Days of Atonement

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Did you see or talk to anyone between the time you dropped off, uh, Singh at the Hiawatha and the time you arrived at home?”

  “No.”

  “Can anyone confirm the time you arrived at home?”

  “My wife. I guess. She was asleep.”

  “And then?”

  “I had something to eat and went to bed. I got up at noon. I drove to the lab after breakfast to pick up some of the data from the run so that I could have a conference tonight with Dr. Singh. I was at the lab about four or five hours while the computer printed out what I needed.”

  “Can anyone confirm that?”

  “The gate guards. And Dr. Dielh. He was there. We spent the time talking about the spectra. The experimental results, I mean.”

  “And Dr. Singh wasn’t there?”

  Jernigan blinked. “No,” he said.

  Loren leaned forward, his mind humming. He knew this was important, though he wasn’t certain why.

  “Isn’t that funny,” he said slowly, working his way into it, “that you’d be sitting there talking experimental results with one of the other project managers, and the third project head is sitting in a motel just a few miles away and you don’t make him a part of it?”

  “We were going to see him, anyway.”

  “But you said he was the visiting guy from out of town and you don’t get to talk to him often. So why didn’t you pick him up at the motel and drive him, or just have him walk to the station and catch the maglev right to the labs?”

  “Well.” Jernigan’s mouth gaped open like a fish, but no sound came out. Panic fluttered behind the thick spectacles.

  “Well?” Loren said.

  “Well. We were supposed to meet this afternoon, actually. But the experiment ran late and we all slept late and we hadn’t got the data yet, so I called Dr. Singh and we postponed the meeting to the evening.”

  Cipriano gave a contemptuous snort. “So why didn’t you invite Dr. Singh this afternoon?” he repeated.

  Jernigan looked for an answer for a long, paralyzed moment, then gave a helpless shrug. “We just didn’t.”

  Loren looked at him for the space of two heartbeats, trying to figure out where to go from here. When he’d taken Jernigan into the office he’d had a picture of crushing the man, destroying him, but somehow he couldn’t find the piece of specific information that would allow him to do it. Even though he’d caught him in a contradiction, in blatantly inconsistent behavior, he couldn’t figure out what to do with it.

  And even if he just flat told Jernigan that he didn’t believe him, even if he jumped up and yelled and tried to intimidate him with his size and conviction, the man had brought a bodyguard with him, a man who was probably hovering just outside the door waiting for a chance to intervene.

  Loren shook his head. “So what did you do then?”

  “Went home for dinner. Ate a quick meal out of the icebox.”

  “About what time?”

  “Six, six-thirty.”

  “And then what?”

  “I took the printouts and went outside and into the driveway for my car. And it was gone.”

  “Right from out of the driveway?”

  A nod.

  “For the recorder, Mr. Jernigan?”

  “Yes.” Jernigan cleared his throat. “It was gone.”

  “About what time?”

  “Around seven. My appointment with Dr. Singh was at seven-thirty.”

  “And what did you do then?”

  “Called Mr. Patience.”

  “And he told you to call us?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then gave you a ride down here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you have another car?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Another car. Aren’t you a two-car family?”

  Jernigan licked his lips. “Yes. My wife has a Chrysler New Yorker. But she had already taken the children to a movie at the mall.”

  “When did they leave?”

  “Just before I did.”

  “And they didn’t notice the car was gone?”

  There was another moment of paralysis before Jernigan found an answer. “I guess not.”

  “Or maybe it wasn’t gone yet.”

  “I . . .” Jernigan cleared his throat. “Possibly. I can’t say.”

  Loren looked at Cipriano, who looked back and gave a twisted smile, Jernigan certainly acted guilty. If nervousness alone could convict a man, Jernigan was headed for death row.

  “I want to tell you something, Mr.— Dr.— Jernigan. We will be talking to witnesses. We will be gathering evidence. And I will talk to you again, okay? And when I talk to you again, I will know certain things.”

  Jernigan gaped up at him.

  “I will know what happened, okay? There’s no way I won’t. So if you have anything to add to this, it would be best if you did it now. It would look a whole lot better.”

  Jernigan shrugged. “I don’t know anything else.”

  Loren looked at the physicist. He couldn’t see this man for a killer.

  “Do you own a firearm, Mr. Jernigan?” he asked.

  Jernigan shook his head. “No. I don’t believe in it.”

  Loren felt a reflexive annoyance. This was not an attitude that found its way out West very often. “Does anyone in your family own a gun?” he said.

  “No. We wouldn’t know how to use one.”

  “Do you have any idea who would steal your car?”

  A mute shake of the head. Loren didn’t bother asking for a verbal answer.

  “Any enemies? Any rivals?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have any reason to suspect that your wife might have been unfaithful?”

  Jernigan looked as if he’d been hit with a hammer. It was some time before he could assemble an answer.

  “No.”

  “Do you use drugs?”

  “No.”

  “Does your wife?”

  “No.”

  “Your children?”

  Jernigan assembled an expression of indignation. “The oldest is in eighth grade!” he said.

  Loren gave him a skeptical smile. “It’s been known to happen.”

  Jernigan shook his head.

