James Benn - A Mortal Terror

“I’ve been thinking about shooting out that light,” Cole said, his voice even and low, eyes on the crowd below. We were on a flat section of the roof, a narrow catwalk at the corner of the building. Above us the roofline sloped into the night. Below us, a long fall to hard ground. A knee-high wall was all that separated me from air. It did less for Cole. He sat on it, his boot heels dangling into space. A. 45 automatic rested in his hand, and he gestured with it lazily toward the searchlight.

“I’ll do it for you,” I said, hoping for a chance to establish a common bond. I untangled my legs and stood. Or more accurately, leaned against the roof, as far from the edge as possible.

“Don’t come any closer,” Cole said.

“Yeah. Or else you’ll jump. Pretty obvious. What’s with the gun? Can’t make up your mind which way to check out?”

“What? Why’d they send you out here anyway, Lieutenant, to crack jokes?” He still didn’t look at me.

“No, I’m serious. I was a cop back home, saw my fair share of suicides. Usually they picked one method and stuck to it. Did you have a plan when you came up here?” One thing my dad taught me is that it’s a rookie move to tell any jumper that this too shall pass, you’ll feel better in the morning, that sort of stuff. It’s likely he’s already heard it, and it didn’t stop him from climbing to the top of the highest thing he could find. Sometimes a person would jump just so he wouldn’t have to listen to another idiot lecture him. No, best thing was to go right at him, ask him what he planned to do. It let him know you took him seriously, that you knew he was in pain. Then, maybe, he might talk.

“The gun is for anyone who tries to stop me,” Cole said, finally giving me a quick glance.

“Listen, if you think I’m going to grab you and let you wrestle me off that ledge as you make your swan dive, you got another thing coming. This is as close as I get. Tell me what happened today.”

“Today? What do you mean?”

“You didn’t come up here yesterday. Or the day before. Not that I know of, anyway. So what got you on this ledge today?”

“You wouldn’t understand. You couldn’t, or you’d be up here yourself. I keep seeing them. Especially the little girl. I see her in my dreams, and she’s alive. She’s holding her doll, like kids do, you know? Then I wake up, and I know she’s dead. I can’t go on any longer, I can’t.” Cole spoke in a deliberate, slow voice. The voice of a man who was sure of himself. This wasn’t a cry for help; this was a guy in the last moments of his life. I needed to get him thinking in a different direction.

“Why were you looking for me today? Was it about the case?”

“It’s nothing. Meaningless.”

“Come on, Cole, help me out. If you jump, I’ll be all alone on this investigation. Tell me what you know.” What I knew was that this wasn’t the time to ask about dead squad mates from the 3rd Division.

“I don’t know anything. Except that nothing matters, no matter what you do. You try to do good, but it turns evil. You try to save lives, but you end up taking them.”

“This is war, Cole.”

“Innocent lives. I can’t forget them. He won’t let me. I can’t carry this any longer.” He thumped his chest, once, then again, harder. “It’ll never go away, never.”

“Who won’t let you?”

“He was my friend,” Cole said, his voice breaking. “I see it in his face, see everything all over again.” He began to sob now, rocking back and forth on the ledge. I reached out to steady him, but his gun hand was up in a flash. “Don’t touch me!” His face was contorted in agony as tears streamed down his cheeks.

“Okay, okay. Just tell me, Cole. Who are you talking about?”

“Everybody wants something, don’t they? You do, the army, the Krauts, you all want something. Answers. Blood. Promises. But I’ve got nothing left to give. I’m going crazy, I can’t take it anymore. I don’t want to see that face for the rest of my life. I see that doll too, a rag doll in a red dress. Even when I’m awake, I see it. I don’t want to live like that. I can’t.”

I heard a noise behind me, and hoped it was Kaz.

“Shoot the light,” I said. “Shoot the damn searchlight!” It was all I could think of.

“There’s people down there. Are you nuts?”

“You’re a combat infantryman, Sergeant Cole. You telling me you can’t hit a big, blazing searchlight dead center at this range?”

“What do you care?”

“You’re the one about to kill yourself, so what do you care?” It was like daring a kid to break a window back home. What are you, chicken? I heard the door move on its hinges.

“Okay,” Cole said, taking the dare. “But first, in case someone shoots back, I have something to give you.” He reached into his pocket, and tossed a double strand of pearls into my hand. Pearls? Smooth white pearls. I was dumbstruck.

“What’s this?”

“You’re the detective,” he said. He stood, balancing his weight, and raised his arm, aiming the. 45 at the searchlight. A murmur rose up from the crowd, and I hoped it covered the sound of Kaz coming through the door.

It didn’t. I leapt, but Cole saw my move and sidestepped away from me. I came down hard on the edge of the granite wall, Kaz hanging onto my legs, the breath knocked out of me. I looked up at Cole, surprised at how agile he was, and tried to think of what to say.

“Don’t jump.” It was all that I could come up with, and it came out in a wheeze as I gulped air.

“I’m not going to,” he said, and took another careful step away from me, sliding his feet along the narrow ledge. He raised the automatic and placed the muzzle under his chin. He didn’t move as the searchlight played over him and the crowd below gasped. He stood, rock solid, until the slightest movement of his finger shattered the night with a sharp noise, blood, and bone.

“Who was that up there?” Phil Einsmann asked. He’d been coming upstairs as Kaz and I headed down, and he turned to descend with us. He handed me a handkerchief, and I must have looked at him dumbly because he made a rubbing motion. I ran the handkerchief across my face and it came away red-streaked. I’ve never gotten used to the tremendous power of the human heart, and I don’t mean its capacity to love. I mean as a pump. The last mechanical function at the moment of death by violence, the release of crimson as if the body is leaving its final mark upon this Earth. And on anyone who happens to be close by.

“It’s not a story, Phil. Not one his folks back home need to read, anyway.”

“I’m not asking as a reporter, Billy. I have a lot of friends here. Who was it?”

“Jim Cole. Sergeant with CID. Did you know him?”

“No, not really. I heard he was new with CID, saw him around, but those guys are a tight-lipped bunch. What set him off?”

“Hard to say.” I meant it.

I handed Einsmann his handkerchief, but he told me to keep it. Couldn’t blame him. I introduced him to Kaz, and then left him to go to CID. I didn’t feel like talking right now, and Kaz could tell. He took the handkerchief and wiped the side of my neck. The top of my jacket was covered in tiny dots of drying blood, and I hoped it wasn’t too noticeable. We walked among people filtering back to what they had been doing before the crazy sergeant shot himself on the roof. Shaking their heads, telling each other it was unbelievable, the poor guy must have been off his rocker. All the things people say to put as much distance between their own lives and the suddenness of death.

That was one of the terrifying things about being on the line. There was so little distance. Death was all around you, and not just during combat. It could be a mine where you didn’t expect it, a sniper shot, or a random shelling. It’s why you lived in a hole in the ground, getting as much distance as possible between yourself and the rest of the world.