A Simple Act of Violence

by R.J. Ellory

  ‘It’s alright,’ Miller said. ‘It’s gonna work out. Trust me.’

  Hemmings smiled, started to laugh. ‘That sounds like the sort of thing they say in movies just before it all goes to shit.’

  ‘Let’s hope not, eh?’ Miller said. ‘Thanks for your help, okay? I really do mean that.’ He wanted to reach out and take her hand. He wanted to put his arms round her. He wanted to tell her that she’d been in his thoughts, but he couldn’t say these things. He couldn’t do anything but walk to the door and leave quietly. He drove back to the Second and put the hairbrush inside a sneaker in his locker. Twice he checked that the locker was closed up tight before he left the changing area, and when he reached the door he went back and checked it a third time. He felt like crap. He felt afraid, tired, unsettled. He felt like a criminal and a thief and a liar. He tried to convince himself that he was doing the right thing, but it was merely a rationalization. He had broken the law. Plain and simple. The simple fact that he’d broken the law and learned something of use, knowing full well that he would never be able to use that something, only served to make it worse.

  He took the stairs back up to the second-floor office and found Al Roth amidst the files.

  ‘This is bullshit,’ Roth said as Miller appeared. ‘This is pretty much the worst administration . . . Jesus, I don’t even know where to begin on this stuff.’ He tossed a manila file on the desk and stood up. He walked to the window, hands in his pockets, and stood there for a little while. He arched his back and inhaled noisily.

  Miller looked through the pile of folders. Margaret Mosley’s case sheet was incomplete. Half the page was blank, the other half barely legible. In the Rayner file he found three interview sheets that belonged to Barbara Lee, an autopsy report, no case sheet, and scrawled across the top of the back cover a question from Metz: Where’s the original incident report? He read the words, but he could not concentrate. All he could see was the brush, the hair tangled through the bristles, the certainty that Robey had lied and lied and lied . . .

  ‘So Catherine Sheridan becomes Isabella Cordillera,’ Roth said, interrupting Miller’s thoughts. He had a whiteboard from one of the adjacent offices. He had Catherine Sheridan’s name on the board. Underneath he had written Isabella Cordillera, underlined it twice. ‘And Isabella Cordillera died in a car accident in June 2003. However, the details of this supposed car accident aren’t available.’

  Miller - forcing himself to focus on what Roth was saying - indicated the right hand side of the whiteboard. ‘Write single on there.’

  ‘Single?’

  ‘Sure. Write the word “single” and then write “no known friends.” ’

  Roth did so. ‘Then we have Margaret Mosley,’ he said. ‘No record in June ’69 of anyone of that name being born.’

  ‘The same with all of them,’ Miller interjected. ‘And don’t forget Michael McCullough.’

  ‘Criminals,’ Roth said. ‘Informers, witness protection like we said. At least that would make sense, but how the hell do you find out?’

  ‘I don’t think you can,’ Miller said. He realized his fists were clenched, his knuckles white. His heart was slowing, the sweat back of his hairline was drying and making his scalp itch. He could not remember a time when he’d been more frightened . . . except after Brandon Thomas. Perhaps then.

  Roth didn’t reply. He stared at the whiteboard intently.

  ‘Why is Robey lying?’ Miller suddenly asked, and he realized that he’d uttered something that he was thinking, almost involuntarily.

  ‘Because he killed Sheridan,’ Roth said. ‘He killed her and he did the others as well. Maybe he’s contract. Maybe he’s just simply out there to get people on the Program. Maybe that’s what he does.’

  Miller asked himself what he knew. Robey knew Sheridan. At least knew of her. Her hair was in the brush. She had been to his apartment, or perhaps Robey had taken the brush from her house after he’d killed her. A memento? A keep-sake? Something that would forever remind him of the special moments they had shared together? Whatever the reason, there was now no question that Robey was in as deep as could be.

  He couldn’t tell Roth. He sure as hell couldn’t tell Lassiter or Nanci Cohen. And when Roth looked over at him, a question in his expression, Miller found himself turning away suddenly.

  ‘We go back to the women,’ Miller said. ‘Back to the fact that their identities do not tie in with their records.’

