Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 137, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 835 & 836, March/April 2011

Icarus by C.J. Harper

C. J. Harper is the pseudonym of Plymouth, Minnesota, lawyer Charlie Rethwisch. His three previous stories for us all featured 1950s P.I. Darrow Nash. In 2009, the author was highly commended by the committee for Britain’s Debut Dagger Award for his as yet unpublished Nash novel. The judges particularly praised the book’s likable protagonist and “sexy 1950s Hollywood setting.” We hope that novel will be bought for U.S. publication soon. In the meantime, here’s a non-series C. J. Harper tale.

THE COMPLETE JOURNAL ENTRIES OF PROFESSOR JAMES ENRIGHT:

Icarus is coming for me.

I can feel it.

Can sense it.

It’s not paranoia.

I know he’s coming.

Because he knows I can see what he does. Can see the results of his depravity. The results of his madness.

Icarus is coming for me.

I am a psychic.

It is not a gift.

This is how it starts:

I see the body from above. From the vantage point of God.

At that moment, I know only two things: that I am awake and in bed. Nothing else has had time to register.

That is how it starts.

That is when the vision comes.

The first one:

The body is sprawled facedown on the rocks along the Mississippi River beneath the Short Line Railroad Bridge. The scene is dark, but an ambient glow from the city lights, refracted down by the overcast sky, brings out a human shape on the rocks. The head is bare and balding and turned to the side, the white, stubbled hair stark against a backdrop of black-looking blood. The pants are dark. The legs are in the position of a rock climber in mid step, one straight down and one bent as if lifting for a toehold. Thick-soled athletic shoes cover feet pointed in opposite directions. The shirt is white with vertical stripes and is untucked. Elbows jut out below arms sprawled over the head. Dark lines encircle the wrists like bracelets. Even from this height, a single word is visible: “Hunter.”

My eyes blink open. My heart hammers against my chest. Sweat stipples my forehead and upper lip. It takes me a moment to get my bearings. To calm down. To realize that what I’ve seen wasn’t in front of me. Had only played out in my mind.

The memory of a dream.

The digital clock on the bedside table reads 3:28 a.m. Its characters are vivid. Blood red.

I’m lying on my back in my double bed, the tan sheet and burgundy bedspread in a pile on the floor. My legs are splayed, my arms bent above my head in the shape of a broken halo. My back aches as if I’ve slept wrong. My head is turned to the side. My posture reminds me of what I’ve just seen in my mind’s eye, that of a man who has fallen from a high place.

Fallen to his death.

It isn’t until later that I begin to understand what I’ve seen.

What I am.

The psychic I’ve become.

In the four weeks since that morning in early April, I have developed a fear of waking. Of finding myself lying in bed in that fallen condition, in that moment between reality and dream, between the conscious and the subconscious.

I fear that moment when I see the aftermath of Icarus.

See the body of his latest victim.

In the four weeks since that first sighting, I have woken that way four times. And four bodies have been found. Right where I told Detective Phelps they would be.

I fight sleep.

Am exhausted nearly to the point of delirium.

To the point of madness.

The circles under my eyes are the shade of bruises. When darkness falls, a dread bears down on my heart with the gravity of shackles. I try to stay awake to avoid what I don’t want to see, but my exhaustion drags me into a deep, dark sleep.

A sleep of density.

The sleep of death.

“For in that sleep of death what dreams may come...”

Hamlet knew.

For all his weaknesses, Hamlet knew.

I miss Denise and McKenna.

This curse of seeing beyond my senses never followed me before their deaths. My life before that first day of August, 2007, was one of hope, built on the naive belief that there was — is — a purpose and a destiny to life.

That balance does not splinter.

That music does not die.

That bridges do not fall.

Eight months later, only a simmering rage has attempted to fill the chasm of loss and hopelessness that has hollowed out my soul. Rage at a world that goes blindly on. Blind to the devastation wrought on a single soul. Focused instead on the inanity of television and the Internet. On the banality of celebrity. On the meaninglessness of sports.

People in the grocery store offer their pop psychology on talentless celebrities without taking a moment to analyze themselves and their shallow fixations. They worship emptiness. They worship a culture that, to borrow from Macbeth, is nothing more than “a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/ Signifying nothing.”

