A Simple Act of Violence (41 page)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Miller had fallen asleep in his clothes. He awoke feeling awkward and nauseous a little before four-thirty a.m. He took a shower, found a clean shirt, was ready by quarter after five. Made some coffee, called Roth on his cell; they shared a few brief words and then Miller left the house. He arrived at the Second at five-forty. It was still dark. A bitter wind made the skin on his face feel tight. Gritty eyes, a sour copper taste in the back of his mouth, a sense of disorientation and vacancy were all-pervasive. Though the city was coming to life around him, he believed he had never felt lonelier. He hesitated at the top of the stairs and looked back towards Fifth. He figured that when this was done he would take a break, a vacation perhaps. He would go someplace he’d never been before and see if life didn’t feel somehow different looking back toward home. He knew that he was lying to himself. He smiled inwardly, pushed open the door and crossed the foyer towards the stairs.

Roth arrived within fifteen minutes. He sat down without speaking, merely nodded at Miller.

‘Amanda okay?’

Roth smiled. ‘Amanda’s always okay.’

‘She okay with you?’

Roth shrugged. ‘She wants a vacation.’

‘Don’t blame her.’

‘I told her maybe . . . maybe when this thing is done we could look at it.’

Miller glanced at his watch: it was four minutes to six. ‘She’ll be getting in now,’ he said. ‘Audrey.’

‘You want to go down there?’

Miller didn’t respond, seemed to be considering the possibility. ‘We look how we look,’ he said eventually. ‘We can’t change the way we look. People see us they know we’re cops. This guy happens to see us inside he’s gonna make a run for it.’

‘If he has something to hide he’ll make a run for it.’

‘I don’t want to risk it,’ Miller said.

‘I agree.’

‘You want some coffee?’

‘From the machine?’ Roth shook his head. ‘God no. I could go get some?’

‘No, leave it.’

‘You hear anything from Littman or Riehl?’

‘They’re not gonna do anything unless there’s something happening,’ Miller said.

‘So we wait.’

‘We wait.’

Roth was silent for a while, seemed elsewhere, and then he looked up at Miller. ‘You ever been on something like this before?’ he asked.

‘A multiple? No. Was on a double murder one time. Hispanic guy killed his wife and her mother. That was a couple of years before I made detective. Messy fucking thing.’ Miller closed his eyes, could see the images more vividly so opened them again. Two women - the younger in her early twenties, the mother in her mid-forties. Shotgun killing in the kitchen of their house. Forensics said there wasn’t a great deal of either of them left. Husband just stood there reloading, reloading, reloading. Forty-seven shell cases they found. Hispanic mystery meat, the forensics guy said, and then said that most of what evidence they needed was in the treads of his shoes. He smiled like he was out for a ball game. Seemed people were hardened to such things. Miller was not, and though he could walk in on something like Catherine Sheridan or Natasha Joyce without needing to heave, it was never easy.

‘You ever get any kind of an understanding of what kind of person does this?’ Roth asked. ‘You know, beat the living hell out of someone, strangle them, whatever else he did?’

Miller shook his head. ‘Makes no fucking sense to me. I don’t go with all this abused childhood shit that the psychs keep feeding us. I’ve met a whole lot of people that had a really rough time, and they sure as shit aren’t driving around the place thinking about whose skin they’re gonna wear.’

Miller tried to focus. This was now as good as it got. They had something, the first lead of any significance throughout the whole investigation. It was the sense of responsibility that worried at him. If he didn’t get it right, someone else might die. If he didn’t figure this thing out then someone somewhere would wake up to find a man standing over them, his latex-gloved hands around their throat, his mind already set on doing what he had to do. And did they have a hope? Factually, no. Miller’s mind turned to who the next one might be. Where was she now? What was her name? Did she have a job, a family, people who relied on her? How many lives would be affected by her death? Washington was big enough to absorb it. Washington would swallow the magnitude of this thing, and it would become just another part of its history. But individuals? And himself? Miller wondered whether he would survive this thing intact.

He had heard stories. Cops ravaged by the life they’d led, their hearts broken, their minds turned. Left with a handful of difficult years in an apartment somewhere, daily trips to some local bar where they would hang out with other retired cops. Old times, old stories, endless banter about the things they’d seen. The sense of longing, the endless promise of something that would never come close to the rush and buzz and madness of the life they’d lived. And then it all broke down. They came apart at the seams. They cleaned their service revolver, loaded it, drank a glass or two, and ended the dream. No-one spoke of them again.

Was that the future?

What would happen if they never found the guy . . . if the Ribbon Killer was no-one at all? A ghost, a haunting, a thing that was, and then was not.

Robert Miller wished for something better. Perhaps he even invoked a handful of words from some half-forgotten prayer. Let it not be the way I fear it will be. Let it be something else.

It was half past six. Traffic was on the streets. Squad cars were pulling out of the underground car park and heading away from the precinct. He watched one disappear down New York Avenue toward Mount Vernon Square and Carnegie Library. Remembering the library reminded him of Catherine Sheridan’s last hours. The unanswered questions: Where did she go? Who saw her? And Natasha Joyce’s visit to the Police Department Administrations Unit. Was this Frances Gray a figment of Natasha’s paranoid imagination, or was there something altogether more suspicious? And Michael McCullough . . . Had he even existed, or was he an invention, like Isabella Cordillera, a woman named after a Nicaraguan mountain range?

For a moment Miller felt overwhelmed, as if the weight of these things was more than sufficient to crush him right where he stood.

He looked at his watch: six thirty-eight. The diner would be open. Audrey would have made coffee, put on the hotplate, perhaps started frying bacon and eggs, hash browns. Regulars would be making their way toward her from various parts of the neighborhood. People she knew by name, by face, by breakfast order. Take-outs, eat-ins, coffee to go, triple shot, half and half, Sweet ’n’ Low. Early morning banter, wisecracks . . . And then he would come. Perhaps. He would come, and she would feel what she felt, and what she felt might be concern, or worry; and there might be something in her expression that gave it away. People had been to see her. Police detectives. Two of them. They had talked to her, and people had come after them and fitted a buzzer beneath the edge of the counter, and there might be something in her eyes - despite her cheery smile, her air of nonchalance - that he could read as clear as daylight, because there was something about this man that was special, different, peculiar; something about him that made the cops very nervous about whether or not they were going to have a chance to speak with him . . .