Scorch City

by Toby Ball

  Frings said, “I know all of this.”

  Grip leaned forward on the table. “Koss said he needed to kill those girls because he was worried that if they started showing up at the hospital, a bunch of them, that he’d have a problem. Mavis Talley did, and that got him spooked. So he was going to kill Lenore, but someone beat him to it.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Koss said he went looking for Lenore at the Checkerboard—that’s the joint she worked out of—but he got there and the other whores said she’d left with this musician she liked. Koss said he found out where they sometimes went, the rocks on the riverbank by the shanties, so he went there looking for her. When he got there, she was dead. He said it was perfect because not only was Lenore already dead, but the investigation would have to focus on the Uhuru Community, a place he didn’t much like to begin with. But that’s not what happened—the body ended up downstream. So Koss, he was already going to kill those other girls—the ones who were sick—Koss goes ahead and dumps their bodies at that same spot. He figured that with all these bodies showing up, we’d be all over the Community. But we both know how the investigation went. Lieutenant Westermann ignored the Uhuru Community as much as he could get away with.”

  Grip paused, but Frings didn’t volunteer anything.

  “I thought at first maybe he was trying to cover for the Community, keep them out of the investigation. But I don’t know that I think so anymore. He ran the right investigation, found the guy that’d been doing all the killing, except Lenore. So I thought about it some more, and there was only one way it made sense to me, that maybe it was the lieut who moved the body. But why would he do that? Which made me think of you.”

  Frings took a sip of his coffee.

  “I’m not here to take you down, Frings. All this shit, Koss has taken the weight, and while it pisses me off that Maddox is walking free, you got to roll with the punches, right? I just want to know if I got it right.”

  “Does it make a difference?”

  Grip scratched at the back of his head. “Does to me.”

  114.

  Frings stood on the edge of the field that had overwhelmed the old railway yard. He was with Mel Washington and Betty Askins, all looking over at the four gleaming black railcars with BLACK COMET LINE inscribed in gold above the windows. A front was moving toward the City, the sky divided between a bright summer blue and the encroaching purple. Beneath the clouds, the gray haze of rain seemed to hang in the air. Wind eddies blew litter around the field. Occasionally a piece lifted high above the rest, as if making a break for the sky, before being sucked back down again.

  A small group of Negroes, maybe two dozen, had gathered by the cars and were making conversation through open windows with people inside. Blackbirds hovered overhead, making a racket and drawing looks. A large mechanical noise was nearing, signaling the approach of something that was shielded by the buildings to Frings’s left.

  “This is how it ends, huh?” Frings asked.

  Mel Washington was wearing a suit, as though this was some kind of occasion; and it probably was for him. “In some ways.”

  A train engine appeared around the edge of some buildings, moving in reverse. A little cheer came up from the group by the railroad cars.

  “I can’t believe that it’ll actually work.” Frings lit a reefer. “Any idea where he’s going?”

  Washington shook his head.

  Betty said, “Does it matter?”

  They left it like that and watched the engine approach the Black Comet Line cars. It slowed as it got closer to the cars, eventually inching until the couplings met. The engineer and two other men congregated around the coupling, making an inspection. The air pressure dropped and the wind changed direction, turning cool.

  Satisfied that the coupling was adequate, the engineer returned to his post. The crowd around the cars pulled away. A window in the back came down and Frings saw Father Womé, looking out at the field. The engine rocked back, compressing the couplings between each car; then moved slowly forward, a blast of steam coming from the smokestack. Father Womé brought his hand up and held it as a kind of wave to the group he was leaving behind. As the train picked up speed, Frings kept his attention on Womé and, just for a moment, thought that their eyes met. Just as quickly, the moment passed and Frings was left watching the engine pull its short string of brilliant black pearls away from the small crowd.

  “I guess that’s it,” Washington said as the train disappeared behind the buildings.

  “I guess so.” Frings turned to walk back to his car.

  115.

