Step Light
Lieutenant Feist was forced to brake hard as he turned onto the street. Already a throng of gawkers had set up, maybe thirty bodies clustered in the middle of the road, craning their necks toward the rooftops. He allowed the siren a couple of shrill whoops and they swelled back, enough that he could tuck his own car behind the two black-and-whites already pulled up on the sidewalk.
He deliberately shuffled over to get out the passenger side, forcing a middle-aged man in grubby vest and slacks to take two sharp steps back. The man turned to glare, then his expression changed to one of recognition and he looked away abruptly, mumbling something apologetic. At that, half a dozen faces turned Feist’s way, and he saw recognition there too.
Well, any audience was better than none. But were there any press? Yes, he could make out a news crew just setting up on the far side of the crowd. This wasn’t a front page story in anyone’s book, but his presence might easily turn that around.
Of course, he thought, if I screw up, it’ll be all over the front page, quick as dying and twice as ugly.
Feist spared one brief glance upward. He considered the building first – new, no more than five years old, a dozen storeys of glossy mock-Georgian architecture – and then let his eyes drift to the figure perched halfway up its height. She was very still, arms and palms pressed against the brick behind, feet slightly splayed, her head hung forward and a little to one side, so that thick coils of black hair draped her face. There was something statuesque about her posture, as though up there on the ledge she’d finally found her calling.
Feist couldn’t tell anything useful, though, except that nothing suggested to him that she was seconds away from taking her final plunge. Yet as his eyes dipped back to street level, he was struck by a sense of familiarity, so abrupt and strong that it ran like a shock through him. As soon as he considered it, he knew he hadn’t seen this building before, or the ones to either side. Yet that didn’t make the feeling go away.
So instead, Feist pushed it aside and began walking. Just as he was despairing that the hack they’d sent would ever look round and see him, he heard a shout of, “Lieutenant Feist! Kevin Paige, Evening Standard. Got a few words for us?”
“Not the time, son,” Feist growled. “Don’t you see a woman’s life’s in danger?”
“Are you here in a police capacity,” called the reporter, “or just trying to get the lady’s vote?”
A ripple of laughter ran through the crowd. Feist fought back a surge of anger, kept his voice steady. “Always police first, Mr Paige. Now if you’ll excuse me…”
Before the reporter could come back at him, Feist was through the doors, held open by one ruffled patrolman, and looking inquiringly at a second across a plush entrance lobby.
Reading his expression correctly, the second patrolman responded, “Sixth floor, sir. There’s a solicitors’ office there. Up in the lift and turn left, you’ll see the door’s open.”
Feist nodded. “One of you go out and give that cocksucker a statement,” he said. “Keep it simple. Don’t tell him more than he needs to know.”
“Sir,” said the second patrolman, and marched past and through the doors.
Inside the lift, Feist wondered again at the familiarity he’d felt outside. He’d never been in this building before, he knew that much. He’d been working this town for nigh on twenty years, there probably wasn’t a street he’d been down less than a dozen times, so that this one had caught in his memory surely meant something. More than that, when he probed the recollection, the wash of emotion that followed was none too pleasant. Only, there wasn’t a damn thing he could grasp.
The lift pinged, the doors slid open. Feist put aside his introspection with long-honed ease and stepped into a wide hallway. Though it was clear that some of the building was given over to apartments, this floor was split between half a dozen smallish business premises. There was a physiatrist’s off to the left, a door marked Holier Technical Design at the far end, and to his right, the open entrance of the solicitors’ firm.
He marched on through into a plain reception room, with a second door off to the left beside a large wooden desk. A high sash window stood open in the back wall, and a third patrolman leaned against the sill. His partner loomed over a young girl with high-piled blonde hair and a tearful expression that Feist figured to be mostly for the benefit of the fourth patrolman. As he entered, the two young cops came clumsily to attention, and the receptionist snuffled and rubbed a sleeve across her eyes.
The patrolman by the window said, “Good morning, sir. They radioed us that you’d be handling this one yourself.” He lowered his voice, tilting his head toward the figure invisible on the far side of the wall. “She won’t say one whit to us, anyway. Figure maybe she’s only out there hoping you might show up and get her in the evening edition.”
