Michael Koryta: Tonight I Said Goodbye

The first book in the Lincoln Perry series, 2004

My thanks, first and foremost, go to Peter Wolverton, Ruth Cavin, John Cunningham, and everyone else at St. Martin’s Press who gave me a chance and made the process a wonderful experience, and to Bob Randisi and the Private Eye Writers of America, who, together with St. Martin’s, give new writers an unmatched opportunity.

Grateful acknowledgement also goes to:

Bob Hammel, who made it happen.

Laura Lane, an excellent writer and editor and even better friend.

Don Johnson, a first-class investigator who gave me a chance of a different sort.

Michael Hefron, who held a door open as he was stepping out of it and always motivated.

Stewart Moon, who has the best hook shot of any graphic designer in the business.

Janice Rickert, Bob Zaltsberg, and everyone else at the Herald-Times .

David Hale Smith, who manages to be a good agent and a great guy simultaneously.

And to my family, who have always encouraged, supported, and tolerated, especially my parents, Jim and Cheryl Koryta, and my sister, Jennifer.

THE LAST time John Weston saw his son alive, it was a frigid afternoon in the first week of March, and John’s granddaughter was building a snowman as the two men stood in the driveway and talked. Before he left, John gave his son a fatherly pat on the shoulder and promised to see him again soon. He saw him soon-stretched out in a morgue less than forty-eight hours later, dead of a small-caliber gunshot wound to the head. John was saved the horror of viewing his granddaughter in a similar state, but the reason for that was a hollow consolation: Five-year-old Betsy Weston and her mother were missing.

John Weston told me this as we sat in his house in North Olmsted, a suburb on Cleveland’s west side, five days later. Weston’s living room was clean and well arranged but dark, with the window shades pulled, and smelled heavily of cigarette smoke. While he spoke, the old man stared at me with a scowl that betrayed no trace of grief but plenty of determination.

“Listen to me, Mr. Perry,” he said, blowing a cloud of cigarette smoke in my direction, “I know my son. He did not kill himself, and he damn sure didn’t hurt his family. Have you watched the news? You hear what those bastards are saying? They’re saying my son killed his own wife and baby daughter, then killed himself.” He slapped the coffee table with his hand hard enough to make some of my coffee splash over the rim of the mug. “I will not tolerate that. I want to know what happened, and I want you and your partner to help me.”

Weston sat on an enormous leather couch across from me, and I was in a bizarre chair with a curved wooden frame and a large, rippled plastic cushion. When I leaned back in it I immediately slid down until my head was parallel to the armrests. Feeling pretty ridiculous in that position, I’d tried an assortment of others before, surrendering to gravity and the slick cushion, I leaned forward, sitting on the edge of the chair, my elbows resting on my knees. Now I looked more intense than I felt, but it beat the alternatives.

“I’ve heard the television reports,” I said. “But the police haven’t said the murder/suicide angle is a legitimate theory, Mr. Weston. That’s just some talking head in a newsroom trying to hold an audience with sensationalism.”

Weston kept the scowl. He was in his upper seventies but still a large man; when he was younger he must have been massive. His legs were skinny now and his belly soft, but his broad chest and shoulders were a testament to his former size. He still had nearly a full head of gray hair, a nose that seemed too small for his face, and calculating, edgy eyes that took everything in as if he were looking for an excuse to shout. The pinky finger of his right hand was missing, and the ring finger ended in a stump just past the middle knuckle. While I sipped my coffee, he turned and pointed at two framed paintings on the wall behind him.

“You see those paintings?” he said.

They appeared to be World War II military scenes, and they were well done. Nothing fancy, just a talented artist’s precise rendition of what he had seen. My type of painting-something you could appreciate without a master’s degree in art.

“A buddy of mine did those,” he said, and then coughed loudly, a wet, rasping hack like a shovel scraping snow off rough pavement. “Pretty good, aren’t they?”

“Very nice.” I finished my coffee and set the mug on the coffee table beside the business card I had given Weston. PERRY AND PRITCHARD INVESTIGATIONS it read. I was Lincoln Perry, and Joe Pritchard was my partner. We were just six months into the business now, but we’d already managed to accumulate a significant amount of debt. We tried not to boast about that accomplishment too often, though, especially to clients. Before going into private work, Joe and I had been partners in the Cleveland Police Department’s narcotics division. I’d been forced into resignation, and he’d retired about a year later. Somehow, Joe had convinced me to meet with John Weston alone while he handled what would probably be a routine interview. I was regretting that arrangement now.

“What you see there in the paintings are a CG-4A glider and a tow plane,” Weston said, looking back at the paintings again. “I flew the gliders.”

“That was a one-of-a-kind experience, I imagine.”

“You’ve got that right. There was never anything like it before, and there hasn’t been since. By the time ’Nam rolled around they had helicopters to do that job. In my war, though, it was gliders.”

I thought about it, the experience of drifting down onto a battle-field in silence with no motor to power you.

“What’d it feel like, flying the thing?”

He smiled. “Like sitting on the front porch and flying the house. I flew two combat missions and a handful of supply missions. Had a rough landing in the second combat mission and lost some fingers, but I still had to fight on the ground all that night. We had the same weapons training as the commando soldiers, and it was the job of us glider pilots to hold whatever territory we landed on. I fought Nazis all night without taking any medicine to help with the pain in my hand. But it was better than it could have been. A couple of the other gliders cracked up badly on landing, and a few were shot down. Hell, I had bullet holes through the canvas.”

“Close call, eh?” I didn’t know where he was going with this conversation, but I was content to ride it out.

“Close enough. The closest call I ever had was a mission I didn’t fly, though. I was slated to fly into what was basically a German fortress in France, and the probability of survival was so low it was damn near a suicide mission. We were all set to fly out, saying our goodbyes to the world, you know, because we were pretty convinced this was a one-way trip. Just before we went up, they told us the mission had been canceled, because Patton took the Nazi fortress.” He lit a cigarette with a steel Zippo and took a long drag. “People badmouth Patton all the time these days, but I’ll tell you this-that son of a bitch is a friend of mine for as long as I live.”

I’ve always been a bit of a Patton fan myself, at least in terms of respecting the man’s battlefield genius and efficiency, but I guessed Weston would scorn such appreciation from a man who’d never served, so I kept quiet. He smoked the cigarette for a minute, staring over his shoulder at the paintings, lost in his memories. Then he turned back to me, and his eyes narrowed in a way that suggested focus and determination.