Ben H. Winters

by The Last Policeman

  As it turns out, Culverson was paying attention from his side of the room when I was on the phone yesterday, spinning my wheels in search of my sister’s village idiot of a husband. So, Culverson, he goes ahead and makes some calls of his own, God bless him, and because he’s a much better investigator than I will ever be, he cracked it.

  “Detective,” I say. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Forget about it,” he says, still grinning. “You know me, I like a challenge. And also, before you thank me too much, take a look at what I found out.”

  He slides the little piece of paper into my palm, and I read it and groan. We stand there for a second, Culverson grinning wickedly, Andreas in his corner watching his movie and wringing his sweaty hands together.

  “Good luck, Detective Palace,” says Culverson, patting me on the shoulder. “Have fun.”

  * * *

  He’s wrong.

  Andreas, I mean.

  Along with this Borstner, the blogger or pamphleteer or whatever he is: the jackass in Arizona getting people’s hopes up.

  There are many such characters, and they’re all wrong, and it’s irritating to me because Andreas has responsibilities, he has a job to do; the public is relying on him, just as they are on me.

  Still, at some point, a few hours later, before I call it a day, I stop at his desk to watch the Jet Propulsion Lab video again. I lean forward, hunch forward really, and squint. There’s no swerve, no stop-start flicker in the animation that might credibly suggest an error in the underlying data. Maia does not jog or bobble on its course, it’s clear forward motion all the way. It just comes, on and on, unerring, as it’s been coming since long before I was born.

  I can’t purport to understand the science, but I know that there are a lot of people who do. There are many observatories, Arecibo and Golds tone and the rest of them, there are a million or more amateur astronomers tracking the thing across the sky.

  Peter Zell, he did understand the science, he studied it, he sat in his small apartment silently absorbing the technical details of what is happening, making his notes, underlining details.

  I restart the video, watch the asteroid swing around one more time, speed up furiously in the homestretch, and then … bam!

  3.

  “Roll through, please.”

  The soldier’s chin is perfectly square, his eyes are sharp and cheerless, his face is cold and impassive beneath a wide black helmet, the minuteman logo of the National Guard emblazoned across the brim. He motions me forward with the tip of his firearm, which appears to be an M-16 semiautomatic. I roll through. This morning I reattached the snow chains, triple-checking the cable connects, drawing tight the slack. Thom Halburton, the department mechanic, said the car’ll drive just fine even with the dent, and so far it seems like he’s right.

  I’m not even a half mile from downtown Concord, I can still see the spire of the state house in one direction and the Outback Steakhouse billboard in the other, but it’s a different world. Barbed-wire fences, one-story windowless brick buildings, a blacktop service road marked with white arrows and yellow arrows and stone pylons. Guard towers, green directional signs riddled with cryptic acronyms. More soldiers. More machine guns.

  The IPSS Act is known to contain a raft of so-called black titles, classified sections generally assumed to relate to the various branches of the armed services. The exact content of those black titles is unknown—except, presumably, to its drafters, a joint House and Senate armed forces committee; to the military commanders and high-level officers of the affected branches; and to various relevant members of the executive branch.

  But everyone knows, or at least everyone in law enforcement is fairly certain, that the organization of the United States military has been extensively revamped, its powers and resources expanded—all of which makes this the last place I would choose to be, on a gray and windy Friday morning when I’m hip-deep in a murder investigation: navigating my Chevrolet Impala through the headquarters of the New Hampshire National Guard.

  Thanks, Nico. I owe you one.

  I climb out of the Impala at the brig, a squat and windowless concrete building with a small forest of antennae bristling along the flat lines of its roof, at 10:43. Thanks to Culverson, and Culverson’s contacts, I’ve got five minutes, beginning at exactly 10:45 a.m.

  A severe and charmless female reserve officer in green camouflage pants stares at my badge in silence for thirty seconds before nodding once and ushering me down a short hallway to a massive metal door with a small square Plexiglas window in its dead center.

