Five Minutes Alone (3 page)

I walk fifty yards along the tracks. I walk on the sleepers. The
view ahead isn’t much different from the view behind me. Weeds. Tracks. A road and farms and some tired-looking farmhouses in the distance. Only real difference is the direction of the shadows and the amount of body parts. I walk another fifty yards. No blood out here. I turn around and head back. Every twenty or thirty seconds I look over my shoulder in case a train is barreling towards me even though I’d feel it and hear it and people would start shouting warnings. I look anyway, the same way kids would throw glances behind them running through a graveyard at night. I think about Dwight Smith lying on the sleepers and the rails vibrating like they’re being powered by a nuclear reactor. Instead of him going towards the light the light came towards him. Up ahead Kent and Hutton are taking a break from their conversation with the railway guy, and both Hutton and the railway guy are making phone calls while Kent stands there waiting, her hands stuffed in her pockets. I’m not sure why, but I give her a brief wave, she smiles, and gives a brief, small wave back. I smile back. What’s it been? Two minutes since we last saw each other?

I angle off the tracks and take my old man knees down to the car Dwight was borrowing. It’s a beat-up station wagon that, according to the registration sticker on the windshield, is fifteen years old. It looks like it was driven off the lot under the condition it must never be washed. There are scratches and dents all over the bodywork, nicks in the paint from gravel, some chips in the windshield. The tires are balding and one has almost no tread on it at all. Even the fluffy dice hanging from the mirror are sun faded, some of the dots having disappeared.

I put on a pair of latex gloves. The driver’s door is closed, but hasn’t latched shut, so the interior light has remained on all night I imagine, and the battery will be dead, but I don’t test my theory. The keys are in the ignition. Soon they will be dusted for prints. The whole car will be. The keys consist of a car key, a house key, and what I’m guessing is a padlock key. Later this morning the car will be towed into a forensics lab and people smarter than me will be able to figure out if Dwight Smith drove it last. In the glove
compartment there’s a map, a small torch, a pocketknife, some CD covers, and some loose CDs. Some country and western, some heavy metal, some rock from the seventies; some I like, some I hate, some I’ve never heard of. I check under the seats, behind the seats, all through the car. No blood. Doesn’t look like it’s been vacuumed clean. Just dirt and dust and bits of dried leaves.

On the passenger seat is a bottle of water. The label on it says
Water Bro.
It’s part of a new range of products aimed at men. It started a few months ago with some aggressive advertising and some well-placed products in supermarkets. The Bro Range—or
Brange.
You can buy Chips Bro, Cola Bro, Salad Bro, Bread Bro—there are dozens of products available. I’ve been using the Shaving Foam Bro over the last month, but can’t bring myself to try out the Clean Teeth Bro toothpaste. The brand has been so successful that six weeks ago they opened two fast-food restaurants in the city. The water bottle is half-full. I take off the lid and sniff the contents. A guy getting ready to jump in front of a train would be drinking something harder than water, I’d have thought, but not in this case. Could be Mr. Spontaneity didn’t stop off for some gin on his way out here.

I close up the car. Hutton has gotten off the phone and is chatting to Kent. I head over to them. The railway guy is still in the process of his call, his free arm making big gestures in the air as if he’s painting on an invisible canvas.

“What have I missed?” I ask.

“We’ve just made a positive ID on Smith,” Hutton says. “Fingerprints were confirmed.” He’s nodding while he tells me, and Kent is nodding too, and it must be nodding Saturday because I find myself joining in.

“So what do you want us to do next?” I ask.

“Talk to his boss. Then talk to his brother and then go to his house and then speak to his probation officer. Get an idea of what Smith was up to, what his state of mind was. We don’t want people thinking we didn’t try to cover all the possibilities because we didn’t like the guy. If we don’t, then tomorrow’s headline will be
accusing us of dismissing any crimes that involve unpleasant people being hurt. We may not like him, but we have to treat him the same way we’d treat any other person who was killed.”

“You have his address?”

“He lives in a boarding house in town—you know the one—it’s run by a guy who calls himself the Preacher.”

I nod. I remember the house and the Preacher. Earlier this year a private case I was working on led me there. It was the following day that I had the glass jar crashed into the side of my head.

