Countdown City: The Last Policeman Book II (Last Policeman Trilogy) (16 page)

“No, he did not come because there aren’t many days left and he wants to spend them with me. He came for guns.”

“He came for—” I blink. “What?”

Julia laughs then, once, a harsh bark, as I stare at her, open-mouthed with bafflement.

“Come on,” she says, and flings open the trapdoor to the stairwell. “Let’s take a walk.”

* * *

Jeremy Canliss was right. Brett had a woman on his mind. But it was neither lust nor love that brought him to the University of New Hampshire to find Julia Stone; it was the lure of the weapons she had proudly described to him in that one letter, a couple months back.

Julia Stone leads and I follow, a pace or two behind, down the path leading away from Kingfisher, under the gauntlet of extinction—Permian, K-T Boundary, Justinian Plague—and off across campus. We don’t speak, we just go, my nervous excitement making itself known in the loud rattling of my heart in my chest, my understanding of this case revolving slowly like a wall of books in a haunted mansion, revealing the hidden staircase behind. I have questions—more questions, new questions—but I just walk, allow myself to be led, Julia offering muted greeting to nearly everyone we pass on the twisting trails.

Our destination, as it turns out, is a compact concrete shed with a flat tar roof, built along a chain-link perimeter fence separating the
UNH facilities buildings from College Road behind them. The shed sits in the shadow of the hulking power station, now defunct, its coils and towers silent and cold.

Julia opens the padlocked shed and leads me inside. It’s a single room, a perfect box: flat floor, flat ceiling, four flat walls. The sunlight filters in dimly through the low dirty windows. The walls are lined with hooks that are hung with guns: pistols, rifles, automatics and semi-automatics. On a shelf near the floor are a dozen boxes of ammunition, neatly arranged. The revolutionary Free Republic, Julia Stone explains, appropriated all this gear from the UNH ROTC program at the time of the “revolution.” What Brett told her was that he needed “serious weapons”; he asked for a pair of high-powered rifles, M140s with bolted scopes. Julia gave him the guns and pinned their disappearance on the rapist.

“Not that the guns were mine to give,” says Julia, shaking her head bitterly. “They belong to the community. I don’t know why I let him talk me into it. He’s just …”

She opens her hands, trailing off. But I know what she wants to say. I’ve heard it before:
He’s just Brett
.

We step outside and Julia locks the door and we lean against one of the concrete sides, facing the power station, and I fight back a wave of anxiety, an intense consciousness of what’s in the shed. The destructive capability of just this one tiny building, this single small room in a world full of them. Because I’ve seen rooms like this before, since the asteroid’s slow approach became known. By now there must be millions of them, basements and attics, sheds and garages, lined
with weapons silently waiting to be used, a world of tinderboxes ready to bloom into flame. I look at my watch and I am late—the deadline given to me by the guards at Thompson Hall has passed. I offer up a silent apology to Houdini, wondering whether those two girls or the guys in the black shirts would actually do anything to harm the dog.

I circle back around to my initial question.

“Julia, what is going on? Who is trying to kill Brett?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe no one.”

“Is he in danger?”

“Danger? I mean, danger doesn’t even …”

She shakes her head with bitter amusement. She’s going to tell me, I realize—she’s already started to tell me. For the first time I feel it with a wrenching ecstatic certainty: I’m going to find him.
I’m coming, Brett
—
I’m coming
.

“Julia?”

But her affect changes; her face gets tight with anger. “Why the fuck should I tell you?” she says, spitting the words. She wheels away from the wall of the shed, glaring. “Why should I tell you
shit
?”

I respond not to the anger but to the question. She wouldn’t be asking if she didn’t want an answer. She wouldn’t have taken me to the guns. “You care about him. Whatever passed between the two of you, it meant something to you. Perhaps you don’t love him, but you wish to keep him from harm. If I find him, maybe I can make that happen.”

She doesn’t answer. She pulls nervously on one of her pigtails,
a small human gesture.

I’m coming, Brett. Here I come
.

