by B C Bell
As she walked home after the interview with Stern, she wondered what she had gotten herself into. She had to report for work on Monday morning. It was Thursday. That gave her four days to make a good secretary of herself. She quickened her walking pace; she knew what she had to do.
Alice went straight back to Julia Carter’s house. She made her way up to the attic. Several weeks earlier, she had gone up to that storage space to retrieve something for her mother-in-law, who had grown too old to climb ladders anymore. While up in that attic, she had noticed an old typewriter. Now she went up into that room again and carried the typewriter down to the second floor of the house. She placed it on the desk in the room she had been using and inserted some paper. She tried to type, but it was clumsy, awkward, and slow. She grew frustrated quickly. Trying to think of a way to make the practicing less torturous, she realized that having something to write about might make it easier. She put in a fresh sheet of paper and thought of Tommy. “Dearest Tommy,” she began to type, “I’ve missed you terribly and I so very much want to tell you everything that’s been happening since you went away. I hope that somehow, wherever you are, you might be able to see this letter and know that I’m thinking of you, as I always will be…”
Alice typed for hours and hours, pouring her heart and her words into a long letter that would never be read. She focused on Tommy and everything she wanted to say to him, all the feelings she wished she could express to him in person, but never could now that he was gone. It no longer felt like difficult practice, for it now had a purpose behind it. She typed and typed, the order of the keys becoming etched into her mind as she pounded the letters onto the page, then the next page, and then a dozen more after that. She typed faster, more confidently, the ease of the task increasing as she grew more proficient. She typed that day and the next and the day after that. By Sunday evening, having barely taken the time to eat or rest since Thursday, much to the concern of her mother-in-law, Alice had transformed herself into a typist of considerable skill and speed.
***
Monday morning came and Alice arrived at the police station at quarter to eight. She made her way upstairs and was seated behind the secondary desk inside Captain Stern’s office by the time the precinct chief had arrived. The first morning went by quickly enough. Captain Stern dictated some reports to Alice and she used her newfound typing ability; it did not let her down. Stern seemed like he would be a decent enough man to work for, although his long looks in her direction often felt like more than casual glances and Alice did feel a bit uncomfortable at times. Even so, her true reasons for taking the secretary’s job at the precinct were always on her mind and that made the slight awkwardness of being in the room with Stern all day a bit more bearable.
At times, Alice would be asked to bring papers or other items to the various parts of the station. She looked forward to those occasions. It gave her a few minutes away from Captain Stern, but more importantly it gave her a chance to familiarize herself with the layout of the building, something she would have to be aware of when the right time came for her to do what she really wanted to do in that precinct building.
The weeks rolled by and the job went well. Captain Stern no longer made her nervous; she came to realize that he was just a lonely cop who had been so engrossed by his career that he’d never bothered to settle down and marry. Casting a lustful glance in the direction of a pretty young woman was no reason to condemn the captain, Alice decided. She actually enjoyed the work, even if her true purpose was something other than the acquisition of the small paycheck she brought home each week.
She tried to avoid Detective Epstein as much as possible. She hadn’t forgiven him for what he had said, or not said, at the diner. If she saw him in the halls or offices, she would say “Hello” or nod, but she made no attempt to engage him in conversation. He seemed to be steering clear of her as well. Perhaps, Alice suspected, Larry Epstein knew more than he had told her over that coffee, perhaps she would someday learn what had upset him so when she had begged for information on the progress of the case of Tommy’s death.
Two months after beginning work at the police precinct, Alice decided she had learned the layout of the building and the daily routine of police business thoroughly enough that she could proceed with what she had in mind as her next step toward discovering the truth about Tommy’s death.
“I’m heading home for the night, Alice,” said Captain Stern after a loud yawn. “Have a good night, my dear.”
“If you don’t mind, sir,” Alice answered, “I’d like to stay here and use the office for a while longer. Your paperwork has been falling into disarray and I thought I’d do some organizing, if it’s all right with you, sir.”
“You never cease to amaze me, young lady,” Stern said. “I wish half the real cops here were as motivated as you are. Suit yourself then, Alice, but I’m quitting now.”
Alice moved papers around, typed a bit, pretended to be doing something productive as the dusk came and went and night fell in fullness over New York City. When it was fully dark outside and Alice could hear the noise in the hallways outside the captain’s office lessening, she knew that the emptier hours in that building had begun.
The precinct was never completely unoccupied. The first floor always had its share of people moving about. There was always a desk sergeant on duty and patrolmen coming in and out. The two upper floors were much less busy in the night hours than during the day. The top floor, where she worked, was left empty overnight once the captain and his immediate staff had gone home for the night. The floor below hers, the second floor, housed the detectives’ department and the large filing room where all the closed case reports were left in storage. Alice knew, from her two months of memorizing the routine of the department, that there was usually just one lone detective present from ten o’clock until about six in the morning. Other plainclothesmen were on duty overnight, but they rarely stayed in the offices, seeing no need to stay glued to their desks when the captain was home sleeping and not around to keep them in line.
