Night Work

by Steve Hamilton

  “Once again, you don’t. But whatever.”

  “I’m going to leave now. Thank you for your time.”

  “Yeah, don’t mention it.”

  I got back in my car for good this time, put it in reverse, and eased it back as slowly as I could. I had visions of our bumpers being locked together, of me dragging his car down the driveway and all the fun we’d have dealing with that. But all we got was a brief shower of the red plastic that had once been his tail-lights.

  As I met his eyes one more time, he crumpled my card and threw it on the ground. I backed out all the way to the street, turned the car toward the bridge, and gunned it. I had a new mission now. I was on my way to find a grieving father’s last remaining son.

  FIFTEEN

  I crossed back over the bridge into Ulster County, the Hudson River far below me, the Catskill Mountains spread out against the western sky. This was the wrong side of the river, it occurred to me, the side where all the troubles were waiting for me. But now I had one more chance to solve everything. The more I thought about what Mr. Ebisch had said about his son Greg, the more it felt like this guy had to be the man I was looking for.

  So what exactly was I supposed to do if it was really him?

  Before I could answer my own question, my cell phone rang. I picked it up, hit the TALK button, and put it to my ear. I was breaking a state law by doing this while driving, but I figured that was the least of my problems today.

  “Joe, it’s Detective Shea.”

  “Yes?”

  “Where are you right now?” Something in the voice, a tightness I hadn’t heard from him before.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I need to know where you are.”

  “I’m on my way back to town.”

  “I seriously need to know where you are right now.”

  “I am in my car, Detective.”

  “Where is your car, Joe?”

  “On the road,” I said. “Will you please tell me what the hell is going on?”

  A long pause. I looked at the cell phone to see if I still had service. When I put it back to my ear, I heard another voice.

  “JT, it’s me.”

  “Howie,” I said. “What are you doing there?”

  “They asked me to come in,” he said. “This is no joke, man. It’s time to face the orchestra.”

  “Time to what?”

  “You heard me. Just tell me where you are.”

  “I’m on the bridge.”

  “They want you to stop so they can come pick you up.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s what they want. They want you to just stay where you are.”

  I felt numb. I kept driving.

  “JT, are you there?”

  “I have to go somewhere first.”

  “Where?”

  “A store. I need to see someone who works there.”

  “Buddy, I don’t know what you’re doing, but—”

  “Tell them I’ll call them right back when I’m done,” I said. “It won’t take long.”

  Shea’s voice came on again. “Please don’t do anything stupid here,” he said. “You need to stop your car right now and wait for us.”

  “One stop, Detective. Then I’ll call you.”

  “This store you’re going to … You’re not going to buy a gun there, are you?”

  I reached the end of the bridge. The toll booths were on the other side, because they only collect when you’re going east. Coming back west, back home, that was free of charge.

  “Joe? Hello?”

  “No, Detective. I’m not going to buy a gun.”

  “Can you stay on the phone with me at least?”

  “I’ll talk to you soon,” I said. Then I turned off the phone and put it down.

  I got off on Route 9W, just past the bridge. That’s where most of the retail is these days, a whole new economy of its own, with the mall and all of the big-box stores. The IBM plant may be empty now, but if you live around Kingston you can get a job at Lowe’s or Home Depot or Kohl’s or Sam’s Club. Or you can always push shopping carts at Wal-Mart.

  I got in line with all of the other traffic, went up the hill, and made the turn by the Toys “R” Us and the PetSmart. There were only about a thousand cars parked in front of the Wal-Mart, so it didn’t take me more than ten minutes to find a parking spot. When I was finally out of the car, I had my PO badge ready, figuring I’d go right to the front desk, and ask them where I could find Greg Ebisch. Then I saw two young men wrestling a long line of shopping carts into the open bay next to the front door. I walked over to them. It took a moment for them to notice me standing there. One of them looked like a clean-cut, all-American boy. The other one didn’t. I knew which one to talk to.

  “Are you Greg Ebisch?” I said to him. As I got closer, I saw his first name printed on his red Wal-Mart shirt. He had the sleeves rolled up as high as they would go, a seemingly futile gesture if you’re out collecting shopping carts on a hot August day.

  “Yeah? What do you want?”

  “My name is Joe Trumbull.”

  He looked at me. “And?”

  Nothing, I thought. Absolutely nothing. Either he’s the best actor who ever lived, or else he has no idea who I am.

  Meaning this is yet another dead end.

  “We’re kinda busy here,” he said. “Am I supposed to know you, or what?”

  That’s when I spotted the tattoo on his left arm. A young man’s face, looking much like his own.

  “Is that your brother Ron?” I said.

  He glanced down at the tattoo. “Yeah. Did you know him?”

  “Yes,” I lied. “He was a great kid. I’m sorry about what happened. That’s all I wanted to say.”

  “Okay.” The tough edge in his voice gone, if only for a moment.

  “Sorry to bother you,” I said. “I’ll let you get back to work.”