  Westermann sat at a table toward the back of a dark road house out in the sticks. He was thinner now and his beard had come in red. He wore workman’s clothes, dirty and damp from the misty air outside. He’d never actually met Moses Winston before and saw the irony that when it finally happened—now—it was out of the City, way out. Their paths hadn’t crossed so much as Westermann had tracked Winston down, wanting to clear up some unresolved business.

  The place was small but full of impoverished laborers and farmhands, drinking clear liquid from mismatched glasses. The place stank of sweat and foul alcohol. Westermann drank a beer; he was the only one drinking beer so far as he could tell. Winston was sitting on a stool, an electric guitar in his lap, picking with his right hand and working a slide with his left; occasionally singing some blues number.

  Westermann had spent a couple of long weeks waiting to see if the disease would show itself, monitoring every ache, every unusual sensation, like a hypochondriac. But nothing had happened. Either the syringe hadn’t contained the disease or he was somehow immune, as Koss had been.

  He was hungry and exhausted, but no longer plagued by interloping thoughts. He wouldn’t be able to keep this up forever—his money was already running low—but he felt he had somehow found room to think, to experience without the crushing pressure and stress that he felt in the City.

  Winston announced that he’d be breaking after one more song, so Westermann ordered two beers and waited. Winston finished to enthusiastic applause and left the stage, walking out a screen door at the back. Westermann followed, holding the necks of both beer bottles between the fingers of one hand. The door creaked as he stepped out to the narrow stairs that descended to the ground. Winston sat on the third step, hunched over, steam rising off him in the cool, damp air. Winston didn’t turn until Westermann sat on the step beside him, offering a beer. Winston took it, a little suspicious.

  “Hello, Moses. Do you know who I am?”

  Winston shook his head, waited.

  “My name’s Piet Westermann. I was a City cop up until recently.” He paused. Winston pulled on his beer, looking off into the distance. Westermann watched him, trying to read his reaction, getting nothing.

  “I worked a case—a series of cases—of girls we found murdered on the riverbank down by the Uhuru Community. You know about those murders, right?”

  “I do.”

  “You were staying in the Uhuru Community when these murders occurred, right?”

  Winston nodded without much interest.

  “And you left the City when? After they tore the shanties down? I was there that night, Moses. You were, too.”

  Winston looked at Westermann now. “So you say.”

  “Let me tell you something. I’m not a cop anymore. I’m not going to be again. But there’s something that I’ve been thinking about and I thought maybe you could help me.”

  “That right?”

  “Ole Koss—the guy we arrested that night in the shanties—he confessed to several murders. A good number. But he says that he didn’t kill the first girl we found on the riverbank, a girl named Lenore.”

  Winston flinched, caught himself, frowned.

  Westermann nodded. His face was wet from the cold mist, his clothes beginning to cling to him. “You see, that made some sense because the girls he murdered, he strangled somewhere else and dumped them at the riverbank. Lenore, s
he was drowned. So, we didn’t solve Lenore’s murder. But even though I left the police, Moses, I can’t get past the fact that we didn’t get her justice, you know? And I thought about her being killed on the riverbank by the Community, but it not being someone from the Community, because then word would’ve gotten around.”

  Winston nodded.

  “But you weren’t really part of the Community, so it makes sense that you could’ve done it and nobody’s the wiser.”

  “What you want, man?”

  Westermann paused, looking at the dark silhouettes of the trees against the starless night. After all that had happened, all the sacrifices, the answer was right here—an itinerant musician and a prostitute. Suddenly exhausted, he returned his gaze to Winston, locking eyes. “Did you kill her, Moses?”

  Winston thought about it for a minute. “You ain’t a cop?”

  “Look at me.” Westermann pulled on his frayed shirt, held up his bearded chin, his neck thin, his shoulders gaunt. “I’m not here to hassle you. I just want to know what happened to that girl.”

  Winston tipped his beer into the side of his mouth and then started to talk.

