A Person of Interest

by Susan Choi

  “Inconclusive? But I passed. Gerry said so. You said so. I passed!”

  “I did not say you passed. I told you what Gerry told me, which is that he saw no evidence of deception. That was Gerry’s conclusion. Headquarters arrived at a different conclusion. Their conclusion is that the test wasn’t conclusive.”

  “But what does that mean?”

  “Lee, I can’t say it five different ways. It means just what I said. It means that the test does not yield a clear meaning. Is that clear enough?”

  “But that doesn’t make sense—”

  “Lee, I need you to shut up, as if you were one of your students and I’m the professor. I need you to shut up and listen to me. Can you do that a minute?”

  Lee was too stung by this to do anything other than color while making a quick, scornful gesture with one hand, as if to say, Be my guest.

  “I’ve been doing what I do a very long time,” Morrison recommenced, “and I’ve always believed, and always had that belief reconfirmed, that you never get if you don’t give. And so, with you, I’ve given. I’ve given you respect—I think you’re an extremely intelligent man. I’ve given you patience. I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt, when I could tell you weren’t being completely forthcoming. And in return, I have gotten. I got the letter, after you’d said that you’d thrown it away. But the balance is very unequal. I have not gotten, in anything like the proportion in which I have given. You’re a mathematician. You grasp what I’m saying. Yet in spite of all that, I am going to give yet again.” Here Morrison paused, as if to underscore his generosity. “Lee, I’m going to tell you something that very few people are privileged to know. In my business, which is the business of law enforcement at the federal level, there is a general belief—by this I mean it is generally shared, Lee, and there are very few who strongly disagree—that certain persons, of certain racial and cultural backgrounds, are immune to the polygraph test. The polygraph test is astoundingly accurate otherwise—but with these groups it’s worse than useless. It produces false negatives, always. It can never detect deception. No one really knows why; maybe these people don’t have the base ethical orientation of our mainstream Judeo-Christians. Maybe they have a relative notion of truth, or they’re lacking in guilt. Whatever the reason, we can’t use the polygraph on them. Who are they? I told you no one outside law enforcement is aware of this problem. That’s because it’s not something we walk around talking about. We can’t polygraph Asians. The Chinese, Japanese, the Malaysians, the Indonesians. The Taiwanese are a maybe. Can’t do Koreans, it doesn’t matter which side. Can’t do Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis, and can’t do any of the people of the region some call Western Asia and most people call Middle East. None of the Arabs, which is a very big problem, and for some funny reason Hasidic Jews also don’t work, although once again, no one knows why.”

  “That is ridiculous,” Lee broke in. “And despicable. The entire idea.”

  “It would be if it wasn’t a plain fact, empirically verified all of the time. But I don’t tell you this because I think you are an Asian immune to the polygraph test; if I thought that, I wouldn’t have wasted my time and yours giving you one. You’ve lived in this country four decades, you’re completely assimilated, and besides that, you seem like a person of conscience who’s not unfamiliar with guilt. I tell you all this to give you some sense of the atmosphere, of the mode of thinking about you going on at headquarters.”

  “But why are they thinking about me at all? I haven’t done anything wrong!”

  “And I’m telling you this,” Morrison continued, ignoring the disruption, “to help you understand that although you might think I’m your biggest antagonist, in fact in this situation, which you may not see clearly, I’m at this point your sole advocate. I’m the person who thought it was worth it to polygraph you. I’m the person who’s giving and giving, but I just don’t get anything back. So I’ll give yet again. Lee, the letter you gave me, the letter you got in your box from 14 Maple Lane, was mailed by the same human being who sent Hendley the bomb. What it looks like to me is, you’ve been aware of that fact all along but weren’t sure that I was. You lost the letter, oops, you found it. It’s from your good friend, no, your worst enemy. You’ve been saying these things, and you’ve even said them to the polygraph, and you haven’t been nabbed. So how does it change the equation if I let you know that I know? I know your letter came from the bomber, Lee. How do I know? I have plenty of ways. That I know is just one more thing I’ve given you, and it’s really time, now, that you gave something useful to me.”

