I’m scratching away, nodding encouragingly and empathetically to keep Gompers talking, and I’m thinking how much I’m starting to like this guy, this Peter Anthony Zell. I like a guy who likes to get his work done.
“The thing about him, though, about Zell, is that this craziness never seemed to affect him too much. Even at the beginning, even when it all first started up.”
Gompers inclines his head backward, toward the window, toward the sky, and I’m guessing that when he says “when it all first started up,” he means early summer of last year, when the asteroid entered the public consciousness in a serious way. It had been spotted by scientists as early as April, but for those first couple months, it only appeared in News-of-the-Weird kinds of reports, funny headlines on the Yahoo! homepage. “Death from Above?!” and “The Sky is Falling!”—that sort of stuff. But for most people, early June was when the threat became real; when the odds of impact rose to five percent; when Maia’s circumference was estimated at between 4.5 and 7 kilometers.
“So, you remember: people are going nuts, people are weeping at their desks. But Zell, like I said, he just keeps his head down, does his thing. Like he thought the asteroid was coming for everyone except him.”
“And what about more recently? Any change in that pattern? Depression?”
“Well,” he says. “You know, wait.” He stops abruptly, puts one hand over his mouth, narrows his eyes, as if trying to see something murky and far away.
“Mr. Gompers?”
“Yeah, I just… Sorry, I’m trying to remember something.” His eyes drift shut for a second, then snap open, and I have a moment of concern for the reliability of my witness here, wondering how many glasses of gin he’s already enjoyed this morning. “The thing is, there was this one incident.”
“Incident?”
“Yeah. We had this girl Theresa, an accountant, and she came to work on Halloween dressed as the asteroid.”
“Oh?”
“I know. Sick, right?” But Gompers grins at the memory. “It was just a big black garbage bag with the number, you know, two-zero-one-one-G-V-one, on a name tag. Most of us laughed, some people more than others. But Zell, out of nowhere, he just flipped. He starts yelling and screaming at this girl, his whole body is shaking. It was really scary, especially because, like I said, he’s normally such a quiet guy. Anyway, he apologized, but the next day he doesn’t show up for work.”
“How long was he gone?”
“A week? Two weeks? I thought he was out for good, but then he turned up again, no explanation, and he’s been the same as ever.”
“The same?”
“Yeah. Quiet. Calm. Focused. Hard work, doing what he’s told. Even when the actuarial side dried up.”
“The—I’m sorry?” I say. “What?”
“The actuarial end. Late fall, early winter, you know, we stopped issuing policies entirely.” He sees my questioning expression and smiles grimly. “I mean, Detective: would you like to buy life insurance right now?”
“I guess not.”
“Right,” he says, sniffs, drains his glass. “I guess not.”
The lights flicker and Gompers looks up, mutters “come on,” and a moment later they glow brightly again.
“Anyway, so then I’ve got Peter doing what everyone else is doing, which is inspecting claims, looking for false filings, dubious claims. It seems loony, but that’s what our parent company, Variegated, is obsessed with these days: fraud prevention. It’s all about protecting the bottom line. A lot of CEOs have cashed in their chips, you know, they’re in Bermuda or Antigua or they’re building bunkers. But not our guy. Between you and me, our guy thinks he’s going to buy his way into heaven when the end comes. That’s the impression I get.”
I don’t laugh. I tap the end of the pen on my book, trying to make sense of all the information, trying to build a timeline in my head.
“Do you think I might speak to her?
“To who?”
“The woman you mentioned.” I glance down at my notes. “Theresa.”
“Oh, she’s long gone, Officer. She’s in New Orleans now, I believe.” Gompers inclines his head, and his voice peters down to a murmur. “A lot of the kids are going down there. My daughter, too, actually.” He looks out the window again. “Anything else I can tell you?”
I stare down at the blue book, spiderwebbed with my crabbed handwriting. Well? What else can he tell me?
“What about friends? Did Mr. Zell have any friends?”
“Uh…” Gompers tilts his head, sticks out his lower lip. “One. Or, I don’t know what he was, I guess he was a friend. A guy, kind of a big fat guy, big arms. Once or twice last summer I saw Zell having lunch with him, around the corner at the Works.”
“A large man, you said?”
“I said a big fat guy, but sure. I remember because, first of all, you’d never see Peter out to lunch, so that was unusual in itself. And second, Peter was such a small person, the two of them were kind of a sight, you know?”
“Did you get his name?”
“The big man? No. I didn’t even talk to him.”
I uncross and recross my legs, trying to think of the right questions, think of the things I’m supposed to ask, what else I need to know. “Sir, do you have any idea where Peter got the bruises?”
“What?”
“Under his eye?”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah, he said he fell down some stairs. A couple weeks ago, I think?”
“Fell down some stairs?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Okay.”
I’m writing this down, and I’m starting to see the dim outlines of the course of my investigation, and I’m feeling these jolts of adrenaline shooting up my right leg, making it bounce a little bit where it’s crossed over the left one.
“Last question, Mr. Gompers. Do you know if Mr. Zell had any enemies?”
Gompers rubs his jaw with the heel of his hand, his eyes swimming into focus. “Enemies, did you say? You’re not thinking that someone killed the guy, are you?”
“Well. Maybe. Probably not.” I flip closed my blue book and stand up. “May I see his workspace, please?”
That sharp jolt of adrenaline that shot up my leg during the Gompers interview has now spread throughout my body, and it lingers, spreading up my veins, filling me with a strange kind of electric hunger.
I’m a policeman, the thing I’ve always wanted to be. For sixteen months I was a patrol officer, working almost exclusively on the overnight shift, almost exclusively in Sector 1, cruising Loudon Road from the Walmart at one end to the overpass on the other. Sixteen months patrolling my four-and-a-half-mile stretch, back and forth, 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., breaking up fights, scattering drunks, rolling up panhandlers and schizophrenics in the Market Basket parking lot.
I loved it. Even last summer I loved it, when things got weird, new times, and then the fall, the work got steadily harder and steadily stranger and I loved it still.
But since making detective I’ve been befogged by a frustrating unnamable sensation, some dissatisfaction, a sense of bad luck, bad timing, where I got the job I’ve wanted and waited for my whole life and it’s a disappointment to me, or I to it.
And now, today, here at last this electric feeling, tingling and fading at my pulse points, and I’m thinking holy moly, this might just be it. It really might be.
“So what are you looking for, anyway?”
It’s an accusation more than a question. I turn from what I’m doing, which is sorting methodically through Peter Zell’s desk drawers, and I see a bald woman in a black pencil skirt and white blouse. It’s the woman I saw at the McDonald’s, the one who approached the door of the restaurant and then turned away, melting back into the parking lot and out of sight. I recognize her pale complexion and deep black eyes, even though this morning she was wearing a bright red wool cap, and now she is hatless, her smooth white scalp reflecting the harsh overhead lights of Merrimack Life and Fire.