Ben H. Winters

by The Last Policeman

  “Yeah. Well, that’s what we do. Gimme a second, all right.”

  “I need you to run it right now.”

  “Didn’t I just say, give me a second?”

  This is the assistant to the assistant that Fenton warned me about, the individual now running the state lab on Hazen Drive. He’s young and disheveled and late for work, and he is looking at me like he’s never seen a policeman before in his life. He stumbles toward his desk, gestures vaguely at a row of hard plastic orange chairs, but I decline.

  “I need these done right away.”

  “Dude, dude. Give me a damn second.”

  He’s clutching a bag of doughnuts, grease staining its bottom, and he looks bleary eyed and unshaven and hungover.

  “Sir?”

  “I just walked in the door. It’s like ten in the morning.”

  “It’s ten forty-five. I’ve been waiting since nine.”

  “Yeah, well, the world’s about to end.”

  “Yes,” I say. “I heard.”

  Tonight it will be one week since Peter Zell was killed, and at last I’ve got a bite on it. One piece. One idea. My hands tap on the toxicologist’s desk while he breathes open-mouthed and settles heavily into his rolling chair, and then I place my sample on his desk. A vial of dark red blood drawn from the heart of Peter Zell, which I removed this morning from the back of my freezer and zipped in the insulated box I use for my lunch.

  “Dude, come on. This isn’t tagged.” The functionary lifts the vial to the pallid halogen light. “There’s no sticker on it, no date. This could be chocolate syrup, man.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Yeah, but, this isn’t procedure, Officer.”

  “The world’s about to end,” I say, and he looks at me, sour.

  “It has to have a sticker, and someone’s gotta order it. Who ordered it?”

  “Fenton,” I say.

  “Seriously?”

  He lowers the vial, narrows his red-rimmed eyes at me. He scratches his head, and a drift of dandruff tumbles onto the desk.

  “Yes, sir,” I say. “She told me that this place is a mess. That orders are getting lost all the time.”

  I’m on thin ice. I am aware of that. I can’t help it. The guy is looking at me, a little fearfully, it seems like, and I realize that my fists are clenched, and my jaw is tight. I need to know if there was morphine in this blood. I need to know if Naomi Eddes is telling me the truth. I think she was, but I need to know.

  “Please, friend,” I say quietly. “Please run my blood. Just run it.”

  * * *

  “Brother?” calls a bespectacled middle-aged man with a beard, as I walk from the parking garage across School Street toward headquarters, turning over possibilities in my head, laying out my timeline. “Have you heard the good news?”

  “Yes,” I say, smile politely. “I sure have. Thanks.”

  I need to get inside, tell my colleagues what I’ve worked out, determine a plan of action. But first I’ve got to stop in Wilentz’s office, get the results of the search I called him for at 8:45 this morning. But the bearded religious man holds his ground, and when I look up I see that they’re out in force this morning, a thick flock of the religious, long black coats, smiling in all directions, wielding their tattered pamphlets.

  “Be not afraid,” says a plain woman who appears before me, her eyes mildly crossed, dots of red lipstick on her smiling teeth. The others are all dressed similarly, three women and two men, all beaming rapturously, all holding thin pamphlets in gloved fingers.

  “Thanks,” I say, no longer smiling. “Thanks so much.”

  It’s not the Jews, the Jews have the hats. It’s not Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Jehovah’s Witnesses stand there quietly holding aloft their literature. Whoever it is, I do what I always do, which is look at my feet and try to keep moving.

  “Be not afraid,” says the first woman again, and the others form behind her in a ragged semicircle, blocking me like a hockey goal. I take a step back, nearly stumble into the street.

  “I’m not afraid, actually. Thanks so much, though.”

  “The truth is not yours to refuse,” murmurs the woman, pressing the pamphlet into my hand. I look down at it, just to avoid her God-glazed eyes, and I scan the bold red-outlined text: IT IS SIMPLY TO PRAY, the cover says on the top, and the same along the bottom: IT IS SIMPLY TO PRAY!

  “Read it,” says another of the ladies, a small, stout African American woman with a lemon-colored scarf and a silver brooch. Everywhere I turn there’s a flap of broadcloth, a heavenly smile. I flip open the pamphlet, skim the bullet points.

