James Carol - The Quiet Man

‘He didn’t do it, Winter.’

‘But wouldn’t it be so convenient if he had?’

‘Yes, it would. Unfortunately, life is never that simple, or that neat.’

‘How far to Alexandra Park?’

‘This time of day, it’ll take us twenty minutes to get there. It’s right on the water, not far from your hotel.’

Traffic was light and they made good time. Anderton found a parking space near the park entrance and they got out. Winter lit a cigarette and took a drag. It was the hottest part of the day and the sun was beating down. Not that he was going to start complaining about the heat. As far as he was concerned, sunshine trumped rain any day. He found his sunglasses and put them on. Anderton was already wearing hers.

The park was small. On one side, the water stretched all the way to the horizon. On the other, skyscrapers reached up to touch the impossibly blue sky, and beyond them, the mountains were there to keep things in perspective. However impressive those skyscrapers might be, they had nothing on the mountains. Ten thousand years after the last building had crumbled those mountains would still be standing.

At first glance the bandstand looked as though it had been built a century ago. It was newer than that, though. This one had probably been built to replace the original. It was octagonal and resembled a pagoda. It would have looked great on a postcard. Any angle would have worked. The water as a backdrop, or the buildings and mountains. The brown paint helped it to blend in with the trees.

Winter walked over to the steps and sat down. Anderton sat down beside him. For a while he sat there smoking his cigarette and taking in the view. It was good to have a moment to slow down and take stock. Most investigative work progressed so slowly it was like wading through treacle. That wasn’t the case here. Things were moving fast, and that was great. The downside was that something important might be missed. When you were acting in haste it was all too easy to skip over a vital clue.

‘How’s your face?’ Anderton asked, breaking the silence.

‘Sore. Hooper’s got a hell of a right hook.’

Anderton snorted and shook her head. ‘I could hit harder.’

‘Easy for you to say. You weren’t the one being hit.’ Winter took a drag on his cigarette. ‘Why did you become a cop?’

‘Because I hate injustice. Always have done. When I was at school, if I saw someone being bullied, I had to get involved.’

‘Even if it ended up with you getting your ass kicked?’

Anderton laughed. ‘Yeah, that happened a couple of times. Nobody likes having their fun spoiled. Especially bullies. It didn’t stop me, though. As soon as I was able to I joined the police. So, what about you? How did you end up in the FBI?’

‘That’s one of those questions that doesn’t have a straightforward answer.’

‘Of course it doesn’t. But something happened to push you in that direction.’

An image of his mom jumped into his head. She was sitting in their cheap little landlord-decorated apartment weeping silently to herself. She was so drunk she didn’t even know he was there. This might have been an actual memory. At the same time it could have been an amalgamation of memories, like the photo composite. Coming home from school to find his mom drunk and weeping was not a one-off event. The apartment could have been a composite of memories, too. There had been a whole string of those, each one as bad as the last, all of them blending together to create a depressing whole.

‘After my father was arrested all I wanted was answers,’ he said. ‘How could he have done what he’d done? How could I not have known he was a killer?’ He hesitated, then added, ‘And why did my mom have to suffer so much? She didn’t deserve it. Before the arrest she was so full of life. Afterwards she was just a shadow. It was like my father had reached into her chest and torn her heart out.’

‘I can’t even begin to imagine what it was like.’

‘No, you can’t. No one can. Even Scott and Cody Hooper would struggle to understand because it’s just too personal. Every situation is completely unique. Theirs, mine, everyone’s. I’m fortunate, though. I survived. Not everyone can say that.’

‘How are you getting on with finding those answers?’

Winter laughed and shook his head. ‘Still working on it.’

‘Some questions just don’t want to be answered. You realise that, don’t you?’

‘It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.’

‘Talking of questions, do you think Cody saw the killer?’

Winter took another drag. ‘What I think is that eyewitnesses are hugely unreliable at the best of times. When it comes down to it I’ll take hard forensic evidence over the testimony of someone who thinks they might have seen someone. In this case we’ve got a double whammy in that the photo composite is a complete fabrication.’

‘But,’ Anderton prompted.

‘But the man with the lost dog was real. And something about him resonated with Cody. At the moment the kid is in survival mode, which means that his medulla oblongata is working overtime. That part of the brain doesn’t work by committee. If it sees danger then the klaxons start howling and the warning lights flash, and you’d best pay attention or you’re going to end up getting eaten by the sabre-tooth tiger.’

‘Except we don’t have sabre-tooth tigers any more.’

Winter smiled. ‘No, we don’t.’

‘Also, that part of the brain might be shouting danger, but it doesn’t call the shots. Did you see what happened? Cody started off thinking the dog guy was the killer, then the logical part of his brain kicked in and he talked himself out of it.’

‘I noticed that, too.’

‘Okay, let’s assume that the dog guy is the killer. Where does that lead us?’

Winter took a last pull on his cigarette, then crushed it out and swept it to the edge of the step, out of the way. There was a trash can near the entrance to the park. He’d dispose of it later. Anderton was staring off into the middle distance, thinking hard. Winter glanced around. It was a busy little park, a great place to come and people-watch. There were moms with strollers and moms trailing toddlers. There were joggers and a couple of teenagers walking hand-in-hand. And there was a woman walking a dog.

It was easy to imagine Cody and his mom sat on a blanket eating their picnic. Easy to imagine the guy from the composite walking over and giving them some sob story about how he’d lost his dog. Maybe his hair was shorter than in the composite picture. He definitely would have looked different. Maybe a lot different, maybe only a little. It was easy to imagine him taking his cell out and showing the picture of his dog to Cody and his mom. Easy to imagine him charming them. Because that was the thing. Some serial killers could be so charming. You want to think that they’re loners, that you’d spot them straight away, but it just didn’t work that way. The most dangerous ones were the chameleons, and that’s what they were dealing with here, someone who could hide in plain sight without raising suspicions. Winter took a moment to go over what Cody had told them, looking for anything that stood out. The thing he kept coming back to was the cell-phone picture of the dog.

‘Why didn’t the dog guy have a flyer?’ He put the question out there, then glanced at Anderton, looking for a reaction.

‘Okay, I’m listening.’

‘According to Cody, he claimed his dog had been missing for a week. If that happens you hit your computer and find the cutest picture you’ve got and make a flyer. You have LOST DOG in bold capital letters at the top. Then you have a paragraph or two saying where it got lost and how much it’s going to be missed. Then you have details of the reward. And right down at the bottom you’re going to have your telephone number, maybe a whole row of numbers all neatly snipped so they’re easy to tear off. Once you’ve done all that you’re going to print it out and canvas the neighbourhood where the dog went missing. You’ll stick the flyers to streetlamps near your favourite park, and on noticeboards, and hand them out to strangers.’