by David Grace
For five days after Yellen’s confession it seemed that everyone wanted to hear about Virgil Quinn and then, almost magically, they didn’t, and his life quickly descended into tedium and anonymity.
On the Mayor’s orders the PD directed Quinn to take a paid vacation until Election Day, though he hadn’t spent enough time on the job to actually accrue any paid vacation time at all. It didn’t matter. Officially no one cared because the vacation kept Quinn out of the public eye until after the polls closed.
Buoyed by the positive press and backed up by his flexible political beliefs, Charlie Grantham was re-elected with 54% of the vote. Once his second term was secure, the Mayor didn’t care what Quinn did as long as he stayed out of the papers. Since the Felony Fugitive Squad still needed a commander and since Quinn’s main expertise was in catching fugitives he was put back in command until his term of exile from the Marshals’ Service officially expired.
It was against this background of quiet normalcy that on a Monday evening in early December Virgil Quinn returned to his furnished apartment, ate a Popeyes’ Bonafide Spicy Chicken Combo while watching the TV news, then settled down in front of his computer.
The original sixty-seven names were now down to thirty-four, though he wasn’t completely confident that half a dozen of the ones he had deleted might not possibly still be Helen in disguise. As best he could, Virgil had reordered the list from most to least likely, but that was based more on guesswork and gut intuition than on reasoned choices. Most of the names didn’t have photos to go with them and those that did bore the anonymous, blank expressions of police mug shots.
At a little after eight Virgil groaned and admitted a truth that he had been struggling to avoid – that he would have to see each candidate in person in order to be able to reliably identify his fugitive ex-wife. Maybe he could knock out a few women if he could convince somebody in local law enforcement to stop by their homes or their jobs and take a cell-phone video of the prospect. The problem with that, even if he could convince some LEO to do it, was that if one of them was Helen and she saw a cop photographing her she would run again.
Virgil was halfway through reorganizing the candidates by geographical location and planning a travel itinerary when his cell began to beep. An anonymous silhouette with the caption “Stanley Kudlacik” filled the screen.
“Stan, what’s up?”
“I need a favor,” Kudlacik said in a half-embarrassed voice.
“What is it?”
“My daughter, Melanie, she just started high school this year and her civics class–”
“Government, dad,” a girl’s voice called out from the background.
“OK, government class, is doing a . . . thing about how the government works–”
“How government interacts with the media,” the girl corrected him.
“Do you want me to do this or not?”
“I’m just trying to help.”
“Sorry, Virgil,” Kudlacik said a moment later. “As I was saying, the class is about how the media affects the government or how the government affects the media, something like that. Anyway, the kids are supposed to pick someone in the government or the media to come to class and give a little talk and answer questions. I agreed to do it, even though I think reporters are a bunch of morons who don’t give a damn about the truth–”
“Dad!”
“–but, I just got a call from the D.A. They finished jury selection early in the Esposito case and I’ve got to be in court tomorrow. The class is at ten tomorrow morning at Eastside High. Is there any way you could cover for me?”
Virgil took half a second to run over his calendar for the following morning – a progress meeting with the teams on their open cases, reviewing the list of apprehension requests from the Department and the Parole Office, checking the overtime, vacation and sick-leave requests against his budget allocation through the end of the year. What fun.
“Well, it’ll be tough, but I guess I can re-arrange a few things,” Virgil said, trying to sound unhappy.
“That’s great. I owe you big time.”
“Yes, you do. Text me all the details. Is there any particular topic or points I’ll need to cover?”
“Melanie, tell Lieutenant Quinn what he’s supposed to talk about.”
There was a moment’s silence then a young girl’s voice came on the line.
“Hello? Mr. Quinn? I’m Melanie Kudlacik. My teacher wants us to discuss how the media influences the government and how the government influences the media, so if you could talk about how the news people affect how you do your job or how you use the media to catch people, that would be great.”
“Sure, I can do that. How long do you want me to talk?”
“Not long. Maybe ten minutes and then answer some questions. Will that be OK?”
“That will be fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Virgil hung up and wondered if he should make some notes, then decided to just wing it. A minute later he was back to reorganizing his list.
* * *
“. . . and that’s how the media sometimes helps us catch the people we’re looking for,” Virgil said, flashing a polite smile. He thought his little talk was what they wanted, but judging from the bored expressions everyone was wearing, somewhere along the way he had gone wrong. “Are there any questions?”
Instantly, a boy in the second row raised his hand. Virgil pointed at him.
“What happened to the lawyer who helped that killer guy get away?”
“What?”
“In the YouTube video you called out that lawyer who tried to help a killer get away. I was wondering if anything ever happened to him, the lawyer, for doing that.”
“You saw that video?”
“We all saw it,” the boy said proudly, glancing around the room. “So, what happened to the lawyer?”
“Nothing,” Virgil said. “Nothing at all.”
“That’s not right. Shouldn’t they have disbarred him or something?”
“That’s not how it works,” Virgil said, then turned away. “Any other questions?”
The boy sitting next to the first questioner raised his hand but didn’t wait for Virgil to call on him. “Were you the one who shot the Mad Dog guy?” he blurted out.