There’s a motion by the chain fence, some animal or stumbling citizen of the Free Republic, moving in shadow. We both turn our heads, see nothing, and then look back at each other. I watch Julia intensely considering, weighing factors, deciding whether to reject the truth of what I’ve said, simply because I’m the one to have said it. I watch her weighing her loyalty to Brett, her anger at him, her desire to see him safe from harm.

“I won’t tell you what he’s doing,” she says at last. “He made me promise to tell no one. I can’t betray him.”

“I understand,” I say. “I respect that.” And I mean it. I do.

“But I will tell you where he is.”

I’m sorry, Martha
.

I can hear myself saying the words, imagine them hanging in the bright empty air of her kitchen, when I make it back to Concord, knock on her door like a cop with hat in hand to give her the news.

I’m sorry, ma’am, but your husband will not be coming home
.

Had I been right, and had I found Brett Cavatone as I briefly imagined him, reclining on the thick grass of the quad, head in the lap of his long-lost love—or had I found him in a whorehouse or at a fuck-it-all beach party, staring up at the stars with something wicked sluicing through his veins—and had I then delivered Martha’s message, reminded him that “his salvation depends” on his return … had it all played out that way, there might still have been some small chance of success, some sliver of hope, that he would remember himself, hang his head, and come home.

But now what I know is that he’s out in the woods with two rifles. And whether he’s plunged himself into some terrible danger, as Julia seems to fear, or he’s performing some great act of end-days nobility, as Martha wants to believe, it is in all scenarios harder to see him having much interest in home.

I couldn’t find him
, I could say to Martha.
Neither hide nor hair of the man
.

But I’ve always been a terrible liar. Maybe the best thing to do is never report back to my client at all. I could stay here in Durham, or return to Concord but never to her house on Albin Road, let the final months roll by for Martha in hopeful silence. Let her die on October 3 with that small diamond of possibility still pressed in her palm, that Brett might return, turn up suddenly to hold her tightly as the world explodes.

* * *

“Sorry I’m late,” I say, panting and out of breath. One of the anarchists in the black T-shirts looks up and goes, “Oh, what time is it?” and there’s Houdini, perfectly fine, bounding around on the sloping lawn under the flapping flag of the Free Republic while Beau and Sport toss a Frisbee for his amusement.

“For God’s sake,” I say, and exhale. The girls’ shotguns lie carelessly on the steps like pocketbooks; the Black Bloc guys are sitting languorously on the dirt by the wall, bandanas off, faces warmed by the sunshine.

Houdini barks in recognition as I come into view but does not, I note sourly, come racing for the lap of his master. He’s having a great time, leaping delightedly between his captors, delivering the battered yellow Frisbee to each in turn. Beau crouches as if to protect him from returning to my ownership, and Sport waves merrily.

“Oh, hey,” she says. “Check it out.” She points to my dog. “Sit.”

He sits.

“Roll over.”

He rolls over.

“That’s great,” I say. “Wow.”

This a clear case of canine Stockholm syndrome, and I explain this to Houdini as he reluctantly falls into step beside me and we trot away back toward Main Street and India Garden.

I eat a Clif Bar and a peanut butter sandwich, pour out a cup of kibble for the dog, reviewing my obligation in my head, my contract with my client:
I will do what I can to find your husband.…
The problem now is that I know where he is. The problem now is that I could be there on the ten-speed in an hour. The problem is that I want to go. I’ve come this far and I want to deliver my message. I’ve come this far, and I need to see the man with my own eyes.

The door rings brightly. “Hey, can I get a palak paneer, please?” says Nico pulling up a chair. “And a thing of naan bread?”

She’s smiling her crooked clever smile, a cigarette hanging in the tough-girl style from the corner of her mouth, but somehow I’m not in the mood. I stand up and hug her for a long time, pressing her face against my chest and resting my chin on her head.

“What the hell, Henry?” she says when I let her go. “Did something happen?”

“No. I mean, yes. Not really.” I sit down again. “You smell like beer.”

“Yup,” she says. “I drank a bunch of beer.” She runs a hand through her spiky black hair, then flicks her cigarette butt into the corner. Houdini glances up disapprovingly from his food, sniffing at the smoke.

“So?” says Nico. “Did you find her?”

“My witness?” I say. “I did.”

“What about Martha’s husband?”

“Not yet. But I know where he is.”

