Third Rail

by Rory Flynn

  23

  LEE SQUINTS AT the two tapes on the counter in front of him. “Wow, this is like audio archaeology, Eddy. Analog media. These tapes ought to be in a museum.” They’re sitting in Lee’s office in the back of the empty Nagog Five and Ten.

  “Look like little cassette tapes to me.” The two tapes were the only contents of the white envelope that Mrs. Munro gave Harkness.

  “The one on the right is a microcassette.” Lee points. “The one on the left is a minicassette.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “I think one format may have been more popular than the other,” Lee says. “But I honestly don’t know which one. Maybe one was for answering machines back in the day. Not sure. Do you ever think about all the information on cassette tapes that’s just going to get lost forever—mix tapes dudes made for their girlfriends, interviews, messages?”

  Harkness pauses. “Not really.”

  “I do.” Lee’s eyes turn a little misty. “I mean, what if you never heard these tapes? Would it matter?”

  “I don’t know, Lee. I have no idea what’s on them,” Harkness says. “That’s why I came here.”

  “Maybe you never will. Let me see what we have for tape players.”

  Lee disappears into the storeroom.

  Harkness stares at the tapes.

  Lee rushes back with a package so old that the plastic has turned opaque. He tears it open to reveal a gray plastic tape player. “This one’s mini. From like 1994 or something, Eddy. I can probably find a micro player on eBay.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But for now, let’s see if this works.” Lee opens up the hidden cavity in the cassette player and presses in two thin batteries.

  Eddy hands him the tape.

  Lee clicks it in place, pauses for a moment, and presses PLAY.

  Harkness startles when he hears Captain Munro’s familiar voice, distant and tinny, come through the speaker.

  For Edward Harkness upon the occasion of my . . . death.

  Captain Munro pauses, stopped cold when he realizes that the words he’s saying will outlive him, like an echo. Then he continues.

  In 1981 I met Anne Harkness, a school principal, and fell in love with her. She was beautiful, vivacious, intelligent. And we were both married to other people.

  Lee clicks the tape player off. “Eddy, Anne Harkness is your mother, right?”

  Harkness nods. “Right.”

  “This sounds pretty personal, Eddy. Maybe you should just take it home and listen to it.”

  “Why?”

  “Just want to make sure I’m, you know, respecting your privacy.”

  “I don’t care, Lee. We’ve known each other since . . .”

  “Third grade, Mrs. Pettengill,” he says.

  “Right. If I can’t trust you, I can’t trust anyone.” Harkness reaches over to press PLAY. “Anyway, I hate secrets.”

  In time, our relationship grew closer and closer. We became . . . intimate in 1982, and in 1983, Anne gave birth to my son, though I couldn’t claim him as my own. I am recording this tape to register my shame at bringing a child into the world that I could not acknowledge until now, after my death. And to tell you, Edward, as I should have so many years ago, that . . . you are my son. I almost told you hundreds of times. But Anne forbade me to. Red suspected but never knew. And it would have broken Katherine’s heart and destroyed my family. So it remained a secret, revealed now by my death. Don’t be angry at me. Just know that I loved you as much as I could, given the unusual circumstances of our . . .

  Now Harkness shuts off the tape. The captain’s words slow time and make the air feel close and under pressure, as if the store has dropped suddenly to the ocean floor.

  “Wow, Eddy. Do you think it’s true?”

  “Makes perfect sense,” he says.

  It explains why the captain always seemed to be around, keeping an eye on him as a boy, visiting his mother. It explains why his father played Harkness and George against each other like pit bulls. Red must have known, in some way, that his second son was his in name, but not by birth. And it explains why, when no one in hardhearted Boston would show him any kindness, the captain invited him back to Nagog, a homecoming motivated by love, Harkness realizes only now, too late to return it.

  “Thanks, Lee. Look . . . I got to get to work.” He picks up the tape player and the second tape and barges out of the store, leaving Lee sitting dazed in the back room.

  ***

  Watt shuffles around the slab, hands jammed in the pockets of his leather jacket.

  Harkness closes the squad car door and walks toward Watt. “You okay?”

