BOILER

Chapter 29

The office was empty. He liked it that way, but he wasn't enjoying himself. He made his coffee and a bolt of pain hit his arm like he'd been jabbed with a cattle prod. He felt the tips of his fingers but couldn't feel that. He swatted a pill into his mouth and walked over to records. He knocked the door as he let himself in and called into the room.

'Hello.'

'Yeah,' May answered, from some unseen corner.

'It's Toland.'

'I heard you,' May said. She came out from the shelves with a box and hobbled to a table. She addressed him with the thin-lipped look of condolence. 'How're you doing, Jim?'

'I'm doing well enough, all things considered.'

'Me and Charlie might not have been best friends, but he was one of the good guys. I knew that much. Not too many of those around.'

'He should've been taken better care of,' Toland said.

May nodded, rather glum. She looked around at the files. 'So,' she said. 'What can I do for you?'

'I got an old case for a Kyle Grant I'd like to take a look at.'

'Sure thing. You just take a seat and I'll see what I can dig out for you.'

A fly landed in Toland's coffee. It hurried in its struggle to escape the surface and was getting deeper when he picked it out and flicked it. The coffee burned and spilled. May saw it and told him to clean up. He went back to the office and took paper towels and laid a few out on the records room floor. He left them there and went walking down an aisle that had files in no order at all.

'How the hell do you find anything?' he asked.

May looked through the shelves to see where he was. 'They're old cases running out of time in storage. The first one you pass is the next one off to the incinerator. And then the one after that and after that.'

He looked along the shelves. Thousands, he thought.

'Kyle Grant,' May said. Toland heard her sliding some things around. He came out of the shelves about the same time she did. She brought the file to the table and opened it.

'You don't mind if I take a look too, do you?'

'I guess not,' Toland said.

'Thanks, I get bored in here. Tell you the truth, sometimes I like to pretend I'm a dec and read through these things like I'm working them for real. Like one day I'll break one of these old cases.'

Toland smiled and opened a file full with photos. He'd look at one and leave it on the table, and then he'd pick out another and do the same.

'Did you ever think you might've cracked one?' He asked.

'One of these old cases?'

'Yeah.'

'No. Mostly, I just end up reading like they're stories. I read one about a lady who killed five men because her husband was such a bastard to her. And he was the first to get it from her, by the way. I read one about a man who had a thing for cutting the heads off women, all because his mother was mean to him.'

'They all blame mother,' Toland said, placing a close-up photo of Kyle's face on the table. 'Do you ever miss the street?'

May put the file down and looked at her shelves of files. 'No,' she said. 'There's no order to what goes on out there. It's just what you can make of it — for better or worse. This might look messy, but there is order to it. I can control it. Your hand is shaking.'

'Oh yeah,' Toland said.

'Does it ever bother you?'

'Well' — he held his hand up in front of him — 'I need to be careful not to hold things that break cause sometimes it just lets go. Ruined a few carpets figuring that out. I thought it would stop, but then I'd break something else. What about your leg? Does it bother you?'

She straightened her leg out as best she could. 'Yeah,' she said. 'Every time I see a lot of steps or a hill that looks a little steep, I remember being in that doorway and seeing that barrel pointed at me. I have to remember that son of a bitch. But those are the breaks.'

'There's a lot of steps to get up here,' Toland said.

May started with a smile that faded. 'Yeah,' she said. Then she perked up. 'Did you know your femur is as strong as steel?'

'I didn't,' Toland said, looking up at her.

'That's what the doctors say. And they'd be the ones to know.'