  “Thanks,” I say, and she grunts and heads back down the hallway.

  I peer in the window, and there he is: Derek Skeve, sitting in the middle of the floor of his cell, cross-legged, breathing slowly and elaborately.

  He’s meditating. For the love of God.

  I make a fist and knock on the little window.

  “Skeve. Hey.” Knock, knock. “Derek.”

  I wait a second. I tap again.

  “Hey.” Louder, sharper: “Derek.”

  Skeve, eyes still closed, raises one finger of one hand, like a doctor’s receptionist busy on the phone. Rage boils in my cheeks, this is it, I’m ready to go home. Surely it’s better to let this self-involved doofus sit in military prison aligning his chakras until Maia gets here. I’ll turn around, say “thanks anyway” to the charmer at the door, call Nico and give her the bad news, and get back to work finding Peter Zell’s killer.

  But I know Nico, and I know myself. I can tell her whatever I feel like, I’ll just end up driving back out here tomorrow.

  So I bang on the window again, and at last the prisoner unfolds himself and stands. Skeve is in a tan jumpsuit with NHNG stenciled across the front, an incongruous complement to his long, matted ropes of hair, those ridiculous Caucasian dreadlocks that make him look like a bike messenger—which in fact he has been, among many other short-lived quasi-professions. Several days’ growth of fuzz coat his cheeks and chin.

  “Henry,” he says, smiling beatifically. “How are you, brother?”

  “What’s going on, Derek?”

  Skeve shrugs absently, as if the question doesn’t really concern him.

  “I am as you find me. A guest of the military-industrial complex.”

  He looks around at the cell: smooth concrete walls, a thin and utilitarian bunk bed bolted to one corner, a small metal toilet to the other.

  I lean forward, filling the small window with my face. “Can you expand on that, please?”

  “Sure. I mean, what can I tell you? I’ve been arrested by the military police.”

  “Yes, Derek. I see that. For what?”

  “I think the charge is operating an all-terrain vehicle on federal land.”

  “That’s the charge? Or you think that’s the charge?”

  “I believe that I think that is the charge.” He smirks, and I would smack him if it were physically possible, I really would.

  I step away from the window, take a deep calming breath, and look at my watch. 10:48.

  “Well, Derek. Were you, in fact, operating an ATV on the base for some reason?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  He doesn’t remember. I stare at him, standing there, still smirking. It’s such a fine line with some people, whether they’re playing dumb or being dumb.

  “I’m not a policeman right now, Derek. I’m your friend.” I stop myself, start again. “I’m Nico’s friend. I’m her brother, and I love her. And she loves you, and so I’m here to help you. So start at the beginning, and tell me exactly what happened.”

  “Oh, Hank,” he says, like he pities me. Like my entreaties are something childish, something he thinks is cute. “I seriously wish that I could.”

  “You wish?”

  This is madness. It’s madness.

  “When are you being arraigned?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you have a lawyer?”

  “I don’t
know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?” I check my watch. Thirty seconds left, and I can hear the heavy footfalls of the reservist from the desk, making her way back to collect me. One thing about the military, they like their schedules.

  “Derek, I came all the way down here to help you.”

  “I know, and that’s really decent of you. But, you know, I didn’t ask you to do that.”

  “Yes, but Nico did ask me. Because she cares about you.”

  “I know. Isn’t she an amazing person?”

  “All right sir.”

  It’s the guard. I talk quickly into the hole in the door. “Derek, there is nothing I can do for you unless you can tell me what’s going on.”

  Derek’s smug grin widens for a moment, the eyes misting with kindness, and then he walks slowly over to the bed and sprawls out, his hands folded behind his head.

  “I totally hear what you’re saying, Henry. But it’s a secret.”

  That’s it. Time’s up.