These people have no concept of the depth of the loss burrowing inside the man standing in line behind them. They are oblivious to the tectonic shift that has left massive fissures in his heart. They are unaware that he could wake up one morning frozen in a fallen and graceless pose and see the death of their loved one before they are told of it. See the devastation that awaits them before their cell phones have begun to ring.

A number they will not recognize.

A detective they will soon come to know.

I fear these psychic visions.

Yet a part of me revels in the power.

Of seeing death before others do.

After they died, I moved from the suburbs to a place known as the Mill District. The birthplace of Minneapolis. Where the Mississippi River tumbles over the Falls of St. Anthony. Where wheat became flour. Where flour became fortunes.

Only a couple of the mills still stand. Others are gone, or left in ruins. Little more than the jagged edges of stone walls from buildings that once hummed with the energy of milling wheat into flour.

Of turning one thing into another.

Many of those mills exploded from the grain dust that had built up inside them. Destroyed by their own unstable breath. By an unforeseen byproduct of their own existence.

Some of them were rebuilt. Others were left as rubble.

A place of rebirth and ruin.

That is why I moved here.

I knew I’d fit in.

One way or the other.

I thought maybe that first vision had just been the vestige of a dream, an illusion of the cruel subconscious that had bled into my perception. But the noon news later that day had led with the story of a missing person, an elderly man, Donald Grayson — white male, age seventy-three, five-eight, 165 pounds, last seen leaving Sidekick’s Bar wearing black jeans and a white Twins jersey. He was a fan of Torii Hunter, the former Minnesota center fielder, and that name was stitched on his back.

I’d picked up the phone that first day to call the police, but hesitated. What was I calling to report? A dream? A coincidence? Would they think I was a lunatic? Yes. But how could seeing the name “Hunter” be a coincidence?

Someone was missing a family member.

Someone was about to understand.

I dialed 911. Told the woman who answered what I’d seen. Where they might find Donald Grayson’s body.

When Denise and McKenna died, time stopped.

I lost track of the months after their deaths. The days, the endless hours of darkness when I was afraid to sleep — almost as afraid as I am now. But back then, I didn’t fear visions. I feared dreams.

New, unlived, frighteningly real dreams. Wishful dreams of scenes of a life I would never have with them. Scenes of a secret life played out under the cover of sleep.

I feared the disorientation of waking from those dreams. Waking to find that it had all been an illusion. A vanished, vanquished dream.

A lie born from the inherent cruelty of the subconscious.

Was I punishing myself? For what? For not saving them? For not dying with them?

I lost track of time. Time I’d measured by other people’s lives.

When Denise was due home from work.

When McKenna was due home from school.

When I had to be home for dinner if I was out on my bike.

When McKenna had to turn off the TV if it was a school night.

When Denise and I would go to bed.

When Denise and I would make love.

An hour after I dialed 911 that first time there was a knock at my door. Two men in tired suits standing on my front stoop.

“James Enright?” said a tall, thin man in a concrete gray suit. His hair was closely cropped and receding, leaving a black, wispy peninsula that reached down to the top of his forehead. His upper lip protruded slightly over his bottom lip, which made his face look unusually long. His teeth never showed when he talked.

I opened the door wider. “That’s right.”

“I’m Detective Phelps.” He turned his torso in the direction of the man standing behind him on the step but kept his eyes on me. “This is Detective Lewis.”

Where Phelps was maybe fifty, Lewis was no more than thirty, still bearing a youthful pudge on his cheeks. He combed his brown hair straight down. His suit was a slightly darker gray than his partner’s.

Phelps stuck out his arm as an afterthought. We shook hands like children, weak and awkward.

“I understand you phoned in a tip this afternoon regarding the whereabouts of a missing person.”

I nodded. “I know it sounds crazy, but it just came to me. I thought I should call.”

“May we come in?”

“Certainly.” My heartbeat quickened. Was I a suspect? When I had called, I hadn’t considered the likely assumption that knowing the location of a body meant I might be the killer. It hadn’t even crossed my mind. I’d simply called because I thought it was the right thing to do.

Then again, what did I have to hide?

I opened the door to let them in.

