Countdown City: The Last Policeman Book II (Last Policeman Trilogy)

CRITICAL PRAISE FOR

The Last Policeman
by Ben H. Winters
An Edgar Award Finalist

“[The] plotting is sure-footed and surprising.… Ben H. Winters reveals himself as a novelist with an eye for the well-drawn detail.”


Slate

“Ben H. Winters makes noir mystery even darker:
The Last Policeman
sets a despondent detective on a suspicious suicide case—while an asteroid hurtles toward earth.”


Wired

“I love this book. I stayed up until seven in the morning reading because I could not stop. Full of compelling twists, likable characters, and a sad beauty,
The Last Policeman
is a gem. It’s the first in a trilogy, and I am already excited for book two.”

—Audrey Curtis,
San Francisco Book Review

“I’m eager to read the other books, and expect that they’ll keep me as enthralled as the first one did.”

—Mark Frauenfelder,
Boing Boing

“I haven’t had to defend my love for science fiction in quite a while, but when I do, I point to books like
The Last Policeman
. [It] explores human emotions and relationships through situations that would be impossible (or worse yet, metaphorical) in literary fiction. This is a book that asks big questions about civilization, community, desperation and hope. But it doesn’t provide big, pat answers.

—Michael Ann Dobbs,
io9

“I’ve rarely been more surprised by a mystery novel than I was by this one—it’s an unlikely cross-genre mashup that coheres for two reasons: the glum, relentless, and implausibly charming detective Hank Palace; and, most importantly, Ben H. Winters’s clean, clever, thoughtful, and gently comic prose.”

—J. Robert Lennon

“A solidly plotted whodunit with strong characters and excellent dialogue … the impending apocalypse isn’t merely window dressing, either: it’s a key piece of the puzzle Hank is trying to solve.”


Booklist

“This thought-provoking mystery should appeal to crime fiction aficionados who like an unusual setting and readers looking for a fresh take on apocalypse stories.”


Library Journal

“A promising kickoff to a planned trilogy. For Winters, the beauty is in the details rather than the plot’s grim main thrust.”

—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Ben H. Winters spins a wonderful tale while creating unique characters that fit in perfectly with the ever-changing societal pressures.… [This] well-written mystery will have readers eagerly awaiting the second installment.”


The New York Journal of Books

“Extraordinary—as well as brilliant, surprising, and, considering the circumstances, oddly uplifting.”


Mystery Scene Magazine

“Exhilarating.… do not wait for the movie!”


E! Online

Copyright © 2013 by Ben H. Winters

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.
Excerpt from Bedbugs © 2011 Ben H. Winters

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Number: 2013930159

eISBN: 978-1-59474-627-7

Designed by Doogie Horner

Cover photographs: (diner scene) © Jonathan Pushnik;

(rioting crowd) © Nameer Galal/Demotix/Corbis

Cover model: Thom Gallen

Special thanks to Silk City

Production management by John J. McGurk

Quirk Books

215 Church St.

Philadelphia, PA 19106

quirkbooks.com

v3.1

For Adele and Sherman Winters

(43 years)

and

Alma and Irwin Hyman

(44 years)

Contents


Nahui Olin
was not the first sun. According to the Aztecs and their neighbors, there have been four previous suns. Each of them presided over a world that was destroyed in a cosmic catastrophe. These catastrophes did not always result in mass extinction; the results were sometimes transformative, i.e., of humans into animals.”

—Meteors and Comets in Ancient Mexico
(Ulrich Köhler, in the Geological Society of America Special Paper 356:
Catastrophic Events and Mass Extinctions
)

“Forever doesn’t mean forever anymore

I said ‘forever’

but it doesn’t look like I’m gonna be around much anymore.”

—Elvis Costello, “Riot Act”

1.

“It’s just that he
promised
,” says Martha Milano, pale eyes flashing, cheeks flushed with anxiety. Grieving, bewildered, desperate. “We both did. We promised each other like a million times.”

“Right,” I say. “Of course.”