Feist nodded. Twelve months ago he’d put the word out that certain types of cases, the ones with headline potential, were to be pushed his way. Mostly that meant getting his name attached to occasional high profile arrests, but he’d also kept a regular sideline of exploits like this. For a year now, where there was a child threatened or a woman in danger, there too had been Feist.
In a city he could never have got away with it, but White Glade was no city, and he knew exactly how far he could push, exactly how much weight his edict carried. The local papers had made a show of seeing through his act, of turning it into a joke, but none of that mattered. He knew he’d earned himself the mocking nickname ‘Saint Feist’ – and that was fine too. If it meant everyone knew him, they could call him any damn thing they liked.
“We got a minute?” he asked the patrolman by the window. “You confident she won’t do anything we’ll regret out there?”
“As I can be. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was just taking the morning air.”
Feist gave the patrolman a hard look that said, Not in front of the witness. Yet by the time his gaze had reached said witness, his expression was all compassion, with just enough grit behind it to show he meant business. “What’s your name, miss?”
“It’s Betty.” She was snivelling again now, perhaps in advance of difficult questions.
“Don’t you worry,” he said, “you’ve done nothing wrong here. Just tell me as quick as you can what happened.”
“What can I say? She came in demanding to see Mr Rosen. I asked if she had an appointment and she said, no, but if I just described her face then she was sure he’d see her. I thought about arguing, but I knew Mr Rosen was quiet and she looked like she might be the type to make a fuss. So I put my head round the door to ask him. Then I heard a noise. By the time I looked back, she was half out the window. It was open already, it gets awful warm in here. I ran straight over, but I didn’t want to try and grab her in case … you know, in case I ended up pushing her by accident.”
Feist wondered what she’d have come back with if he’d asked for the long version. “You sure you didn’t recognise her?”
“Not one bit. Mr Rosen took a look out and he doesn’t either.” Her voice dropping to a conspiratorial hush, she added, “I think she’s just some crazy, Lieutenant Feist, and we got the short straw.”
Well, at least she recognised him, that was something. “Okay then,” he said, “I’m going to step out and say my hellos.”
Feist paced toward the window. Before the patrolman who’d been hovering there moved aside, he leaned closer and whispered, “Chief, you’re sure you don’t want us to call the fire rescue guys?”
“What,” hissed Feist back, “you don’t think I’m up to this?”
“Just a back-up,” muttered the patrolman, abruptly nervous.
“If you’re so worried,” said Feist, “why don’t you and your partner get down there with a sheet or something.”
While the patrolman was trying to figure out whether he was meant to take that seriously, Feist turned his back, hoisted a foot to the windowsill – and steeled himself.
This was his eighth prospective jumper in barely as many months. He’d learned long ago that he had an aptitude for such things, and had asked for them particularly. To Feist’s mind, people who wanted to die didn’t make a song and dance. They locked themselves in a room with a handgun or a car running its exhaust flat out. Anyone who chose an audience didn’t want death, they wanted attention. And what they really wanted was someone to take the choice out of their hands. Once you understood that, it wasn’t so difficult. That persona, kindly but firm, was precisely what he’d been cultivating in his burgeoning political career these last few months, and it came so easily by now that he almost believed in it himself.
For all that, though, Feist was no fan of heights. Six storeys didn’t sound like much, but it made an impression when you were staring down it. Were it a man up here, he might have made do with a bullhorn from the street, and he’d have certainly let the fire brigade in on the act. A young, pretty woman though? That required a little chivalry. He could see the photograph of him escorting her out, one arm slung around her shoulder, in his mind’s eye.
It looked good, enough to help him overcome a spot of vertigo. Feist clambered up and ducked out onto the ledge, steadying himself with one hand against the window frame. He was becoming a connoisseur of ledges, and this one was wide as these things went, a touch over a foot except where support columns cut into its depth. Like the wall behind him, it was made from blocks of stark grey stone.
Feist turned his focus to the reason he was out here risking his life. She was to his left, at the farthest point of the ledge, where it finished to make way for the next building. There was another window halfway between them, presumably the solicitor’s office. Feist cursed himself for not starting there instead, cursed her for making this as difficult as she could. Well, it was good drama, that was for sure.
