Authors: Michael Koryta
"Step
out, please."
I
took a deep breath, put the truck in park, and got out, giving the cruiser
another look as I did. Shaker Heights Police Department. All right, they hadn't
come here from Harrison's. They'd been sent to wait for me.
"There's
no problem," I said as I got out. "I just came here to talk to
him."
The
cop smiled. She was young, couldn't be thirty yet, but she had cool,
no-bullshit eyes.
"I'm
sure that's the case," she said, "but we got a call from Cleveland
city, said they didn't want you talking to him, Mr. Perry. Said they want to
talk to you, and then they'll talk to him."
"I've
got every right to knock on the man's door."
She
shook her head. "I'm going to have to bring you in to talk to city, Mr,
Perry. They have a complaint. Woman says you assaulted her neighbor."
"I
didn't assault anyone."
"I'm
sure you didn't. Still, like I said, they have the complaint."
"They
sent you out here—"
"That's
right. They said you threatened Mr. Sanabria."
I
started to object again, started to say I'd never threatened anyone, but the
energy went out of me then, and I sighed and nodded.
"Call
them," I said. "Tell them I'll come in to talk. You don't need to
take me.
She
frowned. "I was asked—"
"To
arrest me, or to keep me from bothering Sanabria— Doesn't look like you're
arresting me."
"No."
"Then
tell them I'll come in. Tell them I'm cooperative and I'll come in."
She
studied me for a moment, then shot her partner a glance and nodded. "Okay.
Do me a favor and go wait in your truck. Let me see what they say."
I
turned back to my truck, and my eyes passed over it and went up to the house,
and I saw for the first time that Dominic Sanabria was standing in front of the
door. He hadn't been there when I pulled up, must have come outside when he saw
the police lights go on, but now he was standing on his front step wearing
workout pants and a fleece jacket, holding a cup of coffee in his hand. I
stopped short when I saw him, and when he realized he had my attention he
lifted the cup of coffee at me and nodded his head. A neighborly greeting. I
was too far away to see if he was smiling, but I imagined he was.
"Mr.
Perry—" There was a warning in the female cop's voice, and when I looked
at her I saw that she was watching Sanabria, too. "Get in the vehicle,
please."
For a
moment I didn't move, and then she spoke in a gentler tone. "I know who he
is, Mr. Perry. I don't know the details of your situation, but I know who he
is. All the same, though, I need you to get in the vehicle."
I
nodded without speaking, and I got into the truck, and while I waited on her to
come back I did not let myself look at Sanabria. Or at my glove compartment.
Things
didn't get ugly until Graham got to town. The first few hours I spent with the
Cleveland cops who'd responded to Harrison's house and the Metroparks Rangers,
getting everyone updated. Nobody arrested me, and it seemed Harrison's version
of events had been largely sympathetic. When Graham arrived around noon, I let
him have a short briefing and then asked if I could speak to him alone. I
wanted it to be just the two of us when I told him about the mistake I'd made,
the one I hadn't even considered until I was driving back through the gatehouse
of Sanabria's neighborhood.
"You
had anything to eat—" he said when the other cops left the room. "Any
breakfast, lunch, cup of coffee—"
I
shook my head.
"Let's
get out of here, then. Go somewhere, grab a sandwich."
He
was calm, contained, but he'd never had trouble meeting my eyes before, and
today he did. Anger, maybe, but probably some guilt in there, too. Ken was
dead, and Graham had been in charge.
We
left the station and drove back to my office, Graham following behind me, then
walked across the street to Gene's Place. It was close and it was comfortable,
and only after we walked through the doors did I remember that it was also
where I'd gone for lunch on the day Harrison came to see me and I agreed to
take his case. That weird, warm day, when all I'd wanted to do was stand
outside and drink in the air, feel the sun and the wind and the knowledge that
we'd finally shaken winter.
Graham
got a cheeseburger, and I had a cup of soup and picked at a club sandwich while
I went through cup after cup of coffee, the fatigue slamming me now. I told him
everything I could tell him. He listened and ate his burger and didn't look at
me often.
When
I was done talking, he leaned back from the table, wiped his mouth with a
napkin, and said, "I'm sorry."
"Yeah.
Both of us. We're sorry, and he's dead."
His
chest filled with air, and he shook his head. "Maybe we didn't do
everything perfect, but… well, let me correct that, Linc. I
know
we
didn't do everything perfect, know that I didn't, but we also didn't kill the
guy. We didn't get him killed, either."
The
waitress came back and refilled my coffee yet again. "You'll be bouncing
off the walls today," she said and laughed. Yeah. Bouncing off the walls.
"No,"
I said when she was gone, "we didn't get him killed. Sanabria did, I
think, and Harrison's involved."
"The
phone calls suggest that, at least."
"Speaking
of which, why don't you have a damn wiretap on these guys—"
"Don't
have the probable cause, and you know that. Maybe I can get it now, but not
before."
"Great,"
I said. "Ken's made a break in the case. That's all the poor bastard
wanted to do. Don't think he wanted to die to get it, though."
