“You didn’t answer.”
He was quiet. I kept my eyes on the road and waited.
“I joined the police right out of school,” he said. “It was the only thing I ever wanted to do, the only thing I ever considered doing. So I joined up, and I did my thirty. Ruth died and I took a week off and went right back to work, and then it was all I had. She and I had made all these plans, right? Plans for retirement, the way we’d spend it together. But then she was gone, and what was I going to do, see Europe by myself? Build a greenhouse and plant tropical flowers? Come on. All that was gone, and so I retired and started the PI gig with you. Didn’t pause for so much as a summer. Just went right back into the work. It was without the badge and without the bureaucracy, but it was the same work.”
He paused for a minute, and I wanted to look at him but was afraid to, somehow, as if movement would disrupt him, stop him from continuing.
“When I got shot this summer, it forced me to step away from it,” he said. “That was the first time I’d done that, LP. The first time since I was a kid that I wasn’t living and breathing an investigation.”
“And that was good?”
“Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. It was different, at least. It was something different, after three decades of it all being largely the same. And it made me wonder . . . I don’t know.”
“What?”
“I guess it made me wonder if there’s something else I want to do before I’m gone, you know? Something else I need to do, or should do. I’m running out of time—”
“You’re not running out of time.”
“You say that because you’re young. I’m not at death’s door or anything, LP, I know that, but I’m also not young. I’m old, and getting older. And all I’ve ever done is this sort of work.”
I looked over at him for the first time since he’d started to talk. “Are you happy being away from it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t look happy. You looked . . . kind of empty, Joe. I understand what you’re saying about how long you’ve been in this game, but all you were doing until I dragged you back out of the house was sitting in your chair in the living room. Is that better for you?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s not. I have no intention of spending the rest of my life sitting in that chair, feeling like a damned old man. There’s a part of me that believes it’s time for a change, though. I was in the chair only because I don’t know what the change should be, or even if it should be.”
I sat and watched the highway open up ahead of us, didn’t say a word.
“I know you feel like I left you adrift these last couple of months,” Joe said, “but if you were smart enough to consider it, you’d realize there’s an unspoken compliment there. I don’t have to worry about you. Don’t have to call the office nine times a day to make sure nothing’s going wrong. Nothing will be going wrong, because you’re good. You’re damn good, probably already better than I am in some ways. You’ve got an instinct for this sort of work that’s as good as anybody’s I’ve ever seen, and now you’ve matured to the point where you can build off the instinct with a cool head. You’re not the cowboy you used to be, not so much of one, at least.”
“I still need you, Joe. I can’t run this thing by myself.”
“That’s not true.” He shook his head. “You can run it by yourself, and you know that. You can handle any case that comes our way, handle it well. You did it alone for the last few months, and did it easily.”
“You know I’ll support you with whatever it is you want to do,” I said. “I don’t want to work alone, but I will support you if you decide to leave.”
“I know. And when that decision is made, it’ll be made in consultation with you, LP. You’re my partner whether I’m in that office or not.”
21
Eight months out of high school, Andy Doran was arrested for the first time. He was in Cleveland then, a John Marshall High School graduate who got picked up for breaking into a house in Shaker Heights and making off with a few televisions and some speakers. Made it about three miles before he was pulled over for speeding by a cop who grew curious about the odd collection of used electronics equipment in Doran’s backseat.
Doran managed to walk away with nothing more than probation for that first offense, and he kicked around the city for another two years before joining the Army. There he lasted four years, earning a few commendations for his physical skills and marksmanship while completing advanced infantry training, airborne training, and some specialized urban combat training. The commendations didn’t mean his military career was off to a problem-free start, though—his personnel file grew thick with disciplinary actions before he was arrested for the second time. An MP investigation revealed that Doran, in connection with a couple of civilian buddies near Fort Bragg, had been selling stolen military equipment through local gun dealers and the Internet—military equipment that included night vision goggles, guns, and grenades. A dishonorable discharge was the prelude to a two-year prison stay for that one.
He made his way, as ne’er-do-wells usually do, back home. Six months after he moved into his mother’s house, she died, leaving her son a meager inheritance and a larger mortgage. Doran promptly defaulted on the loan and moved out of the house to places unknown. Eighteen months later, he turned up in Geneva-on-the-Lake, where he was arrested for assault and battery after a bar fight. Doran walked away from the fight with some minor bruises and lacerations—all to his hands, which he’d used quite effectively on the other man’s face. For this offense, he served another six months in jail. The fight apparently stemmed from a territorial debate involving a redheaded waitress. While Doran won the brawl, he did not win the waitress, because he was single when he got out of jail, a problem he quickly sought to rectify upon meeting twenty-year-old Monica Heath.
By then Doran was driving a truck, albeit without a commercial driver’s license, engaged in furniture deliveries and whatever other local hauling he could land. One of those jobs was driving the catering van for Heath’s company. A short relationship flourished, apparently based upon a shared love of outdoor intercourse and marijuana. The couple remained together for about three months before Heath’s friends convinced her that Doran was trouble and she could do better. They made out in the van one last time, split a joint, and parted on what appeared to be amicable terms.
Seven weeks later, Heath was dead with her skirt pushed up over her hips, her underwear missing. She’d been strangled with the towel that she’d used to wipe down the tables. The towel was a problem—no fingerprints, no grip marks. The police interviewed Doran after the body was discovered, then returned the next day, this time with a search warrant for his trailer and orange Camaro, motivated by an eyewitness who could place Doran at the scene. Doran was high when they came for him, with a water bong sitting in his sink, but not so far gone that he failed to put up a fight when officers found a black garbage bag tucked beneath a stack of cinder blocks near one end of the trailer—with Monica Heath’s underwear inside. Doran stumbled out of the trailer spewing profanities and trying to fight the cop who’d made the find, screaming about being framed as he swung uncoordinated punches at the man’s head before being subdued.
The underwear was taken to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, where lab tests returned Heath’s DNA, but not Doran’s, or anyone else’s. Still, the black Victoria’s Secret thong made things grim for Doran, particularly when combined with his criminal history and the testimony of Heath’s friends, a half dozen of whom reported that Monica had frequently stated that sex with Doran—while good—was also rough, that he was aggressive and wild and, yes, prone to the occasional hair pull or maybe even a little choking. None of them was firm in the memory of a choking reference, but two of the girls thought that, yeah, maybe, just
Powerful evidence, made only more powerful by the addition of an eyewitness account placing Doran’s Camaro at the scene and a man matching his description involved with Heath on the winery’s deck.
That eyewitness, a Matthew Jefferson, of Pepper Pike, came forward in something of an unconventional manner. Jefferson had discovered the body and called the police. He had not, however, been able to pass along any details of the man on the deck—at least not at first. It was the following day when young Jefferson reappeared with an amended account of the night and his father at his side. In this meeting, the law student claimed that he’d been frightened by the police, who had apparently been aggressive in their questioning, and that he’d neglected to mention that he’d seen a car in the parking lot on his walk up to the winery. The car, he explained, was an older
