Robert Bennett - The Company Man

“No one’s that clean,” said Garvey. “No one passes through Savron and leaves that tiny of a paper trail.”

“No,” said Hayes, thinking. “No one ever does. Think there was anything missing?”

“I can’t say. Had all the essentials. It was weird, though. Weigel asked the other guards if they remembered him. Some said they did, a little.”

“But they weren’t sure.”

“Not sure, no.”

“Hm. I’ll want those records, if you can get them. Give them to Sam for me. We’ll store them somewhere for further examination.”

“Why?”

“Skeletons in the closet,” said Hayes. “Everyone has a few misdeeds in their past. And if those records turn out to be lying, then Tazz’s must be pretty sizable, wouldn’t you say?”

“How are you going to come at it?”

“By asking him,” Hayes said simply.

Garvey laughed. “He’s in hiding. You said it yourself. No one knows where he is. How do you plan to crack that?”

“You leave that to me. What are you going to do?”

“Get what I can on Skiller from Samantha. She’s going to be turning it in at Central later today. Then I’ll work that and I’ll keep working the trolley and the tennie murders. Just keep working it until I’ve worked it to death and then I’ll take the corpse apart. And yeah, I’ll catch other murders in the meantime. Pile them up if I have to. Can’t work them, this is priority.”

“What will your squad think of that?”

“What they usually think. That I’m fucking odd. For working alone and working with you, and working directly under Collins. And they won’t like me for it, but what are you going to do.”

“Hm,” said Hayes contemplatively. “You know, I remember the first time I was quite impressed with you, Garv.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yes. That rifle robbery down close to Blanton. Old man had been shot three times and someone spotted a boy running away with an ancient Winchester. Fucking cowboy gun. But you had no other witnesses and nothing to go by. So you trawled every gun shop in town, legal and otherwise. Took you a few weeks, and I don’t know how you kept it as quiet as you did, but you did. So you got word of a Winchester belonging to some wharf rat down at the docks, something he had taken out to show off to the other firearm fans, and when you couldn’t win a warrant you sat on the house in the freezing cold, day and night, for four days. And then the little bastard tried again. Caught kicking in the door of some old biddy’s house, cowboy rifle in hand. He folded like a wet napkin once you sat him down in the cells. Then you caught a cold and were bedridden with a fever for a week after. I thought you wouldn’t make it. Remember that?”

“Yeah.”

“That was good. Good police work. Just working it to death, something always shakes loose, yes?”

“Sometimes. Other times not.”

“Think something will shake loose here?”

“I don’t know.” He took his hat and ran a finger along the brim. Then he said, “Thanks, by the way.”

“For what?”

“For identifying my John Doe. For finding him and his boy. I appreciate that.”

“All part of the fun.”

Garvey stood and made to leave, then he stopped and looked back at Hayes from the edge of the curtain, eyes hooded and wounded all at once.

“What?” said Hayes.

“You know, if you stopped chasing the dragon for a while you’d do a better job,” he said.

“Fuck you,” said Hayes. He turned his face away.

“You would, you know.”

“If I didn’t take my medicine I wouldn’t be able to work. My head would burn up.”

Garvey nodded, thinking. Then said, “No. It’s not that.”

“Fuck you. What do you know?”

“I know that you were going to the dens long before you ever had an attack,” said Garvey. “So it must just mean you don’t care about the work that much.”

Then he walked away and left Hayes to sit in his bed. It may have been his ears but the sound seemed to die away until everything was silent.

At the end of the afternoon Samantha finished compiling everything she had on Skiller, having turned the man’s story into a hard, stable little pile of sanity in the center of her cluttered office. It had taken less time than she’d originally imagined, yet she’d been somewhat disappointed by how unremarkable his life was. After all this time of Garvey thinking of Skiller as his sad little Grail she had expected his story to be more dramatic, more meaningful. But she found he was just a man after all, his least important moments laid down in the McNaughton records like everyone else’s.

John Neil Skiller, born 1882 in Lincoln, Nebraska. Hired by McNaughton in 1902, one of the very first members of the Air Vessel Foundry, back when the alloys were still experimental and no one was entirely sure how they’d behave when cooled. No supervisor complaints or acclamations for him, nothing more than “adequate.” Sometimes if the supervisor was feeling particularly generous he was also “punctual.” He seemed to be a quiet man, always in the background, yet never catching any attention. Rarely commended, never promoted. Just had his wages cut down year after year, dollars shaved off bit by bit. Suddenly she thought of Garvey, sitting beside him in the dark morgue of the Department, and she could think of no one better to shepherd the man’s memory to justice.

She picked up the file and went down to the front to hail a cab. She was interrupted by one of the company limousine drivers, who waved her down and told her a gentleman was waiting for her. She approached the limousine cautiously. Then her heart sank when she saw Evans seated in the back of the limousine, knees together and hands quaintly in his lap. He smiled wide when he saw her and said, “Miss Fairbanks! Please, come closer and let me get a look at you.”

“Good day, sir,” she said. “Are you doing well?”

“Oh, well enough. It’s very good to see you up and about. Are you hurt? Or ill?”

“No, Mr. Evans, I’m fine.”

“That’s good to hear. Excellent to hear, really, it is. Would you care to take a ride with me today?”

Samantha hesitated, then said, “Certainly, sir.”

Evans leaned to the left to speak to the driver as she climbed in. “Cheery and Fifth, Willie?”

“Yes, sir,” said the driver, and shut the partition. The car spun up and soon they eased off down the street.

“I was aghast to hear what happened to you, Miss Fairbanks,” Evans told her once they began moving. “Just stunned. It’s hard to believe such things happen in this city. It really is, isn’t it?”

She nodded.

“That strange apparition. You saw it?” he asked.

“Yes. I suppose I did. Though I’m not sure what I saw.”

“Certainly, certainly. Have you… adjusted, though?”

She attempted a smile. “I’m alive and working. It’s easier not to think.”

“I suppose I can understand that. And how is Mr. Hayes?”

“I’m not sure. When I left him in the hospital he was alive and well but still asleep. Have you seen him?”

Evans shook his head. “Mr. Hayes’s health is being taken note of. Just not by me, personally. I was somewhat surprised, however, to find your investigation had taken you out into the city,” he said. He frowned a little. “Especially so far as the Porter neighborhoods. Unless I’m mistaken, I believe at the time you were supposed to be speaking to Mr. Ryan? Of the Vulcanization Plant?”

“Yes… yes, well, Mr. Hayes had discovered that there was another link between McNaughton and the Bridgedale. A previous homicide being investigated by one of the detectives working the murders.”