mile and added forty pounds to my bench press, got it back up to a max of three hundred and ten pounds, my all- time high and a mark I’d set when I was a rookie. My attention to diet changed, and I started taking amino acids and fish oils and any number of other things that were rumored to have some sort of health benefit. By August, if I wasn’t in the best shape of my life, I was damn close to it. My workouts had become feverish, almost obsessive. Do one more rep, Lincoln, run one more mile, take one more pill. You’ll be stronger, leaner, faster. You’ll have no vulnerability. None.
I’d been spending more and more nights at Amy’s apartment, and one evening I felt her eyes on me and turned to see her watching me with a frown from across the room.
“What have I done?”
“Quit your job,” she said.
“This is an unemployment lecture?”
“That gym won’t be enough for you.”
“You don’t know that. I could make plenty of money—”
“Not money, Lincoln. It won’t be
“You’re enough for me,” I said.
“Romantically speaking? I sure as shit better be. If I’m not, then you’re a cheating bastard. If you mean I’m
“Actually, it is.”
“Well, it shouldn’t be. You’re not enough for me.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Gee, thanks. You’re a sweetheart tonight.”
“I’m serious. I love you, but you don’t define my entire existence, either. You wouldn’t want to be around me if you did. So to sit there and tell me that I’m
“I’m not sure I follow your logic there, but I don’t intend to hurt you, Amy.”
She came over and kissed me, then leaned back and stood with her hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes.
“You just removed a large piece of yourself, and now you’re pretending that it was never there. It’s been a hell of a thing to watch, trust me. Impressive at times. You’re a master of denial, Lincoln, an absolute master—but I’m scared of where it’s going to take you.”
She kissed me again then and walked out of the room. I sat and watched her go and thought that I should follow and say more. I didn’t know what I would say, though. I really didn’t.
At the end of August, Graham called again, this time to tell me that he finally had his lab results on Joshua Cantrell’s grave. The backlog had loosened up, and he’d used Ken’s murder as a means to bump his request higher in priority.
“We got nothing,” he said. “No DNA results. Nothing that connects to Harrison, or anybody else. The only DNA they could find was Cantrell’s.”
I felt defeat sweep through me, realized just how much hope I’d been holding out.
“What next?” I said.
Graham was quiet.
“You’re done?”
“I’m not done, Linc, but it’s a cold case, and without new—”
“Ken Merriman was murdered in May, Graham. That’s not a cold case.”
“That’s also not my case. Talk to your boys in Cleveland on that one. I’m sitting here in Pennsylvania with a full caseload and a bunch of supervisors who don’t want me spending time in Cleveland. Look, nobody’s more disappointed about this than me. I come to a case with one goal—to close it. I haven’t done that on this one. I won’t deny that, but I also won’t bullshit you. My focus has to be out here, where I’m paid to work. I’d love to take Sanabria down, love to take Harrison down, but I can’t.”
“Somebody will,” I said. “In time.”
“Right,” he said, and then neither of us was comfortable with the other’s silence, so we said a hurried goodbye and hung up.
32
__________
The same day Graham gave me the news about the lack of lab results from the grave, he gave it to John Dunbar, who, evidently, had continued his regular calls asking for updates and offering his help. I hadn’t heard from Dunbar since I’d asked him to leave my apartment, but at noon on the day after Graham’s call he showed up again.
I was on a ladder in the gym, applying paint to a band around the ceiling I’d decided to make a different color than the rest of the wall. It was an aesthetic effect, completely unnecessary, but I’d decided to do it anyhow, because it was good to stay busy. I was finding all sorts of ways to stay busy.
Grace told him where to find me, and he came and stood quietly beneath the ladder and watched me paint until I felt his presence and turned and looked down.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
“Wanted to buy you a beer.”
“I don’t drink in the middle of the day.”
“A cup of coffee, then.”
“I’m off caffeine.”
“A bottle of water.”
He never blinked, just stood with his hands in his pockets and an even stare on his face, watching me. I gave it a moment, and then I sighed and came down off the ladder.
“Let me rinse out the brush.”
We walked up the street to an Irish pub that had gone in on the corner. Neither of us spoke. Once inside, I went to a table across from the bar and ordered a beer.
“Thought you didn’t drink in the middle of the day,” Dunbar said.
I didn’t answer.
“So you’re not happy to see me,” he said. “I get it.”
“I just don’t know why you came. Why you’re not willing to make phone calls instead of personal visits, at least.”
“Tougher to blow me off in person,” he said. It was a line straight out of Joe’s mouth, one of his guiding principles for detective work—you wore out shoe leather before you burned up the phone lines.
“I’ll give you that much,” I said.
They brought my beer, and he asked for a Jameson and water, and we waited while they poured that and brought it over.
“I talked to Graham,” he said after taking an experimental sip.
“As did I.”
“Pretty disappointing news.”
“It was.”
“It’ll go back to where it was twelve years ago now,” he said. “Go back to nobody looking or even thinking about looking. It’ll be unsolved, and forgotten.”
I drank some beer.
“Ken Merriman’s case is open,” he said. “You talked to anybody on that?”
“Not lately.”
“I have. I was calling a couple times a week. Guy I’ve talked to down there got tired of it, though. Asked me
