sarcasm. “I will do that, doctor. Your opinion, such as it is and for whatever it’s worth, is noted, for the record.”
“Were there other witnesses, someone perhaps who saw Zimmerman step away from the crowd on the platform? Someone who saw him move without being pushed?”
“Just LuAnne, doctor. Everyone else only saw a part of the event. No one actually saw that he wasn’t pushed. But, then, a couple of youths did see that he had been standing alone, separated from the other people waiting on the local. The eyewitness pattern, incidentally, doctor, is fairly typical for these sorts of cases. People have their eyes focused ahead, down the tunnel in the direction the train is expected. Typically jumpers move to the back end of the crowd, not the front. They’re looking to do themselves in for whatever private reasons they might have, not provide a show for every other commuter in the station. So, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they move apart from the crowd, to the back. Or pretty much precisely where Mr. Zimmerman had taken up his position.”
The detective smiled. “Dollars to doughnuts I’ll find a note in his personal belongings somewhere. Or maybe you’ll get a letter in the mail this week. If you do, make a copy for my report, willya, doc? Of course, with you heading out on vacation, you may not get it before you leave. Still, it would be helpful.” Ricky wanted to reply, but he kept his own anger on a short string.
“Can I have your card, detective? In case I need to contact you in the future,” he asked as coldly as he could.
“Of course. Call me any old time.” She clearly said this in a contemptuous tone that implied the precise opposite. Then she reached into a box on her desk and removed one, which she handed over with a small flourish. Without glancing at it, Ricky put this in his pocket and rose to leave. He crossed the detective bureau rapidly, looking back only as he passed through the door, catching a single glimpse of Detective Riggins hunched over an old-fashioned typewriter, starting to peck out the words of her report on the obvious, ordinary, and seemingly inconsequential death of Roger Zimmerman.
Chapter Six
Ricky Starks slammed the door to his apartment shut behind him, the noise resounding in his ears, and echoing away through the dimly lit empty building corridor. He frantically twisted the locks that he so infrequently used, double-bolting the entranceway. He pulled on the door handle, to make certain that these functioned properly. Then, still uncertain that the locks alone were sufficient, he grabbed a chair and wedged it up under the doorknob as an old-fashioned secondary barrier. It took some mental energy on his part to prevent himself from piling bureau, boxes, bookshelves-anything he could immediately lay his hands on-up against the door to barricade himself inside. Sweat stung at his eyes, and even though the air conditioner hummed along busily out of sight in the office window, he still felt flashes of sudden heat like so many lightning bolts crease his body. A soldier, a policeman, a pilot, a mountaineer-anyone versed in the various businesses of danger-would have easily recognized these for what they were: strikes of fear. But Ricky had spent so many years living away from any of those edges, that he was unfamiliar with the most obvious of signs.
He stepped away from the door, turning to survey his apartment. A single, dim overhead light above the doorway that barely overcame the night threw odd weak shadows into the corners of the waiting room. He could hear the air conditioner and beyond that, muffled street noises, but other than that, nothing but an oppressive silence.
The door to his office was open, yawning darkly. He was abruptly overcome by the sensation that when he’d left the sanctuary of his home earlier that evening in the minutes after Virgil’s visit, he’d closed that door behind him, as was his usual habit. A rough-edged sense of apprehension scoured about within him, filling him with doubts. He stared at the open door, trying desperately to recall his precise steps in leaving.
He could picture himself donning his tie and jacket, pausing to double-knot his right shoelace, patting his hip to make certain that he carried his wallet, dropping the apartment key into his front pocket, then jangling it to reassure himself that it was secure. He saw himself stepping across the apartment, exiting the front door, waiting for the elevator to descend from the third floor, finding himself out on the street where the air above the sidewalk was still hot. All this was abundantly clear. It was, he thought, a departure no different from thousands of others over thousands of days. It was the return that resulted in everything seeming skewed or slightly misshapen, like staring at one’s image in a circus fun-house mirror, distorted no matter which way one pivoted and turned. Inwardly he screamed at himself:
He bit his lip in frustration, trying to recall the sensation of the knob in his hand, the noise of the wood shutting behind his back. The memory eluded him and he felt frozen in his position, stymied by his inability to recollect a single, simple, everyday act. And then he asked himself an even worse question, although he didn’t realize it quite yet:
He took a deep breath and reassured himself: You must have left it open. By mistake.
Still he didn’t move. He felt suddenly sapped of strength. Almost as if he’d been through a fight, or, at least, what he suspected he’d feel if he’d fought someone, because he realized abruptly that he never had. At least, not as an adult, and he discounted the occasional wrestlings of adolescent boys which seemed impossibly distant in his past.
The darkness seemed to mock him. He strained his hearing, trying to penetrate into the darkened room.
No one is there, he told himself.
But, as if to underscore the lie, he said out loud: “Hello?”
The sound of the single word spoken in the small space had a tightening effect upon Ricky. He was overcome by a sense of being ridiculous. A child, he told himself, is frightened of shadows, not an adult. Especially one who has spent the entirety of their adult life dealing with secrets and hidden terrors, as he had.
He stepped forward, trying to regain his composure. He was home, he told himself. He was safe.
Still, he reached out quickly for the light switch on the wall, as he hesitated in the gray-black space of the doorway, groping about with his hand until he found the toggle switch, which he flicked instantly.
Nothing happened. The blackness of the room remained intact.
Ricky gasped hard, inhaling some of the darkness. He flicked the switch repeatedly, as if refusing to believe that there was no light in the room. He cursed out loud: “Damn it to hell…” but did not step inside. Instead, he allowed time for his eyes to adjust to the dark, all the time listening carefully, trying to pick out some telltale noise that might let him know that he wasn’t alone. He reassured himself: When you’ve had as unsettling an experience as he’d had that evening, the mind naturally played all sorts of little tricks. Still, he waited a few more seconds, so that his vision had some purchase on the dark room, and he swept his eyes back and forth a few times. Then he stepped across the small space, angling for his desk and the lamp that occupied one corner. He felt not unlike a blind man, keeping his hands out in front of him, trying to feel his way across an area where there was nothing to feel. He bumped solidly into his desk, misjudging the distance slightly, banging his knee, which prompted a torrent of obscenities from his mouth. Several shits and damns and a single fuck, all of which were out of character for Ricky, who before the events of the past day, had rarely uttered an obscenity.
He sidled alongside the desk, finally finding the lamp with his hand, and locating its switch. With a relieved sigh, he clicked this, expecting light.
It, too, failed to function.
Ricky gripped the side of the desk, steadying himself. He told himself there must be some kind of power outage, caused by the heat and the citywide demand for electricity, but behind his desk he
