The Silent Hour

“Not worth what?”

He shifted his weight and dropped his eyes for the first time, saw the towel in his hands, and used it to dry his arms.

“Harrison, damn it, tell me what the hell is going on.”

“It’s not worth the potential for harm,” he said.

“Harm to . . .”

“You, Ken Merriman, anyone else. Everyone else. At the end of the day, Lincoln, I think I made a mistake. She left because she wanted to leave, and if she hasn’t been back . . . well, I suppose she wants to stay where she is. Right? Unfound and unbothered. If that’s what Alexandra wants, then I won’t fight for something contrary to it.”

“I’m still not following this sudden worry about harm.”

“It doesn’t matter if you’re following it. The last time we talked, you told me you didn’t want to work for me, so now I’m giving you good news—I don’t want you to work for me, either. Not you, or Merriman, or anybody else.”

What had changed his mind? Something we’d done that he knew about? Had he seen us with Graham or Mike London, somehow developed the idea that we were working with police? Or was it entirely different and unrelated to us?

“Harrison—”

“This isn’t a discussion. I appreciate your reconsideration, the way you brought an investigator to me, but I’m done.”

Now I was more aware of the recorder and the possibilities that were about to be terminated when Harrison threw me out. We’d gotten nothing from him. Not a word that would help the investigation.

“What do you know about the Cantrells?” I said, taking a step toward him even though there wasn’t much space between us. “About what happened to them?”

“What I know isn’t enough to matter.”

“Bullshit. I saw your eyes when we mentioned Bertoli’s name, Harrison. Why?”

“Lincoln, there’s nothing I can say.”

“According to the police, that’s always been your response. Nothing to say—but it’s a lie, Harrison, and you know it.”

“You’ve talked to the police about me? To Graham?”

I hesitated only briefly. “Of course I did. You’re a convicted killer, like it or not, and you wanted me to look into a murder case. Don’t you think that raised some questions in my head?”

He stood where he was and looked into my eyes as if he were taking inventory, and then he reached out with a quick and sure motion and grasped the edge of my shirt collar, and tugged it back, tearing the first button loose. As he did that, he ran his other hand down my spine, checking for a wire. I tried to counter, shoving his hand away and stepping back, but it was too late. His eyes had found the thin black wire, standing out stark against my white skin.

“Whose idea?” he said. “Yours or Graham’s?”

“Mine.” I took a few steps back, feeling exposed now, vulnerable. He hadn’t moved again, but as I stood there in the dark living room facing him I found myself wishing I had my gun. I hadn’t brought it in because Harrison hadn’t seemed the least bit threatening in our previous meetings. Now his stance and his face made the Glock noticeably absent.

“Leave, Lincoln,” he said. “Leave, and let it go. Don’t let anybody else keep you involved. Not Graham, not Merriman, not anybody.”

I waited for a moment, staring back at a face that looked to be caught between fear and anger, and then I went for the door. Harrison didn’t move as I opened it and stepped out.

I stood on the welcome mat in front of his apartment and blew out a trapped breath and looked down at my shirt, the microphone dangling bare and obvious. I took it off and untucked my shirt and slid the whole contraption out and kept it in my hand as I walked to my truck. When I started the engine, the headlights came on automatically, shining directly into Harrison’s windows. The glass reflected an image of my truck back at me, but beyond that I could see the shadows of Harrison’s apartment, and his silhouette standing directly in the middle of the room, watching me. He was holding a phone to his ear.

23

__________

I called Graham as I drove away from Harrison’s building, got the phone out and dialed without pause because I knew if I stopped to think about it I’d delay calling him. He wasn’t going to be pleased with this.

It took about twenty seconds of conversation before he confirmed that idea, breaking into a burst of sustained profanity that might have impressed me had I not been its target. No, he wasn’t pleased.

“Graham, there’s nothing I would have done differently,” I said when he finally paused for a breath.

“Nothing you would have done—”

“No. There’s not. It was nothing I said that convinced him I was wearing a wire; he was already pretty sure of it. The way he went for my shirt, Graham—he knew I was wearing one. He was sure he’d find it.”

“Beautiful, Perry.”

“I don’t know what to say, Graham. Sorry it went like that, but it was your idea.”

“My bad idea,” he said. “I’ll readily admit that. I let you and your buddy get into this, and I shouldn’t have.”

I kept the phone pressed to my ear as I hammered the accelerator and pulled onto the interstate, took it up to eighty-five before letting off. It was silent for a while, Graham’s breathing heavy with irritation.

“Okay,” he said finally. “Okay, it’s done. It was a bad idea, and it didn’t work, and maybe it did some harm. We can’t really tell yet.”

“I’m more interested in what changed his mind.”

“What changed his mind was the fact that he knew you were trying to con him. What changed his mind was knowing you were taping every conversation.”

There was biting accusation in every word, as if he thought I’d gone into Harrison’s home with a microphone labeled police property in my hand and started asking him questions about Cantrell’s death. I gave it a few beats of silence again, not wanting to let this turn into a clash of egos.

“I warned you after our first attempt that I thought he saw through it,” I said. “Back then, you didn’t want to believe me. That’s fine. What I’m telling you tonight is, I don’t think that’s all there was to it. Something else rattled him.”

“That’s terrific, Linc. I’ll find out what it was. In the meantime, you—”

“He called somebody as soon as I left. You might want to check that.”

“How do you know?”

“He was standing with the phone to his ear when I drove away. Kind of curious who he felt deserved such an immediate call.”

“Could be somebody called him.”

“I didn’t hear the phone ring.”

“All right, look, I’ll see about that, but as I was saying, in the meantime, you go find Kenny and you send him home. I want you both off of this, immediately. Like I said before, I take some of the blame. Maybe it was a bad idea from the start, but now it’s done. I want you and him as far away from this as possible.”

“I’m not sure how easy it’ll be to convince Ken.”

“It’ll be damn easy when I arrest him for interference. You tell him that, and if he has a problem with it, you tell him to call me. He doesn’t have a client anymore, and he’s not licensed in Ohio. In other words, he’s mine, Linc. If I want to shut him down, I can.”

Not much was said after that. I disconnected, threw the phone onto the floor of the passenger seat, and