The Company Man

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  Hayes stared at him. “That’s not possible.”

  “Yeah. That’s the crux, ain’t it?”

  “Someone stabbed all these people to death in four minutes?”

  “Or something did.”

  “And none of them resisted,” said Collins, stooping. “Look at their hands. No scratches. No cuts. No bruises.”

  Hayes frowned, doing the same. “And no witnesses.”

  “None,” said Garvey.

  Hayes turned to look out the window down the tunnel. It was black as night behind the car. He wondered what was wandering in there, or what might be waiting down the rails. Then he lifted his hand and touched the cracks in the window before him. They ran throughout the other panes as well, all of them slightly broken but never wholly shattered. He looked up. The bulbs in the roof of the car had completely broken. Little half-moons of white glass stuck out of the sockets, the filaments of the bulbs completely exposed.

  Then Hayes cocked his head suddenly, like he had heard something. He made a soft hmph, then turned to walk down to the conductor’s chair.

  “Where are you going?” said Garvey.

  “There’s something wrong down here,” he said. He looked carefully from body to body.

  “What do you mean? What’s wrong?”

  “I just… I think there’s someone else,” he said.

  “Someone else? Someone else what?”

  “Someone else in here with us.”

  Garvey gave Hayes a sharp look. “You sure about this?”

  Hayes nodded absently as he looked through the trolley.

  “Are you sure this little shit has all his dogs barking?” Collins asked.

  “I’d let him work,” said Garvey. He crossed his arms and fixed his eyes on the floor like he was pretending not to see anything.

  “It’s definitely over here,” Hayes said. He looked down at the conductor. The man’s cheeks and forehead were streaked with blood. He grimaced. “Maybe down below?” He stooped to look under the conductor’s brass control panel. He grunted, then pushed on the conductor’s leg to move it aside.

  “Goddamn it, Don, don’t let him move stuff around,” said Collins.

  “I’m not moving stuff around, I just… I swear, I heard something.”

  “Heard what?” Collins asked.

  “Something,” Hayes said irritably. “I just can’t see.” He shoved at the conductor again.

  “Get out of there,” said Collins. “I’ve got plenty of shit on my hands right now, I don’t need you-”

  But his words were cut off as the conductor jerked once, shuddered, and then lifted his head to stare into Hayes’s face where he squatted beside him on the floor. They gaped at one another for a moment, and then both of them cried out and leaped backward, but the space was so small and cramped that they both crashed into the wall, Hayes cracking his head as he did so.

  “Holy God, he’s alive!” Garvey shouted.

  To everyone’s disbelief the conductor swiveled his head to look around him, face terrified, and stared at the bodies beyond. His eyes rolled madly, and he thrust himself up against the windows as though he was trying to force an escape. A strangled noise started from somewhere within the man and grew into a flat-out scream. He lifted his hands to his face and began clawing at his cheeks, howling wildly until his cries formed words: “No! No, no, let me go! Don’t hurt me, let me go!”

  “Goddamn it, get ahold of him!” shouted Collins, but it was too late. The conductor shook his head and barged through the trolley car and out the broken doors. He leaped down onto the trolley platform and then wheeled around when he was met by an enclosing ring of officers. A few of them brandished revolvers, uncertain where to point them.

  “Don’t shoot!” Garvey yelled. “Don’t shoot him, damn it!”

  The officers shouted for him to get down, down on the ground, but the man would not listen. He reeled back and forth, eyes still wide and mad, raising his arms and shouting for them not to hurt him. Finally one of the larger detectives tackled him and wrapped around his legs, bringing him to the ground. The conductor wept and struggled with him and clawed at the floor. Several patrolmen ran to him, and one took out his truncheon and raised it high.

  “Stop!” shouted a voice.

  The officers looked over their shoulders to see Samantha furiously striding toward them. They paused, unused to dealing with well-dressed women, particularly ones who were shouting at them.

  “Stop?” said the policeman with the truncheon.

