by Andrew Lanh
A wail of wind swirled sheets of snow across the lot. Already the remaining cars were covered with three or four inches of snow. I stood on the landing under the overhead lights that threw shadows across the lot. A hiccough of streetlights dotted the parking lot. Staring up into the lights, I saw snow blowing almost horizontally. As I pulled my gloves on, tightening my scarf, I watched a car deep in the lot maneuver its way out, beams of cloudy headlight lost in the swirling snow. I shivered—my car was at the back of the lot.
Suddenly, standing, mesmerized by the whirr and hum of wind and snow, I heard a distinct pop. My eyes shot to that corner of the lot. Then another pop. But this time I caught the flash of brilliant light.
Pop pop.
In the eerie quiet night with the hiss of wind and slap of snow against my cheeks, I understood, thanks to my early years as a beat cop in Chelsea. Hell’s Kitchen. New York.
I ran, zigzagging through the cars, slamming against bumpers, slipping on the pavement, weaving my way. I watched another car screech out of the parking lot, its headlights illuminating the snow. It slid, braked, sped up, then disappeared around the corner.
I staggered to a car with its motor running. The driver’s window was rolled down and already snow was blowing inside. A head was slumped over the steering wheel, resting there, turned to the side. A smudge of dark red covered his neck. A wash of blood on his left temple. A recognizable hole. His head was turned so that I could see one bulging, horrible eye.
The engine hummed and the windshield wipers moved slowly back and forth. Clumps of snow splashed off the front hood.
I reached into the car, hoping for a sign of life that I knew was not there.
Ben Winslow had died the moment he was shot in the head.
Chapter Six
The police picked up Dustin Trang for questioning late the next afternoon.
Friday began as a white-out day, a morning of fierce wind and an assault of two feet of drifting snow. I’d slept fitfully all night long, most of the time bundled in blankets on my sofa that faced the front windows, staring out into the blackness and shivering from the drafts that seeped through the old wood. I’d spent three or four hours the night before at the college, huddled with the Farmington cops who arrived on the scene after my 9-1-1 call, then with the state police crime machine that appeared. Sitting in the empty faculty lounge, repeating my sparse statement, I relived that awful moment when I realized gunshots had been fired in the parking lot.
What I also kept telling myself—something I did not admit to the cops—was that as I ran through the parked cars I knew, deep in my soul, that I’d discover the body of Ben Winslow. How do you tell that to the police? Psychic hotline for Rick Van Lam on one? My gut instinct, coupled with days of worrying about the metamorphosis of Ben Winslow from jovial backslapper to morose irritant, had plagued me, warned me. No powers of ratiocination there, but old-fashioned worry. Pick a card. Any tarot card. The hanging man.
Late that night, headed home in the blinding snow, a matter of blocks that seemed an endless journey into outer space, I planned to snuggle in with a cup of tea and leftovers—that emptiness in my gut was also for want of supper, a few Ritz crackers not sufficient—and bed. A narcotic sleep with no dreaming. But Hank was texting madly, even as I climbed the stairs to my rooms. Midnight: he’d heard the news through social media and cop hotline.
True? Tell me.
I texted back:
Yes. True. Tomorrow morning talk with you.
But the storm raged on throughout the night, and sleep was impossible. In the morning, switching on the TV, I realized that the governor had closed down the state. Only essential personnel were called in. Schools closed. A persistent crawl at the bottom of my TV chronicled not only schools and public places but also the closing of gymnastics studios, book discussion groups, holistic medicine sessions, yoga studios. On and on. Bizarrely I thought: what about the closing down of a lifetime? What about that? A man sits in his car and switches on his windshield wipers, probably sat for a moment contemplating, like some variation of Robert Frost’s pioneering farmer, his car hood piling up with snow. Between the woods and frozen lake…promises to keep…
And then…then, I realized, he must have rolled down his window. He must have recognized his attacker. Maybe. A knock on the window. Help me, sir. My battery is dead. Yes but…Or: What do you want?