  “I got a weakness for the ladies, and they seem to have a weakness for me. Some ladies, they take me home, sometimes not. I pay if I have to; no shame in that. When I got to the City, I was playing street corners, you know? I didn’t have a place to start, but I knew when people heard me play, I’d get a paying gig somewhere. I always do. So, this cat Cephus, he gets me playing at his club, Checkerboard. He runs whores out of there, too. I figure y’all know about that because a couple blues come in every week for their piece. Anyway, I got friendly with Lenore—she was one of Cephus’s whores. Real nice girl. I paid for it with her a couple times, but then I didn’t pay no more. We enjoyed each other’s company, I guess you’d say. But she was sick, real sick—lost weight, had these sores. Cephus, he’s not such a bad cat, he tried to do what he could for her, and she was seeing this doctor some church sent to her. Anyway, it was hard for her.”

  The screen door opened. An older man—white, skinny, missing teeth—said, “Moses, you’re due back onstage.”

  Winston didn’t turn around but raised his beer in acknowledgment. “Couple of minutes, Mr. Harvey. I need to finish up with this.”

  The old man clucked but returned inside.

  “One night, okay, after my show, she comes find me, says she’s too sick to work; says she wants to talk. So we pick up a bottle at a liquor store and walk down to the riverbank, down by the shanties, and we just sat back in the rocks and smoked some mesca, drank some whiskey, listened to the river, you know. And we got real lit up—real lit up—and just talked like crazy drunks, and then she went down to the river and washed her face, and when she got back, all her makeup’s gone and she’s got these sores on her face. I said, ‘Child, it’s just getting worse,’ and she rolls up her sleeves and she’s got the sores there, too. She’s just not getting better. She has a couple friends real sick like this, too, and another one that died.”

  Winston paused, taking a pull on his beer. Westermann looked at his hands. Such a small thing. Such a small thing, and it had led to everything.

  “She says to me that she knows she’s dying and that this doctor that checks in on her, sees how she’s doing, she says she thinks it’s this guy that’s got her sick, and she says she don’t want to do it anymore. She looks at me and she asks me, can I drown her? All up in my face, crying. And I’m drunk and been smoking mesca and I don’t know what to think, and she’s crying and saying, ‘Please, please, do it.’ ”

  Winston shook his head, tears at the corners of his eyes.

  Westermann felt as if he were fading away. “You did it?”

  Winston nodded. “Drowned her. She took a big drink off that whiskey and her eyes all rolled up, you know. So I kind of set her down in the water, held her there. It didn’t seem real, but it was. I drowned her and I walked away.”

  Westermann nodded and they were silent for a moment.

  Westermann said, “That’s a lot to carry around with you.”

  Winston nodded.

  The old man poked his head out the door again, barked, “Winston.”

  “Time to go,” Winston muttered, took another drink of beer, and walked into the road house, leaving Westermann alone. He stood on the stoop, his back to the light and noise of the bar, and stared into the darkness. He took another drink of beer and closed his eyes, trying to call up the release he had felt in the Holiness Church and finding that he couldn’t. Not even close.

  TOBY BALL works at the Crimes Against Children Research Center and the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The Vaults and Scorch City, also available from The Overlook Press, and lives in Durham, New Hampshire, with his wife and two children.

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  AVAILABLE FROM THE OVERLOOK PRESS

  * * *

  THE VAULTS

  978-1-4683-0903-4 • $16.95 pb

  “A satisfying noirish stew … The Vaults succeeds on every level, in its language, plotting, and ability to enthrall readers.” —Mystery Scene

  “Atmospheric … Ball creates a vivid supporting cast of thuggish police, union organizers, jazz musicians, and bomb-heaving anarchists, wraps them in haunted nighttime settings.”

  —Library Journal (starred review)

  * * *

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  AVAILABLE FROM THE OVERLOOK PRESS

  * * *

  INVISIBLE STREETS

  978-1-4683-0902-7 • $26.95 hc

  “A dark, gritty, and slightly surreal urban thriller that reads like a collaboration between Philip K. Dick at his most noirish and Sidney Lumet. Skillfully plotted and intricately woven, Invisible Streets is one of the most original novels I’ve read this year.”

  —David Bell, bestselling author of The Forgotten Girl

  * * *