said. “You remember how he went into his bedroom and found his files, Joe? In his bedroom? A man who has been retired for years? He was obsessed. And wrong.”
“And a different man than you.”
“Yeah? I don’t know about that. Don’t know how different he is from you, either, if you hadn’t forced yourself to disappear, forced yourself to quit this work. He’s what waits at the end of the tunnel.”
“Something you need to understand, Lincoln? There are a lot of tunnels, and you do your own digging.”
Neither of us spoke after that. He stayed in the chair until a nurse came in and gave him an excuse to leave.
45
__________
We didn’t have another conversation like that. The next time I saw him, there were other people around and he was back to his forced cheerfulness. I’d never seen him so funny, in fact. He seemed like he should have his own late-night show.
I stayed at Amy’s apartment after I was released. The stairs were easier to negotiate there, and her place was more open, had better daylight. That sort of thing matters to you when you spend most of the day sitting around.
I was coming back fast. That’s what the doctors and the physical therapists told me. Coming back faster than I had any excuse to, in fact, largely because I’d been in outstanding shape at the time I’d taken the bullets. All those obsessive workouts were worth something, then. Good to know.
Amy and I talked about the shooting often, but always in a journalistic fashion—how strong the case against Darius was, what the potential legal ramifications for me might be, things like that. At first I wondered if she was keeping that sort of distance for my sake, and eventually I realized it was for hers. In the silence that grew after one of our conversations, I told her that I was sorry.
“You’re sorry?” she said. “For what? Getting shot?”
“For putting you through all of this.”
She gave a sad smile. “One of the last things you said to me, the night before you went over there, was that you had to do one last thing, and it had to be done alone.”
“I remember.”
“Look how well that turned out. In your head, I suppose you were protecting Joe. Probably me, too.”
“Oh, no, Joe’s shared his psychological insight with you.”
“You think he’s wrong?” she said. “You have the nerve to look me in the eye right now and tell me that Joe was wrong with what he told you in the hospital?”
I didn’t speak.
“Exactly,” she said. “You know that he’s right—and you know that if a bullet went just a few inches in a different direction, I’d be alone right now, remembering that last night we were together. You think that would be a good memory for me? I couldn’t stop thinking about it while you were in the hospital. I decided that it would have made a hell of a fitting epitaph for you. ‘He had one last thing to do—alone.’ Heaven knows it would be alone.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I don’t think I can explain just how that memory resonated with me while you were in the hospital,” she said. “How perfectly and tragically symbolic it seemed. If you had gotten killed out there, and you almost did, that moment would have stayed with me. You know why? Because it felt like you were telling me, ‘
“Damn it, Amy, you know that I love you.”
“I do, but I’m trying to tell you something that you need to understand—you can’t protect everyone you love from harm. From the world. Trying to do that will break you, eventually. It will. And you know what? Something bad will still come for the people you love. You can’t stop that, and it’s not your job to try. It’s your job to be there for us when it does.”
It was quiet for a moment, and then she said, “Trust me, Lincoln, bad things will happen to the people you love. I’m staring at my boyfriend right now, and let me tell you, he’s a pretty pathetic sight. Bullet wound, all bandaged up, can’t even get off my couch under his own power.”
“I can, too.”
“Prove it,” she said and walked to the bedroom.
On one of those long days while Amy was at work and I was sitting in her living room alone, I got out a legal pad and a pen, and I sat down to try writing a letter to Ken’s daughter again. It came easier this time. I wrote five pages, five pages of apology and sympathy. Then I read through it and thought that it was all wrong, and I threw those away and started over. I left in a few paragraphs of the old stuff, but then I focused on the case. I told her as much as I could. I told her what sort of detective her father had been, how dedicated, how patient. How he had waited day after day to check out a hunch, and in the end the hunch had been right. I couldn’t tell her more than that, but I could at least explain that much.
He was a good detective, I wrote, because he stayed at it. Because he craved the truth above all else, above even himself. Certainly above himself.
This time, I mailed the letter.
Late in the week after my release, Joe called to say that Parker Harrison was leaving daily messages at the office. I took down his number and called him back. He asked if he could see me in person, and I gave him the address, and he told me he’d be out in twenty minutes.
It took fifteen. I’d already made my way down to the door and was sitting on the bottom step waiting for him. The steps were difficult. My right leg still screamed if it took the bulk of my weight. I opened the door when he arrived, and I shook his hand, and we went back upstairs. It was slow going. He followed me and didn’t say a word.
When we got up to the living room, I fell into my designated corner of the couch, and he sat on the chair across from me. He reached out and handed me an envelope.
“This first,” he said. “I tried to bring it to you at the hospital.”
I opened the envelope and found a handwritten letter inside. It was a woman’s handwriting. Alexandra Cantrell. When I read it, I wanted to laugh. It reminded me so much of the letter I’d written to Ken’s daughter—the tone, the words, even some entire phrases. There was a lot of gratitude there, awkwardly expressed. There was also, I discovered when I turned the page over, a phone number and a promise.
I finished the letter and then folded it again and slipped it back into the envelope. Parker Harrison was watching me.
“I know what she offered,” he said, “and it was sincere. If you’d like her to come forward, she will. She wanted to at the start, but I talked her out of it. I told her to wait.”
I nodded.
“Will you ask her to come forward?” he said.
“I don’t really see the point. It wouldn’t give anyone who matters anything new. It would take some things from Alexandra, though. She’s already had a lot taken.”
That seemed to please him. He looked at the floor for a moment and then leaned forward and said, “Lincoln, the things that happened—”
I held up my hand. “Stop, Harrison. I don’t want or need apologies. You could explain some things to me, though.”
“Of course.”
