A Simple Act of Violence

by R.J. Ellory

  I fixed the thing.

  Whether or not anyone else slept better as a result I had no way of knowing.

  I did not sleep better, and that was all that really concerned me.

  I left the office unnoticed and crossed the city to Sotelo’s house. I went to find the documents that we believed he possessed. That was all I was required to find.

  The events that transpired that evening, the effect of what I discovered in that house, became so much more significant than anything that had occurred to date. I realized then that the truth was always so much more powerful and pervasive than the propaganda.

  It was the beginning of the end, and I knew - as did Catherine - that we had done a terrible, terrible thing.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  ‘What I have here,’ Frank Lassiter said, indicating a half dozen folders stacked on the edge of his desk, ‘are the final reports from forensics on each of the cases so far. They reviewed the original findings and cross-referenced them against one another.’ He smiled resignedly. ‘I say I have something here, but if you read over them very carefully you’ll find that we have nothing at all.’

  Lassiter walked around the edge of the desk and sat down heavily. He looked as exhausted as Miller felt.

  The silence in the room was tangible. It stretched itself out between the three of them as if for the duration.

  Miller broke it by saying ‘You heard about the diner . . .’

  Lassiter nodded. ‘I heard about the diner, about this derelict house where McCullough is supposed to have lived. I also understand we have a waitress who thinks she recognized the guy.’

  Miller leaned forward in his chair, rested his elbows on his knees, for a moment buried his face in his hands. There was a darkness in his head, like a swollen thing. As if this was a punishment. A penalty for something. He remembered Brandon Thomas’s face, the expression as he fell backwards and down the stairs. As if he believed that Miller had intentionally pushed him. Miller looked up at Lassiter. ‘We’re doing everything—’

  ‘You’re doing everything you can,’ Lassiter cut across. ‘I understand that you’re doing everything you can, but everything that you can do isn’t enough.’

  ‘We need more people—’ Roth started.

  ‘You know I don’t have more people,’ Lassiter replied. ‘You know how many murders there are in Washington each year?’ He smiled, shook his head. ‘I don’t need to tell you how many murders there are in Washington every year, do I? These five are just a fraction of what we have to handle here, let alone what goes on in the rest of the city. Thirty-eight precincts, and then you factor in the traffic that we share with Annapolis, Arlington, whoever the hell else considers we have more resources than them . . .’ Lassiter’s voice trailed away into silence. He swiveled his chair and looked out of the window behind his desk. ‘You want to know what my wife said to me this evening?’

  Miller opened his mouth to speak but Lassiter continued before he had a chance.

  ‘She said that we were looking too hard to see anything.’

  Lassiter turned his chair around suddenly. The smile on his face was one of bemusement. ‘My wife is a fucking Buddhist all of a sudden, eh? What the fuck do you think of that? We’re looking too hard to see anything. You get that? I mean, I don’t even know what that means, but when I have my wife telling me how I should do my job . . .’ Lassiter faced the window again.

  Miller cleared his throat. ‘I believe—’

  ‘I don’t need what you believe, Robert,’ Lassiter said. ‘What I need right now are facts. I need evidence. I need something I can hold up and say “Here gentlemen . . . here we have something that’s worth the taxpayer’s dollar,” and for them to see what I’ve got and say “Yes, Jesus Christ, just look at that will you, that’s something right there . . . something we can hang our fucking hats on and go home and tell our wives and daughters to sleep sound because the almighty Second Precinct police have this asshole of a thing under control.” That’s what I need Robert, and that’s all I need.’

  ‘And that,’ Miller said matter-of-factly, ‘is something I can’t give you yet.’

