The Company Man

CHAPTER TEN

Garvey paced up and down the canal bank, clambering over hills of soft wet loam and crumbling cement. He had been roving up and down the canal for four hours, scanning the water and the sludge. There were disturbances, plenty of them. Footprints and cigarette butts and strange scores in the mud. None of them were very distinctive and none of them told him anything. It had been too long.

Garvey eyed the half-finished structures of Construct in the distance, the skeletal tenements and cement pillars standing up like monstrous fenceposts. A many-segmented crane sat hunched in their center, a hibernating predator in a distant, alien land. Garvey knew that somewhere on the northern side of Construct were the foundations of the Lady of Industry, Evesden’s once-intended answer to the Statue of Liberty. She’d been meant to stand along the shore, holding up a great gear that would glow a soft pink at night, the luminescence visible for miles down the Strait. It’d generally been felt that the placement couldn’t have been better, since Construct was right next to the Kulahee Bridge, which reached all the way across to Victoria, so northern visitors to Evesden would have seen the rosy gear slowly cresting the horizon as they approached. But the planners had gotten only so far as casting her feet and putting up her supports when the troubles with Construct began, and they’d been forced to abandon her along with the rest of the project. Now two enormous gray feet sat out by the waters, the waves just licking the toes, as though some giant had gone diving into the sea and left its curiously anatomical slippers behind. Garvey had seen the pictures. They’d run in all the papers when Construct had first started sinking.

Garvey shook himself and returned to the work at hand. If they’d had a body in tow they would have gone through Construct, he decided. Almost certainly. Much of it was abandoned now, and there would be a thousand places for a quiet murder in Construct. Excavated basements and foundations, collapsing canals and office sheds. But they wouldn’t have lived there. They would have gone over the Royce Bridge, or somewhere nearby. It was the only dependable route.

Garvey climbed back into his car and drove to Royce Street and surveyed the shopkeepers and homes. He took out a small photo of the dead man and began approaching the cabbies and the newspaper stands, the late-night cafes and the morning bakeries. None recognized him. But then, they said, it was tough to remember. Most nights seemed the same as any other. Garvey wrote down what they could tell him. Then he showed them a sketch of the tattoo on the man but none of them recognized that either.

“What you looking for?” asked one man at a newspaper stand. “Somebody dead?”

“Somebody’s always dead,” said Garvey.

“Yeah, yeah. But who is it this time?”

Garvey walked away and did not answer.

He moved outward in a spiral, hitting the row homes and the slums, flashing his badge and the picture and asking if there had been any disturbances or sightings of the man. The people came to the door with their eyes meek and watchful, like rabbits approaching a wolf at the entrance of their den. In many homes the reek of shit and urine and rotting wood hung in the air. Sometimes a child cried from somewhere in the depths of the house without ceasing. They knew nothing.

At one home a dog was chained up in the alley beside, panting as though delighted with the day. Garvey knocked on the door and an elderly woman with cataracts the color of oyster shells answered. When he asked her about the picture she had to pull it close and peer at it with one eye as though she were looking at it through a microscope. Then she said, “Oh, yes! I’ve seen him.”

“When?” asked Garvey eagerly. “About three, four weeks ago?”

“Oh, no. Long before that, I think. Last summer. He had a little boy with him. Little boy, used to play with my dog while I watched. The man asked if it was all right and I said certainly it was.”

“He had a little boy?” said Garvey, mentally groaning.

“Yes. He gave Arthur the high point of his day.”

“Arthur?”

“My puppy. Arthur’s his name.” She smiled blindly in the general direction of the little dog, who almost seemed to smile back.

“What was he doing out here? The man, I mean.”

“I’m not sure. He used to come out here on walks with his boy, I think. There’s a playground nearby. Then they used to go over and look across the waterway at Construct. He said he told his little boy giants played there.”

“Did you get the man’s name?”

“No. It was months ago and he only came a handful of times. More than half a year ago. I probably wouldn’t remember if it hadn’t been for Arthur. And it was before my eyes went, you see.”

“Sure, sure. Any idea where he lived?”

“Oh, somewhere around here, I assume. I’m not sure where. He always came from up the road,” she said, and pointed.

“From the Shanties?” said Garvey.

“The what?”

“The Shanties. The Porter neighborhoods.”

“I suppose so, yes.”

“What did the little boy look like?” he asked.

“Like a normal boy. About ten. Underfed a little. He was about so high and he had brown hair and brown eyes,” she said, sticking a quivering hand out breast-high. “That’s about all I remember. I think the boy’s name was Jack, but I can’t be sure.”

“Jack?”

“Something like that.”

“All right,” said Garvey. Then he bade her good day and went back to his car and sat, thinking. He looked at the photo of the dead man, then shook his head and said, “Christ. A kid,” and sighed.

