“Turn right,” he said, too loud, startling Jerome.
“What—”
“Go through the light! Hurry.”
But of course they were too late. By the time they arrived back at the cemetery, Judge Flatt’s grave had not only been filled in, the whole plot had been manicured. Both the yellow backhoe and Rub Squeers were gone. Raymer dropped to his knees in the moist earth, beneath which, under the old asshole’s casket, lay the garage-door opener. He’d been holding it in his hand when he fainted. Which meant his last chance to solve the riddle of his wife’s infidelity was gone, along with it his final opportunity to prove himself a real policeman and not just a joke. Something like a howl escaped his throat then, and the resulting pain in his skull was beyond belief. He gripped his head between his elbows to keep it from exploding.
Jerome put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “I guess those Tylenol aren’t working, huh?”
No, they weren’t. Not even a little. In fact, he might as well have shoved them up his ass.
—
THE STILL, STAGNANT AIR in the vicinity of the Old Mill Lofts was the sort of yellow that normally presages a tornado, and the smell was staggering — yesterday’s stench on steroids. Raymer swallowed hard, trying to keep his roiling stomach in check. As they were driving over here, Charice had radioed again to say there was yet another problem. As if things weren’t bad enough, Carl Roebuck’s crew of merry idiots, jackhammering the concrete floor, had hit an underground power line, knocking out a nearby transformer and leaving most of Bath without electricity. At the station and out at the hospital, they’d converted to the backup generator.
“Go on back to Schuyler,” Raymer said when Jerome pulled over to the curb a couple blocks from the now-three-sided mill. Apparently the power outage stopped at the Schuyler Springs city line, right where misfortune historically ground to a halt. After all, if Raymer, whose job it was, wanted no part of these proceedings, what possible interest could they hold for a man whose job it wasn’t? “I can snag a ride back out to Hilldale later.” On the drive into town he realized that his car was still out at the cemetery. At the sight of the judge’s grave, all filled in, he’d been too distraught to think clearly.
“Nah, I’ll stick around a bit,” Jerome said, getting out and locking the ’Stang. “You don’t look so good.” Raymer, light-headed and jelly kneed, had all he could do to pull himself out of the car’s deep bucket seats.
What remained of the mill resembled a child’s dollhouse, its long front face thoughtfully removed so its insides could be examined. Officer Miller, flexing authoritatively at the knees, had cleverly stationed himself at the epicenter of activity, where he could serve, so far as Raymer could tell, no useful purpose. A Tip Top Construction truck was parked next to the mound of bricks from the collapsed wall, and those of Carl’s crew who weren’t busy depriving the town of electricity were tossing them into the back. Nearby, the impressively flattened car — how had Roy Purdy escaped with his life? — was being hoisted onto one of old Harold Proxmire’s flatbeds.
Miller stood observing all this as if it were his responsibility to make sure these jobs were being done properly. “Chief,” he said, clearly surprised to see Raymer approaching. “I thought you were out at the hospital.” Eyeing Jerome suspiciously, he gave his boss a quizzical what’s-he-doing-here look. Low man on the department totem pole, Miller worried constantly about being replaced, and Jerome, already in law enforcement, was a possible candidate. Also, he was black and Charice’s brother. Was there some sort of affirmative action/nepotism afoot here?
“Mind if I ask what you’re doing?” Raymer said.
Miller seemed pleased to know the answer to this question. “Providing a police presence, sir,” he said, as if reciting from a manual. “I heard you were at the hospital, so I—”
“How about moving those people back,” Raymer suggested, pointing at the gawkers that had gathered at the foot of one of the remaining walls. “Could you do that?”
“Because Charice said you’d sustained an injury out at Hilldale and I was in charge.” Giving orders, he meant. Not taking them.
“Yet here I am.”
Miller nodded. Clearly, he would’ve liked to dispute this fact, but how?
“Miller,” Raymer said, “please move those people back. Now.”
“You think another wall might fall?”
“This one did.”
When he trotted off, Raymer and Jerome joined the mayor, who’d come directly from Hilldale, still dressed in funeral attire, and Carl Roebuck, who was studying some sort of schematic diagram and scratching his head. “What the hell’s a power line doing there?”
“Providing power?” Gus suggested.
“Not anymore,” a worker said, resting his gut on a jackhammer.
“Uh-oh,” said Gus, eyeing the Niagara Mohawk truck that was just then pulling up. “We should’ve waited. NiMo’s gonna ream our asses.”
“My ass,” Carl corrected.
“Jesus, look at this,” Gus said, finally noticing Raymer. “They didn’t admit you?”
“I kind of checked myself out.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought you might need me?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Raymer said, annoyed to be talked to the way he’d just talked to Miller. “That’s what I came to find out.”
“It’s true I might want to borrow your sidearm,” Gus said. “I’m thinking about shooting Carl here. How you doin’, Jerome?”
“Mayor,” he said, and they shook hands. Surprised, Raymer wondered how they knew each other. Had he and Gus ever shaken hands?
“How come shit like this never happens in Schuyler?” was what Gus wanted Jerome to explain.
“There’s an ordinance against it,” Jerome said.
Carl rotated the schematic, considering it from a different angle, and offered it to the mayor. “Show me on this where there’s a power line.”
“Why would I show you on that when I can take you to the actual cable your guys just jacked the shit out of.”
“What I don’t get,” Jerome said, when Carl headed over to the NiMo crew, “is how a building can stand for a century and then one day tumble into the street.”
“Well,” Gus sighed, “several things have to happen. First, some imbecile has to sever the collar ties that secure the walls to the roof.”
“Why would anybody do that?”
“They were working on the penthouse units, is my understanding. They meant to retie them later.”
“Still,” Jerome said, “the floor joists—”
“Those were compromised a couple weeks ago in order to construct the interior stairwells.”
Jerome nodded seriously, apparently following all this.
How did normal people know shit like this? Raymer wondered. Or, to rephrase the question: How had he himself managed to live so long and learn so little? “Aren’t you curious?” Becka always said whenever he asked why she was reading this or that. “About the world and how it works? About people and what makes them tick?” He supposed she had a point. Curiosity was probably a good thing, not always a cat killer. Still, what made people tick was no great mystery, was it? Greed. Lust. Anger. Jealousy. You could almost let your voice fall right there. Love? Some people claimed it made the world go round, but he wasn’t so sure about that. Love mostly turned out to be one of those other emotions, or a mixture of them, in disguise. Even if it did exist, Raymer doubted its relevance to much of anything.