Ben Winters - The Last Policeman

I scowl. My sister, I believe, loves the fact that she can smoke pot now, that her policeman brother can no longer lecture her sternly about it. For Nico, I think, this is a silver lining. She takes a last drag and pitches the butt into the snow. I crouch down and pick up the doused stub of cigarette between two fingers and hold it in the air. “I thought you cared about the environment.”

“Not so much, anymore,” she says.

Nico swivels back to a sitting position, wrapping the thick collar of the coat around her. My sister could be so beautiful if she just took care of herself—combed her hair, got some sleep every once in a while. She’s like a picture of our mother that someone crumpled up and tried to smooth out again.

“So then it’s midnight, and he’s not back. I called him, no answer.”

“So he went to a bar,” I offer.

“I called all the bars.”

“All of them?”

“ Yes , Hen.”

There are a lot more bars than there used to be. A year ago you had Penuche’s, the Green Martini, and that was pretty much as far as it went. Now there are lots of places, some licensed, some pirated, some just basement apartments where someone has got a bathtub full of beer, a cash register, and an iPod set on shuffle.

“So he went to a friend’s house.”

“I called them. I called everyone. He’s gone.”

“He’s not gone,” I say, and what I’m not saying is the truth, which is that if Derek really had pulled a runner on her, it would be the best thing to happen to my sister in a long time. They had gotten married on January 8, that first Sunday after the Tolkin interview. That particular Sunday had set the record, apparently, for the most weddings on a single day, a record unlikely ever to be beaten, unless it’s on October 2.

“Are you going to help me or not?”

“I told you, I can’t. Not today. I’m on a case.”

“God, Henry,” she says, her studied insouciance abruptly gone, and she’s hopping off the car and jabbing me in the chest with a forefinger. “I quit my job as soon as we knew this shit was really happening. I mean, why waste time at work?

“You worked three days a week at a farmers’ market. I solve murders.”

“Oh, excuse me. I’m sorry. My husband is missing.”

“He’s not really your husband.”

“Henry.”

“He’ll be back, Nico. You know he will.”

“Really? What makes you so sure?” She stamps her foot, eyes blazing, not waiting for an answer. “And what are you working on that’s so important?”

I figure, what the heck, and I tell her about the Zell case, explain how I’ve just come from the morgue, that I’m developing leads, trying to impress upon her the seriousness of an ongoing police investigation.

“So wait. A hanger?” she says, sullen, peevish. She’s only twenty-one years old, my sister. She’s just a kid.

“Maybe.”

“You just said the guy hung himself at the McDonald’s.”

“I said it appeared that way.”

“And that’s why you’re too busy to take ten minutes to find my husband? Because some jerk-off killed himself at the McDonald’s ? In the goddamn bathroom?”

“Nico, come on.”

“What?”

I hate it when my sister uses foul language. I’m old-fashioned. She’s my sister.

“I’m sorry. But a man has died, and it’s my job to find out how and why.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry. Because a man is missing, and it’s my man, and I happen to love him, okay?”

There’s a hitch in her voice all of a sudden, and I know that’s it, that’s game over. She’s crying, and I’ll do whatever she wants.

“Oh, come on, Nico. Don’t do that.” It’s too late, she’s sobbing, open mouthed, violently pushing tears from her eyes with the back of her hands. “Don’t do that.”

“It’s just, all of this.” She gestures, a vague and woeful gesture encompassing all of the sky. “I can’t be alone, Henry. Not now.”

A bitter wind courses across the parking lot, flicking drifting snow upward into our eyes.

“I know,” I say. “I know.”

And then I’m gingerly stepping forward, gathering my little sister in my arms. The family joke was that she got the math genes and I got all the height. My chin is a good six inches up from the top of her head, her sobs burying themselves somewhere in my sternum.

“All right, kid. All right.”

She backs out of my awkward embrace, stifles a final moan, and lights herself a fresh American Spirit, shading a gold-plated lighter against the wind as she sucks the thing to life. The lighter, like the coat, like the brand of cigarettes, was my grandfather’s.

“So you’ll find him?” she asks.

“I’ll do my best, Nico. Okay? That’s all I can do.” I pluck the cigarette from the corner of her mouth and toss it under the car.

“Good afternoon. I’d like to speak to Sophia Littlejohn, if I could.”

I’ve got a nice strong signal, out here in the parking lot.

“She’s with a patient just now. May I ask who’s calling?”

“Uh, sure. No—it’s just—a friend of mine’s wife is a patient of… gee, what do you even call a midwife? Doctor Littlejohn, is that what I would—?”

“No, sir. Just the name. Ms. Littlejohn.”

“Okay, well, my friend’s wife is a patient of… of Ms. Littlejohn, and I understood that she had gone into labor. Like, early this morning?”

“This morning?”

“Yeah. Late last night, early this morning? My friend left me a message, early this morning, and I could’ve sworn that’s what he said. But it was garbled, his phone was all staticky, and—hello?”

“Yes, I’m here. There may be a mistake. I don’t think Sophia was delivering. You said this morning?”

“I did.”

“I’m sorry. What was your name?”

“Never mind. It’s not a big deal. Never mind.”

At headquarters I walk briskly past a trio of Brush Cuts in the break room, hanging around in a circle by the Coke machine, laughing like frat boys. I don’t recognize any of them, and they don’t recognize me. No one among them, I warrant, could quote from Farley and Leonard, not to mention the New Hampshire Criminal Code, not to mention the United States Constitution.

In Adult Crimes, I lay out what I’ve got for Detective Culverson: tell him about the house, the Dear Sophia note, Dr. Fenton’s conclusions. He listens patiently, his fingers steepled together, and then he doesn’t say anything for a long time.

“Well, you know, Henry,” he begins slowly, and that’s plenty, I don’t want to hear the rest.

“I get what it looks like,” I say. “I do.”

“Hey. Listen. It’s not my case.” Culverson inclines his head slightly backward. “If you feel like you’ve got to solve it, you’ve got to solve it.”

“I do, Detective. I really do.”

“Okay, then.”

I sit there for a second, and then I go back to my desk and pick up the landline and initiate my search for stupid Derek Skeve. First I repeat the calls that Nico has already made: the bars and the hospitals. I reach the men’s prison and the new, auxiliary men’s prison, I reach the Merrimack County sheriff’s office, I reach admitting departments at Concord Hospital and New Hampshire Hospital and every other hospital I know of in three counties. But no one’s got him, no one matching that description.

Outside, there’s a thick clutch of God people clustered in the plaza, thrusting their pamphlets at passersby, hollering in gospel cadences about how prayer is all we’ve got left, prayer is our only salvation. I nod noncommittally and I keep on moving.

And now I’m lying in my bed and I’m not sleeping because it’s Wednesday night, and it was Tuesday morning that I first looked into the dead eyes of Peter Zell, which means he was killed sometime on Monday night, and so maybe it’s almost forty-eight hours since he got killed, or maybe the forty-eight hours have already passed. Either way, my window is sliding closed and I am nowhere near identifying and apprehending his murderer.