Third Rail

by Rory Flynn

  She reads, “The leader of an Internet drug cult died last night in a muddy field outside the quiet town of Nagog when a Halloween party ended in chaos.”

  Candace pauses.

  “You don’t have to read that.”

  “It’s okay,” she says. “It happened. Can’t pretend it didn’t.” Candace raises the paper again. “In a violent shoot-out, Officer Edward Harkness of the Nagog Police shot and killed the group’s leader, Declan Nevis, 26. Three reputed Chinatown drug dealers died in a related explosion in a drug lab. Nevis’s young daughter, May, was treated and released from Nagog Regional Hospital.”

  She lifts May’s car seat from the floor. She’s sleeping. “See, good as new,” she says. “Not a scratch on her.”

  “Beautiful.”

  Candace stares at him for a moment, her eyes starting to glisten. “You’ve probably been wondering what I knew about the whole drug thing, Eddy. Since you met me, even.”

  He nods.

  “I guess I knew they were up to something, but I didn’t know it was such a big deal. Or that they were selling so much of that Third Rail stuff. Dealing seemed like too much work for those lazy assberger fucktards. The investigators interviewed me for three hours. Sworn deposition. I told them I didn’t know what was going on at the party, except that everyone was going to get high and weird, of course. That was always Dex’s specialty. But I didn’t know he was going to freak. Or that those assholes from Chinatown were going to be there. I never would have asked you to come if I did.”

  “I’m glad you did.” Harkness watches May’s pale face and calm eyes.

  Candace keeps reading. “Investigators still searching the crime scene are focusing on a powerful synthetic drug, Third Rail, which makes users act irrationally and violently. State Police and the DEA are now investigating. Officer Harkness—involved in the infamous fatal shooting on the Brookline Avenue Bridge after a Red Sox division win last year—is currently in the intensive care unit of Mass General Hospital with life-threatening injuries.”

  “Life-threatening?”

  Candace looks at Harkness, then kisses him on the forehead. “Not anymore, Eddy. That was last week. Go back to sleep. The doctors say you need to rest.”

  Harkness closes his eyes and drops back into the murk.

  ***

  When Harkness surfaces again, he’s in a new room, bigger and even brighter.

  Patrick struggles to stand, then rushes forward, bobbling a coffee cup, which hits the floor. He’s looking around for something. “I’m supposed to press that thing that tells the nurses you’re awake,” he says.

  Harkness shakes his head. “Patrick?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Am I dead?” Harkness whispers.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Feel weird. Bad dreams. Life-threatening injuries.”

  Patrick laughs. “No, Eddy. If you were dead, I wouldn’t be talking to you. I’d be crying. Besides, you’re out of the ICU now. Nice room in the normal part of the hospital. Check out the view.” He pulls open the shades on a window and Harkness sees the winding streets of Beacon Hill, the dome of the statehouse. “You don’t die and go to Boston. That’s really not how it works.”

  “Guess not.”

  “You’re in Mass General. Been here for a couple of weeks.”

  “Seems like a lot longer.”

  “Time kind of grinds when you’re in a coma.”

  “Or emptying meters,” he says.

  Patrick leans closer. “You’ll never empty another meter in your life,” he says. “I guarantee you that. You’re the golden boy again, Eddy.”

  “I don’t feel golden, Patrick.”

  “You will.” Patrick sits next to the bed. “Commissioner’s been by the office twice already to rally the troops. Fitzgerald’s going down in flames. Narco-Intel’s gearing up to full speed, waiting for you to get back. Been wanting to ask you—you wouldn’t have any idea where those photos came from, would you, smart guy?”

  “Can neither confirm nor deny.”

  “Well, they did the trick. Mach’s disappeared—they’re searching for him down in New York. Fitzgerald’s got a good shot at ending up in Walpole.”

  “I can die happy,” Harkness says.

  “But don’t, please.” Patrick stares out the window at the city. “Got lots of drugs to find. Perps to pop. And lots of fans cheering for you.”

  “Like the Sox.”

  “Just like the Sox,” Patrick says.