  “Lewis is the bomber?” Lee said. “Oh, my God, is that possible?” Morrison’s foul, shocking speech had fermented in him righteous indignation he’d been bracing himself to unleash, but this articulation, in actual words, by an actual person, of the wicked idea he’d had in the polygraph chair, wrenched his anger away. He was left spent and breathless, trembling.

  “Given what I know about Lewis Gaither,” Agent Morrison said, with sarcasm, “it’s highly unlikely.”

  “What do you know?” Lee exclaimed.

  “Oh, no,” Morrison warned him, and now Lee saw, through the blur of his shock, that the other man was watching him with the same indignation Lee had felt only moments before, as if Morrison had absorbed Lee’s own rage. But Morrison wasn’t angry about racist notions; he was angry at Lee. “I’m not giving anymore, remember? I’m still waiting to get.”

  “Lewis can’t be the bomber,” Lee said. “Jim, you’ve made a mistake.”

  “Lewis sent you that letter?”

  “Of course. I told you.”

  “I think it’s you who has made the mistake,” Morrison said at last, standing. “When you have more to tell me, and I hope that you will, you know how to reach me.”

  “There are people at my school who think I’m the bomber,” Lee replied quietly as he trailed Morrison to the door. “I don’t know how it is, but everyone seems to be wrong.”

  Morrison turned around. “It’s all in your hands to correct them. Isn’t that what your job is, Professor? To correct and enlighten? To broadcast the truth?” Morrison pulled a photograph out of his pocket and flashed it at Lee.

  “Oh, God!” Lee said, cringing away. It was torn limbs, charred skin, and splashed blood.

  “That’s what the cops and the EMTs found in the office that’s right next to yours.”

  Lee remembered when Esther had flung herself into his arms…. No, that had been Emma Stiles. She had sobbed on his chest and then whispered the terrible words in his ear.

  I saw him.

  “That’s what your old pal did,” Morrison added, before letting himself out the door.

  18.

  AFTER MORRISON HAD GONE LEE SAT AT THE KITCHEN table pressing the heels of his hands in his eye sockets, but this only made the image Morrison had shown him return more vividly. Like an invalid, Lee pulled himself by the edge of the countertop island to the sink and hung over it, coughing and gagging, but wasn’t able to vomit. The kitchen was so still he could hear the minute hand on his electric wall clock when it jerked itself forward a notch, with a sound like a faraway arrow released from a bow.

  When the telephone rang, he seized it. “Jim?” he said huskily. That man’s vengeful anger, and his own need to cease being its object, whatever the cost, were all he could think of—apart from that nightmare image of a mangled but just-recognizable man.

  “Dr. Lee?” asked a voice with alacrity. “I’m so glad to find you at home. This is Sheila Klegg from the Examiner, and I’d like to ask you for your comment—”

  Lee automatically hung up the phone.

  He took it up again quickly, before it could unleash another assault, and dialed a number his mind had not realized his fingers remembered. When the familiar voice answered, it took him a moment to understand what he had done.

  “Jeff,” he said. “This is Lee.”

  Jeff Trulli was the young, inexpensive lawyer who had handled Lee’s divorce
from Michiko. His faintly shiny suits, and plainly shiny ties, were more memorable to Lee now than his face; he must have descended from immigrants who had traded their Mediterranean traits for the outlines and palette of soft, snowier peoples with whom they had bred. Lee was only sure now that Jeff had a weak chin, for which he compensated by knotting his ties very high. He was the only lawyer Lee knew, apart from the real-estate lawyer who’d refinanced his mortgage.

  “Hey, Dr. Lee, wow, I’m so sorry about this catastrophe up at the school, I’ve been meaning to call you and see how you were—you were close to it, right? Jesus Christ, goddamn loonies, it’s a miracle that you’re alive, that poor other guy, friend of yours, right? God, I’m sorry, I’ve been meaning to call.” The inelegant, genuine speech, with its effect of a radio broadcast from an innocent era long past, almost left Lee unable to scrape forth the words of his story.

