The Nightmare People

“Police!” someone called, “Is anyone in there?”

“Oh, shit,” he muttered. “I’m coming!” he called, pulling on his robe as he crossed the living room. The cotton clung to the sweat on his back.

He heard voices, but couldn’t make out the words; someone was talking in the hallway. He thought the tone was one of surprise, maybe fear – that puzzled him.

He stopped and peered through the lens in the door as he knotted the belt.

Two men in police uniforms stood there – and one had his gun out.

He froze, with his hand on the doorknob.

He could not think of anything he had done, anything he was involved with, anything anyone he knew might have done, that could logically account for the presence of a cop with a drawn gun outside his door.

He’d heard stories about drug sales in the area, but nothing like that had happened here on the fourth floor of C Building in the Bedford Mills Apartments, and he certainly hadn’t been involved in any illegal transactions, here or anywhere else in Diamond Park. Even back in college he’d never done anything stronger than pot, and he hadn’t even done that in several years.

“Let me see your badges!” he called through the closed door.

The two cops glanced at each other; then each, in turn, showed his badge to the lens.

He had no idea what to look for in determining whether the badges were authentic. They certainly looked real, as far as he could see in the distorted view through the peephole.

The door was equipped with a cheap little chain-lock. He knew that it wouldn’t stop a serious intruder for more than a few seconds, but he put it on anyway, and with a tightening in his stomach, he opened the door a crack.

One policeman, the larger one, was standing at the door. The other, the one with his gun drawn, had stepped back well out of reach, and had the gun raised – not pointed anywhere in particular, but up and ready, a black silhouette against the drab gray of the concrete block wall.

The big cop said, “Sorry to bother you, sir, but could we have a few minutes of your time? We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

The cop’s voice was calm, polite, unhurried – but beads of sweat gleamed on his forehead, and his partner was still there with the gun.

He was not stupid or ignorant; he had read of “good cop/bad cop” scenarios. This, however, was carrying the idea to a bizarre extreme.

“What about?” he asked, trying to sound normal.

He failed; his voice was still clogged with sleep, and the question came out as a hoarse whisper.

“Well, sir, that’s hard to explain. If you could come downstairs and talk to the lieutenant…”

“I’m not dressed,” he pointed out. His voice was better this time.

“There’s no hurry,” the cop said diffidently. “You can get dressed.”

He was becoming a

“What’s this about, officer?” he demanded.

The cop hesitated, and then said, “It’s a missing persons case, sir. We hope you’ll be able to help us.”

He was still puzzled. Why the gun? Why should he come downstairs and talk to a lieutenant, instead of answering questions here? “Who’s missing?” he asked.

The cop hesitated again, almost glanced at his partner, and then thought better of taking his eyes off the open door. “Your neighbors,” he said quietly.

“Which ones?”

That drew the longest hesitation yet.

Finally, the cop took a deep breath and answered, in a voice that almost shook.

“All of them,” he said.

3.

His tie was crooked.

So was the lieutenant’s.

Neither of them gave a damn. Both men had put ties on out of habit, despite the heat, and from nothing more than habit. Both were concerned with matters other than their appearance just now.

He was still confused, and without his morning coffee he felt half asleep. He had stumbled and almost fallen on the stairs coming down; the police vehicles, the people milling about on various tasks, were all very distracting. Even so, he realized almost immediately that something very, very strange was going on, far stranger than a bunch of confused cops.

The parking lot was full.

At 11:30 on a Wednesday morning, the apartment complex lot was full.

He had never seen it full at midday before, not even on weekends. Ordinarily it emptied out almost completely during the morning rush hour, and then filled back up in the evening. People went to work, after all, and they drove their cars to get there.

Except that this time, they hadn’t. The police had parked their half-dozen cars and vans in fire lanes or on the apartment complex lawn, because there were no vacant spaces.

For the first time, it began to really sink in that the cop had said all his neighbors were missing.

One of the cops who had come to his door, the one with the gun, had gone on back down while he was dressing; the other was close at his side, but not touching him.

Half a dozen uniformed officers were trotting about, counting the one escorting him; as many others in plainclothes, but still obviously cops, were standing around talking quietly and seriously, or reading from clipboards.

His escort had led him to a nondescript man in a yellow shirt with the sleeves rolled up, whose clipboard lay besides a brown sportcoat atop the retaining wall between the lawn in front of D building and the parking lot. His brown tie was loose and uneven.

“Here he is, Lieutenant,” the uniformed cop said.

“Thanks,” the man in rolled sleeves answered, looking up. He nodded, but did not offer his hand. “I’m Lieutenant Buckley,” he said. He turned and fished something from a pocket of his jacket.

The civilian watched, puzzled, simultaneously trying to figure out what was going on and why he had bothered to put on a tie. He didn’t usually wear one, after all.

Somehow, though, going to talk to a police lieutenant had seemed like an occasion that called for a tie – something like jury duty, perhaps. He had put one on, a blue print to go with his powder-blue shirt, but he had tied it badly, and it hung askew.

“Your name?” the lieutenant asked, holding up a pocket tape recorder. Under a thick layer of tinted plastic the tape-reels were turning.

“Smith,” he replied, “Edward J. Smith. And yes,” he added wearily, as he always did, “My name is really Smith, it’s not an alias; do you want to see I.D.?”

“If you have any handy, this man will check it,” the lieutenant replied, completely seriously, nodding to a small, balding man in plainclothes.

Smith fished his wallet out of his pants pocket, unclipped the set of plastic windows that held his driver’s license, insurance cards, and credit cards, and handed it over.

The lieutenant watched silently. When the other man had the cards securely in hand, he asked, “Mr. Smith, did my men tell you anything about what’s going on here?”

“No,” Smith replied immediately. He started to say more, then thought better of it.

Buckley nodded. “Well, that’s probably because we don’t know what the hell is going on here,” he said. “Not yet, anyway. We’re hoping you can tell us.”

“I’ll tell you anything I can,” Smith replied.

The lieutenant glanced at the clipboard, without moving it from where it sat atop the retaining wall, then asked, “What do you do, Mr. Smith?”

“I’m a programmer,” he answered.

“Computers, you mean?”

Smith nodded. He supposed that there could be other jobs where people called themselves programmers.

“I see,” the lieutenant said. “If you don’t mind, why are you home today? Were you sick?” He peered searchingly at Smith’s face, as if looking for some trace of illness.

“No,” Smith said, “I just needed a day off. I’m ahead on my work, and I didn’t sleep well last night because of the heat – the air conditioning unit in my apartment’s busted, and I couldn’t get maintenance people out here yesterday because it was after four-thirty when I got home, and I’m up on the top floor, which makes it worse, so I wanted to sleep while I could and I didn’t set the alarm.”