Darkness peering (6 page)

"What about the hotline?"

"We're getting plenty of calls," Phillip Reingold, the dispatcher,
said. "Mostly asking if we've found any suspects yet. Folks are
pretty scared."

"That all?"

"Plenty of leads. Most of'em dead ends."

"Every lead's a dead end," McKissack growled. "I hate this." "Any
anonymous tips?" Nalen asked.

Phillip flipped through his logbook. "One caller says he saw a girl
matching the victim's description walking through the Commerce City
mall at around six o'clock Tuesday night..."

Nalen shook his head. "Doesn't fit the time frame."

"Another caller, this one female, spotted a girl matching the victim's
description riding in the front seat of a green car heading south on
Route 88 toward the exit at Foggy Bottom around

4:30 P.M."

"Green car? Could you be more specific?"

"A green sedan, maybe. She couldn't describe the driver except to say
he was probably male. She noticed the girl because of her Down's
syndrome."

McKissack shot a pencil into the terrarium, which bothered Nalen. The
terrarium was meant for rubber bands only. That was the irritating
thing about McKissack, he made up his own rules.

Nalen leaned forward. "Archie found the remains of a vanilla ice cream
cone in her stomach. Now obviously she didn't get that walking home
from school."

Hughie closed his eyes. "Bludgeoned and strangled," he whispered like
some perverse prayer. "No blood or skin in the nail scrapings. No
semen."

Nalen leaned back and sighed. His eye caught a memo tacked to the wall
above the coffee machine: DUE TO COST CONSTRAINTS,

THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THIS TUNNEL HAS BEEN TEMPORARILY

DISCONNECTED.

The town had recently laid off three patrol officers, leaving only two
detectives under the supervision of a detective

sergeant, ten patrol officers under the command of a sergeant, two
secretaries, the dispatcher, Lieutenant McKissack and himself. The
conference room was on the second floor. Down the hall was the squad
room and the locker room. Downstairs were the jail cells and the
dispatcher's station, and upstairs was Nalen's office, the detectives'
suite and the storage rooms. The building was 150 years old, and
sometimes you could hear the stairs creak when there was nobody else in
the building.

Guy Fletcher wiped the hair out of his eyes, his frustration palpable.
"We're gonna find this animal. One day we're gonna knock on his door,
and this fucking animal's gonna get the death penalty."

Nalen tapped his fingers on the blowup photograph before him. Melissa
smiled broadly into the camera, eyes wide and inquisitive. She was the
essence of innocence. Her left hand was raised as if to wave hello,
and Nalen spotted the bracelet--red and yellow yarn woven in a simple
diamond pattern tied securely around her left wrist. The missing
friendship bracelet.

Melissa D'Agostino had stuck close by her teachers in Special Ed. She
liked birthday parties, caramel apples, and drawing pictures at school.
Nalen had a sample of her artwork right in front of him--a purple
monster with pinwheeling eyes and thick black brush stroke eyebrows
hovering hungrily over three smaller figures--father, mother, little
girl.

You always expect the worst.

"How much overtime do we have approval for?" McKissack asked, his
edginess contagious. The whole room was vibrating now with his
impatience. The men were clearly ready to go home.

"Keep track of your hours." Nalen gathered his papers. "I don't care
how long it takes, I don't care if it takes us to the end of the next
century, we're not eating this one."

"I don't know about you guys." McKissack landed in his chair with a
thud. "But I could use a drink."

NALEN, MCKISSACK, PHILLIP REIN GOLD AND HUG HIE BOUdreau were seated
at a booth inside a bar called Big Tee's. McKissack signaled the
waitress for another pitcher. "More beer for the horses!" Nalen was
drinking nonalcoholic O'Doul's beer. The fact that he no longer drank,
didn't smoke and rarely swore set him apart, and he didn't like being
set apart, but there you were.

McKissack was checking out a fake driver's license he'd seized from an
underage, pimple-faced kid. The quality was poor--the edges didn't
match and the glue showed. Ripping it up, McKissack said, "Vamoose,"
and the kid hightailed it out of there, trailing cops' laughter in his
wake. "Stupid kid tries to pass in a police bar, of all places."

Nalen could taste the length of the day on his tongue. His jawbone
ached, and suddenly he wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed with
his wife. Her hands would be pressed together on her pillow like two
pale leaves.

