A Simple Act of Violence

by R.J. Ellory

  ‘So why did you tell me about this thing then?’

  ‘God, Harriet, I didn’t exactly have a choice.’

  ‘A choice?’ Harriet laughed. ‘You wear this thing like a coat,’ she said. ‘You come down here carrying the weight of the world, and all over your face you’re saying “Ask me what’s wrong. Ask me what’s going on . . .” You think I don’t see it?’

  Miller didn’t reply. There was that tension in his lower gut that came from a sense of fear and frustration. He didn’t know whether such feelings were attendant to the prospect of what he would find, or the fact that he would risk his career, perhaps even his life, if he looked further into this thing. Regardless, it didn’t matter. He knew now there was no other route to take. Already he had his ghosts. He did not want more. Just as it had been with Brandon Thomas and Jennifer Irving, he knew what he knew. It was a small secret, but a secret all the same. Everyone carried demons. John Robey. Catherine Sheridan, whoever was out there doing this work, these executions . . .

  They were out there, and Miller knew he had to do something.

  ‘So come eat with us,’ Harriet said, ‘and then you figure out what you’re going to do, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ Miller replied, and they rose from the table together and walked through to the front of the store.

  FIFTY-TWO

  Miller did not drive to Old Downtown, to Roth’s house on E Street and Fifth. He did not call and ask for his viewpoint, for there was no time.

  Miller ate with the Shamirs. Afterwards, he went upstairs to shave and get cleaned up, and it was then, sometime before three, that his cell phone rang and without thinking, without even looking at the caller ID, he picked it up from the edge of the dresser near his bed and said, ‘Yes?’

  ‘Go to the projects.’

  ‘Who is this?’ The voice was familiar.

  ‘Shut up and listen—’

  ‘Robey?’ Miller couldn’t catch his breath. For a moment he was ready to drop the phone.

  ‘Go to the projects. Find the diplomat.’

  ‘What? Find the diplomat? Who’s the diplomat?’

  The line went dead.

  ‘Robey? Robey!’ Miller shouted into the phone, knowing that it was useless. And then he quickly searched the caller ID function. It said nothing, simply ‘Call 1’.

  Miller stood there, cell phone in his hand, unable to move.

  Go to the projects. Find the diplomat.

  What the fuck did that mean? The projects? Where Natasha Joyce had lived? Those projects? And who was the diplomat? What the hell was that supposed to mean?

  Miller dressed quickly, put on a clean shirt, his shoes, a jacket. He took his gun from the drawer beside the bed, his ID, his pager, and left the apartment. He went down the stairwell at the side of the building and walked half a block to where his own car was parked.

  It could only be where Natasha Joyce lived. There wouldn’t be any other projects . . .

  And then Miller stopped. Stopped right there with the key in the ignition, and for a few moments he considered the significance of the call he’d received. He’d taken a call from John Robey, a man wanted by police and federal authorities, a man who knew more about what had happened than anyone else involved in the investigation, a man who’d just disappeared, gone on the run, subject of an APB across the police network and the TV stations . . .

  And the question was simple. Did he really know that Robey was not the Ribbon Killer? Was he so sure? Sure enough to do what Robey told him without question, without back-up, without telling anyone?

  Miller’s hands were sweating profusely. He found the rag he used to clean the inside of the windshield and dried his palms. He lowered the window on the driver’s side. He breathed deeply again and again, felt the effort of trying to get his own emotions under control, felt himself trying to focus, to understand what it was that John Robey wanted, why John Robey had chosen him, or whether it had simply been a matter of luck. Luck? Miller smiled to himself. He did not believe in luck. Coincidence, serendipity? Jesus, it couldn’t be serendipity. What good could possibly come out of this for him? Right now he was about to continue an unauthorized investigation, to follow an instruction given to him by the very man he was supposed to be looking for. This had been his heartfelt return to the real world, and it had assumed complete possession of his life. Now he had a chance to walk away. Now, for the first time since this nightmare had started, he had a chance to walk away, to do something different, to escape from whatever conspiracy and madness had been created . . .

