Bookman's wake

She looked at me hard. “How’d you know that?”

40

I headed north on the freeway and hoped I’d remember where Murdock’s was. I found it after twenty minutes of trial and error. I arrived on a wave of deja vu. It looked exactly as I’d last seen it—the same dim light shone from deep in the building, the same open sign was propped in the window and tilted at the same slight angle—even the rain was the same, as if the world had turned back on its axis and erased the last seventy-two hours. I pushed open the door and called his name. There was no sound. If any customers had come in since last Friday night, they had left no evidence of their presence. They had come, looked, and left as we had, perhaps with a slight sense of unease. Those who knew Murdock would figure it as another bout with demon rum: the others would mind their own business.

I crossed the store and looked in the back room. Everything was the same…the dim light in the corner…the rolltop desk with its piles of magazines and papers…the canvas briefcase pushed off to one side with my note still taped to the handle…the rickety stacks of books and the thick carpet of dust, undisturbed where we hadn’t walked and already filming over where we had. I followed our three-day trail across the room and into the stairwell. I looked up into the black hole and called him, but I knew he wasn’t going to be inviting me up. My voice felt heavy, like a man shouting into a pillow.

I touched the bottom of the stair with my foot. I leaned into it, took a deep breath, got a firm hold on my gun, and started up. The light faded quickly: there was none at all after the fifth step and I had to go by feel, knowing only that the next step would be onward and upward. I had a sense of movement coming from somewhere… music! . . . and now the feeling that it had all happened before was as sharp as a scream. I planted each foot, letting my fingers slip along the inner edge of the wooden banister and guide me up. Don’t screw up again , I was thinking: don’t make the same mistake twice .

Now I could hear the melody, some classical piece on a radio. I saw a thin line of light…the crack at the bottom of a door. It dropped below eye level as I climbed higher, and a kind of sour dampness lay over the top. And I knew that smell, better than the people of Seattle knew the rain. In my old world it came with the smell of Vicks, the stuff homicide cops use to help them get through the bad ones.

I was standing at the top with an old memory playing in color and sound. My partner was a skinny guy named Willie Mott, who was giving me the lowdown on Vicks VapoRub. This one’s ripe…put a little glop of Vicks up each nostril and you won’t notice it so much .

I stood at the door of hell and nobody had brought the Vicks.

I touched the wood with my knuckles. Found the knob. Gripped it carefully by the edge, with the joints of my fingers and thumb.

The latch clicked: the door creaked open and the warm moist air sucked me in.

I retched.

I backtracked and stumbled and almost fell down the stairs.

On the third try, I made it into the room. I cupped my hand over my nose and got past the threshold to the edge of a ratty old sofa.

A single lamp near the window was the only source of light…a forty-watter, I figured by the dim interior. Dark curtains covered the window. I couldn’t see the body yet, but the room was full of flies. The music poured out of an old radio. It wasn’t “Rigby,” just something he’d been listening to when he finally ran out of time. I moved toward it, still fighting my gut. I hadn’t seen much of anything yet.

There was the one window.

A closed door across the room.

A pile of books on the table.

A typewriter…a pile of magazines…a roll of clear sealing tape…and a bottle of lighter fluid.

I moved around the table, watching where I walked. A wave of rotten air wafted up in a cloud of flies.

I tasted the bile. What I didn’t need now, after compromising the first scene, was to throw up all over this one.

The lighter fluid might help. I know it’s an evil solvent; I’ve heard it can get in your blood through the skin and raise hell with your liver. But it’s stronger by far than Vicks, and even the smell of a cancer-causing poison was like honeysuckle after what I’d been smelling.

I put my handkerchief on the table, then turned the plastic bottle on its side and pried open the squirt nozzle. Liquid flowed into the rag. I touched only the ribbed blue cap, so I wouldn’t mess up any prints on the bottle itself.

I made the wet rag into a bandanna. Found a roll of cord and cut off a piece, then tied it over my mouth and nose.