“Just as you described it,” he said.
“How long ago did it happen?”
“An hour or so.”
I nodded. I didn’t know what else to do.
“Mr. Enright, we need you to see these things before they happen. That would really help us.” He wasn’t smiling.
Neither was I.
“What’s odd,” he continued, “is that the bodies are under bridges that seem to be progressing in this direction. First, the Short Line Bridge. Then, the Washington Avenue Bridge. Now, the Great Northern. All moving upstream. Icarus seems to be moving this way.”
“I know. I think he’s coming for me.”
Phelps’s eyes widened. “Do you know who he is?”
“No.” I hesitated, not sure he would understand. But I had to tell somebody. “I think he knows that I can see what he does.”
Phelps nodded with unconvincing concern, then gave me a pat on the shoulder. “If it’s any consolation, there may not be a pattern here. He missed the Franklin Avenue Bridge.”
“That’s true,” I said, “but it may have been too busy there. The others aren’t open to car traffic.”
Phelps nodded again, his concern more real this time. Then he tried to smile. “You have quite an eye for detail, Mr. Enright. You should be a cop.”
I struggled to smile back, wondering why it was that a detective would need my insight. Weren’t detectives the ones who were supposed to be trained to think like killers?
“Man Dies in Fall from RR Bridge” — Star Tribune, April 8, 2008.
“U Student Dies in Fall” — Star Tribune, April 15, 2008.
“Transient Falls to Death” — Star Tribune, April 23, 2008.
“Icarus Strikes Again” — Star Tribune, April 29, 2008.
The fourth one:
He wears a royal blue polo shirt with a logo on the left breast. It’s an employee shirt, the kind worn at a gas-station convenience store. It’s raised up, showing the man’s belly. Not a big belly, but more than should be there. A college beer belly. Below that, khaki pants and sandals. It’s an unseasonably warm night.
His body lies at an unnatural angle, his back broken sideways from hitting a bridge abutment before hitting the ground. No blood this time, his injuries all internal. All except for the bloody rings around his wrists.
3:28 a.m.
Arms over my head.
Broken halo.
Legs splayed.
Back aching.
Sweat.
Fear.
Nausea.
I reach for the phone.
“The Tenth Avenue Bridge this time,” I tell Phelps. “North end, near the Amoco.”
“I’m going to send Detective Lewis over. Is that okay?”
“He won’t believe me.”
“He’s a good cop, Mr. Enright.”
I hear the bed squeak, then a voice.
A woman’s.
Soft.
Pleading.
Lewis was not happy about being up at four-thirty in the morning. He stood on the doorstep with a large paper cup of coffee from a gas-station convenience store. It wasn’t for me. It had been two weeks since I’d seen him. After the second murder. Four weeks since the first day. The day they searched my house.
“Phelps told me to come.”
After I let him in, he strolled slowly around the room, his tired eyes searching, only glancing at me now and then to make sure I was still there. As if he thought I might flee. He didn’t say anything as he moved. Finally, he came to a stop in the center of my concrete room and leaned against the back of the wing chair. I stood in the kitchen behind the elongated island. The steam from his coffee cup rose between us.
His eyes settled on me and stayed there. It was the look of someone whose natural inclination was to intimidate.
Suspects.
Witnesses.
Coworkers.
Spouses.
Psychics.
But I wasn’t going to let him intimidate me. I had nothing to hide.
“I’ve watched you,” he said before taking a relaxed sip from his cup.
“Excuse me?”
“I tried to get the department to put a twenty-four-hour surveillance on you, but they wouldn’t. Couldn’t afford the overtime. Too many budget cuts. Apparently in this economy the budget is more important than four lives.”
He walked up to the island that stood between us and set down his coffee cup. “So I did it myself. Sat outside all night for six days straight, watching this place. On my own time.”
“And you never saw me kill anyone, did you?”
“No. But the seventh night I fell asleep in my car.” He hesitated, his eyes on me, but his focus inside. “I fell asleep. And what happened? A body was found under the Washington Avenue Bridge.”
“That’s not evidence of anything. That’s a coincidence.” I felt the heat building inside me. Then a thought struck me. “Maybe you’re Icarus.”
He ignored me. “I still watch you. Not every night, but most nights.”
The heat intensified. “You can blame me for the killings if you want, Lewis. You can blame me for your bad career or your bad kids or your bad marriage or any other bad things you have in your life, but it doesn’t make me guilty. I have a... I don’t know what to call it. A gift. A curse. Whatever it is, I can see things that have happened.” Tears followed in the wake of the heat. “And I hate it. And on those nights you’re sitting outside, I’m sitting in here fighting sleep, fighting to avoid what might come when I wake up. And it’s killing me. Can’t you see that? Icarus is killing me, too.”
I turned away from him, the tears streaming down my face, my breath coming in fitful waves.
When I turned back, I expected scepticism.
What I got was nothing.
Lewis was gone. But he’d left his coffee cup, still steaming, on the edge of the island.
I heard the front door click shut.
Neither hard nor soft.
Just a door clicking shut on a lingering darkness.
It has been roughly twenty hours since Lewis left. It’s pushing two in the morning. I’m battling sleep.
I played a note on the piano. The first note I’d played since August.
Since the collapse.
Thought it might help me stay awake.
Pressed one key.
The most basic key.
Middle C.
The point between treble and bass.
The tipping point of the piano.
It was soundless. The ivory key stayed down.
No tension in the string.
Dead.
I feel the urge to check it. To fix it. To give it sound again. To bring it back to life.
But the shrine sits on top of it. I’d have to move my family to get to the vertical strings. To get at the problems inside.
I’m hesitating.
Should I touch the shrine? Move it? Remove it? What would that mean? Was I beginning to heal? Beginning to move on?
I’m afraid.
Afraid to touch something of my own creation. Something that has become a sacred space. Afraid of what trespassing into that sacred space will bring.
The Egyptians feared curses; the Lakota, angry gods.
What do I fear?
The silent key haunts me.
Music has always been in my soul.
The thought of a quiet string — a broken string — distracts me. Has its own hold on me. Creates another kind of fear in me. Fear of silence.
Silence where beauty once was.
Silence that whispers to me.
Whispers I haven’t heard in eight months.
Has something changed in me? Is the old me still there?