Denise and McKenna did not drown.

They died on solid ground.

They had just reached the north end of the bridge heading south when the main span gave way, leaving the span they were on with nothing to hold up its south end. That end fell, but the north end held, creating a sudden, sharp incline toward the ground.

Not a long incline, maybe fifty feet, but nearly vertical.

The medical examiner determined that they had survived the initial fall — the steep slide down.

What killed them had come after.

From above.

An SUV.

A semi.

Other vehicles.

Other people.

It wasn’t until I let the detectives in that I first took a good hard look at where I was living. Took the time to see what others saw.

The outside was three stories of bricks, tall arched windows, and a front stoop. Part of a new building fronted to look like old rowhouses. Rowhouses that had never been a part of the area. Never a part of the true history of the milling district and its skid-row environs of railroad yards, bars, and flophouses. The rowhouses creating the facade of a mythical time. A mythical place.

But while the outside was designed to look old, the inside reflected the new.

Modern.

Spare.

So spare that it seemed lifeless. One big open room of concrete and ventilation pipes. It was supposed to look like a loft or converted warehouse, but instead it just looked cold. A hollow imitation.

The kitchen was open, exposed, marked off by a granite-topped, elongated island and filled with large swatches of stainless steel that covered the refrigerator, dishwasher, and stove. In what passed for the living room, a large television filled one wall opposite a dark green sofa. A green wing chair sat ninety degrees to the sofa and faced the front, curtainless windows.

The only items out of place with the modern interior were the vestiges of my old life. A Schwinn mountain bike leaning against the wall near the front door. A pair of oak bookcases filled with hardcovers, spines exposed, some standing, some on their sides. The tired green couch and wing chair. A forties-era Baldwin spinet piano. And a tan, square coffee table stained with dark brown water marks and the rainbow spectrum of McKenna’s crayon ticks that had run beyond the edges of the paper. The table that had been her favorite place to color.

I’d bought the rowhouse before I’d even collected the insurance money. We’d lived in the safety of the suburbs in an Arts and Crafts bungalow.

The perfect home for a family.

The worst place to live after your family has died.

I sold it so fast I hardly remember the closing.

Or moving out.

Or moving in.

The subconscious has a way of blocking those things out.

I’m a professor at the university. Was. Am still, I guess. Music Department. The dean of the department was kind enough to approve a sabbatical after the bridge collapse. It was his idea. The students needed a teacher. I’d stopped coming in.

After Denise and McKenna died, there didn’t seem much point to music anymore.

During that first visit, Phelps settled on the front edge of the wing chair. I sat on the couch. We had to turn our heads to look at each other. We each faced a side of the coffee table, little more now than a receptacle for my debris: a dozen empty bottles of Summit beer, a glass, emerald-green ashtray stuffed with a bloom of short, bent Winstons, and, open but facedown, a book of poems by W. H. Auden. The marks on the table from McKenna’s crayons looked like fading confetti amid the debris.

Lewis stayed on his feet, perusing the few details of my life that were on display. He shuffled past the bookcases, the bloodless kitchen, and the urban view out my front window. But he stopped at the photographs on top of the walnut-colored piano, my shrine to Denise and McKenna: half a dozen photographs in frames amid McKenna’s drawings and Denise’s handmade pottery. Who they were and what they were.

To me.

Phelps rested his elbows on his thighs. His folded hands hung down into the empty space between his knees.

“We appreciate your help in this matter. And nothing sounds crazy to me, Mr. Enright. I’ve been on the force long enough to know that anything that might help us solve a crime is worth checking out.”

My mouth opened as I began to understand. “Was the body there? Where I said it would be?”

The detective pushed his lips together and nodded.

It was in that nod that my life changed. What I’d seen in my mind had not been a dream or an illusion. It had been a view of reality. A reality beyond my own.

More than a memory of a dream.

More a dream of someone else’s memory.

Icarus.

That’s what they are calling him now. I saw it in a headline in the newspaper after the third death. The media always need a catchy name for everything murderous. The Green River Killer. Jack the Ripper. The Boston Strangler. Son of Sam. They need the name and the fancy graphic, the Pavlovian trademarks they flash on the screen to draw in viewers to the latest gruesome details.

