T
oday is a good day.
Today, above all others, I feel is a good day.
Today is the day I believe something will happen.
I believe that Robert Miller knows what he is doing, at least as well as any of them.
Morning of Thursday, November 16th, I get up and shower. I shave, I comb my hair. Iron a pale blue shirt, choose a suit from the rail in my bedroom. I am not a man who is striking in appearance, but I know how to make the best of my height, my build, my posture. I am forty-seven years old but my students tell me that I look younger, and somehow smarter than most of their fathers, and then they tell me that I am a puzzle, a mystery to them. I smile, and wonder how they would feel if they knew the truth.
I could tell them stories. I could tell them about the training. I could tell them about sand-socks and gilly suits, about AR15s and .223s, about .22 caliber rounds encased in a thin film of plastic so there’s no striations, no riflings, no lands and grooves to be found on the shell if recovered. I could tell them about mercury-tamping, about Glaser safety slugs, about wad cutters, flatnoses, long colts, short colts, ballheads and hollow points. I could tell them about the scarlet blooms of blood that grow on the body, about garrotte wires and how to kill someone with a rolled up magazine. About two guys from Puerto Sandino we nicknamed Dexter and Sinister who would kill anyone we asked them to for twenty-five bucks and a bottle of Seagram’s. I could tell them about the years it takes to create trust, only to have that trust destroyed in a moment - not by proof, but by suspicion. I could tell them that there’s a debt in every favor. Of the means and methods of propaganda manipulation.
What did Cardinal Richelieu say? ‘If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.’ Something like that. I know all about that shit. All about it.
If you lie down with the Devil, you’ll wake up in Hell.
Catherine said that to me one time. We were in a bar in Managua. I had drunk too much. I had drunk too much because of conscience, because of guilt, because of something I could not face.
Would these kids have the faintest idea what something like that even meant?
And if I told them, what would they think, these rich kids with their important fathers? Have seen those fathers, all self-appointed high-powered men with eyes that have seen too much and understood too little. And if I told them what I had done, what would they think of me then? And would I still warrant the deferential nod from the vice-principal, the university treasurer? I think not. I would become a cockroach, a nothing. The worst type of human being. And they would all talk of me as if I was a disease - painful, protracted, terminal, but now excised, removed, banished. And they would tell each other how they knew all along that there was something different about Professor John Robey; how they had a feeling, an intuition, and they should trust that intuition more often, because they’d never been wrong about such things before . . .
The world they have is thanks to people like me. We stood on the proverbial wall, and we guarded their world against all that was dark and malign and destructive. We stood on the wall when no-one else would, and we made it safe. It’s fucked. Sure as hell it’s fucked. I know that, you know that . . . hell, we’re all grown up around here, but if it wasn’t for people like me it would be an awful lot worse. Isn’t that so?
Well, it isn’t so. That’s the truth, and that’s the thing that cannot be faced. There’s the sacred monster, friends and neighbors. There’s the thing we all created that we are now trying so hard to convince ourselves we did not. Well we did, and it is, and it continues to be.
Deal with it.
Thursday morning I stand and look at myself in the mirror. A good suit - single-breasted wool and cashmere blend - pale blue shirt, no tie . . . because I don’t want to wear a tie today, and if I did wear a tie they would only take it away and roll it up and stuff it in a plastic bag and ruin it.
So, no tie today.
Just a suit and a shirt and a pair of brown brogues.
I stand in the hallway for a moment, then I lean down and pick up my briefcase, and I close my eyes, and I take a deep breath, and I pause for another heartbeat or two and then turn toward the door . . .
Outside it is cool and crisp. I walk to the junction and turn right onto Franklin Street. It is four minutes past eight. The bus will arrive between eight and twelve minutes past; I get off at the edge of the Carnegie Library grounds and walk the rest of the way to Massachusetts, get some coffee at Donovan’s. I will leave Donovan’s by eight thirty-five, walk back the way I came and past the church on the corner of K Street, and there I will sit on a bench for ten or fifteen minutes. At eight fifty-five I will cross the road and walk up the steps of Mount Vernon College. I will say hello and raise my hand to Gus, the college security guard, and then I will walk in through the front entrance, turn right into the hubbub and hustle of a new day, and I will make my way to my classroom. By the time I arrive it will be eight fifty-nine. Class begins at five minutes past nine. I am never late. I do time very well. I was raised on the importance of time. My students understand that also. They rarely need to be late more than once to understand that we do not do late in Professor Robey’s class.