What does that have to do with the Media and the Government? Virgil wanted to ask, but he noticed the kids’ rapt attention and knew that ignoring the question was not going to go down well.
“I didn’t shoot him,” Virgil answered. He was about to say that Stan Kudlacik had shot Kyle Neddick when he noticed Melanie’s worried face. “The fugitive pointed his gun at another detective who was chasing him and that detective had to shoot in order to save his own life. Next question?” Virgil said quickly.
“How many guys have you shot?” another boy called out from the back row.
“Everybody,” the teacher, a skinny young man wearing a button-down collar shirt and jeans, broke in, “this is not a class on how to shoot people. Let’s keep our questions relevant to the Marshal’s job of hunting down fugitives and criminals. And the media.”
“Shooting guys is part of arresting them, isn’t it?” the boy shot back.
“Hopefully not,” the teacher said. “Any other questions?”
A girl at the end of the front row raised her hand. She had brown hair and an expressive face, and for an instant Virgil thought, This could be Nicole, except that now Nicole would be six years older than this young woman. Virgil took a breath and waved for the girl to speak.
“Have you ever had someone you were looking for who you couldn’t find?”
“Yes,” Virgil said, his voice suddenly tight. Why did she have to look so much like Nicole?
“Was it a murderer or terrorist, somebody really bad?”
“No,” Virgil said, hoping she would stop talking. But she didn’t.
“Who was it?” she asked, her face expectant, her eyes alight.
Quinn pressed his lips together, but the words,
“My daughter,” slipped out almost against his will.
“Your daughter? What happened to her?” the girl asked. Virgil wanted to look away but he couldn’t take his eyes off her startled, worried face.
“Her mother stole her,” Virgil said before his voice gave out. The children stared back at him, their faces confused. He tried to look away but couldn’t, and somehow it all spilled out. “I’ve looked for her everywhere,” he said, not talking to them anymore, really only speaking to himself, “but I can’t find her. It’s been nine years, but no matter what I do, no matter how hard I look. . . .” He raised his hands in wordless defeat. “I don’t know where to look anymore. She’s just gone.”
For three or four seconds his vision seemed to blur then someone coughed and a chair scraped. Suddenly, everything snapped back into focus and he found himself looking at a roomful of nervous kids.
“I’m sorry,” he said, embarrassed, “that’s . . . it’s a personal . . . thing. Sorry.”
A heartbeat later the teacher stood and hurried to the front of the room.
“Everyone, let’s thank Marshal Quinn for speaking to us today. . . . Marshal,” he said, turning and limply shaking Virgil’s hand, “thank you.”
“My pleasure,” Virgil said and felt every pair of eyes follow him as he walked out the door.
By lunch time one of the boys in the back row had edited the video of Quinn’s talk down to four minutes. He thought about the title for a little while, trying to figure out what words would get the most hits. He decided that “hero” and “kids” might do the trick. Just before afternoon class he posted it on YouTube under the heading, “Hero Marshal Virgil Quinn Talks To Kids.”
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Phyllis died quietly, drifting away in her sleep. The tiny, still body did not seem real to Elaine, instead more closely resembling an oversized doll. Elaine sat in the hospital room for an hour or more until the nurses gently ushered her out.
Elaine thought that she should hold some kind of a service, but when she tried to make a list of who she should invite her mind went blank. Phyllis’ clients? Elaine had never met any of them. They weren’t her mother’s friends, just entries on a ledger. The neighbors? She barely knew their names, vague strangers occasionally seen while emptying the garbage or backing out of the garage. Relatives? Her mother had severed all ties with her family the day they fled L.A. Her friends? A boy she had dated a few times? Three or four girls from school? What was she supposed to say: Would you like to come to my mother’s funeral service?
Mom had no friends, no family. Just the two of us. We lived like fugitives, Elaine thought as she stared at the blank page.
At sunset two days later she stood on a little hill, a rolling park spread out below her. With a light breeze at her back Elaine opened the urn and spilled her mother’s ashes into the wind. That night she sat in the dark, her thoughts as empty as their quiet, little house. Now what? she thought. Now what?
She knew she should eat something, but she wasn’t hungry. She wanted to sleep, but her eyes refused to close. Finally, she brought out her laptop and mindlessly played solitaire, game after game, until her fingers ached. She banished the cards and wandered from Facebook to the news, to Instagram, to some gossip page, to Google where she watched her fingers type: “Marshal Virgil Quinn” as if they were operating independently of her brain. A list of articles appeared:
“Virgil Quinn – Mad Dog Gang”; “Virgil Quinn Captures Limping Man Serial Killer”; “Virgil Quinn Suspended For Anti-Lawyer Rant”; “Virgil Quin Anti-Lawyer Rant – YouTube”; “Hero Marshal Virgil Quinn Talks To Kids – YouTube.”
The cursor drifted back and forth, the headings flashing an underline as the arrow slid over them one-by-one. Like a knee struck by a doctor’s rubber hammer, Elaine’s finger seemed to jerk of its own accord and before she could stop it a new page flashed up on the screen.
