A Welcome Grave (20 page)

“But you are in love with his wife?”

“No. I was once. I’m not now.”

“We know some things about one another,” he said, the words slow and careful, as if he had taken great care selecting them. “Things that would probably be best left between us.”

“I’m not going to talk.”

His head bobbed once. “There was another man . . .”

“He’s gone, and he was so scared of you that he’ll never talk, no matter the incentives.”

This, he certainly believed.

“I suppose that is all, then.” He gazed around the room once more. “At least for me. You? You seem to have some issues that need to be addressed. I wish you luck with that. I trust you will not need it.”

He turned on his heel and moved back for the window, reaching out for the free edge of the plastic sheet.

“Wait,” I said.

“Yes?” half-facing me, but still leaning toward the window.

“Why were you in his car?”

When those ice-blue eyes met mine, my spine felt as cold as the metal bar in my hands.

“I do not discuss the affairs of others.”

He would end the lives of others, had done so frequently, but he would not discuss their affairs. Honor.

“They’re coming for me, Thor. Whoever did kill Jefferson, and the cops. They’re all coming for me.”

Thor cocked his head, frowning. He did not like to talk. He was a man of deeds, not discussion. He stood there and stared at me, though, and I thought that maybe he was remembering the way we’d locked eyes after he’d plunged his knife into another man’s body, remembering that he’d not seen me in court after that, testifying against him. Those things that he wanted to remain between us already had, for some time.

“An offer was made,” he said. “It was made out of confusion. I declined the offer, and I went on my way. That was the only time I ever saw the man.”

“What offer?”

He looked at me for a long time, and just when I thought he was going to decline to answer and make his exit, he told me.

“Alex Jefferson wanted to employ me to kill a man. I do not know who the man was, because I stopped him long before he got to the details of the situation. I told Mr. Jefferson that whatever he had been told about me, it was wrong. I told him that I do not engage in activities of murder for money.”

No, only murder
over
money
, I thought. Didn’t seem like the kind of point Thor would appreciate, though, so I didn’t offer it.

“How did he find you?”

“Through an acquaintance who has represented some of my associates in legal matters.”

“A criminal defense lawyer, then,” I said, and he seemed amused again.

“That is of no concern to you. I have told you all I can. I would hate to think that I have already said too much?”

The question held the menacing edge of a machete blade.

“You haven’t said too much.”

He didn’t respond to that, just nodded once, politely, and lifted the free edge of plastic and stepped over the low window frame and out onto the sidewalk.

For a long time after he was gone, I kept the curl bar in my hands.

S
o it wasn’t too much of a coincidence, after all,” Joe said. “I said earlier that the city wasn’t small enough for both you and Thor to figure into this. When it comes to hired killings, though? City becomes an awful lot smaller. Tight little community.”

I winced. “You’re including me in that community?”

He shrugged. “Look,
I’m
not getting visitors like Thor.”

I pushed out of my chair and walked to the window, looked down on the street for the third time since I’d gotten to the office. I was looking down on the street a lot lately. It’s a habit you pick up when you always think someone dangerous is nearby. Just a little healthy paranoia.

“I should have pushed him harder.”

“Are you insane? Men like Thor do not respond well to pushing, LP.”

“Men like Thor also share only the bare minimum of information,” I said, turning back to him. “He knows more than he gave me.”

“If I were you, I’d just be glad he walked back out that window.” Joe shook his head. “Walking through the damn window. For all his stillness and calm, that guy has a flair for the dramatic.”

“If Jefferson was willing to hire Thor to do his killing, he’d have been willing to hire someone else. If whatever he was afraid of had become that serious,
pushed him to that extent, then he wouldn’t stop because one man declined his offer. He’d keep looking.”

“Maybe.”

“Thor basically admitted that Jefferson had found out about him from a criminal defense lawyer who has defended Belov’s crew. If we can find that guy, maybe we can find out who else he might be connected to.”

Joe looked at me as if I’d offered him a glass of milk that had been left in the sun for a week.

“Surely, LP, you’re not suggesting we refocus on interviewing every contract killer we can find.”

“One of them will know something.”

“Right. And when we find that one, he’ll kill us and consider the problem solved. I’d suggest approaching this a little more obliquely.”

I ran a palm over my face, feeling the haze of a sleepless night already working on my brain.

“I know you’re right. It’s just difficult to pull my mind away from Thor. He’s the sort of guy who can hold on to it, you know?”

“I certainly haven’t forgotten him. But I think I’ve got something that’ll re-focus you.”

“Yeah?”

He had a piece of paper in his hand, an excited gleam in his eyes.

“Remember the problem we had believing that someone connected to Andy Doran could be coming after Jefferson?”

I nodded. “The time lag. It seemed like a stretch.”

“About ten minutes before you showed up, that problem was blown away, LP.”

He slid the paper onto my desk, and I saw it was a printout from an Internet newspaper site.

“Andy Doran escaped from prison the end of September. He was back on the streets over two weeks before Jefferson was killed.”

I picked up the printout and looked from it back to Joe. He had a tight smile on his face.

“Well? Think you’ll be able to forget about Thor for a bit now?”

Without answering, I dropped my eyes and read through the article. Doran had been one of three inmates from a cleanup detail who’d broken out of prison by hiding in a garbage truck. The other two had been arrested within twenty-four hours. Doran had vanished.

“Are you sure he’s still out? Most of these guys are caught so fast . . .”

“He’s still out. There’s a page devoted to him on the U.S. marshals’ Web site.”

