Shattered Shell

by Brendan DuBois

  I looked at Felix and said, "Gee, I've gotten it. How about you?"

  "Oh, I got it a long time ago."

  Dunbar swore one more time and then left, and we followed, and soon we were back outside and a female officer, dressed in a heavy leather jacket and whose nametag said CAROL APPEL, bundled us in the rear seat of a police cruiser and drove us back up to High Street. Along the way she said, "You guys rile up Dunbar back there?"

  "That we did," I said.

  "Good for you," she said, and Felix laughed.

  At High Street she made a turn into the apartment building's parking lot, and she left the cruiser's engine running as she got out. Officer Appel opened up Felix's door --- since it was a cruiser, the rear doors had no handles inside --- and the two of us slid out into the frigid night air. Little breath clouds formed about her head as she said, "Next time, fellas, don't go visiting so late and make so much noise. You woke up the landlord."

  Oops. "Thanks for the advice," I said.

  "No problem." She ducked back into the cruiser and emerged with a 9mm in her hand. She handed it butt-first to Felix, and then passed along the full magazine. "Good for you that you had a carry permit, or you'd still be our guest," she said.

  "With you as our hostess, it wouldn't have been that bad."

  She grinned. "Don't be so sure. Now get the hell out, will you?" As the cruiser went back to High Street Felix looked at me and said, "Now that's a woman I would like to meet someday out of uniform."

  "Because she's a cop?"

  "Because of the challenge."

  The drive back was quiet, with the road fairly empty and a half-moon at our rear lighting up the cold waves of the ocean. Faint drifts of snow covered the asphalt as I drove north, the radio station tuned to an all-news station, the volume turned down low. It was two a.m. on Thursday, and I was getting more tired with each passing mile. Felix was hunched over in his seat and said, "So, where do you want to take this?"

  "A couple of options are open, and none of them are that attractive," I said. "My question to you: Are you still along for the ride?"

  He yawned. "Oh, that I am. First, I still think something bad happened to your friend, and I'm still interested in meeting the guy who did it. And second, this gives me an opportunity to eventually raid your bank account, and I don't want to pass that up."

  "Thanks for the good words," I said. "Why don't we get together in a day or two, look things over, see where we go from here?"

  “Just so long as I get some sleep here and there, that's fine." I turned right onto Rosemount Lane and up the narrow road to his house. The road was bumpy with a layer of cracked and fissured ice. I stopped in front of his Mercedes and reached over and shook his hand, a gesture that seemed to surprise him.

  "Thanks for being here, and thanks for not losing it with the cops."

  Felix smiled. "Cops are part of the job, part of doing business. Nothing to worry about." And then his smile faltered a bit. "I'm worried about you and one special cop, though. Diane isn't going to like what you're going to tell her."

  "I know," I said, "and I also know that I'm not going to talk to her tonight. Soon, but not tonight. You want me to walk you to the door or something?"

  That made him laugh as he stepped out onto the snow. "The day you have to walk me to the front door must be the day I start collecting Social Security. Go to hell."

  "Thanks, but not tonight," I said, and I turned the car around and drove home.

  It was nearly Thursday afternoon before I was awake, showered, and shaved. With only another four hours of daylight left, I decided to take the rest of the day off, and not talk to Felix or Diane or Kara or Paula or even Inspector Dunbar. One of the few joys of being a magazine columnist, and of living secretly off the federal government's largesse, is the ability on some days to do what I damn please.

  I dressed for the outdoors, gathered up my EMS day pack, and went to my tiny dirt cellar and the kitchen for some supplies. I took out my cross-country skis and waxed them up, and then outside I trudged through a rough path in the snow, heading north, carrying the skis and poles in my arms. The sky was bright blue and the ocean was just as majestic, and the air was so crisp and clear that it looked like the Isles of Shoals were just hundreds of feel away. Snow and rime ice covered the rocks, and I moved slowly, trying to keep my balance while wearing cross-country ski boots, which have no traction, no tread, and look like miniature clown shoes.