  But he could not.

  Harriet Shamir knew that. So did John Robey.

  Miller’s hand was shaking. He gripped the steering wheel and leaned forward until his forehead touched the back of his knuckles.

  ‘Jesus,’ he exhaled.

  And despite what he felt, despite the surge of fear that filled his chest, he put the car in gear and pulled out into the street.

  Forty minutes later, again faced with the bleak scenery he’d confronted when he and Roth had visited Natasha Joyce, Miller sat in his car, the engine clicking as it cooled, and looked out across the deserted lot ahead of the project buildings, the same desolate and unrelenting wasteland; and Miller could not help but think of Natasha, of the scene that had faced him when they’d found her body. He thought of Chloe and what would become of her. Thought of those left behind when Margaret Mosley and Barbara Lee and Ann Rayner had died, however many others there might have been . . .

  Find the diplomat.

  Miller checked his gun and opened the door.

  Twenty minutes later, having spoken to three or four people already, he found a gang of teenagers at the corner of a building that looked like something from a war zone.

  ‘Ain’t no-one here goes by that name,’ the outspoken one said. There was always a self-appointed leader, the one at the front, the one with a voice for all of them. He grinned. Gold teeth alternately. A hell of a smile.

  ‘We got all sorts here, my man, but we ain’t got no diplomat.’

  One of the kids in the back, couldn’t have been no more than fourteen or fifteen, stepped forward and motioned for the leader to come close. The leader backed up, shared a few words with the kid, and then once again grinned at Miller with his five thousand-dollar smile. ‘Someone send you down here to find the diplomat?’

  Miller nodded. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And that’s a person there yo’ talkin’ ’bout?’

  ‘I figure so.’

  ‘So it might not be a person is what I’m sayin’.’

  Miller shook his head. ‘Don’t see how it could be anything but a person.’

  ‘You got fifty dollars?’ the leader asked.

  Miller frowned.

  ‘You want some help . . . you wan’ a little guided tour, then yo’ gotta pay the tallyman, yeah?’

  ‘I don’t have fifty dollars,’ Miller said.

  ‘Bullshee-it! You ain’t got fifty dollars?’

  Miller laughed. ‘I haven’t. Seriously. I’ve got maybe thirty, thirty-five dollars, that’s all.’

  ‘Pay it over here, my man.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pay over the thirty-fi’ dollar and we gon’ show you the diplomat.’

  ‘You know who it is?’ Miller asked.

  The leader turned and gestured toward the younger kid he’d spoken to. ‘My boy here knows where the diplomat is at. Pay the thirty-fi’ dollar and we gon’ take you there.’

  Miller went through his pockets, turned them out, collected together everything he had.

  ‘Thirty-six seventy,’ he said. He handed the notes and change over to the leader who buried it in his jeans pocket.

  ‘Yo!’ the leader snapped at the younger kid. ‘Show my man where the diplomat is at.’

  The kid grinned, turned, started at a jog within a moment, and then Miller went after him, the six or seven others following on behind. It became an event: shouting kids, Miller up ahead, a single kid ahead of him. It
looked like the first kid was being chased, the gang behind Miller trying to catch up with Miller and stop him. They jogged for a good two or three minutes, and then the kid slowed up and looked back at Miller. He went backwards, right arm outstretched, and after another thirty or forty meters he pointed to the right, and Miller was looking for what the kid was showing him.

  Miller could see nothing but the shell of a burned-out car, crates and pieces of wood scattered across the ground, an up-ended armchair, the stuffing torn out of the back like it had been ceremoniously gutted. He could see no-one. He could not see whoever the kid was pointing at.

  ‘Where?’ Miller said. ‘Where are you pointing?’

  The kid started laughing. ‘There’s your diplomat,’ he said.

  The leader was alongside Miller now, laughing himself, Miller wondering what the hell was going on.

  ‘He’s right,’ the leader said. ‘There’s your fuckin’ diplomat. ’

  Miller looked again, could see nothing. ‘This is bullshit,’ Miller said. ‘What the fuck is this . . . there was a deal here . . .’

