Shell Game – Chapter 6 – Memorial Bridge
The phone jangled to life, waking Evan after several difficult hours of sleep. Fumbling to locate the ringing contraption through closed eyes, he eventually managed to get the receiver next to his ear.
“Gold… uh huh… what time is it? … That’s so much earlier than I hoped… no, I’m not doing anything. I mean, I was… Yeah, I can come down… Where again? … Sure, give me twenty minutes.” Evan hung up the receiver, pushed himself up on the bed, swung his legs over the side, and gave an unfocused stare out the bedroom window. The diffused light from the full moon penetrated through the fog providing a gloomy look to the night. In front of his building, the streetlights shone down bright cones providing the only breadcrumbs of direction. Evan reached over and grabbed his alarm clock, squinting his eyes to see what the time was.
“Two-thirty,” he mumbled to himself. “How about that? I thought he was fooling.”
Then, Evan gave himself a pep talk and stood to get dressed. Five minutes later, he was dressed and clicking down the deserted streets of Athens. It was a pleasant night for a walk, he mused, except for the part where he should be in bed sleeping.
Around three o’clock, he had worked his way south to the river, to the Memorial Bridge. He saw a police car and several uniforms standing on Commercial about ten yards from one end of the bridge. The place was deserted. The land belonged to old man Soden’s flour mill before it burned down when Evan was a kid. Recently, the bridge was dedicated to the local soldiers who gave their lives in Europe and the Pacific. It was a nice gesture, but the bridge was so far on the outskirts of town, only a small group of fishermen made good use of it.
Evan approached the first barrier of police officers. A couple of standard-issue rookies; lanky and awkward in their freshly starched uniforms. Their job was to monitor the outskirts of the crime scene and stay out of the way. Evan wiped the smile off his face as he approached these fresh-faced kids. He remembered wanting to be in their shoes when he was their age, but that was many years ago and a life he did not regret passing by.
The rookies, who had been talking casually to themselves, suddenly stood pencil-straight and faced Evan with an attempt at dominance.
“This area here is off-limits,” said one of the rookies, “you can’t be here, sir.”
“Sir?” Evan laughed at the formality.
“Sir, you need to leave,” said the other.
“Tell that to Lieutenant Abrams. He’s the one who called me down here. Believe me, gentlemen, I would much rather be sleeping right now than in the middle of your business.” Evan forced a charming smile, though it was difficult.
The officers looked Evan over for a few seconds before one of them said, “I guess you can go through.”
“Thank you very much.” Evan walked past the officers and over to the bridge. An ambulance was parked there along with more experienced officers. These officers moved with more purpose, looking severe with their cameras, overcoats, and notepads discussing details, procedures, and theories.
He saw the most seasoned officer on the bridge pointing to three of his juniors wading along with search lamps in the riverbed. From time to time, a lantern’s beam would flash past what looked to be a body covered in a crisp, white sheet. Evan thought that things were about to get interesting. But how interesting and what did this have to do with him? It was just at that moment that Evan’s brain connected to the fact that Gabe had missed his check-in call after tailing Jason Charles. A pit began to form in Evan’s gut.
The seasoned officer from the bridge came jogging up to Evan, holding his hat on with one hand. He nudged his hat back with his forefinger and said, “Hey, Evan. Thanks for coming down here. Strange night.”
“You called me at two-thirty in the morning, Steve. I assumed it was important,” Evan said, hoping to take the edge off what he was sure was coming.
“It is, I’m afraid,” said Lt. Abrams. Then Abrams said what Evan had already guessed. “It’s Gabe. I hate to tell you, but he got himself killed. That’s him down there under the sheet.”
Evan nodded.
“I wanted you to see your partner one last time before the boys take him to the morgue. You know, pay your respects.” Abrams said.
“That’s very thoughtful, Steve,” Evan said.
Lt. Abrams fished in his pocket, pulled out a pistol, and held it out to Evan. “Look familiar to you?” Abrams asked.
Evan took it from him and gave it the once-over as best he could in the hazy light. “Yeah,” he said, “look like Gabe’s alright.” Evan handed the gun back to Abrams.
“What was it,” Evan mused, “some kind of standoff? Gabe had his deficiencies as a detective, but he wasn’t careless enough to get into a shootout on an out-of-the-way bridge.”
Abrams let out a long, bewildered breath and stared into the dark riverbed. “We got a call, maybe ninety minutes ago, from a guy coming to the bridge for some night fishing,” Abrams said, stuffing the gun away and looking back apologetically to Evan. “What kind of person goes fishing at one in the morning is beyond me. Anyway, he says he was walking on the bridge and sees a man’s hat just lying there. Thinks nothing of it. He’s about to drop his line and sees your partner lying face down in the river. It’s hard to see because of the fog, so he goes down to check it out. Long story short, our man runs home and gives us a call.”
