Countdown City: The Last Policeman Book II

by Ben H. Winters

  “I should say, Hank,” says Dr. Fenton, and I note that there is no remaining amusement in her voice, “it is very much within the realm of possibility that you are going to lose that limb.”

  I listen, numb. Lose the limb. Sure. Of course. My pillow smells like dust, like other men’s blood.

  Fenton is still talking. “I repaired the blood vessels in the ruptured brachial artery by excising the injured segment and performing a graft. But I—” She stops, gives a quick shake of her head. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I was cutting up corpses for the past twenty-five years, and now I’ve been doing general surgeries for approximately two weeks. Plus, you probably haven’t noticed, but it’s fucking dark in here.”

  “Dr. Fenton,” I say. “I’m sure you did your best.” I reach laboriously across the bed with my good hand and pat her on the arm.

  “I’m sure I did, too,” she says. “But you still might lose the limb.”

  I try again to move my legs, and this time I get them a little closer to the edge of the bed. I’m visualizing my swiftest route from here, Concord Hospital at Pleasant Street and Langley Parkway, all the way to Albin Street in North Concord. I’m not cross with you, Martha. I just want to know the truth. The machines around us beep dully, their blinking lights dim and pale, feeble back-up-generator lights. My legs refuse to go any farther for the time being. My arm throbs and my body aches. The world swells up and gently spins around me. I feel myself slipping down, not unpleasantly, back into my cloud of ether. Naomi is standing where Fenton just was, gazing sweetly down at me, and my heart shivers in my chest. Naomi was bald, in life; apparently in the world to come she’s growing out her hair and it looks beautiful, like soft moss on a sea-washed stone.

  I let my head fall back onto the pillow and the helicopter roars into view, Nico hollering from the hatchway, and then I’m in it, on it, feverish and confused, the wind rushing in and around us, Nico’s choppy hair fluttering like a field of black grass. The pilot is nervous and unsure—and young, so terribly young, a girl in her late teens or early twenties, wearing aviator glasses and jerking the levers uncertainly.

  Nico and I fought for the whole trip: forty-five minutes of arguing, voices raised, screaming to be heard over the clatter of the copter blades and the deafening wind, telling each other not to be stupid. I told her she had to get out with me in Concord and stay with me at the farmhouse on Little Pond Road until the end, like we’d discussed. Nico refused, urged me instead to stay with her, went on and on about the asteroid, the bombs, hydrodynamic simulations and necessary changes in velocity. And through all of this we’re jerking back and forth in the skies over New Hampshire and my fever is climbing and then suddenly were descending haphazardly toward the landing pad atop Concord Hospital.

  And as I was clambering out Nico said—what did she say? Something insane. As I stepped uncertainly onto the landing pad and turned around and pleaded with my sister through my haze of fever and pain to remain under my protection until the end—she told me not to worry.

  “I’ll be fine,” she hollered, her hands cupped together. “Just e-mail me.”

  I wake myself up laughing in the hospital bed. Just e-mail me. The words, the concept, like something from an unfamiliar language: Urdu or Farsi or the Latin of the Romans.

  I ease my head back onto the pillow and breathe and try to steady myself a little. I can’t believe I let her go.

  * * *

  The insistent noise and fuss we have learned to expect from hospital rooms is absent now. No one charges down the hallway outside, no nurses in scrubs slip in and out of the door to check my fluid levels or bring dinner or adjust the bed. Every once in a while I hear a scream, or the squeaking wheel of a rolling cart, from some other room or from around some corner.

  Eventually I get my legs off the bed and my feet on the floor, and I make my way over to where my clothes are heaped in a pile.

  My arm is in a sling, wrapped elaborately in bandages and cinched tightly against my side. I find my watch. I find my shoes. I survey my clothing. The pants are wearable, but my blood-soaked shirt and jacket must be left behind, and I will stay in the hospital gown until I can stop at home and change.

  After Martha’s house. First I’m going to stop at Albin Street and ask Martha a few questions.

  Dr. Fenton is at the nurses’ station in the hallway, writing rapidly on the top clipboard on her pile. She looks up at me, shambling along the hall toward her, and looks down again.