I pluck a tissue from the box on her kitchen table and Martha takes it, smiles weakly, blows her nose. “I’m sorry,” she says, and honks again, and then she gathers herself, just a little, sits up straight and takes a breath. “But so Henry, you’re a policeman.”

“I was.”

“Right. You were. But, I mean, is there …”

She can’t finish, but she doesn’t need to. I understand the question and it floats there in the air between us and slowly revolves:
Is there anything you can do?
And of course I’m dying to help her, but frankly I’m not sure whether there
is
anything that I can do, and it’s
hard, it’s impossible, really, to know what to say. For the last hour I’ve just been sitting here and listening, taking down the information in my slim blue exam-taker’s notebook. Martha’s missing husband is Brett Cavatone; age thirty-three; last seen at a restaurant called Rocky’s Rock ’n’ Bowl, on Old Loudon Road, out by the Steeplegate Mall. It’s her father’s place, Martha explained, a family-friendly pizza-joint-slash-bowling-alley, still open despite everything, though with a drastically reduced menu. Brett has worked there, her father’s right-hand man, for two years. Yesterday morning, about 8:45, he left to do some errands and never came back.

I read over these scant notes one more time in the worried silence of Martha’s neat and sunlit kitchen. Officially her name is Martha Cavatone, but to me she will always be Martha Milano, the fifteen-year-old kid who watched my sister Nico and me after school, five days a week, until my mom got home, gave her ten bucks in an envelope, and asked after her folks. It’s unmooring to see her as an adult, let alone one overturned by the emotional catastrophe of having been abandoned by her husband. How much stranger it must be for her to be turning to me, of all people, whom she last laid eyes on when I was twelve. She blows her nose again, and I give her a small gentle smile. Martha Milano with the overstuffed purple JanSport backpack, the Pearl Jam T-shirt. Cherry-pink bubblegum and cinnamon lip gloss.

She wears no makeup now. Her hair is an unruly brown pile; her eyes are red rimmed from crying; she’s gnawing vigorously on the nail of her thumb.

“Disgusting, right?” she says, catching me looking. “But I’ve been smoking like crazy since April, and Brett never says anything even though I know it grosses him out. I have this stupid feeling, like, if I stop now, it’ll bring him home. I’m sorry, Henry, did you—” She stands abruptly. “Do you want tea or something?”

“No, thank you.”

“Water?”

“No. It’s okay, Martha. Sit down.”

She falls back into the chair, stares at the ceiling. What I want of course is coffee, but thanks to whatever byzantine chain of infra-structural disintegration is determining the relative availability of various perishable items, coffee cannot be found. I close my notebook and look Martha in the eye.

“It’s tough,” I say slowly, “it really is. There are just a lot of reasons why a missing-persons investigation is especially challenging in the current environment.”

“Yeah. No.” She blinks her eyes, closed and then open again. “I mean, of course. I know.”

Dozens of reasons, really. Hundreds. There is no way to put out a description on the wires, to issue an APB or post to the FBI Kidnappings and Missing Persons List. Witnesses who might know the location of a missing individual have very little interest or incentive to divulge that information, if they haven’t gone missing themselves. There is no way to access federal or local databases. As of last Friday, in fact, southern New Hampshire appears to have no electricity whatsoever. Plus of course I’m not a policeman anymore, and even
if I was, the CPD as a matter of policy is no longer pursuing such cases. All of which makes finding one particular individual a long shot, is what I tell Martha. Especially—and here I pause, load my voice with as much care and sensitivity as I can—especially since many such people left on purpose.

“Yeah,” she says flatly. “Of course.”

Martha knows all of this. Everybody knows. The world is on the move. Plenty still leaving in droves on their Bucket List adventures, going off to snorkel or skydive or make love to strangers in public parks. And now, more recently, whole new forms of abrupt departure, new species of madness as we approach the end. Religious sects wandering New England in robes, competing for converts: the Doomsday Mormons, the Satellites of God. The mercy cruisers, traveling the deserted highways in buses with converted engines running on wood gas or coal, seeking opportunities for Samaritanship. And of course the preppers, down in their basements, hoarding what they can, building piles for the aftermath, as if any amount of preparation will suffice.

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