  “Yes, stop!”

  “Why? We fucking said to get down and he didn’t!”

  “That’s because he’s deaf, you damn fool, can’t you see?” she said angrily. She pushed through them to kneel beside the conductor’s head. He stared at her, still crazed and babbling, but she gently took his head and held it still. She touched his ears. There was a small flow of blood running from within them and down his cheeks. “The man can’t hear a word you’re saying. Can you?” she asked the conductor kindly.

  “Don’t hurt me,” he whimpered. “Please, don’t hurt me.”

  “We won’t,” she said. She shook her head widely so he could see, then fixed her face with the most comforting and gentle expression she could. “We won’t hurt you.”

  Collins, Garvey, and Hayes climbed down out of the trolley car to join them. “He’s deaf?” said Collins.

  “Yes,” she said. “His eardrums have burst. He just hasn’t realized it yet, I think.” She began making strange gestures before the conductor’s face, looping and knotting her fingers and sometimes tapping them together. The conductor stared at her in confusion.

  “What’s that you’re doing?” Garvey asked.

  “Sign language,” said Samantha. “What little I know of it.” She sighed and dropped her hands. “But he doesn’t appear to know any at all.”

  “He doesn’t?”

  “No.”

  Hayes looked at the man a moment longer, then stared back down the tunnel. “So he’s been recently deafened,” he said. “Probably by whatever happened to the trolley car. Wouldn’t you say?”

  Samantha did not say anything to that. The conductor had begun weeping, and she took out a handkerchief to dry his tears.

  Collins and the other detectives took the conductor and sat him before a small blackboard, where they scribbled out questions. It took some time to convince the man he was deaf, and when they finally succeeded he broke down again and wept for some time. Finally he came around to read their questions and loudly answer them, often rambling on incoherently, ignorant that the officers were signaling for him to slow down. Samantha and Hayes sat in the dark on a station bench a ways away, watching.

  “Fuck me,” said Hayes. “I hope none of the others spring to life. I nearly shat myself.” He turned to look at her. “Where’d you learn sign language?”

  “When I was a nurse. There’d be young men who’d been shelled and were deafened. I didn’t learn much, just enough to ask questions.”

  “Well, you’re full of surprises, aren’t you.”

  “That man needs medical attention,” she said. “He’s in pain.”

  “They don’t want the crowd to see him yet. They’ll want to keep this controlled for as long as possible and get all the answers they can.”

  “But he’s in pain, Mr. Hayes.”

  “If they didn’t, they’d have a riot, and we’d have a lot more pain.”

  Samantha sighed and stared at the trolley car beyond. “What happened here, Mr. Hayes?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Did you see?”

  “See?”

  “See them. The bodies.”

  “From a ways away. When Mr. Garvey had the light on. Or Detective, I should say.” She swallowed. “I wasn’t sure what I saw.”

  Hayes nodded. “I’d be fucking glad of that.”

  They both shivered. It was cold down in the trolley lines, close to the ocean and far away from the warmth of the city, and with the station so empty
it was a gray and eerie place. The officers became dark figures passing back and forth in the spectral light of the station lamps. After some time with the conductor Garvey walked over to them, reviewing his notes.

  “Well?” asked Hayes.

  “His name is Gilbert Lambeth,” he said. “Been a conductor for the Evesden Lines for nearly five years. Knows his trade, talks in a lot of engineering gobbledygook.”

  “Did he say anything useful, though?”

  “I wish. He says he was making the stops, as usual. Turns out it’s mostly automated. He hadn’t made any adjustment to the trolley’s schedule, not a second. He left the last platform, the Stirsdale platform, at the right time and was just going through the tunnel as normal when he heard a…” Garvey flipped through his little notebook. “A loud noise. A high-pitched squeal, he says.”

  “A squeal?” said Hayes.

