The Upright Man

by Michael Marshall

  Monroe glanced out of the window.

  “We’re not here to move on, Ms. Baynam,” Corner Man said. “We’re here to go back.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Nina . . .”

  “Screw you, Charles. I’m tired of this. I don’t know who the hell this guy is or why he thinks he’s got the right to talk to me this way.”

  Monroe pulled a briefcase onto the table, from which he slipped a standard-issue laptop. He opened it and angled the screen toward Nina. Neither he nor Corner Man made any attempt to move to a position where they could see, and Nina understood that they had already viewed whatever she was about to see.

  The screen came on automatically, showing a black window in the center. Monroe hit a key combination and the window changed from black to show rapidly moving colors. It took a moment to make out that it was a view from a video camera, shot across a road.

  The street was empty for a second, revealing the backs of a row of houses on the other side. The view then pulled sharply forward to focus on one in particular. A two-story house, wooden, painted a sandy color with white trim, none of it very recently. It was caught in three-quarter view, revealing windows on the back and one side, all with curtains drawn, and a door in the back.

  Nothing happened for a few moments. Cars passed, one from right to left, two in the other direction. There was no sound, but Nina couldn’t tell whether this was because the file lacked it or if the laptop’s volume was turned down.

  The camera zoomed forward. It took a second to see what the cameraman had noticed. It was the house’s back door. It had opened a few inches, revealing darkness inside. It closed again, for a second, and then opened enough for a man to come out. He was of a little over medium height, with broad shoulders. He closed the door and walked along the back of the house. He was moving in such a way that a casual observer would have seen nothing of his face, and probably not even noticed his presence at all.

  The person operating the camera had evidently not been such an observer, however, and pulled in hard. Nina bit her lip.

  The man was John Zandt.

  He walked out onto the road and the camera followed him to a car Nina recognized, a car he no longer owned but which had spent a few afternoons parked outside her house a few years before. He opened the driver-side door and just before he climbed in, the camera caught a full-on view of his face over the top of the car. It was pale, his eyes hooded. He looked like many men she had seen photographed, walking with their hands cuffed together in front. He didn’t look much like the man she had briefly thought she loved.

  The video slowly pulled out to its widest view yet, one that showed half the street, and then stopped abruptly.

  Her face carefully neutral, Nina sat back in her chair. “Where did this come from?”

  “It was emailed to us,” Monroe said. “It arrived in the early hours of this morning.”

  “What a weird coincidence,” she said. “Coming right after the body in Portland too.”

  The two men were watching her carefully. Screw you, she thought. You want this, you’re going to have to do it yourselves. “So what’s your point?”

  “Our point,” said the man in the corner, “is that this video shows your boyfriend visiting the house of a man who was questioned in regard to the Delivery Boy abductions—an investigation you were intimately involved with. Stephen DeLong was interviewed, presented a tight alibi, and eliminated from the investigation.”

  “Circumstantial evidence from this scene enables it to be dated to around the time of the case,” Monroe said.

  “I’ll just bet it does,” Nina said. “Just like that big pull-back at the end means any idiot could work out exactly where it was shot.”

  Monroe blinked. Corner Man ignored her. “About a week later, neighbors reported an offensive odor coming from the house we’ve just seen. DeLong was found in his bedroom, dead from a single gunshot wound. There was evidence of sustained physical violence to his person. The house featured the paraphernalia of small-scale narcotic distribution, which led the scene officers to assume the death was the result of a deal gone bad. DeLong was written up and forgotten. Nobody cared, and nobody put his death together with the ongoing investigation.”

  “Why should they?”

  “No reason, then. But as you’ve seen, there’s a compelling reason to do so now. We really only need your input on one matter, Ms. Baynam,” the man said. “We’d like to talk to John Zandt.”

  He leaned forward. “Where is he?”

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER NINA WALKED OUT OF the building. Her back was straight and her strides were strong and of equal length. She didn’t turn to look up toward room 623’s window, though she strongly suspected Monroe would be standing there, watching her go. If she saw him, there was a danger she would march back into the building, run straight up the stairs, and attempt to do him harm. She was strong. She might even pull it off. It would feel good, but she might as well take her career and throw that out the window while she was there. This might effectively have happened already, but it wasn’t going to be her who wrote it in stone.

  Instead she got in her car and drove out of the lot. She took her time making the right turn and drove slowly for a while, not heading anywhere in particular. Within ten minutes she was both furious and a little frightened to see she was being tailed.

  She pulled over at the next public phone box she saw. She walked over to it, feeling like an actress, and made two calls. When the first was answered she asked a favor, waited while someone explained why he couldn’t do it, and then provided a brief but compelling reason why he could.

  As she waited for the second call to be connected she watched the road and saw the nondescript sedan pull over twenty yards farther along. The guy was either a beginner or he’d been told to make it obvious. Either pissed her off.

  After about ten rings, the call was picked up.

  “Things are badly fucked up,” she said to an answering service. “Stay away and watch your back.”

