Authors: Michael Koryta
"I
checked the phone call from last night. The one you mentioned."
"Yeah—"
"He
called Sanabria."
Neither
of us spoke for a minute, just sat there across the miles holding our
respective phones and considering the possibilities.
"Okay,"
I said. "That's one call. Right after I left. Right after he'd told me to
hang it up. Were there any others—"
"Uh-huh.
One more, made day before yesterday, in the evening."
Just
before Harrison had called me to ask for a meeting.
"Sanabria
told him to get rid of me," I said.
"Possibly."
"How
did he know I was working with Harrison to begin with— You said there hadn't
been any other calls between them. Not since the body was discovered."
"They
don't always have to use the phone, Linc. In fact, I'm surprised they do it
this often."
"I
guess."
"Another
possibility is your buddy."
"Ken—
Are you crazy—"
"Linc,
you remember how he found his way to you—"
I was
quiet.
"Sanabria,"
he said. "Right— Dominic Sanabria called him. That's what he told you,
that's what he told me. So they've been in communication. Who says it stopped
with that call—"
"Do
you have any records saying it didn't—"
"No."
"Then
I'm not—"
"Remember,
there are plenty of other ways they could have had contact. Face-to-face,
through an associate, e-mails, other phones. All I'm saying is let's not rule
Kenny out of the mix entirely. He around—"
"No."
"Gone
home—"
"No.
He's in the field."
"In
the field,
you say— Doing what—"
"I
have no clue."
Excuse
me—
I
told him about the message and said it was the only thing I'd heard from him all
day. He responded, as expected, by reaming me for letting Ken head off into
unknown avenues of investigation. My patience wasn't strong enough to take it
today.
"I'm
not his caretaker, Graham. I don't know the guy any better than you do, and if
you want somebody monitoring him, you better get an officer on it. Last night,
I told him I was done. That it was time to back off. If he doesn't do that,
it's your problem, not mine."
The
words sounded childish, petulant, and that only contributed to my growing
anger. It had been directed at Ken originally, for cutting me out, now at
Graham for blaming me for that, and only built after I hung up the phone.
Another hour passed before I finally forced myself to admit that another
emotion was bubbling beneath the surface: fear. I was beginning to hear the
first drumbeats of dread. Where was Ken—
In
the next hour, I called his cell six times and got voice mail every time. I
left two messages, then called his hotel and asked to be put through to the
room. Again, just rings and a voice mail option.
At
twenty till five, I got in my truck and drove to his hotel, went up to room 712
and pounded on the door. No answer. I took the elevator back down to the lobby,
stood in the corner, and looked the reception desk over. Two clerks working,
one male and one female. I'd talked to a guy on the phone, which meant he'd be
more sensitive to Ken's name. Ken had been there a few days, and there was a
chance both of the clerks knew him by now, but it was a big hotel, busy, and I
thought I'd take a chance. I waited until the guy took a phone call, then
approached the woman with a rapid step, feigning great annoyance, and told her
I'd locked my keycard in the room.
"Okay,
sir, if you could tell me—"
"Room
712, the name is Merriman."
"All
right, 712… I've got it. Now, can I see some ID—"
I
gave her my best look of condescending patience, as if I were dealing with a
child, and said, "Um, I'm locked out, remember—"
She
stared at me.
"Wallet's
in the room," I said. "I was just running down the hall to get some
ice."
No
ice bucket in hand, but she didn't seem likely to notice that or care.
"Well,
I would have no way of knowing that, would I—" Snippy now, offended. She
looked down at the computer screen, then over at her co-worker, who was still
talking on the phone.
"I'll
just scan you another one, I lung on." She grabbed a blank keycard, ran it
through the scanner, hit a few keys, and passed it over. I thanked her and went
back to the elevator, rose up to the seventh floor, and walked back to stand in
front of the closed door to 712.
I
knocked again, just in case. Nothing. Then I slid the key in, waited for the
green light to flick on, and pushed the door open.
The
so-called living room was in front of me, the bedroom beyond it, with the
little kitchen jammed in between. Nothing seemed out of place—no corpse on the
bed, no blood splatters on the walls.
Ken's
suitcase remained, a pair of pants and a sport coat draped over it. Tossed
there casually, the way you would if you knew you were coming back soon. The
air-conditioning was humming away even though it wasn't much past seventy
outside, turning the room into an icebox. I let the door swing shut, stepped
into the cold room, and made a quick circuit through it, looking for anything
noteworthy and finding nothing. Housekeeping had already made a pass
through—the bed was made and the bathroom cleaned, with fresh towels and soap
out. If anything had gone wrong in this room, word would have been out long
before I conned my way into a keycard.
I saw
a charging cord trailing from the bedside table to a wall outlet, and that made
me wonder if he could have left his cell phone behind in the room, explaining
why he hadn't answered. I took my phone out and called his number, waiting
hopefully as it began to ring, thinking I might hear it in the room. There was
nothing, though.