  Watt nods. His brow is visibly furrowed, parallel lines marking the pale skin of his forehead beneath his buzzcut. He looks like a glowing human question mark.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “About what?”

  “Whatever’s bugging you.”

  “The captain,” Watt says finally. “I know you were his friend and all, so don’t get all freaked out.”

  “Okay.” The captain was much more than a friend, but this news will remain a secret.

  “He didn’t kill himself, Eddy. I mean, everyone knows that. It’s not exactly rocket surgery.”

  Harkness puts his hand on Watt’s elbow and leads him over to the far edge of the slab, out of sight of the station. “Something else you want to get off your chest?”

  “Yeah.”

  Watt huddles close, his breath steaming in the cold morning air. “Sergeant Dabilis and the captain were getting payoffs from someone, maybe at that drug lab you’ve been checking out. Captain tried to stop it, maybe he started to feel guilty, maybe . . .”

  Harkness just stares. “Watt, I got to tell you, I’m surprised.”

  “Surprised about what’s going on or surprised that I know about it?”

  “Little of both.”

  “You’re not the only one who pays attention, Eddy,” Watt says. “They call me Forty Watt and Blinky and give me a hard time and all. But I’ve been staying late and digging into Dabilis’s files. And I can tell you this—the guy is definitely not on the straight and narrow.”

  “Why’re you doing this, Watt?

  “What?”

  “Messing with your superior officer. Doing freelance investigating—the kind that can get you fired.”

  “I like this town a lot.”

  “So do I, Watt. Maybe too much.”

  “There’s worse things than giving a shit, Eddy.”

  “That’s right.” Harkness pauses for a moment. “Watt, given what you already know, I think you need to know about a side project I’m working on out at the Old Nagog Tavern.”

  “Sure, Eddy. What?”

  Harkness leans over and tells him.

  24

  HARKNESS IS ON FOOT patrol along Main Street when a red Porsche convertible glides by with its top down.

  “Hey, hey, hey.” A stranger in cargo pants and a white T-shirt grabs Harkness’s arm and steps into the street to get a better look. “Know who that was?”

  “I don’t even know who you are.”

  “It’s me . . . Thom. Henry David Thoreau? Citizen Garrett?”

  “Oh yeah,” Harkness says. “Sorry, Thom. Didn’t recognize you in civilian clothes. So who was that guy in the nice car?”

  “Seth Braeburn.” Thom whispers the name like an incantation.

  “Never heard of him.”

  Thom pulls off his Ray-Bans. “The Dark Prince of Biotech?”

  “Got nothing,” Harkness says.

  “Started out at Google. Now he’s doing biotech venture capital—investing in stuff that’s way out on the edge. Enhanced LED lights that beam down antidepressants. 3D printers that make human cells. Can’t believe he’s here in Nagog.”

  “Can’t believe you’re here in Nagog,” Harkness says. “Didn’t I throw you in jail?”

  “They let me out when I sobered up.”

  “Sorry to hear it.” Har
kness waves Thom back onto the sidewalk. “Aren’t you supposed to be wearing a costume?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be emptying meters?”

  Harkness says nothing. His Taser is in the trunk of the squad car, parked blocks away. Otherwise it might be touching Thom’s soft places.

  Thom follows Harkness down the street. “Sorry, sorry,” he says. “I’m kind of an asshole. Even without Third Rail. Can’t help it.”

  “Maybe you should try a little harder.” Thom’s the human equivalent of a cover band, familiar and annoying. “So who are you today?”

  “I’m not reenacting.” Thom raises an eyebrow. “I’m enacting. I’m in the moment, experiencing history in real time.”

  “That sounds like grad-student talk. Why don’t you just call it living?”

  “Doesn’t sound as impressive.”

  “So watching a biotech celebrity drive by in a convertible qualifies as experiencing history?”

