Once back in Stagger Bay proper, the contrast between its well-kept little Pleasantville-style 1950s houses and the stark, broken-down hovels we’d just left was startling. Sam drove us down I Street, weaving in and out of traffic, ignoring the honking of cars forced to get out the way of his motorboat Connie.
Elaine's office was on the far side of Stagger Bay Center. As we started driving through the Center, I saw the cyclone fence surrounding the School a few blocks down.
Even from here I could see the warped, torn stretch of cyclone fence where Kendra’s roller had slid into it; could see the charred spots on the asphalt from the grenade explosions. As we got closer to the scene, I grew more and more nervous.
“Are you all right?” Sam asked.
I was sweating and breathing hard as I stared at the school buildings now coming into view. Stared at the place where I’d committed multiple murders in front of wide eyed, terrified children.
“Pull over,” I managed to say. “I need a little air.”
Sam swooped up next to the bank, almost going up over the curb and taking out an old lady on a walker. But I wasn’t in the mood to zing him about it, and was grateful he didn’t take advantage of my present weakness to make any wisecracks his own self.
As I staggered out the car I could hear the recess bell ringing down at the school, and I almost hurled in the gutter as those unseen children commenced shrieking and screaming in play. I bent over with my hands on my knees taking deep breaths.
The nausea passed but I was still trembling as I stood and I saw my pale Cyclops reflection in the bank window. I changed focus to look inside the bank at the wreckage from the robbery: holes in what was left of the false ceiling, as if a great beast had ripped at it; stains and burns on the carpet and walls; a shroud-like canvas draped over one of the teller’s windows concealing whatever homicidal damage had been committed there.
The children’s shrieks melted into each other, sounding louder and shriller as I turned away from the bank. The kids were no closer, of course. It could only be a trick of hearing that made their laughter warble up and down the scale like the beginnings of a bad acid flashback; it was just echo acoustics off the interposing buildings.
A Mexican restaurant was down the block, and I walked quickly to it. As I leaned against its front door and almost toppled inside, the brass bell on the knob jingled.
I slid into a booth while the Mexican couple behind the service counter stared at me. A kid who looked like their son came over, brows raised and a menu in his hand.
“Jarritos, por favor,” I muttered. “Fresa.”
The boy hurried to fetch me my bottle of strawberry soda. I sucked on the straw they were kind enough to put in there for me, listening to them whispering in rapid-fire Spanish, pretending they weren’t talking about me.
Focus on the here and now, I told myself – think of the Stoics. You’re happening but you don’t mean shit, I told the trembling and the still-too-rapid breathing. I’m in charge, not you – You can’t defeat me unless I let you. But my uncooperative body didn’t want to listen.
The bell jingled as the front door opened, the Mexican family shut up, and Officer Hoffman stood in the entrance. He walked over to me with all his leather gear creaking, and slid into the booth to sit opposite me.
“I need to change what I told you about Officer Tubbs,” Hoffman said. “I knew her.”
He looked me directly in the eye for the first time in our acquaintance, giving no evidence he noticed how sweaty my face was. His hand fiddled with his mace holster; he couldn't seem to leave his tackle alone.
“I knew you’d tell me when you were ready, Officer Hoffman.” I shoved my bottle of strawberry soda away.
“I told you before, call me Rick.”
A lopsided smile assembled and disassembled itself quickly on his face. “You’re standing up to them,” he said. “If you're doing it I can too – right, Markus?”
“There's nothing to stop you.”
A curious expression crossed his face, one I couldn’t really interpret. Was he angry? Afraid? “If I knew something important about Officer Tubbs, would you like to hear it?” he asked.
“You mean Kendra,” I said, insisting that he acknowledge her personally, not as a mere title.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course.” His newfound confidence seemed to desert him at the sound of her name; he avoided direct eye contact again.
“Look at you, living in fear,” I said, ‘sarge’-ing on him and gambling with a confrontational tone. “You and I understand each other, Rick. But they don’t have a clue, do they? You say you like me. Prove it. Don’t listen to them, listen to me.”
As I spoke, Rick’s eyes rose to meet mine and he nodded and smiled as he battened onto my words. “Now tell me what you need me to know about Kendra,” I ordered.
And he obeyed: “Did you know she didn't usually patrol the bank district? Somebody switched her patrol with Officer Reese at change of watch that same morning.”
“And there's items missing from the evidence locker. The same drugs the robbers were on, and all the same weapons they used at the bank and at the school.” Rick pressed his palms together in front of him; his nails were bitten to the quick. “Her death was planned.”
“Can we prove it?” I asked.
Assuming this was a lie, where was the sting? If it was game, who stood to gain from it? What would it cost me to act like I thought it was true? Hell, who put Rick up to feeding it to me? It was a good thing I liked Twenty Questions, or I'd go nuts in this town.