  Jeff was audibly discomfited once Lee had finished, or at least once Lee managed to pause so that Jeff could cut in. “The first thing I’m going to say, before I say anything else, is that I think that you want someone else.”

  “I don’t know anyone else—”

  “If you give me a couple of days, I’ll chase down a few names.”

  “I don’t have a few days,” Lee insisted, although he did not really know what he had. He understood nothing: stark panic had wiped his mind clean.

  As if seeing this void for himself, Jeff was saying, “I don’t quite understand what the trouble is here. They haven’t charged you with anything, with harboring a fugitive, or acting as an accessory, or whatever it is you think they think—it’s not my corner of the law, Lee, but even if it was, you don’t seem to have any legal problem here that a lawyer could deal with.”

  “They think I’m lying. They think I’m a liar.”

  “About what? They think you know something about this you’re not telling them? That sounds to me like they don’t really have anything, and they’re grasping at straws.”

  “But my letter—”

  “They say your letter comes from the same person who mailed the bomb. So they’re saying your ex-friend is the bomber. I agree, that’s shocking. But is it totally outside the realm of the possible?”

  “I suppose it’s not,” Lee said in confusion. A debilitating sadness came over him, though he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was the sadness of his own death, having so closely approached him and then passed him by…. “But I told them from the very beginning who the letter was from, and they’re not satisfied.”

  “If your ex-friend has gone into business as a serial bomber, he’d be pretty stupid to have the same name,” Jeff remarked. “But, Lee, like I said, this doesn’t sound like a legal problem, it sounds like cops getting tough. That’s unpleasant, but you have to just keep doing what you’ve been doing, keep telling the truth, and you’re going to be fine. If you want, I can still call some people, try to line up some names.”

  “Call them, Jeff. Tell them what you told me! He must have changed his name, of course he’s changed it, and how could I know what it is—”

  “I hardly think the FBI wants to hear a divorce lawyer’s theories.”

  “Jeff, I’m begging you. Call this man Morrison, just ask him what he wants me to do. I don’t know what to do! I’ll pay you.” And whether persuaded by this or shamed by it, Jeff said that he would.

  The phone rang again the instant Lee hung up. He gasped and jumped back, as if it had not rung but spoken to him, or stung him. The Examiner again. He would say “No comment!” as he’d seen on TV. Or he simply would not pick it up, he would unplug the phone, never answer again…. But what if the call was from Esther? The leading edge of the past weeks of news might have reached her at last, the way all the planet’s transmissions reached ceaselessly out to the stars. Somewhere all the old stories were revealing themselves for the very first time, and somewhere Lee was still an admirable, eloquent, almost-victim of a terrible act—not a liar, sullied and suspicious. Esther would finally call; Lee never had changed his phone number to make it unlisted, as he’d resolved to after getting Gaither’s letter. Because he’d had the same phone number all these years, as Fasano had noticed, for her.

  The telephone was still ringing. He picked it up, ready to declare “No comment!” if he had to, and then he grew still with amazement, because the voice on the line saying “Hello…?” with great caution was not the sharp, avid voice of the newspaperwoman but a young woman’s voice that he knew. “Is this…Dr. Lee?”

  “Yes,” he said, crushingly disappointed.

  “This is Rachel.”

  “Yes,” he murmured.

  “I saw you today.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was rude. I want to apologize.”

  It was a tremendous mental effort, to remember what this was about, the encounter less than two hours ago in the sun on campus. Lee found himself laboring to bring her face into his mind—her face that had once made him think of Aileen.

  “This is going to seem weird, but I want to talk to you. I mean”—and this was almost to herself—“the worst anybody could say is I believed the best of human nature. And I want to. You know? I need to.”

  “Yes,” Lee said again. He could barely make sense of her words.

  “I don’t know if you’d be willing to meet at the Wagon Wheel. Say, six o’clock. I have to talk to these TV news people beforehand. It’s disgusting. But I can be there by six.”

