World of Trouble (The Last Policeman #3)(3)

The watery daylight is not fully penetrating the one dust-coated window in the detectives room, so I switch back on the beam of the Eveready and hover it over Detective Russel’s log book and flip my way through. The first entry is from just seven months ago. February 14. On Valentine’s Day, Detective Russel reported in neat cursive handwriting that rolling blackouts had been ordered for all municipal buildings countywide, and henceforth all record keeping would be done with pen and paper.

The entries that follow are a record of decline. On March 10 there was a small riot at a food pantry in neighboring Brown County, which spread quickly, resulting in “general civil unrest of unanticipated levels.” It is noted on March 30 that the department’s force-readiness levels are significantly depleted, at thirty-five percent of previous year’s staffing. (“Jason quit!!!” Detective Russel notes parenthetically, the exclamation points bristling with surprise and disappointment.) On April 12, a “Bucket List rapist” was apprehended and turned out to be “Charlie, from Blake’s Feed Supply!!!”

I smile. I like this Detective Russel. I’m not wild about all the exclamation points, but I like her.

I follow the neat handwriting down the run of months. The last entry, dated June 9—sixteen weeks ago—just says “Creekbed,” and then “Heavenly Father keep a good eye on us, would ya?”

I linger for a moment, hunched over the notebook. Houdini pads into the room, and I feel his tail brush against my pant leg.

I take out my thin blue notebook from my inside pocket and write down June 9 and Creekbed and Heavenly Father keep a good eye on us, would ya?, trying to write small, keep the words clustered together. It’s the last one of these notebooks I’ve got. My father was a college professor, and when he died he left behind boxes and boxes of these exam-taker’s notebooks, but I have used up many since entering law enforcement, and many more were lost in the fire that consumed my house. Every time I write something down I have this small rustle of anxiety, like what will I do when I run out of pages?

I close Detective Russel’s desk drawers and return the log book to where it was, flipped open to the same page where I found it.


*

Also in my pocket, tucked in a red plastic Concord Public Library card sleeve, is a wallet-size copy of my sister’s sophomore-year yearbook picture. Nico as a defiant and hip high-school student, in a ratty black T-shirt and cheap eyeglass frames, far too cool to have combed her hair. Her lower lip is jutted out, her mouth twisted: I’ll smile when I want to, not when some mope tells me to say cheese. I wish I was carrying a more recent picture, but I lost them in the fire; the truth is, she’s only eight years out of high school, and the photograph remains current, with regard to Nico Palace’s appearance and affect. My body is itching to perform the familiar rituals, to flip the picture open to strangers—“Have you see this girl?”—to improvise a set of discerning follow-ups and follow-ups to the follow-ups.

Along with the photograph and the notebook, inside my well-worn tan sport jacket are a few other basic investigative tools: a handheld magnifying glass; a Swiss army knife; a nine-foot retracting tape measure; a second flashlight, smaller and slimmer than the Eveready; a box of .40-caliber rounds. The gun itself, the department-issue SIG Sauer P229 I’ve been carrying for three years now, is in a holster on my hip.

The door of the evidence room clicks open and closed again, and I raise the flashlight at Cortez.

“Spray paint,” he says, holding up an aerosol canister and giving it an enthusiastic shake-shake-shake. “Half full.”

“Okay,” I say. “Great.”

“Oh, but it is great, Policeman,” Cortez says, looking with childlike delight at this find, turning it over in his rough hands. “Useful for marking a trail, and easily weaponized. A candle, a paper clip, a match. Voilà: flamethrower. I’ve seen it done.” He winks. “I’ve done it.”

“Okay,” I say again.

This is how he talks, Cortez the thief, my unlikely partner: like the world will go on forever, like he with his hobbies and habits will go on forever. He sighs and shakes his head sadly at my indifference, and slides past in the darkness like a phantom, away down the hallway in search of more loot. She’s not here, whispers Officer McConnell in my ear. Not judging, not angry. Just noting the obvious. You came all this way for nothing, Detective Palace. She’s not here.

The day is advancing. Dull gold sunlight inching closer to me down here at the far end of the dark hall. The dog, somewhere I can’t see him, but close enough that I hear him coughing. The planet wobbling beneath my feet.





2.


Next to the detectives room is a door marked MUSTER, and this room too is full of familiar objects, coat hooks hung with windbreakers, a well-broken-in blue ball cap, a pair of sturdy Carhartt boots with stiffened laces. Policeman street clothes. In one corner there’s an American flag on a cheap plastic eagle-head stand. An OSHA workplace-safety information sheet is tacked to the lower corner of a billboard, the same sheet we had in Concord that Detective McGully liked to read aloud, dripping with disdain: “Oh, good, some tips on posture. We get frikkin’ shot at for a living!”

Along the back wall is a dry-erase board on wobbly wheels with an undated exhortation, all-caps and triple-underlined: “STAY SAFE, ASSHOLES.” I smile, half smile, imagining the weary young sergeant writing the message, hiding his own fear behind salty tough-cop cleverness. STAY SAFE, ASSHOLES. Keep a good eye on us, would ya? It hasn’t been an easy time for law enforcement, this last set of months, it really hasn’t.