Barnes’s adrenaline surged. “Excuse me? Say that again.”
“‘Too late’?”
“You’re sure that’s what it means?”
“I’m pretty sure, yeah.”
“Did he say anything about it?”
“No. He just thanked me.”
“Anything else?”
She shook her head.
Barnes handed her his business card. “If you remember anything else, call me. Anything at all.”
“Okay,” she said. She took the card and read it, smiling and tilting her head. The lock of hair she’d tucked behind her ear fell loose. She turned and left the principal’s office, leaving only her scent behind. Barnes closed his eyes and breathed in and out until Principal Nichol came back in.
“The basement?” Barnes said.
“Follow me,” Nichol said. He pulled out a key ring.
They went down the hall toward the back of the building. The index card could be the first break they’d had since Calavera had begun three years ago. What had Dale Wilson gotten himself involved in? Better yet, whom had he gotten involved with? The card might lead the way. Barnes gripped his phone, ready to call Franklin, but he wanted the hard evidence first.
Nichol led him to an unmarked door. He opened it and held the door for Barnes to walk through. The basement. The secret underbelly of the school. For the kids it held the tortures of spiders and snakes and the souls of evil teachers past. They might be disappointed to find it was an ordinary basement—a couple of boilers in one corner, black iron, white PVC, and copper pipes overhead, plus various pressure knobs and gauges. They came to a section of lockers, six of them in army green, set against a cinder-block wall. Each one was padlocked.
“I assume you’d like me to open Wilson’s locker?”
“Yes, sir.”
Nichol nodded. He began flipping through the keys on his ring. Barnes recalled his father once telling him the most important guy in the building isn’t the guy with all the keys, but the guy with no keys. When young John had asked why, Dad replied, “Because all the doors are opened for him.”
“Damn,” Nichol said. “I’m not sure it’s on this set.”
Barnes wandered while Nichol tried the keys. He peeked around a nearby corner. There were two white ceramic washbasins with stainless-steel mirrors over them. Barnes sniffed to find the mildew scent of Wilson’s dream. He went to the first basin.
No.
He went to the second.
Yes.
Dale Wilson’s dream came back to him with arresting clarity. Wilson had been looking at his own face in the mirror, only he imagined it painted like a clown. He had been speaking to himself, chastising himself for never having achieved more with his life than becoming a janitor. His dream had been a vision of what he felt others saw when they looked at him.
Barnes recalled the way he’d smiled at his own face in the mirror that morning, his bald head with bloody bits of toilet paper. The despair he’d felt, the futility. Dale Wilson felt that same despair, that same futility. The man’s consciousness rose into Barnes’s mind and revealed what he’d been cooking up: he was going to sell his own suicide to a machine dealer with the highest bid. Suicides were rare and munkies paid a lot for them. A way to catch a guaranteed glimpse of hell. As guaranteed as it gets, anyway, without punching your own ticket. Wilson planned to have the machine dealer wire the money to his wife’s bank account before pulling the trigger.
Barnes heard the ch-chunk of a padlock being opened.
The locker was sparsely filled. Wilson’s coveralls were hung on a hook. There was a battered brass watch on the shelf above, steel-toed boots at the locker’s bottom. Barnes tugged on a latex glove. He reached into the left-hand pocket of Wilson’s coveralls. Nothing. He reached into the right. There. He gripped the edge of the index card and pulled it out. It was dry, but water damaged. The ends were curled up, and the lines on it were blurred, as was the writing—DEMASIADO TARDE. Barnes slid the card into a Ziploc bag and sealed it. Only then did he take off his glove.
10
“What’s it mean?” Captain Darrow said. He was sitting behind his desk at the police station, staring down at the now–fingerprint-dusted index card. Barnes and Franklin sat before him. The office wasn’t a big glass-walled place like in the movies. The captain’s chair wasn’t high-backed or black leather but Office Depot blue felt. The corners of his desk were cracked and flaked away. Particleboard peeked out from beneath plastic veneer. Everything was standard issue and plenty worn.
