Ben Winters - The Last Policeman

My Impala rolls through the gigantic parking lot, the asphalt painted black and wet with runoff. It’s 9:23.

There is only one thing left that I don’t understand, and that’s why . Why would someone do something like this—why would this person do these things ?

I get out of the car and walk into the hospital.

I have to apprehend the suspect. And even more so, I have to know the answer.

In the crowded lobby I loiter behind a column, hunched over to minimize my height, my bandaged face hidden behind the Monitor like a spy. After a few minutes I see the murderer coming, striding purposefully down the hall, right on time. It’s urgent, important, work to be done in the basement.

I’m hunched in the hospital hallway, twitching with nervousness, ready for action.

The motive, on the one hand, is obvious: money. The same reason anybody steals and then sells controlled substances and commits murders to cover up those activities. Money. Especially now, high demand, low supply, the cost-benefit analysis on drug sales is skewed, someone is going to take the risk, someone is going to put together a small fortune.

But—somehow—it’s wrong. For this killer, for these crimes. These risks. Murder and then double murder, and worse than murder, and for what, for money? The risk of jail, of execution, of throwing away what little time is left? Just money?

Soon I’ll know all the answers. I’m going to go down there, it’s going to work, and then this will be over. The thought of it, the whole thing being over, rolls over me, inevitable, joyless, cold, and I clutch my newspaper. Peter’s killer—Naomi’s killer—gets on the elevator, and a few seconds later, I go down the stairs.

The morgue is cold. The autopsy lights are off, and it’s dim and hushed. The walls are gray. It’s like being inside a refrigerator, inside a coffin. I step into the chilling silence just in time to see Erik Littlejohn shake hands with Dr. Fenton, who gives him a curt, businesslike nod.

“Sir.”

“Good morning, Doctor. As I believe I mentioned on the phone, I do have a visitor coming at ten, but in the meantime I am happy to be of service.”

“Of course,” says Fenton. “Thanks.”

Littlejohn’s voice is hushed and sensitive and appropriate. The director of Spiritual Services. The gold beard, the big eyes, the aura of respect. A handsome new-looking jacket of creamy mahogany leather, a gold watch.

But money’s not enough—a gold watch—a new jacket—to do all that he’s done, the horrors that he has committed. It’s not enough. I can’t accept it. I don’t care what’s coming toward us in the sky.

I tuck myself against a wall, in a far corner, close by the door, the door leading back down the hallway, to the elevator.

Littlejohn turns now and nods his head deeply, respectfully, to Officer McConnell, who is supposed to be looking bereaved, in character, but who instead looks irritated, probably because she is following my instructions, wearing a skirt and blouse and carrying a black pocketbook, wearing her hair down, no ponytail.

“Good morning, ma’am,” says Peter Zell’s murderer. “My name is Erik. Dr. Fenton has asked me to be present this morning, and I understand that that is your wish.”

McConnell nods gravely and launches into the little speech we wrote for her.

“My husband, Dale, he went and he shot himself with his old hunting rifle,” says McConnell. “I don’t know why he did it. I mean, I do know, but I thought—” and then she plays at being unable to continue, her voice trembles and catches, me thinking, there you go, very impressive, Officer McConnell . “I thought we’d have the rest of it together, the rest of our time together.”

“The wound is rather severe,” says Dr. Fenton, “and so Ms. Taylor and I agreed that she might benefit from your presence in viewing her husband’s body for the first time.”

“Of course,” he murmurs, “absolutely.” My eyes flicker over his body, top to bottom, looking for the bulge of a firearm. If he’s got one, it’s well hidden. I don’t think he does.

Littlejohn smiles at McConnell with radiant kindness, places a reassuring hand on her shoulder, and turns to Fenton.

“And where,” he asks in a delicate undertone, “is Ms. Taylor’s husband now?”

My stomach tightens. I place a hand over my mouth to control the sound of my breathing, to control myself.

“This way,” Fenton answers—and here we are, this is the pivot point of the whole affair, because now she’s leading the two of them—Littlejohn with his gentle hand guiding McConnell, the fake widow—leading the two of them across the room, toward where I am, toward the hallway.

“We’ve laid the body out,” explains Dr. Fenton, “in the old chapel.”

“What?”

Littlejohn hesitates, a small stutter step, his eyes flashing with fear and confusion, and my heart catches in my throat, because I’m right—I knew I was right, and yet I cannot believe it. I’m staring at him, imagining those soft hands winding a long black belt around Peter Zell’s neck, slowly tightening. Imagining a pistol trembling in his hand, Naomi’s big black eyes.

A moment more, Palace. A moment more .

“I believe you are mistaken, Doctor,” he says quietly to Fenton.

“No mistake,” she replies briskly, smiling tightly, reassuringly at McConnell. She’s enjoying this, Fenton. Littlejohn keeps pushing, what choice does he have? “No, you are incorrect, that room is out of service. It is locked.”

“Yes,” I say, and Littlejohn jumps, in this instant he knows exactly what’s going on, he looks around the room and I step out of the darkness with my sidearm raised. “And you have the key. Where is the key, please?”

He looks at me, dumbstruck.

“Where is the key, sir?”

“It’s—” he closes his eyes, opens them again, the blood draining from his face, hope dying in his eyes. “It’s in my office.”

“We’ll go there.”

McConnell has drawn her weapon from her black pocketbook. Fenton stays put, her eyes glinting behind her round glasses, enjoying every second.

“Detective.” Littlejohn steps forward, he’s making an effort, his voice trembling, but he’s trying. “Detective, I can’t imagine—”

“Quiet,” I say. “Quiet, please.”

“Yes, but Detective Palace, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but if you… if you think…”

Feigned confusion distrorts his handsome features. It’s there, the truth is there, even in the fact that my name comes so easily to mind: he’s known exactly who I am since the day I caught this case, since I called his wife to arrange an interview, he’s been on to me, tailing me, interposing himself between me and my ongoing investigation. Encouraging Sophia, for example, to evade my questions, selling her on the attenuated notion that it would upset her father. Selling me on how depressed his brother-in-law was. Watching outside the house, waiting, while I interviewed J. T. Toussaint. And then, a Hail Mary, unhooking the chains on my snow tires.

And he was at Toussaint’s again, the house on Bow Bog Road, scrabbling around looking for the leftover merchandise, the phone numbers, client lists. Looking for the same things I was, except he knew what we were looking for and I didn’t, and then I chased him off before he could think to search the doghouse.

But he had one more trick to play, one more way to shove me in the wrong direction. One more brutal trick to play, and it almost worked.

Officer McConnell steps forward, drawing handcuffs from the small pocketbook, and I say, “Wait.”