“You don’t know?”
“I’ll be in touch, Martha. I’ll let you know what I can find.”
The current environment. That’s what I said to Martha: A missing-person investigation is especially challenging in the current environment. I sigh, now, at the pale inadequacy of the euphemism. Even now, fourteen months since the first scattered disbelieving sightings, seven months after the odds of impact rose to one hundred percent, nobody knows what to call it. “The situation,” some people say, or “what’s going on.” “This craziness.” On October third, seventy-seven days from today, the asteroid 2011GV1, 6.5 kilometers in diameter, will plow into planet Earth and destroy us all. The current environment.
I trot briskly down the stairs of the Cavatones’ porch in the sunlight and unchain my bike from their charming cement birdbath. Their lawn is the only one mowed on the street. It’s a beautiful day today, hot but not too hot, clear blue sky, drifting white clouds. Pure uncomplicated summertime. On the street there are no cars, no sound of cars.
I snap on my helmet and take my bike slowly down the street, right on Bradley, east toward Loudon Bridge, heading in the direction of Steeplegate Mall. A police car is parked at the end of Church with an officer in the driver’s seat, a young man sitting upright in black wraparound shades. I nod hello and he nods back, slow, impassive. There’s a second cop car at Main and Pearl, this one with a driver I slightly recognize, although his wave in return to mine is cursory at best, quick and unsmiling. He’s one of the legions of inexperienced young patrol officers who swelled the ranks of the CPD in the weeks before its abrupt reorganization under the federal Department of Justice—the same reorganization that dissolved the Adult Crimes Unit and the rest of the detective divisions. I don’t get the memos anymore, of course, but the current operating strategy appears to be one of overwhelming presence: no investigations, no neighborhood policing, just a cop on every corner, rapid response to any whiff of public disturbance, as with the recent events on Independence Day.
If I were still on the force, it would be General Order 44-2 that would be relevant to Martha’s case. I can call up the form in my mind, practically see it: Part I, procedures; Part VI, Unusual Circumstances. Additional investigative steps.
There’s a guy at Main and Court, dirty beard and no shirt, whirling in circles and punching the air, earbuds in place, though I’d be willing to bet there’s no music coming out of them. I raise my hand from my handlebars and the bearded man waves back then pauses, looks down, adjusting the nonexistent volume. Once I’m over the bridge I make a small detour, weave over to Quincy Street and the elementary school. I chain my bike to the fence surrounding the playing field, take off my helmet and scan the recess yard. It’s the height of summer but there’s a small army of kids hanging out here, as there has been all day, every day, playing four-square and hopscotch, chasing one another across the weeds of the soccer field, urinating against the wall of the deserted brick schoolhouse. Many spend the night here too, camping out on their beach towels and Star Wars: The Clone Wars bed sheets.
Micah Rose is sitting on a bench on the outskirts of the playground, his legs drawn up and hugged to his chest. He’s eight. His sister Alyssa is six, and she’s pacing back and forth in front of him. I take the pair of eyeglasses I’ve been carrying in my coat pocket and hand them to Alyssa, who claps her hands delightedly.
“You fixed them.”
“Not me personally,” I say, eyeing Micah, who is looking stonily at the ground. “I know a guy.” I tilt my head toward the bench. “What’s wrong with my man?”
Micah looks up and scowls warningly at his sister. Alyssa looks away. She’s wearing a sleeveless jean jacket I gave her a couple weeks ago, two sizes too big, with a Social Distortion patch sewn on the back. It belonged to Nico, my own sister, many years ago.
“Come on, guys,” I say, and Alyssa glances one last time at Micah and launches in: “Some big kids from St. Alban’s were here and they were being all crazy and pushing and stuff, and they took things.”
“Shut up,” says Micah. Alyssa looks back and forth from him to me and almost cries, but then keeps it together. “They took Micah’s sword.”
“Sword?” I say. “Huh.”
Their father is a feckless character named Johnson Rose, whom I went to high school with, and who I happen to know went Bucket List very early on. The mother, unless I got the story wrong, subsequently overdosed on vodka and pain pills. A lot of the kids spending their days out here have similar stories. There’s one, Andy Blackstone—I see him right now, bouncing a big rubber medicine ball against the school—who was being raised, for one reason or another, by an uncle. When the odds rose to a hundred percent, the uncle apparently just told him to get the fuck out.
A little more gentle prodding of Alyssa and Micah, and it emerges, to my relief, that what has been lost is a toy—a plastic samurai sword that once upon a time came with a ninja costume, but which Micah had been wearing at his belt for some weeks.
“Okay,” I say, squeezing Alyssa’s shoulder and turning to look at Micah in the eye. “It’s not a big deal.”
“It just sucks,” says Micah emphatically. “It sucks.”
“I know that.”
I flip past the details on Brett Cavatone to the back of my notebook, where I’ve got certain small tasks laid out for myself. I cross out A’s glasses and pencil in samurai sword with a couple of question marks beside it. As I straighten awkwardly out of my squat, Andy Blackstone bounces the medicine ball my way, and I turn just in time for it to sproing up off the pavement and hit my outstretched palms with a satisfying, stinging whap.
“Hey, Palace,” hollers Blackstone. “Play some kickball?”
“Rain check,” I say, winking at Alyssa and clipping my helmet back on. “I’ve got a case I’m working on.”
2.
Rocky’s Rock ’n’ Bowl turns out to be a great big brick building with black-glass windows and a hokey sign above the door—musical notes and a smiling cartoon family munching on pizza. Rocky’s sits just past the abandoned husk of Steeplegate Mall, and to get there you’ve got to go through the vast mall parking lot, through a small obstacle course of garbage cans, overturned and spilling out, and abandoned vehicles, their hoods popped by thieves to dig out the engines. In front of the doors of the restaurant, sitting atop an empty newspaper box like statuary, is a young guy, twenty maybe, twenty-one, a stubbly uneven teenager’s beard and a short ponytail, who calls out “how you doin’?” as I approach.
“Just fine,” I say, mopping my sweaty brow with a handkerchief. The kid hops down from the newspaper box and sidles up to meet me, nice and easy, his hands jammed in the pockets of his light jacket. A criminal’s trick—you don’t know if he’s got a gun or not.
“Nice suit, man,” he says. “Help you find something?”
“I’m looking for the pizza place,” I say, pointing behind him.
“Sure. Sorry, what’s your name?”
“Henry,” I say. “Palace.”
“How’d you hear about us?”
Lots of questions, rat-a-tat, not to get the answers but to get a read: How nervous is this guy? What does he want? But he’s nervous himself, eyes slipping warily side to side, and I talk slow and calm, keep my hands where he can see them.
“I know the owner’s daughter.”
“Oh, no kidding?” he says. “And what’s her name again?”