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I stood in the precinct parking lot, unmindful of the cold and the continuing drizzle. Headlights twinkled in the night. A few pedestrians hurried by, heads ducked low in their coats or under umbrellas, hands jammed into pockets.
A sudden smell of tobacco hit my nostrils. When I turned, I found Polk and Lowrey standing beside me. Polk’s unfiltered Camel glowed dully in the wet gloom.
“Lieutenant says we can cut you loose for the night,” Lowrey announced. “But if you remember anything more—”
“I wish I did. All I heard were footsteps running away. All I saw was a door closing.”
The three of us stood there, listening to the sounds of the Steel City at night. Car horns, the splash of a rain puddle. A distant chorus of drunken laughter. Students, probably, coming out of a bar. Kids who couldn’t imagine that they wouldn’t live forever.
“So this Merrick kid,” Polk said off-handedly. “He wanted to turn into you, or somethin’?
Be
like you?”
“Not exactly.” I thought about saying more, somehow explaining myself. But no words came.
Polk grunted. “Shrinks. Christ.”
“Look,” I said, “why the hell are we just standing here, wasting time? Kevin’s killer is out there somewhere.”
He bristled. “You tellin’ us how to do our jobs now?”
“Yeah, if that’s what it takes.”
Polk showed me a lot of teeth. “Geez, Doc, ain’t you done enough already?”
I felt anger boil up in my throat.
“Hey,” Lowrey said sharply, taking a step between us. Polk and I still glared at each other.
Lowrey glanced at me. “Look, there’s not much we can do before we get the forensics, anyway. Maybe run a back-ground check on Kevin Merrick, his family, friends…”
“You won’t find much,” I said.
“I had that feeling,” she replied. “We’re havin’ a helluva time just finding any next-of-kin to notify.”
“He’s got a father who could be anywhere. And a sister in Tucson. But I don’t know her married name.”
“Poor kid.” Lowrey shivered in her coat. “Sounds like the proverbial little boy lost.”
“Yeah,” said Polk, “only now he’s little boy dead.”
***
I sat in the passenger seat as Harry Polk drove his blue Ford sedan up the winding streets toward Mount Washington, just south of the city. I had a trim two-story house near the Duquesne Incline, overlooking the Point. Sergeant Polk was driving me home.
We’d sat in an awkward silence for five minutes, the only sound the slap-and-swish of the windshield wipers. The wet, gloomy streets were nearly deserted.
“Must be nice havin’ all that juice downtown,” he said absently, lighting another cigarette from the butt of his last one. Acrid smoke drifted in the air between us.
“What do you mean?” I watched the row of World War II-era brownstones and duplexes, gabled and weather-beaten, caravan past my window, against a backdrop of deep Pennsylvania woods.
“Angela Villanova,” Polk said. “Community Liaison. I hear you and her are pretty tight.
Paisans,
eh?”
I shrugged. “She knew me from years back, sent some people to me for help. Just started from there.”
“I remember. I read about you in the
Post-Gazette.
‘Shrink Turns Personal Tragedy Into Personal Mission.’ Somethin’ like that, right?”
“You know reporters.” I said nothing more.
“Fuckin’-A,” he replied. I thought he was going to lower his window and spit.
I wanted to change the subject. “By the way, I’m not a psychiatrist. I’m a clinical psychologist.”
“Who gives a shit?”
“The AMA, for one. State licensing boards.”
“Uh-huh. That’s real interesting. Listen, those people Villanova sent you…that was about the Handyman, right?”
“Yeah. A couple people he grabbed got away. But even so, you’re looking at major trauma. Nightmares. Flashbacks. I worked with one of those survivors.”
“Yeah, well
I
worked with the victims.” His voice grew bitter. “What was left of ’em.”
“You were on the Task Force?”
“Me and every other cop in town, plus the FBI, the ATF…Man, if it had initials, it was climbin’ up our ass, tellin’ us how to do our jobs.” He looked over at me. “It was a local cop who finally got him, ya know that? Kranksi. Another big dumb Polack, like me. Brought the guy in.”
“I remember.”
“Christ, what Dowd did to those poor people…Women, kids, he didn’t care. One truly sick fuck, that guy…”
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Hear who’s playin’ him in the movie? DeNiro. Can you
believe
they’re makin’ a
movie
about that piece o’ shit..?”
“I heard. Serial killers are big box-office.”
“Well, ain’t that nice.” He shook his head. “Tell that to the vics. And their families.”
He gave a hacking cough, a sputtering of rage. Fished in his pocket for another Camel. Came up empty.
I said nothing. If he wanted to say more, he would. I knew he wouldn’t. He was a cop. He’d have nightmares, an alcohol problem, a busted marriage, and an early death by colon cancer. But he wouldn’t talk.
We made the turn onto my street, whose edge fell away onto a panoramic view of the Three Rivers and the glistening lights of contemporary Pittsburgh. Gone were the steel mills and factories; in their place stood razor-thin buildings of glass and chrome, of software and bond trading.
