“Why did you hire me to begin with? Were you worried about being connected to that corpse and wanted to find Alexandra in case you needed a witness?”
He smiled. “Do you know how many times you’ve asked me the same question? How many times you’ve asked why I came to you? I told you the truth the first day.”
“Not all of it.”
“No, not all of it. I apologize for that. My reasons, though . . . those were honest.”
“Then why wait twelve years?”
“I’d thought about doing it earlier but always talked myself out of it. Then Joshua’s body was found, and I thought it was time. I wanted to speak to her again.”
“Ken tried to talk to you during his first investigation. He said you ducked him. Didn’t you remember who he was, though?”
He shook his head. “That was twelve years earlier, Lincoln, and I never spoke to him, just ignored the calls and messages. His name meant nothing to me. Then Alexandra made contact, told me that the police were focused on me, and that you were working with them, and she thought I should probably stay away from you.”
I recalled the day he’d fired me, how he’d gone straight to the phone when I left. It hadn’t been Alexandra that he called.
“You talked to Dominic throughout this. Why?”
“When she left, Alexandra asked me to give him a message.”
“To tell him that she wouldn’t speak to him again, and he shouldn’t look for her,” I said. “Yes, that’s what she told me. Why did Ruzity go to see him?”
“To threaten to kill him if he looked for her,” he said. “I hope you understand that promise didn’t come easily for Mark, or lightly. He loved Alexandra, though. The reason I didn’t want you to visit him to begin with was that I knew it could go badly, for everyone. He’s doing well, though. Ever since he left Alexandra, he has been doing well.”
“Why’d you talk to Sanabria after you fired me?”
“To tell him that you’d been working for me but were not any longer, and if any harm came to you I’d hold him responsible.”
He’d called, in other words, in an attempt to protect me.
“Quinn Graham said you two didn’t have contact for years, but then you did again when the body was found.”
He nodded. “I said that I wouldn’t go to prison for him. That I’d talk to the police if they came to me, regardless of his sister’s decision for silence. He told me then, as he had before, that he hadn’t killed Joshua. I found myself, for the first time, starting to believe him. I needed to know the truth, and I needed to talk to Alexandra. So I came to you.”
“Because you’d read about me in the papers.”
“Because I thought you were the right person for the job,” he said. “It’s the same thing I told you at the start—it was about how you viewed the guilty. I thought you would be able to look past the things that others would not.”
“I didn’t, though.”
He made a small shrug, as if it didn’t matter, and I shook my head.
“No, Harrison. I don’t think you understand how badly I failed to be what you hoped I would be. I distrusted you from the start. That never changed.”
When I said that, he dropped his eyes and looked at his clasped hands and was quiet for a time.
“I’ve never asked anyone to forget what I did,” he said. “I haven’t tried to forget it, either. It demands to be remembered. I carry it with me. I deserve that.”
“We all like the idea of rehabilitation,” I said. “I just don’t know how many of us actually believe in it.”
That made him smile, for some reason. “It only takes a few, Lincoln. Alexandra was enough for me.”
“Have you talked to her?”
“A few times. As I said, I talked her out of going to the police the day you were shot. I told her to wait.”
“I’m glad,” I said, and I meant that sincerely. I saw no gain from what would happen if she reappeared. Not for me, or anyone else. Let some mystery linger for the rest of the world. The world probably needed it.
“I have another question for you,” I said.
“Yes?”
“What happened to Joshua’s ring, the one Dominic left with the body?”
“It’s at the bottom of Pymatuning Reservoir.” He frowned. “You know, if Alexandra hadn’t made the decision she made, her brother might have gone to prison. It was a good way to frame him. It might have worked.”
“Yes. It might have.”
There was a brief silence, and then he reached in his jacket and withdrew something wrapped in newspaper and passed it to me. It was heavy in my palm.
“What is this?”
“Mark Ruzity wanted you to know he could do other things with a chisel than what he showed you the first time. I think it’s his version of a thank-you. Maybe even an apology.”
I tore the paper loose and found a beautiful, small piece of granite. Across the front, carved in small but clear letters, it said,
“It’s for your desk,” Harrison said.
“Yeah.”
When he got to his feet I started to do the same, but he waved me off.
“Don’t make that trip down the stairs for me.”
“The trip’s good for me, Harrison. It’s no fun, but I need it.”
I followed him down the stairs, and when we reached the bottom I put out my hand and shook his.
“Thank you,” he said. “For what it’s worth, Lincoln . . . everything I hoped about you at the start, I still believe now.”
He left then, and I turned and took a deep breath and started up the steps again. Back in the living room, I sat down and read the letter from Alexandra one more time, then picked up the nameplate Mark Ruzity had carved and held it in my hands.
For my desk, Harrison had said. That’s what Ruzity had in mind when he carved it, at least. I wondered, though, if it wasn’t really the smallest headstone he’d ever done.
46
__________
It was three more weeks before I went to see John Dunbar. By then I was moving better and had some of my weight back. I’d lost almost twenty pounds in the aftermath of the shooting, and it was depressing as hell to consider how weak I’d be when I could finally get back in the gym. I’d been at a strength peak before, and now I’d bottomed out. That’s how it goes, though. That’s always how it goes.
It was late November when I made the drive, and the lake was hard and cold and whipped into a fury by a strong front out of Canada. Winter on the way, and with it would go Joe. I hadn’t been surprised when he told me he was planning on another departure in January, but I was surprised to hear it would be back to Florida, and not Idaho. It seemed Gena was stepping aside from her position and heading south to join him. I remembered what she’d told me about neither of them wanting to be selfish, and how the best thing might be to pick a place that was new to both of them. Florida would be that, and it was also the place where they’d found each other. Maybe they’d stay. Maybe he’d convince her to spend some of the year in Cleveland. It was too early to tell.
Sheffield Lake was quiet; not so many people interested in heading to the lake come November. When I got out of the car and walked to Dunbar’s door, the wind was difficult to move through. It seemed to find the bullet wounds somehow, slip through them and carry the chill to the rest of my body.
Dunbar was home, and happy to see me. Ushered me in and took my coat and got me positioned in a chair
