The Silent Hour Page 3

  The bottom was covered with plywood that was rotted and broken, weeds and mud caking the jagged edges of the boards. I leaned back and surveyed the hilltop. It looked like hell now, all the thickets and tall weeds threatening to take over, but I could imagine how beautiful it had been when Parker Harrison tended the grounds and kept the woods at bay. It was a solitary place, that was for damn sure. I couldn't hear a sound except wind and birds. Even though the highway was less than a mile away, I couldn't hear any traffic. That seemed impossible to me, so I listened harder and still couldn't hear a car. Finally I gave up and walked away from the well.

  At the far end of the hill there was a little ridge of stone, and once I got up to it I realized it was the top edge of the back of the house. I walked along it until I came to the end, and there I found a little path that led back down the side of the hill and emptied out behind the house.

  It was just as Harrison had said—two stories of almost sheer glass looking out on the water. There was no fountain now, and the pond was covered with a skim of algae and leaves and hidden behind a cluster of dried, broken reeds, but I hardly cared about the water. The house held all my attention. It should have been gorgeous, but instead it was buried under a heavy layer of grime and disrepair. The windows were broken in several places and covered with dirt, but even so you could see what it must have been, what it could still be if only someone had taken care of it.

  I walked up to the lower-level window and used my shirtsleeve to rub away some of the filth, then pressed my face to the glass, shielding my eyes with my hands like someone window-shopping at a store that had closed for the night.

  A swimming pool was just inside, long and deep. A lap pool. Empty, of course, with stains and corrosion lining the cracked tank. Around the pool was a floor of Italian tile, many of the pieces broken, and behind that the thick plaster walls were bare. I could see two ornate columns rising behind the door that led into the next room, and a curving stone wall with a fireplace.

  I stood there for a long time. Didn't move until my breath began to fog the glass and I could no longer see. Then I stepped away and looked from the house to the silent pond and back again, suddenly feeling very ill at ease.

  This was not normal. The housing market in Medina County wasn't booming, but some people were willing to trade a long commute for a little country living, and the price tag on a place like this would have been mighty. So why not sell it— Why did you let a home like this sit empty and exposed to the elements for twelve years—

  I walked away from the back of the house and up the other side of the hill. I found an angle that allowed me to look in at the second story, in at more beautiful but empty rooms. All the way around the hill was another entrance, a sunporch with almost all the glass broken out. I stepped over the jagged shards and walked to this door and repeated my face-to-the-window act. This time I saw a hallway bordered by a short partition that had recessed floodlights and doors opening to hidden rooms beyond. Back through the broken glass and into the woods, and now I was walking away from the house faster than I'd walked toward it, returning to my truck with a strange tightness In the middle of my back and sweat-dampened hair clinging to my forehead.

  I splashed back through the creek without a single muttered curse or a thought about my shoes and climbed up to the driveway.

  People did not leave homes like this. I'd never seen anything like it, and maybe that was why it was affecting me in this way, why I felt almost relieved when I was back in the driver's seat and had the engine going. It was just something… different, that was all. Felt a little off because, well, it was a little off. Abnormal. Still, I could figure out what had happened, and I could tell Harrison, and I could be done with it. I owed him that much, because his request certainly seemed genuine, convicted murderer or not. This much of the truth he had told me: The door was there in the earth, and the house beyond it was empty.

  * * *

  Chapter Four

  My shoes forced a return home. I was tempted to head straight for the Medina County Recorder's Office, find out who held the deed on the property and whether there was a mortgage, and then continue on to the auditor's office to see whether the taxes were truly paid up and who the hell was paying them. My shoes and the lower third of my pants were soaked and coated with a slimy creek mud, though, and I didn't want to go tramping into the county offices looking like I'd just emerged from a swamp.

  I was back in the city, only a few blocks from my building, when Amy called.

  "Guess who visited today—" I said in place of a hello.

  "Who—"

  "Parker Harrison."

  Amy Ambrose, friend-turned-girlfriend—a process not without its humps—was well aware of the letters I'd received from Harrison.

  "The psycho—"

  "The rehabilitated murderer, Amy."

  "Fava beans," she said. "Tell me he talked about fava beans."

  "Sadly, no."

  "Well, what the hell did he want— How was it— Is he crazy— I bet he's charming. Those guys always are. Or did he get angry— I could see him getting—"

  "Amy."

  "Sorry. Got carried away."

  "Indeed." I turned left across traffic and bounced into the alley beside my building.

  "So—" she prompted.

  "He is unique," I said. "More toward the charming side, definitely."

  "Please don't tell me he charmed you into working on his case. From what I read, the guy couldn't be any guiltier."

  "That isn't in dispute." I parked and shut off the engine. "He candidly admitted his guilt."

  "What did he want with you, then—"

  "Help with the most minor of investigations. I mean, it's odd that he went through all the dramatics of the letters, because this is something that shouldn't take much time—"

  "Oh, no. You agreed to do it, didn't you—"

  "Why do you say that—"

  "Because you're trying to explain it in that rational, matter-of-fact tone you always use to justify something stupid."

