The Silent Hour (36 page)

    He
squeezed the rag in his hand, and drops of sweat fell into the grass.

    "She
kept her promise, Lincoln. So I'll keep mine. I'm sorry, but I'll keep
mine."

    The
summer went down quietly. The heat broke and the humidity dropped and the kids
went back to school. The Indians put together one of their classic late-season
runs to ensure you'd spend the winter with that bitter oh-so-close taste in
your mouth. The gym attracted a few new members. The PI office stayed closed
and locked.

    Joe
came back to town in the middle of September. He'd been gone for more than nine
months without a single trip back, and when he opened up his house and stepped
inside and looked around, I couldn't read his feelings.

    "So
much dust," he said. He'd left Florida at the end of August but headed
west instead of north, making the drive to Idaho with Gena. Just keeping her
company on a long drive, he'd said. He spent two weeks there, though, and I
wondered if it had been a scouting trip of sorts. He'd told me the two of them
had not made any future plans but had also not closed any doors. I left it at
that.

    We
reopened the office on the last day of September and devoted a morning to
cleaning and reorganizing. We'd share the background check duties and the
profits. It wouldn't be enough to support both of us, but that was okay—we each
had a supplemental income, mine through the gym and Joe's through his police
pension. The screenings provided extra cash as well as something to do.

    By
mid-October we'd developed a comfortable rhythm, spending a few mornings a week
in the office together, processing reports and requesting local court record
checks where we needed them. It felt good to have Joe back, good to exchange
some of our old jabs and barbs. What we were doing was not detective work, not
in any sense that I'd come to know, but it was important, too. We routinely
discovered applicants with criminal charges in their histories, from
misdemeanors to felonies. These were the kind of people you didn't want in your
employ, the sort who could bring real problems inside the walls of your
company. In some circumstances, the charges were very old—ten, fifteen, twenty
years—but we recorded them just the same. Old charges or not, there was a risk
factor associated with the hiring of those people, and our new employer didn't
want to take that risk. Couldn't afford to, they told us. Not in this day and
age.

    It
was late October when I heard from Quinn Graham. He called the office and
seemed surprised when I answered.

    "I
thought you'd quit."

    "Just
case work. We've got some other things on the table."

    "I
see."

    "What's
up, Graham— You got something—"

    "No,"
he said, and I could hear embarrassment in his voice. "Not the sort of
thing you're looking for, at least."

    "Then
what is it—"

    "Thought
you might like to know that Joshua Cantrell's parents won their case yesterday."

    "Alexandra's
legally declared dead—"

    "Yeah,
that happened a few weeks back, actually. Yesterday they came to a settlement.
The house is going to be claimed by the estate and sold."

    "Money
split between them and Sanabria—"

    "No.
Sanabria's attorneys showed up and said he wanted no part of it.

    Went
through whatever legal process they had to for him to waive his interest. It
all goes to the Cantrells now."

    At least
that bastard wasn't taking the money. It wasn't much, but it helped.

    "They
going to put the house on the market soon—" I asked.

    "Immediately,
is my understanding."

    We
talked a little while longer, and he told me that a few weeks earlier he had
made an arrest in the case of the murdered girls that he'd been working that
summer. The perp was a thirty-year-old graduate student at Penn State who was
working on a thesis about pornography. I was glad Graham got him. I was glad
he'd told me about it, too. It was good to know these things.

    Two
days later a short article ran in the newspaper. It wasn't much, but it
explained the legal situation and announced the pending sale of the house.
Asking price hadn't been set yet but was rumored to be around four million. The
Cantrell family was considering subdividing the land, though, so there would be
a delay in the sale while they studied their options.

    The
morning the article ran, I stopped in the office and asked Joe if he could
handle a few days without me.

    "Where
you going to be—"

    "Sitting
in the woods with binoculars and a camera."

    He
looked at me for a long time without speaking.

    "I
know you'll think it's crazy," I said, "but I want to watch that
house."

    "The
Cantrell house— You want to watch it—"

    I
nodded. "I want to see who shows."

    "What
makes you think anyone will except a Realtor—"

    "Because
that place is sacred to people, Joe. Was, at least. I'd like to know if anyone
comes to say goodbye."

    "Alexandra—"

    "I
don't know. There might be a chance. Or maybe Dominic. Or Harrison. Or somebody
else entirely."

    He
frowned. "Even if someone does—and I have trouble believing that anyone
will—what the hell will that tell you—"

    
I
didn't answer that. Couldn't. Still, I wanted to see it. I was remembering Ken
Merriman's remark that day on Murray Hill.
She had a damn epitaph carved
beside the door. That place means something to her. So let me tell you—if she's
alive, I bet she'll come back to see it again.

    "If
you feel it's worth a shot, then knock yourself out," foe said. He paused,
then said, "Hell, maybe I could take a day or two at it with you. Been a
while since I did any surveillance. Old time's sake, why not, right—"

    We logged
a full week at it. I spent more time there than Joe, rising early each morning
and sitting until dusk each night, but he put in plenty of hours. I didn't
think it was wise to sit inside the gate, so instead we parked up the road and
watched.

