Third Rail (15 page)

There's a clear line of sight to the target. Deadly force allowable—the Doyles are about to cause serious injury. Harkness drops into the stance, legs wide, arms out and bent slightly, and points his gun at Billy.

A car crossing the bridge honks at the sight of a lone gunman pointing his joined hands at nothing, shouting at no one.

“Pull your friend up, right now. Or I shoot.”

“Drop him! Drop him! Drop him!”
the invisible crowd chants.

Billy shrugs, and pulls Pauley Fitzgerald closer so he can grab the railing. The Doyle brothers slip into the crowd. Harkness runs to the bridge to grab Fitzgerald by his wrists and pull him up, inch by inch, until he slides over the railing. “You're going to be okay,” Harkness says to the empty sidewalk.

“Thanks, man,” Pauley says. “You . . . you saved my life.”

Harkness turns. The toes of his boots slam into the chain-link fence, searching for a foothold. He climbs up to stand on the railing, arms outstretched in the cold night air, staring out at the skyline.

He's supreme, triumphant, a hero.

***

After Thalia talks him down, after he takes a cold shower, after Third Rail starts to let go, the knots come back, one after the next, to retie the tangled black ball that Harkness carries with him. He stretches out on the futon and presses close to Thalia's warm back. She murmurs in her sleep.

Harkness replays the crucial moment on the bridge when he had to answer the important question—was Billy Doyle drunk, stupid, and cruel enough to drop his friend down into the swarming traffic? Billy's pockmarked face gave Harkness the answer—green eyes dead as emeralds, his fleshy mouth twisted like he just drank salt water. No, the threat of getting shot wasn't enough to stop him.

So Harkness fired—scattering the crowd from the bridge.

Billy Doyle gave a merciless smirk as the shot grazed his thigh and dark blood splotched his running pants. If the story had stopped here, Pauley Fitzgerald could have climbed back up on the bridge. But the sick smile stayed locked on Billy Doyle's face as he dragged Pauley further away from the bridge, until his hand slipped from the railing.

Until he didn't have a chance.

Pauley Fitzgerald fell with a scream and the chorus of horns on the Turnpike began playing the opening bars of the
Turnpike Toreador
soundtrack.

During the hearings, Billy Doyle lied, saying he was trying to pull Pauley up when Harkness shot him and made him let go of his best friend. That the knife that his brother Dickie waved around turned out to be a switchblade comb from a downtown joke shop didn't help Harkness's case.

The lawyers claimed that rogue cop Detective Supervisor Edward Harkness turned a teenage prank into a tragedy. And though the BPD Disciplinary Board's investigation was inconclusive, the city of Boston seemed to agree.

Harvard Cop Slays Dorchester Son.
The story stayed on the front page of the
Herald
for weeks. When the Sox started their losing streak, the Harvard Cop curse was born. And after all the internal investigations and witness interviews, only one unequivocal fact remained—Pauley Fitzgerald was dead.

 

When the loft brightens to gray and grainy, Harkness is still struggling to sleep. He has an early shift in Nagog in a few hours and hundreds of meters to empty. But he can't stop thinking about Third Rail's chemical rewrite, where Pauley Fitzgerald lives and Harkness is a hero—a version so much better than what really happened.

As the one golden drop starts to wear off, Harkness realizes its power. Third Rail defeats history, for a while—and sometimes that's enough.

Enough to make him want to take it again.

T
ERRENCE SEEMS DISTRACTED
and lost in thought as he walks down the cement front steps of Nagog High—maybe he has an organic chemistry test coming up. Or maybe the Minutemen were making fun of him in the locker room. It's Friday, game day.

Terrence crosses the empty parking lot and clicks open his Prius with his smart key. Harkness slides into the passenger seat before Terrence can start the car.

Too surprised to talk, Terrence just stares at this apparition in a cop uniform.

“How's that advanced seminar in physics?” Harkness says.

“Good?” Terrence stares through the windshield at the rows of light poles and expensive cars.

“Mr. Lombardi teaches that, right? Big guy, not a lot of hair?”

“Yeah.”

