Night Work (9 page)

“They’re expensive as hell, because they’re custom made. Usually, they have the doctor’s name printed on them, with a special number, because everybody’s is unique.”

We were in the old industrial part of Kingston now. The old warehouses, the worn-out gray buildings with the thick glass-brick windows. Everything was dark.

“So if each one is unique,” I said slowly, “then you must know by now.”

“We called the podiatrist, but we couldn’t give him the whole number. Some of it had rubbed off.”

“So you don’t know for sure yet?”

“We have it narrowed down to a few names. One of them is Marlene Frost.”

“My God …”

“Take it easy,” he said. He came up to a red light, looked both ways, and then shot through the intersection. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“I need to be ready for this, Howie. What if it’s her?”

“If it’s her … Then you identify her. That’ll make
it easier on somebody else. You know, her parents, whoever. They won’t have to see her this way.”

This way. The words hung in the air between us.

“How bad is it?” I finally said.

“It’s bad.”

As we came to the railroad tracks, the lights were flashing and the gates were going down. I could see that Howie was thinking about jumping the tracks. He craned his neck to get a good look at the oncoming train. For one second I thought he was going to go for it, and in the next second after that I was sure we’d both get demolished—but he didn’t go. I closed my eyes and listened to my heart beating in my chest.

“Perfect timing,” he said. He pushed the gearshift into park and leaned back in his seat. “Although I guess she’s not going anywhere.”

I looked at him.

“Sorry,” he said. “That’s the kind of thing a cop says to get through a night like this.”

I didn’t have a response to that. I put my head back against the car seat and watched the train go by. As the cars sped past, they made a sort of zoetrope, with each split-second gap giving us a glimpse of the other side. I saw the white of the police cars, the spinning red and blue lights. The people. It was all happening right there, just beyond the tracks.

It was a long train. If you live in Kingston, you’re accustomed to it. So many trains going by every day, on their way north to Albany or south to New York
City. So many streets closed for minutes at a time. We waited as each car rolled by.

“So tell me something,” Howie said. “What was Marlene wearing?”

“On our date? A blue dress.” And a necklace, I thought. A beautiful blue necklace she made herself and I forgot to compliment her on.

“That was last night.”

“It feels like longer, but yeah. This woman you found … Is that what she’s wearing?”

“Thank God, this train is finally ending.”

“Howie, what is this woman wearing? What am I gonna see?”

“It’s a dress,” he said, putting the car back in gear. “It might be blue. It’s hard to tell.”

The caboose went roaring past. The gates went up. Howie pulled forward over the tracks, but he didn’t have far to go. He pulled off to the right, where all the other cars were, and parked. We were right on the edge of St. Mary’s Cemetery.

There were seven police cars there, maybe eight. An ambulance, just because there’s always an ambulance. A few other vehicles. We got out and walked down the tracks, toward the people gathered there. We pushed our way through until we came to the yellow police tape. A cop in a uniform saw Howie and let him through. I followed him.

There were several men holding flashlights. I recognized three of the other Kingston detectives. A man was taking pictures in the tall weeds. I felt a hand on
my back. It was Robert Brenner, the Kingston chief of police. He was a little taller than me and at least twenty years older. He looked to be in great shape for his age, like one of those lean welterweights who can tie you up with their long reach.

“Thanks for coming down, Joe.” He knew me by name, the same way he’d know just about everybody in my office. It was a small enough city, or maybe he was just a little better with names than most people.

“Who found her?” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to go look at her yet.

“A couple of kids. Around eight o’clock.”

“How long has she been out here?”

He shook his head. “Twenty-four hours, give or take. We don’t know for sure yet.”

“I should take a look now?”

“If you would.”

He pressed on my back, a gentle but unmistakable push forward. I swallowed hard and made myself go to her, even as part of me wanted to run away. When I was close enough, I looked down and saw her lying there in the shallow glow of the flashlights.