  * IF A MAN’S BLINDNESS CAN BE CURED BY THE PRAYERS OF A DOZEN, MANKIND’S CATASTROPHE CAN BE UNDONE BY THE PRAYERS OF A MILLION.

  I don’t really accept the premise, but I go ahead and skim it. If enough of us renounce our wickedness and kneel in the loving light of the Lord, the pamphlet insists, then the ball of fire will bend in its path and sail harmlessly over the horizon. It’s a nice thought. I just want to get into the office. I fold the pamphlet and push it back toward the first woman, the one with the batty eyes and the lipstick teeth.

  “No thanks.”

  “Keep it,” she insists, gentle and firm, while the chorus calls, “Read it!”

  “May I ask you, sir,” says the African American woman, with the scarf. “Are you a man of faith?

  “No. My parents were.”

  “God bless them. And where are your parents now?

  “Dead,” I say. “They were murdered. Excuse me, please.”

  “Leave him alone, you jackals,” says a booming voice, and I look up: my savior, Detective McGully, an open beer bottle in one hand, a cigar clamped in his teeth. “You want to pray to someone, pray to Bruce Willis in Armageddon.” McGully tosses me a salute, lifts his middle finger and waves it at the true believers.

  “Sneer now, sinner, but wickedness shall be punished,” says the saint with the lipstick teeth to Officer McGully, backing away, a pamphlet fluttering from her open pocketbook onto the sidewalk. “You shall face the darkness, young man.”

  “Guess what, sister,” says McGully, handing me his Sam Adams and forming his hands into a megaphone. “You, too.”

  * * *

  “It’s a percentage.”

  “What is?”

  “The number,” I say. “It’s 12.375 percent.”

  I’m pacing, and I’ve got it under my arm like a football, Peter Zell’s shoebox, the one overflowing with asteroid information, all the numbers circled and double underlined. I’m laying it out for my colleagues, explaining what I’ve got, what I think I’ve got. McGully sits with furrowed brow, tipped back in his chair, rolling his empty morning beer bottle between his palms. Culverson is at his desk in a crisp silver suit, sipping coffee from a mug, considering. Andreas, over in his shadowy corner, head down, eyes closed, asleep. Adult Crimes.

  “When Maia first showed up, when they first spotted it and began tracking it, Peter immediately began following the story.”

  “Peter is your hanger?”

  “The victim, yeah.”

  I take that first AP article, from April 2, the one ending with the odds of impact at one in two million one hundred twenty-eight thousand, and hand it to Culverson.

  “And here’s another one, a few days later.” I pull out another scrap of dog-eared computer paper and begin reading. “ ‘Though the object appears to be massively large, with an estimated diameter upwards of six and a quarter kilometers, Spaceguard astronomers calculate its current chances of colliding with Earth as barely higher than zero—what Dr. Kathy Goldstone, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Arizona, calls only just within the realm of non-negligible probability.’ And Mr. Zell, he’s got that number—six and a quarter—that’s underlined, too.”

  I take out another piece of paper, and another. Zell wasn’t just keeping track of the numbers on Maia, on its trajectory and projected density and composition. His box also has articles on all th
e asteroid-related societal changes: new laws, shifting economic landscape, and he’s watching those numbers, too, writing on the backs of the papers, scrawling calculations—long columns of data, exclamation points—adding it all into the matrix.

  “Son of a gun,” says Culverson suddenly.

  “Son of a gun what?” says McGully. “What?”

  “See—so—” I start, and Culverson finishes, says it smooth and right: “The strong possibility of death by global catastrophe can be seen as mitigating the risk of death from drug-related misadventure.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Right. Yes.”

  “Yes, what?” growls McGully.

  “Palace’s hanger was doing a risk assessment.”

  I beam. Culverson nods at me approvingly, and I place the lid back on the box. It’s 11:30 now, shift change, and from the break room a couple doors down we can hear the frat-house rumble of the patrol officers, the young Brush Cuts with their nightsticks. They’re rattling around, shouting abuse at one another, drinking their skinny little cans of energy drink, strapping on their bulletproofing. Ready to get out there and aim their sidearms at some looters, ready to fill up the drunk tank.