Being a policeman of any type in Evesden meant you saw a lot of things, many strange, some funny, and plenty terrible. You armed yourself with a strong dose of black humor and used it to belittle the sights you saw, to make the tragedies and stupidities trivial and easy to handle. A friendly, joking discussion between average police, or possibly the medical personnel they worked with, would probably shock or outrage any outsider who hadn’t yet had a taste. One popular joke was to discuss victims as if they were plumbing, noting leaks and broken U-bends and pointing out the areas that needed soldering. Usually the victim wound up being a toilet in these bizarre, comedic metaphors.

But no matter what anyone had seen, no matter how many bodies they’d filed or marked off, the mere presence of a child changed things. Delivering news to families, and especially about children, aged a man in ways unseen by the naked eye. And cracking the plumbing routine about a dropped child was unthinkable. Any police who dared bandy a joke of any kind about in such a situation would probably wind up with a whaling. A murdered-child case was a curse, the worst possible event, changing the demeanor and very workings of the Department for weeks. The fraternal greetings gave way to furtive nods, and the detective stuck with it was practically considered the victim of a terminal illness. Conversations died when he came near, and he’d find himself receiving earnest condolences and whispers of good luck. One detective, Wolcott, had received a child case as his very first on the job. It had never gotten filed, and Wolcott had been removed from the Department after he was found weeping at his desk a year in, the child’s name still on the bronzed list on the wall. Garvey heard he was working a beat now, dropped back to being a regular uniform. So it went with such poisonous tragedies.

While Garvey couldn’t say if the boy, Jack, was in any danger or involved in any way, it still left a bad taste in his mouth. The man had been poor, Garvey could tell that just from looking at him, and if the old lady was right he’d made his home in the Shanties, a rough neighborhood if ever there was one. God only knew what would happen if the boy went looking for him when he didn’t come home. Abandonment was common in the Shanties, but that didn’t make it any less brutal. Garvey hoped the boy had a mother out there, and that the John Doe’s murder had nothing to do with his family.

He rubbed at his eyes and leaned his head back and sighed. After a while he slept.

He awoke with a start, sitting up at a harsh tapping noise. He peered out the window to see a patrolman standing there, half-stooped and waiting.

“Fuck’s sake,” said Garvey. “Leave me alone.”

The patrolman kept tapping. Garvey swore and pulled out his badge and slapped it up against the glass. The patrolman shrugged and Garvey rolled down the window.

“What? What the hell do you want?” he said.

“Detective Garvey?” asked the patrolman.

“Yeah?”

“My name’s Clemmons. You’re needed, right away.”

“By who?”

“Lieutenant Collins. He needs you in the Shanties. Something’s happened.”

“Collins?” said Garvey. “Why does he need me?”

“He just said to find anyone. Anyone.”

Garvey blinked the sleep away and squinted at the patrolman. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-two. He was pale and clammy and Garvey noticed his lips and fingers were trembling. He smelled faintly of vomit.

“What happened?” asked Garvey.

“I can’t say, sir. You’d have to see it for yourself.”

“Something bad?”

“You’d… you’d have to see it for yourself,” he said again.

“How’d you know I’d be here?”

“I didn’t. I’ve been driving around for an hour in this neighborhood. I just happened to find you. You want to follow me?”

“Where to?”

“On Bridgedale. It’s the trolley station, sir.”

“All right.”

The patrolman started walking back toward his little car. Garvey stuck his head out the window. “Can’t you at least give me a hint?” he called. “Something? Anything?”

The patrolman did not seem to hear him. He climbed into his car and it shook as it started and Garvey followed it down toward Bridgedale.

Three blocks in they came upon the crowd. Throngs of people stood in the street, gawking down toward the corner at the trolley station. Garvey and the patrolman tried to nose their cars through but gave up and got out to push through on foot. Eventually they came to a fence of patrolmen with batons and truncheons, nervously handling their weapons and calling to get back. Garvey pushed past them to where the trolley station steps yawned open. Down on the station floor a half-dozen uniforms and detectives were pacing back and forth, looking off at something Garvey could not see.

As he went down the stairs the stench of the trolley tunnels embraced him, a scent of sewage and coal-tinged smoke. The strange, dry breezes that always surged through the lines played with his hat and tie, prodding them this way and that. He clapped his hat on his head and spotted Collins standing under one of the stark white station lamps, nodding as a patrol sergeant gave him a bad rundown. Garvey had always hated the trolley station lights, specifically how they looked just like street lamps but somehow misplaced here, far under the earth. It was as though the designer had tried to make this strange underground normal and in doing so had made it even stranger. An average street scene, but trapped in eternal night.

When Collins saw him he said, “Oh, thank Christ.”

Garvey approached, worried. His lieutenant rarely expressed gratitude or fondness for any of his detectives. “You called for me, sir?”

Collins waved away the sergeant. “I called for anyone. But it’s a damn good thing they found you. I could use someone decent around here.”