"It breaks you up," Hughie was saying, and Nalen could almost count the
slender hairs that composed his scraggly mustache.

"I know, Hughie," Nalen nodded.

"It just breaks you up, that's all."

"I know."

"You get annoyed."

"Okay, Hughie."

"Chief," he said, eyes narrowing in the manner of a drunk's when he
thinks he's about to say something profound, "sometimes I'm out there
at four in the morning, y'know? And the

whole town's asleep, and I can't help thinking to myself, these people
don't realize ... they don't realize there's bad guys running around,
doing things at four in the morning. Drugs, prostitution, domestic
violence ... this town doesn't want to admit it has any problems. It
doesn't want to admit that it has any weaknesses at all."

"Hughie." Nalen stifled a yawn. "I'm beat."

"Me, too, Chief. I'm beat, too. I'm beyond exhaustion. I'm
be-yausted."

McKissack's eyes danced with amusement.

"I'm consumed," Hughie said. "Is that a word?"

"Yeah, so is asshole."

"Shut up, McKissack."

"Gentlemen, please."

They decided to order some food to sop up the alcohol. Nalen hadn't
had a drop since 1970, but before then he used to haunt the bars after
pounding the beat. All those brick sidewalks, all that snow and slush,
all those hippie drug dealers and dead hookers and runaways. And then
one night, he got drunk and threw his six year-old son against the
living room wall, and that was that. No more alcohol. It took him
three months to convince Faye he meant what he said and that he could
do it without AA or any of those self-help groups. Looking into
Billy's face was reminder enough. The hurt and betrayal emanating from
his son's eyes was like a blinding light you couldn't stare at for too
long.

Now Nalen hunched over a plate of greasy fries and whacked the bottom
of the ketchup bottle until the red stuff plopped out like hot fudge.
Vera walked over to their table. Vera was a friend of McKissack's.

"Bet I can guess how old you are," she told Nalen, sizing him up. Her
hair was like a soft knot of yarn, and she hid her freckles under too
much makeup. She put her cigarette out in the ashtray on the table,
carnival pink lipstick staining the filter. "Thirty nine," she
guessed.

"Forty-three," he said, grinning.

"Ooh. Close."

Vera grabbed McKissack's wrist and tried to yank him to his feet. A
slow song was playing, but McKissack wouldn't budge. He sat like a
boulder while Vera pleaded, "Just one little dance?"

"We're discussing police matters."

"Oh sure, Officer Shithead." She planted a lingering kiss on
McKissack's lips. When she released him, he reeled backward and
laughed. Vera lit another cigarette.

"What's Sheila going to say?" Hughie admonished them.

"I ain't married yet," McKissack said.

"Yeah, but you're engaged, aren't you?"

"Okay, c'mere." McKissack grabbed Vera around the waist and swung her
onto his lap. She seemed comfortable there, her face flushing
slightly.

"I've been having the weirdest dreams lately," she told them between
puffs, "like I don't exist anymore. Not in this dimension anyway. I'm
crossing a room, I take a step and start sinking into the floor." She
took a sip of Nalen's O'Doul's, made a sour face and set it down with
amazing gentleness. She had a pretty laugh.

McKissack kissed her mouth. "Oof, you're heavy."

She stood. "Go ahead, spoil the romance."

McKissack stretched his arms over the back of the booth, muscles
hyperactive under his swarthy skin. "Don't talk to me about romance,"
he said.

"It's all we've got left, honey."

"Not if you use a condom."

"Christ, you're crude." She laughed. "You can all talk about me now,"
she said, walking away.

Nalen yawned, trying to pop his ears. It surprised him how some people
didn't care about the murder anymore. Already yesterday's news. The
haze in the bar was like a forgotten dream. He took out his wallet, a
pitiful reminder of the kind of money he didn't make.

"I dunno." Hughie shook his head. "I've always been of the opinion
that there's a little bit of good in everybody."

"Then let me remind you," McKissack said gruffly, "you haven't met
everybody yet."

"So what d'you think happens when you die?" Hughie asked no one in
particular.

"You're shit-faced." McKissack laughed.

"I believe you go to heaven if you're good. I honestly do."

