God Told Me To

by C. K. Chandler

  He turned the sound back up as his own face came on screen.

  It was after everything was over and he was back down on the street giving his statement. His features were worn and troubled and streaked from the rust and grit of the tower. He had tried to avoid the interview but Hendriks had insisted he make a brief statement.

  “. . . I arrived just before 2:30. The entire area had been cordoned off and the sniper’s position had been pinpointed. Our first concern was medical care and then it became evident that there were no wounded to take care of. They were all dead. Though at the time we still did not know exactly how many victims there were . . .”

  Nicholas hadn’t been aware of what he said while making the statement. As he watched himself he had the odd feeling that he was living those few moments for the first time. He was embarrassed by his dirty face. But around his eyes his face was strangely clean, as if he’d been wearing goggles. He didn’t recall rubbing or wiping his eyes after coming down from the tower.

  “. . . I’ve never come across such accuracy in any similar situation. At any rate we limited the sniper’s ability to fire. He was wedged in behind the tower and we cleared the avenue of any possible targets . . .”

  I should have said victims, Nicholas thought, any possible victims.

  “. . . The sniper had made no attempt to escape when he could have. He simply holed up and waited for us to come and get him. It seemed evident we were dealing with a psychopath and that it might have been possible to talk him into surrendering. I got permission from Captain St. Clair to go up and talk to the man.”

  “And I succeeded,” Nicholas said to his televised image. “I had him ready to surrender. What went wrong?”

  Detective Jordan appeared on the screen.

  Nicholas sneered, “There he is—my so-called backup man.”

  Jordan was always around to collect a little glory. He was overweight and puffy and wore a suit too expensive for his salary. He hid behind a big beefy smile.

  “Usually, see, we use a bullhorn or somethin’, but Nicholas, he insisted on climbing up. I told him, Hey this guy’s killed seventeen people, you can’t . . .”

  You’re lying, thought Nicholas. At the time we still didn’t know about the two bodies that had rolled under cars. All you said were curses and complaints.

  “. . . but like Nicholas is a very religious guy. He goes to Mass every morning. The kind of guy, separated from his wife but won’t get a divorce because he is such a good Catholic. I don’t put him down for it but that’s how he thinks. Like he’s got Jesus in his pocket. Maybe he does. So anyway up that ladder he goes and me, I act as his backup.”

  Nicholas spoke with anger: “Any further back and you’d have been in Pittsburgh.”

  An off-camera reporter asked Jordan:

  “Detective Jordan, what exactly happened once you and Lieutenant Nicholas confronted the sniper?”

  “Well, I think you fellas are pretty much aware of the resultant tragedy. We’ve still got to write our official report. I imagine the department will be releasing more details to the media a few hours from now. In the meantime you can tell one and all the lieutenant is one hell of a cop.”

  Once more Nicholas remembered climbing the ladder. He felt the grit blowing into his face. Heard the whining wind. Before poking his head over the top of the tower, he had called out:

  “I’m coming up. I’m Detective Lieutenant Peter Nicholas. I just want to talk.”

  He had paused for a moment. When no response came to his call, he slowly peeped over the edge.

  The sniper had not climbed back onto the roof of the tower. But exactly where he was crouched Nicholas could only guess. He waited for a telltale sound. Then he heard, very clearly despite the noise of the wind and the helicopter, a tiny pathetic sniffle.

  “I haven’t come up to arrest you. I want to find out who you are and why you’ve done this. We have plenty of time. Neither of us can go anywhere.”

  Nicholas crawled the narrow lip of the tower roof. He unsnapped his holster so that he could reach his weapon.

  “My name is Peter Nicholas. Is there anybody you’d like us to call, notify them you’re up here?”

  He reached the far side of the tower. A slip here would send him falling to the street. He knew that the moment he looked over the tower’s edge the sniper could easily blast him. He listened some seconds to the sad sobbing noises the sniper made and felt confident there would be no more shooting.