“Listen, Detectives,” he says, lowering his voice. “It’s important we dot all the i’s on this one. I’m sure Dwight Smith found some reason to lay on the tracks to end his life, but . . . you remember that case Schroder caught a few years back?” he asks, looking at me. “The one with the train?”

“I remember it,” I tell him, and suspect that’s not just why we’re dotting our i’s, but also crossing our t’s too.

“What case was that?” Kent asks.

I let Hutton tell the story. A guy had been run over by accident. The guy who did the running over had been drunk, and he figured the way to hide what he had done would be to throw his victim under a train, hoping it would be viewed as a suicide. It almost worked.

“The impact of the train hid all the existing cuts and bruises. The train couldn’t hide the fact the killer had been seen doing it,” he says, “but this . . . you know what I said before about the time line?”

We both nod.

“Well, it’s odd to kill yourself when you’re out of jail, but why kill yourself at the end of the working day? Why not at the beginning?”

“Maybe the news he got that made him want to kill himself didn’t arrive until late,” Kent says.

Hutton nods. “Could be.”

Just then one of the officers whistles out. We all turn in his direction. He’s a hundred yards up the track and twenty yards out to
the side of it, and about twenty yards from all the other pieces. He’s waving an arm. His own arm.

“That’ll be the final piece,” Hutton says. Then he puts his hand to his face, rests his chin on his palm, and uses his forefinger to start tapping his teeth. He does this for a few seconds. “Look,” he says, and that word alone reminds me of Schroder, the way he used to open some of his conversations with me, a
Look, Tate, we don’t want your help on this one,
and thinking of Schroder makes me realize I miss working with him. Hell, I even miss working at cross-purposes with him
.
“Truth be told,” he says, but then he doesn’t say, so the truth doesn’t get told. He taps his teeth a few more times. “How do I say this,” he says.

“You don’t need to,” Kent says.

And he doesn’t need to. If it was a suicide, then fine—we can all sigh in relief that a really bad guy decided to hurt himself rather than somebody else. Case closed. Let’s get back to the weekend we all had planned. But if it wasn’t a suicide then we’re still all feeling relief, because Dwight Smith seems like the kind of guy happy to take those bad things from his past and use them to build an even worse future. So the only difference between a suicide and a murder in Smith’s case is who we have to thank.

That’s what Hutton is thinking.

That’s what Kent is thinking.

That’s what I’m thinking.

Of course none of us say it.

“Hopefully you won’t have to interview Kelly Summers. Hopefully she has nothing to do with it, but if this is more than a suicide then that will make her a suspect.” He stares hard at me as he talks. “You can’t go easy on her.”

“Because of the i’s and t’s,” I say.

“Exactly. I know you’re thinking if Kelly Summers was a part of this, then society should let it slide. And truthfully, I’d agree. I think society owes her one. But it doesn’t matter what we think—we have to follow this through. We’re not judges. Are we on the same page here?” he asks.

“We are,” I tell him.

“Good,” he says, and nods. “We’ll know more once the medical examiner has looked at him. Hopefully she’s not going to give us some weird shit about him being dead already when the train hit, or find a bullet wound, but my gut instinct tells me it’s not going to be that easy,” he says, and I wonder if his gut instinct is smaller now that he’s lost all that weight. “Go talk to those people. Hopefully they’ll all tell us Smith kept saying how much he hated life. We get all that squared away without any kinks and I’ll chalk this up as case closed,” he says, but he doesn’t believe it because his gut is telling him differently, and mine is telling me differently too. Things are never that easy. Not even a simple suicide.

CHAPTER FOUR

The man who saved Kelly Summers from Dwight Smith knows two things. The first is that the name he’s come up with for himself is a good one. It’s the type of name the media would give him if they knew the way his mind worked. It’s the Five Minute Man. It has a ring to it. Over the last few years the city has had the Christchurch Carver, the Burial Killer, the Gran Reaper, even Melissa X. Every one of them a psychopath, a killer. The Five Minute Man is a superhero. People love superheroes. He used to love superheroes back when he knew how.

The second thing he knows is that later today the medical examiner will make the determination Dwight Smith was dead before being put on those train tracks. And that’s a problem. He’s bought them some time. Twenty-four, perhaps forty-eight hours, if the ME is backed up, in which to come up with a way to keep the police from suspecting Kelly Summers. And that’s assuming Summers behaves the way he told her to behave when they interview her today—which he thinks they will. She just has to stick with the script—and he believes she will. After all, she’s the one who killed Smith. She’s the one who has the most to lose. She’ll be fine—he knows it, because last night she experienced something she’s dreamed about for five years: revenge.

