“How about your mother, Jackie?” Amanda Jones’s voice.
Jackie pulled a face. “What happened to your voice?”
“Shhh. Jesus Christ.”
“What about my mother?” Jackie said.
Barnes said, “She proud of you?”
21
Martinez was alone in the technical lab, asleep on a stool, facedown in an open textbook. One reading lamp was aimed at her improvised study area; otherwise the lab was dark. Barnes stood in the open doorway and watched her for a moment, innocent in sleep.
When he closed the door behind him, Martinez jerked awake and threw her arms up into a karate position. She blinked at Barnes, registered who he was, and dropped her hands. “Jesus. You scared me.”
Barnes flicked on the overhead fluorescent lights. They blinked into life—tink-tink-tink—exposing the steel gadgetry, white sheets, and black bindings found on the various tools and instruments in the lab. He took a seat on the hospital bed, took off his jacket and holster, rolled up his sleeve. “Pulling an all-nighter?”
She stretched. “It’s quieter here than at home. Got a couple roommates majoring in boys with rock-hard abs.”
“You don’t like rock-hard abs?”
“Rock-hard abs,” she said, pointing to her stomach and then pointing to her temple, “rocks in the head.”
“What are you studying?”
Martinez lifted the book to show Barnes the title: Control Theory by William Glasser, MD.
“Psychology?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s it about?”
“It’s about how our minds are like filing cabinets with tags on the drawers, and if we learn to file things in the right places, we’ll live happier lives.”
“How’s that supposed to work?”
Martinez stretched and yawned. “Well,” she said, “take an overweight person who wants to lose some pounds, right?”
Barnes nodded. “No abs. Just your type.”
She smirked. “Now imagine this person has a happiness drawer in a filing cabinet inside their head. If you were to open that drawer and rifle through it, you’d find pictures of fried chicken and cheeseburgers, you know?”
“I’ll take a double pepperoni with a side of ranch.”
Martinez tapped her chin. “Crab rangoons and plum sauce.”
“Solid,” Barnes said.
“Anyway,” Martinez said, “those are the sorts of things an overweight person might have in their happiness drawer, while in their pain or sadness drawers you’ll find fruits and veggies and diet foods. The idea is if we learn to control what we keep in our drawers—which is basically what we picture happiness or sadness or things like achievement or remorse to be—we can better control the choices we make.”
“Makes sense, but how does one go about moving a cheeseburger from one drawer to the other?”
“Haven’t read that far yet.”
“Well, you’ve read your manual on Eddie, I assume?” He patted the machine at his side.
“Yes.”
“Then let’s get to it.”
“It’s all old stuff.”
“What about Franklin?” Barnes said.
Martinez cocked her head.
“You pulled him, right?”
“Against your wishes. And apparently his.”
“Cat’s out of the bag, then.” He was staring at the machine now. It had no face, no personality, no life, and yet it seemed to stare back at him. What was it Nietzsche said about the abyss? “I need to go through them all. See what I might have missed.”
“It’s really going to be an all-nighter, then?”
“You up for it?”
Martinez hopped off her stool, tucked her button-down top into her slacks. She went to the coffee maker on the far side of the room, pulled out the carafe, poured a cup. “You’re not supposed to do more than an hour at a time. Regulation.”
“That’s why I’m glad you’re here and not Warden. Gonna need you to look the other way on that. Plus, I’d rather do this without Holston snooping around for his story.”
Martinez stared at him, jaw muscles back to their familiar twitching tightness. “I knew I should have taken that internship at Bracken.”
“I need this.”
“You sound like a munky,” Martinez said.
“The case needs this,” Barnes said.
Martinez sighed. “I’ll pull the plug if it becomes too much.”
“Deal.” Barnes lay back on the bed. He stared up at the same ceiling he’d stared at a hundred times or more. It was a drop ceiling with dingy white tiles. Water damaged. One of the tiles had a rip in the corner, showing the beige fibrous material of which it was composed. Martinez came over to the machine. She turned it on and started attaching the tubes.
“How was he when you left him?” Barnes said.
“Franklin?”
“Yeah.”