"Yeah, right," McKissack said. "You and Santa and the Easter bunny.
What's heaven, anyway? Angels floating on cottony clouds? Clouds
can't hold anything up, they're just vapor. And if you could stick a
million souls on the head of a pin, who'd need clouds anyway? And what
I really want to know is, if all life is sacred, then do mosquitoes end
up in heaven, too? Or just cats and dogs and things we like?"

Hughie laughed drunkenly. "I don't have the faintest fucking idea."
He laughed until he nearly choked, and Nalen had to pat him on the
back, then his shoulders slumped in a defeated sort of way and he said,
"We're gonna nail this guy. Right, Chief?"

Counting out his money, Nalen pretended not to hear.

Hughie turned to McKissack. "We're gonna find him, right,
McKissack?"

"Don't worry, Hughie," McKissack said with a wink. "The chief here
could look up a bull's asshole and give you the price of butter."

"That's what I thought." Hughie nodded confidently.

"I guarantee you we will nail this guy," Nalen said, and in the silence
that followed, you could hear an evidence bag drop.

"Look, look, look." Hughie passed out, his nose squashed flat against
the tabletop, gold flecks buried in the pink Formica.

"I'll take him home," Nalen said.

Vera hurried over. "Uh-oh, he's dead." She giggled. "Quick, check
his pulse."

"Hughie?"

"Come on, partner." Nalen helped him to his feet, and he and
McKissack supported him between them. People were smiling. Waving
good night. "See that, Chief?" Hughie said. "You're a lot heavier
than you look, Boudreau." "You see it?" "See what."

"Her eyes? Did you see her eyes, Chief?" "Shut up, Hughie." "You saw
her eyes, too, didn't you?" "You're skunked." "You saw her eyes,
too."

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, NALEN FELT A CAT WALKING

across the foot of the bed, only they didn't own a cat. He bolted
awake and yanked his pistol from its holster, heart hammering.

Melissa D'Agostino was seated at the foot of the bed, mattress bobbing
as she restlessly shifted her weight. She looked just like her
pictures--dark hair, green eyes, that endearing pie face. She sat
perched on the end of his bed as if somebody had told her to wait
there. She didn't seem to want anything from him.

Nalen realized he was dreaming. He tried to wake himself up, heart
slamming around in his rib cage. He couldn't move his arms. "Wake
up," he told himself, then felt two dead fingers on his forehead.

His eyes popped open. The room was checkered with shadows, vague forms
appearing just beyond his range of vision. His arms and legs felt
weighted with bricks. He struggled to sit up. Through slitted eyes,
he saw a dark figure flit out into the

hallway. Fully awake now, he reached for his .38 and leapt out of
bed.

The floor was cool. Nalen headed down the hallway in a combat stance,
head snapping at the slightest sound. Hands shaking.

Thwunk.

He spun around.

"Dad?" Billy came out of his bedroom, rubbing his eyes. He reminded
Nalen so much of the sleepy kid who'd once crawled into bed with them
because he thought there was a wolf in his closet. "Dad, what's
wrong?"

Nalen stared blankly, then slowly lowered his pistol. The boy's
expression did not change; he seemed unafraid, still half asleep. When
he yawned, Nalen could see the velvety deep part of his throat.

"Nothing," Nalen said without smiling. "Go back to sleep."

nalen's stomach turned sourly as he belched up the taste of the chili
dog he'd had for supper. All his men were out in the field, so he was
stuck doing phone duty. Several evidence bags were lined up on the
desk before him--the dozen or so shards of green glass; the matchbook
from Dale's Discount Hardware, no fingerprints; the length of red
thread, perhaps from the girl's missing friendship bracelet; and the
small piece of paper torn in the shape of Italy, some gummy substance
on one side from where it had wedged itself into Melissa's sneaker
tread.

Now the phone rang and he picked up. "Police department, how can I
help you?"

"Hello?" came the hesitant, high-pitched voice of a teenage girl. "I
have some information?"

"Go ahead, I'm listening."

"About the girl who was murdered?"

"Yes?" He leaned forward to scribble the time and date in his logbook.
"Go on," he said as gently as he could so as not to alarm her.

"I'm not gonna turn anybody in or anything ..."

"That's fine." Nalen listened with every fiber of his being. "Go
ahead."