“Why? What’s happening?”

Collins considered it. There was a queer look on his face. It took Garvey a moment to realize he was terrified. “Well,” he said. “I suppose you’d better come and see for yourself.”

Collins led him left, down through the empty station and past the deserted ticket booths and newspaper stands. It was like some subterranean ghost town, yet there at the far end was a ring of officers standing clear of something dark and still at the end of the platform. After a while Garvey realized it was a trolley. He had never seen one without its lights on.

All of the other officers were watching it silently. They kept their electric torches off as though the thing were asleep and they feared its waking. A low rumble filled the tunnel end, the faraway passing of other trolleys and trains. Garvey felt blood pumping in his ears as they walked toward it. He could see shapes and forms slumped up against the glass of the trolley, but he could not make them out. As he neared he smelled an electric copper scent that stuck to the back of his throat like a film. Blood, he figured, very fresh.

One of the uniforms shook his head as Garvey and Collins walked by. “Just came out of nowhere,” he said. “Sailing out of the dark, like a ghost ship.”

“What is it?” said Garvey. “Who’s on it?”

“No one,” said Collins. “Or at least, no one anymore.” Collins flicked on his torch and kept the beam on the dusty platform floor as he braced himself. Then he lifted it and let it glance over the trolley door. It did not show everything, but it showed enough. Garvey saw human forms slouched on the seats, red tongues sprouting from their backs or heads and running down in tendrils to spread across the seats or floor, other corpses curled around the trolley bars. Some were slumped against the glass, their skin as pale as sea foam. His eyes traced over where the crimson and rust-colored pools melted with the shadows, where the fingers and arms became motley tangles. It felt impossible to tell them apart, to distinguish where one ended and the others began. Trapped in that little trolley car, their ruined faces and figures seemed to blend into one another until they were one red-and-white mass laid out on the creaking seats. Then Collins switched the light out and they were shrouded once more.

Garvey could not imagine their numbers. To his eye they had seemed limitless. Still no one spoke. Then Garvey turned around and walked over to a bench and sat.

When the message came to Samantha and Hayes they were on their last interview of the day, awaiting a McCarthy, Franklin. The man from the front desk walked in and handed a telegram to Samantha, who read it and handed it off to Hayes and began quickly putting on her coat.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Bridgedale, apparently,” she said.

“Oh? Why?”

“To meet a Mr. Shroff. Any idea who that is?”

“One of Brightly’s men. Newspaperman, usually tips us off about things going on in the city.” He scooped his scarf off the floor and added, “Which probably doesn’t bode well at all.”

They hurried out to the street, where Hayes tried to pay a cabbie an enormous amount of money to take them across town. With some persuasion Samantha managed to convince him to try a trolley for a fifth of the cost, yet when they began to enter the trolley lines the ticket vendors and conductors turned them away.

“No rides today,” one said. “No trolley today.”

“Why on Earth not?” said Samantha.

“All lines are down. No platforms taking any passengers.”

“Yes, but why?”

He shrugged. “Can’t say. Official broadcast came through about an hour or so ago. We’re all shut down. You’ll have to take a motorcab, or walk if you can.”

“This is the first time in my memory, short as it is, that the trolleys have been wholly shut down,” said Samantha as they walked back to the street. “What could have happened?”

Hayes simply shrugged, irritated to have been made to walk so far.

They took a cab to Bridgedale and the address specified in the message, yet they found it surrounded by a thick, babbling crowd that shielded everything from view. The police had made a large clearing at the front, cutting off the street at either end and shutting down one intersection. Horses and purring cars bucked back and forth as they tried to negotiate their way out, swears and shouts ringing over the buzz of the crowd. People huddled close to one another in the chilly air, bobbing where they stood to glimpse through brief cracks in the groups in front of them. Steaming breath unscrolled up from the crowd in a hundred places, giving it the strange impression of a ticker tape parade.

“What in hell is this nonsense?” said Hayes as they climbed out.

Bystanders couldn’t tell him, shrugging and shaking their heads. Soon he was flagged down by Shroff, who was so short he had to jump to make his hand seen over the crowd. Hayes worked over and pulled him close and said, “What the hell is going on?”

“Trouble,” Shroff said. “Big trouble, down in the underground. Someone’s dead.”

“Dead? Who’s dead?”

“Don’t know, really. Cops have the entire area cordoned. They beat the hell out of one ass who tried to push through. Pardon my language, ma’am,” he said to Samantha, and tipped his hat. “I bet there’s a lot of them, though.”

“A lot of who?” asked Hayes as he slipped through the crowd. Shroff and Samantha struggled to keep up.

“The dead,” said Shroff. “But no one knows how many or who.”

When they finally got through they found they faced the trolley station entrance, the big rusty tin T hanging over the steps. They could see nothing down below except for the faint lights of the station.

