Free Countdown City: The Last Policeman Book II (Last Policeman Trilogy) by Ben H. Winters

chains.
    “Martha, do you lock this door at night?”
    “Yes,” she says, “Yes, we always—I do all the …”
    She stops, bites her lip as she realizes where I’m heading here. Brett could not have come in through this door without her letting him in.
    “There are windows,” she says.
    “Sure. They are locked, though.” I clear my throat. “And barred.”
    “Right. But …” She looks around the small house helplessly. “But it was his house. He installed all those locks, all the bars, and—I mean—he’s
Brett
. He could—I mean, he could have gotten in if he wanted to. Right?”
    “I don’t know,” I say. “Of course. Anything’s possible.”
    I don’t know what else to say. The expression on her face, of pure and fierce belief, untroubled by evidence or common sense—it’s maddening, in its way, and all at once I’m infuriated and exhausted. I remember Detective McGully, questioning my motives, teasing but not really:
That’s not a kind of money
. I hear Trish, too:
Have you checked the alternate dimensions?
    Behind Martha on the wall is a flat-screen TV, a flat cold rectangle, and I am struck by the object’s profound uselessness, a receiver for an extinct species of signal, a reminder of all that is already dead, a tombstone hung on the wall.
    Martha is muttering now, rubbing the sides of her face with the flats of her hands, working herself back up. “I know that it was him, Henry,” she says. “I told you that he was going to come back, and he came back.”
    I wander the apartment, try to focus my mind, see things from my client’s point of view. Brett comes back but doesn’t approach her, doesn’t stop to talk. Why? He’s not back, but there’s something he needs her to know. He wants to leave a message. I nod, turning this over, okay … so where’s the message? On the sofa, Martha Cavatone is clutching her face with both hands, her fingers covering her cheeks and chin and eyes like vines crawling up the wall of a house.
    “He was here,” she’s murmuring, talking to herself now, “I know that he was here.”
    “Yes.”
    “What?”
    I’m calling from the kitchen. I’m in the pantry. She rushes in and I turn around to stare at her. “Martha, you were right. He was here.”
    Astonished, I detach the perforated cardboard top of the uppermost carton of Camels. “Here,” I say. Martha’s eyes are as wide as paper plates. “He left you a note. Hid it where he thought you’d be sure to see it.”
    And I’m almost laughing, because this is what happens when you decide that a case is pure smoke—no solution, no chance. You find a clue, clear and incontrovertible. It’s got a date on it, for heaven’s sake. July nineteenth. Today’s date. I sit beside her on the couch to read what Brett Cavatone has written carefully in neat script.
    17 GARVINS FALLS #2 // MR . PHILLIPS // SUNSHINE SUNSHINE MINE ALL MINE
    Martha’s anxiety has drained out of her. She stands up straight, as steady as I’ve seen her, her brow untroubled, a gentle gleam in hereye. Her faith rewarded.
    “Does this note make sense to you?” I ask.
    “The last part does,” she says, softly, almost whispering. “Sunshine, sunshine, mine all mine. He would always say that to me. When we first got married. Sunshine, sunshine, mine all mine.” She takes the cardboard slip from me and reads it again, murmurs the words to herself. “He’s telling me so I know it’s him.”
    “And the rest of it? Garvins Falls?”
    “No. I mean—it sounds like an address, but I don’t know where it is.”
    It is an address. Garvins Falls Road is a winding industrial street, east of the river, south of Manchester Street. An industrial section, unmaintained and gritty even before the beginning of our current environment.
    “What about Mr. Phillips?”
    “No.”
    “You sure?”
    “I don’t know who that is.”
    Gently, I take the piece of cardboard from her hands and read it again. “Martha, I have to be sure of