  “Won’t you talk to me?”

  The voice of a boy said, “My name is Harold Gorman.”

  “Where do you live, Harold.”

  Nicholas took a radio from his belt and repeated the address the boy told him. He assumed Jordan would relay the message on and that within an hour some member of the family should be here. By then Nicholas hoped to know the boy well enough to judge whether to have the family speak to the boy through a bullhorn. In some of these situations, a relative’s presence was enough to cause panic.

  Nicholas casually asked, “Want us to notify your parents, Harold?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “They’re probably worried, Harold. Families usually worry about their kids.”

  He heard the boy blow his nose.

  “What do you say, Harold?”

  “I wouldn’t mind seeing my mother again.”

  “You’ll see her.”

  “No.”

  “Is it just you and your mother?”

  “I’ve got a sister. Father.”

  “You’re lucky to have a family. My people adopted me. They were nice people but not really parents. My first five years were spent at the Catholic Boy’s Home in the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx. I graduated DeWitt Clinton High School, and then had a year at Fordham before I joined the force.”

  “Why tell me all this stuff?”

  Nicholas was simply searching for a contact point, a common interest between himself and Harold.

  “I want you to know me. I’m in my mid-thirties. Separated from my wife. I’ve got a great girlfriend. You’d like her. How about yourself? Any girlfriends?”

  “I’ll be nineteen the seventh of July. I’ve never—you don’t have any kids, do you?”

  “Interesting you should know that. No, I don’t. Always kind of wanted a boy to take to the ball games. You a sports fan?”

  “Not really. I read a lot.”

  The sobbing had ended. Nicholas sensed the time was nearing when he could safely show himself to Harold.

  “I read a little of everything. Lately I’ve been getting into that guy Lukas, you know, the science columnist.”

  “Emile Lukas. I read him myself. Don’t always agree with him.”

  “Hey, I’m never going to make nineteen, am I?”

  Nicholas edged to the rim of the tower.

  “Come on, Harold. This isn’t L.A. This is New York. We don’t shoot people here.”

  “I’ll never make it.”

  He leaned over the edge of the tower. He was staring directly into the telescopic sight of the rifle. The boy’s face was hidden by the rifle.

  “Harold, listen to me. We don’t kill people we know. We only kill strangers. People whose faces we can’t see from far away. You can see my face. Put your rifle down so I can see yours. And neither one of us will hurt the other.”

  “You know, don’t you?”

  “I know everything’s going to be just fine. You can’t bring anybody back to life, but how about telling the reason you did it. Put the rifle down and tell me.”

  Harold dropped the rifle. Nicholas was shocked to see how young the boy appeared. Nearer sixteen than nineteen. He smiled shyly and his eyes seemed to shine with a wet glow. At first Nicholas thought the glow the result of crying. But another idea occurred.

  “Are you into drugs, Harold.”

  “I don’t do that. I don’t hang out with those kind of people.”

  “Do you know why you did this today?”

  The shy smile stretch
ed. Harold’s face took on the look of a very young child trying to hold back some wonderful secret.

  “I want to come up now.”

  “That’s a good idea, Harold. Take my arm and I’ll help pull you up. Then we’ll crawl to the other side of the tower and go down that side. We’ll both be safe.”

  Nicholas took hold of the boy. He seemed to weigh very little and Nicholas lifted him easily. It was almost as if the boy floated. He still wore his secret smile as he swung over the edge. Nicholas assumed the smile and wet eyes were outward signs of insanity. But there was an eerie quality about them. He got the feeling they were trying to tell him, or remind him, of something.

  He asked, “What is it, Harold? Why did you do this?”

  The boy shook his head, as if silently saying, You certainly ought to know. He leaned forward and softly said:

  “God told me to.”

  Then Harold stood to his full height, took a single short step and leaped from the tower. His body cleared the roof of the building and he dropped without a sound to the pavement.