“Looky there,” said Shroff, and pointed. “There’s your detective friend, eh?”

Garvey was standing at the top of the steps, speaking to another officer who was leaning against the railings. He looked paler and grimmer than usual. He kept his face at a sharp angle to the underground station, like he did not want to look inside or perhaps smell its curious breeze.

“Yeah,” Hayes said. “There he is.” Then he tugged off a glove, stuck his fingers in his mouth, and whistled piercingly.

The police and some of the crowd looked up. Garvey blinked and did the same and saw Hayes standing in the front. His grimace deepened and he strode over and said, “What are you doing here?”

“Same as you, I think,” said Hayes. “Only there’s truncheons in the way.” By now he was flush and grinning with excitement.

Garvey thought for a moment, then said, “I guess it’d be worth you seeing.” He nodded to the patrolman, who let Hayes pass but kept Samantha behind.

“Who’s that?” asked Garvey, gesturing to her.

“My assistant,” said Hayes.

“Your assistant? You have an assistant?”

“Sure. She’s new. Secretarial duties and such.”

“God. I got to pity you, lady. Come on then,” he said, and helped her through.

“Thank you,” she said to him. She stood up and readjusted her hat and blouse.

“Don’t mention it,” he said. He stopped halfway down a step and turned to extend a hand. “Don Garvey.”

Samantha awkwardly shook and introduced herself breathlessly, still fighting past the dour stares of the patrolmen.

“So what’s going on, Garv?” asked Hayes.

Garvey began to lead them down the steps of the station. “I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t.”

“Rumor has it people are dead.”

“Rumor has it right.”

“Was it an accident?” asked Samantha.

Garvey stopped and looked at her. “A what?”

She faltered under his sharp eye, then rallied. “An accident. A trolley accident. Like a derailing.”

“Oh,” he said. “No. Not an accident. That’d be the reasonable conclusion, wouldn’t it? But no.”

“Then what?” said Hayes.

Garvey said nothing. He just motioned them farther down into the tunnels. Hayes glanced to the side and saw bile and chunks of half-digested beef drying and curling on the station floor.

“Bad one?” he asked.

Garvey said, “The worst I’ve seen.”

They walked down the platform, ignoring the curious glances of the other officers. Then a shout rang out: “No. Not him. No.”

They turned. Collins was striding toward them, a half-dozen officers in tow like furious ducklings. Collins pointed at Hayes and said, “Will someone please explain to me what in God’s name this little shit is doing back here? It had better be plenty impressive, too. I mean it.”

Garvey stepped forward into Collins’s path. Even though Garvey was tall in his own right, Collins loomed over him like a storm cloud. He glared at Hayes over Garvey’s shoulder, but Hayes dawdled on the platform and looked down the tunnel with a mildly interested eye. Samantha gripped her briefcase and looked to him for some excuse for their intrusion, but he was barely aware of Collins’s furious outburst, let alone her frantic looks.

“I invited him here,” said Garvey quickly. “I gave the order to let him through.”

“I guessed that,” Collins said. “What in hell did you think you were doing, bringing a mad thing like that into a scene like this?”

“I thought he could help.”

“Help? Help with what?”

“Unions. He might know something. He almost always does.”

Collins turned to Hayes. “And? Do you know anything?”

“I don’t even know what the hell is going on yet,” Hayes said. “Did you say this is union stuff, Garv?”

Collins gave Garvey a warning look. Garvey winced. “I think it is,” he said slowly, reluctantly. “I think it’s got to be.”

“Don’t go stirring up shit you can’t shovel, Garvey,” said Collins. “Don’t go doing that now. Not at a time like this.”

“Let’s at least show them to him,” Garvey said. “Just to see.”

“See who?” asked Hayes.

“Our passengers,” said Garvey. Then he grabbed Hayes by the arm and dragged him down the tunnel to where a darkened trolley car sat in the shadows. Behind them Collins shouted at Samantha and the other officers to stay back. Garvey hauled him through the broken bronze doors of the trolley, Hayes fumbling with the steps, and suddenly he was aware that there were people in the darkened trolley car with them, sitting silently in the seats or lying on the floor. The coppery taste of blood filled his nose and mouth and he suppressed a gag. Then Garvey flicked the light on and Hayes saw the trolley car fully.

As he tried to take in the room around him he felt as if he were in the belly of something alive and malignant and hungry, and there littered on the floor of this monstrous stomach were staring eyes and grasping hands and faces dull and blank and soulless. His eyes adjusted and he tried to count the figures in the dark. There were around a dozen of them, it seemed. More brutalized than in any murder Hayes had seen in years.

“Oh, my,” said Hayes softly.

“Yeah,” said Garvey. “Oh, my is right.” He shook out a handkerchief and stuffed his nose and mouth into it. Hayes did not, for even though Garvey was murder police Hayes was far more used to the scent of blood and putrefaction.