  ‘But where?’ Miller asked. ‘Where the hell do we even begin?’

  ‘Did anyone fingerprint ID them, or were they only ID’d on their records?’

  Miller shook his head. ‘I don’t know . . . I actually don’t know.’

  ‘The files,’ Roth said, and he got up from his chair and walked to the desk on the other side of the room. Miller joined him, the two of them poring over the documents in each file.

  Roth shook his head. ‘Not this one, Margaret Mosley,’ he said. ‘She was ID’d on her driving license and social security number.’

  ‘Same with this one, Ann Rayner,’ Miller replied.

  ‘Were they even fingerprinted, d’you think?’ Roth asked.

  Miller nodded. ‘It’s standard procedure, surely,’ he replied.

  ‘Call Tom Alexander . . . ask him if they have prints on file for them.’

  Miller dialled the desk, asked for the coroner’s office, waited while they patched him through.

  ‘Tom? Robert Miller. Question . . . you guys have prints on file for all the victims, all the way back to Margaret Mosley?’

  Miller paused, glanced at Roth.

  ‘You know if they were ever print ID’d?’ Miller frowned. ‘No, it’s okay. I’ll hang on.’

  Miller placed his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘He doesn’t think so. Says they only print ID if there’s no physical identification possible . . .’ He suddenly turned away. ‘Yes, sure . . . you can hold onto those and we’ll come over.’

  Miller hung up. ‘They have them on file but they didn’t check the first three, Mosley, Rayner and Lee. They didn’t need to because they had positive ID from their personal effects. Let’s go see what they have to say for themselves on AFIS.’

  Roth pulled on his jacket and followed Miller from the room.

  So now I have spoken with Robert Miller.

  He came to my house. He talked with me. He let me speak. He listened to what I had to say, and then he went to the bathroom and stole a hairbrush. Whatever he finds he will not be able to use. Something like that will haunt him. He crossed the line. He knew where the line was, right there in front of him, and there must have been a moment - a single, simple moment, perhaps no longer than a breath, a heartbeat - when he made his decision.

  Shall I? Shan’t I?

  Just like me. Just like Catherine Sheridan. Just like Margaret Mosley, Ann Rayner, Barbara Lee, Darryl King, even - in some strange way - Michael McCullough. Thinking of McCullough makes me smile . . . The line was there and they saw it, and there was a moment when they could have made a decision to turn back, to walk the way they’d come . . . but no, they didn’t. None of us did. We did what was expected of us, and we did it out of fear, out of some imagined loyalty, some belief that we possessed something worth possessing . . .

  Different reasons for different people.

  I wonder what Miller’s reason is. He is single. He has no wife, no girlfriend. His parents are dead. He has no brothers, no sisters. Robert Miller does not have a family, and perhaps never will. He has his work. Maybe his work is everything. Maybe he tries to convince himself that it is everything, but I know that it isn’t. I think he knows that too.

  Robert Miller is a star in orbit. A dead star, but a star all the same. There is no light at the end of the day for him. There are no reasons for him to hurry home.

  Perhaps he crossed the line because he believed that unravelling the madness of what faces him will give him some sense of purpose, some direction. A reason to be.

  Perhaps I did what I did
for the very same reason. A reason which, in hindsight, seems to be no reason at all.

  But now it does not matter. The past is gone; it cannot be recovered or retrieved to live all over again.

  And, if I could go backwards, would I . . . Who knows? Who cares?

  We will play the game, Detective Robert Miller and I, and we will see what comes to pass.

  FORTY-ONE

  Marilyn Hemmings was out when Miller and Roth arrived. For this Miller was grateful. He did not want to be reminded of what he’d done.

  Tom Alexander met them in the corridor. He seemed tired, the grey shadows beneath his eyes pronounced.

  ‘Overload,’ he told Miller. ‘Double shift yesterday and the day before. My mom’s not well, and the girlfriend . . .’ He smiled knowingly.

  ‘So you have these prints?’ Roth asked.