  “My theory is, Zell makes a decision, very early on, that if the odds of impact rise above a certain mathematically determined level, he’s going to try something dangerous and illegal, an interest that had always been too risky to indulge. Until now.”

  In early June the odds rise above his threshold, and Zell heads to the house of his old friend J. T. Toussaint, who figures out how to get ahold of something, and together they get high as satellites.

  But then—late October—Zell has a bad reaction, or a change of heart, or maybe the drugs run out. He goes into withdrawal.

  At this point, McGully raises a hand slowly, sarcastically, like a surly teenager giving his math teacher a hard time.

  “Uh, yes, Detective? Excuse me? How does this tragic tale make the guy into a murder victim?”

  “Well, I don’t know. But that’s what I’d like to find out.”

  “Okay. Great!” He claps, hops off his desk. “So, let’s go to this Toussaint fella’s house and run the asshole in.”

  I turn from Culverson to McGully, my heartbeat accelerating a little. “You think so?”

  “Hell, yeah, I think so.” In fact, he looks delighted at the prospect, and I’m reminded of McConnell, the philosophical question of our era: How many more times do I get to yell, “Stop, motherfucker”?

  “But I don’t have probable cause,” I protest, and I turn back toward Culverson, hoping that he’ll object to my objection, hoping to hear him say, “Sure you do, son,” but he’s still quiet in his corner, ruminating.

  “Probable cause?” snorts McGully. “Christ, man, you’ve got it in spades. You’ve got the guy procuring a controlled substance, distributing it. Automatic go to jail, do not pass Go, IPSS Title IX—right, hotshot? You’ve got him lying to a police officer. Same deal—Title I-don’t-fucking-know, Title Infinity.”

  “Well, I think he’s done those things. I don’t know.” I appeal to Culverson, the adult in the room. “Maybe we can get a warrant? Search the house?”

  “A warrant?” McGully throws his hands up, imploring the room, the heavens, the hushed form of Detective Andreas, who has opened his eyes just enough to stare at something he’s got on his desk.

  “Wait, wait, you know what? He’s driving an oil car, right? He’s admitted to that, right? To the WVO?

  “Yeah. So?”

  “So?” McGully is grinning ear to ear, his hands raised high in the touchdown sign. “Three new provisions just tacked onto Title XVIII, in re: natural resources management and scarcity.” He hops over to his desk, scoops up the new binder, fat and black with the American flag stickered on the front. “Hot off the press, mis amigos. Presuming your man is juicing his French-fry oil with diesel, that vehicle is in fragrant violation.”

  I shake my head. “I can’t arrest him for retroactively violating a newly enacted statute.”

  “Oh, well, Agent Ness, how high-minded of you.” He gives me both middle fingers and sticks out his tongue for good measure.

  “You’ve got another problem, though,” says Culverson. I know what he’s going to say; I’m ready for it. I’m actually a little excited about it. “You told me yesterday that Toussaint’s got a squeaky-clean record. Hardworking guy. Working man. To the extent that Zell has kept up with him at all, to the extent that he’s even crossed the guy’s mind, why would he go to him for drugs?”

  “Excellent question, Detective,” I say, beaming. “Look.”

  I show him the printout I got from Wilentz, on the way up here, the search results on Toussaint’s father. Because that’s what I was remembering, that’s what I found in my notes from yesterday, something about the way J. T. said it, about his old man: “Was he an artist?” “Yes, among other things.” I watch Culverson skim the report. Roger Toussaint; a.k.a. Rooster Toussaint; a.k.a. Marcus Kilroy; a.k.a. Toots Keurig. Possession. Possession with intent to distribute. Possession with intent to distribute. Possession. Violation of a minor. Possession.

  So when Peter Zell decided to get ahold of a controlled substance—when the odds of impact made the decision for him—he remembered his old friend, because his old friend’s dad was a drug dealer.

  Culverson, at last, nodding, rising slowly from his chair. McGully, out of his chair in a flash. My heart, galloping.

  “Okay then,” Culverson says. “Let’s go.”

