Robert Bennett - The Company Man

As he tried to take in the room around him he felt as if he were in the belly of something alive and malignant and hungry, and there littered on the floor of this monstrous stomach were staring eyes and grasping hands and faces dull and blank and soulless. His eyes adjusted and he tried to count the figures in the dark. There were around a dozen of them, it seemed. More brutalized than in any murder Hayes had seen in years.

“Oh, my,” said Hayes softly.

“Yeah,” said Garvey. “Oh, my is right.” He shook out a handkerchief and stuffed his nose and mouth into it. Hayes did not, for even though Garvey was murder police Hayes was far more used to the scent of blood and putrefaction.

Hayes swallowed and shook off the shock. Then morbid curiosity took him over, an old and not entirely welcome friend, and he began studying the bodies nearest to him. He found their poses were queerly passive, as though they had simply dropped, as if something had passed through the trolley car and pulled the life right out of them. And yet they were so ravaged. One man sat in his seat with his back and neck open in a dozen places, one hand still on his handhold. Behind him a woman sat on the floor, sunk to the ground with her knees and thighs below her, smooth white flesh spattered with arterial spray and her face calmly fixed as though contemplating a troubling question. At the end of the car the conductor lay facedown on his control board, still in his seat. Behind him a group of three men lay in a heap around one of the poles. Had it not been for the wounds dotting their chests and thighs you would have thought they had simply become tired and decided to lie down to sleep.

There were more. Many more. Propped up in the seats or prostrate on the floor. Each of them serenely drooping as if the little motor that made their hearts beat had simply stripped a few gears and given up. Behind them the windows were lined with hairline cracks, but there was no sign of impact in the car.

“Do you know anything about this?” said Collins behind him.

Hayes looked at them. Took in their shattered figures and glassy stares. Then he stooped and said, “Well.”

“Well what?” said Garvey from behind a handkerchief.

Hayes looked into one’s face. He put a finger on the man’s white chin and moved his head up to look into his eyes. The skin sagged at the edges, like he was wearing a mask and his true face was hidden somewhere below the paling flesh. “I know this one,” Hayes said softly.

“You do?” said Collins.

“Yes,” said Hayes. “I do. Edward Walton. He works-worked-in the Southern District. Can’t remember what he did. He worked under McClintock. Fellow I interviewed. That’s how I know him. He’s a unioner. Remember, Garv? I sent you some information on him. Just yesterday.”

“I’ve been out of the office for the past two days,” Garvey said.

“Damn,” muttered Hayes. “Too late, I suppose.” He stood and moved through the mass of corpses, carefully stepping among them with wobbly, balletic jumps. “There’s Naylor,” he said. “And Evie. And Eppleton. And Craft. They’re dirty, all of them. Only a few are suspected murderers and saboteurs in my book. The others are just sympathizers. I don’t know who the women are. That one’s a whore and no mistake.” Hayes took a seat between two corpses, surveying the mute crowd. “They’re all mine, for the most part. Or were. All McNaughton boys, and all dirty.”

Garvey and Collins stared around their feet. “Jesus Christ,” said Collins. “Why didn’t I hear about this?”

“Do you think it’s sabotage?” asked Hayes. “Someone sabotaged the line?”

Garvey shook his head. “No. The trolley car coasted in like it does every day, right on time. Just odd that its passengers all happened to be dead. How it got in with a dead conductor is beyond me. Scared the hell out of the people on the platform. And besides, look at them, and the trolley. It didn’t crash. No sign of sabotage. But their wounds, it’s like they’ve been…”

“Stabbed,” finished Collins. “Like someone hopped on board and then ran through, stabbing them all. Stabbed all to hell.”

Hayes turned one over with his foot. They all had the exact same wound, a thin puncture mark about an inch long. “Maybe someone stopped the car and did just that.”

“I told you,” said Garvey. “Trolley was on time, almost exactly.”

“So?”

“Well, according to the stops from the platform before, the window for the murders is about, oh, a little less than four minutes.”

Hayes stared at him. “That’s not possible.”

“Yeah. That’s the crux, ain’t it?”

“Someone stabbed all these people to death in four minutes?”

“Or something did.”

“And none of them resisted,” said Collins, stooping. “Look at their hands. No scratches. No cuts. No bruises.”

Hayes frowned, doing the same. “And no witnesses.”

“None,” said Garvey.

Hayes turned to look out the window down the tunnel. It was black as night behind the car. He wondered what was wandering in there, or what might be waiting down the rails. Then he lifted his hand and touched the cracks in the window before him. They ran throughout the other panes as well, all of them slightly broken but never wholly shattered. He looked up. The bulbs in the roof of the car had completely broken. Little half-moons of white glass stuck out of the sockets, the filaments of the bulbs completely exposed.

Then Hayes cocked his head suddenly, like he had heard something. He made a soft hmph, then turned to walk down to the conductor’s chair.

“Where are you going?” said Garvey.

“There’s something wrong down here,” he said. He looked carefully from body to body.

“What do you mean? What’s wrong?”

“I just… I think there’s someone else,” he said.

“Someone else? Someone else what?”

“Someone else in here with us.”

Garvey gave Hayes a sharp look. “You sure about this?”

Hayes nodded absently as he looked through the trolley.

“Are you sure this little shit has all his dogs barking?” Collins asked.

“I’d let him work,” said Garvey. He crossed his arms and fixed his eyes on the floor like he was pretending not to see anything.

“It’s definitely over here,” Hayes said. He looked down at the conductor. The man’s cheeks and forehead were streaked with blood. He grimaced. “Maybe down below?” He stooped to look under the conductor’s brass control panel. He grunted, then pushed on the conductor’s leg to move it aside.

“Goddamn it, Don, don’t let him move stuff around,” said Collins.

“I’m not moving stuff around, I just… I swear, I heard something.”

“Heard what?” Collins asked.

“Something,” Hayes said irritably. “I just can’t see.” He shoved at the conductor again.

“Get out of there,” said Collins. “I’ve got plenty of shit on my hands right now, I don’t need you-”

But his words were cut off as the conductor jerked once, shuddered, and then lifted his head to stare into Hayes’s face where he squatted beside him on the floor. They gaped at one another for a moment, and then both of them cried out and leaped backward, but the space was so small and cramped that they both crashed into the wall, Hayes cracking his head as he did so.

“Holy God, he’s alive!” Garvey shouted.

To everyone’s disbelief the conductor swiveled his head to look around him, face terrified, and stared at the bodies beyond. His eyes rolled madly, and he thrust himself up against the windows as though he was trying to force an escape. A strangled noise started from somewhere within the man and grew into a flat-out scream. He lifted his hands to his face and began clawing at his cheeks, howling wildly until his cries formed words: “No! No, no, let me go! Don’t hurt me, let me go!”