“His vitals were low. One of his lungs got clipped. It collapsed, but the other was strong enough to see him through the surgery. They were prepping him for more blood.” She loaded the serum bottle onto Eddie and latched it in. She attached the suction cups to Barnes’s temples, turned a dial, and said, “You ready for the needle?”
“Yes.”
She inserted the needle into Barnes’s arm. Her touch was gentler than Warden’s had ever been. She handed him the bit. “Who’s first?”
“Franklin. After that, we’ll do them top to bottom.”
“He’s still alive. He’ll be able to tell us himself.”
“I know,” Barnes said, “but we gotta stop this guy. If there’s anything in his memor—”
Martinez stopped him with a gesture. “I get it.” She turned a dial and flipped a switch. “We were able to pull a couple days off your partner, but I can start you wherever you want.”
“Start me a few minutes before he went down.”
Martinez typed on a keyboard and pressed the “Return” key. She turned a dial. Eddie clicked and hissed. “Here he comes.”
Barnes chomped his bit. His body buzzed for a second, then arched. The Vitruvian Man test pattern appeared. “Prepare for transmission.”
Barnes smelled green grass, heard footsteps crunching gravel. He found himself walking down the drive at Parkview Memorial cemetery. Inside Franklin, Barnes felt more powerful than he could have imagined, like he could crush stones with his fists, like nothing could ever knock him down. Franklin looked to his right, and Barnes saw himself through his partner’s eyes. He looked like a shambling corpse. A vision of Franklin’s former partner, Tom Watkins, bloomed in Franklin’s mind. The two were standing outside the safe house in Ferndale. Watkins said, “We’re just gonna talk to him, that’s all.”
The big man’s stream of consciousness tripped over to a new vision. He was laughing with a young boy at his side. Marvin. Barnes felt an unbridled happiness in Franklin that he’d almost never seen from the outside. The boys sipped sodas in glass bottles as they walked down the street. Good friends. Blood brothers by way of sliced palms. They turned their heads toward a voice: “Hey, you little lawn jockeys.”
“There.” Now it was Barnes pointing up the road at the cemetery. Franklin looked to see the man raking wet leaves near a golf cart. Oh, shit. This could be our guy. His heart boomed. He moved heavily off the gravel to the grass, saw Barnes do the same on the opposite side. They continued toward the groundskeeper. Franklin called out. “Antonio?”
The man stopped raking. He began to turn toward them but stopped.
“Detroit Homicide,” Franklin said. “We’re here to ask you a few questions.”
“I’ll be right over,” the man said.
“It’s him,” Barnes whispered. He drew his gun, called to the groundskeeper. “Why don’t you just stay right there? We’ll come to you.”
Franklin broke into a sweat. He drew his gun. Another vision bloomed in his head. He was standing in front of a man inside a battered house. Tyrell Diggs. Barnes smelled sweet smo
ke in the air, sweat, and piss. Diggs smiled to show a row of golden teeth. “You done with that college bullshit?”
“No,” Franklin said. Then he put a handgun up to Diggs’s sternum and squeezed the trigger.
The phantom gun bucked in Barnes’s hand on the hospital bed, the blast echoed in his ears. He felt Franklin’s fear and remorse as he looked down on Diggs, the gun now shaking wildly in his fist. Diggs was grasping at the bullet hole in his chest, rolling back and forth.
“He was my friend,” Franklin said.
“He was your bitch!”
Franklin stepped forward and put a foot on Diggs’s face, trapping it sideways against the stained carpet beneath, squashing together his cheeks and lips, bulging his dying eyes. “You’ll go to hell, Tyrell.”
Tyrell’s eyes stared off at something unseen. He spoke slowly and with difficulty due to the huge foot on his face. “You can’t kill me. I’m Tyrell Di—”
Back in the cemetery, Franklin yelled, “Hold it right there!” He ran to his left, diagonally up and away from the golf cart. Losing breath. “Hands up, now!”
Calavera threw his hands above his head.
Barnes said, “Drop your weapon!”
“Is that you, Barnes?” Calavera said. “Well hey, ten-three, good buddy!”
“Drop the gun!” Franklin said. He could see the man’s face. Dark-skinned with a wide, flat nose, black eyebrows, and a wide jaw.