I read the article a second time, then set it aside and stared at Joe. “He’s the guy. Doran’s the guy.”

“I’m leaning that way myself.”

“When he had that bag over my head, he told me that Jefferson’s son called his dad for help, and he paid the price for five years. It says in this article that he’d been in prison for five years on a twenty-year sentence.”

“It’s a possibility,” Joe said. “Maybe a strong one. But we’ve got to dig deeper before we throw this one at Targent. A single remark about five years of paying a price is not going to convince the cops.”

I looked back down at the article. “It said he was convicted of manslaughter.”

“I saw that, and I don’t understand it. We’re going to need to go get the case file, see how all of this unfolded.”

“Case file will be out in Geneva.”

“Right. Which is why I suggest we leave now.”

I called Karen while we drove, asked her if she’d received any more phone calls, any more threats. She hadn’t, but it was clear she was still shaken from the first, speaking in a tight voice, her words coming too quickly, her tone too uneven.

“You okay?” I said. “You get any sleep?”

She gave a bitter laugh. “No, Lincoln. I didn’t feel sleep was much of a possibility last night. The police came out and spent a long time here. That was good. I was . . . It was a tough night. I was a little unsteady.”

“Maybe you should go somewhere today. Get out of that house, stop being alone, spend some time around people.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“All right. Listen, Joe and I are working on this, okay? We’ve got some ideas, maybe a decent lead. We’re going to make progress today, Karen. I’m sure of it.”

“Anything you want to tell me about?”

“Give me the day. Let us have the day to work on it, and I’ll come by the house tonight, tell you what we’ve done and what we’re considering.”

“I’d appreciate that, Lincoln. I
do
appreciate it.”

I hung up and relayed the conversation to Joe.

“I’d be damn careful deciding what to tell her, and when to tell it,” he said. “There are a million types of grudges, and reasons for them. But if this guy really is Doran, and he really was innocent?”

“It’ll make Jefferson look like one dirty son of a bitch.”

He nodded. “You got it.”

“I don’t have trouble buying that idea.”

“No. But Karen will. And having it come from you . . .”

“Let’s worry about that when we get to it. All I care about now is finding out what happened to this guy.”

Making the drive felt good. Joe was in the car with me, where he belonged, and we were making progress on a case that mattered. It was in that moment of satisfaction that I thought of the question I’d asked him yesterday, the one he’d chosen not to answer.

“I appreciate you coming out with me on this one, Joe. Don’t know if I made that clear enough.”

“It’s nothing.”

“When I came by your house yesterday, though . . . I asked when you were planning on coming back.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You didn’t answer.”

He was quiet. I kept my eyes on the road and waited.

“I joined the police right out of school,” he said. “It was the only thing I ever wanted to do, the only thing I ever considered doing. So I joined up, and I did my thirty. Ruth died and I took a week off and went right back to work, and then it was all I had. She and I had made all these plans, right? Plans for retirement, the way we’d spend it together. But then she was gone, and what was I going to do, see Europe by myself? Build a greenhouse and plant tropical flowers? Come on. All that was gone, and so I retired and started the PI gig with you. Didn’t pause for so much as a summer. Just went right back into the work. It was without the badge and without the bureaucracy, but it was the same work.”

He paused for a minute, and I wanted to look at him but was afraid to, somehow, as if movement would disrupt him, stop him from continuing.

“When I got shot this summer, it forced me to step away from it,” he said. “That was the first time I’d done that, LP. The first time since I was a kid that I wasn’t living and breathing an investigation.”

“And that was good?”

“Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. It was different, at least. It was something different, after three decades of it all being largely the same. And it made me wonder . . . I don’t know.”

“What?”

“I guess it made me wonder if there’s something else I want to do before
I’m gone, you know? Something else I need to do, or should do. I’m running out of time—”

“You’re not running out of time.”

“You say that because you’re young. I’m not at death’s door or anything, LP, I know that, but I’m also not young. I’m old, and getting older. And all I’ve ever done is this sort of work.”

I looked over at him for the first time since he’d started to talk. “Are you happy being away from it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t look happy. You looked . . . kind of empty, Joe. I understand what you’re saying about how long you’ve been in this game, but all you were doing until I dragged you back out of the house was sitting in your chair in the living room. Is that better for you?”

He shook his head. “No, it’s not. I have no intention of spending the rest of my life sitting in that chair, feeling like a damned old man. There’s a part of me that believes it’s time for a change, though. I was in the chair only because I don’t know what the change should be, or even if it should be.”

I sat and watched the highway open up ahead of us, didn’t say a word.

“I know you feel like I left you adrift these last couple of months,” Joe said, “but if you were smart enough to consider it, you’d realize there’s an unspoken compliment there. I don’t have to worry about you. Don’t have to call the office nine times a day to make sure nothing’s going wrong. Nothing will be going wrong, because you’re good. You’re damn good, probably already better than I am in some ways. You’ve got an instinct for this sort of work that’s as good as anybody’s I’ve ever seen, and now you’ve matured to the point where you can build off the instinct with a cool head. You’re not the cowboy you used to be, not so much of one, at least.”

“I still need you, Joe. I can’t run this thing by myself.”

“That’s not true.” He shook his head. “You can run it by yourself, and you know that. You can handle any case that comes our way, handle it well. You did it alone for the last few months, and did it easily.”

“You know I’ll support you with whatever it is you want to do,” I said. “I don’t want to work alone, but I will support you if you decide to leave.”