“Oh, yeah? Where?”

“Maine, south of Kittery. At a place called Fort Riley. It’s an old state park.”

Nico nods blankly, helping herself to a bite of my Clif Bar. This is as far as her interest goes in my ongoing investigation.

“All right,” says, when she’s done chewing. “You ready?”

I rub my forehead with one hand. I know what she means, of course. I promised that if she guided me to and through the Free Republic of New Hampshire, then I would listen to all the sordid details of Nico’s Magic Plan to Save the World. I just wanted a couple more minutes. Just a moment or two of small normal happiness, a brother and a sister and a dog.
I’m not ready
, I want to say.
Not yet
.

But I promised. I did promise. “Okay,” I say. “Fire away.”

I cross one leg over the other and lean slightly forward and
focus my energy on Nico, admonishing myself as she begins talking to listen with patience and good grace to whatever Hail Mary last-ditch song and dance I’m about to hear.

“The United States government,” Nico begins, and I clap one hand over my mouth, “if it wanted to, could detonate one or more near-surface nuclear explosions in the space surrounding the approaching asteroid.”

I tighten my grip over my mouth, clamp it closed, forcing myself not to speak.

“The effect would be to superheat the surface of the object, initiating what’s called a back reaction and altering its velocity sufficiently to keep it from impacting the planet.”

I shut my eyes now, too, and tilt my head forward in a position that hopefully looks like deep concentration, but is in fact a desperate attempt to keep myself from leaping to my feet and away from this monologue. Nico goes on.

“But certain officials, high in the government, have decided to suppress this information. Make it sound like it’s too late, or impossible.”

I can’t take it any longer, I remove my hand from my mouth. “Nico.” Just that, quietly. She doesn’t hear, or chooses not too. Houdini smacks his lips in the corner.

“Those with the knowledge to perform the operation have been jailed or made to disappear.”

This is talking points. I can smell it. I try again. “Nic?”

“Or, in one case, murdered.”

“Murdered?” I’m done. I stand up, lean forward across the table. “Nico, this is crazy.”

She leans back from me and says, “What?”

“This is the big secret? A nuclear explosion? Blast it from the sky? You can’t do that. It turns the one big asteroid into a million smaller ones. You haven’t heard that? There was a National Geographic special about it, for God’s sake. It was on the cover of the last issue of
Time
magazine.”

I’m speaking loudly. Houdini looks up for a moment, startled, then returns to his kibble.

“That’s not what I said.” Nico speaks softly, crossing her arms patiently like a kindergarden teacher, like I’m the child, I’m the fool. “You’re not listening.

“We went to war to
prevent
Pakistan from shooting a nuke at the thing. Thousands of people died.” I can still see the pictures; it was all in the
Monitor
before the paper went out of business: drones, air strikes, firebombs, the rapid annihilation of nuclear capability and concomitant destruction of civilian areas. There was quite a spread on Pakistan, too, in that same issue of
Time
, their farewell double issue. Cover headline: “And Now We Wait.”

“I didn’t say blast it from the sky.” Nico rises from the table and leans against the buffet line, digs another cigarette from her pocket. “What I said was a nuclear explosion or explosions, near but not on the asteroid. This is called a standoff burst, as distinct from a kinetic impactor, which would be a ship or other object smashing into the surface. A standoff burst has the advantage of creating the desired velocity
change while minimizing surface disruption and the resulting ejecta.”

More talking points. I feel like she’s going to hand me a pamphlet. I get up. I pace.

“A standoff burst. And you guys think no one has thought of that?”

“I knew you wouldn’t listen,” she says with sadness, shaking her head, tapping ash onto the floor. “I knew I couldn’t count on you.”

I stop pacing. Of course she knows exactly what to say; she has had a lifetime of making me feel bad for castigating her in the face of her outrages. I take a breath. I lower my voice. “I’m sorry,” I say. “Please. Tell me more.”

“As I said, it’s not that the government—I should say the military, it’s really the military, not the civilian government. They
have
thought of it. They even commissioned people to figure out how to do it, years ago, when this kind of danger was purely hypothetical. There has to be a nuclear package in a new shape, with a new kind of fuse, to deliver the payload in space.”