Lincoln Perry 02 - Sorrow's Anthem by Michael Koryta Read Free Book Online Page A

a murderer wasn’t one of them.”
“People change. Especially when they . . .”
“When they spend years in jail,” I said for her. She winced, but
it wasn’t because she’d stopped the sentence to protect my feelings.
It was a whole lot more personal than that.
“Yes,” she said. “That changes a person.”
“Not that much. I don’t believe it changes someone that much.
But then I’ve never been to jail.” I paused a second before saying,
“For more than a night, that is,” as if that detail mattered.
“He hadn’t been in any trouble,” she said. “Nothing since he got
out. I watch the papers for his name.”
“You have any idea what he was doing since then?”
She shook her head.
“Me neither,” I said, and something in those two words made
her cock her head and frown at me.
“You’re going to find out, though, is that it?”
I shrugged.
“Are you?” she prompted.
“Would it be wrong if I did?”
She shook her head, her eyes watching me with a measure of
pity. “No, Lincoln. But it’s too late to make amends.”
“You think that’s what it’s about? I don’t have to make amends,
Allison.”
“Right,” she said. “We never did. But I’m not sure you ever believed
that.”
“I did. I do.”
She smiled slightly. “So tell me again why you went after Ed last
night?”
    “I wanted to help a friend.”
“He wasn’t your friend, Lincoln. Not anymore. Hadn’t been for
years.”
    “He’s my friend.”
“And you’re his,” she said. “That’s what you wanted to prove. To
him, to Scott Draper, to anyone who ever knew the two of you. To
the whole damn neighborhood, whatever’s left of it.”
I looked at the wall behind her.
“I’m not discouraging you,” she said. “I’m just reminding you of
what you came here to tell me—he’s dead.”
“His name’s not. It’s still going strong right now, and headed in
the wrong direction. You want the city to remember him as a killer?”
“No.”
    We were quiet for a while, and then she asked if I ever saw anyone
from the old neighborhood.
I shook my head. “Some people sent cards or called after my
dad’s funeral. That was the old guard, though, most of them over
fifty. As far as the kids we grew up with, no. You?”
She smiled at me the way you smile at someone who’s just asked
an utterly absurd question.
    “No, Lincoln. I’m not thought of too highly around there.”
“Neither one of us is, Allison.”
She tried to make her tone light. “We did what we had to do,
right? Just didn’t work out the way anyone wanted it to. No regrets,
Lincoln. No regrets.”
There wasn’t much more to say after that. I stayed in the kitchen
with her a while longer. She finally poured the coffee. I drank mine
while she cried over hers. She was dry-eyed again when I left.
“You look good, Lincoln,” she said as she walked to my truck
with me. “It’s been a while since I saw you, too, you know.”
“I know.” I turned to her and gave her a hug. She squeezed me
tightly and her fingernails bit into my back. I pulled away when I
felt the first fresh teardrop on my neck.
“You’re still the most beautiful woman I never wanted to sleep
with,” I said, and she laughed not because that was funny but because
she knew it to be true.
She watched me climb into the truck, then motioned for me to
put the window down. When I did, she said, “Call me, Lincoln.
Tell me what you learn.”
Her voice held both a note of pleading and one of command. It
was a blend I’d heard before.
    The house is dark because the sun sets behind it, the long shadows in the
room making it seem later than it really is. I’m on the couch. Allison is
on her knees in front of me. Her elbows are braced against my thighs,
her hands clasped. It’s as if she is praying to me, and in a sense she almost
is. Tonight I have been called upon to be a savior.
“You know I’m right;” she says. “I’ve talked to him until I simply
have run out of things to say. He’s not