  She put the phone down and walked back to her car. As she passed the gray sedan she leaned across and flipped the driver the bird. He stared back impassively, but didn’t follow. As she drove home she was dismayed to find that her eyes kept filling, until she realized it was fury that was causing it, as much as hurt. Fury was good. Anger led somewhere.

  “You’re going to rue the day, Charles,” she muttered, and felt a little better, but not for long. As an agent now suspended from duty, with an ex-boyfriend under investigation for two murders, and a boss who no longer trusted anything she said, it wasn’t clear how she could make anyone rue anything at all.

  “WE’RE GETTING OUT OF HERE,” WARD SAID.

  He was stuffing pieces of computer equipment into the bag he’d come with. He had stood and watched while Nina screamed down the phone at Zandt’s answering service for a second and third time, before finally taking the phone from her hand.

  “It doesn’t matter who the guy in the suit is,” he said. “It’s clear what his job is. He’s part of the squeeze on John, and he’s powerful enough to be able to walk into an FBI field office and have the boss there do what he says. You sure he wasn’t bureau brass?”

  “He just didn’t come over like it.”

  “Whatever. He’s in security somewhere, and he’s either one of the Straw Men or doing what they tell him. That means we’re not safe in this house or this city.”

  “But where are we going to go?”

  “Somewhere else. Do you speak any Russian?”

  “Ward, we’ve got to find John. He’s in far more danger than us. They’re trying to nail him for something he didn’t do.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I mean is we only know where he’s been through what he’s told us. He tells you he’s in Florida, he tells me he’s there too. He’s got a previously established reason. Neither of us is going to run a trace on him, subpoena hi
s cell company and demand to know exactly where the call is coming from.”

  “But why would he have killed this Ferillo person?”

  “Are you saying it’s impossible? He killed the man he thought took his daughter. And back then he was still a cop.”

  “I’m just saying he would have to have a very, very good reason.”

  “Maybe he did. We’re not going to know until he takes one of our calls. In the meantime is there any way you can get hold of his cell records? If we can do a point-of-origin trace we can confirm a wrong-state alibi for him.”

  “I’m on it, Ward. I made a call on the way back here.”

  “Fine. In the meantime, get your stuff together.”

  “Ward, I’m not leaving my . . .”

  He stopped packing, came and put a hand on each of her shoulders. He looked her in the eyes and she realized this was the closest they had ever stood. She realized also that this was a man who had spent three months on the road not for the fun of it, but because he’d known a moment like this would come.

  “Yes, Nina, you are,” he said. “We knew we only had so long before they came for us in earnest. This is it. It’s begun.”

  TWO HOURS LATER THEY WERE ON 99 PASSING Bakersfield heading north. Ward was driving fast and not saying anything. Nina’s cell rang and she ripped a nail snatching it out of her bag. She swore when she looked at the screen.

  Ward glanced at her. “Is it John?”

  “No. I don’t recognize the number. It could be the call I’m waiting for. Or . . .”

  “If it’s Monroe, don’t tell him anything, and cut it off fast.”

  She hit Connect. She listened to the voice of Doug Olbrich, who had done what she had asked. She asked him three questions she had already formulated in her head. When she’d heard the answers she severed the connection and sat with her head in her hands.

  Ward gave her precisely twenty seconds. “So?”

  She didn’t move her head. “That was a guy I know in LAPD. He’s heading the task force on the hard disk killer.”

  “And?”

  “I asked him to chase some records fast. He has someone who’s very good at it.” Suddenly, and with no warning, she punched the dashboard with all her strength. “I’ve messed up, Ward.”

  “Why?”

  “Olbrich got hold of John’s T-Mobile account. He tracked some points-of-origin. He noted that three days ago John made a call to a number I recognize as your cell.”

  “Yes. Big deal. We arranged to meet in San Francisco. That’s when he told me he was in Florida.”

  She nodded, said nothing. Looked at her hands in her lap. The cuticle under her torn nail was bleeding.

  “Tell me, Nina.”

  “John lied,” she said. “He hasn’t been to Florida in six weeks. He was in Portland the day Ferillo died.”

  PART III

  THE FALLING OF RAIN

  The meaning of life is that it ends.

  —FRANZ

  KAFKA

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  SHE WAS FOUND IN SOME BUSHES. PEOPLE ARE. They are found in woods too, and in hot and cluttered bedrooms; they are found in back alleys and parking lots and the back row of movie theaters; they are found in swimming pools and in cars. You can be found dead almost anywhere, but bushes are often the worst. The bodies’ condition and location leave little room for the comforting idea that they might just be asleep, drunk, passed out, unconscious in one way or another—but still capable of being led back to join the party of the living. Dead in the bushes is very dead indeed.