  “History repeats itself.”

  “Sure does,” Patrick says. “Like it’s got Alzheimer’s.”

  31

  FROM THE STREET, Harkness can see through the uncurtained windows of the tidy house with a thick crust of snow on the roof. Dabilis is eating a bachelor-style dinner, half standing, half perching on the arm of an Ikea couch, plate in one hand, fork in the other, beer bottle on the table in front of him. He stares at the flat-screen intently, searching for some vital secret. Harkness guesses it’s the Patriots game.

  Harkness takes out the digital wiretap, repaired after its dive in the Nagog River. He sets it on the dashboard of his car and inches forward through the slush.

  Dabilis is still captain of the Nagog Police, one of the most powerful men in town, as he’s glad to tell anyone. He only got a hand slap for not sending backup to Dex’s party, claiming it was a radio malfunction due to the nor’easter.

  If he turned on the digital wiretap, Harkness knows he wouldn’t hear anything incriminating for as long as he could stand to listen. The two other men involved in the bribes—Dex and Captain Munro—are dead. Dex’s friends, who could ID him as the corrupt cop who picked up the payoffs, couldn’t be found. No one has real proof that Dabilis did anything wrong besides being a bad cop, which isn’t news.

  No one except Harkness.

  He flips the digital wiretap over and turns the silver arrow from RECEIVE to BROADCAST, a trick he and his men pull when they get bored during long stakeouts. He points it at the wires running to Dabilis’s house and presses START.

  Dabilis stands up, confused. He sets down his plate and beer and walks toward the flat-screen, pressing buttons on the remote. But every channel broadcasts the last inning of the final game of the ’04 Series against St. Louis, the one when Lowe clinched it. Dabilis throws down the remote and sits on the couch, staring at his favorite game as if it were beamed by God through a celestial cable box.

  Harkness turns up the power.

  Now the game’s coming out of Dabilis’s computer and radio. Wherever he turns, he hears the announcer’s voice and the roaring fans, an onslaught that sends him rushing around the house, trying to turn everything off. To drug dealers staggering around in a haze, Kanye West coming from their beepers is equally mystifying.

  Dabilis scurries through the house, turning knobs and clicking remotes, but he can’t turn off the game. Harkness cranks up the power even more. Now the game is beaming from everywhere at once. He switches to new content:

  Through careful detective work that seemed beyond his abilities, Sergeant Dabilis discovered that I had fathered a son out of wedlock—and used it, over the years, to extort me by threatening to tell Katherine of my transgression. He forced me to fire several officers simply because he didn’t like them. He received payoffs from local businesses. And in a final moment of weakness, I looked the other way as he received payoffs from the operation at the Nagog Tavern, which I now recognize is home to a dangerous drug lab, one that I intend to shut down.

  Dabilis walks into kitchen, confused.

  While the first tape was a revelation, this confession, captured on the second tape the captain left behind, was about revenge. Any listener would suspect that Dabilis killed Captain Munro to quiet him forever.

  Harkness drives his car forward for a better angle, takes out his binoculars, and watches as Dabilis races into the kitchen, looking for relief from the accusations and sonic overload. He opens the fridge to find a beer waiting right in th
e center of the first shelf, Sam Adams Light, his favorite. Dabilis is vain about his growing belly.

  Dabilis twists off the top and raises it to his lips, taking a thirsty swallow intended to chase away the relentless voice of the dead captain. He doesn’t notice the Third Rail—it’s tasteless, odorless. Like water, like nothing.

  When he broke into Dabilis’s house this afternoon, Harkness considered dosing the beer with more than a couple of drops. Enough Third Rail, and Dabilis would curl into the fetal position and thrash around for a few moments, legs rabbit kicking and spastic arms flailing. Then his brain would short-circuit and his body would go into seizure—white foam spraying between clenched teeth—until his heart stopped.

  The punishment would fit the crime. Harkness remembers Mrs. Munro’s instructions to him about her husband’s killer. Hunt him down and make him pay. Without an ounce of mercy. Vengeance would be his. But it would be like a movie where the devious villain gets blown away at the end with a fast shot to the head. Crowd pleasing, but too easy.

