Hard Fall

by Ridley Pearson

  After many hours and many drinks the morning light comes. It paints itself in harsh geometric patterns. Fears, like shadows, play on the walls of his thoughts.

  Briefly, he relives the event.

  “An error!” his victim had dared to claim, his eyes begging forgiveness as Kort towered over him where he lay in his bed. Forced to drink the very waste his factory discharged, this time in full concentration, he vomited twice before a yellowish foam cemented at the corners of his lips and his nose began to run like a child’s. Kort forced a third glass down him, and then it had been only a matter of minutes before it burned through his internal organs. He groped for air; his face turned a disturbing blue; his eyes enlarged. When he clearly had no fight left in him, no hope, Kort had left him—for death is only truly frightening when it appears you might yet escape it. Let the doctors come. Let the seed of hope be planted as an ambulance rushes the man away to stomach pumps and blood tests and toxicology reports. Let him hope, and let that hope be denied. Let him drink from the cup of hope only to vomit again.

  The radio had confirmed it: The founding chairman of EisherWorks Chemicals was dead before Kort had completed the long drive home.

  He thinks of the knock that will come to the door any minute and the years of darkness and confinement: the payment that is expected of him for this deed.

  The rising sun just brushes the windowsill in a bright rectangle of mustard orange. After a few hours it becomes a trapezoid, and then the opposing jamb is flooded in a late afternoon brilliance that forces him to look away. At this same moment he also looks away from the deed for the first time. He flirts with the dangerous thought, the possibility, that the police may not come. It is at once both heady and intoxicating. He finds himself delirious with hope.

  He does not avoid the guilt, he confronts it. An act born of premeditation, there is no choice but to accept responsibility for the murder. The last glint of sunlight leaves the smooth surface of the window frame, a spark snuffed out. An entire day has passed. The haze in the room gives way to darkness, and once again the consequences of his deed overwhelm him. The vodka bottle goes empty. So does his stomach. These fleeting hours seem an unexpected dividend. Certainly the knock will soon come, just as the sun will return to the windows.

  He has been reared to believe they will come. He expects it. But what if they should not? What if by some divine act this murder went unaccounted for? What then?

  The heels of the first day are nipped by the budding of the second, and so again with the third. By the dawning of the fourth day the pit of fear gives way to hunger and he eats quietly and alone. The phone has not rung. No knock has come upon the door. He is no longer frightened by his isolation, his loneliness, but quelled by it. These hours are as peaceful a time as he can recollect. He eats precious little, but he eats, finding sustenance.

  By the fifth day he is cleaning up after himself. His act of only days earlier is now much more unreal than he ever imagined possible, as if someone else had committed the deed while he was but a witness. Order returns to a life where none was imagined possible, so convinced was he of his arrest. The shower water goes cold, but is not noticed. He takes a seventy-minute shower, devoted entirely to the sensation of the pressure streaming down upon his scalp, to the numbness of his head and the quieting of his thoughts. It is in the shower he finds his sanctuary within his sanctuary, and where, over the next two days, he devotes a majority of his time, no consideration of water temperature. His thoughts and his guilt are carried away down the drain.

  Sleep does not come. He tries warm milk, earplugs, blindfolds, and music. He tries reading, counting, praying, and masturbation. Then it’s back to the cold shower water that rains down on his head carrying his fears along with it. He justifies his deed. He dares to allow himself a glimpse of freedom. Every waking moment is perceived as freedom and therefore too sacred to sleep through.

  He no longer takes food for it requires preparation and he can’t think that far in advance. There is only the recent past—the murder—and this immediate moment for him. His hunger goes unnoticed, except for the insomnia; he fails to connect the two. His sustenance comes from alcohol, though try as he might—and he does try—he can’t find intoxication. He finds headaches, he finds himself urinating often, he finds his bowels loose and violent. He finds another crack of light seeping through one of the pulled blinds and corrects the situation. He pins blankets over the windows, and when he runs out of blankets, he seals off several rooms, blocking them with furniture so he won’t make the mistake of going inside and disturbing himself with sunlight. It is as if by blocking out the light, he has stopped time, has blocked out the world, has hidden away where They can’t find him.