    In the
first two days, there was a decent amount of activity, but it was casual
interest, people who drove up to the gate and then pulled back out and went on
their way. The newspaper story had sparked some curiosity, that was all.

    On
the third day, someone drove a black BMW up to the gate, unlocked it, and drove
through. I was intrigued by that one until the driver stepped out of the car,
and then I recognized him as Anthony Child. Checking on the property one last
time, maybe, before it was taken out of his care. He would probably be glad to
see the hassle go.

    The
next afternoon there were more visitors. An old van arrived just after one and
parked at the end of the drive. I watched through my long-range camera lens as
the doors opened and two men stepped out—Parker Harrison from the passenger
side and a rangy, gray-haired guy I'd never seen from the driver's seat. The
gray-haired guy was carrying a bouquet of flowers. He kept them in his hand as
he and Harrison walked around the gate and began to fight their way up through
the woods, just as I had in the spring. I snapped a few pictures before they
disappeared into the trees, including one clear shot of the van and the license
plate.

    Joe
had been out with me for the morning but left around noon. I called him at the
office now. "Guess who's here. Parker Harrison."

    "Really—"

    "Uh-huh.
Just showed up with another guy I didn't recognize, and they aren't in
Harrison's truck. You want to run the plate for me—"

    I
gave him the license number, and a few minutes later he called back and told me
the truck was registered to a Mark Ruzity.

    "Mean
anything to you—"

    "Yeah.
He was another of Alexandra's murderers. The first one."

    "What
do you think they're doing—"

    "Paying
respects," I said. "He brought flowers, Joe. I'm telling you, the
place is a damn memorial at this point."

    Ruzity
and Harrison came back out twenty minutes later, sans flowers, and got back
into the truck and drove away.

    So
now I had an answer. I'd seen what I told him I wanted to see, and yet I knew
nothing more than I had before. Ken's bizarre prediction—
she'll come back to
see it
—was as foolish as I should have known it was.

    I
stayed, though. For the rest of that day, and the three that followed. By the
end of the week I was starting to lose my mind from sitting in one spot so
long, and Joe was quiet on the topic, which meant he thought it was time to
give up. Even Amy asked how much longer I intended to keep watch, and her tone
made her feelings clear—it was time to call the surveillance off.

    I
told them I wanted one more day. Spent twelve hours watching that lonely drive
and the gate and didn't see a soul.

    "You
knew it was a long shot anyhow," Amy said. "Time to let it
pass."

    I
agreed with her, told her the whole thing had gone on too long. Then the next
morning I got up and took my camera and my binoculars and drove back and
watched nothing. I did it the day after that, too, then came home and told Amy
I'd spent the day at the gym. The next morning I rose before dawn and returned.

    That
was the coldest day of the fall so far, and by seven my coffee was gone and the
sun wasn't even up yet and the chill had already filled the cab of the truck
and gone to work on my knotted back and shoulder muscles. It was time to quit,
I realized. This was lunacy, or close to it.

    I was
parked just off the road beside a cluster of saplings and brush, squeezed in
the back of the extended cab with blackout curtains hung in the windows. I'd
now spent about a hundred hours in this position, the most surveillance time
I'd logged on a case in years, and I wasn't making a dime from it.

    When
the headlights crested the hill and slowed near the drive, I didn't even lift
my camera. I'd seen too many cars pass to get excited about this one. Then it
came to a complete stop, and I sat up and pushed the blackout curtain farther
aside and watched as the car—a small red sedan—turned into the gravel track and
drove right up to the gate. I finally got my shit together then, reached for
the camera and got it up and turned on as the driver's door swung open. My zoom
was good, but it wasn't built for low-light conditions, and all I could see in
the predawn gloom was that the driver looked like a woman, and she was walking
around the gate and through the trees. She was walking toward the house.

    For a
moment, I wasn't sure what to do. I just sat there holding my camera and
looking at the dark trees she'd vanished into, wondering if I should wait for
her to reemerge and then follow her, or set off now with hopes of catching her
at the house. After a brief hesitation, I decided to take action over patience.

    I got
out of the truck, leaving my camera but wearing my gun, and walked down the
road toward the drive. I took my time, knowing that any attempt to follow her
quietly through the woods around the creek would be hopeless. It was important
to give her a little lead time. When I reached the red sedan, I knelt by the
back bumper and took a photograph of the license plate with my cell phone's
built-in camera, a device I'd come to appreciate in moments like this. It was
an Ohio plate. Surely, then, this couldn't be Alexandra. She couldn't be living
so close to home. It would be an aggressive Realtor checking on the house
before going to the office, and nothing more. When I walked around to the front
of the car I spotted an Avis sticker, though. A rental.

    I
walked toward the woods bordering the gate. The trees didn't seem nearly so
dark when I was in them as they'd looked through the camera, and I found I was
able to walk without much difficulty. It was easier now, in late fall, than it
had been in spring, when everything was green and growing and the water in the
creek rode high on the banks. Once I was around the gate and away from the
creek I slowed again, focusing on a quiet approach now. I made my way back to
the rutted drive and followed it along, seeing and hearing nothing of the woman
ahead.