Last night sparked something inside him that was lost. He’s spent the last few months sitting in his lounge watching the sun climb one wall and descend the other. He’s been tracking the progression of a spider who’s building a life in one of the corners. Days pass where all he does is eat and sleep. Some days his wife drops by, but most days she doesn’t, and on the days she does she doesn’t bring the kids because he isn’t their dad anymore, not really. The same
way he isn’t her husband or even himself. He knows there’s more to life—only he doesn’t care. His wife and children are part of the old life, and in that life hadn’t he been happy? Working long hours, mowing lawns, taking his daughter to ballet practice, changing his son’s diapers, paying the mortgage and taking out the trash—that was life. Looking back, he doesn’t know if that made him happy, all he knows is that his new life makes it all feel irrelevant. He doesn’t miss his family. He knows he should. He should miss them a lot. The truth is he doesn’t care. That’s the thing—the Old Him would have rebelled against the person he has become, would have fought and screamed to be heard, he would have gone to every doctor in the country to put things right, and if they couldn’t then he would have searched the world. But the Old Him has gone, replaced by the New Him, and the New Him is all about acceptance. This is what he is. This is life. And that’s fine. The New Him wasn’t going to search for the Old Him. He skipped the first four stages of grief.

The New Him would slowly die in front of a TV he never turned on, on a couch he didn’t like or dislike, in a house he didn’t like or dislike, watching a spider that he had named Warren munching on the occasional unlucky fly. He isn’t bored. When he shopped, he bought instant meals that could be heated in a microwave. The Old Him would have picked out foods he enjoyed, foods based on flavors and textures and scents and the fun of cooking and the memories those tastes and smells evoked. The New Him can’t taste the difference. Chicken, ice cream, rice, tomatoes—there is only one flavor now. The doctor said there wasn’t anything they could do about that. But he didn’t care. Food was fuel. He ate it to live. And to be honest, he didn’t care if he lived. Or died. But when he didn’t eat he got hungry, and the hunger hurt, and that’s why he ate. It’s why he shopped. Warren would agree. Warren knew about hunger—sure he did.

Then came the conversation.

But a week before the conversation there was the referendum—or, more accurately, the result of such a referendum. The citizens of New Zealand were asked a month ago whether to keep the prime
minister they had, or vote on a new one. They were given that opportunity every three years. Personally, he never thought there was much difference between politicians. Could they be trusted? No. Did people know that? Yes. So who was the fool when a politician let you down? He would vote Labour, he would vote National, he would choose on the day. Who was the better of two evils? That was the box he would tick. This time there was a second question being asked, a question many were demanding to be asked. Should the death penalty be brought back? The current prime minister won by a landslide. But the death penalty was closer. Half of the country voted yes. Half voted no. It was split down the middle. A dead heat. So the votes needed to be counted. And recounted. And recounted again. Which took two weeks. The votes weren’t split down the middle at all. They were separated by one hundred and seventy-seven votes. They say every single vote counts. In this case it was one hundred and seventy-six votes away from being true.

The death penalty was coming back.

He didn’t care.

It was what it was. It didn’t affect him. It wasn’t a big deal.

It was. Just. Life.

Then the conversation. It was three days ago. It wasn’t just his wife that came by. There were others. People he’d worked with. People he knew. They felt bad about what had happened to him. Of course they did. He didn’t. It was. Just. Life. He was okay with it. Didn’t like it. Didn’t hate it. He’d accepted it. People from his past were showing up. They showed up without being invited. Sometimes with food. Sometimes with beer. He just sat and listened and didn’t much feel like contributing to the conversation—which, in hindsight, meant he felt something, didn’t it?

The conversation that changed everything was seemingly inconsequential. There was the weather. It could rain or snow or the sun could scorch the earth, and what would change? He’d sit in his room and okay, maybe he’d put on a heater or open a window, but life would go on. Other people. Names from his past were thrown
at him, this guy was doing that, that guy was doing this. World events. Oil was going up in price, somewhere was getting invaded, human rights were in jeopardy as they always were in some far corner, people being hacked to pieces a way of life the way ice creams on beaches in summer was a way of life in New Zealand. The referendum. The death penalty was on its way back and did he think it would change the level of violence in the country?