As far as he could tell, she hadn’t twitched a finger since he’d first seen her from the street. His first assessment had been right, though; she was certainly pretty. Even with that dark hair mostly covering her face, her features were striking, a mite sharp overall maybe but softened by her wide and full-lipped mouth. She was wearing a long dress, cream with patterns of blue flowers, and flat-soled shoes of the same cornflower shade. He wondered how she was faring with the cold wind on those tanned calves – and whether the sensible shoes were a sign that she’d dressed that morning with the intention of spending it stood on the outside of a building.
With his back pressed to the wall, Feist took a hesitant sidestep toward her and said, “Young lady, my name is Lieutenant Feist. I’m here to get you safe.”
She didn’t respond, not even to glance his way.
He took another short step, another. “I’m sure you’ve got all sorts of troubles, to be out here like this. Probably you think you can’t go on another minute. But I’m here to tell you, you can and you will. You just need help … and we’re going to make certain you get that.”
No answer. No look his way.
Feist took another step. He was passing by the second window now. He imagined the solicitor watching from behind his desk, as though this were all some show laid on to break up his day – but he didn’t bother to check. “And when I say we, I mean me. You have my word that I personally will get you the help you need.”
He was starting to think that this conversation would be one-sided all the way, so that he started when she said, “It’s all gone wrong.”
Feist took a deep breath, bracing himself. “I don’t doubt it seems that way.”
“It’s been wrong for the longest time.”
“Perhaps so,” he said, with a force of calm he didn’t quite feel, “but there’s nothing in this life that can’t be put right. Only, this isn’t the way. So why don’t we traipse on back inside before we talk anymore?”
“The longest time,” she echoed – and it was as if he hadn’t spoken. She was talking very softly, as though to herself. “I can look back and see every stage of it, like watching dominoes fall. Only there’s nothing I can do to change it. If I could just make it right somehow, even a little, then maybe I could start over.”
“Then that’s what we’ll help you do.”
She looked at him then, finally. The motion brushed the hair back from her face, and he was surprised to see no fear there, not even anxiety – really, no expression at all. “Do you mean that, Lieutenant?”
So she knew who he was. And she was a talker. In Feist’s experience, the world boiled down to talkers and doers, and it was the doers you had to watch out for. She was a talker, and probably she liked the idea that she’d got a celebrity to tell her tale to. All he needed to do was listen, make the right noises, and sooner or later she’d get bored with this routine.
Except, there’d been something in her tone that he didn’t altogether like. It was enough to make him hesitate before taking another step. “Course I mean it. So what say we—”
“I can’t go back in. Not just yet. Not until you understand.”
Feist suppressed a sigh. A talker, all right. Didn’t she realise they were playing to a crowd? If they were out here all damn day, the news crew might get sick of waiting for their headline. At the thought, he glanced down – something he’d sworn not to do – and immediately his stomach bobbed like an apple in a water barrel, his vision tilted and swam. He pressed back hard against the wall, trying not to let on how near to panic he’d found himself.
It wasn’t only the height. The building he’d parked in front of, a decrepit laundry – he’d seen it before. Not only that, he’d seen it before from this angle. That didn’t make any sense, yet there it was. Feist forced himself to look again, this time tilting his gaze by degrees. Yes, he recognised the building opposite, all right. Not the stores to left and right, both of which boasted new facades, but he’d seen that laundry before, and he’d seen it from above. What he couldn’t tell was when – or why the fact scared him so severely.
Don’t lose it, he told himself. Just do what you came to do. Talk to her, damn you. Get this over with.
“All right,” he said, successfully keeping the fear down to the barest tremor, “why don’t we start by you telling me your name?”
“It’s Mary,” she said. “Mary Tucker. But that’s not the name I was born with.”
A strange thing to say – and he felt sure this time, there was something in her tone, an edge he couldn’t figure. “So you’re married, Mary? Not happily, I’m guessing?”
“He’s not a bad man. The badness came from me more than him. When you’ve seen too much hurt, it gets inside you. It builds in your head, so you think if you don’t let it out it’ll kill you.”
“So the problem was your parents?” Feist hazarded, taking another short sidestep as he spoke. “They fought? Sure, I’ve seen what that can do.”
“They fought,” she agreed. “But they loved each other, they did. Even in the end, they still loved each other. Only, after what happened – it got into them, like a sickness. There just wasn’t any cure.”
Feist took another shallow step. Now the distance between them was less than half a dozen feet. Something else was starting to nag at him. Common sense told him she was pouring her heart out here, yet there was no hint of passion in her voice. But it was more than that.