  Instead, Harkness gets out of the car and walks to the back of the house. The door is unlocked. Cops are notoriously slack about safety at home. Like nurses who smoke, doctors who drive too fast, and motorcyclists who don’t wear helmets, they like to tempt fate.

  Dabilis stands in the living room, his eyes wide-open as the information keeps pouring into his brain—his past rewritten and replayed at 1,000× speed, memory cracked open. His awestruck smile droops when he sees Harkness.

  The captain’s voice echoes through Dabilis’s house, repeating over and over like a mantra of guilt.

  Dabilis tries to run but Harkness grabs the back of his shirt and throws him against the television, knocking it off its stand with a short-ciruit flash.

  “You’ll get a citation for this,” Dabilis says from the floor.

  Harkness feels his boot rising to stomp Dabilis’s head but he stops short. “I don’t work for you anymore,” he says. “I’m in Boston now. No citations. No backtalk. I came back here to make you an offer.”

  “Fuck you.” Dabilis crab walks away from him, sliding along the floor until he hits a wall.

  Harkness follows, points up at the ceiling, where the captain’s voice echoes from in-wall speakers. “You killed him, didn’t you?”

  “You mean your daddy?” Dabilis sneers. “I always knew you were a real bastard, but still . . .”

  Before Dabilis can flinch, Harkness reaches out to grip the back of his ear with three fingers, then uses that leverage to press his thumb into Dabilis’s right eye, backing him against the wall in a practiced move that bouncers call eye for an eye.

  He presses harder, until Dabilis squirms, then screams.

  “You know, you’re not very popular in Nagog,” Harkness says, releasing him. “You’ve fucked with every officer. You made the captain’s wife a widow, and lied to her. You took bribes from drug dealers. And you drowned your superior officer.”

  “He jumped off the Carson Avenue Bridge,” Dabilis says, face dripping with sweat. “Had leukemia. And a pile of debt.”

  “That’s the story you made up,” Harkness says. “And the Third Rail I put in your beer is making you think it’s the truth. But when you wake up in the morning, you’ll know it’s not. You’ll remember how you held him underwater on the banks of the Nagog until he wasn’t moving. Right?”

  “Maybe. But I’ll still be in charge,” Dabilis sputters, twisting his damp face.

  “Not for long. You’re resigning and leaving Nagog. Florida’s nice this time of year. Spring training starts in a couple of months.”

  “What if I don’t?”

  Harkness takes the tape from his jacket pocket and holds it up. “I’ll take this to the town manager and you’ll be under investigation in no time. If that doesn’t work, I’ll be glad to come back and revisit my decision to let you depart gracefully.”

  Dabilis juts his face forward maniacally, inspired by Third Rail. “Why don’t you just shoot me now, Detective Harkness of the fucking BPD? Too scared, bastard boy?”

  Harkness shakes his head. “Because then I’d be just like you, Sweathog,” he says. “And I’m not. If you don’t follow the rules, they’re not rules anymore.”

  Dabilis smirks. “I know you don’t believe that.”

  “There’re all kinds of rules,” Harkness says. “Some bend. Others don’t.” He reaches toward Dabilis’s other eye with his thumb, ready for a second round of eye for an eye.

  Dabilis’s screams, the captain’s confession, and Harkness’s low threats form a brutal trio, echoing deep into the night.

  As he drives away from Dabilis’s house, scene of a successful home invasion and interrogation, Harkness knows that his purgatory in Nagog is over. Dex is dead, his followers and customers dispersed to grad school and tech start-ups. Freedom Farm is slated to become a community garden. The town of Nagog, no longer awash in smart kids and amber vials, awaits a new temptation. Someone else is emptying the parking meters.

  Inspired by Harkness’s visit, Dabilis will resign soon enough. If he doesn’t, Harkness will be glad to provide new motivation. He comes back to Nagog a couple times a week to visit his sister and mother. Dabilis’s house isn’t that far away, just a few streets west, near the elementary school where Harkness went so many years ago, where his mother was principal.