  His beard grows, and his hair becomes oily and filthy despite the endless showers. He takes to cleaning his fingernails with a green plastic party toothpick. He can barely see his nails in the dark, but he cleans them all the same, cleans them until the skin beneath them bleeds.

  It is the end of the alcohol that leads him to her medicine cabinet and the treasures he finds within. Never had he known what resources lurked behind her hinged mirror. In the dim light of the bath, it is her face he sees in the glass, not his; his tears on her face. Behind the mirror are a variety of recent medications for a woman unable to confront her situation, a new mother unable to cope with the deformed child that has come from her womb. A child deformed by the chemical discharge of an EisherWorks factory some three miles away. Seeing this array of prescriptions, he flirts with the thought that these took her life, not her. That these were in control, not her. But it is impossible to escape the truth: She killed their child with these drugs, and then she killed herself. They are never coming back, either of them. Kort goes off to visit them.

  He greedily consumes the pills in varying combinations, delighted by the bone-dry throats, quivering limbs, and various stages of numbness they inspire. He embarks on voyages of introspection so dark that he wonders if he has gone blind, only to find it is a form of induced sleep so deep and distant that he cannot claw his way out. The small, disfigured, asexual infant is disgorged from her womb and caught by the trembling, gloved hands of a doctor at once afraid, but pretending to be otherwise.

  It gets so that he cannot pass by the medicine cabinet without a handful. And so it is that he is alternately in the chair, shivering cold from his nightmares, and in the shower, shivering cold from the water.

  The only warmth comes from deep within him as he recollects with some pride his deed.

  He sleeps, off and on, for the better part of the next seventy-two hours. He awakens and takes a ten-minute shower, stopping when the water runs cold. Control has miraculously returned to his life. He cleans house and prepares himself a hot, nourishing meal from frozen foods. This meal won’t stay down, but the next one does, and the one after that. Slowly, the blankets come down from the windows. Light returns into his life. The furniture is moved from the blocked doors. He shaves. He presses his trousers, dons a coat, and ventures outside to clear the stoop of the newspapers and mail that have collected. Then, frightened, he returns inside and locks the door like a paranoid old woman.

  The frozen food is the next supply he drains. He exhausts it, still too frightened—of what he’s not exactly sure—to venture out past the porch. Freedom has come, and somehow the area beyond his own door represents a test of that freedom he now has no desire to lose. It is a cherished, treasured entity, this freedom. They still haven’t come for him! Has it been a week, two, three? He has lost track.

  Days later, a knock comes on the front door.

  Heat flashes up his spine and the hairs on the nape of his neck stand erect. His hands go clammy. His right hand is shaking and his knees feel weak.

  Then he thinks: It’s just a delivery, a solicitor of some sort. It’s nothing. But secretly he knows who it is; who it must be.

  “Police, Mr. Kort. Please answer the door. It will spare us both. I don’t wish to make a scene and kick your door
in, and you don’t wish to repair it.” The voice waits. Kort looks around. There must be someplace to hide. He can’t think straight. His feet won’t move. Some spittle runs from the corner of his mouth. He wipes it off on his sleeve and thinks what a pitiful murderer he is. He should be plotting a way out, not trembling like an idiot. “Please,” comes the voice.

  That’s all it takes: Kort reaches out and turns the doorknob.

  The man is big. He is alone. He holds the doorway like a sentry. Sunlight flames from his shoulders. He speaks. He even shows his identification, but Kort hears only the one word, a word mixed in with all the others: Inspector.

  Kort considers what it would take to kill the man. There’s only one of him. Invite him in. Make it happen. Get far, far away. Is it possible.

