Robert Bennett - The Company Man

“Goddamn it, get ahold of him!” shouted Collins, but it was too late. The conductor shook his head and barged through the trolley car and out the broken doors. He leaped down onto the trolley platform and then wheeled around when he was met by an enclosing ring of officers. A few of them brandished revolvers, uncertain where to point them.

“Don’t shoot!” Garvey yelled. “Don’t shoot him, damn it!”

The officers shouted for him to get down, down on the ground, but the man would not listen. He reeled back and forth, eyes still wide and mad, raising his arms and shouting for them not to hurt him. Finally one of the larger detectives tackled him and wrapped around his legs, bringing him to the ground. The conductor wept and struggled with him and clawed at the floor. Several patrolmen ran to him, and one took out his truncheon and raised it high.

“Stop!” shouted a voice.

The officers looked over their shoulders to see Samantha furiously striding toward them. They paused, unused to dealing with well-dressed women, particularly ones who were shouting at them.

“Stop?” said the policeman with the truncheon.

“Yes, stop!”

“Why? We fucking said to get down and he didn’t!”

“That’s because he’s deaf, you damn fool, can’t you see?” she said angrily. She pushed through them to kneel beside the conductor’s head. He stared at her, still crazed and babbling, but she gently took his head and held it still. She touched his ears. There was a small flow of blood running from within them and down his cheeks. “The man can’t hear a word you’re saying. Can you?” she asked the conductor kindly.

“Don’t hurt me,” he whimpered. “Please, don’t hurt me.”

“We won’t,” she said. She shook her head widely so he could see, then fixed her face with the most comforting and gentle expression she could. “We won’t hurt you.”

Collins, Garvey, and Hayes climbed down out of the trolley car to join them. “He’s deaf?” said Collins.

“Yes,” she said. “His eardrums have burst. He just hasn’t realized it yet, I think.” She began making strange gestures before the conductor’s face, looping and knotting her fingers and sometimes tapping them together. The conductor stared at her in confusion.

“What’s that you’re doing?” Garvey asked.

“Sign language,” said Samantha. “What little I know of it.” She sighed and dropped her hands. “But he doesn’t appear to know any at all.”

“He doesn’t?”

“No.”

Hayes looked at the man a moment longer, then stared back down the tunnel. “So he’s been recently deafened,” he said. “Probably by whatever happened to the trolley car. Wouldn’t you say?”

Samantha did not say anything to that. The conductor had begun weeping, and she took out a handkerchief to dry his tears.

Collins and the other detectives took the conductor and sat him before a small blackboard, where they scribbled out questions. It took some time to convince the man he was deaf, and when they finally succeeded he broke down again and wept for some time. Finally he came around to read their questions and loudly answer them, often rambling on incoherently, ignorant that the officers were signaling for him to slow down. Samantha and Hayes sat in the dark on a station bench a ways away, watching.

“Fuck me,” said Hayes. “I hope none of the others spring to life. I nearly shat myself.” He turned to look at her. “Where’d you learn sign language?”

“When I was a nurse. There’d be young men who’d been shelled and were deafened. I didn’t learn much, just enough to ask questions.”

“Well, you’re full of surprises, aren’t you.”

“That man needs medical attention,” she said. “He’s in pain.”

“They don’t want the crowd to see him yet. They’ll want to keep this controlled for as long as possible and get all the answers they can.”

“But he’s in pain, Mr. Hayes.”

“If they didn’t, they’d have a riot, and we’d have a lot more pain.”

Samantha sighed and stared at the trolley car beyond. “What happened here, Mr. Hayes?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Did you see?”

“See?”

“See them. The bodies.”

“From a ways away. When Mr. Garvey had the light on. Or Detective, I should say.” She swallowed. “I wasn’t sure what I saw.”

Hayes nodded. “I’d be fucking glad of that.”

They both shivered. It was cold down in the trolley lines, close to the ocean and far away from the warmth of the city, and with the station so empty it was a gray and eerie place. The officers became dark figures passing back and forth in the spectral light of the station lamps. After some time with the conductor Garvey walked over to them, reviewing his notes.

“Well?” asked Hayes.

“His name is Gilbert Lambeth,” he said. “Been a conductor for the Evesden Lines for nearly five years. Knows his trade, talks in a lot of engineering gobbledygook.”

“Did he say anything useful, though?”

“I wish. He says he was making the stops, as usual. Turns out it’s mostly automated. He hadn’t made any adjustment to the trolley’s schedule, not a second. He left the last platform, the Stirsdale platform, at the right time and was just going through the tunnel as normal when he heard a…” Garvey flipped through his little notebook. “A loud noise. A high-pitched squeal, he says.”

“A squeal?” said Hayes.

“Like metal on metal. Then there was a pop like a bomb went off, and the lights went out, and he passed out. The trolley car coasted in automatically, but Gilbert wasn’t awake to tell it to continue. Then he just sat there until you woke his poor ass up. And that’s it. That’s all he’s given us.”

Hayes thinned his eyes. “That almost sounds like a planned attack.”

“Yeah. It does.”

“Why would anyone want to do that?”

Garvey sighed. “I have a few ideas. I found something interesting.” He took out a sketch of a little symbol of a hammer inside a bell. “See this?”

“Yes?” said Hayes.

“This was tattooed on my John Doe. In the canal.”

“Who?”

“The guy. The guy you helped me fish out of the damn canal? Six weeks ago or so? Mr. Four Hundred and Eighty-six?”

“Oh. Oh, right. Wait, so that sign was tattooed on him?”

“Yeah. It was on his arm. And there’s eleven dead passengers in there, and nine of them have the same tattoo. All in the same place.” He tapped his arm. “Right there.”

“ How many dead?” said Samantha softly.

“Eleven.”

“Good… good Lord.”

“Yeah. This is the worst yet. The worst by far.” He paused. “Someone is killing unioners. And anyone they’re close to.”

There was a pause as Hayes and Samantha considered that.

“Have you seen many unioners with that tattoo?” asked Hayes.

“Well. No. Just the recent dead ones.”

“But even so, who would want them dead?” Hayes said, standing up. He walked to the edge of the platform and looked down at the sooty rails and the blackened stone floor. “I mean, who’d even be able to do something like this? Slaughter everyone on a trolley without even slowing it down?”

“You sure those names are all you can give us?” said a voice.

Hayes turned to see Collins standing not far off, watching him with harsh eyes. “What?” he said.

“You sure there’s nothing else you know? At all?” asked Collins.

Hayes shook his head. “Nothing.”

Collins looked at him for a long time. Eyes uncertain. Hands at his hips, uncomfortably close to his gun.

“What?” asked Hayes.

“There’s nothing you’re hiding from us?” Collins asked, this time quieter.