Now it’s Icarus.

I named him.

I’ve been reading Auden lately and came across his poem “Musée des Beaux Arts.” In it he considers the cold-hearted indifference of daily life to the tragedy befalling others all around us. And it struck deep into my heart. It was all I’d been feeling since the bridge collapsed. Since my life collapsed onto the muddy banks and into the muddy waters of the Mississippi.

Daedalus, the story goes, had constructed wings of feathers attached with wax for himself and his son, Icarus, so they could escape imprisonment. Daedalus had warned Icarus not to fly too close to the sun, but, caught up in the glory of his own good fortune, Icarus ignored his father’s advice. The wax melted, the feathers came off, and Icarus plunged into the sea.

Auden considered the indifference of those who might have seen the fall of Icarus, an indifference I see every day of my life:

I’d mentioned this to Detective Phelps in a vain attempt to explain the indifference to my tragedy that emanates from the world around me. The indifference that infuriates me. The indifference that makes me want to shake them. To shout at them. To show them my hell.

But I guess he only took away the image of Icarus falling.

So now the killer is Icarus.

And once again the cops and the media have gotten it wrong.

Icarus the mythological character falls.

Icarus the murderer does not.

In that first meeting, after Phelps had confirmed what I had seen — confirmed my psychic ability — I began to feel sick. My head dropped between my knees.

Phelps quickly kneeled by my side. With a gentle push, he helped me sit upright again. “Take some deep breaths.”

I did as I was told, swallowing down slow waves of bile as they rose in my throat. After I assured him I was better, Phelps returned to his chair.

He pulled a notepad and pen out of his inside coat pocket, flipped the notepad open, and clicked the pen. “You told the dispatcher that you saw the man in a dream, is that correct?”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly a dream. I was awake. I’d just woken up and this image popped into my head of a man in a Twins jersey facedown on the rocks.”

“Did you see anything else?”

I tried to revive the picture, but my mind was racing. “I... like what?”

“Anything. Anything unusual.”

I thought for a moment. “I don’t know. I probably saw what you guys found. But I did notice that his wrists may have been tied at some point. There were lines of blood where whatever had bound them had cut through the skin.”

“Do you know what might have been used? Handcuffs? A rope? A cord of some kind?”

“No idea.”

“How did you know it was the Short Line Bridge?”

“I used to bike a lot around here. I’m a professor — or was — at the U and I’d go biking over lunch. The paths go everywhere. If I wasn’t on sabbatical I’d probably bike to work.”

“A professor of what?”

“Music.”

Phelps nodded as if that had relevance. Then he frowned.

“Have you had visions like this before?”

“No. Never.”

I had nothing to hide.

For several days after the first vision, I fought sleep. Drifted off at times, but never for more than a minute or two. And I never woke to the horror of a new image. A new body.

But one week to the day after the first vision, I failed.

I fought sleep and failed.

And the horror returned.

The second one:

The view is from above, looking down on West River Road, a twisty two-lane parkway that skirts the Mississippi like a shadow and runs directly beneath the Washington Avenue Bridge, the two-level link between the East and West Banks of the University of Minnesota. The lower deck bears cars, the upper deck students, either on foot or on bikes.

The fallen radiance of a whitish-blue streetlight adds a high-definition vividness to the scene below the bridge. To the body facedown on the centerline of the road. To a pair of blue jeans and a gray hooded sweatshirt mostly hidden by a navy blue backpack that is still strung from his shoulders. To a baseball cap lying upside down in a pool of blood that has settled in the nearest tire depression in the asphalt. To the wind-blown leaves that tumble down the road, some already mired in the ripening blood. To the arms that stick out from the body like dead branches. To the dark lines that surround the wrists like black tourniquets.

I wake again with my arms over my head in a broken halo, my legs splayed, my back aching, my head turned to the side.

3:28 a.m.

Phelps answers on the third ring. I tell him what I have seen.

By noon, Phelps and Lewis were back in my concrete room. The body was where I had said it would be.

I gave them the same answers as in the first interview.

Then Lewis piped up.

“Do you have a job?” he said.

I looked up at him. He stood near the piano again, his arms folded across his chest like Mr. Clean.