  “So—” I say.

  “I get it,” she says. “You’re going.”

  From an examination room behind Dr. Fenton there’s a steady anguished groaning. From another, someone is saying, “Just take it easy—just take it easy—just take it easy.”

  “You should stay for twenty-four hours at least,” says Fenton. “You need to be observed. You need a course of antibiotics.”

  “Oh,” I say, and look back over my shoulder at the desolate room. “Well, can I get that now?”

  “I said you need a course of antibiotics,” she says, grabbing her clipboard and striding off. “We don’t have any.”

  * * *

  Houdini is waiting just outside the main lobby door of Concord Hospital, like a mafia bodyguard stationed at the sickbed of the capo. As soon as I emerge blinking into the parking lot in my pale blue gown he nods at me, I swear to God he does, and off we go.

  2.

  My watch says it’s 11:15, and I know that means 11:15 a.m. because the sun is high and bright as Houdini and I make our way north across Concord. But I don’t know what day it is—I literally have no idea. I was dead in the dirt at Fort Riley for who knows how long, and then I was on a helicopter and then I was in a bed on the fourth floor of Concord Hospital floating in and out of ether for years and years.

  I walk as fast as I can manage across the city toward Martha’s house, my dead arm tight in its harness, sweat dripping down my back and plastering my hospital gown against my spine. Looking around, examining the city after being gone, it’s like one of those puzzle pages in a children’s magazine: Look at these two pictures and spot what’s changed. Down Pleasant Street and then up along Rumford. Walls with new graffiti; cars that had one wheel gone and the hood popped open are now down to the rims all the way around, or the glass of the windshield’s been pried out with a crowbar. Or they’re actually burning, thick black smoke pouring out of the engine. More houses that have been left behind, front doors yawning wide. Telephone poles made into stumps.

  Last week Pirelli’s Deli on Wilde Street was bustling, a cheerful violence-free dry goods rummage, with a couple of guys giving haircuts, of all things, in the back. Now the chain grate is pulled down over the doors and windows, and Pirelli stands on the sidewalk scowling, a strip of ammunition across his chest like a bandito.

  Houdini is growling as we walk, bounding out ahead of me, his eyes fierce yellow slits. The sun beats on the sidewalks.

  * * *

  “Martha?” I bang on the door with my left hand, pause for a moment, then bang again. “Martha, are you in there?”

  The Cavatones’ lawn had been the only one mowed, but now it’s starting to catch up with the others, wildness creeping in, the trim green fuzz growing out like uncut hair. My arm pulses suddenly, painfully, and I wince.

  I knock again, waiting to hear those locks being thrown open, one by one. Nothing. I shout. “Hey, Martha?”

  Across the street a window blind snaps open, a wary face peers out. “Excuse me?” I call. “Hey—” The blinds shoot closed again. A dog barks somewhere, down the street, and Houdini twitches his small head around in search of the challenger.

  My fist is raised to knock again when the door jerks open and a strong hand grabs my wrist, and somebody in one quick motion drags me inside and kicks the door closed behind me. I’m pushed against a wall, my right arm sending out spasms of pain, and there’s hot breath in my face. A tumble of hair, a crooked chin.

  “Cortez,” I say. “Hello.”
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br />   “Oh, shit,” he says, the good-humored voice, the laughing eyes. “I know you.”

  Cortez lets go of my wrist, steps back, embraces me like I’m an old friend he’s picking up at the airport. “Policeman!”

  His staple gun is dangling from his right hand, but he leaves it angled down, pointed at the ground. Houdini is out on the porch, barking like a madman, so I step over and open the door, let him in.

  “Where did you come from?” Cortez asks. “Why are you dressed for the mental asylum?”

  “Where’s Martha?”

  “Oh, hell,” he says, and flings himself into the Cavatones’ fat leather Barcalounger. “I thought you were going to tell me.”

  “She’s not here?”

  “I don’t lie, Policeman.”