  I smiled and didn't answer.

  "Speak," she said. "Tell me I'm wrong."

  More silence.

  "Lincoln!"

  I explained it to her then, told her about Harrison's story as quickly as possible and went on to describe the house. I knew the house would pacify her. Amy's natural curiosity well exceeds my own.

  "How much do you think the place is worth—" she asked when I was done, her voice softer.

  "I'm not good with real estate, but I'd have to say a few million with all that property involved. The house is incredible, but it's also been ignored for a long time. It would take someone willing to invest in rehabilitation."

  "I want to see it," she said.

  "Bring some waders, that creek provides the best way in."

  "Your psychopath didn't mention that— He didn't even know there was a gate—"

  "My client did not, no."

  "Hey, you work for a murderer, you better get used to the criticism and name-calling. Anyway, maybe that means the gate is new."

  "Probably."

  "I wonder who put it up."

  "So do I. I'm going to change clothes and drive back down there and check with the auditor, see who has been paying the taxes."

  "You're going back today—"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Lot of driving for one day."

  It was, and with any other case I might have delayed the return trip. This was different, somehow. There was something about the place that had gotten under my skin after just one visit, and I wanted to know who was responsible for it, who'd kept it away from a sheriff's sale but still didn't bother to actually take care of the home.

  "I'm not busy," I said. "Faster I get this worked out, the faster I can terminate my relationship with Harrison."

  'Two hours later, wearing fresh pants and shoes, I stood in the recorder's office and stared at a warranty deed confirming that, yes, Alexandra and Joshua Cantrell owned the home. There was n
o mortgage. They'd paid five hundred thousand for the property alone seventeen years earlier. It was a forty-eight-acre parcel.

  So Harrison's information was accurate and up-to-date and the Cantrells still owned the home. Now came the second step, the auditor's office, where I'll find a new address for the couple.

  Well, it was supposed to go that way. When I took the parcel number over lo the auditor's office and requested the records, though, I learned that the tuxes had been paid each year—in full and on time—by one Anthony Child, attorney at law, Hinckley, Ohio. Okay, maybe I was going to need a third step lo finish this one off.

  Child's office was on the second floor of a brick building on the square in Hinckley, which is a town known nationally for Buzzard Day, a bizarre ritual in which people gather each April to welcome a returning flock of turkey vultures. In some places, this return would be cause for alarm, or at least mild revulsion. In Ohio, it's a celebration. Hey, we have long, tedious winters, all right— You take your excitement where you can get it.

  Attorney Child was in, and willing to see me. The entire firm seemed to consist of an angry-looking secretary in an outer room and Child alone in the office behind that. The door to the tiny attached bathroom stood open, showing a toilet with the seat up. First class. For a good thirty seconds after I'd been shown into his office he kept his back to me, staring at the TV. Weather report. Can't miss that.

  "Hot," he said when he finally clicked the television off and turned to me. "Unusually hot for the first week of May."

  "I know it."

  "Going to be a rough summer. You can always tell."

  Everyone else was rejoicing that winter had finally broken, and this guy was bitching about the summer to come. Cheerful. He sat and stared at me without much interest. Maybe fifty years old, small face with slack jowls and sleepy eyes. His tie was loosened, and his jacket was off.

  "I was just explaining to your secretary that I found you through a tax record," I said. "I'm curious about some property, and when I pulled the records I found your office handled the payments."

  That was all it took to wake the sleepy eyes up. They narrowed and focused, and he pushed away from the desk and ran both thumbs down the straps of his suspenders.

  "What exactly is your line of work, Mr. Perry—"

  I took out a business card and passed it across the desk to him. He looked at it long enough to read every word three times and then read them backward. Finally he set the card carefully on the desk and kept one hand on it while he looked back up at me.

  "This is about the Cantrell house."

  I nodded.

  "Who are you working for—"

  Here I hesitated, for the obvious reason. Parker Harrison's name hadn't meant anything to me until he'd taken to writing letters, but Child was a good deal older and more likely to remember a murderer from that era than I was.

  "Someone who's interested in the property," I said after a beat of silence. "It's a damn expensive home to leave in that condition."

  "I take it you've trespassed out there and seen the place— Don't worry, I'm not going to report you. Plenty of people have trespassed there before. It's a damn headache, that house is, and for as little money as I've made off the arrangements, I wish I'd never agreed to it."

  He was warming up to me now, waving his hand around while he talked, looking more relaxed.

  "You put up the gate," I said.

  He nodded.

  "At the Cantrells' request—"

  A hesitation, as if I'd asked something odd, and then, "No, not exactly. I'd been out to the house a few times and saw that there'd been some vandalism. 'I he sheriff called me to complain, because they'd had to go out there on several occasions and break up groups of drunk kids wandering the grounds. Word got out that the place was empty, and the kids immediately found their way to it. You know how that goes. Then there was a hitchhiker who found it and moved right in, had some insane idea about claiming squatter's rights. Sheriff was irritated, so I went ahead and put up the gate and the fence. It's helped."

