no chance I’d even get in the ballpark. Too many consonants. Or maybe it was vowels.”

“What’s he got to do with this?”

“So you do know the man?”

“I didn’t say that. Just tell me why you’re asking about him. Tell me that or get the hell out of here.”

Targent smiled, enjoying the tension he heard in my voice. “After Jefferson’s body turned up, we searched his vehicle and pulled some prints. There were several different sets there, but only one turned up a match on our computers. Two fingers of the right hand of a Russian mobster named Thor. A gentleman who’s been charged with four crimes and investigated in maybe thirty others and convicted of none. Word about this guy is that he’s a hitter. Serious protection for Dainius Belov, and I’m quite sure you know who he is.”

His words slid in and out of my brain. I couldn’t focus on anything other than a Russian with the palest blue eyes I’d ever seen, eyes that belonged to some ancient glacier. Did I know Thor? Targent had asked. Proof of that acquaintance was standing in front of him. Thor had saved my life once. Saved it while taking the lives of a few other men, sure, but when you’re the one who comes out alive you tend not to worry about the other side of the equation so much.

“We were pretty intrigued by this guy, right from the start,” Targent was saying. I blinked hard and stared at him, struggling to pay attention, to look calm, and not like I’d just been kicked in the stomach.

“Yeah?”

“A guy with that sort of reputation, you kidding me? Looked like a good fit. Problem was motive, Perry. All we had connecting Jefferson to this guy were those two fingerprints in the car. Nothing else. Not a phone record, not a mutual acquaintance, nothing. Then we learned something very interesting about you.”

He motioned at Daly, who reached into his bag and pulled out a sheaf of papers. Targent took them and shuffled them for a minute, then spoke again.

“We’re acquainted with a homicide detective named Swanders. That one familiar to you?”

I nodded.

“Right. Turns out you two were working the same case about a year ago. Guy named Wayne Weston got whacked. Trail ran back to the Russian mob, Belov’s crew. You played a pretty heavy role in the way everything shook out on that one. Dangerous stuff, is how they wrote it up in the papers. The interesting thing about the newspaper articles was that they were filled with loose ends. I hate unanswered questions, you know? So I threw a few of those questions at Swanders. The way he remembers it, right around the same time this Weston case was going on, the Russians had a bit of an internal shake-up.”

I sat down on the chair behind my desk, leaned back, and gave him indifferent, as bored an expression as I could muster. It wasn’t much.

“We asked around about this shake-up. There are a couple guys with the department and a few more with the FBI who keep a tight watch on the Russians. They remember the situation. Seems about three of the Russians who were affiliated with Belov just disappeared.” He snapped his fingers. “Poof. One day they were here, wreaking havoc on the city, and the next, they were gone. Then there’s you, a guy who by all accounts should have been viewed as a major pain in the ass by these Russians, and yet . . . you’re still here. Some of the cops who work on these guys? They find that pretty damn incredible.”

“If you’ve got prints from this Thor, and he’s got such a history, seems like you should be talking to him, not me.”

“We’ve talked to him,” Targent said. “Tried to, at least. He lawyered up right away. I’m wondering if maybe we asked the wrong questions.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. None of your questions seem particularly bright to me.”

“You’ve got the motive. Thor didn’t, not that we can see, but you do. And when we prove you’re connected to him, Perry? Shit’s gonna turn pretty damn interesting, I’d say.”

I leaned back and smiled at him. “Targent?”

“Yeah?”

“Get the hell out of my office. Immediately. You’ve been crowding the line with me, and today you jumped over it with both feet. I’m done tolerating your stupidity.”

I stood up and went to the door, opened it, and stood there looking at him expectantly.

“You don’t think we’ll be able to connect you to him?” Targent said.

“You’re done. Leave.”

“I’m guessing we can make that connection,” he said, starting for the door. “I’m guessing you and this guy have some serious history.”

They brushed past me and went outside, and I slammed the door behind them. When I heard their car start up in the parking lot, I looked at the clock, wondering when Joe would be done with therapy, hoping he’d have some advice about how to handle a ghost with a Russian accent and translucent blue eyes.

14

Joe’s natural expression falls somewhere between grim and gloomy. To see him look troubled, then, is to see the kind of look that belongs only on the face of a man in a foxhole who is running out of ammunition and has an entire enemy battalion headed his way. It doesn’t bolster your confidence, is what I’m saying.

“Thor,” he said, hunched forward at his desk, flexing a thin metal ruler in his hands as if he were testing its strength, expecting to need it as a weapon at any moment.

“Yeah.”

“Shit.”