“Used to work at Raytheon. Developed the navigation system for drone bombers. Felt so guilty about it that he quit. Gets paid a buck a year to teach high school.”

Terrence's face blanches and his chin quivers. “Who are you? How do you know all that?”

“Took his class, way back when,” Harkness says. “And I'm a cop, Terrence. I'm supposed to know what's going on.” No need to mention that the last vestiges of Third Rail are still amping up his memory.

“Am I in trouble?”

“Maybe.”

Terrence's confused look says he's not used to trouble, or getting caught.

“Let's take a little drive,” Harkness says.

 

Harkness and Terrence stand at the far end of the playing fields, where the track meets the woods. The dormant grass, part green, part brown, is cut close for the coming winter. The pine trees at the edge of the woods are aligned in rows as orderly as an Indiana cornfield.

“You know Newton's laws of motion, right?”

“Yes,” Terrence says quietly.

“An object in motion tends to stay in motion unless . . . Help me out a little, Terrence,” Harkness says.

“Unless an external force is applied to that object,” Terrence mutters, studying the knees of his tan cargo pants.

“So let's say that object was, in fact, a person—say, the late Kelly Pierce.” Harkness holds up an evidence bag holding a strip of black cloth and an amber vial.

Terrence starts to shake.

“So she would stay in motion unless some external force got in her way,” Harkness says. “I suppose a tree might be considered an external force.”

Terrence turns away from the woods. “I didn't do anything.” Tears run down his face and he smears them away with his soft hand.

“Well, actually, Terrence. You did something. You know that, right?”

“Why are you asking me all this stuff? Aren't I supposed to have a lawyer or something?” Terrence's eyes twitch all around the playing fields, empty at midday, as if he might find a lawyer standing there.

“Calm down, Terrence. Here's the deal. I have one question for you. I'm going to ask you that question. You're going to answer it honestly. Then I'm going to let you get back in your car so you can drive to lunch.”

“What if I don't?”

“Well, that's where it gets complicated,” Harkness says. “You'll have to come into the station and a detective will interrogate you for a couple of hours. We'll have to call your parents, alert the school—you're applying early to Stanford, I hear—I'm sure they'll be sorry to hear you're involved with drugs and implicated in the death of a classmate.”

Terrence's mouth moves but no sound comes out. “It's not my fault,” he says finally.

Harkness holds up his hand. “Don't tell it to me. Save it for the jury.”

“The jury!”

Harkness lets Terrence Jessup—Nagog High senior and drug aficionado—freak out for a few minutes. Set in motion, Terrence's well-tuned mind runs through all of the possibilities, none of them very good.

“Okay, ready?”

Terrence nods.

“Tell me exactly what happened on the night Kelly Pierce died.”

***

The smart kids called their game
Fate
because no matter how well you played, it could still kill you. Once a week, they drifted from their quiet ranch houses and saltbox Colonials and gathered behind the hulking brick high school, the cool air thick with their whispers as Terrence popped up a window with a crowbar. By now, even the night janitor was gone, which was good news, because they were clueless at breaking and entering, Terrence claims.

Their nervous laughter echoed through the locker room as they tried on the shiny red Nagog Minutemen track uniforms that never fit—the smart kids were all too scrawny from nerves and Adderall or doughy from spending more time online than in the gym. When they burst through the swinging metal doors of the locker room in formation, girls and boys in alternating rows, and jogged out onto the cool wet grass, someone always sang a line or two of “We Are the Champions.”

At the far side of the playing fields, Terrence fished the amber vial from his pocket. He smiled, pale skin glowing in the moonlight. They circled him, faces tilted toward the stars, mouths open like hungry birds. Joe Maguire, National Merit finalist and late-night gamer, edged forward to taste the first golden drop. Then came Jack Palmer and Lindsay Doherty, stars of
It's Academic,
the cable show no one but parents and math teachers watched. A thick drop fell into the eager mouth of Kelly Pierce, the red-haired honors student who talked so fast she seemed to be set at the wrong speed.

“One drop,” Terrence said that night, every night they played the game. “This stuff's expensive—and strong.”