Abrams turned to stare in the direction of the river. “Got two slugs in him. Right in his gut. I don’t think he survived his wounds very long.” He paused and took in a deep breath before saying, “Whoever it was, was good. No casings, no dropped items, no signs of struggle. Just a little blood up on the bridge, so we think he was shot up there. We think after he was shot, the murderer pushed or dropped the body over the side of the bridge.”
“Nobody saw or heard anything?” Evan asked.
“Not that we’ve found yet,” Abrams said. “But there’s not a lot of hope there. This place is off several well-beaten paths.” Abrams looked around and took off his hat to fidget with the brim.
“You want to see the body?” He asked finally.
“Do I need to?” Evan asked.
Abrams cocked his head to one side, taken aback, “I don’t know that you need to, necessarily. It would be the respectful thing to do, though.”
Evan looked back at Lt. Abrams, “How is it respectful? Gabe’s not in that body anymore, is he? So, what am I paying my respects to, the shell of the man?”
“I hate to tell you this, Evan,” Abrams started, “but I think this might be why some people think you’re cold.”
“I’m not worried about other people,” Evan grunted.
Abrams shook his head, “Yeah, well… something you should know… Gabe’s gun wasn’t fired.” Evan’s eyebrows went up. “Yep. I know. Still snapped into his holster. Yeah, it’s weird, but I thought you would want to know that.”
Evan’s eyes started to dance from side to side as he tried to make any connections in his head.
“Was he working a case?” Lt. Abrams asked a little too casually.
Evan nodded. “Not really. Something came in this morning. Missing person. A woman wanted us to find her runaway father.”
“Was he supposed to meet him here?”
Evan shook his head. “No. Don’t know why he would have ended up here.”
“Was Gabe into something else?” Abrams asked. He was digging for more information. Evan was not in a mood to throw Abrams a bone.
“Your guess is as good as mine, Steve. He was just my business partner. We didn’t share our hopes and dreams out loud.”
“Yeah,” Abrams said and dropped his eyes before looking up to the full moon.
“Was there anything else?” Evan asked.
Lt. Abrams frowned and squeezed his eyebrows together. “Not at the moment, but I know how to get a hold of you if something comes up.” Then he volunteered, “I suppose someone should let Mrs. Silver know.”
“I suppose they should,” Evan agreed. “I’ll do it. Seems like the right thing.”
Abrams turned to look toward the river. Gabe Silver’s shrouded body was just making its way into the back of the ambulance on a makeshift gurney. The two men who carried the body shut the wide-swinging back hatch door. Lt. Abrams continued to run the brim of his hat in a circle through his anxious fingers.
“Gabe Silver was a good man. He had his good points. He had his bad points. Just like the rest of us, I guess.” He placed his hat back on his head. “Thanks for coming down, Evan. You’re sure you don’t want to pay your respects?”
“I’m sure,” Evan said. “I’ll see you around, Steve.”
“Yeah,” Abrams said. “See you around.”
Evan started to walk back north, then turned east on Logan. His mind was alert and alive. He aimed nowhere in particular. Just walked to let his thoughts run. How much more tragedy could he take? It seemed like everything around him was crumbling away like a sandcastle devoured by the encroaching tide. Death always shows up on the doorstep, Evan reminded himself. He shows up right on time but always unexpectedly. Evan had to break the news to Gabe’s wife but didn’t know if he could. Maybe if the words were never said, Gabe’s death could be reversed, and life could go on as it had been.
But he knew he couldn’t unsee what he’d seen. The widow needed to know. He swung up East St. and stopped at the first payphone he could, circled his fingers through the numbers on the dial till the bell rang in the receiver.
“Sophie, hi, it’s Evan. Sorry to wake you, but I need you to do me a favor… Gabe went and got himself killed tonight… I don’t know… Police are on it. We can’t do much till the sun comes up. Say, I need you to do me a favor. I need you to call the wife. Right. She shouldn’t find this out in the morning paper. She didn’t marry much of a man, but she deserves at least this much… No, I can’t… Soph… Sophie… I don’t know that I can watch another heartbreak right now… and the kids… I just can’t… Thanks, Soph, you’re one in a million… I’m headed over to the office to check on something… Maybe he wrote down why he would end up on Memorial Bridge, of all things… I know. Doesn’t make sense on the face of it… Yeah, thanks, Sophie. I’ll see you later.”
Evan hung up the phone and then stood there, dazed for a moment. The anger that had been building for the past month boiled over. He picked up the receiver and whacked the payphone box twenty, maybe thirty times, cracking the handset in several places. Once he could get himself under control, he adjusted his hat, turned west onto 2nd Avenue, and zig-zagged the way to his office.
