A Welcome Grave

Now it was me who couldn’t look at Karen. “You know who it is.”

“Right. And so do you, Perry. We’re sitting here looking at proof that you’ve lied to me. Remember what you told me this afternoon when we searched your apartment? You told me I needed to prove that you were lying. Consider it done. And lying to me is withholding information critical to a homicide investigation, and that can be considered a crime. You lied yesterday when I asked you about him, then lied again sitting here in front of your client thirty seconds ago.”

“You shouldn’t have that tape. I never gave—”

“I left an officer watching your gym today. For your own well-being. You know how guys sometimes like to drift back by the scene of a crime, check it out. Thought maybe we’d get lucky, and I guess we did. I just didn’t expect it to happen the way it did.”

“Your officer didn’t shoot that tape. It’s from my gym camera. That’s illegal search and seizure.”

“Perfectly legal. You gave me consent to the tapes in the presence of about five other officers.”

“That was for last night’s tape.”

“Really? Sorry, I forgot. Called your gym manager and told her I had one tape to return and one to pick up. We agreed that it would be best not to bother you. After all, you’d had a long night.” He cocked his head. “Tell me why Thor was there.”

“Dropped by to ask about a membership. Wants to get back in shape, he said.”

Targent’s face stayed neutral, but Karen’s flushed with anger. I looked at her and felt my shoulders tighten and the back of my neck go hot. Honesty matters deeply to me, and to sit here in front of Karen and lie was painful. I could tell them why Thor had been there, what information he had shared, but I wouldn’t. Even if I could disregard the fact that Thor had saved my life once, decide that wasn’t enough to earn my silence, I’d be a damn fool to talk. Send Targent back to Thor with the details of our conversation? I might as well start shopping for a headstone.

“I didn’t kill Alex Jefferson,” I said. “I didn’t hire someone else to kill him. All the rest of this is external, irrelevant crap. If you want someone to be guilty bad enough, you can find something that makes him look like a possibility.”

“True enough,” Targent said. “But I’d like to hear you explain something. Anything. Why is this guy going after you? Why did Jefferson’s son wait for you to arrive before capping himself? Why is Thor involved, and why are you lying about him? Can you give us one answer, Perry? That’s what I’m asking from you. One honest answer.”

“This is ludicrous, Targent. You really think I’m behind all of it? Karen came to me about finding Matt, not the other way around. Karen asked me to help with this. That’s why I’m involved.”

“He’s right,” Karen said.

“Terrific. She brought you into it. What does that explain? Which one of my questions does that answer?”

“That’s your job. I’m trying to help, but you won’t even hear me out on Andy Doran. Aren’t you even a little intrigued by the timing of his prison break and those first phone calls to Jefferson? Or do you think it’s more likely that I spent the past three years brooding and working up my nut to kill a guy for something that was such a minor offense?”

“Did you think it was a minor offense when you assaulted him?”

“That’s in the past, gone and forgotten. Stop trying to make it count.”

“I’ve seen some things that suggest maybe it isn’t gone and forgotten, Perry. Your little box of keepsakes . . .”

“I kept photographs of a woman I was engaged to and you think that’s evidence of some sort of obsession? Are you serious? It would be more psychotic if I didn’t have anything like that, if I’d purged it all.”

“My partner interviewed one of Alex Jefferson’s colleagues. This guy said Alex saw you at his wedding, parked on the street, watching the ceremony. He didn’t tell Mrs. Jefferson because he didn’t want to put a damper on their special day.”

Karen looked at me with surprise and sympathy, and I turned away.

“This is a cheap tactic, Targent. Throwing this shit in my face with her in the room.”

“Cheap tactic or not, I’d like you to explain your presence at their wedding. That seems, Perry, like the action of a guy who has not moved on. A guy who has an unhealthy obsession.”

I shook my head, not wanting to look at either of them.

“Well?” Targent said. “Can you explain?”

I laughed without humor. “Yeah, I can explain it. I missed her. Is that what you want to hear? That what you need me to say, you prick? I missed her. Was it unhealthy, to miss someone I loved? I don’t know. It was just the way it went, for a while. But it stopped going that way a long time ago.”

“I don’t think we need to be talking about this,” Karen said, and the pity in her voice wounded me.

“It’s all right, Karen. He wants to lay the pressure on, and that’s fine. The sad part is that it’s not helping you.”

“And you turning up in every corner we check, disrupting our investigation?” Targent said. “That’s helping?”

“I’m not turning up anywhere, Targent. Someone’s trying to give it that appearance, that’s all. But since you can’t recognize the truth when you hear it—”

“You know what? I’m done with you tonight. You’ve had your say, Perry. I’d like you to go on home.”

“I came for a few words alone with Karen, thanks.”

“You can have them later. I’m not through with my conversation with her, but I am through with you. Take off, Perry. You want to talk to her, you can call her later, although I will urge her not to take your call.”

“It’s okay, Lincoln,” Karen said. “I don’t know what’s happening, but I do know you. Don’t worry about this.”

I’d been dismissed. I got to my feet with the two of them sitting there waiting for me to leave, walked down the hall, and let myself out of the house, closing the door on soft voices discussing my potential as a murderer.

25

Confusion kills.

The words were written on a dry-erase board, with a marker that made a wince-producing squeak at the end of each letter, the old cop’s hand moving too fast, using too much pressure.

The training seminar was called “Critical Incident Response,” bureaucratic code that meant situations where people were going to shoot at us. I was one of a dozen cops in the room, listening to an instructor who’d trained SWAT teams all over the country for the better part of three decades.

Confusion kills. He read it aloud, then faced us.

“You must know your assailant, you must know your friend,” he said. “It sounds simple sitting here in this room. It will not be simple when it’s dark and loud and there are bullets searching for your heart. If you are properly trained, properly prepared, you will execute under fire, you will survive, you will accomplish your goals. If you are not, then the first thing those bullets will create is confusion. And confusion, gentlemen, kills.”

Matt Jefferson came home from a day in the apple orchard as the sun descended. Pulled his truck into the gravel parking lot beside the barn just as he did every evening, walked up the stone path to his apartment door, and stopped short. Read my note. A man from Cleveland was here to see him. Family business. The man would return.

A few short sentences, one meaning clear to me, another meaning clear to Matt Jefferson. While I sat in a small-town diner, eating pie and thinking about Amy, Matt pulled the note off the door and went upstairs, found a bottle of whiskey and a gun, and walked down to the gazebo to wait.

What a beautiful spot. It must have been something as the sun set, that pond catching whatever muted colors the overcast day allowed, then fading to a black sparkle as the sky darkened and the moon rose. I’d taken my time with dinner, driven slowly on the return to the orchard. He’d had some time to sit. Listen to the wind, watch