Drowsy from a lack of sleep and food, my mind roiled with spitfire associations that led me to bury my head under the blanket.
The college was closed for the day, of course, dorm students hunkered down in their rooms playing cards and smoking weed. But the announcer noted that the police allowed no one on campus. Grainy footage showed Ben Winslow’s lone automobile circled with flapping yellow tape, a ring of cop cars surrounding it, flashing blue and red lights, and in the distant background, the blinking lights of the state evidence van.
TV coverage intermingled all day long with local weather forecasts. Both forecasting doom. At one point, mid-morning, dressing in jeans and flannel shirt after a long, cruel hot shower that did nothing to revive me, I heard Gracie rapping on my door. She was delivering fresh-made muffins. I gave her a quick peck on the cheek, a hug. Manna from the Gods, I told her, eyeing the blueberry muffins, breathing in the warm yeasty smell.
“Don’t know about manna, but you got the goddess part of that right.”
I hugged her again.
So the two of us sat with coffee and muffins and stared at the TV. I filled her in on what happened last night.
She held my eye. “What now?”
“What do you mean?”
“You—there?” She pointed to a wispy footage then on a loop on TV that showed the lone car in that parking lot. “You found the body of your friend.”
“I know, Gracie.”
“But I also know you. You’re in this now.”
I shook my head. “No.”
A slight chuckle. “Why do you lie to yourself?”
“I don’t.” Then a thin smile. “Sometimes—a little.”
She shook her head back and forth. “You’re watching the screen with this look on your face. You’re waiting for something. I’m watching the coverage out of curiosity, the ghoulish wonder we all have when people do horrible things. You’re watching…waiting…for an answer.”
I smiled back at her. “It’s the detective in me.”
She shook her head more vigorously. Muffin crumbs drifted down her housedress. “Simple fact—this murdered man was a friend of that Manhattan beat cop.”
I nodded. “Bingo.”
But the incessant tape loop that played on every local station told me nothing. After Gracie went downstairs I lay back on the sofa and talked to Hank, then Liz, and finally Jimmy. Hank was on duty, given little time to talk with the chaos on the interstates that occupied his time, but he wanted me to retell the events I’d witnessed. But I had so little: the pop pop, the second one accompanied by that flash of light, running through the parking lot, a speeding car whose headlights cut the night and out onto the street.
“One car?”
I paused. “Another just before. A minute before maybe.”
“Connected?”
“I doubt it. Faculty fleeing the snow.”
“Timing,” he said. “The killer was taking a chance. Other faculty—even you if you learned how to walk faster than a Saigon snail—could have approached that car in the snowstorm. The killer could not have seen who was nearby.”
“True, and he had to wait until Ben was in the car, not walking up to it. Sitting, windshield wipers switched on. Maybe he counted on the darkness and the snow to shield him.”
“He knew Ben’s car.”
“This was an ambush.”
“Planned because of the snow?”
I considered that. “How do you plan for that? Yes, you can know Ben’s
teaching schedule, especially if you watched him for days. But he let his classes go early.”
“So did everyone,” Hank said.
“So he lays in wait, parked nearby, car running.”
Hank concluded, “Gun at the ready.”
My mind wandered—Is this a dagger I see before me, its handle turned toward my hand…Come, let me clutch it…
“Rick? Earth to Rick. You there?”
“I was thinking of Hamlet.”
“You need more coffee.”
“I always need more coffee.”
“Vietnamese coffee. Potent, sit-up-and-notice coffee. The only gift the French gave to the Vietnamese. Not that namby-pamby stuff you drink.” Then, quickly, “They’re gonna pick up Dustin for questioning. The grapevine here.”
“I figured.” I drew in my breath. “The chatter on Facebook. The college page. Comments. Someone brought up the YouTube video, this time identifying Dustin by name. A frenzy. The second altercation caught on Instagram—all over the place.”
“Yeah, hundreds of hits, Rick. The cops are monitoring that. Wild fire—Dustin and Ben’s names.”