  ‘I know that, Robert, but that’s not what I want to be told. You understand me? I want to be told that you have this thing under control, that you’re making headway, that come tomorrow you’re gonna have this guy in the bullpen and he’s gonna be telling you everything you ever wanted to know about what the fuck in God’s name happened to the Mosley woman and Barbara Lee and . . .’ Lassiter stopped suddenly and started laughing. It was forced and nervous laughter. ‘Oh shit, I forgot to tell you. Jesus, how the hell could I have forgotten to tell you this? This is a fucking masterpiece. This is an almighty fucking masterpiece that we couldn’t have designed if we’d wanted to. The Rayner woman, Ann Rayner . . . legal secretary, right? Well you’ll never guess who the fuck she used to type depositions and summary judgements for?’

  Miller shook his head.

  ‘Retired judge, two-term Washington fucking congressman? ’

  Miller’s eyes widened. ‘Bill Walford?’

  ‘On the fucking money,’ Lassiter said. ‘Legal secretary to Judge Walford between June of 1986 and August of ’93. Seven years, for God’s sake. Seven fucking years. I know guys here who’ve done two marriages in less time than that.’

  Roth was shaking his head. ‘Walford?’

  Miller glanced at him. ‘I’ll tell you later.’

  Lassiter laughed again. ‘You never had the pleasure of dealing with Judge Walford, my friend,’ he said to Roth. ‘Of all the people one of these women could have worked for it had to be him.’

  ‘He’s into this now?’ Miller asked.

  ‘Jesus no, the guy’s about a hundred years old, but now we have another very good reason to keep it out of the papers. I know that Judge Thorne is very interested, and Judge Thorne happens to be a golfing buddy with the mayor, and Thorne knows Walford . . .’ Lassiter paused for a moment. ‘So far we’ve gotten away light, let me tell you. Amount of noise there’s been in the newspapers has surprised me. This could have been a lot worse, and when the Natasha Joyce thing happened . . . well, you were very fucking lucky that the papers didn’t have anything on this girl. If they’d found out that you were talking to her . . . Jesus, it doesn’t even bear thinking about.’

  Lassiter stood up, dragged his overcoat from the back of his chair and folded it over his arm. ‘Right now I need something on this, some movement somewhere that says we’re doing what we’re paid to do. Time does the diner open?’

  ‘Officially, six-thirty,’ Miller replied.

  ‘Officially?’

  ‘The waitress - she’s actually the owner - she’s there at six.’

  ‘Five forty-five you’re here, both of you,’ Lassiter said matter-of-factly. ‘The button gets pushed and I need you outside that diner within minutes. I’m leaving Metz and Feshbach on the watch tonight, Riehl and Littman take over at four a.m.’ He hesitated, looked at Roth and Miller each in turn, almost as if he was challenging them to say something. ‘I’m giving you everything I can on this, you understand?’

  ‘I know Captain, I know—’ Miller started.

  Lassiter stopped him. ‘I don’t wanna hear anything now except we have the guy. What I don’t want is any more dead women, okay?’ Lassiter did not wait for a reply. He stepped out into the corridor and closed the door noisily behind him.

  ‘I’ll check on the diner,’ Miller said.

  Roth didn’t argue; didn’t challenge Miller. He’d barely seen his family since the first week of the month. This was the life. Amanda knew it, the kids as well, but that didn’t change the tone of voice with which they asked the questions. How long, Dad? When are you gonna come home? Are we gonna see you this weekend?

  Roth put on his coat. As he passed Miller he reached out and gripped his shoulder. ‘You’re okay?’

  Miller smiled resignedly. ‘I’m okay,’ he said quietly. ‘Now will you leave?’

  Roth raised his han
d. ‘I’m gone,’ he said.

  Miller listened until Roth’s footsteps disappeared into silence, then he stood at the window, looked down into the street, pressed his hand against the glass. Glass was cool, and through the spaces between his fingers he watched the lights flicker as cars passed on the highway, as traffic swarmed across the overpass in a constant stream of brilliance. He tried to concentrate on the dark spaces between, but he was drawn back to the colored neons, the streetlights, the arc-sodium, the fluorescents. He wondered if Lassiter’s wife was right. Looking too hard to see anything . . .

