The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters Read Free Book Online Page A

Rockland Road, hatless and somber, calling, “Anybody home?” into the morning darkness.
    Me standing at the top of the stairs, in a Red Sox jersey, or it might have been a pajama top, thinking my sister is probably still asleep, hoping so anyway. I’ve already got a pretty good idea what the policeman’s there to say.
    * * *
    “Let me guess, Detective,” says Denny Dotseth, “We’ve got another 10-54S.”
    “Not a new one, actually. I wanted to touch base with you about Peter Zell.”
    I’m easing the Impala down Broadway, hands at ten and two. There’s a New Hampshire state trooper parked at Broadway and Stone, engine on, the blue lights slowly rotating on the roof, a machine gun clutched in his hand. I nod slightly, raise two fingers off the wheel, and he nods back.
    “Who’s Peter Zell?” says Dotseth.
    “The man from this morning, sir.”
    “Oh, right. Hey, you hear they named the big day? When we’ll know where she comes down, I mean. April 9.”
    “Yep. I heard.”
    Dotseth, like McGully, likes to keep up-to-date on every unfolding detail of our global catastrophe. At the last suicide scene, not Zell’s but the one before that, he talked excitedly for ten minutes about the war on the Horn of Africa, the Ethiopian army swarming into Eritrea to avenge ancient grievances in the time remaining.
    “I thought it made sense to present you with what I’ve learned so far,” I say. “I know your impression from this morning, but I thinkthis might be a homicide, I really do.”
    Dotseth murmurs, “Is that a fact?” and I take that as a go-ahead, give him my sense of the case thus far: The incident at Merrimack Life and Fire, on Halloween. The red pickup truck, burning vegetable oil, that took the victim away the night he died. My hunch on the belt from Belknap and Rose.
    All of this the assistant AG receives with a toneless “interesting,” and then he sighs and says, “What about a note?”
    “Uh, no. No note, sir.”
    I decide not to tell him about
Dear Sophia
, because I feel fairly certain that whatever that is, it is
not
an aborted suicide note—but Dotseth will think it was, he’ll say, “There you go, young man, you’re barking up the wrong tree.” Which he pretty clearly thinks I’m doing anyway.
    “You got some straws to grasp at there,” is what he says. “You’re not going to refer this case to Fenton, are you?”
    “I am, actually. I already did. Why?”
    There’s a pause, and then a low chuckle. “Oh, no reason.”
    “What?”
    “Hey, listen, kid. If you really think you can build a case, of course I’ll take a look. But don’t forget the context. People are killing themselves right and left, you know? For someone like the fella you’re describing, someone without a lot of friends, with no real support system, there’s a powerful social incentive to join the herd.”
    I keep my mouth shut, keep driving, but this line of reasoning I do not like.
He did it because everyone else is doing it?
It’s like Dotseth is accusing the victim of something: cowardice, perhaps, or mere faddishness, some color of weakness. Which, if in fact Peter Zell
was
murdered, murdered and dragged into a McDonald’s and left in that bathroom like meat, only adds insult to injury.
    “I’ll tell you what,” says Dotseth genially. “We’ll call it an attempted murder.”
    “Sorry, sir?”
    “It’s a suicide, but you’re attempting to make it a murder. Have a great day, Detective.”
    * * *
    Driving down School Street there’s an old-time-style ice-cream parlor on the south side of the road, right where you pass the YMCA, and today it looks like they’re doing a pretty brisk business, snow or no snow, dairy prices or no dairy prices. There’s a nice-looking young couple, early thirties maybe, they’ve just stepped outside with their colorful cones. The woman gives me a small tentative friendly-policeman wave, and I wave back, but the man looks at me dead-eyed and unsmiling.
    People in