  ‘And we kept the fuckin’ deal,’ the leader said. He waved the younger kid over. ‘Tell the man,’ he said. ‘Tell the man what we have here.’

  ‘Dodge,’ the kid said. ‘Dodge le Baron Diplomat ’78,’ and he pointed at the burned-out wreck of a car.

  ‘That’s a Diplomat?’ Miller said.

  ‘Sure the fuck is,’ the leader said. ‘My boy here knows every goddam car ever been made in the last I don’t know how many fuckin’ years. Kid’s head is like a rolodex for cars, man, a fuckin’ rolodex for cars.’

  Miller approached the vehicle. The thing was black with fire, the original color long since unidentifiable, the window gone, the tires melted to the ground. The whole thing had been consumed.

  Miller turned back to the gang of kids. ‘How long’s it been here?’

  ‘Two days ago,’ the car expert said. ‘Was brought out here and burned two days ago.’

  ‘Thursday,’ Miller said.

  ‘Thursday,’ the kid echoed.

  Miller looked in through the holes where the windows had been. He walked around the blackened shell of the thing, the sound of broken glass beneath his shoes, the smell of burned rubber and burned paint and burned metal in his nostrils. Someone had brought this thing out here the day after Natasha Joyce’s murder and had set it on fire. Why? What was the significance of it?

  The gang of kids came up behind Miller, curious, looking into the car, wondering what the deal was.

  ‘I need to open the trunk,’ Miller said.

  A couple of kids started searching for something. One of them handed him a tire lever with a twisted end. Miller took it with both hands and drove it repeatedly into the trunk lock until the thing popped through and fell with a clatter into the well beneath. He then used the edge of the lever to prize open the trunk.

  The smell was unbearable.

  One of the kids started screaming. Another one turned away and started retching. Miller stood there for a moment trying to gain some semblance of understanding of what he was looking at. He knew what it was. He knew exactly what it was, but it was almost as if his mind was fighting to make it something else.

  The man had been bound tightly, his hands and feet behind him, the rope pulled taut so his back was arched. Some sort of covering had been put over his head, but this had charred and degraded with the heat of the fire, and what remained of his face was visible. A rictus expression of the most horrendous pain. His teeth were bared, his lips burned away, much of his nose gone, his ears and hair sort of glued together in a dark matted clump of blood and tissue that had appeared to settle across one side of his head and then dissolve down his cheek. The protection offered by the trunk itself had meant that instead of burning, the man had baked to death within. Nausea rose in Miller’s chest and throat.

  Many of the kids had run away. The leader of the group stood there, his eyes wide, his mouth open. Two or three times he started to say something and then he just closed his mouth and said nothing at all.

  Miller took out his cell phone. He dialled Roth, told him where he was, what he’d found. Roth asked him how he’d known, where the information had come from. Miller said he’d call later. Miller then called the Second, told them to get someone from the coroner’s office down there. Lastly he called Marilyn Hemmings directly.

  ‘Detective Miller,’ she said.

  ‘Hey there . . . I was gonna call—’

  ‘No you weren’t.’

  ‘Sure I was—’

  ‘What do you want, Detective Miller?’ Her tone was cool, a little dismissive.

  ‘I need your help, Marilyn . . .’

  ‘Again? What am I? The Detective Robert Miller Appreciation and Support Society?’

  ‘I got a body down here, burned to fuck in the trunk of a car, and I need an autopsy done now.’

  ‘Now? It’s getting on for five o’ clock on a Saturday evening . . .’

  ‘I know, I know . . . but this is really important.’

  ‘I’m very sure that it is really important, Detective Miller, but where I have agreed to be at seven o’clock this evening is also really important. After forensics have done whatever they need to do out there I wouldn’t even get the body until nine or ten o’clock, and that’s at the earliest.’

  ‘Can you come later . . . could you come in later? You know . . . after you’ve done whatever you’re doing at seven o’clock, could you come back and do this thing?’

  Marilyn Hemmings was silent.

  ‘Marilyn?’