  “Yes,” he heard himself saying. “Okay.”

  “Thank you. I’ll see you there.”

  “Okay. Thank you,” he added stupidly, before hanging up.

  Then he did unplug the phone, yanking the cord angrily. If Esther had not called before, there was really no reason to think she’d call now.

  He remained several minutes at his telephone table, his hand still at rest in the posture of ending the call, the thunderbolt of Rachel’s voice vestiged by warmth in his palm. The yellow legal pad on which he had written does not like hotshots or tall poppies…one of us: mathematician/computer scientist still lay within sight. Gaither was not even a “short poppy” in the field like Fasano and Lee; he had failed to work his way onto the field at all. A talentless mathematical aspirant and a grad-school dropout, a Christian zealot who never had what it took to do science…Lee was reminded of the condescending verdict Donald Whitehead had once passed on Gaither. I can’t tolerate religious men, personally. I’m not saying Gaither’s not a mathematician, but I wonder about his work.

  He was still reverberating from the shock of Rachel’s summons, but now that shock seemed to dislodge him from the vault of immediate pressures, so that he could examine this thing that until now had obstructed all view of itself. Not merely the letter, which he saw had always been Morrison’s object: the “inventory” of all Lee’s mail, of everyone’s mail, had been a ruse, a smoke screen. And yet, Lee realized, Morrison had been ensnared in another man’s ruse all along. The letter had forced Morrison to investigate Lee, the same way that the bomb had forced the agents to come to the school where Lee taught. Hendley’s awful death, for all its shock waves, was not even the primary thing; it was only a means, the first step of a much larger scheme.

  Until this moment Lee had not really known if he would go to meet Rachel. The imperative to see her was no less overwhelming than all the obstacles, the Sheila Kleggs and news vans, he might encounter on the way. But at the same time, the momentum of revelation was dictating its own harsh demands. He must find a listener, if not an ally. His fear was so great now it functioned the same way he assumed courage must: he was able to think very clearly, pressed against his own possible ruin. The proximity of the bomb to himself had been no accident. Gaither had mailed the bomb, to Lee’s very close colleague; and then Gaither had waited a short interval and had mailed the letter, to Lee; and then, just as Gaither had known that Lee would, Lee had pounced on the bait and replied. And by now, just as Gaither had planned, the FBI was the avid observer of this postal exchange: Gait
her’s first letter, and Lee’s letter back, and that letter’s instant rebound stamped Addressee unknown and delivered to Lee by no less than an FBI agent.

  In the polygraph chair, Lee had glimpsed just the tail of this truth, something flashing and fleet through the dark underbrush of cognition. Then he’d wondered if Gaither had meant not to kill Hendley but him, with a poorly aimed bomb. Now he cringed at his slowness, almost optimistic in its miscomprehensions. Gaither didn’t mean to end Lee’s life: he meant to destroy it. He meant to spatter with spots until stained. He meant to scorch with the beam of suspicion. He meant to bring ruin.

  He felt certain the white car was following him. He’d first noticed it after turning off Fearrington Way onto the main artery of his subdivision, though whether it had also come out of his street he couldn’t say; he’d always been too scrupulous a driver to find consulting the mirrors instinctive, since even such momentary glances took him from what lay before him, sometimes causing an involuntary swerve that Esther, in her teenage years, had always answered with a gasp of dismay or disgust. But coming to a stop at the “fieldstone” gates that marked his subdivision’s entrance, and waiting patiently with his left-turn signal on to join the sparse, steady traffic along Route 19, he was able to consult his rearview and see the white car behind him. Often, at this precise intersection, and despite the unhurried prudence of most midwestern drivers, a car caught behind Lee might honk after Lee had passed up several chances to dart into traffic in favor of a clear road both ways almost to the horizon. Now Lee made a point of being even more cautious than usual, but the white car was as patient as he was. Though he squinted, the late-afternoon glare blocked his view of the driver. Finally he made the turn, the white car coming with him as if they were shackled together.