  ‘I have them, and then I don’t,’ Alexander replied. ‘Of course I have them, but I put them through AFIS and got nothing. They’re running on another database right now, the one we use for screening potential employees, but I doubt anything will come up. The biggest percentage of people is not on any of these systems.’

  ‘What happened when they came in originally?’ Miller asked. They had reached the small office at the end of the corridor and Alexander showed them in.

  ‘Standard procedure. When they first come in we deal with immediate spillage issues. You can guess what that is so I won’t explain it. Once the cadaver is contained from the viewpoint of contamination, we make an initial exam for any obvious indications of death - head wounds, GSWs, drowning, things like that, you know? These go in a preliminary report. A relatively obvious cause of death doesn’t necessarily turn out to be the official cause of death, but we do make our preliminary report based on what we see when the body comes in. Then we do ID. If the body was found at a place of residence there are many things that can serve as ID. Name and address on utility bills, the victim’s social security number, driver’s license, passport, all that kind of thing. If they all tie up then we don’t take it any further. We print the body simply for records purposes, but we don’t operate on the assumption that the person isn’t who they appear to be. We operate on the basis that this person is who they appear to be, and then we’re looking for things to confirm the identification, not disprove it. Hence, no necessity to fingerprint the first three. They came in with name and address, positive ID from however many official documents, you know? We see it for what it is. We’re dealing with them simply as a dead body. If there’s a question about identity it’s ordinarily handled by the PD before the body even gets here.’

  ‘So what system is this they’re running on now?’ Miller asked.

  ‘It’s a state employment database. It ties in with AFIS, the DMV records, the Education Board, all that kind of thing. It’s something that we use to vet people who apply for jobs in state-funded positions. It was just a thought, you know? When nothing came up on AFIS I figured it wouldn’t do any harm.’

  ‘Margaret Mosley was a city employee,’ Roth said. ‘She worked at one of the libraries, didn’t she?’

  ‘She’ll be on there then,’ Miller said. ‘The other two I doubt. Ann Rayner was a secretary for a private legal firm, and the Lee woman was a florist.’

  ‘It should be run through by now,’ Alexander said. ‘I’ll go check if they’ve appeared.’ He squeezed past Miller and left the office.

  ‘So this is another dead end,’ Roth said. ‘I want to follow up on McCullough. That’s the one that sticks in my craw. This pension money that never arrived.’

  ‘You remember the name of the guy at the Seventh that Lassiter said he knew?’ Miller asked. ‘Was it Young?’

  ‘Yeah, Bill Young. Lassiter said he had a number.’

  ‘We’ll call him,’ Miller said. He started to say something else, but turned at the sound of Alexander making his way back into the office.

  ‘Ready for some fireworks?’ Alexander said.

  ‘You got something?’ Roth asked.

  ‘All three of them have been screened.’

  ‘Screened? For what?’

  ‘God knows. All I can tell you is that they’ve all been checked out for a government-related position, something like that.’

  ‘It doesn’t tell us who screened them?’ Roth asked.

  ‘No, just the date it was done. Margaret Mosley in August 1990—’

  ‘Hang fire,’ Roth said. He took his notepad from his jacket pocket and started writing.

  ‘So Mosley was done in August of ’90,’ Alexander repeated. ‘Ann Rayner, February 1988. Barbara Lee, September 1999.’

  ‘Where is this database system?’ Miller asked.

  ‘In back of the admin office,’ Alexander replied. ‘Why?’

  ‘Is it connected to the records you have here?’

  Alexander nodded.

  ‘Can you check something else for us?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can you pull Catherine Sheridan’s prints from your records and see if she was screened?’

  ‘Sure I can,’ Alexander said. They left the office, made their way down the corridor to the admin department. Roth and Miller watched as Alexander exited one program, started another, typed Catherine Sheridan’s name and waited for her file to appear. He did a drop and drag on her fingerprint ID and ran it on the screening database. It took no more than a few moments.

  ‘She was screened,’ Alexander said, ‘but it was prior to computerization.’

  ‘Which means what?’ Roth asked.

  ‘Means it was before 1986.’

  ‘That’s all it can tell us?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Alexander said.

  ‘Can you check someone else?’ Miller asked.

