World of Trouble (The Last Policeman Book, #3)

by Ben H. Winters

I am a question mark pointed at a secret, Cortez is a tool aimed at the stubborn places of the world.

Nothing we ever did mattered one way or another. This event has always been in the cards for man’s planet, for the whole scope of our history, coming regardless of what we did or didn’t do.

Houdini and I step down off the porch on Downing Drive into a warm wafting smell, buoying up off the road and surrounding us, and I swear we look at each other, the dog and I, and obviously he can’t talk but we do, we say it to each other: “Is that fried chicken?” Saliva fills my mouth, and Houdini begins whipping his little head this way and that. His eyes are shiny with excitement, like glossy marbles. “Go,” I say, and Houdini bolts for the source of the smell and I bolt after him.

“So basically I said, screw it,” Billy says. “I fired up the Pirate and drove down to find her. And can I tell you something—sorry, man, what …” “Henry,” I say. “Or—Hank.” “Hank,” says Sandy, as if she was the one who asked. “I like that. Crazy part is, I was all packed. I was waiting for him.” “You fucking believe it? She was waiting for me. Says she knew I’d be coming to find her.” “I did,” she says, nods firmly, a mild drunk smile in her eyes. “I just knew.”

Possible futures surface like fish from deep water; like memories of things that never got to happen. We might one day have been one of those happy sitcom households, cheerfully chaotic, with the colorful alphabet magnets making bright nonsense words on the refrigerator, with the chores and yard work, getting the kids out the door in the morning. Murmuring conversations late at night, just the two of us left awake.

It’s not just a person’s present that dies when they die, when they are murdered or drowned or a giant rock falls on their head. It’s the past, too, all the memories that belonged only to them, the things they thought and never said. And all those possible futures, all the ways that life might have turned out. Past and future and present all burn up together like a bundle of sticks.

Surviving challenging circumstances, I have found, is very often a matter of keeping things in perspective.

I can feel it, a feeling I never had occasion to notice until it disappeared, the odorless colorless presence of the future.

I see Houdini on my way out, still in that muddy spot he picked out behind the shed. Wallowing, practically inert, head tilted, asleep. A couple of the Amish kids are nearby, playing jacks on a patch of hard dirt. Houdini will like that, when he wakes up, he’ll like to hear them laughing. It happens the same way Atlee described it, in the crack of a moment—I don’t call to the dog. I don’t even get close enough to wake him. I move quietly past with my head down, looking back once and then moving on. It isn’t easy, because he’s a good dog and he has been good to me and I love him, but I leave him behind in this big green place that smells like animals and grass, among these people who will take care of him into a good old age, at least as far as either party knows. *

“Acceptance of loss is not a destination—it’s a journey.”

“Policeman, listen,” says Cortez, no longer bothering to whisper, his eyes fixed on the thin staircase leading down. “We’re not going in there to play ping-pong in the rec room. This isn’t all the set-up for a surprise party I planned for you.”

everybody does everything for a reason. That’s lesson number one of police work; it’s lesson number one of life.

Almost always, things are exactly as they appear. People are continually looking at the painful or boring parts of life with the half-hidden expectation that there is more going on beneath the surface, some deeper meaning that will eventually be unveiled; we’re waiting for the saving grace, the shocking reveal. But almost always things just are what they are, almost always there’s no glittering ore hidden under the dirt.

Solving a murder is not about serving the victim, because the victim is, after all, dead. Solving a murder serves society by restoring the moral order that has been upset by the gunshot or knife strike or poisoning, and it serves to preserve that moral order by warning others that certain acts cannot be committed with impunity.

But society is dead. Civilization is burning cities, its terrified animals clustered around grain silos, stabbing each other at burned-down convenience stores for the last can of Pringles.

Vengeance is the cheapest of motivations, it’s a tin star on a shabby coat. I want answers is all that I want.

I hold Ruthie’s hand and she holds my hand, we sit like that, giving each other strength, like strangers on a crashing plane.