She was on her back, with her hands folded neatly on her stomach. For one terrible second my eyes fooled me and I saw a woman who had lain down to look up at the stars. The reality caught up with me when I saw her face. The lifeless stare. The mouth open. And her neck … something black wrapped tight around her neck …

She was wearing the same dress. The perfect blue dress but without the perfect blue necklace. The necklace gone from her neck now. Something else instead, something black wrapped tight…

Wrapped tight around her dead neck.

I tried to say something. I tried to make some sort of sound come out of my mouth.

“Is that her, Joe?” The chief had me by both shoulders now.

“No,” I said. “No.”

“Are you saying it’s
not
her?”

“No,” I said. “No, it’s her. It’s Marlene.”

“This is Marlene Frost. Are you sure?”

“It’s her, Chief. It’s her.” Other details coming into focus now. A paper cup, a beer can, the wrapper from a Popsicle. All the usual crap you’d expect to find on some forgotten piece of ground next to the railroad tracks. It was all around her. This woman I had been so close to just a matter of hours ago.
Minutes,
it felt like. I was talking to her and looking in her eyes and feeling her warm skin.

I kept going back to the black cloth wrapped around her neck. The horrible, simple violation of those few inches of black.

“Okay.” He pulled me away from her. “Okay, Joe.” I took one last look and followed him to the edge of the police line.

“Who did this to her?” I said. “I’ve got to know.”

“We all do. That’s why we need your help. We need you to tell us everything you can.”

“I just met her last night, Chief. We went out one time.”

“We’re going to talk to her parents, Joe, and everybody else we can find. But right now you’re all we’ve got.”

“I’ll do whatever I can. You know that.”

“I want you to come to the station so you can give us a statement. I’ll take you there myself, all right?”

“Howie brought me over here …” I looked for him, finally saw him talking to someone else on the far side of the crime scene.

“He might be busy for a while,” the chief said. “You come with me. We’ll take your statement, and then I’ll run you home.”

“Okay, Chief.” I hesitated a moment, waiting to catch Howie’s eye. When he looked over at me, I nodded my head. He gave me a tight smile. We didn’t say anything else that night. I left him there to do what he had to do, to try to restore some order in the world, and I went with the chief to do the same.

I
rode in the chief’s car to the station. I sat up front, next to him. For some reason I started noticing things, little details that would otherwise slip right past me. Like the fact that he kept his car immaculately clean. Or that the light on his cell phone charger was glowing a beautiful shade of blue, exactly like Marlene’s dress.

The name of the color came to me. Cobalt blue. That’s what it was. Her dress was cobalt blue.

Then the high school, as we went down Broadway. City Hall, standing high on the opposite side of the street. They had torn it apart years ago, restored every inch to make it beautiful again, just like it had been back in the 1800s. High Victorian Gothic, that was the name of the style, coming to me from wherever the cobalt blue had come from, as I sat there looking out the window. What a beautifully restored building, all lit up now with the granite statue out front commemorating the city’s sons who had died in various wars, the two cannons standing guard on either side.

I closed my eyes for a minute. I took a breath, let it out, took another. I could feel the car going down the long hill, toward the water, could sense the streetlights passing by. The car slowed down. I opened my eyes. The chief took the left turn onto Garraghan Drive. Here we were.

As beautiful as City Hall was, nobody was trying to make the police station anything other than exactly what it was, a purely functional building, white and square, all business, looking exactly like any other police station in any other small city in the country. He parked in the back and we got out of his car, walking past half a dozen empty squad cars to the downstairs entrance. The on-duty desk sergeant was a man I knew, a big man named Mike, a man who usually had some kind of line waiting for me.
You keeping ‘em out of jail so your buddy Howie can catch them again?
Something hilarious like that. Tonight he didn’t have a line. He looked at both of us, moving
his chin up an inch for the chief, one cop to another on a tough night.