  I’m sure they were both staring at me as I walked away from them. I went back to my car and opened the driver’s side door, feeling the heat of the day pressing down on me now, like someone had just turned up the dial. I got in, started the car, and turned on the air conditioner. Then I picked up my cell phone. Like Howie said, it was time to face the orchestra.

  I had six numbers dialed when I stopped. Time to face the orchestra, he said.

  In one second, I was back in ninth grade. Sixth period, with a gym teacher named Mr. Coleman, a man with a certain command of the English language, the same command a twenty-four-horsepower rider mower has over an acre of grass. His signature expression, and a surefire sign that things were about to turn painful: “Playtime is over, gentlemen. It’s time to face the orchestra.”

  What came next was usually laps, sometimes push-ups, sometimes the dreaded squat-thrusts. Never music.

  God damn, I thought. They were right there in the room with you. It was the only thing you could say to me without actually saying anything. Time to face the orchestra.

  I cleared the phone and started dialing Howie’s cell phone number.

  No, wait, I thought. That’s not good, either. He’s probably right there at the station.

  I cleared the phone again and called Elaine. It rang once. Then she picked up.

  “Joe,” she said, “thank God it’s you. I was calling you before but you didn’t answer, and then it was busy, and Howie said not to leave a message because if they take your phone, they shouldn’t hear what I was going to tell you, but then I was thinking—”

  “Elaine, Elaine. Please. Slow down.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She was out of breath. “I’m so scared, Joe. I can’t believe this is happening.”

  “What did Howie tell you? What’s the message?”

  “A few things. Number one, he wanted you to do everything the BCI guys told you to do. Come right to the station or stay where you are or whatever they said to do.”

  “Okay, I blew that one already. Go on.”

  “Number two, he wants you to keep
your mouth shut this time. Say absolutely nothing until your lawyer gets there.”

  “Okay, I can still do that one.”

  “Yeah, well, he said you’d be too stupid to follow number two.”

  “Thanks. Although he’s probably right.”

  “So number three is that Howie has already told them you were with us last night. So don’t lie and try to cover for him. That would make things worse for you and it wouldn’t help him. He’s already suspended.”

  “Great. Is there a number four?”

  There was a silence on the line.

  “Elaine? What’s number four?”

  “I can’t say it, Joe. It’s too terrible. That’s why it’s last.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Another woman was killed,” she said in a halting voice. “That’s why they’re after you today.”

  I closed my eyes and held on tight to the steering wheel, feeling the ice cold wave in my stomach. Another woman I’d been in contact with … Who else was there? Then it came to me.

  “Agnes Gayle,” I said. “Up in Woodstock, right?”

  “No, that’s not the name.”

  I opened my eyes. “What?”

  “I have the name here,” she said. “God, I can barely see this thing, my hands are shaking so much. Hold on … The name is Marion Stansberry.”

  “I don’t know that name. Are you sure?”

  “Somebody saw you with her yesterday.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Howie said there’s a witness. The two of you were together.”

  Wait a minute, I thought. Marion Stansberry. Something about that name was familiar. The sing-song rhythm of it. Where did I hear that name?

  I thought back on the day before, reran everything. Detective Shea’s morning visit, then going out to the Bowmans’ place. Then what? Over to the Haneys’ place on Dirk Lane. The house was empty, so I had to go on to … Wait, back up.

  “Oh my God,” I said. “The house.”

  “What is it?”

  “One of the houses I went to was empty. There was a realtor there.”

  I played the scene back in my mind. The realtor telling me her name, giving me her card. Marion Stansberry.

  “I was in the house with her for three minutes,” I said. “Then I left. I talked to the next-door neighbor. He must have been the one who saw me there. But then I went to the next house on my list. How could I have—”

  “She was found in her bedroom at home,” Elaine said. “Out in Hurley. Somebody strangled her in the middle of the night. They think it was you, Joe. Howie said something about a shoelace.”

  “The shoelace. My God. Are you telling me he actually tracked this woman down, found out where she lived?”

  “What are you going to do, Joe?”

  “Did she have a family?”

  “The dead woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know. Howie didn’t say. He didn’t have much time to talk. I got the feeling that things are pretty bad down there. Those two BCI guys were arguing again. And they’re both totally pissed at the Kingston guys because somebody was supposed to be tailing you at all times.”

  “Tailing me …”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Somebody was tailing me.”

  “A police officer, he means.”

  “I know, I know. But God … I think I’m going to be sick, Elaine. I’m going to lose it right here.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” she said. “Joe, are you there?”

  “I’m the angel of death, Elaine. Three minutes with me and the next day you’re dead.”

  “Don’t talk that way. You didn’t do this.”

  “What am I supposed to do now?” I said.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m at Wal-Mart.”

  “What are you doing there?”

  “I was following a lead. But it didn’t pan out.”

  “Just call the police, Joe. Tell them where you are.”

  “I think they’re already here,” I said. I saw a police car moving slowly down the row next to me. They knew I was on the bridge. They knew I was going to a store. They’re out looking for me.

  “Just call them,” she said. “We’ll figure out what to do next.”

  “I’ve gotta go, Elaine.”

  “Joe, don’t go anywhere!”

