A Welcome Grave (24 page)

“Exactly,” Targent said.

“My partner and I have already uncovered some fairly appalling evidence of how corrupt the case against him was.”

I hadn’t decided until that point that I would tell them about Donny Ward. Part of me still thought it was too early, but I’d also expected to receive at least a meager amount of interest from Targent. So far, I wasn’t getting that.

“Doran told police he had an alibi,” I said. “Told them he’d been with a friend all night. When the cops interviewed the friend, this guy pretended to have no idea what Doran was talking about.”

“He probably didn’t.”

I shook my head. “Joe and I interviewed him this afternoon. He had plenty of reason to lie to the cops back then, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a lie.”

I explained Ward’s story, but Targent’s expression didn’t change; there was still no trace of anything but skepticism and strained patience in his face.

“Isn’t that enough for you, Targent? Don’t you think this is at least worth checking out?”

“I’ll check it out, because that’s my job, but my perspective right now is that this is more than a stretch. You’re forcing it. Even if everything you’ve told me is true, I don’t see the connection between this and Alex Jefferson.”

“It’s there. Trust me, it’s there. The guy who attacked me on the street told me Jefferson and his son had—”

“Hang on.” Targent held up his hand to interrupt me. “This is all fascinating stuff, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve got a few points to make before we get lost in this. What did you just say?”

I frowned. “That the guy who attacked me—”

“No. Before that. You said the connection was there, and then you said . . .” He waited.

“Trust me.”

He nodded. “That’s the one. That’s what I was looking for. You said, ‘Trust me.’ As if you’re a reliable source of information to this investigation. As if you’re not lying to me now, haven’t been in the past.”

“That’s right.”

“Okay. Let’s all keep that statement in mind while we watch a movie.”

“What?”

“Mrs. Jefferson and I were about to watch a movie when you joined us. I’m glad you’ll be here for the viewing. I think that’s most appropriate.”

Karen was seated in the far corner of the couch, tucked back into it, as far away as she could get from both Targent and me.

“Mrs. Jefferson and I have talked about last night’s events,” Targent continued. “We both agree that it’s unusual that this, um, predator has chosen to go
through you if all he wants is money from her. Why pull you off the street before he’d even contacted her? Why shoot up your gym?”

I looked at Karen, and there was a quality in her eyes that I didn’t understand. Was it an apology or an accusation? More like something in between, I thought, and then I got it. She was suspicious. Targent had actually pulled that off. Karen was suspicious of me. She didn’t want to be, felt bad about it—that was the touch of apology I saw in the look—but she was, anyhow.

“Karen,” I said. “You know this is insane.”

“I know you have nothing to do with this,” she said. “I’m just confused. I don’t understand why someone is making it seem like you do. This man in Indiana who said you hired him—”

“You told her that?” I said to Targent.

“It’s relevant to the investigation. I’m trying to keep her up to date.”

I shook my head, disgusted. “I don’t know what to tell you about that, Karen, except that it’s a lie. I never hired that guy.”

“I believe you.”

“Back to my movie,” Targent said.

“You’ve got to at least hear me out on Doran. There’s more here than you understand.”

“I’m sure there is. I find it fascinating that you’d locate this suspect with a grudge so quickly after I informed you—and Mrs. Jefferson—that Brewer had heard something along those lines in Indiana. That’s a real neat trick of timing, Perry. As was that violent incident at your gym last night.”

“You’ve seen the tape of that. You know what happened, and you know it wasn’t some elaborate façade.”

For a long moment, he just sat and looked at me. His eyes flicked to Karen for an instant, as if to make sure she was watching, and then back.

“I’ve been talking to Mrs. Jefferson about the fingerprint we found in her husband’s car. This man named Thor.”

Shit. That was the last thing I wanted Karen to know about.