That near-emptiness of the two upper floors was the reason why Alice had chosen to stay late that night. She wanted to get into the records room and see if she could find the file on Tommy’s murder. Having only one detective to avoid being seen by made things a lot easier than they would have been in the impossible daylight hours when the place was abuzz with activities of all kinds. As a mere secretary and civilian, Alice was forbidden from accessing the sealed records unless accompanied by an authorized officer. She had no intention of asking Captain Stern for permission to read the file on Tommy’s death, for she suspected, based on the early closure of the case and on Epstein’s reaction to her questions months earlier, that there was something very strange about the case, something the department was trying to hide.
When she was certain that the third floor was empty except for her, Alice put aside the papers she had been fiddling with. She got up from her desk and glanced around, a last assurance to herself that she was alone. She put her mind into focus, gathering the instincts she had developed as a younger woman when she had survived by sneaking around the streets of the East End and drawing as little attention to herself as possible. Like the old cliché says about riding a bicycle, certain skills are never lost, no matter how much one might expect them to be eroded by time.
Alice kicked off her shoes to minimize the sound of her walking around the building. While there might have been fewer people around to catch sight of her, the emptiness could also be a disadvantage as the lack of noise would make any sound seem magnified to anyone close enough to hear it. The clicking of heels on the hard floors would give her away for sure had she not taken that precaution.
She slipped out the door of Captain Stern’s office and into the hallway. Slowly, carefully, silently, she crept along the corridor and made her way to the staircase. Through the next door and onto the steps she went, the on
ly sound the slight whisper of the fabric of her skirt as she moved gracefully and clandestinely along.
She tiptoed down the stairs to the door that led from the stairwell out into the second-story halls. She opened the door slowly, poking her head out to glance around. No one was in sight. She went out into the hallway. About a hundred feet ahead would be two rooms, the only rooms on that floor that mattered to her on that night. She moved on. The detectives’ offices were on her left. Through the windows of the offices she could see about a dozen empty desks. Only one lamp was lit, illuminating a stack of paperwork that sat upon the desk in front of the lone detective in the building. The coffee mug next to the paperwork let loose no steam so Alice assumed it had gone cold. The slumped posture of the man in the accompanying chair showed her that the detective, whom she did not recognize from her view of the back of his head, had dozed off, the victim of too much paperwork and the boredom that went along with it.
She breathed a short breath of relief at the sight of the dozing detective. The man’s slumber would make her job easier. On her right was the entrance to the records room. She put a hand to her breast, taking a key from within her bra. She had taken the key from the drawer where she had known that Captain Stern kept it. She had hidden it in her bra as a precaution. Had she been caught in the act of sneaking around the halls, that spot would be the last place a male police officer would have dared to look unless he was absolutely certain that Alice was up to no good. Hiding the key there would have given her extra time to figure out a way to get rid of it had she been caught.
She slipped the key into the lock and turned the doorknob. It opened. She slipped inside the dark records room and shut the door behind her. There were several lamps in the room, but she lit only one; the less light there was, the less chance there would be of it being seen under the door. She slipped the key back into her blouse and looked at the rows of filing cabinets that lined the walls. She knew that murder cases were filed under the last name of the victim. She walked over to the drawer marked with a “C.”
Caldwell, Campbell, Candini; she rifled through the files in their thick folders. Murder files were always thick, she knew from handling the files on open cases as they crossed her desk on their way to the captain. Murder was taken seriously, as it should have been, and those files contained every report, every note, every statement the detectives had reason to write out in the course of an investigation.
Carter! There it was, she thought. No, wait. There were several Carters. Andrew Carter, Joan Carter, Miles Carter, Thomas Carter! There it was. Alice’s slender fingers gripped the top of the folder and pulled it from its place in the drawer. She gasped in shock when she saw the slimness of the file. She placed it in direct light of the single lit lamp and opened it. Nothing! There was almost nothing inside it. Alice looked at the single sheet of paper in the folder; it was just the initial report of the crime: address and time of incident; name, age, and occupation of the victim; and the first notes, amounting to nothing substantial, of the detective who had been first on the scene, one Detective First Class Douglas Brown.
Alice’s mind spun with confusion. She had known that there had not been much of an investigation; it had been called off far too quickly for it to have gone too far, but this was nothing. As if there had been no investigation at all, the file was nearly empty. She looked that single sheet of paper over one last time. On the bottom was a notation: “Case closed by order of…”
“By order of who?” Alice whispered to herself, just barely keeping calm enough to not scream the question out loud. The name at the end of the sentence had been blacked out, covered in ink. Who had closed the case? She held the paper up in front of the lamplight, trying to squint through the ink, praying that her eyes could penetrate the black blotch of camouflage, but it was no use. Alice cursed under her breath. She repeated the name Douglas Brown to herself several times, etching it into her memory; that detective’s name was the only lead she had and she vowed to find Brown and learn whatever he knew. The name didn’t ring a bell in her mind, so she assumed he was no longer assigned to that precinct. If he was, she would have known his name from whatever case files he was currently working on. “Douglas Brown,” she repeated.