Graham
sighed again. "Linc, how's your head—"
"What,
the coffee—"
"No,
not the coffee. The way you went at it today, brother… I can't have you doing
that. You're lucky Harrison's not pressing charges. He may change his mind.
Either way, I can't afford to have you—"
"I
screwed up with him."
"No
shit you screwed up with him, and I'm just saying—"
"No."
I shook my head. "You don't understand, Graham. I don't mean in general
terms. I mean specifically. In the heat of the moment, when I had him out there
in the parking lot, I said something I shouldn't have."
He
looked at me like a man who was waiting for a diagnosis and wasn't optimistic.
"I
told him you know about the burial," I said. "The Shawnee
elements."
Diagnosis
delivered, and the result was what I'd expected—a flash of shock, replaced quickly
by anger. Deep anger. He stared at me and then turned and looked down at the
table and blew his breath out between his teeth.
"You
told him we know about the burial. The one thing we've got hope on, waiting on
those damn lab results—"
"If
you get the lab results, it doesn't matter that he knows. Maybe it doesn't
anyhow. How can he prepare to deal with that, Graham— How can that knowledge
really help him—"
I was
arguing out of a natural sense of self-defense, but I still knew it had been a
mistake, and a potentially damaging one. The detail of the grave was the one
card Graham had to play on this one, the only thing he'd held back from the
media and the only firm link he had to Harrison. It wasn't all that firm—the
definition of circumstantial, actually—but it was what he had.
"That's
beautiful," he said, shaking his head. "That is just beautiful,
Linc."
"Graham,
I'm sorry. Like I said, heat of the moment."
"Yeah,
heat of a moment you shouldn't have been in. You wer
e police,
you know
better than that." Another head shake. "No, it's on me. It's on me,
damn it, I know that, I see that, I got him dead and you knocking suspects
around and divulging information and driving out to Sanabria's with intentions
I don't even want to guess at… yeah, Linc, I made the wrong play when you boys
called me. I did. No question."
I
didn't say anything to that, didn't want to argue anymore, wanted to try to
retain some dignity. Graham and I were feeling a lot of the same things,
really. We'd both made some mistakes we'd be thinking about for a long time to
come.
"So
he knows," Graham said eventually. "He knows what I know now. Level
field now, right— Level field."
"It's
not level. He knows a hell of a lot more than you do."
He
looked up at me then, held my eye for a moment, then nodded. The waitress came
back and dropped a check off and Graham reached out and took it and folded it.
"Linc,
there's something I need to ask of you."
"You
want me out."
"Oh,
yeah. Wanted you out yesterday, you know that, but after this morning, the way
you went driving around, stirring shit up—that cannot continue."
"Let
me head you off here," I said. "I
am
out."
He
leaned back and gave me a bemused look, not buying it.
"That's
a promise, Graham. The minute you and I finish this talk, I'm done. When I say
that, I mean it."
"Why—"
he said.
"Why
do I want out— Because it's got nothing to do with me."
"Never
did, though."
"I
know it, and I should have paid more attention to that. Ken showed up and
asked, and I went along with him because it is what I do, Graham. This is what
I know how to do. He gave me a case and said here is what we know and here is
what we need to know, and I couldn't stop myself from joining up. I've done it
for too long to stop, evidently. Until today. Because I'll tell you something—I
went down to see the spot where his body was found. I stood down there and I
thought about my girlfriend's body ending up there instead, or my partner's.
They've both come close over the last two years. I stood there and I realized
what you just said: that it never did have anything to do with me, and that I
can't make a decision to put people in danger for things that aren't personal.
Call it a revelation, an epiphany, whatever you'd like. Here's what I'm
promising you: I will not put other people at risk for a case anymore. I'm done
with it. If I'd sent that poor bastard back to Pennsylvania the day he arrived,
he'd be alive, too."
"Can't
put all that on yourself, Linc."
"Oh,
I'm not. Some of it's on you, and plenty is on him. Then there are the guys who
actually, you know,
killed
him. They probably require a bit of blame,
too. What I'm saying, though, is that I'm not going to be involved in any
attempt to settle up with them. I burned that desire out this morning, and
screwed things up for you while doing it. Now I'm just going to apologize and
step aside. So save whatever speech you have prepared."
He
was watching me with a deep frown, and now he braced his forearms on the table
and leaned close, eyes on mine.
"I'll
close this case," he said. "Word as bond, Linc, I'll close it."
"I
hope so, Graham. You have to try, at least. It's your job—but you know what— It
doesn't have to be mine. I'm finally understanding that." I stood up and
tossed some money on the table. "I wish you luck, and if you have more
questions, you know how to reach me. Otherwise, though, save yourself any worry
on my part. I'm gone."
John
Dunbar came by my apartment that afternoon. I'd been waiting for Amy, but when
I heard a knock instead of a key turning I grimaced, knowing it wouldn't be
good. I let him up, and he sat in my living room, loosened his tie, and told me
that we had to get to work.
"Look,
Perry, I understand how you feel right now. The anger, the sense of futility.
You feel that way because you
know
who's responsible and yet he's
walking around free. Sanabria's done that too long. We can't let it continue.
We can't."