“I told you before. I’m on extended leave. A grief sabbatical, you might say. Since the accident I’ve been having... coping issues.” I took a long drag on my cigarette. My hand shook.

“Get a good night’s sleep last night?” It carried an undercurrent of mockery.

I glared at him. “I fight sleep, Detective. I wasn’t born with these bags under my eyes.”

I could feel Phelps staring at me. He began nodding. His lips puffed out as he pushed them together.

Lewis took a long, deep breath. “Did you know the victims you saw in your dreams?”

“They weren’t dreams.” I couldn’t keep the irritation out of my voice. “But no, I didn’t. Are you going to get another search warrant?”

Phelps put his hands up as if to repel an unseen enemy. “No, no. We’re all done with that. We trust you, Mr. Enright, but we don’t understand how you do it.”

I fought tears. “Join the crowd.”

Phelps pushed down on both knees and rose to his feet. “I think that’s enough, then. Thank you again for helping us with these cases.”

I didn’t get up. They saw themselves out.

It took me six months to begin to live again.

Not live.

Function.

Barely.

Like an old car left out in the brutal, sub-zero cold. The winter cold that only added to my paralysis. My hibernation. My dislocation.

Coming out only long enough to see my shadow.

To leave the suburbs.

To leave my dreams.

To come to the ruins.

From that first meeting:

“Where were you last night, Mr. Enright?”

It was Lewis. He was leaning against the piano, his arms folded. His tone implied a different question.

“Do you think I did it?”

“We have to check all avenues,” Phelps said. I began to see their roles. It was the detective version of good cop/bad cop. A cheap interrogation trick. Something out of the movies.

Still, I became worried.

Paranoid.

They weren’t convinced of my innocence yet.

I looked at Phelps when I answered. I couldn’t keep the sense of pleading out of my voice. The cheap interrogation trick was working. “I was here. All night.”

“Is there a Mrs. Enright who can vouch for that?” It was Lewis again.

I met his gaze as he blocked my view of the shrine on top of the piano. My throat tightened as the tears began to well in my eyes. “You’re standing in front of what is left of Mrs. Enright.”

Lewis glanced back at the pictures.

“She and my daughter were killed in the bridge collapse. There’s no one left to vouch for me.” I couldn’t say anything more. My throat clenched as the tears advanced.

Phelps cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Mr. Enright.” He took a deep breath.

I held my hands to my face, fighting back the tears, battling for composure.

For the ten thousandth time.

Phelps must have signaled Lewis, because they moved to the door at the same time. After a moment I followed them. They stepped outside and Phelps turned to me. “Thank you, Mr. Enright. We appreciate your help with this case. And we’re sorry for your loss. If we have any more questions, can we call you?”

“Yes, of course.” I wiped the tears from my cheeks. “Sorry.”

“No need to be. Thank you again, sir.” Phelps fingered a contact card out of an inside pocket of his suit coat and handed it to me. “If something like this happens again, call me. Day or night. Okay?”

“I don’t want it to happen again.”

“No, but if it does...”

I closed my eyes and nodded.

Phelps and Lewis returned to their car. Lewis never said a word, but as he climbed into the black Ford Taurus, his eyes kept coming back to me. Even as they drove away.

It’s more than a shrine.

More than a memorial to them or to their memories.

It IS them.

All that I have left.

Phelps and Lewis were both back by one that first day.

“I hope we’re not bothering you, Mr. Enright,” Phelps said breezily, ever the good detective. His broad upper lip spread into a smile but still hid his teeth.

Lewis stood behind him on the stoop, his cold blue eyes telling me that his role hadn’t changed either. “Had any more visions?”

I met his cynical gaze. “No. What do you want?”

Lewis stepped forward and stuffed a piece of paper into my hand. “We’ve got a warrant to search the premises,” he said as he shouldered past me.

“Strictly routine,” said Phelps, still smiling.

“What are you looking for?”

Lewis answered from behind me. “Evidence.” A dozen cops who had hidden themselves from view converged on my door and flooded the house. Phelps took me by the elbow and led me to the couch.

