by David Daniel
She sounded surprised to hear from me, and a bit cool when I said I had a few follow-up questions for her. I asked, “Did she tell you that she might get married?”
“I already told you everything what I know”
“Okay. You said that Flora seemed frightened or nervous when you spoke with her. Did you wonder why?”
“Maybe I did, but she didn’t splain nothing. I just thought she was a-scared, but maybe I was wrong. We wasn’t really close friends, you know? We just knew each other from night classes at the community college.”
“Did you get the idea that it was Pepper she was scared of?”
“Who else? He was her boyfriend, no? But I got to go now. The boss he don’t like us taking personal calls here.”
I thanked her and hung up wondering if Flora Nuñez was the only one who was a-scared.
Courtney had commented on my investigative “method,” as though it were a protocol of careful steps and procedures. In truth, it was pretty scattershot. You thought about what you wanted to know, imagined ways you might find out, and then you made your approach. A lot of the time, I felt as if I were climbing tall, rickety ladders in the pitch dark.
There was still the option of trying to track Pepper’s military service record, but in strict time-value terms, it didn’t add up. I hunted in my Rolodex for a name, which I found, but there was no phone number. Only an e-mail address.
19
I hauled down the overhead cage door of the ancient freight elevator and began a slow and clanking ascent, each deserted floor floating spectrally past. If you looked very closely into the murk of the elevator shaft, you might notice the insulated ductwork and the heavy duty electrical conduit snaking upward, but you’d have no reason to look, really; no reason to have come through the rusty portcullis into the courtyard in the first place, and certainly no reason to be headed for the roof of a dilapidated old mill.
The building was formerly part of Lamson Woolens, which had been one of the companies whose vast holdings stretched along the Merrimack River for a full mile. Prior to the Civil War, this was the epicenter of American manufacturing. Along with the Lamson, there were a dozen others, built by the city’s movers and shakers.
The fortresslike design wasn’t for aesthetics: Inner courtyards surrounded by high walls, coupled with the canals on the outer side, like moats, gave the image of castles, removed from the outside world, protected. Typically there was but one way in, over a footbridge and through iron gates. The gates would be locked right after the time when the original workers—the mill girls—were due to report for their twelve-hour shifts, so that if they were late they were forced to enter through the mill agent’s office. In this way, tardiness could be noted and pay docked. Repeated offenses and you were on the bricks. But that was lifetimes ago. The flesh and sinew were gone, and the Lamson mill, and what remained of most of the others, was back to bones now. The only hints of life I could detect were pigeons cooing in the upper dimness of the elevator shaft, and vague scurrying sounds beyond the walls, which made me think of rats.
When the elevator stopped and I lifted the slatted door, Randy Nguyen was standing inside an enclosed entryway waiting. He slid a heavy insulated door shut behind me. I felt an instant bath of cooled air surround me, and I had the sensation of docking at a lonely space colony on the far reaches of the solar system. The rooftop shed I walked into fit the setup, too. Despite the surrounding landscape of decaying brick, the shed’s interior was modern, with an electrostatic tile floor, thermal windows, and halogen lighting. He gave my extended hand a blank, red-eyed look before apparently remembering the ancient custom and shook it. His palm was as dry as a circuit board.
“Hey,” he said by way of greeting.
Nguyen would be in his midtwenties now, I guessed, though he had the unkempt look of a college freshman coming off finals week. He wore a loose white sweatshirt with a large bar code printed across the front, and crinkled cargo pants that bloused over the tops of his Timberlands like virulent elephantiasis. On a computer screen behind him I saw that he’d been playing solitaire.
“You actually send that e-mail yourself?” he asked. “Or do you got a ghost writer does your tech work?”
“I’ve traded in the Underwood for a PC since I saw you last.”
“Pffft. Ancient technology. Might as well carve symbols on stone tablets. Anyway you could’ve saved yourself fifty cents.”
“That’s what it cost to e-mail you?”