  “Why not? We’d be watching General Gage on a white horse back in 1770. Same diff. History’s just whatever people manage to remember.” Thom’s digging in his backpack. “Here! This should clue you in.” He hands Harkness a dog-eared copy of Wired. Seth Braeburn stares from the cover, a tangle of fiberoptic cables running from his forehead. The headline screams NEW FRONTIERS OF COGNITIVE PHARMA. Below it, the byline reads Dr. Lauren North. Harkness remembers walking through Boston, mind racing on Third Rail. Part of him wants to do it again.

  “The guy’s a freakin’ genius,” Thom says.

  “No doubt,” Harkness says. “Must be in town for the big smarty party.”

  “Headless at Freedom Farm? Everyone’s going to be there.”

  “Except you, right? Because you’re not doing drugs anymore, smart or otherwise, remember?”

  Thom looks away. “Right.”

  School’s out early and the streets are packed with young kids diving for candy along the parade route and teenagers wandering around in awkward packs. Salem has its witches. Concord has the Shot Heard ’Round the World. Nagog has Headless Hallows Eve, the town’s annual parade, a warm-up act for Halloween, still a couple of days away.

  Vintage cars pass—two-tone turquoise Chevys, ancient black Fords, and Elvis-worthy Cadillacs—each with a gray-haired driver. They’re followed by every citizen with a micron of Native American blood, wrapped in furs and beating drums. This crew is all but drowned out by the Nagog Minutemen, who march behind them with fifes and drums, faces drawn and stoic, as if they’re facing a line of redcoats. Their costumes are flawless, billowing linen shirts and brown woolen trousers buttoned at the ankles over high leather boots. Not a spot of battlefield dirt on these sanitized soldiers.

  The soldiers stop and shift their muskets from one shoulder to the other in unison. They aim at the cloudless sky. Their leader raises his arm and shouts. When he lowers his arm, the muskets crack. Babies cry, kids cover their ears, and Harkness’s hand jerks toward the handle of his plastic pistol. He lowers his arm to his side and walks on.

  Nine decapitated redcoats march in bloodied outfits, each holding his head in front of him. The younger kids in the crowd start crying when they see the sprouting cords from their severed necks, gleaming glass eyes rolling back in their heads, and blood dripping from leaf-matted hair.

  A smoke-sodden, ragged Colonial woodsman steps forward and shouts, revealing blackened teeth, “Have ye heard the Legend of Nine Men’s Misery?”

  “No!” The crowd shouts, though of course they have. It’s been part of Nagog history for hundreds of years.

  The woodsman unfolds a piece of parchment to tell the tale they’ve all been waiting to hear.

  “After the Battle of Concord, a group of nine young redcoats found themselves lost in the Nagog Woods, unsure of which direction might lead them to Boston town. There came no word from these soldiers for many weeks. Then nine heads and eighteen hands washed up in the town mill, a bloody gift from the forest. In the trackless wilderness nine men found their fame, their red coats gone, heads and hands the same. These are the words of the dark bard Nathaniel Hawthorne.”

  The woodsman bends down to point at the kids. “No one knows who butchered them. Some say minutemen. Some say Indians. Others say the angry spirits of the forest rose up to join the battle. Just remember this, young friends, to avoid their misery. When all seems lost, ye must keep your head about you.” He gives a maniacal grin and walks on with his headless charges trudging in front of him.

  With palpable relief, the crowd turns its attention to a squad of realtors doing synchronized briefcase drills, followed by a tae kwon do class side kicking its way down Main Street.

  Dabilis leans against a light pole across the street. He raises his hand to his mouth and Harkness’s radio crackles. “Officer Harkness, get moving. Up and down the whole parade route. The meters are waiting.”

  “I emptied Main Street this morning,” he says.

  “Empty it again.”

  Harkness unloads the coin transfer unit from his squad car and pushes it along the crowded street. Sergeant Dabilis just wants to embarrass him in front of the entire town. It’s worse than being in the Nagog Journal police blotter.

  Harkness thinks that this may be the moment when he stops being a cop. He could toss his badge on the ground and walk. But letting Dabilis chase him away would be more than humiliating. Harkness keeps walking down the street, asking kids to move over so he can get to the meters. Meager handfuls of change rattle down the craw of the transfer unit. And all along the parade route, the citizens of Nagog watch his progress, their stares loaded with varying amounts of pity and scorn.

