The Silent Hour

call was a complete collapse of his marriage, I believe. His wife wasn’t aware of it yet, but that’s what it was.” He cocked his head at us. “What do you know about Joshua?”

“Quiet, academic sort,” Ken said. “Interested in the prison system.”

“Interested,” Dunbar said and nodded. “He was interested in it as a student, not as a participant. Here’s what I can tell you about Joshua—he was a nervous man, a scared man. Insecure. I believe that played a role when he met Alexandra. He saw her fascination with those issues of rehabilitation and reentry, and he ran with it. She was a beautiful woman, and a rich one, the sort who had never before given him the time of day. What more motivation did he need?

“Joshua’s vision of their married life was that his wife’s obsession would pass, or that a few papers, maybe some small donations, would satisfy it. He was wrong. I’m not surprised the final straw came when she began to hire inmates to work for them. As I’ve said, he was an insecure man. I think those insecurities took his imagination to some wild, dark places.”

He looked directly at me with a sudden, sharp gaze. “Understand this—while I sit here and discuss the man’s paranoia, I didn’t do anything at that time except feed it. I’m not proud of that, but I won’t lie about it, either. He felt betrayed by his wife, pushed aside in favor of murderers and thieves, and he wanted to hurt her. That was the sum of it. He wanted to hurt her, but he didn’t know how. What could he do? Leave her? Then he’d lose everything. Have an affair? He was an awkward, introverted man, hardly capable of becoming a crusading Casanova. Withhold his money? He didn’t have any. Alexandra was so much stronger than he was in virtually every way a person can have strength. He saw no way to strike back, no way to retaliate for what he viewed as disregard and betrayal. Until he found my card.”

It had started to rain, and the wind was blowing even stronger now. Dunbar turned his head and looked out at the tossing lake.

“He was going to feed you information about his brother-in-law?” Ken said.

“I’m sure he would have been happy to do that,” Dunbar said, looking back at us, “provided he knew anything, but he didn’t. No, he remembered my earlier proposal, the one I’d made as a throwaway line, about seeing that one of the inmates placed in their care was someone who could snitch.”

“Enter Salvatore Bertoli,” I said.

“What did he know?” Ken asked. “What was he supposed to know, at least?”

“I told you to remember Johnny DiPietro’s name from that story about the hotel. Well, Sanabria and he were both partners and rivals. We heard rumors that Sanabria wanted to clip him even before the motel arrest. After the way DiPietro stood pat and didn’t talk he eased up on it temporarily, but before long they were at odds again.”

“Over what?”

“Key issues were drugs and associates. Sanabria was very reluctant to be involved with the drug trade at any level. Had heard too many stories about how it brought down his mob buddies all over the country. DiPietro was all about it. DiPietro was also not only willing to network outside the Italians but enthusiastic about it. Sanabria, being old school, didn’t support that or trust it. One of the reasons Sanabria was so furious with DiPietro was his tendency to trust people like Bertoli who committed ignorant, poorly thought-out crimes. He also was at odds with him over his desire to move into the east side drug market, which was generally black territory. Eventually the feud boiled over and Sanabria had him whacked. Bertoli was a witness.”

“How did you know that?”

“Wiretaps. We got lucky. Almost got lucky, I should say. Caught a conversation between Bertoli and another guy—who’s actually in prison now—and Bertoli started in on DiPietro, saying he knew what happened, but his buddy was smart enough to shut him up and get off the phone. Still, it was clear he’d seen it.”

“You didn’t question him?”

“Of course, but he didn’t talk. He was facing prison time on another charge, and we thought we might be able to leverage him then, but . . .” He shrugged. “Sanabria’s not the sort of person you want to snitch on. There was a side element, too. When DiPietro was killed, a significant quantity of heroin and coke disappeared. We had credible information that he’d bought into the supply end of things, that he intended to push his influence into the east side drug trade. This was in direct conflict with what Sanabria wanted, and when the hit was made, the drugs seemed to vanish.”

“Bertoli’s other charge was for beating the shit out of the truck stop guy and stealing his drugs,” I said. “You think he went after DiPietro’s product?”

“All we’re sure of is that the product seemed to disappear from Italian hands. My guess is Sanabria claimed it and got rid of it. Sold it to someone else, outside of his circle, probably. Maybe just destroyed it. He didn’t trust drugs.”

“Let me be clear on the time line,” Ken said. “DiPietro was killed after Bertoli was arrested and went to jail, but you somehow think he was a witness? That makes no sense.”

“He wasn’t in jail yet. He’d been charged, bonded out, and was awaiting trial. Then DiPietro was murdered, Bertoli witnessed it, and we came back at him hard, pushing for him to talk. He panicked and took the plea bargain and did his time. You want to know why? Because he was afraid of Sanabria. He thought going to jail would prove his trustworthiness, prove that he’d kept his mouth shut. He thought, gentlemen, that jail was the safer place to be. As I just said, Sanabria is not the sort of person you want to snitch on.”

“You understood that, but you still decided to try again with Cantrell?” I said. “If Bertoli didn’t give Sanabria up to avoid prison, why would he do it after he got out?”

“I should have turned him away?” Dunbar snapped. “A potential source of Cantrell’s level comes to me and offers to help and I should have turned him away? That’s what you think?”

I waited a few seconds, wanting to diffuse the tension, and then spoke as gently as I could. “I’m not second-guessing you. I’m just trying to conceive of the situation—all of them living in that house, working against one another. You turned it into a damned gothic mansion, Dunbar. How surprised could you have been when it imploded?”

“Sanabria had been a target of our investigation for years. Years. We’d had him once, and he slipped out, and we were determined to have him again and make it stick.”

How’d that work for you? I wanted to ask, but neither Ken nor I spoke, and for a long time all you could hear was the wind.

“I don’t feel like that was the end of your story,” Ken said eventually. “You told us you got him killed. Who killed him, and why?”

“Sanabria, of course. For the obvious reason. Can I prove that? No. If I could have, that bastard would be in prison where he belongs. So, yes, what you’re thinking is right—I screwed up again, and he laughed his way through it again.”

“That’s not what I was thinking,” Ken said.

“Well, it should be. It damn well should be.”

“How did it happen?” I said. “Did you have no idea things were going wrong until they disappeared, or . . .”

“I had an idea, but it all went to hell pretty fast. Joshua Cantrell was clumsy in his attempts with Bertoli, displayed his true intentions too early and awkwardly, and Bertoli took off. Moved out of the house. Joshua called to notify me of that, and I thought, well, there’s another missed opportunity. That’s all that I thought. That we’d taken another swing, hadn’t made contact, but no big deal. Then a week later Bertoli was dead. As soon as I found out about that, I went looking for Joshua. He and his wife were gone.”

“How are you so sure it was Sanabria, then?” Ken said.

Dunbar frowned. “Did you miss the summary your partner gave? That bit about the gothic mansion? To use his word, it imploded. It surely did. Think about it—we were attempting to get information about Sanabria, we panicked Bertoli, and then he was killed and the Cantrells vanished. Where do you think the blame rests?”

Ken didn’t answer. Dunbar stared at him for a moment, and then he said softly, “That’s a poor question. The blame, as I’ve already told you, rests here. Rests with me. But the bloodshed, Mr. Merriman? That’s not my doing. That’s Dominic Sanabria.”

“You must have questioned him,” I said. “Tried to connect him to Bertoli’s death.”

“Of course we did. True to form, he had an alibi seven layers deep. Actually, calling it an alibi wouldn’t be fair. He didn’t kill Bertoli personally—I’m fairly certain of that—but he had it done. I am even more certain of that.”