  After about fifteen minutes I passed over into state-owned land, into the Samson Point State Wildlife Preserve, and I strapped on the skis near a grove of birch trees. Half-covered by the snow was a concrete bunker, its iron door welded shut years ago when the early-warning radar system that had replaced the huge coast artillery pieces had itself been shut down. The whole of the state park had once been the Samson Point Coast Artillery Station, built when the Spaniards were considered a threat for those several months in 1898, and over the years the enemies had changed to Germans and then the Soviets.

  I started skiing, moving in that graceful rhythm that only takes a day or two to learn, and that is a great exercise. There was a trail I was following, one broken by me some weeks ago. As I traveled through the quiet woods, breathing deeply, I met not a single other skier. The trails were probably empty for two reasons: It was the middle of a work week, and this part of the park was officially closed, due to the discovery a few years back of some hazardous waste and chemicals in some of the bunkers.

  The trail went deep into the woods, and except for the salt tag in the air, you wouldn't know you were near the ocean's edge. Snow still clung to the branches of the pines and evergreens, and I savored the cool air and the quite shush-shush of the skis sliding though the snow. Along the side of the trail were the marks of animals in the snow, the deep trio of indentations that mark a rabbit, the tiny marks of a field mouse, and even once the sharp marks of a deer, and I saw where bark and branches had been gnawed on the trees. As I skied along in the quiet forest, I tried to forget my trip last night to Newburyport, what Felix and I had found in Kara's apartment, the memory of the fires that had been tearing apart Tyler this winter, and the bitter thoughts of what had happened to me once in the Nevada desert that had eventually brought me here.

  The trail then came out into the open, to a narrow point of land that was one of my favorite places. There was a large, flat rock near the tide line of the water, and I brushed away some snow and sat down, undoing my pack, and had a late afternoon lunch. Having stopped skiing, I was a bit sweaty, and I started to cool off, but my meal soon warmed me back up. I had two Thermos bottles, one that contained tea and the other tomato soup, and a sandwich made of leftover steak from a previous Lafayette House meal, along with lettuce, cheddar cheese, and tomato. The cold air seemed to sharpen my appetite and I sat there and ate, and later sipped a cup of tea when I was finished eating, just listening to the wind whisper through the snow-covered limbs and the sounds of the waves moving against the icy shoreline.

  I just sat, not thinking, just looking at the sharp blue of the ocean and the different shades of white among the snowdrifts on the park and the tall majesty of the evergreens. It was wonderful, feeling the minutes ooze by, and then the wind picked up and I shivered. It was time to leave. I repacked my belongings and tossed out a crust of bread for the benefit of the birds, and then I gathered up my ski poles and skis and started to move away from rock. I had to get back to my house and my work and the thoughts of Kara Miles and Diane Woods and even the mystery arsonist, for they would not wait.

  I turned and looked back, and saw something by the rock. I poked with my ski pole and uncovered some empty beer cans. I knelt down and pulled them out, placed them in my pack, and then started to ski south. I felt good. No one saw me pick up the old trash, but I knew, and that was what counted.

  I pushed forward through the snow.

  Chapter Nine

  During winter, lunch can be a challenge at Tyler Beach. In the summer, the beach is famous for the
dozens of restaurants, fast food booths, and snack joints on every block, but when the first snows fall, those shops are closed and shuttered tight, leaving one or two brave places open along the entire stretch of the Strip.

  For Diane Woods and me this Friday afternoon, lunch was eaten from the front seat, parked at the town's tiny Bicentennial Park, up beyond Weymouth's Point and near North Beach. Diane had to prepare for a court appearance later that day and didn't have the time for a drive into town. We got take-out from Sal's Super Subs on Atlantic Avenue, and she had some clam chowder while I made do with a steak-and-cheese sub. The air in the Rover was stuffy and smelled of cooked food and grease, and paper napkins wore scattered everywhere. A handful of other vehicles were parked sloppily in the poorly plowed parking lot of the town park.