“Met with Detective Swanders again today, as well as one of the organized crime guys at the FBI,” he continued. “There are people down there who are pretty disgusted with you. People who think you withheld some very important information about the Russians. Some believe you might have interacted directly with Dainius Belov when all that was going on. This Thor guy, they told me, he probably would have been around. Sounds like he’s Belov’s top lieutenant. I asked the guy at the bureau to give me odds on you knowing Thor, and he said ten to one.”

Karen would not meet my eyes. She was watching Targent and would not turn my way.

“You want to tell Mrs. Jefferson how you’re acquainted with Thor?”

“Already told you, I don’t know the man.”

Targent picked up a remote control and turned to the big plasma television beside him. He turned it on and then punched a few buttons on the remote, and the screen turned to a grainy black-and-white image of my gym. It was from my own security cameras, and it showed the front of the weight room, where I stood by the blown-out window with a curl bar in my hands and Thor in front of me.

“Can you tell us who that gentleman is?” Targent said.

Now it was me who couldn’t look at Karen. “You know who it is.”

“Right. And so do you, Perry. We’re sitting here looking at proof that you’ve lied to me. Remember what you told me this afternoon when we searched your apartment? You told me I needed to prove that you were lying. Consider it done. And lying to me is withholding information critical to a homicide investigation, and that can be considered a crime. You lied yesterday when I asked you about him, then lied again sitting here in front of your client thirty seconds ago.”

“You shouldn’t have that tape. I never gave—”

“I left an officer watching your gym today. For your own well-being. You know how guys sometimes like to drift back by the scene of a crime, check it out. Thought maybe we’d get lucky, and I guess we did. I just didn’t expect it to happen the way it did.”

“Your officer didn’t shoot that tape. It’s from my gym camera. That’s illegal search and seizure.”

“Perfectly legal. You gave me consent to the tapes in the presence of about five other officers.”

“That was for last night’s tape.”

“Really? Sorry, I forgot. Called your gym manager and told her I had one tape to return and one to pick up. We agreed that it would be best not to bother you. After all, you’d had a long night.” He cocked his head. “Tell me why Thor was there.”

“Dropped by to ask about a membership. Wants to get back in shape, he said.”

Targent’s face stayed neutral, but Karen’s flushed with anger. I looked at her and felt my shoulders tighten and the back of my neck go hot. Honesty matters deeply to me, and to sit here in front of Karen and lie was painful. I could
tell them why Thor had been there, what information he had shared, but I wouldn’t. Even if I could disregard the fact that Thor had saved my life once, decide that wasn’t enough to earn my silence, I’d be a damn fool to talk. Send Targent back to Thor with the details of our conversation? I might as well start shopping for a headstone.

“I didn’t kill Alex Jefferson,” I said. “I didn’t hire someone else to kill him. All the rest of this is external, irrelevant crap. If you want someone to be guilty bad enough, you can find something that makes him look like a possibility.”

“True enough,” Targent said. “But I’d like to hear you explain something.
Anything.
Why is this guy going after you? Why did Jefferson’s son wait for you to arrive before capping himself? Why is Thor involved, and why are you lying about him? Can you give us
one
answer, Perry? That’s what I’m asking from you.
One
honest answer.”

“This is ludicrous, Targent. You really think I’m behind all of it? Karen came to
me
about finding Matt, not the other way around. Karen asked
me
to help with this. That’s why I’m involved.”

“He’s right,” Karen said.

“Terrific. She brought you into it. What does that explain? Which one of my questions does that answer?”

“That’s
your
job. I’m trying to help, but you won’t even hear me out on Andy Doran. Aren’t you even a little intrigued by the timing of his prison break and those first phone calls to Jefferson? Or do you think it’s more likely that I spent the past three years brooding and working up my nut to kill a guy for something that was such a minor offense?”

“Did you think it was a minor offense when you assaulted him?”

“That’s in the past, gone and forgotten. Stop trying to make it count.”

“I’ve seen some things that suggest maybe it isn’t gone and forgotten, Perry. Your little box of keepsakes . . .”