“Twitter madness,” I added. “Kids at the college revving up, crazy. Everyone has a story. I caught one tweet.” I checked my phone. ‘“Snowstorm hit—you got more than a Dustin.’ #DustinTrang. #ProfWinslowshot.”
“This is only the beginning.”
My landline was ringing. “Gotta go,” I told him. “Liz is calling.”
“I can’t talk anyway. I’m on the way to another fender bender on I-84. Folks drive like it’s the middle of August.” The line went dead.
Liz was calling from Sophia Grecko’s apartment, her voice a faint whisper. “I’m staying with Sophia. I finally got her to lie down. I don’t know what happened. The news says you were there.”
“Yes,” I told her. “Ben Winslow. Poor Sophia.”
“We were out to dinner last night, close by because of the snow, but when we got back around nine or so, there were squad cars everywhere. My heart stopped.”
“Were they in Ben’s apartment?”
“Yes, all the lights on. Frightening. At first I thought he was in there, but a detective—Harry Manus, known him for years—spotted me and filled me in.”
“How did Sophia take it?”
“What do you think? Hysterical, frantic. I had to hold her up.”
“Did they interview her?”
“A little, but she was not making sense. We were up in her apartment. Then she kept walking in circles, unable to settle. It broke my heart.”
“Christ,” I whispered. “What did she tell the cops?”
“Well, not much. They left us alone. I told them I’d sleep over. They’ll be back here soon.”
“Any scuttlebutt?”
She made a clicking sound from deep in her throat. “Rick.”
“Tell me, Liz. I can always tell…”
“You are reading an ex-wife’s simple mind?”
“Tell me.”
“Sophia said little, but what she did tell Detective Manus was…Dustin Trang’s crazy pursuit of Ben. The fights, especially his mysterious visit here Saturday night.”
“Christ, she won’t be the last one to give his name to the cops.”
“Exactly. Phone lines buzzing at the station—his name surfaced. The state cops are involved. Where’s Hank?”
“Staring down fender-benders on the highway.”
“I called to tell you they’re on the way to pick up the boy.”
“Yeah, Hank just told me.”
“Some nut tweeted #ArrestDustinNow. Channel 3 picked up some YouTube video—running with it. Even one of his professors tattled on him.”
“This isn’t good,” I said into the phone.
“No, it isn’t.” A pause. “Do you think he shot Ben?”
An image rose of that odd student tucked away in the corner of the College Union. Those absurd rolled-up jeans. Those goggle glasses. The narrow pinched face of a lost boy.
“I hope not.”
“That’s not really answering my question.”
“I don’t know much about his life, Liz.”
She waited a heartbeat, then I heard her sigh. “But you will, Rick. I know you. All parts of your being come into play here. Personal. Professional. Nosiness. Peskiness. Orneriness.” A slight laugh. “But most of all a sense of justice.”
“I don’t want that boy to be the killer.”
“We can’t always get what we want, Rick.”
“I said that to you a hundred years ago in Manhattan. Remember?”
A low ripple of laughter. “How can I forget? You used to sing that Rolling Stones song over and over as we sat in the West End Café.”
I rolled my head to the side. ‘“You can’t always get what you want…’”
She finished for me. “But you can ‘get what you need.’”
“Even that was a lie, Liz.”
“It wasn’t a lie, Rick. It’s just that the song forgot to tell us that what you need is not guaranteed to last forever.”
“Call me if you hear anything.”
“I always do.”
***
At noon the skies suddenly cleared as the last wisps of snow drifted to the ground. The world went suddenly quiet, that stillness after a raging storm, immediately broken by the grinding snowplows crashing through the streets.
When I answered the phone, Jimmy was already in the middle of a sentence. I could also hear him chomping on something, the crinkle of cellophane. A bag of potato chips?
“What?”
“I’m trying to do two things at once.”
I laughed. “Eat and talk?”
“Don’t be a wise guy. Potato chips ain’t food. I mean, watch TV and talk to you.” He swallowed and cleared his throat, a loud cigarette smoker’s rasp. “You’re on TV, Rick. At least they say the blur running through parked cars like a dizzy girl is you. Witness to a murder.”