  ‘What the fuck is this, Robert? Who the fuck am I? You think I’m here to attend to your whims as and when you feel like it? This is my job, sure it is . . . but I’m off-shift at five-thirty, and then I’m going out, and when I’m done going out I’m planning on going home, and it’ll be late then so I’ll have some herbal tea and answer my e-mails and go to bed. That’s what I do, Robert . . . at least that’s what I’m planning on doing tonight, and no, I don’t have any interest in dragging myself back to work at ten or eleven o’clock tonight to look at the burned corpse of some poor bastard who got locked in the trunk of a car . . .’

  ‘Marilyn . . . Marilyn, I really need your help with this—’

  ‘Leave it alone, will you? Have the night shift guys do it. Who’s on tonight?’ Hemmings turned away from the mouthpiece and shouted for Tom Alexander. ‘Tom? Tom? Who’s on tonight?’

  Miller heard Tom Alexander speaking in the background.

  ‘Urquhart, Kevin Urquhart. He’s as good as any of us. He’s on all night, Robert, and he can do your party favors for you, okay?’

  ‘Marilyn, seriously. I need this done by someone who knows what’s been happening here. This is a big deal to me, a really big deal, and I need your help.’

  ‘And why the fuck should I, Robert? Tell me that. Why the fuck should I go out of my way to help you yet again . . . seems to me you’ve gotten me into enough trouble already, and I really don’t know why—’

  ‘Are you pissed off at me because I didn’t call you?’

  Marilyn Hemmings laughed - suddenly, abruptly. ‘I’m not having this conversation, okay? I don’t want to have this conversation with you.’

  ‘I’ll call you later,’ Miller said. ‘I’ll call you when the body’s back at the coroner’s office.’

  ‘Do whatever you like, Robert . . .’

  The line went dead, and as Miller began wondering if he could have possibly managed to handle the situation any worse he was interrupted by the sound of vehicles, the sound of a siren, the flashing of lights as two unmarked cars and a coroners’ wagon started down along the road at the edge of the tenement block.

  The kids scattered, all of them except the leader, and when Miller looked at him he smiled his five-thousand dollar smile and shook his head.

  ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Down here, man . . . hell, we might be fucked up, but least we don’t barbecue our people in their fuckin’ cars, you
know?’ and then he turned, and before Miller could speak he too was gone.

  FIFTY-THREE

  Eight forty-eight p.m. forensics released the body to the coroner’s office. Miller had spoken with Roth once more, had told him that it was best he stayed out of it, that if anything came of it he would let him know. He was aware of the relief in Roth’s voice. Miller did not call Lassiter, did not relay a message to ADA Cohen. For now he wished for no-one but himself to be aware of the connection between John Robey and a burned-out Dodge Diplomat in the projects. There was also the fact that the forensics report on Natasha Joyce’s apartment had never been forwarded. He began to wonder if there had in fact been a forensics examination at all.

  It was Greg Reid who called Miller, asked him where he was, what he was doing, whether he could make his way down to the forensics complex. Miller said he could, that he’d be there by quarter after nine.

  Reid met him in the annexe corridor, indicated that they should walk down the side of the building and go in through the rear doors. Miller didn’t ask, didn’t need to ask; he knew that Reid would not have called him unless there was something of significance to relay.

  He showed Miller into a laboratory in the furthermost wing, directed him to an examination table, on it some fragments of something, beside them a plastic evidence baggie with something unidentifiable inside.

  ‘This is not good,’ Reid said quietly. Even as he spoke he looked nervously toward the door through which they’d come.

  Miller didn’t reply. His expression was all the prompting that Reid needed.

  Reid snapped on a latex glove, and then with a pair of tweezers he lifted one of the small fragments from the examination table. ‘This,’ he said, ‘was found around the neck of the victim . . . as far as I can tell it was originally orange.’ Reid lowered the fragment to the desk, set the tweezers aside, and then carefully lifted the baggie. ‘In here, this small melted mess of whatever, is a collection of similar multi-colored items—’

  He looked up at Miller.

  ‘Ribbons,’ Miller said calmly.