  I nod, there’s a pause, and then the three of us move to the door at the same time, three policemen swinging into action, patting their shoulder holsters and shrugging on their coats, and there’s a rush of anticipation and joy so strong in my gut that it comes all the way around, to a kind of dread. This is a moment I’ve imagined all my life, three police detectives up and ready for action, feeling the sturdiness of our legs beneath us, feeling the adrenaline begin to flow.

  McGully stops for Andreas on the way out the door—“You coming, gorgeous?”—but the last of the Adult Crimes detectives isn’t going anywhere. He’s frozen in his chair, a half-empty coffee cup at his elbow, his hair a bird’s nest, staring at a tattered pamphlet on his desk: IT IS SIMPLY TO PRAY.

  “Come on, pally,” McGully urges, snatching away the wrinkled pamphlet. “New Guy has got a scumbag for us.”

  “Come on,” says Culverson, and I say it, too. “Come on.”

  He turns a quarter of an inch, mutters something.

  “What?” I say.

  “What if they’re right?” says Andreas. “The—the—” he gestures to the pamphlet, and I sort of can’t take it anymore.

  “They’re not right.” I place a firm hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t we not think about this right now.”

  “Not think about it?” says Andreas, wide-eyed, pathetic. “Not think about it?”

  With a quick flat chop I knock over the cup of coffee on Andreas’s desk, and the cold brown liquid gushes out, rushing over the pamphlet, flooding his ashtray, his paperwork and computer keyboard.

  “Hey,” he says dumbly, pushing back from the desk, turning all the way around. “Hey.”

  “You know what I’m doing right now?” I say, watching the muddy liquid rush toward the edge of the table. “I’m thinking: Oh no! The coffee’s going to spill onto the floor! I’m so worried! Let’s keep talking about it!”

  And then the coffee waterfalls over the side of the desk, splashing on Andreas’s shoes and pooling on the ground beneath the desk.

  “Oh, look at that,” I say. “It happened anyway.”

  * * *

  All is the same as it was.

  The doghouse, the thorn bushes and the oak tree, the ladder propped against the lip of the roof. There’s the small white dog, Houdini, weaving anxiously around the legs of the ladder, and there’s big J. T. Toussaint, up there fixing shingles, bent to his task in the same brown work pants and black boots. He looks up at the sound of the gravel crunch on the dr
iveway, and I catch a flash of impression, a reclusive animal surprised in his lair by the arrival of the hunters.

  I’m out of the car first, straightening up and tugging down the hem of my suit coat, one hand shading my eyes against the winter sun, the other hand raised, flat palmed in greeting.

  “Good morning, Mr. Toussaint,” I call. “I have just a couple more questions for you.”

  “What?” he says. He comes up from his crouch, finds his balance, and stands full height on the roof, the sun right behind him and all around him, casting him in a weird pale gray halo. The other doors slam behind me, McGully and Culverson stepping out of the vehicle, and Toussaint flinches, retreats a step upward on the roof, stumbles.

  He raises his hands to steady himself, and I hear McGully shout, “Gun!” and I turn my head back and say, “What—no,” because it’s not, “it’s just a caulking gun!”

  But McGully and Culverson have their weapons raised, service-issue SIG Sauer P229s. “Freeze, asshole,” McGully shouts, but Toussaint can’t freeze, his boots have lost their purchase on the shingled slope, he’s scrabbling, hands in motion, eyes wide, McGully still shouting—and I’m shouting, too, “No, no, don’t—no,” whipping my head back and forth, because I don’t want him dead. I want to know the story.

  Toussaint turns on his heel, tries to escape toward the spine of the roof; McGully fires his gun, a sliver of brick spits off the side of the chimney, and Toussaint turns and falls off the house and down onto the lawn.

  * * *

  “Your house smells like dog shit.”

  “Let’s focus on what’s material, Detective McGully.”

  “Okay. It’s true, though, isn’t it? Stinks in here.”

  “Detective, come on.”

  J. T. Toussaint starts to say something, or maybe he’s just moaning, and McGully tells him to shut up, and he shuts up. He’s on the living-room floor, giant body prone on the dirty carpet, face buried in the rug, bleeding from his forehead where he caught it on the roof on the way down. McGully is sitting on his back, smoking a cigar. Detective Culverson is over by the mantel, I’m pacing, everyone’s waiting, it’s my show.