  TWO

  Despite the amount of beer he had drunk, Peter Nicholas did not sleep well. He tossed fitfully and once during the night he was aware he was trembling and felt Casey’s arms around him, comforting him.

  He rose early and stood under the shower for a long time. He ran the water at a temperature too hot for comfort. His skin was aching when he switched to cold water, and his heart was pounding heavily by the time he finished. The blade of his razor was dull and pulled at his beard. He gave himself a deep nick. He used a plaster of wet toilet paper to stop the blood and he slapped his cheeks with astringent.

  He was nearly dressed when he remembered the Deputy Commissioner ordering him to stay off the job today. He changed to more casual clothes than he wore at work. He selected a lightweight corduroy jacket with leather elbow patches. This jacket had been bought specifically because it looked like something no cop would wear. Nicholas enjoyed his work but since he was basically a loner, he avoided being with other officers when not on duty. He thought a slightly different mode of dress helped separate him from them.

  He went to the closet. He reached into the pocket of the jacket he’d worn yesterday and took out a rosary. He put the rosary into the pocket of today’s jacket.

  He stood at the mirror and combed his dark, medium-length hair. By now the toilet-paper plaster had dried on his cheek. He pulled it loose and the wound reopened. He put a finger to the blood. He licked his finger, then pressed a clean handkerchief against the cut.

  He made coffee and was nursing a cup of it when Casey joined him at the table. She was in her bathrobe. Though he had not been consciously thinking about anything, Casey’s presence struck him as an intrusion.

  Casey asked, “How do you feel?”

  He shrugged in answer.

  “For somebody who doesn’t like to see himself on TV, you made quite an exception.”

  “Me, superstar.”

  She poured coffee for herself. They sat quietly until she asked, “What happened on that roof, Peter?”

  He frowned his displeasure at her question.

  “Peter, you spent the whole night kicking like a colt. Now you can’t just sit there and let it eat away at you. I want to help you. Don’t shut me out.”

  “What happened? That’s what everybody asked me. Jordan—that super backup man—he finally climbed the tower one second after the kid went over and that’s the first thing he asked. It’s what the captain wanted to know. The Deputy Commissioner and the reporters. They all kept asking and when we were back at the station, I blew up. The kid jumped, Casey, but in God’s name I don’t know what happened.”

  “You were talking with him.”

  Nicholas dropped a spoon into his coffee and twirled it. He wouldn’t look at her, and when he spoke again his voice was flat and without inflection.

  “He told me his name and address. The rest was just the . . . just usual. Nothing that made any sense.”

  She reached across the table and covered one of his hands with her own.

  “It was just insane suicidal nonsense, Casey. But I can’t shake the feeling he was trying to tell me something.”

  “Is the department questioning your actions.”

  “No. Jordan asked me before we climbed down, he said what do we tell them, suicide or accident. I said suicide, so that’s the way it will fall. The men in the helicopter will back me. There’ll be a departmental hearing. Not for a week or so, not until the forensics people pick up every shell casing, scrape up every smear. There’ll be an autopsy on what’s left of the boy to see if he had a brain tumor or some kind of causative illness. Some of the witnesses on the street claimed they heard other rifles. The department will work to find all evidence to prove there weren’t.”

  “Will you be on the case?”

  “Not if the Deputy Commissioner has his way. He called me down to his office and wanted me to go through a big press interview. I blew up. Refused. He’d probably try suspending me if the reporters weren’t already calling me a hero.”

  “I know it’s not your scene, Peter, but I can understand the Deputy Commissioner’s concern. The public wants to hear your story. If enough people start talking about other rifles, or if the boy’s mother continues to speak cover-up—well, it could get hot for the police. People might start saying you pushed the boy.”

  “Harold Gorman was alone. Seems impossible but . . .”

