David Ellis - The Hidden Man

All of this assumed that Archie Novotny had something to hide. But the longer he stared at me through those narrow slants, the more I thought I’d stumbled onto something.

“I was at a guitar lesson that night,” he said. “I’ve had guitar lessons every Thursday night for three years.” He nodded presumptively. “I was playing guitar.”

Interesting that he had an alibi at the ready. I wanted to explore this. And I wanted to seem nonchalant in doing so. But that effort typically backfires; in fact it has the opposite effect, trying too hard to seem unaffected, and then you’ve emphasized the importance of the question still further by trying to be underhanded about it. I wanted to know more about this alibi, and there was no way to ask about it in a casual manner.

I was instantly sorry that I hadn’t brought a “prover”-somebody who could verify the contents of this conversation in court. I couldn’t testify, obviously, as I was counsel, and it had been an oversight on my part not to bring Joel Lightner or anyone else along with me. I’d been so focused on sneaking out of my building without Smith’s guys seeing me that I hadn’t taken this elementary precaution. It was another reminder to me that I wasn’t bringing my “A” game to this case, that I probably wasn’t capable of doing so, that I quite possibly was in over my head as I tried to help my childhood friend escape a first-degree murder charge. The usual physical symptoms of minor panic showed themselves-my chest tightened, my throat constricted-but I had no way out at this point and there was simply nothing I could do but motor forward and play out this string. I took a deep breath and refocused.

“Who said Griffin Perlini was murdered on a Thursday, Archie?”

He drew back. “Wasn’t he?”

He was. September 21, 2006, was a Thursday. But how did he know that?

“I heard about it,” he explained, rather vaguely.

“When did you hear about it?” I asked. “How did you hear about it?”

“ I don’t know.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Hell, I heard about it, is all.”

If this were a game show, a buzzer would have gone off. People don’t remember details of most things that happened in their lives, even last week, but they typically remember quite accurately the wheres and hows of memorable events. I remember exactly where I was when President Reagan was shot; when I learned my mother had had a stroke; when the second plane hit the World Trade Center.

The significance of Griffin Perlini’s death would have been tantamount to 9/11 to Archie Novotny.

I tried to control my reaction. This conversation, this line of questioning, was precisely why I was here, but I realized, now, that I hadn’t expected this to happen. Sammy Cutler had not asked me to believe in his innocence. His comments had essentially suggested his guilt.

Did Archie Novotny kill Griffin Perlini?

“Where do you take guitar lessons?” I asked.

Novotny shook his head, his eyes cast off toward the window. Things had turned decidedly adverse now, and he was rethinking his strategy. Again, I considered, and rejected, the idea of downplaying things, telling him I was just dotting i’s and crossing t’s. This guy’s feet were on the fire, and I needed to let this play out.

After a long pause, he seemed to calm, his crimson face settling in tension, a clenched jaw and the narrow squint. “She still has nightmares, you know. And she won’t admit it to me, but she still thinks, on some level, that it was all her fault.” His eyes, still focused on the window, grew shiny with tears. “Perlini told her, you know-he told her that Mommy and Daddy said it was okay. He told her that we knew what he was doing to her and it was okay with us.”

I knew a little something about self-torture and guilt, and it was everything I could do to keep a clinical perspective. If this guy killed Griffin Perlini, I would offer to defend him, free of charge. But I had to know. And this guy had motive written all over him.

And if he was working with Smith, if he had engineered a criminal case against my brother for leverage, I couldn’t let my sympathy for his plight get in my way.

“When we found out about this monster-when the Drurys came forward about their Charlene-we asked Jody about it. Just like every parent who had a child in that park district program. And I remember thinking, then, that Jody had become really moody that summer, she was wetting the bed, she wasn’t eating-it all dawned on me, and I remember thinking to myself, How could you not have noticed? How could you have missed it?”

I didn’t dare speak. My heart was rattling against my chest.

“And when we asked her-when we sat her down and talked to her about it, you know what she said to me? To me and my wife? You know what she said? She said, ‘I’m sorry.’ She- she -apologized to us. ”

My eyes dropped to the floor. I felt like an eavesdropper, a witness to something intensely private, which I had no right to observe.

“This man has haunted our home for twenty years,” he continued. “He doesn’t get to haunt us anymore.” I looked up just as he turned to me, a sharp frown, a snarl, on an otherwise emotionless face. “So you don’t get to ask me these questions. Okay, Jason ? You want to try to pin his death on me, you go right ahead. You’ll get no help from me.”

He was kicking me out. I wasn’t ready to go. I tried the only words I could imagine that would avoid a violent reaction, a complete shut-off of the valve.

“Sammy Cutler,” I said. “He knows a thing or two about being haunted. He lost his sister for good, Archie.”

Novotny placed his hands on his knees and pushed himself off the couch. “Music Emporium,” he said. “Greenway and Thirty-ninth. Every Thursday night, eight to nine. Guy who teaches me is Nick Trillo. Be on your way, now, Jason.”

He didn’t wait for me to leave. He returned to the corner of the room and plugged in the sander. I took the stairs back down, finding myself back at the front door. I reached for the doorknob but pulled back. Overhead, I heard the high-pitched whirr of the floor sander.

My eyes drifted to the coat closet. I pulled the string for the single light bulb and did a quick inventory of the hanging ware. There were a couple of windbreakers, a baseball jersey, a heavy coat, and-yes-a brown leather bomber jacket.

I raised up on the balls of my feet and looked at the top shelf. There were four baseball caps, all with union labels, a ski mask, and yes, there it was.

A green stocking cap.

WHEN I LEFT Archie Novotny’s place, I kept driving west. I was already in Marion Park, so there was no reason why I couldn’t stop by another address in that town, the home of John Dixon-J.D., Pete’s supplier. I’d already called his place of employment, McHenry Stern, and it sounded like he’d taken a leave of absence of some kind. If I was right, and he’d decided to lay low while my brother Pete was out on a limb, then it stood to reason that J.D. would not be lounging around his home, either.

The address Lightner had given me was 4554 West Elvira. It was a three-story walk-up, which Joel hadn’t mentioned. The signs on the buzzers showed J.D. as occupying the garden apartment, his front door just a short walk down a few steps, but protected by a gate ten feet high. It looked like there was no one home at Chez Dixon, but I buzzed for good measure.

No answer, but it was dinnertime, so I tried another buzzer, beside the name WILLIS. After a long wait, I noticed in my peripheral vision a stirring of a curtain on the second floor, presumably checking me out. Shortly thereafter, a voice cackled through an intercom.