“Too late,” Barnes said.
Captain Darrow looked up. He eyeballed Barnes and then Franklin. “What’d you find on the Montgomery girl’s father?”
“Dead end,” Franklin said. He consulted his notepad. “Welfare junkie on restraining order to stay away from the kid and the mom. Could hardly keep his eyes open when I was talking to him. We can put him on the machine, suck out what he’s got, but you know how it’ll go.”
“What’s the deal with letting Holston in the tech lab?” Barnes said.
Darrow frowned. “It was bound to happen. After all the human-rights maniacs and the protests at the beginning, and now with all the munkies stalking the streets like zombies, to have gotten this far with the machine is a miracle in its own right. After Watkins I’m surprised it took this long for Holston to come sniffing around for a story.”
“So why give him direct access?”
“Because someone’s going to get it eventually. Would you rather have him get his stories from munkies? They’d shut us down faster than you could spit. You’re going to give him an interview, too.”
“Screw that.”
Darrow held up the bagged index card. “Was it damp in that basement or what?”
“Not particularly,” Barnes said. “The card may have been left out in the rain, maybe dropped in a toilet.”
“Dropped in a toilet?”
Barnes shrugged. “Dude’s a janitor.”
A uniformed officer came into the office. He handed a manila envelope to Captain Darrow and then left. Darrow opened the folder, glanced at the contents, closed it. “Two sets of prints on the card.”
“Hot damn!” Franklin sat up.
“Let’s keep our pants on,” Barnes said. “The teacher said she picked up the card and handed it back to Wilson.”
“Get her in here,” Darrow said. “Gotta rule her out.”
Barnes stood.
“Wait a second,” Darrow said. “You look like dog shit, Barnes. Why don’t you let Franklin bring in the teacher, go get some rest?”
“I’m fine.”
“That’s the same thing Watkins said.”
It was Franklin who’d spoken. Barnes gritted his teeth. He refused to look at his partner. “Come on, Cap,” he said. “You know I won’t go Watkins on you. Trust me.”
Darrow squinted at Barnes. “Pick up the teacher, bring her in here, get her printed, and then go get some rest. You come in here looking like shit tomorrow and I’m taking your badge.”
“Let me see that card,” Franklin said.
Darrow Frisbee-tossed the bagged index card toward Franklin. The big man looked it over as he stood up.
“What’s on your mind?” Darrow said.
“Don’t know,” Franklin said. “I’ll go back to the Wilsons’.”
“For what?”
“Too late. It’s the same as the refrigerator magnets.”
“Yeah, and?” Darrow said.
“And I got a curious mind, Cap,” Franklin said. He winked. “That’s why you pay me the big bucks.”
Evening descended as Barnes and Franklin walked across the precinct parking lot toward their cars. Rain began to fall, straight down, big drops. The overhead street lamps blinked to life. Barnes pulled up his collar and said, “Nothing like throwing your partner under the bus, br—”
He was going to say bro, but the word was cut off when Franklin yanked him off his feet by the lapels, slammed him into a nearby SUV
. “I’ll throw you through a wall if I have to, bro.” They were nose to nose. Barnes’s feet weren’t touching the ground. “You don’t know what Watkins went through. I won’t stand by and watch it again.”
Barnes’s head stung from when it impacted the SUV’s side window. His clavicle throbbed, his spine ached. Franklin’s former partner, Tom Watkins, was currently in the loony bin, his mind supposedly scrambled by the machine. Barnes looked into Franklin’s eyes and saw a grown man with rain on his face, trying to help his new partner, trying to prevent the same mistakes Watkins had made, maybe trying to stop Barnes from losing his mind.
“Fuck you,” Barnes said.
Franklin threw him down on the concrete and stood over him. Barnes looked up, shielding his eyes from the rain. Franklin was made a silhouette by the glow from the street lamp above and behind him. He had the impossible proportions of a comic-book villain.