  * * *

  I was twelve years old and Nico was only six when we moved from the house on Rockland to the farmhouse on Little Pond Road, halfway to Penacook. Nathanael Palace, my grandfather, only recently retired from forty years in banking, had a wide range of interests: model trains, shooting, building stone walls. Already by prepubescence a bookish and private person, I was uninterested to varying degrees in all these activities but was forced by Grandfather to take part. Nico, a lonesome and anxious child, was avidly interested in all of them and rigorously ignored. He once got a set of World War II–era model airplanes, and we sat in the basement, the three of us, and Grandfather harangued me for an hour, refusing to let me quit until I’d successfully attached both wings to the body, while mechanically minded Nico sat in the corner, clutching a handful of tiny gunmetal gray airplane parts, waiting for her turn: at first excited, then restlessly, and finally in tears.

  That was springtime, I think, not that long after we moved in with him. The years have been like that, for her and me, a lot of ups and downs.

  “So, you’ll go back.”

  “No.”

  “Why not? Can’t Culverson get you another appointment? Maybe Monday.”

  “Nico.”

  “Henry.”

  “Nico.” I’m leaning forward, sort of hollering into the phone, which is on speaker on the passenger seat. We’ve got a terrible line, cell to cell, all kinds of stops and starts, which isn’t helping. “Listen to me.”

  But she’s not going to listen.

  “I’m sure you just misunderstood him or something. He can be weird.”

  “That is true.”

  I’m parked in the abandoned lot next to what remains of the Capitol Shopping Center, a several-block stretch just east of Main Street along the banks of the Merrimack. The Presidents’ Day riots burned away the last remaining shops here, and now there are just a few scattered tents full of drunks and homeless people. This is where Mr. Shepherd, my scout leader, was living when the Brush Cuts ran him in on vagrancy.

  “Nico, are you okay? Are you eating?”

  “I’m fine. You know what I bet?” She’s not fine. Her voice is raspy, haggard, like she’s been doing nothing but smoking since Derek’s disappearance. “I bet he just didn’t want to say anything in front of the guards.”

  “Nope,” I say. “No, Nico.” Exasperating. I tell her how easy it was for me to get in there, how few guards are watching over Derek Skeve.

  “Really?”

  “There’s one woman. A reservist. They don’t care about some kid who went joyriding on a military base.”

  “So why can’t you get him out?”

  “Because I don’t have a magic wand.”

  Nico’s denial of reality, as maddening as her husband’s dull obstinacy, is a long-standing aspect of her character. My sister was a mystic from an early age, a firm believer in fairies and miracles, and her starry little spirit demanded magic. In the immediate aftermath of our becoming orphans, she could not and would not accept that it was all real, and I’d gotten so mad, I’d stormed away, and then I’d reeled back around, shouting. “They’re both dead! Period. End of story. Dead, dead, d-dead-d-dead! Okay? No ambiguity!”

  This was at Father’s wake, the house full of friends and well-meaning strangers. Nico had stared back at me, tiny rose lips pursed, the word ambiguity vastly above her six-year-old pay grade, the severity of my tone nevertheless unmistakable. The assembled mourners staring at the sad little pair of us.

  And now, the present, new times, Nico’s powers of disbelief unwavering. I try to change the subject.

  “Nico, you’re good at math. Does the number 12.375 mean anything?”

  “What do you mean, does it mean anything?”

  “I don’t know, is it, like, pi or something, where—”

  “No, Henry, it’s not,” she says quickly, coughs. “So what are we going to do next?”

  “Nico, come on. Are you not listening to me? It’s military, which is on a totally different set of rules. I wouldn’t even know how to try to get him out of there.”

  One of the homeless guys stumbles out of his tent, and I give him a small two-fingered wave; his name is Charles Taylor, and we went to high school together.

  “This thing is going to fall out of the sky,” says Nico, “it’s going to fall on our heads. I don’t want to be sitting here by myself when it happens.”

  “It is not falling on our heads.”

  “What?”

  “Everybody says that, and it’s just—it’s just arrogant, is what it is.” I’m so tired of this, all of it, and I should stop talking, but I can’t. “Two objects are moving through space on separate but overlapping orbits, and this one time, we’ll both be at the same place at the same time. It’s not ‘falling on our heads,’ okay? It’s not ‘coming for us.’ It just is. Do you understand?”