  It’s a small town.

  By the Harbor

  CANDACE LIVES IN the seaport now, in a new neighborhood still figuring itself out, with parking lots and construction sites, an old seafarers’ church lit blue by cerulean waves captured in stained glass, and whiskey bars that throb with techno deep into the night. Developers call it the Innovation District, hoping to dream up a new Silicon Valley from gritty warehouses gentrified by scrappy artists who were edged out by people with more money.

  Now this urban work in progress is thick with cranes and crews in hardhats. They’re building office towers, research labs, and high-rise apartment buildings. But they’re not building a casino. That idea withered along with the reputation of its promoter, former mayoral candidate John Fitzgerald, now facing a federal investigation into his ties to organized crime.

  Her condo, paid for with what was left of her father’s money, is on a high floor in a gleaming tower completed just a couple of months ago, keeping it free from history, memories, and misery. None of the ghosts of Nagog have followed Candace and May.

  From the nineteenth floor, Harkness looks out the living room window at the East Boston drydocks, jets taking off from Logan, and cranes putting up new buildings where old piers once jutted out into the harbor. It’s six in the morning but the city is already awake. It’s the morning that matters in Boston, the early shift where all the honest work gets done.

  The spring light beams off the water in patterns that mesmerize Harkness for a moment. He checks his watch, checks that his badge is in his pocket. He moves his hand slightly to the right to the Glock 22 in the waistband of his jeans. The commissioner gave him the gun when he came back on the force. It has a custom grip, a textured frame, and a larger magazine catch, making it excellent for street work. Harkness misses his old Glock 17, with its scraped grip and mixed history, turned in when he left Nagog. Like lovers, their time together was brief and tumultuous.

  Candace walks in from the bedroom wearing Harkness’s faded Black Flag T-shirt, shorts, and slippers. “Hey.” She leans up and her long, slow kiss almost derails Harkness from his shift.

  Candace reads his mind. “Not enough time.”

  Harkness reaches out to touch Candace’s black hair with his left hand, most of the index finger missing. He’s almost used to it now—adaptation.

  “No uniform?” she says.

  “On a raid. See that wharf over there?” Harkness points.

  “Yeah?”

  “Furniture importer’s been bringing in bootleg Vicodin behind the back panels of bookcases.”

  “How’d you find that out?”

  “Got suspicious about s
omeone importing thousands of bookcases from Indonesia. Not exactly a lot of demand. Gone the way of the CD rack.”

  “Don’t get killed today, okay?”

  Candace’s bluntness doesn’t surprise Harkness anymore. “I won’t.”

  “Or any other day. May’s getting kind of used to you, you know, stopping by.” Candace wanders into the kitchen and the coffeemaker starts burbling.

  Harkness moves to the side window, facing east toward the city. He can almost see Chinatown from here. Sometimes when he’s walking down Beach Street he’ll sense someone watching him—one of Mach’s goons, Thalia, someone. But there’s never anyone there, at least no one he can see.

  No matter what Marnie thought, Boston isn’t rotten underneath. The latest rot waits in trashed-out Somerville triple-deckers and plush Marlborough Street townhouses, venerable North End social clubs and shimmering office towers on Route 128. Harkness knows he’ll never find all the outliers with their drugs and big plans. But it’s his job to keep looking.

  Candace comes back in with two coffees and hands one to Harkness.

  They stand at the window for a moment, listening to rustling sounds coming from the bedroom.

  “Our little friend up?”

  “Up with the sun,” she says.

  May wanders in dragging a gray blanket behind her and takes a meandering path across the living room. She makes it all the way to Harkness, stumbles, and wraps her arms around his leg.

  “Dada.”

  “No, honey.” A darkness shades Candace’s face.

  Harkness picks May up and she nestles her head on his chest. The truth—that he isn’t May’s father, that he’s the man who killed her father—can wait until she’s older, when she can make sense of it all, if that’s even possible. For now Harkness and Candace let the secret hover above them, safely out of May’s reach.