Chapter Sixty
Virgil scanned the almost-empty Monday-morning bull pen. Stan and his partner, Carl Montgomery, were out beating the bushes for a parole jumper who had fallen back into his old specialty of armed robbery. Four other detectives were either in court or watching fugitives’ mothers and girlfriends’ homes for some sign of their quarries. Virgil glanced around the office and his eyes strayed to the cardboard box in the corner filled with Janet’s awards and mementoes.
For a moment he pictured her sitting next to him on some stake-out, drinking cold coffee, talking about nothing and everything. He remembered her twisted smile and her laugh, but then his thoughts drifted back to the night they had gone into that house on Sergeant Street. He shook his head and the memory of the smoke and flames slowly faded away. Suddenly, her office felt like a cell. He grabbed the box and carried it to one of the empty desks where he removed its contents and, one-by-one, rolled them up in newspaper, wedged them back inside, and topped them with a handwritten note:
Dear Mr. & Mrs. Tanner,
These items are from Janet’s office. I’m sorry I’ve taken so long to send them to you. She was a wonderful person and I will always miss her.
Sincerely,
Virgil Quinn
He read the note a second time and thought it seemed anonymous and lazy and trite. This is what you say to the parents of a woman who loved you? Virgil wondered then asked himself, What should I say?, but his brain was overwhelmed by a whirl of confused thoughts that vanished as quickly as they had appeared. Spent, he folded the note, wrote her parents’ names on the outside, and taped up the box. He promised himself that he would drop it off at the UPS store on the way home.
Virgil glanced from the clock, 11:15, then back to his laptop. After five seconds he pried it open and watched the screen flicker to life. The list of names seemed to taunt him, but he did not touch the keys. Instead, he looked around the squad room, then back at the clock.
It was customary for the boss to spring for a meal when the squad made a good bust. He figured that with what the team had been through over the last couple of months that was way overdue. Besides, right now he wanted an excuse to get away.
“I’m going to make a lunch run,” he called out. “Who wants what?”
“What are our choices?” Harvey Renfrew asked from the back of the room.
“You can have a sandwich or a burger.”
“My wife wants me to eat healthy,” Harvey said.
“I’ll get you a veggie hoagie with extra tofu.”
“Screw that,” Harvey said, laughing. “Bring me a pastrami with extra mustard.”
Virgil wrote down the rest of the orders then headed out.
It was bright and cold and Quinn wrapped his arms across his chest in defense against a biting wind off the lake. A little after noon they bagged up his order and Virgil left Harry’s Heroes for the five-block walk back to the office.
The city seemed to grow colder with each step, and the air burned his throat like a rasp. A block from the station he stumbled into the shelter of an alley where his breath swirled around his face like fog. Leaning back Virgil closed his eyes and struggled to catch his breath. When he opened them a translucent Jane/Nicole was standing in front of him. Today she wore Nicole’s old, pink, wool coat and red mittens that now seemed too small for her hands.
“You’re doing the right thing,” she said, her voice so faint that it almost disappeared into the wind.
“Catching the bad guys, that’s my job.”
“I mean letting me go.”
“I haven’t,” Virgil protested.
“You know that I don’t exist, that I’m just a figment of your imagination.”
The little figure moved toward him, growing fainter with each step, then paused in front of him and held out her hand.
“I’m not your future. I’m only your past. . . . Remember me,” Nicole whispered and the instant he touched her fingers she shimmered and disappeared. Ten minutes later, back at the station, bent and chilled to the bone, Virgil collapsed in his chair.
“Which on
e’s my turkey and avocado?” Van Buren asked as he pulled the white, wrapped sandwiches from the bag. Virgil just stared out the window, lost in thought. Eventually, the sounds of crinkling paper and crunching chips penetrated Virgil’s consciousness and, half in a fog, he too began to eat.
At a little after one the soiled napkins and flattened mustard packets had all been packed away and Virgil found himself staring blankly at his laptop screen. Screw it! he thought, I’m never giving up, and he began to type, struggling to whittle down the list, to somehow defy the odds and find his lost child.
“Lieutenant?” Renfrew called. Virgil turned to see the detective standing behind him. “That girl wants to talk to you.” Renfrew pointed at a nervous, dark-haired young woman standing in the squad-room doorway. Her face seemed so familiar that, as he had a hundred times before, Virgil thought, Could this be her?
“Who is she?”
“Her name’s Elaine Derwent. She said she has some questions about your daughter.”
Derwent? Virgil grabbed his laptop and scrolled down the list – Danvers, Dotry, no Derwent. Another dead end.
“She said she saw you on YouTube, talking to some school kids about you looking for your daughter,” Renfrew said to fill the void. “When were you on YouTube?”
Virgil glanced again at the girl. “OK, send her over,” he said then stood and tried to force a smile.
“Marshal Virgil Quinn?” the girl asked uneasily when she reached his desk.
“Well, I’m on leave from the Marshals’ Service right now, but, yes, that’s me. Have a seat.”
She looked up at him for a moment, then took half a step back.