  It suddenly seems incredibly, weirdly, quiet, and I realize I must have been yelling. “Nico? I’m sorry. Nico?”

  But then she’s back, her voice small and flat. “I just miss him, is all.”

  “I know that.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Wait.”

  “Don’t worry about me. Go solve your case.”

  She hangs up, and I sit there in the car, my chest trembling as if struck.

  Bam!

  * * *

  It’s a science-fiction serial, is what it is, Distant Pale Glimmers, one new half-hour episode coming out every week, running like gangbusters since Christmastime. Here in Concord it’s showing at the Red River, the indie house. Apparently it’s about an intergalactic battleship called the John Adams, piloted by a General Amelie Chenoweth, who is portrayed by a bombshell named Kristin Dallas, who also writes and directs. The John Adams charts the distant reaches of the universe circa 2145. Of course the subtext, as subtle as a blow to the head, is that somehow, someone makes it, survives, prospers, the human race resurgent among the stars.

  I went with Nico and Derek once, a few weeks ago, the first Monday in March. I didn’t care for it much, personally.

  I wonder if Peter was there, that same night? Maybe alone, maybe with J. T. Toussaint.

  I bet he was.

  * * *

  “Detective Culverson?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How reliable are the snow chains on the Impalas?”

  “How reliable are they? What do you mean?”

  “The chains. On the cars. They’re good, right? They stay on, for the most part?”

  Culverson shrugs, engrossed in the newspaper. “I guess.”

  I’m in my chair, at my desk, blue books arranged in a neat rectangle in front of me, trying to forget about my sister, move on with my life. A case to investigate. A man is dead.

  “They’re fucking tremendous,” calls McGully from his desk, and his pronouncement is punctuated by the slam of his front chair legs hitting the floor as he leans forward. He’s got a pastrami sandwich from the Works, he’s got a na
pkin for a bib, spread out like a picnic blanket over his stomach. “They won’t come off for shit, not unless you latch ’em wrong. What happened? You spin out?”

  “I did. Yesterday afternoon. Hit a tree.”

  McGully bites his sandwich. Culverson mutters “Jesus,” but not about the accident, about something in the newspaper. Andreas’s desk is empty. Our window unit is clanking, burping out drifts of heat. Outside, on the sill, a slowly deepening shelf of new snow.

  “It’s a tricky little latch on those bastards, and you really gotta keep the slack out.” McGully grins, mustard on his chin. “Don’t beat yourself up.”

  “Yep. But, you know, I’ve been doing them a while. I did a winter on patrol.”

  “Yeah, but were you servicing your own vehicle last winter?”

  “No.”

  Culverson, meanwhile, sets down his newspaper and looks out the window. I get up and start pacing. “Someone could have uncoupled them pretty easily, right? If they wanted to.”

  McGully snorts, swallows a big bite of sandwich. “In the garage, here?”

  “No, out in the field. While I was parked somewhere.”

  “You mean—” he stares at me, lowers his voice, mock-serious, “somebody who’s trying to murder you?”

  “Well—I mean—sure.”

  “By unlatching your snow chains?” McGully brays laughter, hunks of pastrami erupting from his maw and bouncing off the napkin, onto the desk. “I’m sorry, kid, are you in a spy movie?”

  “No.”

  “Are you the president?”

  “No.”

  People have been trying to assassinate the president, that’s one of the deranged features of the national scene, the last three months—that’s the joke there.

  I look at Culverson, but he’s still up in his head somewhere, eyes fixed on the drifting snow.

  “Well, then, no offense, kid,” says McGully, “but I don’t think anybody’s trying to murder you. Nobody cares about you.”

  “Right.”

  “Nothing against you. Nobody cares about anything.”

  Culverson stands abruptly, drops his newspaper in the garbage.

  “What’s up your ass?” says McGully, craning his head around.