  “Like metal on metal. Then there was a pop like a bomb went off, and the lights went out, and he passed out. The trolley car coasted in automatically, but Gilbert wasn’t awake to tell it to continue. Then he just sat there until you woke his poor ass up. And that’s it. That’s all he’s given us.”

  Hayes thinned his eyes. “That almost sounds like a planned attack.”

  “Yeah. It does.”

  “Why would anyone want to do that?”

  Garvey sighed. “I have a few ideas. I found something interesting.” He took out a sketch of a little symbol of a hammer inside a bell. “See this?”

  “Yes?” said Hayes.

  “This was tattooed on my John Doe. In the canal.”

  “Who?”

  “The guy. The guy you helped me fish out of the damn canal? Six weeks ago or so? Mr. Four Hundred and Eighty-six?”

  “Oh. Oh, right. Wait, so that sign was tattooed on him?”

  “Yeah. It was on his arm. And there’s eleven dead passengers in there, and nine of them have the same tattoo. All in the same place.” He tapped his arm. “Right there.”

  “ How many dead?” said Samantha softly.

  “Eleven.”

  “Good… good Lord.”

  “Yeah. This is the worst yet. The worst by far.” He paused. “Someone is killing unioners. And anyone they’re close to.”

  There was a pause as Hayes and Samantha considered that.

  “Have you seen many unioners with that tattoo?” asked Hayes.

  “Well. No. Just the recent dead ones.”

  “But even so, who would want them dead?” Hayes said, standing up. He walked to the edge of the platform and looked down at the sooty rails and the blackened stone floor. “I mean, who’d even be able to do something like this? Slaughter everyone on a trolley without even slowing it down?”

  “You sure those names are all you can give us?” said a voice.

  Hayes turned to see Collins standing not far off, watching him with harsh eyes. “What?” he said.

  “You sure there’s nothing else you know? At all?” asked Collins.

  Hayes shook his head. “Nothing.”

  Collins looked at him for a long time. Eyes uncertain. Hands at his hips, uncomfortably close to his gun.

  “What?” asked Hayes.

  “There’s nothing you’re hiding from us?” Collins asked, this time quieter.

  “Hiding? No. Why are you asking?”

  But Collins just shook his head and walked back to the other officers.

  “What the hell? What was that about?” asked Hayes.

  “He’s just worried,” said Garvey.

  “Well, I can see that.”

  “No, he’s worried about you. And McNaughton.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, come on, Hayes,” said Garvey, exasperated. “You come in here telling us that about half these men are responsible for murders in your company, and then all of them suddenly drop dead? Not to mention that it was on the day after you sent me their files. That’s sort of odd, isn’t it?”

  “You think McNaughton could have done this?”

  “I don’t know. Do you?”

  Hayes stared into the tracks at his feet. “No,” he said. “They don’t have the guts. Besides, those files I sent you were nothing. Just enough to give you a lead.”

  “You sure?” Garvey said.

  “I doubt if McNaughton is capable of murder, either,” said Samantha. “Particularly mass murder. But before we’re asked to start incriminating ourselves, are we involved with an official police investigation, Detective Garvey?”

  “Well. Not official, no,” said Garvey.

  “So on what grounds are we here?”

  “You were just asked. By me. And Collins. And Brightly, probably. Consulted, maybe. Your company pulls a lot of water around here. People are usually pretty happy to just do whatever the hell they say. But I have a hunch that’s going to change soon.”

  They turned to look at the conductor, who was shouting about something once more. The policemen around him frantically tried to flag him down.

  “And all he knows is he heard a loud noise,” said Hayes quietly.

  “Yeah,” said Garvey.

  “And then all those people were dead.”

  “Yes. And only he survived, out of all of them,” said Garvey. Then, quieter, “Want to sit with him for a while? See if he’s telling the truth?”

  Hayes shook his head. “Not in a crowd. Later, maybe. I’m already getting a headache. And you think your John Doe may have something to do with it?”

  “Maybe. I’d talk about it but I don’t know when I’m getting out of here. It’ll be hours for sure.”