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘Darryl King.’

  Alexander frowned.

  ‘Go with it,’ Miller said. ‘He’s on file in the PD database. Has an arrest from August 2001 for cocaine possession.’

  It took a few minutes but Tom Alexander found Darryl Eric King, date of birth June 14th, 1974, arrest file from August 9th, 2001. Sergeant Michael McCullough’s name appeared larger than life once again.

  Tom Alexander pulled King’s print and ran it.

  ‘August 1995,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Say that again,’ Miller said.

  ‘Your friend here was screened in August 1995,’ Alexander said.

  Roth shook his head. ‘So what are we saying here? That all of them were screened for government jobs, every single one of them?’

  ‘That would appear to be the case,’ Miller confirmed.

  ‘This gets worse,’ Roth said. ‘God, this makes less sense than the disappearing police sergeant . . .’

  Miller’s expression changed suddenly. ‘Try that one,’ he said. ‘Try McCullough. Maybe it will give some detail that will help us find him. Go back to the King file, the record of his arrest from 2001. I want you to run McCullough’s name through the system and tell me when he was screened for the PD.’

  Alexander had already typed McCullough’s name, was watching the screen as it flashed once and then displayed a narrow box in the right hand corner.

  ‘What’s that?’ Miller said, and then he could read the words within the box. NAME NOT FOUND. CHECK SPELLING.

  Alexander frowned, typed the name again.

  The screen flashed. The box appeared.

  ‘What the fuck is that supposed to mean?’ Miller asked. ‘Is that pre-1986 again or what?’

  Alexander shook his head. ‘Means your man wasn’t screened. Even the ones before ’86 come up, they just don’t tell us when. What this means is that the guy was never put through the system in the first place.’

  Miller leaned closer to the computer screen. ‘Could there be errors in this system?’

  Alexander smiled sardonically. ‘Hell, there are errors in everything when it comes to computers. I wouldn’t know. I’m in there, Hemmings is in there, you guys are gonna be in there too, but nothing’s infallible
, detective.’

  ‘You can print off these others for me?’ Miller asked.

  ‘Sure I can,’ Alexander said.

  ‘And how do we find the date of Catherine Sheridan’s screening?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Alexander said. ‘There would be some paper files somewhere I should think, but I’ve never needed to look.’

  The hard copies ran off the printer. Roth picked them up and the three men left the admin office.

  ‘Thanks for your help on this,’ Miller told Alexander.

  Roth had already started down the corridor, and once he was out of earshot Miller looked down at the floor, something like a moment of awkwardness there, and then he looked up at Tom Alexander.

  ‘Where’s Marilyn Hemmings?’ he asked.

  ‘Right now she’s waist-deep in a trench full of water trying to get a drowned body out of there without it falling to pieces. You want I should call her?’

  ‘That’s a bad attitude you have there, Tom Alexander,’ Miller said, and started down the corridor towards Al Roth.

  ‘I’ll tell her you asked after her,’ Alexander called after him, but Miller, thinking about Bill Young and Michael McCullough, chose not to respond.

  Catherine Sheridan is dead.

  So are Natasha Joyce and Margaret Mosley, Ann Rayner and Barbara Lee.

  My heart is a broken-up thing.

  I eat my dinner in a narrow-fronted diner on Marion Street, no more than a couple of blocks from where I live. Chicken-fried steak, a side salad, some fries. I drink 7-Up from the bottle. I dip my fries in mayonnaise and ketchup. It’s the way I like them. I want to smoke while I eat but I gave up some time ago and I’m testing my resolve. Catherine always said I had resolve. ‘Takes resolve to do what you do,’ she said, and I’d smile and nod and say nothing in return.

  And now she is dead.

  Tomorrow I’ll get up like normal. I’ll get dressed. I’ll wear a suit. I will go to work like any other regular day, and more than likely one of the girls will comment on the suit, and she will say ‘Hey, John . . . you got a hot date or what?’ and I will smile and nod or wink as if there is something conspiratorial between us, and she will wonder about me. They all do, at least once in a while. They all wonder about the English lecturer in Room 419.