A Welcome Grave (10 page)

She went quiet. I didn’t want to lift my head and look at her, but eventually I did. I sat there with my elbows on my knees and my hands clasped together and looked at her while she said, “I know you loved me, Lincoln. But I never felt like you needed me.”

For a moment silence filled the room, the ticking of the wall clock audible again. Karen looked uncomfortable. I probably didn’t look particularly at ease myself.

“You’re a very strong person,” she said. “You’re so comfortable with your abilities, so . . . assured. That’s probably the right word. Self-assured, I guess. And independent in a way that most people aren’t, either. Those are wonderful qualities, Lincoln, really they are, but . . . maybe they make you seem distanced. I knew I was important to you, I knew you loved me, but I just never had the sense that I was
necessary
. I never—”

“I thought you were going to talk about your husband.”

She froze with her mouth half open, another thought about ready to spill out, and then she nodded, almost imperceptibly.

“Okay. That’s fair. I’m sorry.” She leaned back into the couch and pulled her legs up beside her. “There was always something beneath the surface with Alex. Something that intensified how he felt about me, but that I never really understood. I thought it had to do with his family, with his son. He told me only that Matthew and he were no longer close. It wasn’t a subject Alex was comfortable with, and I didn’t push. Not until we were making the wedding
plans. Then I told him I wanted his son to be there, that it was important to me. He told me Matthew would never come, and he refused to talk about the circumstances at length. That was the hardest I ever pushed him for details, and it was utterly unsuccessful.

“Once we were married, the topic almost never came up. I knew it was sensitive for Alex, and, to be perfectly honest, I never thought about his son. Why would I? I’d never met him, and he’d never been any sort of factor in my relationship with Alex. Every now and then something would remind me of him, and I’d wonder, but that was it. I was happy—we were happy—and Alex seemed at peace.”

“Until recently?”

She nodded. “A few weeks ago, something happened. The change in Alex was sudden, and profound. He was scared, Lincoln, and he wouldn’t tell me of what. He didn’t sleep; I’d find him sitting at his desk or out on the deck at two in the morning, just staring off into space, mostly. He became secretive and guarded. I know you want more details, but I just don’t have them. All I saw was the change in his personality. All I saw was his fear.”

“What was the response when you asked him about it?”

“He denied it at first,” Karen said. “Told me I was crazy, that he was fine, just busy. This went on for a while. Until Matthew called.”

“When was that?”

She frowned, considering. “The first call was two weeks ago, almost exactly. The phone rang very late, almost midnight. Alex was downstairs, and I was upstairs. I came down to see who’d been on the phone, and he said it was his son. He looked more scared than anyone I’ve ever seen, Lincoln. I asked him what was wrong and he just shook his head. Told me that it didn’t involve me and that the most important thing for him was seeing that it stayed that way. Obviously, I was furious, because now he was scaring me, and I didn’t even understand what was going on. I started yelling at him, demanding he tell me what was going on, and he got up and left the house. He didn’t leave in anger, though. He was robotic. Silent.”

She stared at the front door as if she were watching him walk out of it again.

“He left, and he was gone for hours. It was about four in the morning when he came back. I was still awake. He got into bed next to me, and I didn’t say anything, but he knew I was awake. He just lay there for a few minutes, and then he told me that he was sorry for upsetting me but that he was thinking of my best interests. He told me that someone wanted to make him accountable
for something he’d done a long time ago. ‘For an old sin’ was actually how he put it.”

“There were no other details? No throwaway reference to something you didn’t understand?”

She started to shake her head, then stopped. “Actually, there was one. He said something like ‘When the phone rings at two in the morning, you know it’s either a wrong number or a prank or that it’s about to change your life. For me, it was the latter.’ ”

“He was certainly right about that.”

“But that’s the problem—he couldn’t have been talking about the call from Matthew. It was midnight when Matthew called. I was home, I heard the phone ring.”

“Maybe he misspoke. By the time you had that conversation it was, what, four in the morning?”

“Yes.”

“It probably seemed like the call had come in later than it did. But I suppose there’s nothing to lose by checking some phone records, seeing if there was a call that you missed some night.”

“I already looked, and so did the police. There weren’t any other calls that late. Not to the house or to his cell phone or his office.”

“That was the first time that they’d spoken in how many years?”

“Five years. Alex told me that the night of the call. We were done talking, both of us trying to sleep, and he said, almost to himself, ‘That’s the first time I’ve heard his voice in five years.’ ”

“But the specifics of this old sin? They weren’t given?”

“No. He just said he was going to handle it.”

“He didn’t handle it,” I said, thinking of what Targent had told me about the razor cuts and the burns.

“No,” Karen said, and her voice was faint. “It doesn’t look like he handled it.”

“Did you tell the police all of this?”

“Everything except Matthew’s call.”

I frowned. “Why leave that out? It sounds like he knew something, Karen. Something that could have been valuable.”

“I know. That’s why I wanted to talk to him first. Before the police.”

I stared at her, puzzled for a second, and then I got it. She was worried about what her husband had done. Worried about his image, maybe. And hers.

“You wanted a chance to do damage control before the cops and the media got to it. Wanted to make sure the right buried secrets stayed buried.”

Her eyes flashed. “That wasn’t it. I just wanted to know what happened. I just wanted to talk to him first.”

I shook my head. “Well, it was a hell of a bad idea, Karen. Because now Matt Jefferson’s not going to be telling anyone anything. If you’d played it right, and been honest with the cops, they would have gone down there and grabbed him before he had a chance to blow his head off. And, yes, I mean that they would have handled it better than me. Of course, I would’ve handled it differently if you’d been honest with me, too.”

