Chuck Logan - Absolute Zero

For five years J.T. had been putting his farm together; like most of the cops close to fifty in St. Paul, he took the early retirement. He’d dropped the twenty pounds he’d gained when he quit the cigarettes and his face had lost that puffy desk-bloat. Some men age into roundness. J.T. and Broker shared a genetic predisposition toward edges. And farm work and fresh air were putting the taut angles back into J.T.’s Ethiopian cheekbones.

“Hmmmmm,” J.T. said, big hands on his hips, as Amy came around the Ford and waited to be introduced.

“J.T., this is Amy Skoda,” Broker said.

“Uh-huh,” J.T. said, appraising Amy.

“It’s not like that,” Broker said.

J.T. nodded. “Far be it from me to judge people,” though in fact J.T. believed in enforcing the rules with the ardor of an Old Testament Jeremiah. He grinned and tipped back the brim of his hat with more than a little theater. “Hell, I’d fuck around myself except my wife would beat me to death with a number-twelve Weber cast-iron skillet when I was sleeping.” He extended his hand. “J.T. Merryweather. Pleased to meet you.”

Amy took the handshake, looked around. “So what’s it like going from law enforcement to ostrich farmer?”

J.T. grinned slowly. “Comes naturally. I keep them in cages.” Straight-faced, he added, “Actually, my family was heavy into agriculture for quite a while in Georgia, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.”

“Gotcha,” Amy said.

Denise Merryweather walked out on the porch in just a blouse and jeans, hugging herself. She was a well-put-together woman over thirty and under fifty, who was successfully playing hide and seek with age. She had a width of Cherokee blood to her dark face, strong brown eyes, close-cropped hair, and a cross on a chain at her throat.

As a general proposition, she had never approved of Broker.

“Phil Broker,” she said in a noncommittal tone. “Will you and your friend be staying for a while?”

“Hi, Denise, this is Amy Skoda. Amy, this is Denise,” Broker said.

The two women met on the stairs and shook hands.

“It’s not like that,” Amy said. “We are, like, friends.”

“I’m glad,” Denise said. “Because we only have the one spare bedroom. Broker, you get the couch.”

An awkward silence followed Denise’s remark. Amy cocked her head at a distinctive rattling rebound sound from the barn and changed the subject.

“Hoops?” she asked.

“Uh-huh,” said J.T. “I tore out the milking stanchions in the back basement of the barn, poured a new concrete floor, and put up a backboard for my daughter.”

“You did, huh?” Broker said.

“Okay. You helped.”

“Come on inside, honey,” Denise said. “Let these two men whine about getting old.” Denise motioned Amy into the house.

“We are getting old,” Broker said.

“I’ll never unhook a 38D triple-eyelet bra one-handed in under three seconds again, cruising in a ’57 Chevy, that’s for sure,” J.T. said.

“Why, Jarret True Merryweather, I didn’t know you could count past twenty.” Denise flared her eyes as she disappeared through the door with Amy. When the door was shut J.T. scrutinized Broker.

“So who’s the woman?” he asked.

“That thing up north, the guy who got brain dead in the Ely hospital. . Hank Sommer,” Broker said.

“This guy,” said J.T. pointing at the Ford Expedition.

“Yeah,” Broker said. “She was the anesthetist.”

“You fucking her?”

“No, of course not.” Broker was careful not to sound too indignant.

“So what are you doing?” J.T. asked.

Broker chewed his lip, furrowed his brow. “The guy nailed up in the woods by Marine. .”

“Uh-huh. I made some calls. Stovall, the accountant.”

“Stovall was Sommer’s accountant,” Broker said.

J.T. moved his hands back and forth trying to make invisible pieces fit. “Yeah, so?”

Broker debated whether to go further.

J.T. said, “Uh-huh. You’re not quite sure what you’re doing but. .”

“I got this feeling about something,” Broker said.

“I recall a conversation that started this way in eighty-nine. Two hours later I got whacked with a machete.”

“It was the flat of a machete,” Broker protested.

“It was a machete. It broke the skin,” J.T. insisted, starting to hitch up his coat sleeve.

“Look,” Broker said. “I have to take this car back.”

“You need me to follow you, give you a ride?”

“Nah, I’ll hang out with Sommer’s wife for a while. She’ll give me a lift back here.”

J.T. thought for a moment, then squinted. “You’re holding out on me,” he said.

“A little,” Broker said. He turned and walked toward the big Ford.

The Buddhists say — the mind is a monkey chasing its tail, suffering and desire going round and round. Hank had that monkey scampering inside his skull, treating his brain like a television remote. Pushing buttons. Throwing it down. Picking it up, chewing on it, drooling on it. Peeing on it. A goddamn electrical shitstorm of neurons and electrons blazed behind his eyes .

Then, something clicked. The static cleared and the picture came on.

Came on big-time. Snap, crackle, and zap. Digital high res, fiber-optic, surround-sound. ON.

Lights, camera, action. And what a picture. Almost like his perception and intelligence have become more acute in feverish overload. Burning up the wires. You and me, Jerry Lee.

Great balls of fire.

And he sees and hears.

His buddy, Allen Falken. Dead-Eye Doc himself.

A whole corridor of emptiness now filled up with detailed memory. The last face he saw before the icy black ink pumped out of his heart and down-flooded him inside until only his mind survived, hooked to the aqua lung of his heart and lungs and cast him into inner darkness to float in the nonspecific blackness inside his skin.

Last face. First face.

Allen. Smooth, Teutonic Allen, every hair in place and looking like a young, fit Billy Graham.

Handsome but not too handsome. Vain but in moderation.

There was some split screen going on, some interior backfill of images, the moraine of his life, the clutter of his personal album. But memory insisted on being very vivid, painfully boosting the resolution.

And it was like one of those Yogi Berra Zen pronouncements that illuminate a universe of everyday pain and comedy and hopes and dreams. The “This Is It” of your life.

Allen, sitting there, talking in his best bedside manner.

There was a sensation like when the roller coaster slows at the end of the ride, and Hank felt the loopy circuit of his eyes start to steady down, then stop. Hank rotated his eyes consciously, blinked consciously. Allen, absorbed in his casual soliloquy, missed it.

Missed it because Allen, good ole cautious, quiet Casper Milquetoast Allen, was saying that he finally took a chance.

No one’s looking. The syringe. Succinylcholine. A paralytic. Then turn off the monitor.

I see. At first it’s a mistake. Then it’s more like an accident on purpose. Uh-huh. Then it’s deliberate.

The nurse and the anesthetist take the blame.

The linx.

Blond woman. Young. Sharp and a little sassy. Liked her.

Allen. Fucker. Sitting on the bed. Patting my knee.

First you saved my life, then as an afterthought you killed me. I see. The first covers the tracks of the second.

Thought it would kill me. That’s the antiseptic thinking of the surgeon. But it’s hard to kill a man, Allen. Only sure way is to cut off his head.