Hayes swallowed and shook off the shock. Then morbid curiosity took him over, an old and not entirely welcome friend, and he began studying the bodies nearest to him. He found their poses were queerly passive, as though they had simply dropped, as if something had passed through the trolley car and pulled the life right out of them. And yet they were so ravaged. One man sat in his seat with his back and neck open in a dozen places, one hand still on his handhold. Behind him a woman sat on the floor, sunk to the ground with her knees and thighs below her, smooth white flesh spattered with arterial spray and her face calmly fixed as though contemplating a troubling question. At the end of the car the conductor lay facedown on his control board, still in his seat. Behind him a group of three men lay in a heap around one of the poles. Had it not been for the wounds dotting their chests and thighs you would have thought they had simply become tired and decided to lie down to sleep.

There were more. Many more. Propped up in the seats or prostrate on the floor. Each of them serenely drooping as if the little motor that made their hearts beat had simply stripped a few gears and given up. Behind them the windows were lined with hairline cracks, but there was no sign of impact in the car.

“Do you know anything about this?” said Collins behind him.

Hayes looked at them. Took in their shattered figures and glassy stares. Then he stooped and said, “Well.”

“Well what?” said Garvey from behind a handkerchief.

Hayes looked into one’s face. He put a finger on the man’s white chin and moved his head up to look into his eyes. The skin sagged at the edges, like he was wearing a mask and his true face was hidden somewhere below the paling flesh. “I know this one,” Hayes said softly.

“You do?” said Collins.

“Yes,” said Hayes. “I do. Edward Walton. He works-worked-in the Southern District. Can’t remember what he did. He worked under McClintock. Fellow I interviewed. That’s how I know him. He’s a unioner. Remember, Garv? I sent you some information on him. Just yesterday.”

“I’ve been out of the office for the past two days,” Garvey said.

“Damn,” muttered Hayes. “Too late, I suppose.” He stood and moved through the mass of corpses, carefully stepping among them with wobbly, balletic jumps. “There’s Naylor,” he said. “And Evie. And Eppleton. And Craft. They’re dirty, all of them. Only a few are suspected murderers and saboteurs in my book. The others are just sympathizers. I don’t know who the women are. That one’s a whore and no mistake.” Hayes took a seat between two corpses, surveying the mute crowd. “They’re all mine, for the most part. Or were. All McNaughton boys, and all dirty.”

Garvey and Collins stared around their feet. “Jesus Christ,” said Collins. “Why didn’t I hear about this?”

“Do you think it’s sabotage?” asked Hayes. “Someone sabotaged the line?”

Garvey shook his head. “No. The trolley car coasted in like it does every day, right on time. Just odd that its passengers all happened to be dead. How it got in with a dead conductor is beyond me. Scared the hell out of the people on the platform. And besides, look at them, and the trolley. It didn’t crash. No sign of sabotage. But their wounds, it’s like they’ve been…”

“Stabbed,” finished Collins. “Like someone hopped on board and then ran through, stabbing them all. Stabbed all to hell.”

Hayes turned one over with his foot. They all had the exact same wound, a thin puncture mark about an inch long. “Maybe someone stopped the car and did just that.”

“I told you,” said Garvey. “Trolley was on time, almost exactly.”

“So?”

“Well, according to the stops from the platform before, the window for the murders is about, oh, a little less than four minutes.”

Hayes stared at him. “That’s not possible.”

“Yeah. That’s the crux, ain’t it?”

“Someone stabbed all these people to death in four minutes?”

“Or something did.”

“And none of them resisted,” said Collins, stooping. “Look at their hands. No scratches. No cuts. No bruises.”

Hayes frowned, doing the same. “And no witnesses.”

“None,” said Garvey.

Hayes turned to look out the window down the tunnel. It was black as night behind the car. He wondered what was wandering in there, or what might be waiting down the rails. Then he lifted his hand and touched the cracks in the window before him. They ran throughout the other panes as well, all of them slightly broken but never wholly shattered. He looked up. The bulbs in the roof of the car had completely broken. Little half-moons of white glass stuck out of the sockets, the filaments of the bulbs completely exposed.

Then Hayes cocked his head suddenly, like he had heard something. He made a soft hmph, then turned to walk down to the conductor’s chair.

“Where are you going?” said Garvey.

“There’s something wrong down here,” he said. He looked carefully from body to body.

“What do you mean? What’s wrong?”

“I just… I think there’s someone else,” he said.

“Someone else? Someone else what?”

“Someone else in here with us.”

Garvey gave Hayes a sharp look. “You sure about this?”

Hayes nodded absently as he looked through the trolley.

“Are you sure this little shit has all his dogs barking?” Collins asked.

“I’d let him work,” said Garvey. He crossed his arms and fixed his eyes on the floor like he was pretending not to see anything.