I smile at this thought, and with my briefcase in my hand I leave my apartment and walk down the steps to the street.
I am what I appear to be, and what others wish me to be, and above all else I am no longer the man I was.
It is that simple.
I catch the bus. I take the journey south seven blocks, to the edge of the Carnegie Library grounds. Here I alight and walk down Massachusetts. I notice the sedan on the corner, the two men inside. I wonder, just for a moment, if it isn’t Miller and his partner. It is not, but they watch me nevertheless, and I sense the tension as they look back over their shoulders once they know I can no longer see them.
I arrive at Donovan’s. I am neither late nor early. Even as I approach the counter, even as Audrey turns and smiles and walks towards me, I know.
I wonder what will happen now.
I wonder if she must now do something to alert them to my arrival.
‘Usual?’ she asks, and her tone is slightly too breezy, slightly too nonchalant. I watch her closely as she makes her way down to the end of the counter to get the coffee jug from the hotplate.
She reaches out her hand toward the edge of the counter. She looks up at me, and in that split second I wonder.
She half-smiles, and then she blinks twice in succession, and I look at her hand on the edge of the counter, and then she’s walking toward me again - smiling wide, relaxed, everything’s fine, everything’s fine, everything’s just oh so very fine . . .
‘Take out?’ she asks.
I smile, I shake my head. ‘It’s okay, Audrey,’ I say quietly. ’I’ll
wait for them here.’
TWENTY-NINE
Miller had fallen asleep in his clothes. He awoke feeling awkward and nauseous a little before four-thirty a.m. He took a shower, found a clean shirt, was ready by quarter after five. Made some coffee, called Roth on his cell; they shared a few brief words and then Miller left the house. He arrived at the Second at five-forty. It was still dark. A bitter wind made the skin on his face feel tight. Gritty eyes, a sour copper taste in the back of his mouth, a sense of disorientation and vacancy were all-pervasive. Though the city was coming to life around him, he believed he had never felt lonelier. He hesitated at the top of the stairs and looked back towards Fifth. He figured that when this was done he would take a break, a vacation perhaps. He would go someplace he’d never been before and see if life didn’t feel somehow different looking back toward home. He knew that he was lying to himself. He smiled inwardly, pushed open the door and crossed the foyer towards the stairs.
Roth arrived within fifteen minutes. He sat down without speaking, merely nodded at Miller.
‘Amanda okay?’
Roth smiled. ‘Amanda’s always okay.’
‘She okay with you?’
Roth shrugged. ‘She wants a vacation.’
‘Don’t blame her.’
‘I told her maybe . . . maybe when this thing is done we could look at it.’
Miller glanced at his watch: it was four minutes to six. ‘She’ll be getting in now,’ he said. ‘Audrey.’
‘You want to go down there?’
Miller didn’t respond, seemed to be considering the possibility. ‘We look how we look,’ he said eventually. ‘We can’t change the way we look. People see us they know we’re cops. This guy happens to see us inside he’s gonna make a run for it.’
‘If he has something to hide he’ll make a run for it.’
‘I don’t want to risk it,’ Miller said.
‘I agree.’
‘You want some coffee?’
‘From the machine?’ Roth shook his head. ‘God no. I could go get some?’
‘No, leave it.’
‘You hear anything from Littman or Riehl?’
‘They’re not gonna do anything unless there’s something happening,’ Miller said.
‘So we wait.’
‘We wait.’
Roth was silent for a while, seemed elsewhere, and then he looked up at Miller. ‘You ever been on something like this before?’ he asked.