  "You paid for this—"

  "I draw from an account she left. The money was there." He pulled himself back to the desk again, frowning, and said, "Mr. Perry, you clearly don't want to tell me who you're working for and why they want to find her, but I need to tell you this: Any number of people do want to find her, from the police to reporters to people like you, and I can't help. All I ask of you is to make that clear lo your client. I don't know how to get in touch with her; I don't know where *he is or what she's doing."

  "Mr. Child, I don't understand exactly why she'd be so sought after. Who is the woman, anyhow—"

  He looked at me as if I'd asked him how to spell my own name. Then his eyes turned reflective and he nodded. "Your client's interested in the property."

  "That's right." It wasn't true, really, but I had the sense that was what he wanted to hear as some kind of reassurance.

  "So you have no idea… shit, you guys really are clueless. Okay. That puts me at peace. It truly does."

  "What don't I understand, Mr. Child—"

  "Anything," he said. "You don't understand anything. What do you know about Alexandra and Joshua Cantrell—"

  I shook my head. "Only that their names are on the deed."

  "Okay," he said. "Then you absolutely don't understand a damn thing. Now I'm going to tell you two little details, and then I'm going to ask one more time who you're working for, and if you won't answer, I'll tell you to get the hell out of my office."

  He braced his elbows on the desk and folded his hands together. "You've done amazingly poor research, Mr. Perry. Here are the two details you need to know: First, Joshua Cantrell is dead. Nobody had heard from him in twelve years, but last winter his bones were found near Pymatuning Reservoir. Buried in the woods. Case still under investigation."

  He paused, and I was aware of how quiet it was in his office, so quiet that I could hear the dripping of a faucet in the little bathroom on the other side of the wall, a drop falling into the sink every few seconds. Plip, plip, plip.

  "Detail number two," he said. "Do you know the lovely Mrs. Cantrell's maiden name—"

  "I do not."

  "Sanabria," he said. "Alexandra Sanabria."

  "Shit," I said. "You're kidding."

  He shook his head.

  "Maiden name," I said. "Surely she's too old to be the daughter of—"

  "Dominic— Yes, too old to be his daughter. Just the right age to be his sister. Sister of Dominic, daughter of Christopher, right there in the trunk of a very infamous family tree. Pride and joy of Crime Town, USA."

  It was an old nickname, went back almost fifty years, but people still attached it to Youngstown, a gritty factory town an hour from Cleveland. While the Italian mob's heyday in Cleveland was during the sixties and seventies, Youngstown remained an epicenter for decades longer, featuring constant FBI attention as well as the occasional car bombing or sniper takedown of a major player. During one attempt to pay off the town's mayor, a priest was involved as a money handler. Ties run deep in Youngstown, and a lot of them run through the Sanabria family. Christopher was the patriarch, the focus of a major federal investigation when he was killed in the late seventies. Twenty years later, his son, Dominic, appeared in headlines for a few months during the Lenny Strollo and James Traficant trials. Something like seventy convictions were handed down in the fallout of those investigations—Traficant was a U.S. representative at the time, which only added to the circus—but Dominic Sanabria walked away with one of the lightest sentences, two years for minor crimes. It wasn't that he'd been a minor player, but he apparently left less evidence and trusted fewer people. At the time, one of the district attorneys suggested that Sanabria was the most dangerous of the lot, and the media made good use of that quote. People in the Cleveland area remembered the name.

  "That house," I said, "is owned by Dominic Sanabria's sister— That's what you're telling me—"

  Child's face turned un
pleasant as he leaned across the desk, almost pulling out of his chair, and said, "Yes. Now, damn it, I need to know who you're working for."

  "That information is confidential, Mr. Child. I'm sorry."

  "Then get out. And tell your client to give up his inquiries on that house."

  "Where is she—" I said as he got to his feet and walked to the door. "Where's Alexandra—"

  I didn't ask because I believed he would provide an answer but simply because I wanted to gauge his reaction for myself, see if I smelled a lie.

  He paused with his hand on the doorknob and turned back to me. "Nobody knows. Not me, not her family, and certainly not the police. If they did know, maybe they'd stop calling me all the time."

  It felt like the truth.

  He twisted the knob and swung the door open for me. "Goodbye, Mr. Perry."

  * * *

  Chapter Five

  Outside, the air was thick with humidity, and a bank of angry dark clouds had gathered in the west. It was a heavy, cloaking warmth, and I opened the second button of my shirt and stood on the sidewalk and stared at the sleepy town square.

  Joshua Cantrell is dead… bones found last winter… buried in the woods. Case still under investigation.

  Without leaving the front steps of Child's office, I took out my cell phone and called Amy at the newspaper. For once, she was there. I asked her to do an archives search for Joshua Cantrell.

  "The guy who owns the house—"

  "Owned. He's dead."

  "Lincoln—"

  "Run the search, please. I'd like to know when they found the body."