“I had a chance, you know?” Franklin said. “I had a chance to stop Watkins before he hurt anyone.” He squatted down, close to Barnes. “He was my partner. You understand that. I trusted him with my life, and he trusted me with his, but when I looked into his eyes the day he shot Dawson, you know what I saw?”
“Enlighten me.”
“Someone else.”
Barnes looked off. “I’m not Watkins.”
Franklin turned and began to walk away. Over his shoulder he said, “Neither was he.”
11
Barnes pulled up to Jessica Taylor’s three-story brownstone in Brush Park. Row housing was rare in Detroit, and he sat for a minute while the rain drummed the car’s roof, thinking he’d been somehow transported to Boston or Pittsburgh. He’d been to Pittsburgh once, had road-tripped and spent the weekend there with some friends his senior year. He’d met an older woman at a bar and tried to pick her up, despite the fact she reeked of cigarettes and a half gallon of perfume. With a smoke-ravaged voice she told him he was sweet, but she was looking for a man with hair on his nuts.
Three of the street lamps on Jessica Taylor’s block were working, which was three more than most Detroit city blocks. Brush Park was near the center of the city where you could hear the home-run cheers from Comerica Park or look up and see the skyscrapers. Here you were relatively safe. Walk a half mile outside of downtown and the broken street lamps would be the least of your worries. Barnes pushed through the iron gates and approached the brownstone. He found the buzzer that read TAYLOR and pressed it.
No response.
He pressed it again.
After thirty seconds, he stepped back down the steps and looked up through the rain. An elderly woman was leaning out a window on the second floor, sipping coffee under an umbrella.
“She ain’t here,” the woman said.
Barnes cocked his head.
“You’re looking for Ms. Taylor, right?”
“How did you know that?”
“She told me about them people that were killed. I saw your badge. Two plus two and all that.”
“Do you know where she might have gone?”
“She teaches at the Tubman on Thursday nights. Seven thirty to nine. Computer stuff.”
“Over there on Temple?”
“That’s the one.”
“Thanks.”
Barnes entered the Harriet Tubman Center via the wide staircase that led up to the building’s glass front doors. He passed beneath a security camera as he crossed the threshold and shook off the rain. The building was empty and quiet. He checked a schedule on the wall to find GETTING STARTED W/MICROSOFT OFFICE, THU @ 7:30 P.M., RM 202.
He took the stairs to the second floor.
The door to Room 202 was halfway open. Light spilled out of the room and cut hard against the hallway floor. Barnes could hear Jessica Taylor speaking, “Okay, so now that we’re in the function field, I want you to type in an equals sign, then ‘sum,’ that’s S-U-M, then a left parenthesis, then ‘A1,’ colon, ‘A4,’ right parenthesis.”
There were several people in the class but a few empty seats. Barnes snuck into the back of the room and took a seat at a desk with an ancient desktop tower of an off-white color that screamed nineties. Jessica saw him and raised her eyebrows in question, but Barnes shook his head to wave her off: It can wait.
She nodded and kept to her lesson, though he could swear she was blushing now. She moved back and forth across the front of the room, where a spreadsheet was projected against an old black chalkboard, to bend over and talk with various students as they struggled with the technology. He felt sick about the way she walked, the way she paid attention to her students’ questions, the shape of her body as she turned, bent, and gestured. He told himself that Dale Wilson’s desire was fierce.
Ricky would like her.
The thought had come suddenly and painfully. As he sometimes did, Barnes imagined an adult Ricky—or Rick, he guessed, but not Richard—living in a modest apartment in a New York or Chicago neighborhood. He’d know the best thing to order at the nearby diner, he’d call the local bartenders by name, and he’d work out in a boxing club in the basement of the fire department where he worked. His pals would call him Bomber or Turbo—a nickname he’d earned in some secret way, never to be shared with those who weren’t there—and playfully clap his back when he turned red with embarrassment. When Barnes and Jessica came from Detroit to visit, Ricky would welcome them into his little apartment, recently picked up but not exactly clean, with a big smile and hugs for them both. Later, when the two brothers had a moment alone, he’d say, “Johnny, she’s a keeper.”