  “How many other detectives are on this?”

  “Right now we’re all just running around, bugshit crazy. I’m guessing it’ll come down to two murder police and then a shitload of High Crimes. I’ll be on it, maybe. Labor detail and all. Probably Morris, too.”

  “Shit,” said Hayes. “Morris is worthless.”

  “Yeah. Goddamn. Usually I love a murder in the Shanties. All these little tennie weasels do is talk. cooped up in these goddamn tenements, what else are they going to do but talk about who killed who, and why? But this is going to be the pits.” He moved to spit, then glanced sideways at Samantha and stopped. He coughed and said, “Want me to swing by and kick you out of bed later?”

  “That’ll work,” said Hayes.

  “I need to get back. It was, ah, nice meeting you, Miss Fairbanks,” he said, and tipped his hat. The he walked back to the distant, dark figures grouped around the trolley.

  “John Doe?” asked Samantha as they walked back up through the streets.

  “Unnamed murder,” Hayes said. “Garvey caught one a couple of weeks ago. Man found floating in a Construct canal, throat cut. Dragged him out right before I met you, in fact.”

  “Oh. And, excuse me, but what exactly is Construct?”

  Hayes stopped and looked at her cockeyed.

  “I mean, I’ve heard everyone talk about it,” she said. “I’ve just never seen the name on any of the districts and boroughs or anything.”

  “That’s because it’s not a real name. That’s odd. You’re usually pretty on the ball, Sam,” he said. “Construct is the great stillbirth of Evesden. Here, you can see it from nearby.”

  He led her out to the edge of a bridge and pointed at the northwestern horizon. There beside the massive form of the Kulahee Bridge two dozen tall cement pillars stood like ancient monoliths, bare and gray and silent, each bigger than most buildings. Around their bases were skeletons of scaffolding and iron framework and silent construction equipment. They seemed like the ruins of a primitive temple, as though some savage fragment of history had somehow found itself wedged against the shore.

  Samantha frowned. “So it’s just…”

  “You probably know it as the Isle Projects,” said Hayes.

  “Oh. Yes.”

  “No one calls it that here, though. It was going to be a section of city-funded, McNaughton-approved, and McNaughton-built tenements. Domiciles. Towers of apartments.
Whatever the hell. Some were going to be bigger than the Nail, they said.”

  “And what happened?”

  “Well, for one thing, most of the land around the city was already used up. So some engineering prodigy decided they’d make their own.”

  “Their own land?”

  “Yes. After all, it had worked for the Kulahee Bridge. See, that area designated for Construct wasn’t good for foundation, not at all. Part of an ocean runlet, or something. But they gave it a good try and laid down cement and steel and redirected the streams and gave half the damn shore a complete overhaul. Reclamation, they called it. Brought in some Dutchman to do it, apparently they’re naturals. Eventually they had just miles and miles and miles of buildable foundation, some of it right out in the ocean. Or so they thought. North section started experiencing real trouble with the dredging and it put the rest of the plan on a tilt. They said you could put a marble on one end of Construct and it’d travel four miles before going into the water, on a dry day at low tide, that is. Then the contractors and the real estate folks started crying foul and there were problems with backers or whatever, and everything devolved into some sort of huge litigious feud. It’s been in limbo in court for years. There’s a lot of money to be made there, you know. It’s Evesden’s great humanitarian effort. It was going to turn it from a valuable hole to the shining city on the hill.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Hum,” said Hayes, thinking. One hand roved through his coat for a match. Finding one, he lit it and puffed at his cigarette distractedly. “That’s a bit more complicated.”

  “Please try, if you would.”

  “Well, see, if you go from one end of this city to the other you’ll find a dozen towns in between. All with different names, all with different people. This city exploded and people grouped together and lived where they wanted before the government could say anything about it. But the poor got the short end of the stick. They…”

  He stopped and looked at her. Her pad was out and she was scribbling away.

  “Are you writing this down?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to know this. Go on.”