Calavera fired at him.
“Son of a bitch.” Franklin ducked down and fired back, three shots. Barnes heard his own voice echoing across the cemetery. “You all right?”
“I’m fine!”
Franklin covered Barnes as he went to the cart, shook his head, and moved up into the headstones beyond. He heard distant footsteps, scrapes of clothing against the headstones.
Barnes ducked and fired.
Franklin rose up, fired at a flash of gray between the headstones, ducked back down.
Calavera fired back.
Franklin moved up through the rows of graves. He stopped when he saw Barnes taking aim and firing.
“He’s at the back,” Barnes said. “Near the fence.”
Franklin charged ahead. He ducked behind the entrance to a family crypt nestled into a hillside, up against a solidly built door. “I’ll cover you,” he said. “Come up.” He stepped around the side of the crypt and riddled the hillside with bullets.
“See him?” Franklin said.
“He’s gone out the back gate,” Barnes said. “Cover me.”
Franklin turned to fire but found his clip empty. He pulled back against the door and reached for a new clip. He heard shattering glass nearby. Overhead?
The door behind him fell open.
Barnes groped in the air above the hospital bed as Franklin toppled over like a domino. His body slammed the concrete floor inside the crypt. He dropped his gun on impact. It skittered and bounced against a wall of cubbyholes, each one with a dusty silver urn inside.
Franklin rolled to his front and reached for the gun but felt a punch against his back. His breath disappeared. He gasped. Barnes felt a wetness inside his own lungs, like how he imagined drowning would feel. Franklin looked up to see Calavera, now masked. He must have slipped past Barnes, come down from the fence, Franklin thought.
Calavera placed the hot barrel of his nickel-plated handgun against Franklin’s head, leaned in close, and said, “Think you’ll be visited?”
Franklin tried to speak but only managed a mouthful of blood. Barnes tasted it, the iron scent filling up his nose and throat.
Calavera removed the handgun from Franklin’s head and left.
The crypt floor was cold against Franklin’s cheek. He spat blood. His mind shifted over to Marvin, walking next to him on the sidewalk. Franklin had grown big by then, and he looked down at his friend. Marvin was wearing the black vest his mother had given him for his birthday, plus the Cincinnati Reds hat his father had left behind so many years ago. So small, and in that getup, he looked just like a crank-box monkey.
I’ll be damned.
“Franklin?”
Franklin’s mind snapped back to the crypt. It was Barnes in the doorway.
22
Barnes sat on the hospital bed, recovering from Franklin’s memory. Martinez had given him some time, claiming she needed a bathroom break. Before she left, they’d briefly spoken of calling in a sketch artist to take down his description of Reyes, but considering the detailed report given by Sharon Bruckheimer of Parkview Memorial, as well as the late hour, Barnes decided it wasn’t necessary.
Martinez came back in. “Saw this on your desk,” she said, holding out a manila envelope marked BARNES in Magic Marker.
Barnes opened the envelope. It was a cross-referenced list from the Parkview Memorial—each of Calavera’s victims linked to the deceased loved one whose grave they’d ignored, the victim’s relationship to the neglected loved one, and the loved one’s age when they died.
Martinez said, “Edith MacKenzie is next. Ready?”
“I was tied down by that bastard in my living room.” Edith’s voice. “My daughter in the next room, helpless.”
Barnes found Edith’s name on the list. Next to it was Mildred Smith, sister, fifty-five years old. He set down the list and closed his eyes, just now feeling like he could breathe again, after the psychosomatic loss of Franklin’s lung. He dropped back onto the hospital bed and put in his bit.
The power surged. The Vitruvian Man test pattern reappeared, stayed for a moment, and then blinked away.
Barnes once again endured Edith’s final moments.
Darkness and silence.
“End of transmission.”
The Vitruvian Man test pattern.
Please Stand By.
They moved on to Edith’s bedridden daughter, Kendra. He suffered the same fears, the same terrors, the same aches and pains in his body as he had the first time he’d been Kendra, two years ago. He noted, as he had before, that Calavera had used the word detectives with her instead of Watkins or Barnes. The MacKenzies were his first victims. Calavera couldn’t know which police officers would be assigned to his case. At the end of her memory, Calavera looked down at the paralyzed Kendra and said, “Hello again. Enjoy your first clue.” Then he waved to the police through Kendra’s dying eyes. “Ten-three.”