‘A multiple? No. Was on a double murder one time. Hispanic guy killed his wife and her mother. That was a couple of years before I made detective. Messy fucking thing.’ Miller closed his eyes, could see the images more vividly so opened them again. Two women - the younger in her early twenties, the mother in her mid-forties. Shotgun killing in the kitchen of their house. Forensics said there wasn’t a great deal of either of them left. Husband just stood there reloading, reloading, reloading. Forty-seven shell cases they found. Hispanic mystery meat, the forensics guy said, and then said that most of what evidence they needed was in the treads of his shoes. He smiled like he was out for a ball game. Seemed people were hardened to such things. Miller was not, and though he could walk in on something like Catherine Sheridan or Natasha Joyce without needing to heave, it was never easy.
‘You ever get any kind of an understanding of what kind of person does this?’ Roth asked. ‘You know, beat the living hell out of someone, strangle them, whatever else he did?’
Miller shook his head. ‘Makes no fucking sense to me. I don’t go with all this abused childhood shit that the psychs keep feeding us. I’ve met a whole lot of people that had a really rough time, and they sure as shit aren’t driving around the place thinking about whose skin they’re gonna wear.’
Miller tried to focus. This was now as good as it got. They had something, the first lead of any significance throughout the whole investigation. It was the sense of responsibility that worried at him. If he didn’t get it right, someone else might die. If he didn’t figure this thing out then someone somewhere would wake up to find a man standing over them, his latex-gloved hands around their throat, his mind already set on doing what he had to do. And did they have a hope? Factually, no. Miller’s mind turned to who the next one might be. Where was she now? What was her name? Did she have a job, a family, people who relied on her? How many lives would be affected by her death? Washington was big enough to absorb it. Washington would swallow the magnitude of this thing, and it would become just another part of its history. But individuals? And himself? Miller wondered whether he would survive this thing intact.
He had heard stories. Cops ravaged by the life they’d led, their hearts broken, their minds turned. Left with a handful of difficult years in an apartment somewhere, daily trips to some local bar where they would hang out with other retired cops. Old times, old stories, endless banter about the things they’d seen. The sense of longing, the endless promise of something that would never come close to the rush and buzz and madness of the life they’d lived. And then it all broke down. They came apart at the seams. They cleaned their service revolver, loaded it, drank a glass or two, and ended the dream. No-one spoke of them again.
Was that the future?
What would happen if they never found the guy . . . if the Ribbon Killer was no-one at all? A ghost, a haunting, a thing that was, and then was not.
Robert Miller wished for something better. Perhaps he even invoked a handful of words from some half-forgotten prayer. Let it not be the way I fear it will be. Let it be something else.
It was half past six. Traffic was on the streets. Squad cars were pulling out of the underground car park and heading away from the precinct. He watched one disappear down New York Avenue toward Mount Vernon Square and Carnegie Library. Remembering the library reminded him of Catherine Sheridan’s last hours. The unanswered questions: Where did she go? Who saw her? And Natasha Joyce’s visit to the Police Department Administrations Unit. Was this Frances Gray a figment of Natasha’s paranoid imagination, or was there something altogether more suspicious? And Michael McCullough . . . Had he even existed, or was he an invention, like Isabella Cordillera, a woman named after a Nicaraguan mountain range?
For a moment Miller felt overwhelmed, as if the weight of these things was more than sufficient to crush him right where he stood.
He looked at his watch: six thirty-eight. The diner would be open. Audrey would have made coffee, put on the hotplate, perhaps started frying bacon and eggs, hash browns. Regulars would be making their way toward her from various parts of the neighborhood. People she knew by name, by face, by breakfast order. Take-outs, eat-ins, coffee to go, triple shot, half and half, Sweet ’n’ Low. Early morning banter, wisecracks . . . And then he would come. Perhaps. He would come, and she would feel what she felt, and what she felt might be concern, or worry; and there might be something in her expression that gave it away. People had been to see her. Police detectives. Two of them. They had talked to her, and people had come after them and fitted a buzzer beneath the edge of the counter, and there might be something in her eyes - despite her cheery smile, her air of nonchalance - that he could read as clear as daylight, because there was something about this man that was special, different, peculiar; something about him that made the cops very nervous about whether or not they were going to have a chance to speak with him . . .