  Harkness glimpses Candace between rows of marching bands and gymnasts, stroller brigades and veterans. She smiles, raises one of May’s tiny hands, and waves it.

  Harkness sidles up to the next meter. Candace looks away.

  Further down Main, Harkness sees Dex, Mouse, and their friends sprawled on the sidewalk and staring at the parade, not with open-eyed astonishment, just the gleaming eyes of Third Rail. Outliers among the children and families, they look out of place away from their laptops. They laugh as the oldest veterans hobble past. They stare when the town manager’s white Cadillac glides by, escorted by six motorcycle cops.

  Dex and his friends aren’t impressed or amused by anything as hokey as a small-town parade. They’re just waiting for their party to start.

  The parade ends, the balloon vendors and roasted chestnut carts move on, and the town cleanup crew starts sweeping the streets. His shift almost over, Harkness pushes the coin transfer unit toward his squad car.

  “Hey!” Candace pushes May’s stroller with the determination of a marathon runner. “Saw you . . .”

  “Emptying meters?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Doesn’t look like much fun.”

  “Don’t knock it till you try it,” Harkness says. “Did May like the parade?”

  “Every kid likes a parade. Even if it’s kind of creepy,” Candace says, then closes her eyes and starts to sob.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  “Everything.” She holds up her hand and pulls herself together.

  “May looks happy. So something’s going right.”

  “Don’t make me count my fucking blessings, Eddy,” Candace says quietly. “I know I’m lucky. It’s just . . .”

  “What?”

  “Our house has like twenty people crammed in it. A French neuroscientist who asks annoying questions all night and complains about the food. This skinny Australian photographer who takes hundreds of Polaroids of herself naked in the woods and calls it art. Anyone with a PhD and no fucking clue.”

  This sounds like good news to Harkness. If these are the kind of people going to Headless at Freedom Farm, it might turn out more like a TED conference than a drug fest.

  “I’m a waitress, Eddy. This time to a bunch of smarty-pants. And I got to tell you, the tips suck. Dex is acting like a boy bridezilla right now. He could freak at any minute.”

/>   “This party of his, it’s tomorrow night?”

  Candace nods.

  “Be careful,” Harkness says. “Halloween always gets weird around here.”

  “You talking about more than smashed pumpkins?”

  “Right,” he says. “Never know what people will do given the chance.”

  Candace moves closer. “These people at the house? They don’t have babies. They don’t know what life is really like. They’re thirty and they’re still in school. They listen to electronica shit. Their entire lives are in ironic quotes. They’re serious about nothing. And I hate Dex for inviting them all to camp out like his stupid party is the next Woodstock or something.”

  Harkness just shakes his head. With free Third Rail, the party’s not going to be about peace, love, and understanding.

  “I’m really worried,” she says quietly. “These are smart people, Eddy, but fucked up. They think they know everything, but they don’t know anything.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on the party.”

  “Thank you.” Candace leans forward and kisses Harkness on the cheek, then backs away. “Sorry, forgot you were a cop for a minute.”

  “That’s okay, so did I.”

  “I think you may be the only person I trust in this whole town.”

  Harkness tries to think of what to say, something reassuring. But finding the right words is a struggle when Candace is around. And by the time they come to him, she’s already walking down Elm, pushing May’s stroller with her good hand.

  25

  THE BOATHOUSE IS CLOSED for the season, front gate padlocked, the chain-link fence cold on his fingers as Harkness climbs over it and walks to the stack of canoes and kayaks on the dock. He picks out a kayak and eases the bow slowly into the Nagog River.

  Minutes later he’s gliding along, the full moon glimmering on the dark water, low wisps of fog lofting from its surface as the night cools. Starting in the west as a wild, narrow creek, the Nagog widens and slows in the inland marshes west of town until its current is almost imperceptible. The same slow current carried the dugout canoes of the Wampanoags and Micmacs, brought the hands and heads of Nine Men’s Misery floating into Nagog, and bore the bloated body of Captain Munro to the town mill.