  “Would you object if we tested your hands for gunpowder residue?”

  Jernigan’s mouth opened, then closed. “Go right ahead,” he said.

  “We’ll have to ask you to sign a statement that you took the test voluntarily. Does that bother you?”

  Jernigan shook his head. Loren looked up. “Would you take care of that, Cipriano?”

  “I guess. Where’s the Shibano kit?”

  Loren thought for a moment and didn’t know the answer. “Better ask Eloy.”

  Cipriano led Jernigan away. He would use the new Shibano test, the one recommended by the FBI, swab the hand and wrist thoroughly with Solution A, allow to dry, then swab with Solution B. Any gunpowder residue would turn bright red.

  Loren stood, stretched, adjusted his gun. He took the recorder from the desk and was about to press the Off button when he noticed that the red LED above the Record button wasn’t lit.

  The battery had died at some point during the interview.

  Loren looked at the dead recorder and put it down gently and wondered whether the department was ready for any of this. The still camera in his bedroom closet when he needed it, the gunpowder test kit stored somewhere where it couldn’t be found, evidence bags borrowed from the Rexall store, dead batteries loaded into the disk recorder… Maybe there was something to Jerry’s theory about a germ of incompetence that lived in the water here.

  At least, in his experience, the germ usually infected the bad guys, too.

  There was a knock on the door frame. William Patience gave an inquiring look. “Busy?” he said.

  Loren looked up. “Not this second, no.”

  Patience slid into the room. His jacket was open and Loren could see the hardware under his left arm. “How’d
Tim do?”

  “He’s very nervous.”

  “I know. Most of the researchers are pretty regular people, but some of them never developed much in the way of social skills.” Patience sighed. “Tim’s one of those. That’s why I thought I’d better bring him in myself.”

  “For what it’s worth,” Loren said, “I don’t figure he shot anyone.”

  Patience nodded. “I didn’t think so, either.”

  “Maybe he knows who did,” said Loren.

  “I doubt it.” Patience scowled. “You don’t know who the dead man is, right? Maybe nobody does.”

  Loren gave the smaller man his hick grin. “What makes you think nobody knows who the guy is?”

  Patience looked up. “What do you mean?”

  “He talked before he died.”

  “What did he say?” Casually.

  He called me by name.

  Loren shook his head. “Words,” he said.

  Patience’s glance flickered away. “Hell of a weekend for you,” he said.

  “As violent as they come.”

  “They don’t get much worse.”

  Loren gave a laugh. “You should have been here during the Big Strike against Riga Brothers. It lasted five months. Nobody died, but the governor had to call in the state troopers and the National Guard. There were more broken heads than there were beds in the hospital.”

  Patience looked up. “Who won?”

  “Nobody. The company lost, the union lost, the town lost. If anybody won, it was the copper miners in Chile. And ATL came in to use the pit’s excess generating capacity.”

  Patience shook his head. “They shouldn’t allow that kind of thing anymore. The unions just got too strong. Somebody had to knock them down a peg.”

  “Shit, Bill,” Loren said. “That wasn’t it. The unions weren’t too strong, it was the companies that got too multinational. If they can play Chilotes off against American workers, then they can keep the profits and pay the miners like peons no matter which bunch of ’em are working.”

  Patience looked at him. “I guess we disagree.”

  “I guess we do.”

  Patience ambled over into the corner, where Loren’s trophies and photographs were set up. “Somebody told me you were a boxer,” he said.

  “When I was in the service.”

  Patience peered at the photograph of Loren in his belt. “U.S. Army heavyweight champion of Korea.” He looked over his shoulder at Loren. “That was after the war, right?”

  A stab of pain raced through Loren’s back. “After the war?” he said. “It was decades after the war. How old do you think I am?” He eased his gun around to the front.

  Patience looked at Loren over his shoulder. “Guess you’ve still got the moves,” he said.

  “A few.”

  “All my men are trained in hapkido. That’s a Korean style of karate.”

  “Is that one of those where you jump up in the air all the time? I never thought those would be very useful.” Loren limped to his chair and sat in it. Relief swam through his lower back. “I mean,” he said, “the time it takes one of those guys to get his foot up into the air, I could pop him in the face about twelve times.”

  “We try to emphasize the practical side of things. I teach my people to immobilize the enemy before trying any high kicks.”

  Loren shifted his weight in his chair and gave a sigh of relief. “That’s makes sense,” he said.

  Cipriano appeared in the office door. “Test’s done, jefe.” He shook his head. “Negative.”

  Loren shrugged. The test, he knew, was good; it would have picked up traces of the powder no matter how carefully the man had washed his hands. “Thank Mr. Jernigan for his time,” he said. “I guess he’s got a meeting to go to.”

  Patience shook everyone’s hand and left with the physicist. Cipriano stood in Loren’s office, his arms akimbo, a dubious expression on his face. “There’s something going on, jefe,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “I wish we could have kept on that guy’s ass in here a little longer.”

  “Me, too. But we didn’t have any reason to question him further. And I couldn’t think of questions to ask anymore.”

  “So what now?”

