When I stood up my knee made a popping sound, a loud one, similar to a knuckle popping but lower down and even worse. None of the people in the bullpen turned around, not a single one. That's all right. Honestly, it's typical for me.
I am sixty-six years old, but most of the time I feel older than that; and if I'm being honest, a circumstance which only occurs around three in the morning when I can't sleep and am standing there in my underwear looking at the man in the mirror who has my father's neck and my grandfather's posture, I end up wondering whether I'm becoming one of them.
This place was once noisy. People could be heard on the phone, others shouting from desk to desk, and there was always some offender in cuffs, chained to a chair, telling the whole room to go to hell. Nowadays it's silent. Everybody is staring at their screens. The phones don’t ring as they used to. It's all down to email or some app that pings rather than rings and sometimes I don't know what the noise means at all. I once tried to get to know the system. A young IT technician, barely twenty-five, spoke to me as if I were his grandfather who had just wet himself at Thanksgiving.
All you have to do is swipe left, Detective Vance. No, no, the other one on the left.
I left before saying something that would have earned me a write-up.
The coffee pot was only half full and had turned stone cold, so I still poured myself a cup since making a fresh pot meant caring about something before nine a.m. and I hadn't arrived yet. Someone had left a box of the cheap donuts from the gas station on the break table, together with a note in blue marker that read HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEB, even though as far as I knew no one in this office was called Deb, which meant that either the note was old or Deb had moved to another department and no one had taken the trouble to update the sign. I picked up a donut anyway. It was the powdered kind and I got it on my shirt in about four seconds, just as usual.
A few rows away, Detective Laura Kim was sitting at her desk, the blue light from her monitor casting a glow on her face, typing the way people her age do, quickly and without hesitation, as if her fingers knew exactly where each letter was located. She is thirty-two and became a detective after six years, it took me nine and I had to earn it by working on the ground, not by simply running databases and filling in the same forms until someone happened to notice that I was there.
I can recall the filing cabinets my father had in the basement, they were solid metal and in summer the drawers would stick. You could reach out and touch the files, feeling their weight in your hand. Nowadays everything just floats, somewhere in a server farm in Nevada. It's there yet not there and all that matters to me is that it's the same.
Kim doesn't often speak to me. All she ever says is some basic polite things, like 'Good morning, Detective Vance' and 'Take care'. The husband of hers is a lawyer or works for the DA; I came across him at a Christmas party a number of years ago and he had one of those faces which you forget the moment he's out of the room. He seemed all right. I suppose they must talk about me at home from time to time. “That old man at the office is finally going to be leaving soon.” I'm glad for them.
I sat down and the chair made its usual squeaking sound, exactly as it has done for the past ten years. Over the last year the pile in my inbox has become thinner. They are now giving me the simpler cases: domestic follow-ups, a bicycle that had been stolen, that sort of thing. Isn't forty years of police work supposed to amount to something more than just a broken lock and a person's ten-speed bicycle?
There are six weeks and four days before I have to retire. On my monitor there is a yellow Post-it note with the date in a circle, even though I didn't intentionally choose that color. I look at it more often than I'd like to admit, and then I find myself wondering, what on earth am I going to do after that? Am I going to stay in my apartment and watch television that I don't care about?
My sister has been leaving me voicemails concerning Arizona more and more, whether it's Scottsdale or Tempe I can't remember. She says the dry heat will be good for my joints. She's been urging me to move for years but never takes any notice when I tell her no. I hadn't returned her call for a month and the phone seemed heavier than it ought to.
The most prominent message in my inbox was about the bicycle. There was clear security footage and a good view of the man's face. It was a case that would not be in doubt, one of the kinds I was now given. I phoned a number which was disconnected and then called a bicycle shop to get the serial number. After two more calls it would be finished before lunch. That was usually how most days were, a situation which used to bother me more than it does now.
The paper seemed thin as I held it. Over forty years of it all and now it comes down to a ten-speed. Forty years after the Red Ribbon killer and I could still see that girl in the warehouse, the oddness of her hands, the knots in them. I had filled fourteen notebooks in my attempt to work out those knots, drawing diagrams until my own hands became cramped, and my various theories never led anywhere. You don't need a list for the ones who get away, they are always there, just waiting for a quiet moment.
The phone rang. It was the landline, which is a thing that no one uses any more, and the sound was so unlike what one would expect that it took a moment to realize what it was.
“Vance.”
This is Morrison, Hank. I've got a corpse at the Paramount on Fifth — it's a homicide — I need you to come and look at it.
I looked at the receiver and said, "Are you certain? Kim's still here."
Kim is getting ready for the grand jury; Rodriguez and the entire crew are occupied with the fentanyl operation down town. It's a mess. The call was passed to me and now I'm passing it on to you, Hank. Can you manage it?
Can I manage it? Since there are some mornings when I can't even tie my own shoes. I said yes to him and kept my tone even, after which he hung up without saying a single word, which is exactly Morrison.
I stayed sitting there for a second longer with the bicycle file still spread in front of me, considering the stairs which I must climb, and then I got up all the same. I reached for my coat, the brown leather one, fifteen years old, with a torn lining that I've always meant to repair but never do, because I don't know how to sew and I don't want to learn.
Kim looked up as I went by and said, " You got a case to catch?"
“Homicide at the Paramount.”
“That old theatre, I always thought that they had condemned the building.”
“They did.”
She nodded once and immediately turned her eyes back to her screen. That's perfectly all right with me.
The elevator button was sticky, likely due to someone having spilled soda on it, and it had dried up into a thing you wouldn't want to think about too much, so I pressed it all the same. My reflection in the metal doors seemed awful. Gray hair, deep lines, and the general air of exhaustion. When the doors opened I went in and the bullpen disappeared behind me, everybody still at their desks, everybody still staring at their screens as if the world was going to come to them eventually.
The Paramount, I was there once on a date with a woman whose name I’ve since forgotten. We watched a film which had some explosions in it. The theatre seemed impressive at that time. Nowadays it’s just another abandoned building, like half the other buildings on this street. Another place that I’ve seen decline over the years.
Morrison had sounded more unpleasant than normal on the phone, which meant the situation was serious, one that would give a name and a face to the thing I had been half dreaming about since the Red Ribbon case was closed.