  But he was alone and it was suicide, he thought, and again he replayed in his mind the scene of Harold jumping. He saw once more the strange smile and the large wet eyes and, yes, unquestionably it was suicide. No accident. Harold did not stumble. But why? Had he said something or made a gesture that frightened the boy.

  “I had him, Casey. He was about to come down. Then he . . .” Nicholas’s voice died out and he slowly shook his head.

  Casey said, “Not so long ago, Peter, you promised me you wouldn’t take any more unnecessary chances.”

  He said distractedly, “It’s the job.”

  “You volunteered. It was all over the TV. Everybody all but saying you were a damn fool to climb that tower.”

  He sharply said, “Next time I’ll let Jordan do it. Two days and another seventeen bodies later, I’ll climb up and finish the job.”

  “You win, Peter. I’ll leave you alone.”

  “Damn it! Harold Gorman’s aim couldn’t have been that accurate. It was a lousy old .22 rifle. The sights weren’t properly adjusted. Even if they were, the wind on that tower should have carried the bullets off aim.”

  Casey did not want to argue. She wanted only to settle him down. “What about Lee Harvey Oswald? Or the kid on the Texas tower?”

  “The kid didn’t score a direct hit with every bullet. Oswald, for all the holes in the damn Warren Report, was a military-trained marksman. Harold only got his rifle a few weeks ago. Do you know what a .22 is at that range? It’s a spitball and a rubber band.”

  “Tell that to the seventeen victims! Tell it to me if you had been the eighteenth!”

  He smashed a fist against the table.

  “Casey! Who guided his hand?”

  She leaped to her feet.

  “For Christ’s sake! Now you’re going into your brooding Catholic fatalism. Who guided his hand! Go to Mass, Peter. Or go to a confession or whatever the hell you go to. Just don’t lay any more guiding hand bullshit on me!”

  She stomped from the table.

  She slammed the bathroom door and a moment later Nicholas heard running water. He was immediately sorry for the force of their words. And then, quickly as she had fled from the table, she left his thoughts.

  Each house in the Hempstead development was enough like its next-door neighbor to give the impression that a decade ago a contractor had come along with a gigantic cookie cutter and stamped each dwelling out at the cost of eighteen thou a unit. It was a neighborhood that Peter Nicholas had come to think of as a haven for moderate dreams and fad
ing hopes, but for eight years he had lived here with his wife. Those first few months after his walkout on Martha, Nicholas had believed he would never again see this place. He had been wrong. Within a short while he found himself driving back here with a frequency as regularized as the neighborhood itself.

  He parked at the curb in front of what he had once called home.

  The lawn was ragged and needed tending. Hoops and stakes of a croquet set patterned the grass. The mongrel dog Martha had taken in was napping on the front steps.

  She’s given up, Nicholas thought, Martha’s given up her own wish of having a child and is making do with a pet and watching kids at play.

  He beeped the car horn in the signal he had first used way back when they were still dating, and which he now used whenever he came here. He waited five minutes.

  The mongrel shifted with a lazy reluctance and made room for him to pass as he approached the door.

  Martha had Sen-Sen on her breath and a wobble in her walk. They went to the kitchen. She poured them both coffee and sliced a piece of pound cake for him. Her cup was not as full as the one she gave him, and after a few minutes Nicholas made the excuse of going to the bathroom, where he remained long enough for her to lace her coffee.

  Despite her drinking, Martha still managed to keep the house clean. Indeed, it was far neater than the casual quarters Nicholas shared with Casey. The furnishings, though, were drab and undistinguished, and were arranged as they had always been. Much of the furniture and appointments, including the landscapes on the walls, had been wedding presents from Martha’s parents. Nicholas and Martha had spent four days going through Ethan Allen’s making their selections. He now wondered why it had taken them so long to choose such unimaginative objects.

  The effects of alcohol were written on Martha’s features. Her face had thickened and she seemed to be aging quickly. Her hair was graying rapidly. A single white strand in her black hair used to send her rushing to the beauty parlor.