  “It is not what you’re thinking,” the man says. “Believe me, I know what you are thinking. I have done this before, Mr. Kort. You have not. To every problem there is a solution, to every solution, negotiation. At least in my business.” He steps through the door and presses close to Kort as he swings the door closed. “Open some windows, please. It stinks in here.” When Kort doesn’t move, the man repeats, “Open some windows, please.” He walks past Kort and does it himself. Kort is standing, staring at the front door. Just on the other side of that door …

  “I am conducting the investigation into the murder of Joseph Eisher. Would you like a cigarette?” Kort reaches out and accepts one from the man, who then lights it for him. It is this taste he always remembers. “I am here to arrest you for that murder.”

  These are the words Kort has heard in his mind a hundred times over. They are so familiar to him that he isn’t sure if this man, this cigarette, this moment, are real or imagined. Perhaps he’s still intoxicated by the alcohol or the drugs. There’s no telling. The cigarette tastes good—wonderful—and that’s when he realizes it’s no dream.

  “It does not necessarily mean I will arrest you for that murder,” the man teases, a perverse grin on his face. The face is hard at the edges. The skin of his left cheek is rough. A bristled moustache on his upper lip juts out like a shelf. He’s cut his chin shaving. But it’s his eyes that hold Kort. Blue eyes—gentle, humorous, knowing. They are smiling at Kort. “I am not going to arrest you, Mr. Kort. Not necessarily. You can be of value to me. We can be of value to each other. We have much to discuss. You may call me Michael. Sit down please, Mr. Kort. You have a very important decision to make.”

  She drove a red BMW with a cellular phone and a compact disk stereo. The luncheon was take-out. Turkey croissant sandwiches with cream cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. Kort drank an espresso; Monique, decaf au lait. They ate on a plaid blanket by the shore of the Potomac with a distant view of National Airport. Joggers, dragging from the heat, passed in front of them.

  “I read about it,” she said. He looked over at her, something tugged at his heartstrings, and he flirted with a dozen thoughts—everything from running away with her to making love with her here on the blanket—before managing to shut out such ideas. “We did not take credit for it. I do not understand the point if we do not take credit. There was a reason behind it, was there not?” She shifted uneasily, tugging at her skirt. “Have we resorted to indiscriminate killing—like the Arab barbarians? Is that the path down which Michael has led us?”

  “We don’t take credit. That’s just the point. That’s the real genius of the plan. ‘Let them be accidents,’” he said, directly quoting Michael but not letting her know this. “If they knew it was terrorism, they would focus on us instead of Mosner and EisherWorks. Let the public figure it out for themselves. This kind of thing: There will be endless investigations, everything from the FBI to congressional subcommittees. By now they’ve already begun. If necessary, some key reporters will receive important documentation from ‘anonymous’ sources. With our help, they will flush out the ‘truth’ about EisherWorks’s duplicity. It will fill the papers for months. Years perhaps. Two major air accidents within a few weeks of each other. And what do we accomplish?” He counted off on his long fingers, “Mosner and the others dead; EisherWorks bankrupted; the unveiling of what amounts to an antienvironmental conspiracy between the largest chemical producers and the U.S. government agencies. Who knows what else? It’s beautiful.”

  “And this meeting is next?”

  “Yes.”

  “How is it to be done? You still have not explained this.”

  “I told you: I can’t explain everything. You must understand that.” He said, sipping from his coffee, “It’s too hot for coffee. I should have had an iced drink. This heat is oppressive; no wonder Washington empties in August.” He set the espresso down and took another bite of the sandwich. He wiped cream cheese from his lips.

  “Tell me,” she said in a demanding tone.

  He snapped his head toward her. “I’ll tell you nothing. Do you understand? Nothing more than you need to be told. Nothing more than I decide you need to be told. There’s such a thing as trust, isn’t there?”

  “Is there?”

  “Would I be eating here with you if I did not trust you?” he asked. “Completely exposed. Nowhere, no way to escape.” He waited. “Well?”

  She didn’t look at him. She spoke to the blanket. “Sometimes I hate you for the way you are.”

  He was thinking: That makes two of us.