She shoved the folder with her dead husband’s name on it back into the drawer, closed the cabinet, and snuck back out into the hall. Within minutes she was back up on the third floor, gathering her things and leaving the building. She’d take the open route out now; there was no need for anymore sneaking around. She left by the front floor on the first floor, smiling and giving a wave to the sergeant on duty as she left.
***
She placed the file in the direct light of the single lit lamp and opened it. Nothing! There was almost nothing inside it.
Alice got no sleep that night. She tossed and turned and thought and grew angrier and angrier. It made no sense to her. Tommy had been a cop, a member of the fraternity that the police department was supposed to be. They were supposed to look out for their own. When one of them was killed, the others were supposed to spare no expense, make no excuses, stop at nothing to find whoever was responsible and bring him to justice. Why hadn’t that been done for Tommy? Why had only the barest formality of an investigation been attempted? Who had given the order to close the case so quickly…and why was his name blacked out on that report?
Alice’s head spun round and round as her grief, the sadness she had buried and convinced herself was gone, came rising back up to the surface of her consciousness. She sat up in bed, sweat soaking her nightgown, her hands trembling, and the moonlight that shone in the window reflecting in her luminous, tear-filled blue eyes.
“Justice,” Alice Carter said out loud. She got out of bed and went to the closet. She ripped open the closet door and stood staring at the pile of boxes, all which remained of the contents of the apartment she had once shared with the man of her dreams, the man that America had given her, the man she loved more than any other, her husband.
She found the box she was looking for. She pulled it out and tore off the lid. She reached in and took out a large, folded white garment. She went to another box, pulling out a small metal object. She placed both objects into a bag that she had lying in the room. Her mind spun with ideas, she knew what she had to do next, but some of it would have to wait until morning. She knew she would not sleep; her heart raced too fast, her nerves shook, her head ached. She sat down on the floor and gazed out the window at the moon.
When morning arrived, Alice left early, ignoring the breakfast that Julia had made, and headed to the nearest collection of shops. It was Sunday; no work at the police station for her. She shopped quickly and determinedly, acquiring the few items that had occurred to her the night before. She bought two bottles of dye, one red and one black. She purchased a pair of metal shears, strong scissors capable of cutting through thin sheets of many metallic materials. She went to the Army Surplus store and bought a pair of thick leather gloves and a pair of heavy combat boots, hard to find in a size that fit her as they were not made for women, but there were small soldiers after all and she eventually found a pair. Her last stop was a pawn shop. It was not the sort of place a proper young woman would go, but she had no concerns about being proper at that moment. She had one thing on her mind, and it would be found in a place like that. When she left the pawn shop, she shoved the pistol all the way down to the bottom of her bag, making certain that no one should see it if they happened to glance at what she was carrying.
She tried to spend the rest of the day as normally as possible. She had lunch with Julia, listened to the afternoon radio programs, helped Julia in the garden for awhile, ate supper, and retired to her room at a fairly early hour, wanting to do nothing that might indicate to Julia that she was up to anything unusual. If her mother-in-law found out what she was planning, Alice knew, the elderly woman would have her committed.
She sat on her bed
and waited for an hour after she had gone upstairs. She wanted to be sure that Julia had gone to sleep so that there would be no unwelcome interruptions to her night’s work. When she was certain that no one would bother her, she began. She took out two buckets she had brought up after working in the garden earlier that day. She took out the white garment she had pulled from the closet the night before. She tore a strip from part of the garment. She stuffed the larger piece of the garment into one of the buckets. Into that bucket she poured the black dye she had bought that morning. The smaller piece of material that she had torn from the larger piece, she put into the second bucket. Onto that, she poured the entire bottle of red dye. She took the boots and gloves she had bought from her shopping bag and laid them on the floor. She took the gun and placed it beside them. Finally, she took out the small metal object she had found in her closet the night before and held it up in front of her tearful eyes. It glinted in the dim light of her room at night. She held it there in front of her face for a long time: the badge that had once adorned the uniform of Officer Thomas Carter. She breathed deeply to prepare herself for what she was about to do. She put the badge to her lips and gently kissed it. Then she took out her new metal shears and cut the badge into pieces.
When she was finished, Alice took all of those things and put them into the closet, leaving the cloth in the buckets to soak up all the dye. She closed the closet door and climbed into bed. She fell asleep and dreamed of all the parts of her life. As she slept, the past swirled around in her head like wet cement in a mixer truck. Who was she? Who was Alice? She kept asking herself that question as she slept and dreamed. Was she the innocent little girl who took infinite joy in watching the bullets she fired shatter those old glass beer bottles in the English countryside? Was she the teenager, in rags and starving and scraping by and fighting in the streets to escape the would-be rapists in the night on the East End? Was she the pretty young woman, trying so hard to act and talk like an American girl and wishing more than anything that the handsome young college football star would notice the way she looked at him? Was she the proud young wife, so in love with the handsome policeman who came home to her every night? Or was she the poor sorrowful widow, robbed of her husband in a single instant of terrible violence? Who was Alice Carter? Who had she been in the past…and who would she be when the sun rose again? Who would she be the next time night fell on New York City?