Authors: Michael Koryta
"To
Sam Spade," I agreed, then touched my bottle off his glass and took a
drink. He was a damned likable guy, easygoing and good-humored, but that didn't
make the purpose of his visit appealing.
"I
wish you'd just made a phone call so I could've told you not to waste your
time," I said, "but as long as you made the drive, I'll tell you what
I can—
nothing.
Somebody asked me to look into the property, see where
the owners had gone. I was dangerously uninformed and had no idea that what was
left of one owner was in a coroner's lab somewhere and that the other owner was
related to Lenny Strollo's best pal."
Merriman
took a drink and shook his head. "Nah, Strollo wasn't that tight with
Dominic. Acquainted with him, sure, colleagues you might say, but not that
tight."
"What
a wonderful reassurance."
He
smiled again. "You sound damn edgy about this, Lincoln."
"You
would be, too, had Dominic Sanabria paid a visit to your home."
"By
all accounts, Sanabria has settled down these days. Living on the straight and
narrow. Nary a complaint."
"Be
that as it may, there were a few complaints in years past, and some of them
involved car bombs."
He
acknowledged that with a nod and drank some more of his beer. "Did he
threaten you—"
"Not
overtly, but he also went out of his way to make sure the notion was in my
head. It wasn't a relaxing conversation."
"How
do you think he got wind of you so fast—"
"The
attorney."
"Anthony
Child— That makes sense."
"Of
course it does. He called you, too."
He
wagged his finger at me. "Wrong. Nice try, but wrong."
"Okay,
then who did call you, Ken— Who sent you up from Pittsburgh to ply me with
booze and get me to talk—"
"Booze
was your idea. I just fell in line."
"We're
not going to accomplish much," I said, "if neither one of us is willing
to say who we're working for. That's fine with me. There's nothing that I want
to accomplish. That doesn't seem to be the case for you."
"If
I tell you who tipped me, do I get reciprocity— Will you tell me your client's
name—"
I
shook my head.
"Damn,"
he said. "I was afraid of that. But the good news, Lincoln, is that
ultimately I'm not too worried about your client. That's not why I'm
here."
"No—
Then what is it—"
"I
want you to work with me. Or, rather, I'd like to work with you. I've done some
background research. Seems like you're awfully good. I need help on this
one."
"By
this one, you mean…"
"Finding
out who killed Joshua Cantrell."
I
shook my head. "No thanks, Ken."
"Sanabria
scared you that much, huh—"
"It's
not just that, though I'll admit he did a damn good job. There's nothing in it
for me. I have no interest in it."
"Really."
His Guinness was almost gone. "I'm surprised to hear that. Because what this
one has, man, is some intrigue, and most of the detectives I know, well, they
go for that sort of thing. The challenge. At least the detectives who are worth
a damn."
"Then
I must not qualify for that list."
"So
if I were to say I could fill you in on Cantrell's history, tell you about the
happy couple, what they did up until the time they vanished, you'd say no
thanks— Prefer not to hear about it—"
"All
I care to hear about is how you learned that I'd inquired about their
house."
"You
want to know that, I'll tell you," he said, "but you'll have to sit
through the rest of it, too. Because if I start, I'm starting at the
beginning."
I
didn't answer.
He
slid out of the booth and got to his feet. "You want a pass on that, I'll
walk out the door and drive back home. If you want to hear about it, though,
then I think I better buy another round."
Somebody
burst into loud laughter at the bar while Ken Merriman stood above me, waiting.
Then the laughter faded and it was quiet.
Merriman
shifted and spread his hands. "Well—"
"Bring
me another Moosehead," I said, "and a bourbon. I think I'll need
both."
He'd
been hired by Joshua Cantrell's parents, James and Maria, about two months
after their son and daughter-in-law left the house near Hinckley for places
unknown. It wasn't an especially close-knit family—the Cantrells hadn't been on
the best terms with their son in many years, too many social and ideological
differences—but it was also unusual for weeks to pass without any word. When
they finally called, they learned the phone was disconnected.
"Took
them about another month to grow concerned enough to hire me," Ken said.
"They drove out and saw the house was empty, then went to the local
police, who nosed around enough to determine that Alexandra had made
arrangements for the care of the place. That implied a willing departure, not a
crime. Nothing illegal about ignoring your parents."
James
and Maria Cantrell couldn't believe their son would have made such an abrupt, unannounced
departure, and as the weeks went by and still no word came, they grew certain
something was terribly wrong.
"When
they came to see me that first time, they were petrified," Ken said.
"It was difficult to get anything close to a fact out of them."
What
he found, once he began looking into the situation, was that there weren't many
facts. The only person who'd had any knowledge of the couple's plans to leave
was Anthony Child, and he'd been contacted by phone. Child swore that he knew
Alexandra's voice and believed without a doubt that she was the one who'd given
him his instructions.