  Diane held a white container in her hands and spooned up the chowder, looking outside, and said, "By God, I hate this time of year, I really do."

  It was overcast and there was a mix of snow and frozen rain scattering down, not enough for a serious accumulation, but enough so that I kept the engine running and the heater on so the water wouldn't freeze up the windows. There wasn't much to see --- piles of snow, ice-covered boulders at the water's edge, and the incessant movement of the gray and cold Atlantic. Supposedly this park was where the Reverend Bonus Tyler --- the town's founder --- and his congregation landed in 1638, and I'm sure that if the weather had been like this on that special day, they would have turned around and headed back to England.

  I had finished my sandwich and was working on a salad, and I looked over and said, "Is it really the weather, or is it just the circumstances?"

  She spooned in some chowder, eating almost mechanically.

  "Oh, you're probably right, but I can never really remember feeling that thrilled with January. With who I am and what I do, the holidays have always been a time to be endured, not enjoyed, and it's days like these that make you think winter's going to last right through to June."

  Her face was drawn and her normally shiny brown hair looked dull. I put down my fork, reached over and stroked her poor hair, and said, "How are you doing?"

  Diane's eyes filled up. "I know there's going to be a time out there, maybe next year, maybe in two years, when I won't feel so rotten, and by Jesus I wish I could be there right now. It seems like every hour of every day is just pure, grinding misery, and I even thought going to work would help, but it hasn't."

  "The old keep-busy routine?"

  "Yeah, that old keep-busy routine. You know, it does work. Keeping yourself busy does make the day go by and makes your problems manageable, but the problems are still there, still waiting to gnaw at your brain at two in the morning. And what work I do achieve isn't that much. I'm letting this arson case slip by, letting Mike Ahern and the state fire marshal's office take more and more of the case, and if that was going on a month ago, I'd scream and raise a fuss, but now I'm so tired and zoned out, some days I could give a shit. A crappy attitude, but I'm afraid it's the only one I have."

  Another car joined us in the parking lot, its wheels spinning in the snow. "And how's Kara doing?" I asked.

  Diane looked down at her lunch, moved the spoon around a bit. "She's doing all right physically, and her mouth doesn't hurt as much. But that's not the problem."

  "Both of you getting on each other's nerves?"

  She kept on stirring the chowder. "We've been fighting, and it’s not pretty."

  "Not that my ego is so healthy, but is the fighting over what I’m doing?"

  "Oh, some, but there's other things as well. Like living arrangements." She took a deep breath. "We've been together for a while and I've made the suggestion, here and there, that she move in with me. Maybe we find someplace a bit secluded, maybe in North Tyler or Exonia. A few eyebrows would be raised, but we I could just get by on smiles and lies about roommates, and we'd do fine, and I'd be very happy." She looked at me, her eyes shiny. "I really do want her by my side, every day and night."

  "But she's got other ideas."

  "Yeah, and she's mentioned that eventually she's going to want to move out of High Street and find someplace new to live in. l've told her she should just stay here with me, and she says no, she needs to recover and stand on her own two feet again. She thinks moving in with me would just be a sign of weakness. She doesn’t like being weak, and shit, I don't like her going into an empty apartment at night."

  "And there's been other fights?"

  “Well, yeah ... it's just ... well, she's told me a couple of times that she's trying to put everything behind her, and that I should do the same thing. That I should just let go and not let revenge run my life, and try to move on."

  I hoped I wasn't going to regret what I said next. "Those are valid points. And what do you say back to her?"

  She picked up a spoonful of chowder and then let it fall back.

  "Drop the lecturing tone. I know it makes sense, that we should grieve and mourn and get on with things. I know I shouldn't obsess on it, and if Kara wants to put it behind her, then I should just do what she wants. That makes sense."

