The Silent Hour

gone home, who had not heeded the warning—was dead.

Harrison had answers.

It was time to get them.

I was close to Old Brooklyn, and that was important, because Harrison left early for work. I didn’t know what cemetery employed him, and I didn’t want to take the time to find out. The MetroParks Rangers who’d drawn Ken’s homicide would surely be looking for Harrison this morning, and I didn’t want to follow in on their heels. By then it would probably be too late. The good fortune I had was that they’d been alarmed by all of the information I’d shared. The stories about Sanabria and Harrison and Bertoli had overwhelmed them, and I knew when they finally released me that they’d take a few hours to talk to Graham and others, working to confirm my claims, before they moved in on people with mob ties and murder convictions. I had a window this morning. It was going to be small and closing fast, but I had a window.

By the time I got to Harrison’s apartment it was nearly six, and the soft predawn light was giving way to a deep red sunrise, the sort of that age-old sailor’s caution. I’d cut it close—almost too close. I was pulling into the parking lot when the door to Harrison’s apartment opened and he stepped out. He was wearing jeans and one of those tan work coats favored by farmers, with a thin knit cap pulled over his head. He wouldn’t need the jacket and the cap—the day was dawning hot and humid—but he was probably used to chill early morning hours, and he wouldn’t yet know of the weather change. He hadn’t spent the night sitting in the woods above a body-dump scene.

Harrison didn’t look up at my truck as he shut the door and turned to lock it. I pulled in at an angle a few doors down from him, leaving the truck across three parking spaces as I threw it in park and stepped out without bothering to cut the engine. Only then, as he put his key back in his pocket and turned from the door, did he look toward the headlights of my truck. When he saw me his face registered first surprise, then concern, and he said, “What happened?” just as I reached him, grabbed fistfuls of his coat, and pushed him against his own door.

When I left the truck I’d intended to say something immediately, shout in his face, but when I caught him and slammed him against the door I didn’t speak at all, wanting instead to just stare into his eyes and see what I saw there. It was only a few seconds of silence as I held him pinned by his shoulders, but what I saw added coal to those fires of anger. His face held secrets. I could no longer tolerate the secrets.

“He’s dead, you piece of shit.”

“Ken?” he said, and the sound of the name leaving his lips, the way he wanted confirmation of it, was too much for me. I lifted him off the door and then slammed him back into it, maybe three times, maybe four, and when he finally made a move to resist I stepped sideways and sent him spinning off the sidewalk and into the hood of the closest car.

He hit it hard, his ribs catching the bulk of the fall, and when he righted himself and turned back to me I saw a new Parker Harrison. He stood with a wide stance, balanced and ready to move in any direction, and took two steps toward me with his hands raised and no hint of fear or uncertainty in his eyes. He was coming to do harm, coming with violence and confidence, and as I stepped off the sidewalk to meet him I wasn’t at all sure that I could win this encounter, knew in a flash of recognition that he had been places and seen things that I had not, and that it was the sort of experience that might well make my advantage in size irrelevant.

That new Harrison lasted only those two steps, though. He brought himself up short as I approached, and there was a moment of hesitation before he moved backward. To a spectator it might have appeared he was giving way to me, but I knew it wasn’t that. He didn’t fear me at all. Not physically. For a few seconds he’d been sure he could take me and ready to do it. The latter aspect had passed. The former had not.

“What happened?” he said, circling away from me as I continued to pursue him, back on the sidewalk now.

“Somebody killed him, and you know who, you son of a bitch.”

“I don’t.”

“Harrison—”

“I didn’t want this,” he said. “Lincoln, I did not want this. When I told you to leave it alone, this is what I wanted to avoid.”

“What do you know?” I shouted it and was dimly aware of a light going on in the apartment beside Harrison’s.

He didn’t answer, moving backward in short, shuffling steps.

“This is what you wanted to avoid? How did you know it would happen? Stop lying and say what you know!”

We were beside his apartment now, and I punctuated the last shout by pounding my first into his door.

“You called Sanabria,” I said. “You told me to quit, and then you called him. Didn’t even wait until I was out of the parking lot. Why?”

“How do you know that?”

“Answer the question!”

“You’ll have to ask him.”

I almost went for him again. Almost gave up the questions and came at him swinging. It was close for a second, but I held back. My hands were trembling at my sides.

“Did Sanabria have you kill him, or did somebody else do it this time?”

“I haven’t killed anyone.”

“Did fifteen years in prison for shoplifting?”

“That’s got nothing to do—”

“It doesn’t? You’re a murderer.”

The muscles in his jaw flexed, his eyes going flat.

“You killed Joshua Cantrell,” I said. “Didn’t you?”

“No.”

“Bullshit. Somebody else gave him a Shawnee burial?”

“I didn’t kill—”

“Bullshit!” As I moved toward him, the door to the apartment next door opened and a young woman in a pink robe stepped out and pointed a gun at me.

“Stop it,” she said. The voice was weak, but the gun was strong. A compact Kahr 9mm, and though her voice shook, the gun didn’t do much bouncing, just stayed trained on my chest.

“I called the police,” she said. “You can wait for them, or you can leave.”

Parker Harrison said, “Kelly, go inside. I’m sorry.”

She didn’t move. Behind her, the door was open, and somewhere in the apartment a child was crying. This woman, who looked maybe twenty-five, was wearing a pink robe and standing barefoot on the sidewalk and was pointing a gun at me while her child cried in their home.

I said, “There’s going to be a lot of police here in the next few days, ma’am. They’re coming for him, not me.”

Neither she nor Harrison responded.

“Do you know he’s a murderer?” I said. “Do you know that he killed a man with a knife?”

She said, “Please leave,” and now the gun had started to tremble.

I nodded. “I’m going to. I’m sorry. I’m sorry . . . but he . . .” The words left me then, and my strength seemed to go with them, and suddenly standing seemed difficult.

“I’ll burn your lies down,” I said to Harrison. “All of them. Every lie you’ve told and every secret you have. Understand that. Tell Sanabria.”

I could hear the sirens when I drove out of the parking lot.

26

__________

I went to the office, walked upstairs, and logged on to the computer. For a moment I stared at the phone,