Michael Koryta: Tonight I Said Goodbye

I understood that. Joe had retired only six months earlier, and I knew working on an active police investigation from the outside would feel strange to him. It was too late now; I’d made the agreement with Weston, and I had a two-thousand-dollar retainer check in my pocket to seal the deal.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “You know the case interests you, and our plate isn’t exactly full of other projects.”

He grunted but didn’t say anything, gazing around the office as if seeking support from the furniture. Our little office is on the city’s west side, on the second floor of an old stone bank building. It has hardwood floors badly in need of a polish, two desks, a small bathroom and secondary office, and freshly painted walls that look frighteningly bright in the old building. My contribution to the office furniture sits across from our desks: a set of four wooden seats from the old Cleveland Stadium. The stadium had been torn down in the early nineties, and they’d auctioned off some of the memorabilia. I’d purchased the chairs and had them refinished, and I thought they looked pretty decent, if slightly out of place. Joe referred to the seats by various vulgar names and refused to sit in them. It was hard to believe he was an Indians fan. No sense of nostalgia.

“Well, I told Weston we’re in it now,” I said, “so let’s not hassle over whether we should have taken the case. Let’s figure out how we’re going to get started.”

“We could get started by grabbing a sandwich,” Joe said. “I’m starving.” Joe eats with a ravenous appetite, but he also drinks almost nothing but water and runs several miles each day, so he’s still trim and fit even in his fifties.

“I haven’t paid very close attention to the case,” I said, ignoring him, “so we probably ought to review the newspaper articles before we make any calls down to CPD. Hate to look uninformed, you know.”

“You’re looking for an excuse to drag Lois Lane into it,” he said with a sigh. “Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse.”

I grinned. “I’m sure Amy will be happy to assist in any way possible.”

“Fabulous,” he said. “I’ll tell you what: How about you track down the background information while I go get something to eat? Then, when I come back, you can give me a concise briefing and I’ll be able to focus without being distracted by my growling stomach.” He pushed away from the desk.

“That’s fine,” I said as he opened the door to leave. “I’m expecting to do most of the work around here. You old guys don’t have the stamina to keep up.”

Amy Ambrose agreed to come by on her lunch hour with all the relevant articles. Around noon she stepped through the door, wrinkling her nose.

“Your stairwell reeks. The winos taken to sleeping there again?”

“Hello to you, too.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She shrugged off her coat and flopped onto one of the stadium seats. She looked good, as she always did. Her hair was a little longer than it had been when we first met in the summer, but it was the same dark blond and had the same soft curl. Amy was a reporter for the Cleveland Daily Journal and in the summer she’d been assigned to cover a murder investigation. The murder victim had been a patron at my gym, and Amy showed up at my door looking for information. With my usual charm, I’d told her to go to hell. A day later she was back, with more information about the case and about me than most reporters could turn up overnight. She’d won my respect, my assistance, and, soon, my friendship. She was outspoken and brazen and cocky, but she was also completely her own person, and she was genuine. We were drawn together because of that-two self-reliant loners who trusted only our own judgment and ability when under pressure. Outside of Joe, she was my closest friend, and while I told people I thought of her as a sister, a small part of my mind recognized that my breath didn’t catch in my chest when I saw my real sister the way it could when I saw Amy.

“So you and Pritchard think you can accomplish what dozens of cops and a few FBI agents haven’t been able to, eh?” Amy said.

“We’re not that cocky,” I said. “I figure it may take us two, maybe three days.”

She smiled. “Sure. Well, it looks like you’ve got your hands full. I read through most of this stuff before I came over, and if the cops have any worthwhile leads they aren’t sharing them with the media, that’s for sure.”

“You’re not working on the story?”

“No, they gave it to another reporter, a guy named Steve. He’s a good writer, but I don’t know if he has much of a nose for investigative work.” She spotted a minute wrinkle on her pants and frowned at it, then tried to smooth it with the palm of her hand. It’s the little things that bother Amy. She’s indifferent to the striking resemblance the backseat of her car holds to a landfill, but she can’t stand wrinkles.

“Did you get me some background information?” I asked.

“Here’s everything Steve’s written about the case,” she said, passing me a stack of printouts. “That’s all I could get.”

I read through them. Plenty of articles for just a five-day span, but none of them said much more than I already knew. Weston’s body had been discovered Wednesday morning by his cleaning lady. He’d died from a single gunshot wound to the right temple, a wound determined to be self-inflicted. The gun, a.38-caliber Smith & Wesson, was still in his right hand when the body was discovered. It was registered in his name. The police had been summoned, and they spent the rest of the day trying unsuccessfully to locate Weston’s wife and daughter. By Wednesday evening, the police had put out a missing persons report. There was no evidence to suggest kidnapping, which would have made it an FBI case, but a few agents from the Cleveland office were “assisting” CPD. The article revealed some suspicion among neighbors and acquaintances that the incident had something to do with a case Weston had been working on, but the police hadn’t supported that theory. It was likely nothing more than curiosity and intrigue associated with the PI business. The police searched Weston’s office and home and were “actively pursuing leads,” but the detective in charge of the case, Rick Swanders, said they had no justifiable suspicion that the wife and daughter had been targeted by anyone Weston had investigated.

“Well,” I said when I was finished, “I haven’t cracked the case yet. I suppose I’ll actually have to conduct an interview or two.”

“I was expecting you to piece it out from the articles,” Amy said with mock disappointment. “This is a real letdown.”

“Any chance your buddy Steve knows details he isn’t sharing with his readers?”

“There’s a chance, but I wouldn’t put much hope into it. You know how closemouthed cops are at the start of an investigation like this. Unless he’s developed a great source, I doubt he’s heard much more than you just read.”

I nodded. It had been a while since I’d left the force, but not so long that I’d forgotten the well-founded distrust most cops held for the media.

“So where do you go from here?” Amy asked.

“When Joe gets back, we’ll go over to see Weston’s father. We’ll interview him for details about his son and try to get a feel for what his life had been like in recent months. Then we’ll talk to the police and see how much cooperation we can expect to get from them. Once that’s been taken care of, I imagine we’ll focus on his business, learn as much as possible about his recent cases, and determine if there’s anyone he’s really pissed off.”

She nodded. “You think he was murdered?”

“From everything I’ve heard or read, no, I don’t think he was murdered. I think he killed himself. But the father wants us to prove otherwise, so I’m going to have to go into the case thinking he didn’t commit suicide. Besides, if his family’s alive, then it’s much more likely he was murdered. So until somebody can prove they’re dead, I’ll pretend the police are looking in the wrong direction.”