“It’s definitely over here,” Hayes said. He looked down at the conductor. The man’s cheeks and forehead were streaked with blood. He grimaced. “Maybe down below?” He stooped to look under the conductor’s brass control panel. He grunted, then pushed on the conductor’s leg to move it aside.

“Goddamn it, Don, don’t let him move stuff around,” said Collins.

“I’m not moving stuff around, I just… I swear, I heard something.”

“Heard what?” Collins asked.

“Something,” Hayes said irritably. “I just can’t see.” He shoved at the conductor again.

“Get out of there,” said Collins. “I’ve got plenty of shit on my hands right now, I don’t need you-”

But his words were cut off as the conductor jerked once, shuddered, and then lifted his head to stare into Hayes’s face where he squatted beside him on the floor. They gaped at one another for a moment, and then both of them cried out and leaped backward, but the space was so small and cramped that they both crashed into the wall, Hayes cracking his head as he did so.

“Holy God, he’s alive!” Garvey shouted.

To everyone’s disbelief the conductor swiveled his head to look around him, face terrified, and stared at the bodies beyond. His eyes rolled madly, and he thrust himself up against the windows as though he was trying to force an escape. A strangled noise started from somewhere within the man and grew into a flat-out scream. He lifted his hands to his face and began clawing at his cheeks, howling wildly until his cries formed words: “No! No, no, let me go! Don’t hurt me, let me go!”

“Goddamn it, get ahold of him!” shouted Collins, but it was too late. The conductor shook his head and barged through the trolley car and out the broken doors. He leaped down onto the trolley platform and then wheeled around when he was met by an enclosing ring of officers. A few of them brandished revolvers, uncertain where to point them.

“Don’t shoot!” Garvey yelled. “Don’t shoot him, damn it!”

The officers shouted for him to get down, down on the ground, but the man would not listen. He reeled back and forth, eyes still wide and mad, raising his arms and shouting for them not to hurt him. Finally one of the larger detectives tackled him and wrapped around his legs, bringing him to the ground. The conductor wept and struggled with him and clawed at the floor. Several patrolmen ran to him, and one took out his truncheon and raised it high.

“Stop!” shouted a voice.

The officers looked over their shoulders to see Samantha furiously striding toward them. They paused, unused to dealing with well-dressed women, particularly ones who were shouting at them.

“Stop?” said the policeman with the truncheon.

“Yes, stop!”

“Why? We fucking said to get down and he didn’t!”

“That’s because he’s deaf, you damn fool, can’t you see?” she said angrily. She pushed through them to kneel beside the conductor’s head. He stared at her, still crazed and babbling, but she gently took his head and held it still. She touched his ears. There was a small flow of blood running from within them and down his cheeks. “The man can’t hear a word you’re saying. Can you?” she asked the conductor kindly.

“Don’t hurt me,” he whimpered. “Please, don’t hurt me.”

“We won’t,” she said. She shook her head widely so he could see, then fixed her face with the most comforting and gentle expression she could. “We won’t hurt you.”

Collins, Garvey, and Hayes climbed down out of the trolley car to join them. “He’s deaf?” said Collins.

“Yes,” she said. “His eardrums have burst. He just hasn’t realized it yet, I think.” She began making strange gestures before the conductor’s face, looping and knotting her fingers and sometimes tapping them together. The conductor stared at her in confusion.

“What’s that you’re doing?” Garvey asked.

“Sign language,” said Samantha. “What little I know of it.” She sighed and dropped her hands. “But he doesn’t appear to know any at all.”

“He doesn’t?”

“No.”

Hayes looked at the man a moment longer, then stared back down the tunnel. “So he’s been recently deafened,” he said. “Probably by whatever happened to the trolley car. Wouldn’t you say?”

Samantha did not say anything to that. The conductor had begun weeping, and she took out a handkerchief to dry his tears.

Collins and the other detectives took the conductor and sat him before a small blackboard, where they scribbled out questions. It took some time to convince the man he was deaf, and when they finally succeeded he broke down again and wept for some time. Finally he came around to read their questions and loudly answer them, often rambling on incoherently, ignorant that the officers were signaling for him to slow down. Samantha and Hayes sat in the dark on a station bench a ways away, watching.

“Fuck me,” said Hayes. “I hope none of the others spring to life. I nearly shat myself.” He turned to look at her. “Where’d you learn sign language?”

“When I was a nurse. There’d be young men who’d been shelled and were deafened. I didn’t learn much, just enough to ask questions.”

“Well, you’re full of surprises, aren’t you.”

“That man needs medical attention,” she said. “He’s in pain.”

“They don’t want the crowd to see him yet. They’ll want to keep this controlled for as long as possible and get all the answers they can.”

“But he’s in pain, Mr. Hayes.”

“If they didn’t, they’d have a riot, and we’d have a lot more pain.”

Samantha sighed and stared at the trolley car beyond. “What happened here, Mr. Hayes?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Did you see?”