  Cortez watches with amusement while I search the small house, working my way through the closets of the living room, opening all the ones in the bedroom and peering under the bed, looking for Martha or evidence of Martha. Nothing. She’s gone, and her clothes are gone: her dressers empty, wooden hangers dangling on her side of the closet. Brett’s sidearm is also gone, the SIG Sauer he left behind for his wife’s protection when he went off to play crusader in the woods. In the kitchen, sunbeams still play across the warm wood table, and the brass kettle sits happily in its place on the stove. But there’s no sign of Martha, and my case has come full circle: It’s a missing person, just a different person than before.

  I return to the living room and point an angry finger at Cortez.

  “I thought you were supposed to be watching her?”

  “I was,” he says, the staple gun lying across his lap like a kitten. “I am.”

  “So?”

  “So, I failed,” he says, and looks up at the ceiling with theatrical misery, as if to ask what kind of God could allow this to happen. “I absolutely failed.”

  “Okay,” I say, “okay,” patting my pockets for a notebook, but of course I have no notebook—I have no pockets—and my right hand is my writing hand. “Just tell me the story.”

  Cortez needs no prompting. He stands, gestures animatedly while he talks.

  “On Saturday I came by three times. Three times I came.” He holds up forefinger, middle finger, pointer, and his rhythm is like a Bible story: Three times I called your name and three times you refused me. Three times Cortez the thief came from Garvins Falls Road on a bike-and-wagon, laden with supplies for Martha, three times he did a “comprehensive walkaround” to ensure the safety of the small home, checking the doors and windows, checking the perimeters. Morning, midday, sunset. Three times he made sure all was well; three times he paraded himself around with large and visible firearms, so any thugs or rapists would be aware of the presence of an armed defender. Sunday, Cortez says, same thing: morning visit, noon visit, nighttime.

  “And I told her, anything else you need, I provide it.” Cortez looks around the living room. “You want a muscular gentleman with a baseball bat sitting on this sofa all night long, you can have that. You want someone on the porch with a rocket launcher, we can make that happen.”

  I raise an eyebrow—they do not sell rocket launchers at Office Depot—and Cortez grins, happy to explain, but I wave my hand for him to go on. I’m not in the mood.

  “The woman is not interested in protection inside the house, but otherwise she is happy,” Cortez says. “Happy to have us around. As her husband had arranged.”

  “Okay. And?”

  “Okay, so same yesterday. But then today, I am here in the morning, just the same, and the woman is standing out on the porch, shaking her head and waving her hands.”

  “She’s on the porch?”

  “Yes, Policeman. With a suitcase.”

  “A suitcase?”

  “Yes. Suitcase. And she says, no thank you. Like I’m selling Girl Scout cookies. Like I’m a goddamn Jehovah’s Witness.” He puts on a mocking, feminine voice, says it again: “No thank you.”

  Martha, oh Martha, what secrets had you hidden in your heart?

  “It was like she was waiting for someone,” Cortez says, rubbing his chin. “Someone other than me.”

  “Wait—” I say. I’m trying to capture all these details, arrange them in my head. “Wait one second.”

  “What is it?” Cortez looks at me curiously. “You need me to repeat something?”

  “Nothing,” I say, “No. Just—what day is it?”

  “It’s Tuesday.” He grins. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. I just didn’t know what day it is. Please continue the story.”

  What happened next is Cortez told her it wasn’t up to her, with all due respect he had been contracted to take care of her, and this wasn’t her arrangement to undo. If she didn’t want to see him, she could stay inside the house and he or his friend would drop off supplies and protect her from the outside. She insisted, no thank you, told him to leave her be, and then someone hit him on the side of the head.

  “Someone hit you or her?”

  “Me. I said me.”

  “With what?”

  “I do not know. Something hard and flat.” Cortez ducks his head, embarrassed. “I was hit very hard. I was knocked unconscious.” He steps back, raises his hands, looks at me wide eyed, like, Sounds impossible, I know, but that’s what happened. “I was out cold for I don’t know how long, not long I think, and when I woke up, she was gone. I went inside and ran up and down, three times I searched for her. But the house was as you see it. She is gone.”

  “Holy moly,” I say.

  “Yes,” says Cortez drily, and now it’s my voice he puts on, flat and solemn. “Holy moly.”

