I cross Landry off my list. Then I head back up the center aisle and directly to Detective Superintendent Dominic Stevens’s office. Fumble with the lock. Eight seconds.
I close the blinds and use the small flashlight I’ve brought along with me. Sneaking around in Stevens’s office is far more obvious than sneaking around the cubicles. There’s a copy of a report he has written for his superiors on his desk. It explains in detail where the investigation is, which, in simple terms, is nowhere. It explains the running theories, while adding his theory that Daniela Walker was killed by somebody different. He recommends a separate investigation into her death. If Stevens is the killer, he sure as hell wouldn’t do that. I cross him off the list.
Five suspects left, and I’m starting to get the bad feeling I could end up crossing all of them off over the next few days, that I’m overlooking something.
When eleven o’clock rolls around I decide it’s time to go. I catch the bus toward home, but get off a half mile or so before my street hoping a walk in the fresh air will help clear my mind. It’s a beautiful night. There’s a nor’wester blowing like a cure for anybody feeling down. Same nor’wester that irritates everybody else. Weather’s great like that.
But I’m not interested in making a forecast.
Ahead of me are more long days and plenty of late nights, so I hit the sack the moment I get inside. I realize I didn’t call Jennifer about the cat, but that can wait. Right now I’m just too busy falling asleep.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
At two minutes past eight I’m sitting on the edge of my bed covered in sweat. For the first time in years, I’ve dreamed. Though the sensation wasn’t entirely unpleasant, the dream certainly was. I was a policeman, investigating myself for murder. Attempting to coerce a confession, I played good cop, bad cop. Yet I wouldn’t give in. Instead I suggested and then mimed a rather lewd act to myself, which was followed by a demand for a lawyer. When a lawyer did arrive, it was Daniela Walker. She looked exactly as she had in her photograph. The bruises around her neck were like a string of black, deformed pearls. She never blinked, not once, her glazed-over eyes staring at me the entire time. Her only words were to tell me to confess to her murder. She repeated them over and over like a mantra. I was confused and confessed to a whole bunch of murders. Then the walls of the interrogation cell slid away as if I were in a game show, revealing a court of law. There was a judge and a jury and a lawyer. I recognized none of them. There was even a band. One of those old swing-time bands with guys dressed in suits. They were holding up freshly polished brass instruments but none of them were playing. Even with a guilty plea on offer, there was still a jury, and the jury found me guilty. So did the judge. The judge sentenced me to death. The band started playing the same song I’d heard on Angela’s stereo, and as they played, the two businessmen I saw on the bus yesterday rolled in an electric chair. I woke just after the clamps of the electric chair locked my arms and legs into place.
I can smell burning flesh even now as I sit on the edge of my bed. This is the first time my internal alarm clock has ever let me down. I close my eyes and try to push the big buttons inside to reset it. Why did I dream? How is it I’ve slept in? Because I’m trying to do something good? Could be. I’m trying to give Daniela Walker’s family closure, and that doesn’t feel right. I must suffer for my humanity.
I don’t want to miss my bus, so I skip breakfast. Can’t make myself lunch either, so I toss some fruit into my briefcase, then race out the door. I don’t even have time to feed my fish. The day is overcast and muggy. Warm and lethargic. This is worse than a sun-shining-hot day. I’m already sweating by the time Mr. Stanley refuses to punch my ticket.
I walk down the aisle and sit behind the same businessmen who were in my dream, making me suspect for a moment that I’m still in it, and I watch the walls of the bus to see if they give way to another court of law and another swing-time band. They don’t. The businessmen are already talking loudly. Business this. Money that. I begin to imagine what they do in their spare time. If they’re not sleeping with each other, they’re probably married to women who are having affairs. I doubt they would have the courage to dump their bitches if they found out they were being cheated on. And I don’t mean divorce.
Sally is waiting for me outside the police station. No shimmering heat today. Just wet heat, helped by the thick clouds above that are light gray over the city, but black out to sea. Still no signs of rain, though. Sally looks as though she’s trying to figure something out, as if she knows me, but can’t place exactly who I am. Then her face brightens and she reaches out and touches me on the shoulder. I don’t feel the need to pull away.
“How are you, Joe? Feeling up to another hard day at work?”
“Sure. I like working here. I like the people.”
She seems about to say something, then closes her mouth and opens it again. She’s fighting with something, and ends up losing the battle. Her arm falls back to her side.
“I’m sorry, Joe, but I didn’t get to make you lunch today.”
I’m not sure whether she makes the lunch, whether she buys it, or whether her mom makes it for her not knowing it’s for me, but when my face sags a little at the news, it’s genuine. “Oh. Okay, then,” I say, not knowing what I’m going to do. No breakfast. No made lunch. Just some crappy fruit in my briefcase to last me all day. Why the hell did I think two days of her bringing me food was the start of a pattern?
“It’s my dad’s birthday today.”
“Happy birthday.”
She smiles. “I’ll pass that along.”
The air-conditioning is working in the foyer. One day it does, the next it won’t. The old maintenance worker who used to work here must have died: I haven’t seen him for a while. Sally used to work for him, doing things like grabbing rags and washing tools. The sort of thing that warms people’s hearts, seeing the trolley-pushers of this world given a low-paying, shit-eating job that gives them a place in society.
“What did you do before you came to clean here, Joe?” she asks.
“Ate breakfast.”
“No, I mean a few years ago, before you started this job.”
“Oh. I don’t know. Not much. Nobody wanted to give somebody like me a job.”
“Somebody like you?”
“You know.”
“You’re special, Joe. Remember that.”
I remember that the whole way up to my floor in the elevator, and I keep remembering it as I say good-bye to the woman who didn’t bring me any lunch today. Even when I ignore the conference room and go straight to my office I keep thinking about how special I really am. I have to be, right? That’s why I’m down to five suspects and the rest of the department is throwing darts at a phone book.
Five suspects. Travers, McCoy, and Schroder are the local three. Then there are the two that have come from out of town-Calhoun and Taylor. These two are going to be the harder ones to figure out. Calhoun has come from Auckland, and Taylor from Wellington. I’m still doubting Schroder is the guy after the speech from yesterday morning, but I can’t be hasty. And I think I have a way to cross Travers off my list. But until then all five of them will have to remain suspects.
The day drags on, the daily routine cometh. I spend it learning nothing I don’t already know and not eating the sandwiches Sally didn’t make. I clean and mop and vacuum. Live to work. Work to live. McCoy’s coffee cup had it wrong.
When four thirty comes around, rather than going home, I wait for Travers. He’s out in the field interviewing witnesses and doing what he can to find a killer. He’s due back around six o’clock, so rather than sitting outside the station, I head off to a nearby food court. I’m absolutely starving, since I’ve only eaten fruit today. I have Chinese. Flied lice. The guy who serves me is Asian, and must figure I am too, since he speaks to me in his language. I feel a little silly still wearing my overalls as I sit eating my chicken fried rice, the food court full of moms with strollers and school students eating the kind of food that will have many of them fifty pounds overweight by the time they hit their twenties.