“To park. There hasn’t been a meter maid on that street since July” He nodded toward a bank of video screens built into a console along one wall. “Courtyard,” he said. “Scan left.” On one of the screens, my car appeared, sitting alone on a stretch of empty street. “Four—replay.” The vista grayed a moment and then there I was, five minutes younger, plugging coins into the meter. “Voice-rec tech,” he said. “These keep a continuous scan of over a million square feet of empty mill space.”
“And you sit and play solitaire.”
He shrugged, gesturing for me to look around.
The room had been designed to take advantage of the rooftop height, with thermal glass panes that gave views of the river and the city. The rooftop surrounding Randy’s shed sprouted sumac and small trees, the result of airborne seeds that found root in the humus of decaying wood and decades of soot, though there was purpose there, too. The random saplings camouflaged a thicket of antennas. There was nothing random, however, about the equipment Nguyen had. The bank of monitors gave crisp black-and-white images of various sectors of the mill complex, though the only movement in the landscape of broken bricks and shadowy cloisters and occasional quick glimpses of my car was the shifting of the images themselves. There wasn’t a human to be seen. Lines squiggled across a set of smaller screens—oscilloscopes, I realized—which I guessed meant Nguyen had set up listening posts as well.
Why? I thought. For what purpose? Who cared? But I said, “Any luck with what I asked you?”
With a smirk he drew me over to a pair of comfortable swivel chairs in his workstation.
I’d first met Randy Nguyen when I was a cop and he was a high school detention rat who’d been awarded a police department grant, ostensibly to keep him off the street and out of whatever trouble kids with a 140 IQ got into. Fast access and connectivity weren’t a given in those days, and Nguyen, who was a graduate of every video arcade in town, had soon made himself indispensable. Over the year and a half he spent with the department, he got the city hooked into national crime registries and fingerprint databases and had organized police files going back decades, all of it accomplished with a minimal human interface. Digital machines were his world. Unfortunately he also dropped out of school during that time, and his grant was canceled. I’d heard he’d gone on to get a GED. He now worked for the outfit that oversaw security for a number of the abandoned mills that stretched along the eastern shore of the river like the ruined palisades of an ancient city-state. He swung into his padded spring chair. “Some ex-jarhead’s service rec, right?”
“Never ex.”
“Semper. I’m hip. I’m surprised you couldn’t locate it yourself.”
“I didn’t have the hours to play Ping-Pong with forty different voices on a telephone—some of them even human.”
“Yeah, must be rough being analog these days.”
He made it sound like not being toilet trained. He said it without irony or malice—or an ounce of understanding for a world that was other than his neat on/off binary world. Guilty or innocent, black or white: It was a zone that had none of the grays of complexity that bedevil the rest of us poor souls. He turned to a computer and began commanding his minions.
“Your bosses know you pull all this juice?” I asked.
“They see the bills and don’t squawk. With what they pay me, they’re still way ahead of what they’d have to lay out for a fleet of rent-a-cops walking rounds.”
“Yeah, their shoes alone would add up to more than your mouse pad. Bu
t why not just do it from home? Then you wouldn’t have to get out of bed.”
“I like to be out in the world. Besides, where else would I get the penthouse views and the roof garden?” He shrugged. “Print,” he said, and rolled his chair sideways, the casters moving swiftly on the Lucite carpet protector. A sheet of paper slid crisply out of a printer. Nguyen handed it to me with a “Voilà!” flourish. Before I read a word, a second sheet came out.
It was the military service file of Troy S. Pepper. I didn’t bother to ask Randy how he’d done it. His answer would’ve been from a 1930s movie, von Stroheim going, “Ve haf our vays”—if he knew any films that weren’t by Tartantino. I hoisted my wallet and gave him a questioning look. He scraped at his sparse black whiskers. “How does fifty sound?”
