The Silent Hour

“Sounds pretty strange to me, Lincoln.”

“He sent the first one the week Cantrell’s body was discovered.”

Ken leaned back and spread his hands, a what-more-do-you-need gesture.

I looked down at the file, stared at Harrison’s photograph for a few seconds, then snapped the folder shut and tossed it on the desk.

“You got Graham’s number?”

I called from the office, with Ken listening to my half of the conversation. He didn’t hear much. I’d barely begun my explanation when Graham interrupted.

“He was writing you letters? Starting in December?”

“Yes.”

“You still have them?”

“No.”

“Damn it. That’s okay, though. That’s okay. You said you’re in Cleveland?”

“That’s right. Now I only—”

“About a two-hour drive,” he said as if I hadn’t spoken. “I have a few things to finish up, take maybe an hour, then I can head your way. You give me your address, I can be up there by two, two thirty at the latest.”

“I can tell you everything over the phone.”

“No, no. I’ll come up.”

So I gave him the address. When I hung up, Ken said, “Seem interested?”

“Enough to make a two-hour drive without even hearing the whole story,” I said, and that made Ken smile. Odd. I didn’t feel like smiling at all.

11

__________

Quinn Graham arrived just before two, and it didn’t take him long to make me feel like a fool. He was probably in his late thirties, black, with a shaved head and a thin goatee. Not tall but powerful, with heavy arms and a substantial chest.

“So Harrison explained in the first letter that he was a convicted murderer, and you chose not to keep that letter or any that followed it?” he asked about thirty seconds after exchanging greetings.

“That’s right.”

He didn’t shake his head or make a snort of disgust or a wiseass remark. He looked at me thoughtfully.

“Okay. Probably wanted to get it out of your sight. Is that it? Yeah, I don’t blame you for that, but I wish you’d held on to them. It’s a police thing, though. People with experience tend to be more concerned with potential evidence.”

“I know,” I said. “I used to be a police detective.”

“Oh?” he said and gave me more of that stare, as if he were thinking it was no real surprise that I wasn’t still a police detective.

“I remember the letters quite well, though,” I said, “and while I do wish I’d kept them, I’m not sure how much evidentiary value they would have offered.”

“We could have analyzed the language, given it to a profiler. Harrison might have even been crazy enough to incorporate some sort of code.”

All right, I was an idiot. What else to say? I waited for him.

“Well, they’re gone now,” he said. “Nothing to do about that.”

“Exactly.”

“You say you remember them well, so let’s hear what you remember.”

I took him through the sequence as best as I remembered it, offering approximate dates for the letters, describing each message. Then I told him about Harrison’s visit, the simplicity of his request, and the few brief hours I’d invested into working his case.

“Now when you told him off and said you were done,” Graham said, scribbling notes onto a leather-bound legal pad on his lap, “was that in person or on the phone?”

“In person.” I told him about that final meeting.

“Since then, no communication?”

“He mailed a check.”

Graham lifted his head. “I assume you cashed it?”

I shook my head.

“Did you keep that at least?”

Another shake.

He frowned and scribbled a few more words onto the pad. “So you have no record of your relationship with Harrison? That’s what I’m understanding? No record at all?”

“No, I do not. As I said, I wasn’t expecting it would lead to a meeting like this. I just wanted to end it.”

“So how did it lead to this meeting?” he asked, looking at Ken for the first time. “I’ve spoken to Kenny here, but how is it that the two of you found each other?”

Ken took it from there. I watched Graham, and when Ken explained that he’d been called by Dominic Sanabria, the pencil stopped moving across the pad, and he lifted his head much slower.

“Dominic Sanabria called you three days ago?”

“That’s right. To ask if Lincoln was—”

“I’ve already heard the reason, Kenny. I’m wishing you might have found that information worthy of my attention. I believe I asked that you pass such things along.”

“That was several months ago,” Ken said.

“I don’t recall putting an expiration date on the request.” Graham stared at Ken for a few seconds, then sighed and looked back at his pad. He took his time with it, reading through all of the notes, and then he closed the notebook and set it on the edge of my desk.

“Was supposed to have the day off,” he said. “I decided, well, go in this morning, get a few things done, be gone by eleven. Noon at the latest. Now I’m in Ohio. That’s the way the damn days off always seem to go. You think you only got a few hours, then you’re in Ohio.”

“We could’ve waited,” Ken said.

“Oh, no.” Graham was shaking his big head. “No, this couldn’t have waited. This, boys, this is important.”

“Ken told me he had the sense that Harrison was the focus of your investigation,” I said, trying to prompt a little information.

He was frowning at his notebook on the desk and spoke again without looking at me. “If you were with the police, then you understand what a nightmare this one is, Linc, my friend.”

Apparently Graham liked to dispense nicknames. Too bad there was nobody in the world who called me Linc, and I could tell from Ken’s face that he didn’t go by Kenny, either.

“It’s an awfully cold trail,” I said.

“Not the only problem, Linc. Yes, the trail is cold, but it also starts in Pennsylvania, beautiful Crawford County, over which I have jurisdiction.” He cocked his head and stared at me. “You know what’s in Crawford County? Woods. You know where I’m from? Philadelphia. Now, the woods are nice, sure, but I miss sidewalks. Strange damn thing to miss, but it’s true. I miss my sidewalks.”

He looked from me to Ken and then back as if he were disappointed that we didn’t chime in with our shared love of sidewalks.

“Now I work in Crawford County,” he said, “and the wonderful thing about having a body dug up in the woods in Crawford County is that I get to go to work. Bad thing is that in this case, all of the work to be done seems to be in Ohio. That limits me. I’ve been out here before, spent a few weeks driving back and forth after the body was ID’d, but it’s a pain in the ass. An investigation that requires I spend time in Ohio when my superiors would like me