“You think I don’t regret that? You think I’m not feeling guilty?”

I was quiet. She shook her head and blinked at tears that were rising again. She kept them in this time, though. After a minute, she turned back to me.

“I want to know what happened to this family, Lincoln. I’ve
got
to know what happened to this family.”

“I’m not the guy to help you. Never was. Why the hell
did
you call me, anyhow?”

“The police told me they’d talked to you, and I . . .” She let her words trail off, staring thoughtfully at nothing. Then she looked back up at me. “Remember those qualities I was telling you about? The confidence, the independence, the—”

“The things that drove you away.”

She seemed to wince at that, but still she nodded. “Yes. Well, even if they made you seem distanced, they bred faith in you, Lincoln. They bred trust. I’m sorry, but that never went away.” She looked at me sadly. “Doesn’t that make any sense to you?”

“As much sense as any of the rest of this.”

“Do you understand that I need to know what happened to this family?”

“Yes. And I wish you luck with it. But I’m not going to help. I can’t. I never should have let myself get involved with this in the first place, and I spent a good portion of the drive home today swearing at myself for making that mistake.”

She was quiet for a long time. Then she said, “I’m sorry that’s how you feel. I’m sorry for getting you involved.”

I stood up. “You need to call the police and give them the straight story.”

She followed me to the door. “I’ll send a check. For the amount we agreed upon earlier.”

I shook my head. “You’ll get a bill with my normal fees. Pay that, and we’re done.”

She stood in the entryway as I pulled the big door open and stepped out. The sun was completely gone now, and I was greeted by chill, dark air. I turned back to her, now nothing more than a silhouette framed by the light over the entryway.

“Good luck, Karen,” I said, and then I walked back to my truck and drove away.

I
made it only to the end of that long, winding driveway before a pair of spotlights lit up the darkness, blinding me with harsh beams. I winced and slowed, shielding my eyes with my forearm. When I brought the truck to a stop, the spotlights went off, and then someone’s knuckles rapped on my window.

After a hard blink that sent white squares floating through my field of vision, I lowered the window, and after one more blink I was staring into the face of Hal Targent.

“Mr. Perry, how are you?”

“Tired, and going home. You want to clear those cars out of my way?”

“No, I want you to clear yourself out of your truck.”

I looked away from him and leaned back in my seat, frustration building through me and threatening to spill over. I wasn’t ready to deal with more of this. Not another cop sweating me over things I had nothing to do with. Not tonight.

“Get out of the truck, Mr. Perry.”

“No.”

“Excuse me?” He leaned in the window, and I could smell cigarettes on his breath.

“There’s no reason for me to get out of the truck, Targent. What the hell do you want?”

“Just want to talk. Easier to do that if you get out here with us.”

“I’m going home.”

He hooked his forearms over the door, leaning his entire upper body in through the window, into my space. I felt my hands go tight on the steering wheel, but I kept my eyes straight ahead, out the dark windshield. My vision had cleared enough to show me the two cruisers parked side by side in the driveway, blocking my exit. They couldn’t have followed me here, not when I was coming in straight from Indiana. That meant they were either watching Karen’s house or they’d happened to stop by, conveniently found my truck in the drive, and waited to ambush me on the way out.

“Last I heard you were in a jail in Indiana,” Targent said. “Came back and went right to see the widow, huh?”

“I was working for her.”

“So I hear. So I hear. Pretty funny, you working with her just a few days after you told us what a bitch she was, said you hadn’t seen her in years.”

“I hadn’t seen her in years. And I didn’t call her a bitch.”

Targent nodded absently. “Sure, sure. I spent a while on the phone today with a detective from Indiana, name of Brewer. Said he enjoyed some conversation with you.”

“He’s a lovely man.”

“That was my take, as well. Has some funny ideas, though.” Targent’s face was almost touching my own, lit with a green glow from the dashboard lights.

“Yeah, he does,” I said. The truck was in park but still running, and I stared at the gearshift and thought about dropping it into drive and hammering the accelerator, seeing if I could clip Targent’s toes before he got out of the way.

“Man proposed a theory to me that was damn near wild,” Targent said. “I mean, this is some made-for-TV-movie shit. He has two stars in it, a couple of old loves who reunite, secretly. Has things between them heating up again, and then they get this crazy idea to kill the woman’s husband. Why? Well, he’s in the way, of course, but there’s more than that. Turns out the poor bastard’s filthy rich, and the leading male character—in this Indiana guy’s version, I think you get the starring role—he’s had a hard-on for the husband for a while. Assaulted him once before, in fact. So, the couple, they take the husband off the playing field, right? But, shit, that’s only good for half the money. Other half goes to his prick kid, who was never even around. Don’t seem right. But what if the kid turns up dead himself? Be damn convenient. Now, here’s where the plot starts to slip away, in my opinion. Here’s where it goes from feature film to the made-for-TV shit. The man and woman try to fake the son’s suicide. A suicide, even though there’s no apparent motive for him to do it, and even though he’s standing to
inherit millions. Then—and this is where the Hollywood directors would really get pissed, because the story’s losing all credibility—the only witness to the suicide is the
same guy who’s a suspect in the husband’s murder
.”

Targent chuckled and shook his head. “I mean, is that not ridiculous? A suspect in the murder, the rich widow’s old love, he just happens to be the only witness to the kid’s suicide? That’s reaching for it, don’t you think?”

“Get the hell away from my truck,” I said, and I dropped the gearshift out of park and into drive.

“Now, slow down, Perry. I was just explaining the Indiana guy’s theory. It’s not my own.”