The Broken Window

I freeze. Then turn slowly to the groundskeeper, who is talking to me. He’s come up silently, treading over the carpet of short, dewy grass. And he looks from my face toward my right hand, which I slip into my pocket. He might or might not have seen the beige cloth glove I’m wearing.

“Hi,” I say.

“I saw you in the bushes there.”

How do I respond to that?

“The bushes?”

His eyes reveal to me that he’s protective of his dead folks.

“Can I ask who you’re visiting?”

His name is on the front of his overalls but I can’t see it clearly. Stony? What kind of name is that? I’m riddled with anger. This is Their fault…Them, the people after me! They’ve made me careless. I’m addled by all the noise, all the contamination! I hate Them hate Them hate…

I manage a sympathetic smile. “I’m a friend of Miguel’s.”

“Ah. You knew Carmela and Juan?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Stony, or is it Stanley, is wondering why I’m still here since Miguel 5465 is gone. A shift in posture. Yes, it’s Stony… His hand moves closer to the walkie-talkie riding on his hip. I don’t recall the names on the tombstones. I’m wondering if Miguel’s wife was named Rosa and the boy Jose and I’ve just waltzed into a trap.

Other people’s cleverness is so tedious.

Stony glances at his radio and when he looks up the knife is already halfway into his chest. One, two, three punches, careful around the bone-you can twist a finger if you’re not careful, as I’ve learned the hard way. It’s very painful.

The shocked groundskeeper is more resilient than I’d expected, though. He lunges forward and grabs my collar with the hand not gripping the wound. We struggle, grappling and pushing and pulling, a macabre dance among the graves, until his hand falls away and he drops onto his back on the sidewalk, a snaky strip of asphalt that leads to the cemetery office. His hand finds the walkie-talkie at the same instant my blade finds his neck.

Zip, zip, two quiet slashes open the artery or vein or both and send a surprising torrent of blood into the sky.

I dodge it.

“No, no, why? Why?” He reaches for the wound, helpfully getting his hands out of the way and allowing me to do the same on the other side of his neck. Slash, slash, I can’t stop myself. It’s unnecessary but I’m mad, furious-at Them for throwing me off stride. They forced me to use Miguel 5465 as an escape. And now They’ve distracted me. I got careless.

More slashing…Then I stand back and in thirty seconds, after a few eerie kicks, the man is unconscious. In sixty, life becomes death.

I can only stand, numb from this nightmare, gasping from the effort. I’m hunched over and I feel like a miserable animal.

The police-They-will know I was the one, of course. The data are all there. The death happened at the gravesite of an SSD employee’s family, and, after the wrestling match with the groundskeeper, I’m sure there’s some evidence the clever police can trace to the other scenes. I don’t have time to clean up.

They’ll understand that I’d followed Miguel 5465 to fake his suicide and was interrupted by the groundskeeper.

Then a clatter from the walkie-talkie. Someone is asking for Stony. The voice isn’t alarmed; it’s a simple inquiry. But with no response they’ll come looking for him soon.

I turn and leave quickly, as if I’m a mourner overcome with sorrow and bewildered by what the future holds.

But then, of course, that’s exactly who I am.

Chapter Thirty

Another killing.

And there was no doubt that 522 had committed it.

Rhyme and Sellitto were on a hot list for immediate notification about any homicides in New York City. When the call arrived from the Detective Bureau, it took only a few questions to find out that the victim, a cemetery groundskeeper, had been murdered next to the grave of an SSD employee’s wife and child, most likely by a man who’d followed the worker there.

Too much of a coincidence, of course.

The employee, a janitor, was not a suspect. He was talking to another visitor just outside the cemetery when they heard the groundskeeper’s screams.

“Right.” Rhyme nodded. “Okay, Pulaski?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Call somebody at SSD. See if you can find out where everybody on the suspect list was in the past two hours.”

“All right.” Another stoic smile. He sure didn’t like the place.

“And, Sachs-”

“I’ll run the scene at the cemetery.” She was already heading for the door.

After Sachs and Pulaski left, Rhyme called Rodney Szarnek at the NYPD Computer Crimes Unit. He explained about the recent killing and said, “I’m guessing he’s hungry for information about what we’ve learned. Have there been any hits on the trap?”

“Nothing outside the department. Just one search. Somebody from a Captain Malloy’s office in the Big Building. Read through the files for twenty minutes then logged off.”