He didn't need to warn them. They knew not to ask for more.

In a few minutes they were pacing in circles, running fingers through hair, and pressing hands on temples as if that alone might calm their febrile minds. Thrumming from the first rush, they raced around the darkened field, stopping only to blurt out half-formed ideas and sudden declarations. They clutched each other like drowning sailors, slipped fingers down past elastic waistbands. Inhibitions dissolved, nervousness transformed to swagger, tongues flickered, cocks pointed moonward, and white legs scissored on the cold grass.

Dr. North was right about sex on Third Rail.

On game night, everyone was hot, everyone was cool. Everyone knew everything.

When their minds settled, Terrence held out the deck and they each took a card. Kelly Pierce won with the jack of spades.

The others gathered around the chosen and tied her black blindfold tight. They kissed her cheek, whispered in her ear, then turned her toward the woods, narrow pines planted in close rows.

They cheered as Kelly ran across the field toward the edge of the woods, red uniform flashing in the fading light, to smash into the pines or rush in triumph and relief into the dark spaces between them. The chosen could never be sure.

Fate would figure that out for them.

***

Terrence sits in the cold grass, sobbing. Remembering Kelly has opened a well of guilt, and Harkness plumbs its depths to get answers.

“This is the part I don't understand, Terrence. From what I can tell, you and your friends played the game every week or so, isn't that right?”

Terrence nods and a tear drops from the end of his nose.

Harkness leans down to put his hand on Terrence's shoulder. “Chances are someone must have run into a tree before,” he says. “I mean, there's no way every fucked-up kid before Kelly managed to just run into the woods without hitting anything. What happened to Kelly? Why her?”

Terrence shakes his head slowly for a moment. “Everyone else just jogged toward the woods,” he says quietly. “If they hit a tree, maybe they ended up with a scrape on their forehead or something. But Kelly, Kelly . . .” He sobs.

“Kelly what?”

“She ran,” he says. “She ran as fast as she could. Crazy fast.”

“Was she trying to kill herself?”

He shakes his head. “I don't think so. I think she was just really high. She didn't weigh that much, and that Third Rail stuff went to her head.”

“Thought she was invincible.”

Terrence nods.

“But we both know no one's invincible. Can't beat the laws of physics.”

“I know that,” Terrence says. “But it's so safe in Nagog, you know. Nothing happens here. It felt good to do something stupid and dangerous.”

Harkness remembers dodging cars on the Pike. “I know what you mean, Terrence.”

“The game was really fun for a while, then it turned into something terrible.”

“That's pretty much how it always goes.” Harkness reaches down to help Terrence up from the cold grass.

“Am I going to jail?”

Another cop might pin Kelly Pierce's death on Terrence, turning an accident into second-degree murder. But Harkness just shakes his head. Fate's already tying knots in Terrence's life. “No. But when you get home, I need you to find that amber vial of Third Rail and dump it down the toilet.”

Terrence nods and they walk back toward his car.

“How much did you pay for it?”

“Three hundred dollars.”

“Short, hairy guy sold it to you, right?”

“At first, yeah. Then a taller guy. Long dyed hair, kind of yellow. Called himself Straight Ed.”

Harkness stops cold. “Well, that's an ironic name for a drug dealer.”

Terrence opens the door to his mint-colored Prius and climbs inside.

Harkness leans down to pass along one final message to Terrence. “Forget you ever heard it.”

***

Harkness pulls in front of the Old Nagog Tavern, a tilted white Colonial with peeling paint, gap-toothed clapboards, and plastic stapled over its windows. Gray lumber is piled in the front yard, and behind the house, battered cars point in all directions in a weedy field dotted by black trash bags, fifty-gallon drums, and rusted junk. At the far end of the field there's a big red barn, roofline sagging like a telephone wire.

No warrant. No probable cause. No discussion with the captain. No plan. No gun. Harkness knows he has no justification to show up here on a crisp fall morning except that he's pissed off at Dex for selling drugs in Nagog—and for using his old nickname as some kind of joke, or worse.

The unexpected arrival of a cop in a squad car can have a catalytic effect.