The Silent Hour

by the fireplace. It was gas, not wood, but it threw some heat and made the tiny house seem like the perfect place to sit out a howling storm.

“You better let me get you some coffee,” he said. “Maybe put in a touch of whiskey, too? Just a warmer. Today’s a day for it, if ever there was one.”

I said that sounded fine, and then he went out to the kitchen and fixed the coffee, and I sat and watched the storm. When he came back we drank the coffee together, and I listened while he talked about the case, offering updates and theories and connections I might not have heard.

Eventually he burned himself out and set his coffee aside and said, “Well, what brought you out here on a day like this? I’m sure it wasn’t for my coffee.”

“How sure are you that Alvin Neloms killed Joshua Cantrell?” I said.

He blinked. “Quite sure. How could I not be, at this point? I’ve heard your tape—he all but confessed. Then Darius provided the details. Why do you . . . I mean, you’re sure of it, too. Right? You don’t think something else?”

“If I had to guess,” I said, “if I had to put every dime I have down on one bet, I’d say he did it, yeah.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“I believe that because of what I saw. Because of how he reacted when I said Cantrell’s name. Sometimes, though, I get things wrong. Sometimes I make an assumption based upon what I’ve seen, and it’s wrong.”

He was frowning at me, quiet.

“So here’s what I have to ask you,” I said. “Did you kill Joshua Cantrell, or did you just leave the ring?”

I waited a long time. He did not speak, did not move. Did not look away, either.

“Probably wouldn’t have bothered me if I hadn’t gotten shot,” I said. “Or if it had bothered me, it would have slipped by easier. Since I did get shot, I’ve had a lot of time to sit around and think. I thought about the way Neloms had his uncle shoot me, the way he dumped Ken’s body, the way he threw Bertoli off a roof. He was not a man who was interested in subtleties. He was interested in making people dead and moving on. Didn’t care who got arrested for it, didn’t care about framing people.”

I leaned forward, feeling a tug in my chest but not the radiating pain that had once been there.

“Alexandra thought her brother killed him, or had him killed. She thought that because of the ring. It’s why she left. While I can understand why she thought that, I can’t imagine why in the hell Dominic would have left it. As a message? That would have served no purpose. She wasn’t a mob rival, she was his sister, and she mattered dearly to him. If he had killed her husband, he wouldn’t have left a calling card.”

Dunbar’s face was still impassive, but his eyes went to the wall above my head.

“It’s possible that Joshua Cantrell told Bertoli about that ring,” I said, “and that Bertoli told Neloms. Here’s the thing, Dunbar: Even if Neloms were to think it wise to frame someone like Sanabria—and he wouldn’t—and even if he did know about the ring, he wouldn’t have known where to find it. Because Cantrell never wore the thing. I suppose Bertoli could have known, and could have told Neloms, but I don’t think so.”

It was quiet. Dunbar looked at me for a while, then away.

“Of course I didn’t kill him,” he said.

“That’s your only denial?”

He nodded. “How do you know about the ring?”

“How, indeed.”

He sat back in his chair, blew out a shaking breath.

“Tell me what you did,” I said.

He turned his hands up. “You know what I did.”

“I know you left the ring. I’d like more details.”

“Joshua called me and told me that Bertoli was dead and he wanted out. Said they were leaving the country. I told him that he couldn’t do that; he had to be a witness for the investigation of Bertoli’s murder. He hung up on me. So I went to see him in person, and I found his body.”

His mouth worked for a bit without any words coming out, and then he said, “You can’t know what I felt then. I can’t explain that to you. I knew I was partially responsible, but I also knew who killed him.”

“You thought you knew,” I said. “You were wrong.”

That made his jaw clench, but he nodded. “At the time I was certain, and I thought, no, I will not let this happen again. I will not let Dominic walk away from this, too.”

“You knew where Cantrell kept the ring?”

“It was in a cabinet just inside the door. He kept it there in case Dominic made a surprise visit. So he could put it on at the last minute, you know? The ring was a big deal to Dominic.”

He said “Dominic” the way most people say “poison.”

“You had a key?”

“Door was unlocked. Open. His feet were still inside the house.”

“So you went away, and waited for the discovery.”

He nodded, and there was a tremor in his face, near his left eye. “Waited all night, and into the next day. Then I couldn’t wait any more, and I went back. He was gone, and the stone was clean. I couldn’t believe it. I thought I was losing my mind.”

“You didn’t call anyone,” I said. “With the murder less than two days old, you did not call anyone.”

“I had tampered with a homicide scene, and then I had left it.”

“There was a murder to be solved. You were the only—”

“I didn’t think it would take twelve years!” He shouted it at me, and now his hands were trembling, too.

I shook my head in disgust.

“I tried to help,” he said. “Anybody would tell you that. I tried to guide things.”

“Guide things right to Dominic Sanabria. Right to an innocent man.”

“He is not an innocent man!”

“He was this time, Dunbar.”

“If you had known what I knew—”

“I did,” I said. “Me, and every other detective who’s looked at it. We fell all over ourselves looking at Sanabria and Harrison and all the rest of them. Shit, there was no shortage of suspects. All of them had been guilty. None of them were this time. Nobody could ever get it, could ever see the forest because there were too many damn trees. Until Ken Merriman. He got it. Then he was murdered, and some of that’s on your head, Dunbar.”

“Everything you just said is true, but it wouldn’t necessarily have changed because they had a corpse. They already had Bertoli’s corpse. That didn’t help.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Why would another crime scene possibly have been a help? Why would Alexandra’s testimony possibly have been a help? You know how long it took me to get to Neloms after I talked to her? One day. One day, you son of a bitch.”

He said, “When you talked to her?”

“That’s right, Dunbar. She’s out there—and she’s staying out there. You tell anybody that I’ve talked to her, and I’ll happily distract them with the rest of this conversation.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” he said. “I just can’t believe . . . I never knew . . .”

“She ran away. Because of what you did, she ran away. It wasn’t the murder. It was the ring and the message that it carried. Remove that, and you might have had an arrest within a week, might have had twelve fewer years of Alvin Neloms, might have had Ken Merriman alive.”

My voice was rising now, and I wanted to hit him, but instead I reached out and ran my fingers over my shirt, near the scars.

“I hope it weighs on you,” I said. “I hope that burden is terrible, Dunbar. It should be.”

“You hope it is? You don’t know?”

“I don’t know much of anything,” I said. “I just do a lot of hoping.”

I got to my feet and went to the door, walked back out into the cold wind.

That night I took Joe and Amy out for dinner at Sokolowski’s. I hadn’t been there since that lunch with Ken at the end of the spring. It was edging toward winter now, and the view of the city’s lights was hampered by rain- streaked windows. It was still beautiful, though. You just had to look harder.