Jessica Taylor dismissed her class early. The students filed out, some grumbling, some giving Barnes and his badge on its chain a sidelong glance as they went. He smiled and nodded at them, waited at the back while Jessica waited at the front until the room was empty. She put on her jacket and picked up her bag, came over to him. He stood to greet her.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” she said.
“Turns out I gotta haul you in.”
Her eyebrows rose, as did her color.
“Just for fingerprinting,” he said, hands up.
“Jesus, man,” she said. She slapped him on the chest. “You scared the hell out of me.”
Barnes laughed. “Guilty conscience?”
She threw her hands on her hips and glared at him.
“Attitude like that, might have to run a background check.”
“You might not like what you find.”
“Wait a second. Are you El Chapo?”
“Maybe.” She went ahead of him and clicked off the classroom light, walked through the door and into the hallway.
“You must drive a sweet ride, then,” Barnes said. “All that drug money.”
“Repossessed,” she said. “I’m rockin’ the SMART bus these days.”
“How the mighty have fallen.”
Outside, in the street, Barnes held the car door for her. She thanked him and got in. As he rounded the back of the car, he saw a munky-hook standing at the dark mouth of an alleyway, her breath vapor dissipating in the cold air. She wore a furry vest, tight shorts, and black leggings. Her body was for sale, but for your money all you’d get was a trip on the machine—one of her previous experiences. Her memory inventory would be wide. Want to bang her with a dick bigger than yours? Want to be black? White? A woman?
The munky-hook called out, “Go for it, sweetie!”
Barnes blushed. His heart fell into his shoes. His legs went rubbery as he made his way to the driver-side door and got in. Had Jessica heard the hook’s comment? He couldn’t tell. She was looking straight ahead, not giving anything away.
He started the car, put it in drive, and pulled up to the first stop sign. “It’ll be quick,” he said. “We just need your prints to rule out the second set on the index card, assuming the first set is Wilson’s.”
She nodded, kept her eyes forward. Tight lips.
He turned down Plum Street.
They were a few minutes from the station now. His nerves we
re shot. He checked himself in the rearview mirror, mostly to keep Dale Wilson’s gaze from her face, her legs. Captain Darrow was right; he did look like dog shit. Felt like it, too. He needed a drink.
Jessica remained pine-board stiff in the passenger seat, hands piled one over the other on her lap. She must have heard the munky-hook’s comment, must have noticed him staring at her in the classroom.
They pulled up to the station and found a parking spot. By then the air inside the vehicle was as thick as peanut butter. He turned off the ignition. They sat in silence while raindrops spread out and connected with one another on the windshield.
“Look,” Barnes said, “I’m sorry about what that—”
Jessica got out of the car. She turned around and stood inside the passenger-side door, holding it open. She leaned in and said, “I have just one question, Detective Barnes.”
“What’s that?”
She smirked. “You gonna go for it, sweetie?”
She laughed and slammed the car door, ran across the parking lot through the rain. Barnes sat in the car, watching her in the rearview mirror as she made her way toward the precinct door. Once she was under the awning, she stopped and turned around, hands on her hips just like in the classroom. Remnants of laughter were still on her face.
Ricky would love her.
The rain had gotten worse. It battered the roof of Barnes’s car, the street, the sidewalks. He and Jessica were back at her brownstone, parked in the street. She was cleaning the ink from her fingers and thumbs with the wipes they’d provided her at the station. “I can’t believe they still use ink,” she said. “I thought there’d be some kind of scanner.” She balled up the wipes and stuffed them into her bag. She looked out toward her building and sighed. “You wanna go get a coffee or something?”
Barnes clicked his tongue. “Um, well . . .”
“Come on,” she said, turning to him. “I’m not a witness, am I? I know there’s some rule about fraternizing with witnesses.” Her hair was wet, her smile mischievous.
Barnes’s stomach lurched as Dale Wilson’s sex dream took over his mind. He felt her phantom touch, smelled her soapy scent, felt her hips pressing against his own.
Punishment Page 7
