The Last Policeman - By Ben H. Winters Page 0,1

town houses down that way. Rolly Lewis has a place over there.”

“And he got beat up.”

“Rolly?”

“The victim. Look.” I turn back to the insurance man’s distorted face and point to a cluster of yellowing bruises, high on the right cheek. “Someone banged him one, hard.”

“Oh, yeah. He sure did.”

Dotseth yawns and sips his coffee. New Hampshire statute has long required that someone from the office of the attorney general be called whenever a dead body is discovered, so that if a murder case is to be built, the prosecuting authority has a hand in from Go. In mid-January this requirement was overturned by the state legislature as being unduly onerous, given the present unusual circumstances—Dotseth and his colleagues hauling themselves all over the state just to stand around like crows at murder scenes that aren’t murder scenes at all. Now, it’s up to the discretion of the investigating officer whether to call an AAG to a 10-54S. I usually go ahead and call mine in.

“So what else is new, young man?” says Dotseth. “You still playing a little racquetball?”

“I don’t play racquetball, sir,” I say, half listening, eyes locked on the dead man.

“You don’t? Who am I thinking of?”

I’m tapping a finger on my chin. Zell was short, five foot six maybe; stubby, thick around the middle. Holy moly, I’m still thinking, because something is off about this body, this corpse, this particular presumptive suicide, and I’m trying to figure out what it is.

“No phone,” I murmur.

“What?”

“His wallet is here, and his keys, but there’s no cell phone.”

Dotseth shrugs. “Betcha he junked it. Beth just junked hers. Service is starting to get so dicey, she figured she might as well get rid of the darn thing now.”

I nod, murmur “sure, sure,” still staring at Zell.

“Also, no note.”

“What?”

“There’s no suicide note.”

“Oh, yeah?” he says, shrugs again. “Probably a friend will find it. Boss, maybe.” He smiles, drains the coffee. “They all leave notes, these folks. Although, you have to say, explanation not really necessary at this point, right?”

“Yes, sir,” I say, running a hand over my mustache. “Yes, indeed.”

Last week in Kathmandu, a thousand pilgrims from all over southeast Asia walked into a massive pyre, monks chanting in a circle around them before marching into the blaze themselves. In central Europe, old folks are trading how-to DVDs: How to Weigh Your Pockets with Stones, How to Mix a Barbiturate Cocktail in the Sink. In the American Midwest—Kansas City, St. Louis, Des Moines—the trend is firearms, a solid majority employing a shotgun blast to the brain.

Here in Concord, New Hampshire, for whatever reason, it’s hanger town. Bodies slumped in closets, in sheds, in unfinished basements. A week ago Friday, a furniture-store owner in East Concord tried to do it the Hollywood way, hoisted himself from an overhanging length of gutter with the sash of his bathrobe, but the gutter pipe snapped, sent him tumbling down onto the patio, alive but with four broken limbs.

“Anyhow, it’s a tragedy,” Dotseth concludes blandly. “Every one of them a tragedy.”

He shoots a quick look at his watch; he’s ready to boogie. But I’m still down in a squat, still running my narrowed eyes over the body of the insurance man. For his last day on earth, Peter Zell chose a rumpled tan suit and a pale blue button-down dress shirt. His socks almost but don’t quite match, both of them brown, one dark and one merely darkish, both loose in their elastic, slipping down his calves. The belt around his neck, what Dr. Fenton will call the ligature, is a thing of beauty: shiny black leather, the letters B&R etched into the gold buckle.

“Detective? Hello?” Dotseth says, and I look up at him and I blink. “Anything else you’d like to share?”

“No, sir. Thank you.”

“No sweat. Pleasure as always, young man.”

“Except, wait.”

“Sorry?”

I stand up straight and turn and face him. “So. I’m going to murder somebody.”

A pause. Dotseth waiting, amused, exaggerated patience. “All righty.”

“And I live in a time and a town where people are killing themselves all over the place. Right and left. It’s hanger town.”

“Okay.”

“Wouldn’t my move be, kill my victim and then arrange it to appear as a suicide?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe, right?”

“Yeah. Maybe. But that right there?” Dotseth jabs a cheerful thumb toward the slumped corpse. “That’s a suicide.”

He winks, pushes open the door of the men’s room, and leaves me alone with Peter Zell.

* * *

“So what’s the story, Stretch? Are we waiting for the meat wagon on this one, or cuttin’ down the