I fought the urge to panic. Whether I had something to hide or not, the police invading my home rattled me. Heavy footsteps thumped the floor above me. Drawers slid open and slammed shut. Orders were shouted up and down the stairs. The whole place seemed to groan under the onslaught. I’d seen movies where evidence had been planted, and that paranoia began to infect me.

“I have nothing to hide,” I said to Phelps as he sat again on the front edge of the green wing chair. “They’re not going to find anything.”

Phelps held up his hands to calm me. “It’s okay. I believe you. But we have to do this. Obviously, most people aren’t psychic, so we have to verify that you weren’t involved in any way. The information you gave us was so specific that we have to check you out. Between you and me, I hope we leave empty-handed.”

I was distracted by a cop who was reaching for the pictures on top of the piano. Attempting to remove the shrine.

My vision frayed.

Pixilated.

I jumped to my feet.

Fear and rage.

Rage at the cops.

At the bridge.

At life.

At death.

At Icarus.

Phelps anticipated my next move and grabbed my arms.

“Calm down, Professor.” He looked at the cop. “It’s okay, Rob. Just leave it.”

Rob shrugged and moved to a bookshelf.

Phelps settled me back onto the sofa.

He kept his hand on my back as the sobs echoed through me.

“I don’t want anyone to touch them anymore,” I said, forcing out words swollen by the tears. “Not EMTs. Not medical examiners. Not cops. I want them to rest in peace.”

The search was over an hour later. As Phelps had hoped, and as I’d known they would, they left empty-handed.

Much to Lewis’s dismay.

Once again, he didn’t say anything to me as he left.

The third one:

The bridge deck has maroon railings. Maroon streetlamps with drooping heads — drooping as if bowed in prayer — spilling lonely pools of light onto the pavement. Two bike lanes in the middle, two pedestrian lanes on the sides. Twenty feet wide at the most.

Beneath the bridge, the man’s clothes are ragged, soiled, from living on the streets, in dumpsters and under bridges. Living in the dark, dirty places of society. One of the feral humans who live below the radar. Below the surface.

He’s on his back, lying perpendicular to the railroad tracks that run beneath him, one rail under his shoulders, the other under his knees. His face is dark, covered by a matted beard and skin that has been leathered by sun and wind. A black stocking cap remains on his head, having somehow managed to survive the fall in place, nearly blending into a shiny halo of blood. His arms are out to the sides, as if he had tried to fly. Black lines look like tethers on his wrists.

3:28 a.m.

Legs splayed.

Back aching.

Head to the side, arms surrounding it in a broken halo.

I lift myself up to my elbows. The room is dark except for the red numbers on the clock and a gray glow bleeding around the edges of the curtains. I wipe sweat from my forehead. My T-shirt collar is wet, my pillow damp. I can smell lilacs.

Phelps answers on the fourth ring, his voice a nearly unrecognizable croak. “Phelps.”

“I’ve seen another one.”

He clears his throat. His bed creaks from movement. Him or someone else?

“Professor.”

“Yes. This one is on the railroad tracks under the Dinkytown Bikeway Connection.”

“The what?”

“The old Northern Pacific Bridge that runs between the east and the west banks at the U. It’s a bike path now.”

“Which bank is the body on?”

“The east bank. On the railroad tracks below it.”

“Do you recognize him?”

“He looks homeless.”

“Are you sure he’s dead? Those guys can sleep anywhere.”

“His wrists were bloody. Just like the others.”

Phelps hesitates. He wants to stay in bed. “Are you sure about this one?”

“So sure I can smell the lilacs.”

The piano, a Baldwin Acrosonic spinet, was my mother’s. She was a music teacher. I was her student. McKenna was learning to play, too. She was my student.

By eight years old she was better than I had been at that age.

I loved sitting in the other room listening to her practice. The mistakes. The breakthroughs. The moments of near perfection. The innate challenge of it. The will to succeed. To prevail.

The lessons of life found in something as simple as “Chopsticks.”

An hour after I called him about the third one, Phelps was at my door. This time without Lewis. I offered him some coffee. He held the mug with both hands, as if he needed its heat. He was out of uniform, wearing running shoes, navy blue athletic wind pants with three white stripes down the legs, and a navy blue baseball jacket with white leather sleeves. His skin looked pale under the fluorescent kitchen light. A light that buzzed like a fly caught in a mason jar.

