It sounded like a joke, but his face held all the humor of a brick wall.
“Didn’t even cash it,” I said. “Mind if we come in?”
He was wearing jeans and no shirt, and his body was more muscular than I would’ve guessed. Not cut from working out, but strong and free of fat in the way you can be if you eat right. Something told me Harrison probably ate right. He regarded Ken with a curious but not unfriendly gaze, and then he nodded and stepped back, and we followed him into the apartment.
It wasn’t spacious—the rooms were narrow, and the ceilings felt low—but it was clean and laid out with a nice touch, furniture carefully situated to keep the small space from seeming cramped. There was a large piece of art on one wall, an elaborate wood carving in a symbol that meant nothing to me.
Harrison watched me look around and said, “It’s not my first choice. I don’t like living in apartments. I’d rather have some space, but I can’t afford that yet, and the neighborhood here is quiet. Besides, I spend all day outside.”
“Do you?” I looked away from the wood carving, back at him. “What is it that you do for a living, Harrison?”
“I’m a groundskeeper. For a cemetery.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “It suits me.”
Ken said, “How unsettling,” in a flat voice that was pure Bogart and would have made me smile anywhere and anytime else. Harrison gave him one quick, hard stare, then returned his attention to me.
“Can I ask—” he began, but I interrupted and pointed at Ken.
“He’s the one who wants to talk with you. It wasn’t my choice.”
His eyes went to Ken and lingered there, studying, but when he spoke again it was still to me.
“If he wants to talk to me, why did he go through you?”
“I’ll let him explain that.” I walked past Harrison and sat on his couch. He watched me but didn’t say anything, and after a short pause Ken sat down, too. Harrison stayed on his feet.
“Well?” he said, speaking directly to Ken this time.
Ken launched into his story, explaining the twelve-year-old case, the way it had eaten at him, how he’d promised Joshua Cantrell’s parents he’d deliver an answer. I listened and tried to look bored, a little put out, as I was claiming to be. The seed microphone was cool and firm against my collarbone, but so far it hadn’t taken in anything worth hearing, just Ken talking and Harrison staying silent.
“So when I found out Lincoln had looked into the house, I asked him about it,” Ken was saying. “Wanted to know who his client was, who had an interest in the family.”
Harrison looked over at me, no trace of emotion showing yet. “You provided that information.”
I nodded.
“That’s not confidential?”
“Usually.”
He waited for more, but I didn’t say anything. Finally he said, “Why wasn’t it in my case?”
“You’d already broken my trust, Harrison. I told you that. You sent me out there asking questions like a fool, no idea the man was dead and his sister was related to Dominic Sanabria. You know who showed up at my home the other day? Sanabria. That’s your doing, Harrison. You think I owed you confidentiality after that bullshit?”
I’d put some heat into the words, but he didn’t change expression or break eye contact. Just listened, gave it a few seconds to make sure I was done, and then turned back to Ken.
“So what do you want from me?”
“A job,” Ken said.
“A job?”
“Why not? You wanted Lincoln to work for you, right? Well, he backed out. I won’t. I want to see this through, and I need someone to bankroll it, Mr. Harrison. I’m not going to take any more money from the family, and they don’t have any to give me. They’re not well off. They still want to know what happened to their son, though, and supposedly so do you.”
“What will you do?” Harrison asked. “No offense meant, but if you’ve had twelve years at this . . .”
I was surprised by the flush that rose into Ken’s cheeks. Either he was a hell of an actor or that sort of remark got to him even when it came from the lead suspect.
“It wasn’t like I worked at it full-time for twelve years,” he said, his voice measured and tight. “When I got started there was no body, no evidence of a crime. They just went away, that’s all. Went away and didn’t leave a trace. Now there’s a trace.”
“The buried body,” Harrison said. “That’s your trace?”
His tone had changed when he said
“Sure,” he said. “That’s one hell of a trace, don’t you think?”
“The body was found months ago. Has the trace helped you since then?”
It felt cold in the room now, and there was something in Harrison’s eyes and the set of his jaw that I didn’t like. Ken was sitting forward on the couch, his arms braced on his knees, and I was leaning back, out of his view. Ken shifted his head slightly, as if he wanted to look at me, but then stopped, realizing Harrison would see any exchange between us.
“Well?” Harrison said. “Has the trace helped you?”
“Sure,” Ken said.
“In what way?”
Again a pause, Ken unsure of himself now, and Harrison repeated his question.
“In what way?”
“It’s given me some suspects.”
“Really? Who?”
“Salvatore Bertoli,” Ken said.
This was no longer going according to script—Graham had asked that we mention Bertoli, not identify him as a suspect—but Harrison’s reaction was worth the gamble. He’d been unusually still, one of those rare people who can stand in front of others without fidgeting or shifting, but now he stepped closer to Ken and took the back of a chair in his hand and gripped it tight.
“Why do you say that?” he asked.
This time Ken did look at me, just one quick glance, and then he said, “You’re not my client yet, Mr. Harrison. I’m not going to disclose any of the work I’ve done. You want to hire me, that would change.”
“I’ll write you a check tonight,” Harrison said, “if you tell me why you said Salvatore’s name.”
“I’ve got my reasons.”
“I want to hear them.”
Ken was in a corner now—he had no reasons for suspecting Bertoli, and no way to avoid answering the question that wouldn’t seem false. He was silent for a minute, weighing his options, and I decided to speak for the first time since he’d gotten started, just to divert the conversation if possible.
“You worked with him, Harrison,” I said. “So you tell us—what did you think of Salvatore?”
He frowned and shook his head, then pointed at Ken. “I’d like to know why you think he’s a suspect.”
“He took a tumble off a warehouse roof the same time they disappeared,” Ken said. “I’ve got a feeling those events weren’t coincidental.”
It was a cop-out, and not enough to satisfy Harrison. He said, “That’s all? That’s the only reason you called him a suspect?”
“It’s the only one I’m prepared to share tonight. Now, if you want to write that check . . .”
“Is he the only suspect?”
“Everyone’s a—”
“That’s a silly cliche. Is he
“He’s a favorite,” Ken said, still dancing, still evading. It wasn’t working well, though. The one thing I was becoming more and more certain about with Harrison was that he could read people, and if Ken kept playing him there was a damn good chance we’d expose too much and learn too little. Every time Harrison looked at me I felt