  She folded the wax paper around her sandwich. A small, colorless bird bathed itself at river’s edge, the splashing of its wings foaming the polluted water. Again, he felt tempted to point out the pollution to her. Instead he said, “I need you.”

  “I hate you.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “Yes. Yes, I hate you.”

  “Okay. So that’s it then: You hate me.”

  “No I don’t.”

  “You’re confused.”

  “Yes.”

  “Angry.”

  “Yes.”

  “With me?”

  “With everything.” A pause. Then she continued, “The meeting. When is it?”

  “You need to contact the Greek. He knows the date. He can tell us.”

  “And that is all? That is all I do?”

  “For the time being, yes. That’s all.”

  “And later?” she asked.

  He couldn’t take any more of this. They could train him to keep his cool in the midst of gunfire, in handling bombs, but no one had prepared him for her. He couldn’t do this without her, and she seemed to know that. “You mustn’t keep asking me that. I can’t tell you everything. It would be foolish to do so. But your time will come. Believe me: Your time will come.” She was squirming. It bothered him. “I need you,” he said, still believing this was what she wanted to hear. “I can’t do it without you.” Her eyes lit up.

  He hid his smile of confidence from her by trying the coffee again.

  “I thought you didn’t want any more of that,” she said.

  “It’s not so bad.”

  “I’ll never understand you,” she said in disappointment.

  No you won’t, he was thinking, though he didn’t say so.

  He reached over and drew his finger slowly on her soft, pouty lips. She licked out at it and caught it briefly. “It tastes sweet,” she said quietly.

  “It’s you that is sweet,” he countered. He felt himself respond to her. It was some kind of chemistry with them. Around and around his finger went, slippery and warm, her tongue darting out after it.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said breathlessly, eyes closed.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “Let’s.”

  9

  * * *

  With her sad brown eyes and broomstick posture, Gloria’s demanding expression stopped Daggett cold. She was still angry about his refusing the promotion. It was the first time it had occurred to him that her jet black hair might be covering the truth. He felt tempted to ask her if she dyed it—it was one sure way to silence her before she spoke.

  He placed his briefcase down heavily onto h
is desktop, and with a few nods said hello to a couple of the gang who had beaten him into work, already busy on the phones. CNN ran with the sound down low from a battered set in the corner. It ran twenty-four hours a day. The remaining desks went empty. Some of the guys had stretched the holiday weekend into a week’s vacation. Others were on field assignments, a few on opposing shifts.

  He said hello to her. She was playing it smug. “We get a new agent today. He’ll be in any minute.”

  “Glo,” he said, “this is important to me.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” She handed him a fax. “Here, this is for you.”

  It was the flight manifest, listing passengers who had flown from Los Angeles to Washington on the plane that the mystery woman, Maryanne Lyttle, had boarded after dropping off the rented minivan. Daggett scanned the list for her name, but it wasn’t there. He couldn’t allow this to discourage him. An operative would change aliases at every opportunity. They would change looks, driver’s licenses, credit cards, everything. It didn’t give him the kind of hard evidence Pullman was demanding to see. It left him in the familiar no-man’s-land of suspicion without proof. Investigative Purgatory. He wanted to believe that Lyttle—by whatever name—was involved, but he couldn’t be certain.

  The new man’s name was Bradley Levin. He was thirty-two, fiercely handsome, and a good deal taller than Daggett, maybe six-two, two hundred or two-ten. Strong upper body. Long, black curly hair with a shock of premature gray in the front. Gentle dark eyes, but chiseled lines to his face, his cheeks shaded by an insistent five o’clock shadow. Daggett greeted him enthusiastically, but it was an act: Although he needed help badly, the idea of working with a transfer was less than appealing. They got to know each other over more burned coffee. This time in the first-floor cafeteria. Levin had started out at the Denver field office, where he had worked kidnappings. “Miami after that. Drugs,” he explained in a low, warm voice. “We took up some slack for the DEA. Surprise inspections of commercial aircraft.”