“Come on up this way,” the chief said to me. We went upstairs past the reception area, all the way down the hallway to one of the interview rooms. A table and three chairs, a mirror on one wall. For some reason there was a McDonald’s bag on the table, Big Mac wrappers, cold French fries, empty cups, the whole works. Plus a spread-open
Sunday Freeman,
the local newspaper.

“For God’s sake,” the chief said, picking up the trash and putting it in the bag. I folded up the paper while he threw everything else away.

“I apologize,” he said. “They must have been in a hurry to get down there.” Down there being, no doubt, where we had just come from.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I’ll be right back.” He left me there alone for a minute, long enough to read the front page of the newspaper. The lead article was all about the jail they had been building on the other side of town, how late it was now, how many millions over budget. A very sore subject around here, no matter who you asked, but somehow I thought the story would be pushed to page two in tomorrow’s paper.

“Just had to get something to write on,” he said as he came back into the room. He had a legal pad now, and a pen. He sat down.

“You understand why I’m doing this,” he said.

“You want to find out everything you can about Marlene.”

“No, I mean why I brought you here myself, instead of having Detective Borello do it, or one of the other detectives.”

“You said Howie might be busy over there.”

“It’s more than that. Right now you’re the only material witness we have, and the last known person to see her alive.”

“Yes?”

“Your best friend is a detective in this building.”

“If you’re worried about a conflict of interest …”

“I’m not worried about it at all, but I’m not the one who matters. If somebody else sees it—somebody in Albany, somebody from the victim’s family, you name it. I’m just trying to make sure everything looks clean, no matter what happens. You understand what I’m saying?”

“I think so.”

“I’m looking out for you,” he said. “Both of you. I hope you know that.”

“I do. I appreciate it.”

“Okay, then. I’m glad we’re on the same page. So tell me everything you can.”

I did. I told him how we met, how we hooked up through the singles network. Meeting at the restaurant, going to the club, walking around town. Finally ending up back at her place. Under the circumstances, I overcame any uneasiness I might have felt and told
him exactly how much physical contact we had that night. I knew it would be important when the medical examiner did his work.

It didn’t take long to cover everything. It was only one night, after all, maybe four or five hours spent with her. When we were done he thanked me. Then he took me back outside to his car, to take me home.

It was well after midnight when he dropped me off at the gym. The place looked too dark tonight. It looked like a building long abandoned.

“You live here, huh?” the chief said. “I remember when it was the bus station.”

“Anything happens, any development, you’ll call me, right? No matter what time it is?”

“Of course. We’ll catch whoever did this, don’t worry.”

“Do that,” I said. “Please.”

“We might need to ask you some more questions tomorrow. I assume Detective Borello knows where to reach you?”

“Sure. I’ll be at work. Or he has my cell phone number.”

“Good enough,” he said. “Go get some sleep.”

Like there was any way that was going to happen.

An hour later, I was lying in my bed, staring up at my ceiling, seeing nothing but Marlene’s dead body in the weeds, the black fabric wrapped around her neck. Two hours later, nothing had changed.

It should be me, I thought. Mine should be the life
ended. I was the one who dared to think I could become human again. That was my sin, not hers.

I got up and went downstairs. I opened up the back door to the gym, went inside, and flipped on the one lamp on the table, the same table where I had been sitting with Anderson and the guys, before Sandra showed up and we packed her off to the shelter. Before Howie showed up and turned what was left of the night inside out.

I hit the heavy bag with my right hand. Then my left. I didn’t tape up. I didn’t think about what the bag was doing to my hands. I just kept hitting it. That’s all I could think of doing. Just hitting and hitting that bag until I had nothing left.

The morning came, its light filtered through the high, dirty windows of the gym. Anderson found me facedown on one of the mats. My knuckles looked like I had taken a cheese grater to them. He yelled at me for a while, until I told him what had happened. He stopped and listened to me. When it sank in, he started yelling again.

“So this is what you do? You destroy your hands and then pass out on the goddamned floor?”