Death of the Black-Haired Girl

34

ACCORDING TO THE afternoon timetable, Stack had to change trains at what had been a derelict station in Connecticut he had not seen in a few years. His last time through it had been a crack scene, a rat-haunted vault of pissy shadows. It had been improved somewhat since the downtown bombings. Maybe, he thought, one thing had to do with the other. Graffiti had been painted over. The fluorescent lights in the ceiling were as yet unvandalized, but the ticket counter was closed and the only person in the station with him was a suspiciously sleepy teenager in a hoodie. Stack went over and looked at him — a police impulse. The boy’s eyes were half closed. The kid never reacted, and it was as though he were trying to hide in plain sight.

Stack, in his best wool pants and rather shabby sport jacket, walked tilted against the weight of the semi-automatic pistol he had taken to carrying. New York cops had been issued Glocks while Stack was in the job. Glocks, which replaced the old revolvers, were fearsome, fateful pieces, and they could set a running man into an airborne spin. It was a weapon to display on a twenty-first-century coat of arms, Stack thought. If there was a piece of weaponry used to claim the streets, it would be the Glock, exploding into random fusillades. A carelessly drawn breath might set it blazing. A gun with a mind of its own, in the world that had come to be after 9/11—heavy, hard to use, ready to take out half the room in seconds. They had become popular. Prestigious weapons, they tempted bozos toward casual display.

The Glock had led to a pandemic of bizarre shootings. Things happened inexplicably, the gun creating absurd occurrences on the streets. He had not packed it since leaving the job, and it felt strange.

On the next train to the college Stack had his choice of seats. At New Haven he rose to change again and walked across the refurbished station’s interior. By Maud’s time they had cleaned it up, as befitted the classy young passengers who used it. Of whom Maud had been one. From New Haven a slow local train tunneled through the hills and up the river to Amesbury.