  “I go home and go to bed. You stay on till the bars close.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “In the morning we do police work. We go to everyone on Jernigan’s block and ask what they saw. And we talk to Singh and Dielh, and to Jernigan’s family. And if we have anything that contradicts Jernigan’s story, we nail him with it.”

  Cipriano nodded. “Shit,” he said, “I hate this.”

  Loren heaved himself out of his chair. “Me, too, pachuco.” He headed out, then paused in the office door. He turned to Cipriano. “He called me by name,” he said. “He asked me for help.”

  “Who?”

  “The John Doe.”

  Cipriano looked surprised. “You know this guy?”

  “Not unless he was Randal Dudenhof.”

  Cipriano laughed. “Yeah, sure.”

  “He knew me,” Loren said.

  “Maybe he read your name tag.”

  Loren looked in surprise at the plastic name tag pinned above his right breast pocket. “I never thought of that.”

  “It’s right there in blue and white.”

  “Funny thing for a dying man to do.”

  Cipriano shrugged. “Dying men do funny things.”

  “I guess so.” Loren walked out into the corridor, then to the front desk. The body was still sprawled on the white tile in front of the doors. Someone had put a blanket over it.

  Loren turned to Eloy. “Tell the Bag ’n’ Drag they can take him away.”

  “Right, Chief.”

  Loren felt a sudden tenderness welling up in him. Despite the dead battery and the forgotten Pentax, the department had done very well tonight, had performed on a par with any department anywhere. He put a hand on Eloy’s shoulder.

  “You did real good,” he said.

  Eloy looked up in surprise. “Thanks, Chief.”

  “Take care of your neck. Do what the doctors say.”

  “Sure.”

  “Have a good night, now.”

  “You, too.”

  Loren limped out of the building, pain nagging at his back. He paused on the front steps, breathing the October air that touched his face and hands with its invigorating chill.

  He looked down at the BMW, its gleaming surface defaced with fingerprint powder.

  Time to go home, he thought.

  The Days of Atonement were just beginning.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “It’s a well-documented phenomenon,” Jerry said. “Sometimes people just catch on fire. I read it in a book. Could you pass the waffles?”

  Breakfast coffee scalded its way down Loren’s throat, forcing open his eyes through sheer pain. He hadn’t slept well. Images of John Doe’s body still sprawled through his mind, Randal Dudenhof in an accordion of sharp-edged metal, impaled by the steering column, one or the other or both gasping for breath on the white tile floor.

  “There was this one guy—” Jerry was enthusiastic. “He caught fire in his car in the middle of traffic. He burned up completely before they got to him. All that was left was his feet.”

  “Yuck,” said Kelly.

  “Most people who burn up are fat old alcoholics, but this guy was young.”

  Loren looked up from his coffee cup. “Sounds like he was freebasing cocaine,” he said, “and the torch got away from him.”

  “This was before cocaine. I mean, before they started doing that kind of thing with it.”

  Loren considered the thought of a pair of smoldering feet found in an automobile. The insurance company would call it an act of God, and perhaps they were right. People, he thought, shouldn’t be afraid to call something a miracle when there was no other explanation.

  This specific instance, however, did not convince him. Miracles ought not to be
this frivolous. “Where do you find this stuff?” he said.

  “Books.”

  “There are books and there are books,” Loren said. “People lie in those kinds of books. Sometimes people just tell good stories.”

  Jerry shrugged. “Maybe. But it could be relevant.”

  “To what, for God’s sake?”

  “There’s a fire danger now, right? There are always these fires up in the national forest. And range fires around town. Suppose it isn’t just humans who spontaneously combust. Suppose all those fires are caused by animals just blowing up.”

  “Exploding gophers.” Kelly rolled her eyes. “Give me a break, Jer.”

  “Jerry,” said Loren, “the cause of those fires is always investigated. And nobody’s found an exploding animal yet.”

  “Have they looked?”

  “Someone would have noticed by now.”

  “Mom.” Katrina looked at her plate. “This toast has butter on it. I wanted dry toast.”

  Loren looked at her. “You’re not fat,” he said.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “You’re not.”

  Skinny Kelly smirked. “Yes, she is.”

  Loren poured himself more coffee. Katrina had inherited her mother’s sturdy bone structure— no diet could change that— but Katrina hadn’t accepted it. She was on some manner of fast most of the time and worked out continually, a nonstop combination of track, aerobics, and the high school drill team. At least, Loren thought, the weight obsession had made his daughter into an athlete.

  Katrina went into the kitchen to make herself more toast. Loren stared at his plate and swallowed coffee.

  He remembered Randal with the steering column through his chest, blood bubbling out of his mouth. Back then the department didn’t have the equipment to cut him out of the car, the heavy cutters they called the jaws of life.

  A few weeks after the accident Loren had started a fund for the city’s first pair of cutters. He hadn’t wanted to see anything like Randal’s death again. Loren was just a patrolman then and he didn’t have much money, but he would have paid for them out of his own pocket if he’d had to. Instead he’d gone to Luis Figueracion and pointed out how with a few thousand dollars he could preserve the lives of any number of voters. Luis had seen the point, and the cutters he’d bought were still in operation.