Rick continued: “I have the physical inventory entries for the robbery weapons, and for the drugs the coroner found in the tox-screen at their autopsies. If anyone holds an audit on the locker the drugs and weapons in the evidence log won’t be there. That’s enough evidence for anybody.”
“Who changed Reese and Kendra’s patrols, Rick?” I asked.
But he giggled and shook his head. “I can only go so far right now. You have to know what to do with it. I have to know you’re who I think you are, that you can save me.”
His gaze searched my face as I nodded decisively, still in charge, and doing my best to make it seem I'd stake my life on his words.
“I knew you could do it, Rick,” I said. “I won’t let you down; I'll take care of it all.”
His shoulders lowered minutely as if a great tension had been released. Outside the restaurant’s front door, Chief Jansen’s squad car pulled to the curb. Hoffman got up without any sort of farewell, hurried outside to Jansen and fawned on him like a puppy, then got in his cruiser and drove away.
After Hoffman left Jansen just stood there, looking around at all the people hurrying about their various business, pretending he didn’t even know I was on the other side of the door. I grimaced. He’d stay there in the only entrance for as long as it took to force me to come to him.
Jansen graced me with a regal nod as I came out the door.
“Your boy’s a strange one,” I said, jerking my chin in the direction Hoffman had disappeared in.
“Rick?” Jansen asked, as if discussing an inconsequential. “He does what’s required of him. He has his uses.”
I wondered how useful Jansen would consider Hoffman's revelation about Kendra. But then again, if Rick was feeding me a line it was probably Jansen’s schemes he was serving.
“You know,” Jansen said. “I understand you better than you think I do.”
“Do tell,” I said.
“Yes. Your hesitance to accept the people’s adulation for that day at the school? No mystery: You sympathized with those men even as you killed them, for you were once much like they were. You feel no pride for laying down dogs that were no madder than you were as a boy. Am I right? No, do not answer; I can see it in your eyes.”
I shook my head. “You’ll have to do better than that if you’re trying to impress anyone here.”
Jansen chuckled. “Suppose I told you I even know why you ran from the cameras, and run from them still?”
“It’d be interesting to hear your theory,” I admitted, glancing down the block and eying Sam’s car longingly.
“No theory,” Jansen said. “I know. And it appears then that I do understand part of you better than yourself. But I am in no hurry to enlighten you. After all,” he quoted as if casting pearls before swine: “’A matter which is explained ceases to concern us. What does that god mean who advised ‘Know Thyself?’ Does that not perhaps mean 'Stop being concerned about yourself!'”
“So I should ‘Become objective,’ eh?” I continued the quote. “Friederich’s ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ – a golden oldie, a blast from the past to be sure.”
It was sweet to see Jansen’s eyes widen. “You know Nietzsche?” he asked, voice flat, not as delighted as you’d think he’d be at meeting a fellow classicist.
I smiled and shrugged. “Maybe ‘Dick and Jane Do Rehab’ was checked out that day, Chief. Besides, I’m surprised you’re unaware how popular Mr. Friederich is in the Big House.”
Jansen’s expression softened, and he tilted his head to the side. “You see my badge and suppose we are opposites. You think me no more than a sheepdog. But can you imagine what it is like to serve people that might as well be livestock?
“Something could be right in front of them staring them in the face and they would not see it. If I ever tried to talk to them about Nietzsche, or anything sublime, anything transcendent? They would never understand the words, they would just bleat. But you are not one of them, Markus,” he said. Was that a hopeful expression on his face now? “You are no sheep. You think I am your enemy but I am not. I wish you well. I hope you bring it all crashing down on them in a Gotterdammerung.”
“Really,” I said, not bothering to hide my incredulity.
“Yes. It means something to you, does it not? And you are a man like me who is hungry for meaning as these others could never be. That is the worst, is it not? To be meaningless?”
I was irritated. “You know exactly what’s what. Screw the razzle-dazzle,” I said, trying to pin him down. “If you really loved the Canon, you wouldn’t be holding still for what’s happening here.”
“Touché,” he said, but he didn’t mean it at all. “Such a curious mixture you are, of perceptiveness and naiveté.” He shook his head and left.
I got back in the Continental and glanced at the left side of the bank entrance, noting the huge sheet of plywood nailed up there to block the hole where the plate glass window had been shot out – like an eye patch, I mused.
As we pulled away from the curb in the direction of the school, Sam asked, “Do you maybe want us to drive around another way?”
“No,” I said. “Keep right on going, full speed ahead.”
The children playing at the school sounded far away and normal again – it didn’t bother me one damn bit. I stared straight at the school as Sam drove past it, my head swiveling to watch as it receded further behind us. I’d walked Sam to it every day once, and that was all I’d allow myself to take away from this place.