Darkness and silence.
“End of transmission.”
The Vitruvian Man test pattern.
Please Stand By.
Barnes shook out his hands and his feet, attempting to alleviate some of Edith and Kendra MacKenzie’s pain. He breathed steadily. He’d gained nothing new from the MacKenzie memories, at least not directly. From within, Kendra MacKenzie recalled the day her mother told her that her horse, Paddie, had originally been Mildred’s. “We inherited it from my goddamn sister.”
“Ready for Philips?” Martinez said.
Barnes nodded. Chunk Philips’s loved one had been Verna Philips, mother, sixty-seven years old.
The Vitruvian Man appeared, disappeared.
Chunk sat in his delivery truck, staring at the back of an oyster bar through the cracked windshield. It was dark outside, 4:00 a.m., though still muggy and hot from a scorching day. Chunk didn’t want to exit his truck; there was no AC outside to stem his sweat, which Barnes felt collecting under his sagging male breasts. Chunk sighed. Man, I gotta get that windshield fixed. The back door to the restaurant opened, and a slight man poked his head out. The skinny twerp. Chunk lifted his chin toward the man, who nodded back and smiled with big teeth. Chunk hopped out of the truck and landed heavily on the pavement.
“Hot enough for ya?” the twerp said.
“Damn right, Jordy,” Chunk said. He pulled on his jersey gloves and breathed in the rotten-fish stink in the old Detroit alleyway.
“August in Michigan, right?”
“Soon we’ll be under a foot of snow,” Chunk said.
“Catch you on the flip side,” Jordy said. He slipped back
into the restaurant, letting the door click closed behind him.
“Catch you on the flip side,” Chunk said in a whiny, mocking tone. He set up his conveyor rail of steel casters, placing one end on the back of his truck, the other on the shelf attached to the back of the restaurant. The shelf was below a window covered over with plastic drapes like you used to see over supermarket coolers, a pass-through window for deliveries. Chunk set a box of flash-frozen salmon fillets on the casters and waited. He stared at the red bricks of the building, followed the grout lines up and over and diagonally with his eyes. He thought the man who laid those bricks must have been a good, solid person doing something meaningful for the world. And here I am, delivering fish. A memory bloomed in Chunk’s mind. Mother. She stood over him in an apron, one hand high on her hip, the other pointing a finger in his face. Bloodred fingernails. Barnes tasted a chocolate-chip cookie, felt its texture in his mouth. Verna Philips said, “You’ll never amount to anything, Raymond, if you can’t keep your hands out of the cookie jar.”
Jordy unlocked and opened the small door on the other side of the plastic drapes. Chunk slung the salmon fillets along the conveyor and through the opening. The casters sang out as they spun—sheeng!
Thirty-seven boxes to go.
Chunk loaded another box and slung it—sheeng!
Thirty-six.
Sheeng!
Thirty-five.
“Hey, Chunk.”
Chunk nearly shat himself. He cringed and turned to face the source of the voice that had crept up so quietly behind him. When he saw the mask, Chunk damn near shat again, but he remained composed. “That’s Raymond to you, sir; only my friends call me Chunk. Whatcha wearing a mask for?”
Barnes felt a ball of pressure on his belly. Although he’d been Chunk Philips twice before, the blade entering his guts still surprised him. He looked down over Chunk’s ample frame, saw the blood spilling out over Calavera’s hand. He shuddered when Calavera yanked the blade up toward his chest bone.
A moment later Chunk was being dragged forward by his hair, stumbling deeper into the alley. Barnes’s eyes saw alternative views of pavement, bricks, scraps of paper, a manhole cover, and Calavera’s shoes through blurry blinks. They were generic black sneakers beneath black pants, as frustratingly nondescript as always. Barnes felt a bang and sharp pain in the crown of his head. He looked up to see Chunk was at a dumpster. The steel corner—where the dump-truck arms entered to lift it up—now had some of his hair on it, some of his skin.
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