She’s dancing around something.
Yes. That was it. She was leading him. “Mary,” he said, “what is it you’re not telling me?”
She was looking at him fully now. He found himself imagining the scene as it must appear from the street: he in his charcoal suit, her in her blue-patterned dress, both standing straight-backed with their necks twisted to watch each other, like old folks talking at a bus stop, as the wind whipped their hair into odd, quick sculptures.
“My father was black,” she said, “and my mother was white. So maybe they never stood a chance.”
So that was it – a part, at any rate. He reappraised her face in this new light and knew she was telling the truth. “Folks didn’t have much tolerance for that in those days.” Hell, they still don’t.
“I took after my mother. My older brother got his father’s colour. It was hard for us – harder for him than me. He started to go wrong fast. Fighting at first, then worse. He wasn’t bad, but he was doing bad things. I guess sooner or later the police were bound to come knocking.”
A cold, creeping sensation, like an insect crawling with feet of ice, ran the length of Feist’s spine.
She was, what, pushing thirty? Say what she was talking about had happened twenty years ago. Twenty years. About when Feist had joined the force.
It hadn’t been an auspicious start. His career had almost been derailed altogether in that first year. He wondered what hope there was of grabbing her, of forcing her inside. He was strong as any man in his early forties, but the attempt would be awfully risky – and that press crew were still watching.
“Leroy wasn’t in when the policeman came to the door,” she said. “But he came home at exactly the wrong time. They figured each other straight away. If Leroy had run down the stairs, into the street, he might have got away. But he didn’t, Lieutenant Feist. I guess Leroy just panicked … because he went up those stairs instead.”
Yes. The kid had been scared, all right. And Feist’s blood had been boiling. Nothing had gone right in days, and here he was, chasing down some dumb kid who’d been lifting from liquor stores. It was too damn much.
So he’d run like a man possessed, he’d bellowed at the top of his lungs. The kid got more scared, ran harder. That only made Feist madder. Up the stairs they went, on to the roof. The place had been a decrepit tenement, nothing but garbage and a couple of old sun loungers up there, the wall around the edge too low to serve much purpose.
It had been here … just here. A different age, a different building. Where a rooftop had been was now the ledge outside a solicitor’s office, but this was still that selfsame spot.
“It was an accident,” he said. “He kept on running. He got to the edge. I tried to grab him.”
“He was thirteen years old. Would you have run down a white boy in a good neighbourhood like a dog?”
Feist ignored the question. They both knew the answer – even as he knew in his heart that it hadn’t been entirely and truly an accident. Oh, he’d reached for the kid, all right, but inside his head, something had been grinning all the while.
That incident had almost ended his career. These days it would have. It had taught him a lot, too, before he’d made himself forget.
“What do you want?” he asked harshly. “Your brother’s dying was an accident, and one that happened a hell of a long time ago.”
“I want to put the past to rest,” she said.
“Then you ought to. It’s nothing to do with me.”
“You know, I tried to tell myself that.”
Feist took a step back, felt his back foot scud on the lip of the ledge. He drew a deep, shuddering breath that didn’t calm him one iota. What was he so scared of? This chit of a girl?
Yes.
She’d watched him. She’d planned. She’d seen her opportunity, and now here they were and she was so damn calm.
Feist hissed through clenched teeth. “You won’t get away with this.”
“What’s to get away with?” she asked, almost sweetly.
“You crazy bitch,” he said. “They’re all watching.” He tried for another step, but his ankles were like jelly.
“Anyone can panic, Lieutenant,” she whispered, the words hardly reaching him over the incessant wind. “Anyone can slip.”
“Like hell!” Feist flailed with his left hand, hoping to touch the window of the solicitor’s office, maybe to draw the man’s attention. But all his fingers found was raw stone, rasping across his knuckles. He staggered then, as though he were performing a small dance on the spot, as though he didn’t have the moves down right yet. He could feel the void beside him, feel its tug. The wall, the ledge, seemed to be wavering.
Suddenly, quicker than his eyes could follow, her hand shot out toward him. Instinct, unmodified by judgement, jerked his whole body back. By the time he realised that maybe she was merely trying to grab him – at least, that was how it would look – he’d already lost his footing. The world tilted, tipped.
Feist’s last thought, as the wall sheered away before him, was that her scream was damned convincing.
Even more real-sounding than his own.