As I
stood there amid his things, I began to feel intrusive. I had no right to be
there, not just from the hotel's point of view but also from Ken's. He'd been
gone a few hours, that was all. Hadn't returned my calls yet. That hardly gave
me justification to break into his room and go through his things. Now that I
was in here, away from Graham's suspicions and Harrison's questions and the
collision those things had with my faith in Ken, the sense of urgency faded a
bit. He'd turn up soon, and then I'd have to admit that I'd done this and hope
he'd be more amused than angry. It would be an embarrassing moment for me. Right
then, though, I was looking forward to that embarrassment. By the time I could
feel shame over my actions, he'd be back.
I
walked out of the bedroom and back toward the door, then stopped in the living
room and looked down at the coffee table. His laptop sat there, closed but with
a blinking green light indicating it was still on. There was a blank CD in a
clear plastic case on top of the computer. I leaned over and picked it up, read
the scrawled
Peter Case, CTB
written with a black marker across the disc.
"Cold Trail Blues." The song he'd promised to burn me, his
surveillance song.
I put
the CD into my pocket. Even the guilt I was feeling about breaking into his
room didn't give me pause. I don't know why that was. Maybe it was just that I
knew the CD was for me. Maybe it was something darker and more instinctive.
Either way, I took it.
I'm
glad that I did.
The
day faded to evening, and I went back to my apartment and called Amy, asked her
to come by. She picked up some Chinese takeout on the way, and while we ate
that together I told her about Graham's call and Ken being MIA. She put her
fork down and looked at the clock, and her forehead creased with worry lines.
"He's
not obligated to call, Amy. He's not our kid, staying out past curfew."
It
was forced nonchalance, though, and she knew it.
"You
could call someone else, ask if they've heard from him," Amy said.
"Who—
His ex-wife—"
That
silenced the conversation, but it shouldn't have, because the idea wasn't bad.
His ex-wife did hear something before me, when she was called as next of kin
and notified that Ken Merriman's body had been found in one of the Metroparks
with two small-caliber bullet wounds, one through his heart and one through his
forehead.
The
ex-wife heard first, and she gave the police my name. Apparently Ken had spoken
of me to his daughter. It was eleven thirty when the phone rang. I was sitting
on the couch with my arm around Amy, trying without success to focus on the TV,
and for a few seconds before I got to the phone I was sure it would be Ken.
They were a pleasant few seconds.
I
wish I could have them back.
Where
his life ended, the police weren't sure. They knew only where the body had been
found, and at four o'clock in the morning, long after I'd widened their eyes
with my list of possible suspects, I stood there alone in the dark.
Ken
Merriman's corpse had been discovered on a short but steep hill near the edge
of the tree line in Mill Stream Run Reservation, snagged in a thicket of
undergrowth that was full and green with late-spring enthusiasm. There was
honeysuckle nearby, the sweet cloying scent pushed at me by a breeze that rose
and fell like long rollers breaking on an empty beach. The breeze was warmer
than the still air, and damp, a messenger sent ahead with promises of rain.
At
the top of the hill and beyond the tree line, a small field ran across a
parking lot. A walking and bike path snaked away from the lot, a silver thread
in the darkness. No cars were in the lot but mine, and no traces of police
activity remained. The body had been found at eight that evening, and the
Metroparks Rangers who interviewed me said they thought it was found soon after
it was dumped. Twenty, thirty minutes earlier and they might've had an
eyewitness.
Instead,
there'd been only the discovery, made by two brothers from Berea who'd ridden
their bikes down past the YMCA camp with a glow-in-the-dark football. The
police had the football now, because one end of its neon green body carried a
crimson smear. The kids had tossed it into the woods, where it took one good
bounce into the thicket and landed directly on Ken's body. Throw got away from
him, the older brother, who was fourteen, told the police. Then he started to
cry.
Maybe
I'd come down here to cry myself. Or maybe to rage and swear. Maybe I thought
Ken Merriman would speak to me somehow, that alone in the dark in the place
where his blood had drained into the earth and then gone dry under the wind I'd
be able to feel his presence, understand something about his end and find
direction for the justice this required.
None
of that happened. I didn't scream, I didn't weep, I didn't hear any voices of
dead men. Instead I smelled the honeysuckle and felt that warm, ebbing breeze
and wished that I'd turned Ken away the night he arrived from Pennsylvania.
Where
had he gone, what had he done, who had he provoked— Why was his body out here
in the brambles instead of mine— We'd worked side by side on this since he'd
arrived in Cleveland, right up until those last twenty-four hours when I sat at
the office waiting on him to show up and he'd gone out and gotten killed.
What
did you do, Ken— What button did you push, what thread did you pull—
There
would be no answers here, nothing but wind sounds and sorrow, but I stayed
anyhow. When my legs got tired I sat on the top of the hill and stared into the
shadows and did not turn when the occasional car passed, disrupting the silence
and throwing harsh white light into the trees.
We're
going to see this thing to the end, Lincoln. Twelve years I've been waiting for
that.
That's
what he'd told me at the start, sitting in my truck with one hand on the door
handle, ready to go up to the hotel room where he would upend his last night
alive, sleeping alone with a too-loud air conditioner blasting away beside him.
I'd responded by telling him… what had I said— That we might not get there.
Something to that effect, some warning that all the effort might yield no
result. He'd shaken his head.