  “I’ll call you later. I love you both.”

  I turned off the phone and pulled out. Someone driving a minivan saw me and was already angling for my parking spot. I could see the police car just behind it.

  I’m running, I thought to myself. Like it was something I had no control over. I’m running away so they can’t come get me and throw me in jail.

  I drove around to the far side of the store, to the service road that ran behind it. That goes right to 32, I thought. Which I can take to 209, down to the Thruway, which will take me anywhere I want to go. Unless they’re waiting there for me. Unless they’re sitting behind the toll booth, ready to run me down.

  No, I thought. I’m not running. This is crazy. I’ll drive right to the police station, turn myself in, put my faith in the system and let it all work out.

  I looped around, back to the main road. I drove toward the station, seeing another police car speeding by in the opposite direction. When I got down to 28, I was about to cut east into the heart of Kingston when I saw the sign. 28 West. That was the road to Woodstock.

  I thought about it for all of two seconds. Then I took the road west.

  A few minutes later, my phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and hit the TALK button.

  “Joe, this is Detective Shea. Where are you?”

  “I have one more stop to make. Then I’ll be coming in.”

  “You’re getting yourself into some serious trouble,” he said. “You need to let me help you.”

  “I appreciate your concern, but there’s one person I need to talk to. It won’t take long.”

  “Where are you going, Joe? Who do you have to talk to?”

  “If I tell you, Detective, then I know I’ll never get there. If I never get there, then I won’t be able to tell her something very important.”

  “Just tell me who it is. I’ll pass along anything you want her to know. I promise.”

  “Listen very carefully,” I said. “I need to do this for the very simple reason that you don’t believe me. You think I’m killing these women, which means that when you have me in custody, you’ll think that everybody will be safe. Which, come to think of it, maybe they will be, because maybe this guy will know to stop then. But the moment you let me go, the moment I’m walking around free again, this guy will kill somebody else. And even if I make a point of locking myself in a room and not setting eyes on another woman for the rest of my goddamned life, there’s one woman who needs to be warned, so that she can pack up her things right now and get as far away from this place as she possibly can.”

  “Trumbull!” It was Detective Rhinehart on the phone now. I could picture him tearing the phone right out of Shea’s hands. “Cut this shit out right now, do you hear me?”

  “I’m hanging up now,” I said. “I’ll see you in a little while.”

  I hit the END button, then turned the power off.

  I kept driving. This one last thing you can do, I said to myself. After all the death you’ve brought to these women, this is one last thing you can do before you lose the power to do anything at all.

  It wasn’t until I got halfway to Woodstock that the second possibility hit me. Maybe it was too late to warn her. Maybe she was already dead. She lived way the hell up on that road, all by herself. Nobody would find her for days. The more I thought of it, the more it made a horrible kind of sense. If Marion Stansberry was killed last night, why not Agnes Gayle, too?

  “Please don’t do it,” I said. I was driving fast now. I didn’t care anymore. “Please don’t kill her. You don’t have to. You’ve done enough.”

  Eight miles to W
oodstock. Then seven.

  “You win,” I said. “Okay? You win. You don’t have to kill anybody else.”

  Six miles. Five miles. A winding, lonely road, trees whizzing by on either side of me.

  Four miles. Three miles.

  I came up behind a car doing fifty. I pulled into the other lane, crossing the double lines. I gunned it and burst past him, swerving back into my lane just in time to miss a truck coming from the other direction. Lots of honking behind me as I kept going.

  Two miles away. One mile.

  I hit Woodstock, slowed down, and beat my hands on the steering wheel as I waited behind the cars going up the long hill to the center of town. When I got to the village green I took the hard right and headed up toward the mountain. Past the cemetery, the new houses being built, the other driveways one after the other until finally I was there.

  I broke through the line of trees, the meadow opening up with the house on the hill, the mountain behind it. As I pulled up closer to the house, I saw a car parked in front of the restored barn. There hadn’t been any cars outside when I was here the day before.

  I turned my car off and got out, the ticking of the hot engine the only thing breaking the sudden silence. I didn’t see Mrs. Gayle on the porch today. I didn’t see any signs of life at all.

  That car … I walked up to it first. It was a blue Hyundai, a few years old, clearly past its prime. A totally nondescript car, and yet it looked familiar to me. After all the time I’d spent studying each car on the street outside my window … Had I seen this car in the past few days? On the other hand, hell, it wasn’t exactly an unusual brand or color. There had to be thousands of them in the state of New York.

  I looked in through the windows. It was clean. Nothing to tell me anything about the owner.

  I walked up to the house, scaling those same stairs again. When I reached the top, the same cat appeared. He jumped up in the same seat he had been sitting in, only this time he was alone. There was no Mrs. Gayle to rub a hand down his back. The cat looked at me like I was to blame for this.

  One more look down at the familiar car, then a new thought to rattle around in my head. Maybe he’s here. Right now. He drove up here and he’s inside this house. I swallowed and rang the doorbell.

  I waited. Nobody came to the door. I pushed the button again, heard the chimes echo inside.