“Just as you described it,” he said.

“How long ago did it happen?”

“An hour or so.”

I nodded. I didn’t know what else to do.

“Mr. Enright, we need you to see these things before they happen. That would really help us.” He wasn’t smiling.

Neither was I.

“What’s odd,” he continued, “is that the bodies are under bridges that seem to be progressing in this direction. First, the Short Line Bridge. Then, the Washington Avenue Bridge. Now, the Great Northern. All moving upstream. Icarus seems to be moving this way.”

“I know. I think he’s coming for me.”

Phelps’s eyes widened. “Do you know who he is?”

“No.” I hesitated, not sure he would understand. But I had to tell somebody. “I think he knows that I can see what he does.”

Phelps nodded with unconvincing concern, then gave me a pat on the shoulder. “If it’s any consolation, there may not be a pattern here. He missed the Franklin Avenue Bridge.”

“That’s true,” I said, “but it may have been too busy there. The others aren’t open to car traffic.”

Phelps nodded again, his concern more real this time. Then he tried to smile. “You have quite an eye for detail, Mr. Enright. You should be a cop.”

I struggled to smile back, wondering why it was that a detective would need my insight. Weren’t detectives the ones who were supposed to be trained to think like killers?

“Man Dies in Fall from RR Bridge” — Star Tribune, April 8, 2008.

“U Student Dies in Fall” — Star Tribune, April 15, 2008.

“Transient Falls to Death” — Star Tribune, April 23, 2008.

“Icarus Strikes Again” — Star Tribune, April 29, 2008.

The fourth one:

He wears a royal blue polo shirt with a logo on the left breast. It’s an employee shirt, the kind worn at a gas-station convenience store. It’s raised up, showing the man’s belly. Not a big belly, but more than should be there. A college beer belly. Below that, khaki pants and sandals. It’s an unseasonably warm night.

His body lies at an unnatural angle, his back broken sideways from hitting a bridge abutment before hitting the ground. No blood this time, his injuries all internal. All except for the bloody rings around his wrists.

3:28 a.m.

Arms over my head.

Broken halo.

Legs splayed.

Back aching.

Sweat.

Fear.

Nausea.

I reach for the phone.

“The Tenth Avenue Bridge this time,” I tell Phelps. “North end, near the Amoco.”

“I’m going to send Detective Lewis over. Is that okay?”

“He won’t believe me.”

“He’s a good cop, Mr. Enright.”

I hear the bed squeak, then a voice.

A woman’s.

Soft.

Pleading.

Lewis was not happy about being up at four-thirty in the morning. He stood on the doorstep with a large paper cup of coffee from a gas-station convenience store. It wasn’t for me. It had been two weeks since I’d seen him. After the second murder. Four weeks since the first day. The day they searched my house.

“Phelps told me to come.”

After I let him in, he strolled slowly around the room, his tired eyes searching, only glancing at me now and then to make sure I was still there. As if he thought I might flee. He didn’t say anything as he moved. Finally, he came to a stop in the center of my concrete room and leaned against the back of the wing chair. I stood in the kitchen behind the elongated island. The steam from his coffee cup rose between us.

His eyes settled on me and stayed there. It was the look of someone whose natural inclination was to intimidate.

Suspects.

Witnesses.

Coworkers.

Spouses.

Psychics.

But I wasn’t going to let him intimidate me. I had nothing to hide.

“I’ve watched you,” he said before taking a relaxed sip from his cup.

“Excuse me?”

“I tried to get the department to put a twenty-four-hour surveillance on you, but they wouldn’t. Couldn’t afford the overtime. Too many budget cuts. Apparently in this economy the budget is more important than four lives.”

He walked up to the island that stood between us and set down his coffee cup. “So I did it myself. Sat outside all night for six days straight, watching this place. On my own time.”

“And you never saw me kill anyone, did you?”

“No. But the seventh night I fell asleep in my car.” He hesitated, his eyes on me, but his focus inside. “I fell asleep. And what happened? A body was found under the Washington Avenue Bridge.”

“That’s not evidence of anything. That’s a coincidence.” I felt the heat building inside me. Then a thought struck me. “Maybe you’re Icarus.”

