Part 3 (1/2)

I take out my notebook, click open a pen. ”What did it look like?”

”It was a performance Ford, an old model. Eighteen-inch Goodyears, no chains. Smoke billowing out the back, you know, that nasty vegetable-oil smoke.”

”Right. You get a license plate?

”I did not.”

”And did you get a look at the driver?”

”Nope. Didn't know I'd have a reason to.” The old man blinks, bemused, I think, by my enthusiasm. ”He was a big fella, though. Pretty sure of that. Heavyset, like.”

I'm nodding, writing quickly. ”And you're sure it was a red pickup?”

”It was. A red, medium-body pickup truck with a standard bed. And there was a big flag airbrushed on the driver's side wall.”

”What flag?”

”What flag? United States,” he says diffidently, as if unwilling to acknowledge the existence of any other kind.

I write quietly for a minute, faster and faster, the pen scratching in the silence of the lobby, the old man looking abstractedly at me, head tilted, eyes distant, like I'm something in a museum case. Then I thank him and put away my blue book and my pen and step out onto the sidewalk, the snow falling on the red brick and sandstone of downtown, and I'm standing there for a second watching it all in my head, like a movie: the shy, awkward man in the rumpled brown suit, climbing up into the shotgun seat of a s.h.i.+ny red pickup running a converted engine, driving off into the last hours of his life.

There's a dream I used to have, pretty consistently once or twice a week, going back to when I was right around twelve years old.

The dream featured the imposing figure of Ryan J. Ordler, the long-serving chief of the Concord Police Department, long-serving even back then, whom in real life I would see every summer at the Family and Friends Picnic Potluck, where he would awkwardly tousle my hair and flip me a buffalo-head nickel, like he did for all the children present. In the dream, Ordler stands at attention in full uniform, holding a Bible, on which I place my right hand, palm down, and I'm repeating after him, pledging to enforce and uphold the law, and then he's solemnly presenting me with my gun, my badge, and I salute him and he salutes me back and the music swells-there is music in the dream-and I am made detective.

In real life, one brutally cold morning late last year, I returned to the station at 9:30 a.m., after a long night spent patrolling Sector 1, to find a handwritten note in my locker instructing me to report to the office of the DCA. I stopped in the break room, splashed water on my face, and took the stairs two at a time. The Deputy Chief of Administration at that time was Lieutenant Irina Paul, who had held the post a little more than six weeks, after the abrupt departure of Lieutenant Irvin Moss.

”Good morning, ma'am,” I say. ”Did you need something?”

”Yeah,” Lieutenant Paul says, looks up and then back down at what's in front of her, a thick black binder with the words U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE stenciled on the side. ”Gimme one sec, Officer.”

”Sure,” I say, looking around, and then there's another voice, deep and rumbling, from the far end of the office: ”Son.”

It's Chief Ordler, in uniform but no tie, collar open, shrouded in semidarkness at the small office's only window, arms crossed, a st.u.r.dy oak tree of a human being. A wave of trepidation washes over me, my spine straightens, and I say, ”Morning, sir.”

”Okay, young man,” says Lieutenant Paul, and the chief nods minutely, gently, t.i.tling his head toward the DCA, letting me know to pay attention. ”Now. You were involved in an incident two nights ago, in the bas.e.m.e.nt.”

”What-oh.”

My face flushes, and I begin to explain: ”One of the new people-newer, I should say-” I've only been on the force for sixteen months myself, ”-one of the newer people brought in a suspect for preventive detention under t.i.tle XVI. A vagrant. A homeless individual, that is.”

”Right,” says Paul, and I see that she's got an incident report in front of her, and I'm not liking this at all. I'm sweating now, literally sweating in the cold office.

”And he was, the officer I mean, he was being verbally abusive to the suspect, in a way I felt was inappropriate and contrary to department guidelines.”

”And you took it open yourself to intervene. To, let's see,” and she looks down at her desk again, flips over the onion-skin pink paper of the report, ”to recite the relevant statute in an aggressive and threatening manner.”

”I'm not sure that I would characterize it that way.” I glance at the chief, but he's looking at Lieutenant Paul, her show.