  These particular bushes were around the back of the parking lot associated with Cutting Loose, a hair salon on the main drag through Snoqualmie. The body was discovered, as is sometimes the case, by a man out walking his dog early in the day. Having kept it together for long enough to make a call on his cell phone, wait close to the spot—but yet far enough away to avoid attracting the curious—and finally point the way for the two cops from the sheriff’s department, this man now sat on the other side of the street, back against a fence, head between his knees. His dog stood close by, confused by the smell of vomit, but loyal and game. When they got back to the house, the dog knew, he’d be confined to barracks for the long day while the human went out and did whatever it was he did when he wasn’t there to hang out with the dog. The dog was therefore in no hurry to go home. If the price of a little extra freedom was sitting on rain-wet asphalt near some regurgitation, that was fine by him. He licked his owner’s hand, to show moral support. The hand flapped at him, feebly.

  One of the policemen was now on the radio, putting out the word. The other stood a couple of yards away from the body, his hands on his hips. He had not seen a great many dead bodies, and there is something horribly transfixing about them. He was frankly glad that other policemen would soon arrive and take this situation off his hands, that it would not be his responsibility to spend the next several days, weeks, or all eternity trying to work out what process had created this livid, could-not-be-deader thing out of someone living, how this woman had made the journey from some other place to here. He did not want to have to think overly much about the mind of a man—assuming it was a man, because it almost always was—who would think it right or even merely expedient to dump someone a few yards off the side of the road like so much trash. Worse, perhaps, because people at least bothered to put their garbage in bags. This had been abandoned like it was less than that, as if it didn’t even merit the temporary, aboveground burial people afforded to empty cans and cereal boxes.

  He heard his colleague signing off, and decided he’d seen enough. As he was turning away, however, he noticed something glinting at the dead thing’s head end. Against his better judgment, but feeling a little like a bona fide detective, he took a step closer to the body and bent down a little to get a closer look.

  They had already informally decided that it would take neither long or a genius to work out the cause of death. The woman was dressed in a smart suit, or the remains of one. Her body below the neck did not look like something you’d want to touch, but that was death’s casual work, after the fact. It was above the neck that something had happened while she was still alive. There was something skewed about her head, and it was covered with brown, dried blood and other, blacker, material to such a degree that it was hard to make out the features. It was in the middle of this, just above the brow, that the weak morning sun was catching something.

  “Careful, man,” his partner said. “You screw up the scene and they’ll pull your asshole out and wear it like a ring.”

  “I know, I know,” he said.

  Still he leaned in a little closer. This was as far as he was going to go, for sure. He tilted his head slightly, to reduce the glint. The smell was odd. The sight was bad. It was unpleasant all over.

  In the mess that had been her forehead, something looked out of place.

  He held his breath and moved forward another few inches. From here you couldn’t avoid seeing the ants and other insects going about their duties, hurriedly, as if they knew someone was going to come and take this treasure away from them. You could also see that there was something stuck in the woman’s forehead. The protruding edge was the width of a playing card, though it was much thicker—a quarter inch, maybe slightly more. The glint came off the parts of this thing that weren’t covered in dried blood. It seemed to be mainly made out of chrome, or some other kind of shiny metal. The lower edge of it looked to be a black plastic.

  Suddenly some of the remaining glare disappeared, as his partner leaned in to have a look and blocked out the sun. As a result the policeman could just make out something that looked like a very narrow label running along the end of the object.

  “Fuck is that?” he said.

  BY A LITTLE AFTER NINE IT HAD BEEN ESTABLISHED that the thing sticking out of the woman’s forehead was a hard disk, a small one, the kind found in laptop computers. It wasn’t long before this information reached the FBI field office in Everett,
and then quickly down to Los Angeles. From there, everything went batshit.

  Charles Monroe tried every number he had, but Nina Baynam wasn’t answering. He kept trying anyway, at regular intervals. Something had gone wrong with Monroe’s life, in a way he didn’t quite understand, and it was getting more and more wrong by the minute. He had looked away, lost concentration for just one second, and turned back to find his ducks were no longer in a row.

  His ducks had always been in a row before. Not now. It was even beginning to look as if some of them were missing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  HENRICKSON SWITCHED THE ENGINE OFF AND turned to Tom with a grin. It was, Tom estimated, approximately the man’s fifteenth of the morning, and it was as yet only ten o’clock.

  “You ready for this?”

  Tom gripped the backpack on his lap. “I guess so.”

  Forty-eight hours had now passed since he came back to Sheffer. The previous morning he’d woken from a night’s nonsleep to find he felt too ill to consider a walk in the woods that day. Whatever adrenaline had hauled him back to Sheffer had burned out, leaving him exhausted, in many kinds of pain, and deeply nauseous. He also realized he had to do some proper thinking.

  Henrickson had been cool about the delay, and told him to rest up. This Tom had done, initially, sitting in the chair in his room wrapped up in all the bedding he could find, getting stuff straight in his head, working out things he could do. In the early afternoon he had gone for a long drive, coming back after dark. By then he’d felt well enough to go for another drink with the journalist. This morning he’d felt better, if not exactly in top form. Calmer, perhaps. More compartmentalized.