“A lot better than ‘One Is the Loneliest Number,’ which is what I’d still be listening to on the telephone without you.” I forked over a twenty and three tens, which he tucked into the pocket of his cargo pants.
“Seriously,” he said, “I’m the only heart beating in this desolation, and the owners know it. You know how in a winter pond, there’ll be one little patch of water that the ducks keep open by moving around, keeping the ice from forming? That’s me in this gothic labyrinth. I’m not here to protect against crime. Even the taggers don’t waste paint on these walls—no one to see their work. Rats rule here.”
“And you’re the last line of defense before total entropy.”
“I’m not kidding you. Someday, everything’s going to be run by people like me sitting alone in towers, ringed by security, because, after silicon, we’re going to be the most valuable resource on the planet. Wait and see.”
In his world we’d all be overwired and disconnected. I spooked a few pigeons on my way through the alcove to the elevator, which made a good old-fashioned mechanical rattling as it took me back to my world. In that world, when I phoned Pop Sonders from my office, he told me that the carnival crew had finished gathering their personal belongings and had made the move over to the Venice Hotel. He thanked me for arranging it.
“What about you?” I asked.
“I’m gonna squat here, for tonight at least.”
“Is that legal?”
“It don’t feel right just leaving. Besides, I want to keep an eye on things.”
I told him I’d call him there later if I learned anything new. At my house, as I fixed dinner, I put on the TV and caught the tail end of the six o’clock news. Francine had fizzled, but tropical storm Gus seemed hot to trot, the weatherman promised, grinning like a maniac, and this one was the real deal. When I had my food on the table, I laid out the pages of Troy Pepper’s service record. I felt my appetite die.
20
The carnival looked forlorn in the fading afternoon, the colored lights unlit, loudspeakers mute, the amusement rides inert. I didn’t spot another soul. As I walked past the haunted house, I caught a distorted flicker in one of the old crazy mirrors. I moved closer, watching my image metamorphose as I approached. On the night I’d come with Phoebe, she had laughed looking at herself, dragging me into it, too. “You know what I like?” she asked. “We get to see ourselves as a little absurd.”
Looking for a new perspective now—or perhaps chasing absurdity—I walked to where Troy Pepper’s camper was parked. The police seal was gone, but when I tried the door, it was locked. Someone had been here since, however. On the wall beside the steps was painted the word KILLER in drippy red letters.
To satisfy curiosity, I paced off the distance from the camper to the spot where the body had been discovered. It was a pretty straight shot, but it was close to a hundred yards, and part of it passed close to the vans and trailers of other carnival workers. Carrying a body such a distance, even that of a small person, would have been a feat.
A scattered flow of traffic went by on the boulevard, but it seemed very far away. At the edge of the field, where the unmowed grass began, I paused. The police had taken away the crime scene tape. Or perhaps kids had, and it streamed from the handlebars of their bikes. Either way I was glad. A birch stood at the edge of the clearing. In the fading light, its leaves darkening, it looked as if it were full of blackbirds waiting to swoop. A soft wind prowled through the high grass and stirred the trees beyond, like the passing of an uneasy spirit. I shut my eyes and tried to think myself back to Sunday night.
In darkness I’m walking the midway with Phoebe, Michael Jackson singing … “Tell ’em that it’s human nature” … Phoebe pointing at a parti-colored teddy bear asking me to win it for her. Swing the hammer and be a hero. Troy Pepper is there, just a face in the crowd at this point. He says something to us. “The lady knows what she wants.” Okay, I remember that. Anything else?
A drop of sweat crept down my temple. I let it roll and drop. My eyes still shut.
I tear off two tickets at the perforation and put them in his hand. His deformed hand. I grip the friction-taped shaft of the mallet, feeling my arms and shoulders swinging the hammer down onto the strike plate … “careful what you wish for—” That’s what he has said. Swinging the hammer again … A scream. The weight wobbling up …
No. Rewind further.
