The Silent Hour

Dominic Sanabria walked away with one of the lightest sentences, two years for minor crimes. It wasn’t that he’d been a minor player, but he apparently left less evidence and trusted fewer people. At the time, one of the district attorneys suggested that Sanabria was the most dangerous of the lot, and the media made good use of that quote. People in the Cleveland area remembered the name.

“That house,” I said, “is owned by Dominic Sanabria’s sister? That’s what you’re telling me?”

Child’s face turned unpleasant as he leaned across the desk, almost pulling out of his chair, and said, “Yes. Now, damn it, I need to know who you’re working for.”

“That information is confidential, Mr. Child. I’m sorry.”

“Then get out. And tell your client to give up his inquiries on that house.”

“Where is she?” I said as he got to his feet and walked to the door. “Where’s Alexandra?”

I didn’t ask because I believed he would provide an answer but simply because I wanted to gauge his reaction for myself, see if I smelled a lie.

He paused with his hand on the doorknob and turned back to me. “Nobody knows. Not me, not her family, and certainly not the police. If they did know, maybe they’d stop calling me all the time.”

It felt like the truth.

He twisted the knob and swung the door open for me. “Goodbye, Mr. Perry.”

5

__________

Outside, the air was thick with humidity, and a bank of angry dark clouds had gathered in the west. It was a heavy, cloaking warmth, and I opened the second button of my shirt and stood on the sidewalk and stared at the sleepy town square.

Joshua Cantrell is dead . . . bones found last winter . . . buried in the woods. Case still under investigation.

Without leaving the front steps of Child’s office, I took out my cell phone and called Amy at the newspaper. For once, she was there. I asked her to do an archives search for Joshua Cantrell.

“The guy who owns the house?”

“Owned. He’s dead.”

“Lincoln—”

“Run the search, please. I’d like to know when they found the body.”

I listened as she clicked keys and people in her office laughed over something. It took a few minutes, and neither of us spoke. Then she found the right article.

“Looks like a hunter found the body on the first weekend of December.”

“That’s just before Harrison wrote me the first letter. He knew. The son of a bitch knew.”

“Lincoln, there’s stuff in here . . . hang on. It says that Cantrell is related by marriage to organized crime. To the Sanabria family.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I was recently informed of that.”

“What in the hell is Parker Harrison trying to do?”

“I have no idea, but I guarantee you he knew Cantrell was dead when he sent me out here. He knew, and he didn’t tell me.”

“You don’t think he killed him? That he’s playing some sick game now because the body was found?”

“I don’t know if he killed him, but, yeah, he’s playing some sick game—and I’m going to end it.”

I called Harrison from my truck and told him to meet me at the office. I didn’t say anything else. The clouds built overhead as I drove back to the city with both hands tight on the wheel and the stereo off, the cab of the truck silent. The rain started when I reached the stoplight across from the office and was falling steadily as I walked into the building, but the air was still warm, reassuring us that this was a spring, not winter, storm. Harrison was already inside, and he met me at the top of the stairs with a smile.

“When you said you’d be in touch, I was expecting a bit more of a wait.”

I didn’t say a word. Just unlocked the door and walked inside and sat behind the desk and stared at him while he took the chair across from me, waited while his smile faded and his eyes narrowed.

“What’s the problem?” he said.

“Did you kill him?”

If I’d been expecting a visceral reaction to that, I was wrong. He lifted his hand and ran his fingertips over the scar on his cheekbone, let his eyes wander away from mine. “No, I didn’t kill him. If you’re referring to Joshua Cantrell.”

“If I’m referring . . . listen, Harrison, you twisted prick, what the hell kind of game is this? Why do I need to play it?”

“Hang on, Lincoln.”

“Shut up. I shouldn’t have ever let you in the door, and when I made that mistake I definitely shouldn’t have been stupid enough to buy your story. It was a good one, though, compelling, and you reeled me all the way in with those questions about whether I believed in rehabilitation, whether I believed in the system. A nice, subtle guilt trip. I’m sure there’s a better word for it, some psychology term, and you probably know it because you had fifteen years to sit in a cell and read books and come up with games to play. But you shouldn’t have involved me, Harrison.”

I was leaning toward him, loud and aggressive, and if that made the slightest impact he didn’t show it. He waited till I’d wound down, then said, “I told you the truth.”

“Like hell you did.”

“Lincoln, I worked for the Cantrells as a groundskeeper for one year, and ever since I’ve wondered what —”

“Oh, stop it already.” I waved him off. “All that may be true, and I don’t care if it is or if it isn’t. What I care about is that you lied to me. You sat there and talked about Joshua Cantrell as if you didn’t have the faintest idea that he was dead. Talked about wanting to find him.”

“I said nothing about wanting to find him. I said I want to find her. In fact, I assured you he was not the reason she had stayed out of touch.”

“You already knew he’d been murdered and didn’t bother to tell me that. Like it’s insignificant information, Harrison, that the guy is dead and the woman is the sister of a Youngstown mob figure? How did you get tied up with those guys in the first place? Last I knew, the requirement was to be Sicilian, not Shawnee.”

“I was never tied up with them.”

“Sure.”

“I shared minimal facts,” he said. “That I will admit.”

My laugh was heavy with disgust. “Shared minimal facts? Shit, that’s brilliant. You should’ve been an attorney, Harrison, instead of a murderer.”

That seemed to sting him, and for a moment he looked entirely genuine again. Looked hurt.

“Would you have taken this case,” he said, “if you knew all of that beforehand?”

“No.”

“See, that was my reasoning. I didn’t think you would, but I knew if I could get you to go out to the house, to stand there in that spot under the trees and feel the energy of that place, that things might change. I knew that was possible, because I knew this one was meant for you, that you’d been—”

“Shut up!” I hammered my fist onto the desk between us. “I don’t want to hear any more of it. I’m not going to take the case. We’re done.”

I stood up and walked to the door and opened it for him, just as Child had done for me an hour earlier.

“You saw the house?” he said without turning.

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t feel anything?”