The Silent Hour

When I was done talking, he leaned back from the table, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and said, “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Both of us. We’re sorry, and he’s dead.”

His chest filled with air, and he shook his head. “Maybe we didn’t do everything perfect, but . . . well, let me correct that, Linc. I know we didn’t do everything perfect, know that I didn’t, but we also didn’t kill the guy. We didn’t get him killed, either.”

The waitress came back and refilled my coffee yet again. “You’ll be bouncing off the walls today,” she said and laughed. Yeah. Bouncing off the walls.

“No,” I said when she was gone, “we didn’t get him killed. Sanabria did, I think, and Harrison’s involved.”

“The phone calls suggest that, at least.”

“Speaking of which, why don’t you have a damn wiretap on these guys?”

“Don’t have the probable cause, and you know that. Maybe I can get it now, but not before.”

“Great,” I said. “Ken’s made a break in the case. That’s all the poor bastard wanted to do. Don’t think he wanted to die to get it, though.”

Graham sighed again. “Linc, how’s your head?”

“What, the coffee?”

“No, not the coffee. The way you went at it today, brother . . . I can’t have you doing that. You’re lucky Harrison’s not pressing charges. He may change his mind. Either way, I can’t afford to have you—”

“I screwed up with him.”

“No shit you screwed up with him, and I’m just saying—”

“No.” I shook my head. “You don’t understand, Graham. I don’t mean in general terms. I mean specifically. In the heat of the moment, when I had him out there in the parking lot, I said something I shouldn’t have.”

He looked at me like a man who was waiting for a diagnosis and wasn’t optimistic.

“I told him you know about the burial,” I said. “The Shawnee elements.”

Diagnosis delivered, and the result was what I’d expected—a flash of shock, replaced quickly by anger. Deep anger. He stared at me and then turned and looked down at the table and blew his breath out between his teeth.

“You told him we know about the burial. The one thing we’ve got hope on, waiting on those damn lab results—”

“If you get the lab results, it doesn’t matter that he knows. Maybe it doesn’t anyhow. How can he prepare to deal with that, Graham? How can that knowledge really help him?”

I was arguing out of a natural sense of self-defense, but I still knew it had been a mistake, and a potentially damaging one. The detail of the grave was the one card Graham had to play on this one, the only thing he’d held back from the media and the only firm link he had to Harrison. It wasn’t all that firm—the definition of circumstantial, actually—but it was what he had.

“That’s beautiful,” he said, shaking his head. “That is just beautiful, Linc.”

“Graham, I’m sorry. Like I said, heat of the moment.”

“Yeah, heat of a moment you shouldn’t have been in. You were police, you know better than that.” Another head shake. “No, it’s on me. It’s on me, damn it, I know that, I see that, I got him dead and you knocking suspects around and divulging information and driving out to Sanabria’s with intentions I don’t even want to guess at . . . yeah, Linc, I made the wrong play when you boys called me. I did. No question.”

I didn’t say anything to that, didn’t want to argue anymore, wanted to try to retain some dignity. Graham and I were feeling a lot of the same things, really. We’d both made some mistakes we’d be thinking about for a long time to come.

“So he knows,” Graham said eventually. “He knows what I know now. Level field now, right? Level field.”

“It’s not level. He knows a hell of a lot more than you do.”

He looked up at me then, held my eye for a moment, then nodded. The waitress came back and dropped a check off and Graham reached out and took it and folded it.

“Linc, there’s something I need to ask of you.”

“You want me out.”

“Oh, yeah. Wanted you out yesterday, you know that, but after this morning, the way you went driving around, stirring shit up—that cannot continue.”

“Let me head you off here,” I said. “I am out.”

He leaned back and gave me a bemused look, not buying it.

“That’s a promise, Graham. The minute you and I finish this talk, I’m done. When I say that, I mean it.”

“Why?” he said.

“Why do I want out? Because it’s got nothing to do with me.”

“Never did, though.”

“I know it, and I should have paid more attention to that. Ken showed up and asked, and I went along with him because it is what I do, Graham. This is what I know how to do. He gave me a case and said here is what we know and here is what we need to know, and I couldn’t stop myself from joining up. I’ve done it for too long to stop, evidently. Until today. Because I’ll tell you something—I went down to see the spot where his body was found. I stood down there and I thought about my girlfriend’s body ending up there instead, or my partner’s. They’ve both come close over the last two years. I stood there and I realized what you just said: that it never did have anything to do with me, and that I can’t make a decision to put people in danger for things that aren’t personal. Call it a revelation, an epiphany, whatever you’d like. Here’s what I’m promising you: I will not put other people at risk for a case anymore. I’m done with it. If I’d sent that poor bastard back to Pennsylvania the day he arrived, he’d be alive, too.”

“Can’t put all that on yourself, Linc.”

“Oh, I’m not. Some of it’s on you, and plenty is on him. Then there are the guys who actually, you know, killed him. They probably require a bit of blame, too. What I’m saying, though, is that I’m not going to be involved in any attempt to settle up with them. I burned that desire out this morning, and screwed things up for you while doing it. Now I’m just going to apologize and step aside. So save whatever speech you have prepared.”

He was watching me with a deep frown, and now he braced his forearms on the table and leaned close, eyes on mine.

“I’ll close this case,” he said. “Word as bond, Linc, I’ll close it.”

“I hope so, Graham. You have to try, at least. It’s your job—but you know what? It doesn’t have to be mine. I’m finally understanding that.” I stood up and tossed some money on the table. “I wish you luck, and if you have more questions, you know how to reach me. Otherwise, though, save yourself any worry on my part. I’m gone.”

John Dunbar came by my apartment that afternoon. I’d been waiting for Amy, but when I heard a knock instead of a key turning I grimaced, knowing it wouldn’t be good. I let him up, and he sat in my living room, loosened his tie, and told me that we had to get to work.

“Look, Perry, I understand how you feel right now. The anger, the sense of futility. You feel that way because you know who’s responsible and yet he’s walking around free. Sanabria’s done that too long. We can’t let it continue. We can’t.”

“Did you ever consider,” I said, “that you might be responsible for this?”

“What?”

“Everything that happened with the Cantrells. Think about it. Do they ever leave that house if you don’t conceive of the brilliant idea of planting Bertoli there? Does anyone ever get killed? Or are they still living in that place and helping people, Dunbar?”

He shook his head. “I’m not going to let you put that at my feet. I didn’t invent the trouble they had as a couple, didn’t even come to Joshua with the idea. He came to me. I don’t regret what we tried to do.”

I stayed silent and made a point of looking at my watch. Anytime you want to leave, Dunbar . . .