"For
twelve years the police have refused to look into this because that woman's
contact with Child suggested they'd just gotten a wild hair and taken off
somewhere," Ken said when he returned from the bar with two more beers and
two more bourbons. "Until the body was found, at least. That's shaken
things up."
The
problem, Ken admitted, was that the couple seemed like the type who
might
get a wild hair and take off. They were an eclectic pair, and most of their
interests—holistic practices, faith healing, spiritual retreats—suggested a
life outside of the ordinary. Those close to the Cantrells, while surprised by
the disappearance, had to admit it seemed to suit them.
Ken
worked the case for months and never developed a lead on the missing couple's
whereabouts or the reason for their departure. What he did learn was a great
deal about their past, including one particularly interesting detail: For years,
the couple had maintained a relationship with the state's department of
corrections, helping to transition violent offenders through the early stages
of parole.
"They
met when they were both studying offender rehabilitation in graduate
school," Ken told me. "Found some sort of mutual interest there.
Academic for Joshua, personal for Alexandra. You can imagine why. Her father
had been in and out of jail before being murdered, and her brothers were moving
quickly down the same path. Anyhow, once they were married, she and Joshua
teamed up to write a few papers, conducted some studies, and got hooked up with
an alternative program that snagged a federal grant. At that time, the state
was real concerned with engaging the offender's family to help with reentry.
The problem that the Cantrells raised was, what about the offender who has no
family, or whose family is a cancer to him—"
I
sipped my beer and kept my eyes on the table while I listened, not wanting to
react in a way that suggested this was anything but new to me. I still hadn't
decided whether I'd disclose Harrison's identity, but this twist in the
conversation had me wondering if Ken would bring him up of his own accord.
"A
police detective called me a few months back, after Cantrell's body was
found," he said. "They'd heard I'd investigated in the beginning, and
he wanted to know if I'd come across anyone who could work as a homicide
suspect. I told him, yeah, I've got twenty-eight names."
The
twenty-eight names belonged to the violent offenders Alexandra and Joshua had
helped transition back into the world. We had another round of drinks while Ken
recited their crimes, which ranged from bank robbery to rape and murder. As of
Ken's last count, nineteen of them were still free, and two were dead.
"That
means only seven of the offenders who worked with the Cantrells returned to
prison," he said. "You know anything about recidivism numbers—"
"Enough
to know that's a hell of a lot better than average."
"Yes,"
he said. "It absolutely is. So whatever they were doing, it seemed to
work."
"What
were they doing, exactly—"
"At
first, they were acting as, well, I guess you'd call it a sort of foster
family. They kind of adopted these guys, stayed close to them, counseled them,
things like that. By the end, after they bought that land in Hinckley, it
changed. They would hire these guys to work for them, kept them on for six
months to a year. They paid them well, but the catch was the guys also had to
live there."
"In
the house—"
"Yes.
Imagine that, welcoming convicted killers into your home. Also, while
everything out there was modern enough—running water, electricity, all
that—they insisted that all the work be done by hand, and without power tools."
He grinned at me. "Weird stuff, huh—"
At
first I thought they were crazy for requiring that… Then I came to understand
how important it was. How the sound of an engine would have destroyed what was
there.
"Weird,"
I agreed and finished my beer.
"Alexandra
contended that a great contributing factor to recidivism was a loss of touch
with the natural world," Ken said. "That prolonged incarceration
created this traumatic sense of isolation."
"Okay."
"I
talked to a woman with the state parole office who worked with the Cantrells,
and she said that Alexandra's vision was for a new sort of prison, one that
didn't isolate the inmates from nature. As you can imagine, making
that
sort of change was going to be difficult. So she brought the same ideas over to
the reentry side."
"She
wanted the parolees to, what, bond with nature—"
"Evidently.
She had all these studies. One demonstrated that just a view of nature from a
hospital window reduced reliance on pain medication; another showed inmates who
participated in a gardening program had improved recidivism rates. Since she
couldn't get the support she wanted, she created the program of her desires on
a very small scale."
"How
were the parolees chosen—" I asked.
"The
Cantrells would review their files, their case histories, and then extend the
offer. The offenders were under no obligation to accept, but they always did.
The pay was good. The Cantrells had one stipulation: They'd only take violent
offenders. Preferably murderers."
"That's
different from the requirements I've had for roommates over the years."
"Not
a request you see in a lot of personal ads, either."
"So
how many of these guys did they actually have out there, working for
them—"
"Four,"
he said. "None of those have shown up back in prison—but one is
dead."
"How'd
he go—"
"Mysterious
death," he said. "Not long after leaving the Cantrells' care."
It
was quiet for a moment, and then I said, "Seems like it was a hit-or-miss
program," and Ken's smile returned.
"Yes.
Seems like it was. Apparently they were hoping to use the handful they'd worked
with to get a larger program going. Those first four were test subjects, I
guess."
"Okay.
So you've got twenty-eight violent criminals who worked closely with the couple,
and you've got the daughter of a bloody mob legacy. Not hurting for
suspects."