  Fifteen minutes later he called the diner. He spoke to Audrey briefly. Yes, the tech guy had come. Yes, the button was in. Yes, they had tested it and it all worked fine, and now she was going home to sleep, and she’d be back in bright and early, six a.m., coffee ready, should she make him a cup?

  Miller told her no, but thanks for the invite. Another time perhaps.

  He set the receiver down. He left the room, walked back down to the street and hailed a cab. Took a route north along Fifth, left onto P Street towards Logan Circle. Passed Columbia NW as they went, craning his head back toward it as they drove by Catherine Sheridan’s house. Sitting like something quiet and malignant, a dark hollow amidst all the bright lights, and he realized that now, even now, he still had no greater understanding of what had happened there on the 11th.

  He closed his eyes, didn’t open them until the cab drew to a stop outside his home. Paid the driver, let himself in, took off his jacket. Made some tea and sat in the kitchen. Wondered if the guy would show tomorrow, and if he did . . . well, if he did, would he be able to give them anything at all?

  Today is a good day.

  Today, above all others, I feel is a good day.

  Today is the day I believe something will happen.

  I believe that Robert Miller knows what he is doing, at least as well as any of them.

  Morning of Thursday, November 16th, I get up and shower. I shave, I comb my hair. Iron a pale blue shirt, choose a suit from the rail in my bedroom. I am not a man who is striking in appearance, but I know how to make the best of my height, my build, my posture. I am forty-seven years old but my students tell me that I look younger, and somehow smarter than most of their fathers, and then they tell me that I am a puzzle, a mystery to them. I smile, and wonder how they would feel if they knew the truth.

  I could tell them stories. I could tell them about the training. I could tell them about sand-socks and gilly suits, about AR15s and .223s, about .22 caliber rounds encased in a thin film of plastic so there’s no striations, no riflings, no lands and grooves to be found on the shell if recovered. I could tell them about mercury-tamping, about Glaser safety slugs, about wad cutters, flatnoses, long colts, short colts, ballheads and hollow points. I could tell them about the scarlet blooms of blood that grow on the body, about garrotte wires and how to kill someone with a rolled up magazine. About two guys from Puerto Sandino we nicknamed Dexter and Sinister who would kill anyone we asked them to for twenty-five bucks and a bottle of Seagram’s. I could tell them about the years it takes to create trust, only to have that trust destroyed in a moment - not by proof, but by suspicion. I could tell them that there’s a debt in every favor. Of the means and methods of propaganda manipulation.

  What did Cardinal Richelieu say? ‘If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.’ Something like that. I know all about that shit. All about it.

  If you lie down with the Devil, you’ll wake up in Hell.

  Catherine said that to me one time. We were in a bar in Managua. I had drunk too much. I had drunk too much because of conscience, because of guilt, because of something I could not face.

  Would these kids have the faintest idea what something like that even meant?

  And if I told them, what would they think, these rich kids with their important fathers? Have seen those fathers, all self-appointed high-powered men with eyes that have seen too much and understood too little. And if I told them what I had done, what would they think of me then? And would I still warrant the deferential nod from the vice-principal, the university treasurer? I think not. I would become a cockroach, a nothing. The worst type of human being. And they would all talk of me as if I was a disease - painful, protracted, terminal, but now excised, removed, banished. And they would tell each other how they knew all along that there was something different about Professor John Robey; how they had a feeling, an intuition, and they should trust that intuition more often, because they’d never been wrong about such things before . . .

  The world they have is thanks to people like me. We stood on the proverbial wall, and we guarded their world against all that was dark and malign and destructive. We stood on the wall when no-one else would, and we made it safe. It’s fucked. Sure as hell it’s fucked. I know that, you know that . . . hell, we’re all grown up around here, but if it wasn’t for people like me it would be an awful lot worse. Isn’t that so?

  Well, it isn’t so. That’s the truth, and that’s the thing that cannot be faced. There’s the sacred monster, friends and neighbors. There’s the thing we all created that we are now trying so hard to convince ourselves we did not. Well we did, and it is, and it continues to be.