“I kept photographs of a woman I was engaged to and you think that’s evidence of some sort of obsession? Are you serious? It would be more psychotic if I
didn’t
have anything like that, if I’d purged it all.”

“My partner interviewed one of Alex Jefferson’s colleagues. This guy said Alex saw you at his wedding, parked on the street, watching the ceremony. He didn’t tell Mrs. Jefferson because he didn’t want to put a damper on their special day.”

Karen looked at me with surprise and sympathy, and I turned away.

“This is a cheap tactic, Targent. Throwing this shit in my face with her in the room.”

“Cheap tactic or not, I’d like you to explain your presence at their wedding. That seems, Perry, like the action of a guy who has not moved on. A guy who has an unhealthy obsession.”

I shook my head, not wanting to look at either of them.

“Well?” Targent said. “Can you explain?”

I laughed without humor. “Yeah, I can explain it. I missed her. Is that what you want to hear? That what you need me to say, you prick? I missed her. Was it unhealthy, to miss someone I loved? I don’t know. It was just the way it went, for a while. But it stopped going that way a long time ago.”

“I don’t think we need to be talking about this,” Karen said, and the pity in her voice wounded me.

“It’s all right, Karen. He wants to lay the pressure on, and that’s fine. The sad part is that it’s not helping you.”

“And you turning up in every corner we check, disrupting our investigation?” Targent said. “That’s helping?”

“I’m not turning up anywhere, Targent. Someone’s trying to give it that appearance, that’s all. But since you can’t recognize the truth when you hear it—”

“You know what? I’m done with you tonight. You’ve had your say, Perry. I’d like you to go on home.”

“I came for a few words alone with Karen, thanks.”

“You can have them later. I’m not through with my conversation with her, but I am through with you. Take off, Perry. You want to talk to her, you can call her later, although I will urge her not to take your call.”

“It’s okay, Lincoln,” Karen said. “I don’t know what’s happening, but I do know you. Don’t worry about this.”

I’d been dismissed. I got to my feet with the two of them sitting there waiting for me to leave, walked down the hall, and let myself out of the house, closing the door on soft voices discussing my potential as a murderer.

C
onfusion kills.

The words were written on a dry-erase board, with a marker that made a wince-producing squeak at the end of each letter, the old cop’s hand moving too fast, using too much pressure.

The training seminar was called “Critical Incident Response,” bureaucratic code that meant situations where people were going to shoot at us. I was one of a dozen cops in the room, listening to an instructor who’d trained SWAT teams all over the country for the better part of three decades.

Confusion kills.
He read it aloud, then faced us.

“You must know your assailant, you must know your friend,” he said. “It sounds simple sitting here in this room. It will not be simple when it’s dark and loud and there are bullets searching for your heart. If you are properly trained, properly prepared, you will execute under fire, you will survive, you will accomplish your goals. If you are not, then the first thing those bullets will create is confusion. And confusion, gentlemen, kills.”

Matt Jefferson came home from a day in the apple orchard as the sun descended. Pulled his truck into the gravel parking lot beside the barn just as he did every evening, walked up the stone path to his apartment door, and stopped short. Read my note. A man from Cleveland was here to see him. Family business. The man would return.

A few short sentences, one meaning clear to me, another meaning clear to Matt Jefferson. While I sat in a small-town diner, eating pie and thinking about Amy, Matt pulled the note off the door and went upstairs, found a bottle of whiskey and a gun, and walked down to the gazebo to wait.

What a beautiful spot. It must have been something as the sun set, that pond catching whatever muted colors the overcast day allowed, then fading to a black sparkle as the sky darkened and the moon rose. I’d taken my time with dinner, driven slowly on the return to the orchard. He’d had some time to sit. Listen to the wind, watch the dead leaves fall to the earth, taste the whiskey in his mouth and feel it burn down his throat, the stock of the gun cool and comfortable in his hand.