Ray Wood: Schrödinger's Gun

“Kitty, then,” I said, jumping with both feet into the universe that kept us on good terms. Her head lifted slightly. Her face was buried under a snowdrift of makeup. “Could you tell me about the last time you saw your husband? I know it will be tough to talk about. Remember, though—we want to help you. We want to find whoever did this.”

She nodded, once, and drew a Marlboro from the pack I offered her. It took her a couple tries to get it to her lips.

“Yesterday,” she said, once she had taken a drag, “Johnny came home about six.”

I nodded encouragingly. Watching her suck on the cigarette was making me crave a smoke myself, but I forced my attention onto the possibilities the heisen was throwing at me. The more Kitty’s story varied between universes, the more likely it was that she was making it up as she went along; the more similar, the more likely she was telling me the truth—or that the story had been carefully rehearsed. Shadows of those possibilities stretched out on either side of us, rows of doppelgangers interviewing and being interviewed, as though Kitty and I were caught between two mirrors.

“…and he went out again at around seven thirty,” Kitty said. “He—”

“—said he needed to go back to his office—

“—wouldn’t tell me where he was going. Said it was nothing to do with me—

“—didn’t say a word when I asked him where he was off to—

“—and he left. By eight o’clock I was getting worried. By nine I was imagining all these terrible things that could’ve happened to him. By eleven… I got a cab over to his office on West 21st. Heard a gun go off as I was getting out.”

“Did you see anything?”

She stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray on the desk and twisted her handkerchief around her finger.

“A man,” three Kittys said in unison. “Running down the street. I didn’t see his face. He might—I think he was wearing a hat.” She glanced up at me. “After that I—I went into Johnny’s office and I saw—I found him—lying—”

She pressed the handkerchief to her mouth. Her shoulders shook.

“Take as long as you need.”

“I ran all the way to a callbox on 20th,” she said, “and called the cops. I didn’t—I couldn’t believe it. Him just lying there, I mean. He never meant no harm, Detective, I swear…”

I poured her a glass of water. She was just a kid, when it came down to it—eighteen, nineteen; easily young enough to be my daughter. Too young to be married to some dead gangster.

“Here.” I held the glass out to her.

“Thanks.”

—the water falls into her lap: for a second, the young woman drops her guard—

I jerked my hand back as Kitty’s fingers closed around the top of the glass. The rim slipped underneath her thumb and the whole thing dropped into her lap.

“Ah, darn it, Kitty, I’m sorry… here.” I drew my own handkerchief from my pocket and knelt to dab at her dress. I felt her slim legs tremble through the fabric.

“It was my fault,” she said, and looked at me with wet, red eyes, like a child. The glass rolled along the floor and stopped at my knee.

“Kitty,” I said seriously. The handkerchief still rested on her thigh. “Do you have any idea who might have wanted Johnny dead?”

She sucked her cushioned bottom lip. “I—” She dropped her eyes to her lap. “Two men came to see him a while back. Months ago. I don’t know what they wanted—Johnny made me leave the room as soon as he saw them. But there was one fella the size of a truck—fair-haired, scar on his neck—”

Big Dakota. Moore reckoned our boys on the east side had already ruled him out.

“—and another guy, dark, a little heavy; I think the other fella called him ‘Quine.’”

That would be Vincent Quine, I guessed—another Montagnio tough, and a first-rate slimeball. Kitty twisted her handkerchief around like she was wringing out a dishcloth. “Is that”—she stopped and got her voice under control—“is that any help? Do you have anything… any clues to go on?”

I stood up and put my handkerchief back in my pocket. The sun was already low and squinting through the window blinds. “All we have to go on,” I began, and hesitated. The pistol I had left beneath the stairs hovered in my mind. “All we have to go on is what you just told me and a couple bullets we found at the scene.” I turned to my desk and started leafing through some papers. “It might be that we check the distillery again once we know what we’re looking for, but… Excuse me.”

Moore was staring at me from the doorway, tapping an envelope against his lips and looking thoughtful.

“Not like you,” he said, when I approached. “Falling for the bereaved widow act.”

I turned my head. Kitty was staring into space and picking at her handkerchief. “She’s just a kid,” I said. “Did you want something?”

“For you.” He held out the envelope and I saw the familiar handwriting.

Detective O’Harren, c/o Chicago Police Department , etc. etc.

“Still not giving out the home address, huh?”

I took the letter without looking at him.

“Mrs. Rivers needs escorting home,” I said. “I think you just volunteered. Oh, and while you’re out—see what the word is on the street about our old pal Vincent Quine.”

Snow scrunched beneath my boots as I made my way home that night. It was cold, and quiet: only the occasional hum of a car or smatter of distant voices on the wind disturbed the silence. I turned at the corner of Trumbull Avenue and slid my key into the door of Number 17.

Mrs. Long was already asleep. I knocked the worst of the snow from the bottoms of my boots and made my way upstairs, taking care not to let the door to my room slam shut. I locked it behind me. I probably didn’t need to—even when awake, Mrs. Long knew not to disturb me—but the possibilities that it excluded made things easier.

I hung my wet coat on the door and put the letter from Rick with the others, unopened. The tired old rubber band I was using to hold them all together snapped. I swore, stuffed them under the bed, and lay down, my head full of the usual letter-questions. How was Sarah? Did she miss me? Did Rick? He must; enough to keep writing every few months with no reply, at any rate. Unless he did it out of pity. Was he seeing anyone? I turned onto my side and stared at the wall.

I wondered, sometimes, if Rick had already been seeing someone else before the end—if maybe that was why he’d left—but I knew that I was just looking for an excuse to blame him instead of myself. There hadn’t been anyone else. Not in the universe I was living in, at least, although there must have been others in which other Ricks had been unfaithful to other mes. Not that I blamed them. I was the one who had pushed Rick away. And Sarah. I had lost them both, one day at a time, starting from the day I woke up on the operating table with the implant in my head and didn’t know which ‘me’ was me.

It helps if your life’s already in pieces when you get the heisen implant. Less to adapt to, that way.

I thumped the pillow. Feeling sorry for myself wasn’t solving Johnny’s murder. Wasn’t that why I had gotten the heisen in the first place? To be a better cop? It was in my head forever now, so I might as well make use of it. I closed my eyes.

We didn’t have the manpower to have someone watch the basement on West 23rd every hour of the day and night—if I wanted to see if anyone came back for the gun, I’d have to do it myself. But I couldn’t afford to spend all night on stake-out, not when there was so much work to do during the day. I’d be exhausted.