  "But ... "

  Her voice grew more harsh. "But then I close my eyes and think of what happened to her last week, think of that bastard who raped her... Then I can't just forget it. I just can't let bygones be bygones. I won't allow it. I won't allow him to live."

  I finished my salad, put the plastic dish and fork away in a bag. "Well, you've just answered one question I had today."

  "And what was that?"

  "I wanted to make sure that you haven't changed your mind."

  She took a deep breath. "No. Not at all. That hasn't changed. You still with me?"

  "I'm still with you."

  "So. What have you got?"

  "You mean besides undying thanks that you and Kara managed to keep me and Felix out of jail for the night?"

  That brought a slight smile to her face, and I felt a touch of victory at seeing that mouth move upwards. "Yes, I mean besides that. I've talked to Jason Henry. He feels bad about having gotten the two of you arrested, but he was just scared, hearing the two of you upstairs and not knowing who you were. And he also says he's going to be home tomorrow, if you still want to talk to him."

  "I do."

  She turned to me again. "Again, Lewis. So. What have you got for me?"

  An answer that I've been practicing for a half-day, I felt like saying, but instead I said, "Not much, I'm afraid. We talked to her neighbors. They all knew Kara at some point or another, but I got the feeling that she didn't go out of her way to be best friends with them. A fair assessment?"

  Diane nodded. "You're probably right. Kara worked so many hours at Digital and I know she liked to just relax when she got home. And whatever free time there was, we tried to spend as much of it together as possible. She likes to keep to herself, so yeah, I can see that her neighbors didn't know her that much. What else?"

  "Well, they all pretty much had the same reaction when we told them what had happened. Sheer horror that such a crime could happen in their neighborhood. And I'm afraid nobody saw anything out of the ordinary. No strange cars or strange men in the neighborhood. No break-ins, nothing unusual to be noted."

  "So what's your next step?"

  My next step is to find out why in hell Kara's not being entirely open should have been my response, but I wanted to follow some other leads before dropping that live hand grenade in Diane's lap. Hoping against hope, I wanted there to be some solid answers out there instead of fuzzy questions, and I wasn't ready to give it up quite yet.

  "We talk to the landlord tomorrow, maybe talk to the people where she works," I said. "Might do some checks on the neighbors and even spend a few more cuddly minutes with Inspector Dunbar. But we don't have much. Has Kara said anything more?"

  "Why, do you think she's changing her story?" Her voice took on a sharper tone.

  "No, it's just that sometimes things are remembered later, after some reflection. I might need to talk to her a
gain, Diane."

  She finally put the half-eaten chowder into the plastic trash bag we were sharing. "I might not want you to do that."

  I looked out the window, seeing the frozen rain pelt against the windshield, and said, "That's Diane Woods talking to me, and not Detective Woods. A world of difference. And if Diane Woods doesn't want me to do things in a competent way, then she should have a talk with Detective Woods."

  A soft tap on my shoulder. "Both Dianes are sorry," she said. "I know you're doing what you can. It's just ... Lewis, it's just so hard."

  "I know."

  "No, you don't," she said, "and be glad you don't. Take me hack to the station, will you?"

  "Sure."

  When we got to the Tyler police station, I followed Diane in so I could wash my hands and discreetly toss away our lunchtime trash in the station's receptacles. When I was done I went down a tiled hallway to the rear office that was the detective's bureau, going by a kitchen area where a large uniformed officer was sitting, his back to me, his neatly shaved head moving side to side with effort as he laboriously typed a report with two fingers on a manual typewriter. Diane's office was as cluttered as ever, and the sickly green paint on the cinder-block walls looked more faded. She was sitting at her paper-strewn desk, where a bong for smoking illegal substances was being used as a paperweight, and she looked up at me oddly, holding a telephone.

  "It's for you," she said. "You can pick it up at the spare desk." Her odd gaze continued and I shrugged and gave her my who-knows-I'm-here? look, then sat down and punched up the blinking light and said, "Hello?" and a familiar voice was there.