  “So what are you doing here now, Mr. Cortez?”

  “Waiting for her. A friend I have, Mr. Wells, is out looking while I wait—often the missing simply return. Ellen, meanwhile, minds the home front. Listen, I don’t care if that girl wants to be found or not. We’re going to find her. That cop comes back and finds her gone, I’m finished.”

  “That contract, I think, has been abrogated.”

  “Why? Oh—dead?” Cortez does not look saddened by this news. “Who killed him?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  He pauses, tilts his head. “Why?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll know when I find the killer.”

  “I don’t mean why was he killed. I mean, why are you working on it?”

  I take one more turn around the small house, Houdini close at my heels. I check the locks on the window, look for fingerprints, footprints, anything. Did someone do this to her, or did she do it herself, slip out from under the protection that Brett had arranged? Was she kidnapped? The suitcase says she was waiting for someone, presumably the mysterious Mr. N. But the mysterious Mr. N. is dead, right?

  For a long time I stare into Martha Milano’s empty closet, and then I go back downstairs, find Cortez lounging in the recliner, his cigarette raised like a scepter.

  “I tell you, this whole thing, it’s a bad sign,” he says. “Me losing track of someone I’m supposed to look after? That is a bad fucking sign.”

  “For what?”

  “Oh, shit, you know. For all of mankind. The whole human race.”

  * * *

  Back on Albin Street I look up at the sun. The city is hotter than it was last week, and you can smell it on the air—the reek of untreated sewage water drifting up off the river, of garbage that’s been dumped in the streets and out of windows. Sweat and body odor and fear. I should go home and change clothes, see if any damage has been done while I was away. Make sure that nothing has been taken from my store of food and supplies, all that we left behind.

  “We really should, buddy,” I say to Houdini. “We should go home.”

  But we don’t. We go back the way we came, down Albin, down Rumford, up Pleasant Street.

  What few people there are on the streets are moving quickly, no eye contact. As we get closer to Langley Boulevard a man rushes past in a windbreaker, head down, carrying two whole hams,
one under each arm. Then a woman, running, pushing a stroller with a giant Deer Park bottle strapped into it instead of a child.

  I realize suddenly I have not seen a police car or a police officer or evidence of police presence of any kind since I returned to Concord, and for some reason the observation floods my stomach with a churning dread.

  My legs are getting tired; my busted arm joggles against my side, tight and uncomfortable and useless, like I’m lugging a ten-pound weight around, to prove a point or win a contest.

  * * *

  I find Dr. Fenton right where I left her, working her way down her towering pile of charts, leaning against the counter of the nurses’ station, her eyes blinking and red behind the round glasses.

  “Hey,” I start, but then another doctor, short and bald and bleary eyed, stops and scowls. “Is that a fucking dog? You can’t have a fucking dog in here.”

  “Sorry,” I say, but Fenton says, “Shut up, Gordon. That dog’s more hygienic than you are.”

  “Clever,” he says, “you fucking hack.” He disappears into an adjacent exam room and slams the door. Fenton turns to me. “What happened, Detective Palace? You get shot again?”

  * * *

  We take the unlit stairwell down to the crowded first-floor cafeteria: dirty linoleum tables and a handful of stools, a big plastic bin filled with mismatched cutlery, boxes of supermarket teabags and a row of kettles lined up on camp stoves. Dr. Fenton and I take our tea out to the lobby and sit in the overstuffed chairs.

  “When did you stop working in the morgue?”

  “Two weeks ago,” she says. “Three, maybe. The last month or so, though, we weren’t doing autopsies. No call for it. Just intake, preparing bodies for burial.”

  “But you were still down there when Independence Day happened?”

  “I was.”

  The front door of the hospital crashes open and a middle-aged man stumbles in carrying a woman in his arms like a newlywed, her bleeding profusely from the wrists, him just yelling, “God you idiot, you idiot, you’re such an idiot!” He kicks open the door of the stairwell and lugs his wife inside, and the door slams closed behind them. Fenton lifts her glasses to rub her eyes, looks at me expectantly.