“See?”

“See them. The bodies.”

“From a ways away. When Mr. Garvey had the light on. Or Detective, I should say.” She swallowed. “I wasn’t sure what I saw.”

Hayes nodded. “I’d be fucking glad of that.”

They both shivered. It was cold down in the trolley lines, close to the ocean and far away from the warmth of the city, and with the station so empty it was a gray and eerie place. The officers became dark figures passing back and forth in the spectral light of the station lamps. After some time with the conductor Garvey walked over to them, reviewing his notes.

“Well?” asked Hayes.

“His name is Gilbert Lambeth,” he said. “Been a conductor for the Evesden Lines for nearly five years. Knows his trade, talks in a lot of engineering gobbledygook.”

“Did he say anything useful, though?”

“I wish. He says he was making the stops, as usual. Turns out it’s mostly automated. He hadn’t made any adjustment to the trolley’s schedule, not a second. He left the last platform, the Stirsdale platform, at the right time and was just going through the tunnel as normal when he heard a…” Garvey flipped through his little notebook. “A loud noise. A high-pitched squeal, he says.”

“A squeal?” said Hayes.

“Like metal on metal. Then there was a pop like a bomb went off, and the lights went out, and he passed out. The trolley car coasted in automatically, but Gilbert wasn’t awake to tell it to continue. Then he just sat there until you woke his poor ass up. And that’s it. That’s all he’s given us.”

Hayes thinned his eyes. “That almost sounds like a planned attack.”

“Yeah. It does.”

“Why would anyone want to do that?”

Garvey sighed. “I have a few ideas. I found something interesting.” He took out a sketch of a little symbol of a hammer inside a bell. “See this?”

“Yes?” said Hayes.

“This was tattooed on my John Doe. In the canal.”

“Who?”

“The guy. The guy you helped me fish out of the damn canal? Six weeks ago or so? Mr. Four Hundred and Eighty-six?”

“Oh. Oh, right. Wait, so that sign was tattooed on him?”

“Yeah. It was on his arm. And there’s eleven dead passengers in there, and nine of them have the same tattoo. All in the same place.” He tapped his arm. “Right there.”

“ How many dead?” said Samantha softly.

“Eleven.”

“Good… good Lord.”

“Yeah. This is the worst yet. The worst by far.” He paused. “Someone is killing unioners. And anyone they’re close to.”

There was a pause as Hayes and Samantha considered that.

“Have you seen many unioners with that tattoo?” asked Hayes.

“Well. No. Just the recent dead ones.”

“But even so, who would want them dead?” Hayes said, standing up. He walked to the edge of the platform and looked down at the sooty rails and the blackened stone floor. “I mean, who’d even be able to do something like this? Slaughter everyone on a trolley without even slowing it down?”

“You sure those names are all you can give us?” said a voice.

Hayes turned to see Collins standing not far off, watching him with harsh eyes. “What?” he said.

“You sure there’s nothing else you know? At all?” asked Collins.

Hayes shook his head. “Nothing.”

Collins looked at him for a long time. Eyes uncertain. Hands at his hips, uncomfortably close to his gun.

“What?” asked Hayes.

“There’s nothing you’re hiding from us?” Collins asked, this time quieter.

“Hiding? No. Why are you asking?”

But Collins just shook his head and walked back to the other officers.

“What the hell? What was that about?” asked Hayes.

“He’s just worried,” said Garvey.

“Well, I can see that.”

“No, he’s worried about you. And McNaughton.”

“Why?”

“Oh, come on, Hayes,” said Garvey, exasperated. “You come in here telling us that about half these men are responsible for murders in your company, and then all of them suddenly drop dead? Not to mention that it was on the day after you sent me their files. That’s sort of odd, isn’t it?”

“You think McNaughton could have done this?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

Hayes stared into the tracks at his feet. “No,” he said. “They don’t have the guts. Besides, those files I sent you were nothing. Just enough to give you a lead.”

“You sure?” Garvey said.

“I doubt if McNaughton is capable of murder, either,” said Samantha. “Particularly mass murder. But before we’re asked to start incriminating ourselves, are we involved with an official police investigation, Detective Garvey?”

“Well. Not official, no,” said Garvey.

“So on what grounds are we here?”

“You were just asked. By me. And Collins. And Brightly, probably. Consulted, maybe. Your company pulls a lot of water around here. People are usually pretty happy to just do whatever the hell they say. But I have a hunch that’s going to change soon.”

They turned to look at the conductor, who was shouting about something once more. The policemen around him frantically tried to flag him down.

“And all he knows is he heard a loud noise,” said Hayes quietly.

“Yeah,” said Garvey.

“And then all those people were dead.”

“Yes. And only he survived, out of all of them,” said Garvey. Then, quieter, “Want to sit with him for a while? See if he’s telling the truth?”