The Christchurch Carver—given name Joe Middleton—was a sick, twisted son of a bitch who for years had worked as a janitor at the police department during the day, but during the night was out there breaking into the houses of women who were alone, tying them up, and turning them into homicide statistics. The police arrested him late in the game, and a year later, on the day his trial was set to begin—the trial that would possibly send him to death row—Joe escaped. Even now he’s roaming about freely, but nobody knows where.

And that did it. At the mention of the Carver he felt something stir inside him. It was like an old car that hadn’t run in years was being started. Only the fuel was bad, the engine was half-seized, there was enough juice for the engine to try and turn over, but that was all, a hint of life and then nothing. So the New Him did care about something. It cared about the Carver, because back in the old life he had been on the task force that had failed for so long to catch him. He still felt the anger of the man’s escape, but what could he do about it? Track the Carver down? No—because nobody has been able to. He cared . . . but then he didn’t care. The anger just drained away. The Old Him—the Old Him would have fired up, would have topped the rev counter, would have exploded.

More of the conversation. The prime minister. Did he like the guy? He was fine. Fishing. They should go fishing sometime, like they used to. Did he remember that time the fishhook went through his ankle? The rugby season was over and had he seen any of the cricket? He should get out more, should try to get away, should try to do this and try to do that—and he nodded some of the time and some of the time he didn’t, he just stared ahead, waiting to be
alone. Travel. Gardening. New restaurants opening and old restaurants closing. A new mall was being built. Extensions to the prisons were almost complete. Dwight Smith was released two weeks ago.

Another jump start. Something inside sparked.

Did he remember Dwight Smith? Yes, he did, and wasn’t it early for Dwight Smith to be released? Why yes, it was, six years too early. Why was that, he’d asked? Why was anything, he’d been told.

So something had sparked and it had caught. And why? Looking back, he thinks because Dwight Smith was somebody he could do something about. The Christchurch Carver—nobody knew where the hell he was, what he was doing, whether he was dead or alive or even still in the city. But Dwight Smith? Well now, Dwight was an entirely different kettle of spiders.

The conversation ended and he was alone again and on the couch he didn’t like or dislike, and the motor was running. There were hiccups and moments where it almost stalled, but it was running.

Dwight Smith was free.

Dwight Smith was a dog who had tasted blood.

The Old Him had been about men like Dwight Smith. The Old Him had been about getting up every morning at seven a.m. and getting to work by eight, about fighting a never-ending fight, about dedicating himself to the cause. It had been about sitting at his desk with a coffee and catching up on paperwork, about taking orders, about giving orders, about often being somewhere in the middle of the chain of command. It had been about knocking on doors, interviewing shop owners and bank tellers and people whose homes had been broken into. It had been about interviewing family members and victims and suspects. It had been about seeing the good in people and the bad in people, but mostly about the bad. He would spend his days putting bad people away, and they would do their time and they would come back out and he would spend more days putting them away again. It was simply how the world
worked. From eight o’clock to five o’clock, five days a week—that was his life, often with overtime. A never-ending cycle. Of course old age and karma caught up to some of those bad people so he never had to see them again, and occasionally they either gave up the life of crime or got so good at it they dropped off the radar, but there were always more being produced in the white-trash factories of the city, a production line of meth manufacturers and sociopaths and rapists and shoplifters and arsonists and people who just didn’t give a shit. And of course the Old Him stopped being the Old Him because of people like Dwight Smith and the Christchurch Carver, and why should—

Why should.

There they were Two small words.
Why should,
and a future opened in front of him, just like that, a doorway to a world of possibilities. That was the moment he realized he was a man searching for something. That’s what man did. If man didn’t search, the world would not evolve. The world would not be explored. People would still be living in caves and killing lizards with rocks.

Why should a guy like Dwight Smith get a second chance at hurting people?

Why should Dwight Smith get to be happy? Should get to carry on? Should get to be free?

He didn’t care. And at the same time he did care.

He didn’t understand it.

What he did understand was Dwight Smith wasn’t going to spend his life indoors staring at a goddamn spider in the corner of the room. Dwight Smith was a ticking time bomb who was going to cause a lot of pain.

Why should.

He was evolving. Why should Dwight Smith get to live a better life than him? Or that of the woman he had attacked?

Why should?

The answer was simple—he shouldn’t.