I pick up Phoebe at her house 5:30 P.M. Is Flora Nuñez dead in the trailer? Already in the field?
Further.
In my office, maybe three o’dock, doing a background check for Atlantic Casualty … dull, routine stuff … The ME’s time span for death was between noon and five. Meaning Flora Nuñez could still be alive. It’s Sunday Has she gone to church? And taken the afternoon to go to speak with Troy Pepper?
No one I’d spoken with could place her here that day alive. Where had she been? With whom?
Fast forward.
Careful what you wish for …
The woman dead. Cops arriving, first one—the woman officer, then Duross … moving the crowd back, securing the scene for the detectives to take it over. A little later they pick up Pepper.
Killer …
“Sir? What are you doing here?”
The female voice startled me, and I snapped open my eyes.
I turned and saw a patrol officer stepping through the grass toward me. I hadn’t heard the cruiser, but there it sat, parked near my car. “Just looking,” I said.
“For what?” Her gaze was steady and probing.
I realized I’d just been thinking about her. She was the female half of the detail that had been here Sunday night, but I’d seen her one other time since then—seen more of her, too—and I suddenly remembered where.
“Trying to find my eyeballs, so I don’t trip over them.” I grinned. “It was a better line when you used it at the West Side Gym yesterday” I couldn’t see the gold ring in her navel, but she was the kickboxer.
“Who are you?”
I told her. “I’m a private investigator. I’m working with the lawyer representing Troy Pepper.” I took another step toward her, reaching for ID.
“Hold it right there.”
I stayed put, and she reached to take my offered wallet.
She had a no-nonsense face, attractive in a hard-edged way I tried to read her name tag, but I couldn’t. She handed back my ID. “And you’re doing what, Mr. Rasmussen?”
“I’m just a cat, mousing in the field.” I nodded toward where the body had been found. “Flora Nuñez wasn’t very big, but still it would have required some effort to carry her out there from the suspect’s camper.”
The cop appeared to give it some thought.
“Unless there were two people to carry her,” I went on, “which seems unlikely Another possibility is that the suspect’s camper wasn’t the crime scene after all, which would mean she was killed somewhere else and brought here. That could also suggest that Pepper wasn’t her killer.”
I thought she might get interested or angry or resistant to my ideas, but she just lifted a shoulder. “That’s not for me to say I’m on patrol and saw your vehicle. You really shouldn’t be here. There’ve been incidents of
vandalism.”
We started back toward the cars. Walking alongside her, I was finally able to read her tag. Her name was Loftis.
“You were here the other night when the victim was found,” I said.
She seemed surprised to learn that I had been here, too.
“That must’ve been rough,” I said. “Not your everyday paid detail.”
She raised a hand to cut me off. She had a call on her walkie-talkie and said something into it, listened, said something else, and signed off. “I’ve got to go.”
“I happened to notice the other officer from the detail—Duross—is working with Detective Cote.”
She gave me a sideways glance. “You seem to be well informed.”
“I was on the job for a number of years.”
“What’s your name again?”
It didn’t seem to ring any bells. “Paul Duross has a goal to make detective,” she said. “He’s very motivated.”
“What about you?”
“I like what I do now”
I nodded. “Investigation isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The paperwork can be more of a killer than the bad guys with guns and knives.” We got to our cars. “Can I ask you one more thing? If Pepper did kill her, why leave the body so close to the carnival?”
She hesitated, and I sensed she was going to shut me down, but after a moment she said, “Maybe he panicked. Or possibly he wanted it to be found. But that’s not my area of expertise. I wish you well.”
The officer trailed me in her cruiser out to the boulevard and then took off, with her own sector to patrol. I drove away considering the implications of what she’d said. I’d thought of both possibilities, and yet they ran counter to Roland Cote’s idea of premeditation. Now a new idea came to me. Had the police investigators read the crime as they had because it had been set up to be read? Was that why Pepper was so passive in his own defense? Had he wanted discovery as part of a plan?