Hayes shook his head. “Not in a crowd. Later, maybe. I’m already getting a headache. And you think your John Doe may have something to do with it?”

“Maybe. I’d talk about it but I don’t know when I’m getting out of here. It’ll be hours for sure.”

“How many other detectives are on this?”

“Right now we’re all just running around, bugshit crazy. I’m guessing it’ll come down to two murder police and then a shitload of High Crimes. I’ll be on it, maybe. Labor detail and all. Probably Morris, too.”

“Shit,” said Hayes. “Morris is worthless.”

“Yeah. Goddamn. Usually I love a murder in the Shanties. All these little tennie weasels do is talk. cooped up in these goddamn tenements, what else are they going to do but talk about who killed who, and why? But this is going to be the pits.” He moved to spit, then glanced sideways at Samantha and stopped. He coughed and said, “Want me to swing by and kick you out of bed later?”

“That’ll work,” said Hayes.

“I need to get back. It was, ah, nice meeting you, Miss Fairbanks,” he said, and tipped his hat. The he walked back to the distant, dark figures grouped around the trolley.

“John Doe?” asked Samantha as they walked back up through the streets.

“Unnamed murder,” Hayes said. “Garvey caught one a couple of weeks ago. Man found floating in a Construct canal, throat cut. Dragged him out right before I met you, in fact.”

“Oh. And, excuse me, but what exactly is Construct?”

Hayes stopped and looked at her cockeyed.

“I mean, I’ve heard everyone talk about it,” she said. “I’ve just never seen the name on any of the districts and boroughs or anything.”

“That’s because it’s not a real name. That’s odd. You’re usually pretty on the ball, Sam,” he said. “Construct is the great stillbirth of Evesden. Here, you can see it from nearby.”

He led her out to the edge of a bridge and pointed at the northwestern horizon. There beside the massive form of the Kulahee Bridge two dozen tall cement pillars stood like ancient monoliths, bare and gray and silent, each bigger than most buildings. Around their bases were skeletons of scaffolding and iron framework and silent construction equipment. They seemed like the ruins of a primitive temple, as though some savage fragment of history had somehow found itself wedged against the shore.

Samantha frowned. “So it’s just…”

“You probably know it as the Isle Projects,” said Hayes.

“Oh. Yes.”

“No one calls it that here, though. It was going to be a section of city-funded, McNaughton-approved, and McNaughton-built tenements. Domiciles. Towers of apartments. Whatever the hell. Some were going to be bigger than the Nail, they said.”

“And what happened?”

“Well, for one thing, most of the land around the city was already used up. So some engineering prodigy decided they’d make their own.”

“Their own land?”

“Yes. After all, it had worked for the Kulahee Bridge. See, that area designated for Construct wasn’t good for foundation, not at all. Part of an ocean runlet, or something. But they gave it a good try and laid down cement and steel and redirected the streams and gave half the damn shore a complete overhaul. Reclamation, they called it. Brought in some Dutchman to do it, apparently they’re naturals. Eventually they had just miles and miles and miles of buildable foundation, some of it right out in the ocean. Or so they thought. North section started experiencing real trouble with the dredging and it put the rest of the plan on a tilt. They said you could put a marble on one end of Construct and it’d travel four miles before going into the water, on a dry day at low tide, that is. Then the contractors and the real estate folks started crying foul and there were problems with backers or whatever, and everything devolved into some sort of huge litigious feud. It’s been in limbo in court for years. There’s a lot of money to be made there, you know. It’s Evesden’s great humanitarian effort. It was going to turn it from a valuable hole to the shining city on the hill.”

“How do you mean?”

“Hum,” said Hayes, thinking. One hand roved through his coat for a match. Finding one, he lit it and puffed at his cigarette distractedly. “That’s a bit more complicated.”

“Please try, if you would.”

“Well, see, if you go from one end of this city to the other you’ll find a dozen towns in between. All with different names, all with different people. This city exploded and people grouped together and lived where they wanted before the government could say anything about it. But the poor got the short end of the stick. They…”

He stopped and looked at her. Her pad was out and she was scribbling away.

“Are you writing this down?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because I want to know this. Go on.”

“Well. Suit yourself. Anyways, the poor got the short end of the stick. They got the in-between places. They got Dockland. They got the Shanties. They got Lynn. We’re in the nice part of the Shanties now, almost none of it is this presentable. Construct was going to be new living. The rich extending a hand to the poor. Instead they made the world’s biggest graveyard. So the poor stay where they are, stuck in their little neighborhoods, and everyone tries to forget about it.” He sneaked a glance at her. “Newton is far and away the most advanced section of town. It has the elevated train and it has the conduits. You’re living in the twentieth century we were all promised, while the rest of the city’s still fucking medieval. Hope you like it.” He stamped out his cigarette. “Come on. Let’s go see Evans and find out what the word is.”