”It's just, I happened to know the gentleman-sorry, the, I should say, the suspect. Duane Shepherd, Caucasian male, age fifty-five.” Paul's gaze, unwavering but distant, disinterested, is fl.u.s.tering me, as is the quiet presence of the chief. ”Mr. Shepherd was my scout leader when I was a kid. And he used to work as an electric-crew foreman, in Penacook, but I gather he's had a hard time. With the recession.”

”Officially,” says Paul quietly, ”I believe it is a depression.”

”Yes, ma'am.”

Lieutenant Paul looks down at the incident report again. She looks exhausted.

This conversation is taking place in early December, deep in the cold months of uncertainty. On September 17 the asteroid went into conjunction, got too close to the Sun to be observed, too close for new readings to be taken. So the odds, which had been inching steadily upward since April-three percent chance of impact, ten percent chance, fifteen-were stalled, late fall and early winter, at fifty-three percent. The world economy went from bad to worse, much worse. On October 12 the president saw fit to sign the first round of IPSS legislation, authorizing an influx of federal money to state and local law-enforcement agencies. In Concord, this meant all these young kids, younger than me, some recent high-school dropouts, all of them rushed through a sort of quasi-police-academy boot camp. Privately, McConnell and I call them the Brush Cuts, because they all seemed to have that same haircut, the same baby faces and cold eyes and swagger.

The thing with Mr. Shepherd was not, in truth, my first run-in with my new colleagues.

The chief clears his throat, and Paul leans back, happy to let him take over. ”Son, listen. There is not a person in this building who does not want you here. We were proud to welcome you to the patrol division, and were it not for the present unusual circ.u.mstances-”

”Sir, I was first in my cla.s.s at the academy,” I say, aware that I am talking loudly and that I have interrupted Chief Ordler, but I can't stop, I keep going. ”I have a perfect attendance record, zero violations, zero citizen complaints pre- and post-Maia.”

”Henry,” says the chief gently.

”I am trusted implicitly, I believe, by Watch Command.”

”Young man,” says Lieutenant Paul sharply, and holds up her hand. ”I think you misunderstand the situation.”

”Ma'am?”

”You're not being fired, Palace. You're being promoted.”

Chief Ordler steps forward into a slant of sunlight from the small window. ”We think that, given the circ.u.mstances and your particular talents, you'd be better off in a seat upstairs.”

I gape at him. I scramble for and then recover the power of speech. ”But department regulation says that an officer must put in two years and six months on patrol before becoming eligible for service in the detective unit.”

”We're going to waive that requirement,” Paul explains, folding up the incident report and dropping it in the trash. ”I think we'll also not bother with recla.s.sifying your 401(k), just for the time being.”

This is a joke, but I don't laugh; it's all I can do to stay upright. I'm trying to get oriented, trying to form words, thinking new times and thinking a seat upstairs and thinking this is not how it happens, in the dream.

”Okay, Henry,” says Chief Ordler mildly. ”That's the end of the meeting.”

I learn later on that it's Detective Harvey Telson whose spot I'm filling, Telson having taken an early retirement, gone ”Bucket List” like many others were doing by this point, by December, heading off to do the things they've always wanted to do: speed around in race cars, experiment with long-suppressed romantic or s.e.xual inclinations, track down the old bully and punch him in the face. Detective Telson, as it turns out, always wanted to race yachts. America's Cup kind of stuff. A lucky break for me.

Twenty-six days after the meeting in her office, two days after the asteroid emerged from conjunction with the Sun, Lieutenant Paul quit the force and moved to Las Vegas to be with her grown children.

I don't have the dream anymore, the one where Ordler lays my hand on the Bible and makes me a detective. There's another dream that I've been having a lot instead.

Like Dotseth says, the cellular phones are getting dicey. You dial, you wait, sometimes you get through and sometimes not. A lot of people are convinced that Maia is bending Earth's gravitational field, our magnets or ions, or something, but of course the asteroid, still 450 million kilometers away, is having no more effect on cellphone service than on the weather. Officer Wilentz, our tech guy, he explained it to me once: cellular service is chopped up into sectors-cells-and basically the sectors are dropping out, the cells are dying, one by one. The telecom companies are losing service people because they can't pay them, because no one is paying their bill; they're losing their executives to the Bucket List; they're losing telephone poles to unrepaired storm damage, and they're losing long stretches of wire to vandals and thieves. So the cells are dying. As for all the other stuff, the smartphone stuff, the apps and the gizmos, forget it.