The Silent Hour

to stop. Said he’d let me know if they got an update. So in my professional opinion, that one’s moving along about as well as the Cantrell investigation. Which is to say, it’s not.”

“That could be an unfair assessment.”

“You think?”

“The rangers aren’t bad at what they do, Dunbar. Give them time.”

“Time.” He nodded and turned the glass with his fingers. “Twelve years of time, that’s what we’ve had on Cantrell. I don’t want to see Ken Merriman’s case go another twelve.”

“I know it.”

“But you’re not doing anything to help,” he said, “and I don’t understand that. Somebody else, sure, they’d feel hopeless and useless and I’d get that. I’ve read about you though. I’ve talked to people. Your reputation as a detective is extraordinary, Perry. Good instincts, they tell me, good experience, a real natural—but what people talk about most? It’s how damned dogged you’ve been. How determined. How relentless.”

I blew out a breath, looked away.

“I see you’ve closed your office,” he said, “and now it’s the middle of the week and you’re in the gym, painting. Is that the new you?”

“What if it is?”

“I’d say that’s a shame. I’d say that’s as much of a shame as anything I’ve heard in a long time, because the world is full of evil, and there aren’t enough people who can do something about it.”

He paused. “Dominic Sanabria is a killer. He has gone unpunished for that. He sits around in his fancy house drinking afternoon cocktails and smiling about it. I cannot let that last.”

When I didn’t answer, a glow of anger came into his face, and he took a deep breath and looked away, as if he couldn’t stand the sight of me.

“You remember the kid Sanabria killed, Lamarca?” he said after a while. “I told you about him. It’s the case we had him for at the motel if the son of a bitch had only rented his own room.”

“I remember.”

“The reason he was killed? Sanabria thought the kid was talking to an informant. Thought he was. In truth, he wasn’t, but that didn’t matter to Sanabria. When Joseph Lamarca’s body was found, seven of his fingers were broken. Smashed. Bone showing.”

It was quiet. He said, “That’s what he did to someone he thought betrayed him, Perry. Then Joshua Cantrell. Then Ken Merriman. It all goes back to the same place, every single one of those bodies goes back to the damned motel room that he didn’t rent. It’s about atonement. You bet your ass I’m looking for it, buddy. You better believe it.”

I finished my beer, and we sat in silence for a while and watched the TV without really seeing it. Then I ordered another beer and asked if he wanted a second whiskey, and he shook his head. Most of his first was still in the glass.

“I got upset the last time I talked with you,” he said eventually, voice soft. “I thought you were being a bastard, to be honest. You said some very cutting things.”

“I was having a bad day.”

“That doesn’t matter. The things you said were cutting, but I know that’s because they were true. I screwed that situation up, Perry, I screwed it up bad, and a man died. A man was murdered, and I have that blood on my hands. Do you understand that? His blood is on my hands.”

His eyes were red, and his voice sounded thin.

“I’ve got to live with that,” he said, “and all I can do, the only way I know to cope with it, is by looking for atonement. Because while his blood might be on my hands, I didn’t kill him—and if I can see that whoever did kill him is punished? Perry, that’s the closest thing I’ve got to redemption.”

I’d lost my taste for the beer now.

“I know Joshua Cantrell doesn’t mean anything to you,” he said, “but Ken Merriman should. So think of him, and help me. Let’s see it through.”

“What Ken Merriman means to me,” I said, “is that it’s time for me to walk away. What you’re asking for, I just cannot do. I’m tired of being in the game. Tired of having to spend my days immersed in some filthy, foolish crime, trying to determine what son of a bitch killed a good man and dumped his body in a park where children play. It’s not for me anymore. I’m sorry.”

“I understand that you’re tired,” he said, “but I’m trying to tell you that you can’t afford to be. Because there are too many people saying they’re tired. The whole world is tired now, the whole damn world doesn’t have the energy to set anything right. We want to wait on somebody else to do it, and yeah, maybe we believe that it should be done, but we just don’t have it in us to try anymore. We’re a sideline species these days, Perry. We turn the news on and see some tragedy or crisis and shake our heads and say, ‘Boy, hope somebody gets to that. It is just outrageous that nobody’s addressed that one yet.’ Then we put on American Idol and go to bed.”

“You watch American Idol?” I said.

“Don’t be an asshole.”

It was quiet then, and he waited a while, and eventually I said, “Dunbar, good luck. Really and truly—good luck—but I’m out.”

His face fell and he looked away from me. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a bill and dropped it on the table. He got to his feet and shook my hand silently, and then he went to the door and stepped out into the wind, shoulders hunched and head down and alone.

33

__________

I couldn’t sleep the night after Dunbar’s visit. I’d worked out for two hours that afternoon, then gone to the Hideaway and caught up with Scott Draper for a few beers while we watched the Indians game. They were on a losing streak. I knew the feeling.

It was midnight when I got back to my apartment, and I went right to bed, hoping that the lingering effects of the alcohol would take care of the rest, put me to sleep quickly. They didn’t. Two hours passed, then three, then four. I stared at the ceiling, wandered out to the couch, went back to bed, turned the TV on, turned it off, tried to read, tried to control my breathing, tried damn near everything I could think of and still couldn’t find sleep.

I gave up around five, dressed in workout clothes, and went downstairs, thinking I’d punish my body for refusing sleep by going for yet another run. Break its will before it broke mine. By the time I got outside, though, I knew I didn’t have it in me. I stretched out in the parking lot in the dark, breathing in the last cool air of night, another hot and humid day ready to replace it. If not a run, maybe a drive. That seemed better. I could drive to Edgewater Park before the traffic started, watch the sun rise over the lake and the city. I hadn’t done that in years. Or maybe go down to the West Side Market, hang around and watch as the vendors arrived and set up their wares before the doors opened. I used to do that when I was a patrol officer, come off a night shift and head down to the market, a place that always felt like a step back in time.

There were plenty of possibilities, and they all sounded good. How I found myself in Old Brooklyn, then, parked across the street from Parker Harrison’s apartment building, I really couldn’t say.

He left the house just before six, exactly as he had the last time I’d seen him. He walked out of the apartment, turned and locked the door carefully with his key, then tested it once to be sure before he headed to his truck. It was a Chevy S-10, at least fifteen years old, and for a second as he drove out of the lot he was facing directly toward me. Then he made the turn and pulled away and I started the Silverado and followed. I wanted to watch him. That was all. Didn’t want another confrontation, didn’t want to say a word to him, just wanted to watch him.

He drove to Riverside Cemetery, and I passed the entrance when he turned in, knowing it was too early in the morning not to attract attention by following him in. I gave it fifteen minutes, then circled back around and entered the cemetery, which was one of the city’s oldest and largest. It was a beautiful place, really. More than a hundred acres of rolling green valley and flowering trees and marble monuments and the dead. There were plenty of