He ignored me. “I still watch you. Not every night, but most nights.”

The heat intensified. “You can blame me for the killings if you want, Lewis. You can blame me for your bad career or your bad kids or your bad marriage or any other bad things you have in your life, but it doesn’t make me guilty. I have a... I don’t know what to call it. A gift. A curse. Whatever it is, I can see things that have happened.” Tears followed in the wake of the heat. “And I hate it. And on those nights you’re sitting outside, I’m sitting in here fighting sleep, fighting to avoid what might come when I wake up. And it’s killing me. Can’t you see that? Icarus is killing me, too.”

I turned away from him, the tears streaming down my face, my breath coming in fitful waves.

When I turned back, I expected scepticism.

What I got was nothing.

Lewis was gone. But he’d left his coffee cup, still steaming, on the edge of the island.

I heard the front door click shut.

Neither hard nor soft.

Just a door clicking shut on a lingering darkness.

It has been roughly twenty hours since Lewis left. It’s pushing two in the morning. I’m battling sleep.

I played a note on the piano. The first note I’d played since August.

Since the collapse.

Thought it might help me stay awake.

Pressed one key.

The most basic key.

Middle C.

The point between treble and bass.

The tipping point of the piano.

It was soundless. The ivory key stayed down.

No tension in the string.

Dead.

I feel the urge to check it. To fix it. To give it sound again. To bring it back to life.

But the shrine sits on top of it. I’d have to move my family to get to the vertical strings. To get at the problems inside.

I’m hesitating.

Should I touch the shrine? Move it? Remove it? What would that mean? Was I beginning to heal? Beginning to move on?

I’m afraid.

Afraid to touch something of my own creation. Something that has become a sacred space. Afraid of what trespassing into that sacred space will bring.

The Egyptians feared curses; the Lakota, angry gods.

What do I fear?

The silent key haunts me.

Music has always been in my soul.

The thought of a quiet string — a broken string — distracts me. Has its own hold on me. Creates another kind of fear in me. Fear of silence.

Silence where beauty once was.

Silence that whispers to me.

Whispers I haven’t heard in eight months.

Has something changed in me? Is the old me still there?

But they’re not the whispers I used to hear eight months ago, before the collapse, whispers of hopes and dreams.

What I hear now are whispers of silence.

Whispers of trouble.

I have to fix it.

I have to move the shrine and see what damage lies inside...

Icarus has come for me...

I found him in the silence of the piano...

In the silence of the cruel subconscious...

Was’t Hamlet wrong’d Laertes? Never Hamlet:

If Hamlet from himself be ta’en away,

And when he’s not himself does wrong Laertes,

Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.

Who does it, then?

2:28 a.m.

Phelps didn’t answer. His phone was off.

I left a message. Told him where he would find Icarus.

The last one:

The body will lie within the confines of Hennepin Island Park, at the base of the fourth abutment of the Stone Arch Bridge. Time of death will be 3:28 a.m.

The body will be on its back, legs splayed, face turned to the side, arms encircling the head like a broken halo. His back will be broken. The wrists will be bleeding, still tied with a D string from an old Baldwin Acrosonic piano. Icarus will have left the string tied on because there will be no reason to hide any more evidence. Now that his identity has been uncovered.

A Schwinn mountain bike will be resting against the railing on the bridge decking directly above the body. The piano strings used by Icarus — a C, an A, a G, and an E — to bind the wrists of the other victims will be dangling from the handlebars next to a fanny pack. Inside the fanny pack will be a.38 caliber Smith and Wesson, the gun Icarus used to persuade his victims to submit.

Revelations from inside the heart of a silent spinet piano.

There you go, Phelps. I saw one before it happened. Like Auden’s expensive delicate ship, I saw Icarus fall.

And like that ship, I had somewhere to get to and — stepping from the railing of a bridge that did not collapse — sailed calmly on...

“Musée des Beaux Arts” by W. H. Auden, currently collected in Collected Poems by W. H. Auden. Copyright ©1938 by W. H. Auden, published in print throughout North America and electronically by permission of the Wylie Agency L.L.C.

Copyright © 2011 by C. J. Harper