The city had changed a lot since I was a kid, a shot-and-a-beer town colliding with the Information Age. Though sometimes, like tonight, I missed the Pittsburgh I grew up in. Forged by immigrants. Musty like the smell of damp wool. A mosaic of thick accents and old neighborhoods, clanging trolleys and cobblestone streets. Before mini-malls and decaf lattes. Before spaghetti became pasta.
Polk slowed the car, as I pointed up ahead to my place, freshly painted a quiet yellow a few years back. I’d also added a rear deck that jutted over the edge of the hill. The houses on either side, my neighbors, were coal-dark, except for tiny porch-lights that made them seem somehow more vulnerable, not less.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said as he pulled over to the curb. “When can I get my car back?”
“Tomorrow. Oh, and Biegler ordered some surveillance. No big deal. A unit drivin’ by your place every twenty minutes, somethin’ like that.”
“Surveillance?”
“Hell, yeah. Maybe the killer knows he got the wrong guy. Maybe he don’t. If not, he’ll find out soon enough. This’ll be all over the morning news.”
“Jesus Christ,” was all I could say.
“It’s just hittin’ you now?” He laughed. “You’re so busy feelin’ guilty, you forgot to worry about your
real
problem. Namely, some fucker’s out there lookin’ to kill you.”
I spent the next thirty minutes working out my frustrations on the heavy bag in the basement, throwing combinations under the cold glare of the track lights. The large, pine-paneled room is lined with boxes and old tools. Like the unconscious itself, a windowless vault below ground level, a hoarder of memory and regret.
Barefoot, stripped to my shorts, I was covered in sweat. I had Chick Corea on the CD. Loud. It was three a.m.
I worked it hard. Muscles aching, eyes stinging with briny sweat; fists going numb, long past pain. At the end, I clung to the bag, face pressed against the slick, damp leather, gasping for breath.
Memory fragments flickered like heat lightning in my mind: nine years old, the house on Winebiddle Street, my old man in pajamas and robe, sparring bare-handed with me, bob and weave, tapping my cheek with his powerful left, reminding me to keep my guard up, always up, another slap on my face, stinging, another life lesson, always harder than it needed to be…
I pulled off my gloves, went upstairs and hit the shower. Standing under the hot water, steam rising, I peeled the cracked, grimy training tape from my hands. Blood-caked skin came away with it.
I ducked my head under the scalding water. I wanted it to burn, to sear off the day’s events, to scour me clean.
***
An hour later, in jeans and sweatshirt, I stood at the window in the front room. In the storm’s wake, the purple sky looked like a bruise, splotchy and sore, stretching to the horizon.
Then I saw the headlights. The patrol unit doing its regular pass by my house. I found myself nodding to them through the curtains, though I doubt they saw it. Or were even looking.
It was bullshit, and I knew it. Whoever tried to kill me wouldn’t be stupid enough to try again. Not in the same night. Not with the cops alerted.
I was wide awake and jangly. Going into the kitchen, I flicked on the overhead, flooding me in light about as warm and consoling as a solar flare.
Christ,
I thought,
gotta put in that dimmer switch…
Funny, the things you think about at four a.m. A brutal murder and household chores. Death and dimmer switches.
I poured myself a Jack Daniels, pulled up a chair. Polk had suggested I come up with a list of enemies, people who might bear a grudge against me. People from my past. Ex-lovers. Colleagues. Even patients.
A list of enemies? Right. God knows, I’d pissed-off my share of people over the years—in
all
the above-mentioned categories—but not enough to warrant homicide. At least, I didn’t think so.
Instead, I kept replaying Kevin’s last words to me as he left my office. “I’ve got
lots
of secrets…”
The look I’d seen on his face. Not guarded, or challenging. Something else. In his eyes. A warning?
No, a
promise
.
I sat up. I’d misread that last moment between us. It wasn’t the usual patient’s yearning to disclose something painful, terrifying, held back by fear or shame.
I must have passed some test today, and Kevin was sending me a message. He wasn’t
wanting
to tell me something else, something important. He was
going
to tell me. Soon.
But what?
Coffee in hand, I stood against the door to my back porch, watching the sun rise over the famed three rivers. The arteries in the heart of the city.
Even with the sparse river traffic nowadays. Not like years ago, when the riverfront below was flanked by seventeen miles of steel mills. When coal barges and tugboats clogged the Point and black smoke belched from furnaces and foundries, sprinkling the old buildings with soot.
Now, as the sun pulled deep reds and oranges out of the morning sky, the rain-washed city shone like a scale model under glass. And what new steel there was, embedded in freshly-poured concrete, was imported from Japan.
At six on the dot, I went back inside the house, poured another mug of black coffee, and turned on KDKA-TV.