  Deal with it.

  Thursday morning I stand and look at myself in the mirror. A good suit - single-breasted wool and cashmere blend - pale blue shirt, no tie . . . because I don’t want to wear a tie today, and if I did wear a tie they would only take it away and roll it up and stuff it in a plastic bag and ruin it.

  So, no tie today.

  Just a suit and a shirt and a pair of brown brogues.

  I stand in the hallway for a moment, then I lean down and pick up my briefcase, and I close my eyes, and I take a deep breath, and I pause for another heartbeat or two and then turn toward the door . . .

  Outside it is cool and crisp. I walk to the junction and turn right onto Franklin Street. It is four minutes past eight. The bus will arrive between eight and twelve minutes past; I get off at the edge of the Carnegie Library grounds and walk the rest of the way to Massachusetts, get some coffee at Donovan’s. I will leave Donovan’s by eight thirty-five, walk back the way I came and past the church on the corner of K Street, and there I will sit on a bench for ten or fifteen minutes. At eight fifty-five I will cross the road and walk up the steps of Mount Vernon College. I will say hello and raise my hand to Gus, the college security guard, and then I will walk in through the front entrance, turn right into the hubbub and hustle of a new day, and I will make my way to my classroom. By the time I arrive it will be eight fifty-nine. Class begins at five minutes past nine. I am never late. I do time very well. I was raised on the importance of time. My students understand that also. They rarely need to be late more than once to understand that we do not do late in Professor Robey’s class.

  I smile at this thought, and with my briefcase in my hand I leave my apartment and walk down the steps to the street.

  I am what I appear to be, and what others wish me to be, and above all else I am no longer the man I was.

  It is that simple.

  I catch the bus. I take the journey south seven blocks, to the edge of the Carnegie Library grounds. Here I alight and walk down Massachusetts. I notice the sedan on the corner, the two men inside. I wonder, just for a moment, if it isn’t Miller and his partner. It is not, but they watch me nevertheless, and I sense the tension as they look back over their shoulders once they know I can no longer see them.

  I arrive at Donovan’s. I am neither late nor early. Even as I approach the counter, even as Audrey turns and smiles and walks towards me, I know.

  I wonder what will happen now.

  I wonder if she must now do something to alert them to my arrival.

  ‘Usual?’ she asks, and her tone is slightly too breezy, slightly too nonchalant. I watch her closely as she makes her way down to the end of the counter to get the coffee jug from t
he hotplate.

  She reaches out her hand toward the edge of the counter. She looks up at me, and in that split second I wonder.

  She half-smiles, and then she blinks twice in succession, and I look at her hand on the edge of the counter, and then she’s walking toward me again - smiling wide, relaxed, everything’s fine, everything’s fine, everything’s just oh so very fine . . .

  ‘Take out?’ she asks.

  I smile, I shake my head. ‘It’s okay, Audrey,’ I say quietly. ’I’ll wait for them here.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  Miller had fallen asleep in his clothes. He awoke feeling awkward and nauseous a little before four-thirty a.m. He took a shower, found a clean shirt, was ready by quarter after five. Made some coffee, called Roth on his cell; they shared a few brief words and then Miller left the house. He arrived at the Second at five-forty. It was still dark. A bitter wind made the skin on his face feel tight. Gritty eyes, a sour copper taste in the back of his mouth, a sense of disorientation and vacancy were all-pervasive. Though the city was coming to life around him, he believed he had never felt lonelier. He hesitated at the top of the stairs and looked back towards Fifth. He figured that when this was done he would take a break, a vacation perhaps. He would go someplace he’d never been before and see if life didn’t feel somehow different looking back toward home. He knew that he was lying to himself. He smiled inwardly, pushed open the door and crossed the foyer towards the stairs.

  Roth arrived within fifteen minutes. He sat down without speaking, merely nodded at Miller.