“Not quite a witness. Seconds after the fact.”
“Ain’t that the way it always is.” The crunch of a potato chip, another cough. “Your usual bad timing.”
“If I’d been any earlier, I wouldn’t be a witness—I’d be the corpse.”
He held the phone away from his mouth. “Anyway, what the hell is going on? Liz just called me.”
“Tattletale.”
“She’s your wife. If someone can’t blab about your bad behavior, who can?”
“Ex-wife, Jimmy. Ex.”
“Yeah, keep telling yourself that. The two of you are meant to be together like…well…pork and beans.”
“More food imagery, Jimmy.”
“She’s worried about you.”
“She’s always worried about me. When I was a cop, she worried. Then we got divorced. She still worries.”
“That’s what people in love do. Don’t you know nothing?”
“You’re a rank sentimentalist, Jimmy.”
“Yeah, I’m a lot of things, but it sounds to me like you’re in the thick of things. Liz tells me about this misfit, this Dustin kid. Christ, can’t the boat people stay outta trouble?”
“We like to be noticed.”
“Yeah, especially on a post office wall.” I heard him rip open another bag of something. “Is this kid a murderer?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, that’s a good beginning. Jumping off a cliff without a parachute.”
“That makes no sense.”
“I’m hanging up now. They’re mentioning you on TV again. I may have to ask for your goddamn autograph—if you ever choose to come into the office.”
The police released the surveillance tapes, though I wasn’t certain why. A number of cameras, various rooftop angles, one of which showed Ben Wins
low sauntering slowly off the landing and headed to his car. Another showed me—“Professor Rick Van Lam, PI with Gaddy Associates in Hartford”—contemplating the snowstorm and then—you could hear the crack of gunfire, the pop, then another pop—darting toward it. Another camera angle showed the back of the lot, a dark car screeching out onto the street. Worthless tapes, the newscaster commented, quoting undisclosed police sources, because the dense snowfall made visibility nearly impossible. What one snippet of tape did show, however, was jerky movement by Ben’s car, a grainy figure, shadowy, and two rapid-fire flashes of light from a gun. But far away. Out of the camera’s limited range.
Given the prominence of the murdered man in the Hartford metropolitan area—and the horrific nature of the crime—local TV stations suspended broadcasts of Dr. Phil and Judge Judy and Dr. Oz, treating the viewership with endless loops of the same meaningless footage. Other than the sensational murder, a slow news day—snow and more snow. Schools shuttered. Even the criminals stayed at home—except, of course, for that one volcanic explosion last night. I got tired of seeing my wispy self, and hearing the mispronunciation of my name. Americans preferred “lamb,” not “lam” that sort of rhymed with “bomb.” So be it.
Then the cellphone YouTube footage—seconds long—of Dustin exploding at Ben in the hallway.
That was riveting.
Suddenly the broadcast went live as cameras zeroed in on a caravan of squad cars, local and state police, moving up Terryville Avenue and turning into Jefferson Drive. A rambling, decades-old housing project, two-story frame complexes that, even with the softening patina of new-fallen snow, came off as tired, desolate. Channels 3, 4, and 8 flooded the yard with cameras. Real-time reportage: A door opens. An old woman stands with her arms folded over her chest and gestures to a cop. We watch this scenario from a distance, the reporter’s narrative accompanied by a cameraman whose angle is impeded by a cop’s cautioning hand. The woman points away from the house, then, dramatically, slams the door. The cops look at each other, stupefied.
The caravan circles out of the projects. Channel 3 breaks for a commercial about Toyota End-of-the-Year Marathon sales. When the coverage continues, the newscaster, breathless and jittery, tells us that the police have pulled in front of Sullivan’s Diner down on Route 6. For a half-hour nothing changes as the camera focuses on the eatery. A Dumpster next to two Ford pickups. One cop is visible standing outside his squad car. A cigarette between his lips. Nothing else.