Part 14 (1/2)
”Why did you say you weren't that close?”
”We weren't. Before last fall, before all of this, we'd never actually spoken.”
”So, why go to all this trouble for the guy?
”I had to.” She looks down, looks away. ”He was suffering.”
”Yeah, but that's an awful lot of time and effort. Especially now.”
”Well, exactly.” Now she stops looking away; she stares at me, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng, as if daring me to reject the possibility of such a far-fetched motive as simple human kindness. ”Especially now.”
”What about the bruises?”
”Below his eye? I don't know. Showed up two weeks ago, said he had fallen down some stairs.”
”Did you believe him?”
She shrugs. ”Like I said ...”
”You weren't that close.”
”Yeah.”
And here I'm feeling this strange and strong impulse to reach across the table, to take her hands in my own, to tell her it's okay, that it's all going to be okay. But I can't do that, can I? It's not okay. I can't tell her it's okay, because it's not okay, and because I have one more question.
”Naomi,” I say, and her eyes flicker in quick teasing recognition that I've never used her first name before. ”What were you doing there that morning?”
The spark dies in her eyes; her face tightens, pales. I wish I hadn't asked. I wish we could just be sitting here, two people, order some dessert.
”He used to talk about it. On the phone, at night, especially around December. He was done with the drugs, I really think he was, but he was still-he was not entirely happy. On the other hand, no one is. Entirely happy. How can we be?”
”Yeah. So, but, he would talk about the McDonald's?”
She nods. ”Yeah. He'd say, you know that place? If I was going to kill myself, that would be the place to do it. Just look at that place.” I don't say anything. From elsewhere in the restaurant, spoons clinking of coffee cups. Other people's melancholy conversation. ”Anyway. As soon as he didn't show up for work, I came over to that McDonald's. I knew it. I knew he would be over there.”
From Maurice's radio in the kitchen come the opening chords of ”Mr. Tambourine Man.”
”Hey,” says Naomi. ”This is Dylan, isn't it? You like this one?”
”No. I only like the seventies Dylan and the post-1990s Dylan.”
”That's ridiculous.”
I shrug. We listen for a minute. The song plays. She takes a bite of tomato.
”My eyelashes, huh?”
”Yeah.”
It's probably not true.
Almost certainly, this woman is gulling me, misdirecting me for reasons still to be discovered.
From all that I have learned, the idea of Peter Zell having experimented with hard drugs-not to mention having sought out and purchased drugs, given their current scarcity and extreme expense, and the severity of the penalties for such purchases under the post-Maia criminal codes-it all seems like a one-in-a-million chance. On the other hand, isn't it so that even the one-in-a-million chance must be true one time, or there would be no chance at all? Everybody's been saying that. Statisticians on television talk shows, scientists testifying before Congress, everyone trying to explain, everyone desperate for all of this to make some kind of sense. Yes, the odds were extremely unlikely. A statistical unlikelihood approaching zero. But the strong unlikelihood of a given event is moot once that event has nevertheless transpired.
Anyway, I just don't think she was lying. I don't know why. I close my eyes and I can picture her telling me, her big dark eyes are steady and sad, she's casting them down at her hands, her mouth is still and set, and I think for some insane reason that she was telling it straight.
The question of Peter Zell and morphine rotates in a slow ellipse in my mind, drifting past the other new fact spinning around up there: Zell's preoccupation with the McDonald's as a site of suicide. So what, Detective? So he got murdered, and the murderer left him to be found, by coincidence, in the very same spot? What are the odds of that?
It's a different kind of snow right now, big fat drops falling slowly, almost one at a time, each adding its weight to the drifts in the parking lot.
”You all right, Hank?” says Ruth-Ann, slipping the hundreds I've left on the table into her ap.r.o.n pocket without looking at them.
”I don't know.” I shake my head slowly, look out the window at the parking lot, lift my cup of coffee for one final sip. ”I feel like I wasn't made for these times.”
”I don't know, kid,” she says. ”I think maybe you're the only person who was.”
I wake up at four o'clock in the morning, wake from some abstract dream of clocks and hourgla.s.ses and gambling wheels, and I can't fall back asleep, because suddenly I've got it, I've got one piece of it, I've got something.
I get dressed, blazer and slacks, I put on coffee, I slide my department-issued semiautomatic pistol in its holster.
The words are turning around in my head, in a long slow circle: what are the odds?
There's a lot to do when the day begins.
I've got to call Wilentz. I've got to get over to Hazen Drive.
I look at the moon, fat and bright and cold, and wait for daybreak.
”Excuse me? Good morning. Hi. I need you to run a sample for me.”
”Yeah. Well, that's what we do. Gimme a second, all right.”
”I need you to run it right now.”
”Didn't I just say, give me a second?”
This is the a.s.sistant to the a.s.sistant that Fenton warned me about, the individual now running the state lab on Hazen Drive. He's young and disheveled and late for work, and he is looking at me like he's never seen a policeman before in his life. He stumbles toward his desk, gestures vaguely at a row of hard plastic orange chairs, but I decline.
”I need these done right away.”
”Dude, dude. Give me a d.a.m.n second.”