Ben Winters - The Last Policeman

“You wish?”

This is madness. It’s madness.

“When are you being arraigned?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you have a lawyer?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” I check my watch. Thirty seconds left, and I can hear the heavy footfalls of the reservist from the desk, making her way back to collect me. One thing about the military, they like their schedules.

“Derek, I came all the way down here to help you.”

“I know, and that’s really decent of you. But, you know, I didn’t ask you to do that.”

“Yes, but Nico did ask me. Because she cares about you.”

“I know. Isn’t she an amazing person?”

“All right sir.”

It’s the guard. I talk quickly into the hole in the door. “Derek, there is nothing I can do for you unless you can tell me what’s going on.”

Derek’s smug grin widens for a moment, the eyes misting with kindness, and then he walks slowly over to the bed and sprawls out, his hands folded behind his head.

“I totally hear what you’re saying, Henry. But it’s a secret.”

That’s it. Time’s up.

I was twelve years old and Nico was only six when we moved from the house on Rockland to the farmhouse on Little Pond Road, halfway to Penacook. Nathanael Palace, my grandfather, only recently retired from forty years in banking, had a wide range of interests: model trains, shooting, building stone walls. Already by prepubescence a bookish and private person, I was uninterested to varying degrees in all these activities but was forced by Grandfather to take part. Nico, a lonesome and anxious child, was avidly interested in all of them and rigorously ignored. He once got a set of World War II–era model airplanes, and we sat in the basement, the three of us, and Grandfather harangued me for an hour, refusing to let me quit until I’d successfully attached both wings to the body, while mechanically minded Nico sat in the corner, clutching a handful of tiny gunmetal gray airplane parts, waiting for her turn: at first excited, then restlessly, and finally in tears.

That was springtime, I think, not that long after we moved in with him. The years have been like that, for her and me, a lot of ups and downs.

“So, you’ll go back.”

“No.”

“Why not? Can’t Culverson get you another appointment? Maybe Monday.”

“Nico.”

“Henry.”

“ Nico .” I’m leaning forward, sort of hollering into the phone, which is on speaker on the passenger seat. We’ve got a terrible line, cell to cell, all kinds of stops and starts, which isn’t helping. “Listen to me.”

But she’s not going to listen.

“I’m sure you just misunderstood him or something. He can be weird.”

“That is true.”

I’m parked in the abandoned lot next to what remains of the Capitol Shopping Center, a several-block stretch just east of Main Street along the banks of the Merrimack. The Presidents’ Day riots burned away the last remaining shops here, and now there are just a few scattered tents full of drunks and homeless people. This is where Mr. Shepherd, my scout leader, was living when the Brush Cuts ran him in on vagrancy.

“Nico, are you okay? Are you eating?”

“I’m fine. You know what I bet?” She’s not fine. Her voice is raspy, haggard, like she’s been doing nothing but smoking since Derek’s disappearance. “I bet he just didn’t want to say anything in front of the guards.”

“Nope,” I say. “No, Nico.” Exasperating. I tell her how easy it was for me to get in there, how few guards are watching over Derek Skeve.

“Really?”

“There’s one woman. A reservist. They don’t care about some kid who went joyriding on a military base.”

“So why can’t you get him out?”

“Because I don’t have a magic wand.”

Nico’s denial of reality, as maddening as her husband’s dull obstinacy, is a long-standing aspect of her character. My sister was a mystic from an early age, a firm believer in fairies and miracles, and her starry little spirit demanded magic. In the immediate aftermath of our becoming orphans, she could not and would not accept that it was all real, and I’d gotten so mad, I’d stormed away, and then I’d reeled back around, shouting. “They’re both dead ! Period. End of story. Dead, dead, d-dead-d-dead! Okay? No ambiguity!”

This was at Father’s wake, the house full of friends and well-meaning strangers. Nico had stared back at me, tiny rose lips pursed, the word ambiguity vastly above her six-year-old pay grade, the severity of my tone nevertheless unmistakable. The assembled mourners staring at the sad little pair of us.

And now, the present, new times, Nico’s powers of disbelief unwavering. I try to change the subject.

“Nico, you’re good at math. Does the number 12.375 mean anything?”

“What do you mean, does it mean anything?”

“I don’t know, is it, like, pi or something, where—”

“No, Henry, it’s not,” she says quickly, coughs. “So what are we going to do next?”

“Nico, come on. Are you not listening to me? It’s military, which is on a totally different set of rules. I wouldn’t even know how to try to get him out of there.”

One of the homeless guys stumbles out of his tent, and I give him a small two-fingered wave; his name is Charles Taylor, and we went to high school together.

“This thing is going to fall out of the sky,” says Nico, “it’s going to fall on our heads. I don’t want to be sitting here by myself when it happens.”

“It is not falling on our heads.”

“What?”

“Everybody says that, and it’s just—it’s just arrogant, is what it is.” I’m so tired of this, all of it, and I should stop talking, but I can’t. “Two objects are moving through space on separate but overlapping orbits, and this one time, we’ll both be at the same place at the same time. It’s not ‘falling on our heads,’ okay? It’s not ‘coming for us.’ It just is . Do you understand?”

It suddenly seems incredibly, weirdly, quiet, and I realize I must have been yelling. “Nico? I’m sorry. Nico?”

But then she’s back, her voice small and flat. “I just miss him, is all.”

“I know that.”

“Forget it.”

“Wait.”

“Don’t worry about me. Go solve your case.”

She hangs up, and I sit there in the car, my chest trembling as if struck.

Bam!

It’s a science-fiction serial, is what it is, Distant Pale Glimmers , one new half-hour episode coming out every week, running like gangbusters since Christmastime. Here in Concord it’s showing at the Red River, the indie house. Apparently it’s about an intergalactic battleship called the John Adams , piloted by a General Amelie Chenoweth, who is portrayed by a bombshell named Kristin Dallas, who also writes and directs. The John Adams charts the distant reaches of the universe circa 2145. Of course the subtext, as subtle as a blow to the head, is that somehow, someone makes it, survives, prospers, the human race resurgent among the stars.

I went with Nico and Derek once, a few weeks ago, the first Monday in March. I didn’t care for it much, personally.

I wonder if Peter was there, that same night? Maybe alone, maybe with J. T. Toussaint.

I bet he was.

“Detective Culverson?”

“Yeah?”

“How reliable are the snow chains on the Impalas?”

“How reliable are they? What do you mean?”

“The chains. On the cars. They’re good, right? They stay on, for the most part?”

Culverson shrugs, engrossed in the newspaper. “I guess.”