Kevin’s murder was the lead story on the news. The anchorman explained that the body had been found “by his therapist, Dr. Daniel Rinaldi, the noted trauma expert, who was later held for questioning by the police.”
Jesus. I clicked it off, sat calmly with the mug on my knee, and waited for the phone to start ringing. It did.
The first call was from my cousin Johnny. “Shit, man,
now
I know why you didn’t show up at the restaurant last night. You were busy gettin’ on the news.”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“Screw it. Not for nothin’, though, but you coulda called. Aren’t they supposed to allow you one phone call?”
“That’s if you’re a suspect. I’m not.”
Johnny laughed on the other end of the line. Ten years younger than me, he always tried to come off as cool and cynical, a player’s player. The Sammy Glick of CPAs.
“Listen, Danny, if you think you ain’t a suspect, you’re nuttier than one of your patients. The cops don’t turn up some poor mook for this thing soon, you’re it!”
“You’re a goddam ray of sunshine, you know that?” I yawned despite the coffee. I could feel the fatigue settling over me now. The bone-weariness of a sleepless night. The long hours of daylight ahead. Shit.
Johnny’s voice hardened. “Trust me, man. You gotta move fast. Hang up with me and call a friggin’ lawyer.”
“Good advice,” I said, hanging up. Almost immediately the phone rang again. I let the answering machine take it.
“This is Stan Brody, WWSW News Radio. Can you just—”
I turned down the volume and went upstairs. Stretched out on the bed, I listened to the phone ringing again and again. The remorseless clicks as the machine recorded the silent messages. I knew who’d they’d be from. The press. Worried colleagues and friends. Probably a couple attorneys offering their services.
Finally, I roused myself and reached for the extension phone. I had some calls to make, too.
As I flipped through my patient roster, I realized I was about to repeat the same steps I’d taken, in almost the exact same sequence, six years before…
Calling my patients and canceling their sessions for the next two weeks. Explaining my need for some personal time. Some responded with sympathy; others got angry. As I expected, a few claimed it was fine with them. No big deal. I knew I’d have the hardest time with them when I got back.
Then I called Paul Atwood, another therapist in my office building, to see if he could cover for me. Luckily, he’d seen the morning news and didn’t have to ask why.
“Look, Dan, if you need anything…” His voice grew thick. “You know, I had a patient once who—”
“Thanks,” I said, cutting him off. “I’m fine.”
A pause. “Right.”
***
The doorbell rang, waking me. I must have lain back on the bed and fallen asleep. Groggily, I turned over, pulled the bedside table clock closer. 3:15 p.m.
The bell rang again. More reporters? Damn.
I clambered out of bed, eyes adjusting to the afternoon light slanting into the room, and looked out the window. There was a patrol unit parked at the curb. My own green Mustang was parked behind it.
I went downstairs and opened the door. Two uniforms stood there, both young and wearing mustaches. One of them dangled my car keys in his hand. The other had a clipboard.
“Brought your car back, sir,” the latter said, offering me the clipboard and a pen. “You have to sign for it.”
“No problem.” So I did.
As I pocketed my keys, the other cop said, “Sergeant Polk said to tell you to meet him downtown at nine tonight. The Old County Building. They need you there.”
“Okay.” What the hell was going on?
“He says to just stay put till then. We gotta pull the surveillance on your place. Manpower’s short.”
“Tell Sergeant Polk I’ll sit tight.”
“Great. You have a nice day.”
Given the circumstances, a strange comment. I stood in the open doorway and watched them drive off. As soon as the patrol car rounded the corner, I went back inside, dressed, locked up the house, and got in my car.
I was not going to sit tight.
Driving down the narrow, twisting roads, I opened all the windows to get at some of that storm-sweetened air. It felt good, bracing. I was starting to wake up.
Pennsylvania is a green state, never greener than after a heavy rain. Trees glisten, leaves studded with tears. Puffs of wind push around the big clouds, sun-spackled, intensely white. The old Appalachian Hills, sloping away before spreading urban tendrils, looking as pristine and timeless as when the first settlers came over four hundred years ago.
I turned off Grandview and headed down toward the Fort Pitt bridge. Traffic was forming in clusters, soon to be backed up on the highway all the way to the airport.
I popped a Jimmy Smith CD into the player and cranked up the volume.
Organ Grinder’s Swing.
With Kenny Burrell on guitar, Grady Tate holding the sticks. For a lapsed Catholic boy, the only Holy Trinity left to believe in.
I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. My fingers drummed on the wheel in time to the music. I was awake, all right. The surreal, dream-like quality of the past twenty-four hours was gone.
In its place was an aching clarity about the obscenity of Kevin’s death, and my commitment to doing something about it. Somehow making things right. But first—
I felt the rhythmic bumps from the steel plates as I drove over the old bridge spanning the Monongahela River. I saw my exit up ahead, to the right.
I had to smile. Not for the first time, I was driving down to the river to tell my troubles to a crazy man.
