Women on the Case

by Sara Paretsky

I spot a man across the room, brow wrinkled painfully, fingers moving back and forth as if about to grab an answer just out of reach. Bingo. I moved toward him, careful not to lift a wing, not to indulge in the forbidden glide. I—

  “Let me out of here! I have a meeting!” A brisk, brown-haired woman in her early forties strides out of the courtroom, brushing the worried man aside without breaking stride. Even under her white robe I can tell she’s got one of those tight, muscular bodies, the type men covet and women envy. She races forward, legs nearly windmilling, oblivious to the fact she’s merely treading space. She is holding a white towel.

  Often Cools come to trial still clutching some vital item as if it were a talisman. Not infrequently that item is the picture of a spouse, child, cat. Wizened patriarchs arrive holding the baseball bat with which they hit the winning run fifty years earlier! Matrons come clinging to the wedding dress, the pair of jeans, the silk skirt they’re still planning to get into again. (When they hear about the body falling away, their first reaction is glee.) Executives hold the brass name signs from their office doors.

  But the brisk brunette, Tasha Pierce, was holding nothing but her anger. And her towel.

  It is a bad sign that I suddenly knew her name. Knowledge comes like that up here. Suddenly you know it, as if you’ve always known. But you don’t know for no reason. I stepped into her path. “You have a meeting, Ms. Pierce? With whom?”

  “Selwyn!” Her full dark brows drew low over equally dark eyes. An instant later, when she realized I hadn’t reacted to the vaunted name, she insisted, “Selwyn Reed, the CEO. You don’t blow off a meeting with the CEO.” She was racing her feet, still clad in white running shoes. If I’d had any questions about her haste to get to Selwyn, I needed only note her shoelaces—untied. I could picture her yanking off the pumps that went with her dress-for-success suit, poking her feet into the running shoes as she leapt from her chair, and racing out the door. She had the look of a woman who assumed the purpose of red lights was self-enhancement: the driver’s opportunity to apply makeup, the pedestrian’s chance at shoelaces.

  As if I had perused her file, I suddenly knew that Tasha Pierce had been personnel director. In the home office fifty people had reported to her: the satellite offices under her authority tripled that number. Staffed with her selections, Selwyn Industries “ran like a well-oiled machine,” she had announced more than once. Other quotes were: “A company is only as good as the people it employs,” and “Dead wood means dead sales.”

  Ah, dead wood. Wood that had seen itself as headed toward being a mighty oak, is not prepared for the ax—in trees or personnel. Perhaps Tasha Pierce had conducted one too many termination interviews. I smiled to myself. Her case could be the easy investigation I needed. I just hoped she hadn’t thinned an entire forest of potential suspects. Couching my question in the kind of impersonal terms personnel departments love—words like their title, so close to “personal” as to float the illusion they are concerned about people—I said, “You downsized?”

  “Me? No way. I don’t do that shit. We’ve got an outplacement department.”

  An entire department! Selwyn Industries didn’t just thin, they clear-cut! How many people had Selwyn laid off? But that carnage wouldn’t have been aimed at my client alone. So much for the easy case.

  Still, it looked like someone had done her in. And to say she was unready to forgive her killer was the understatement of the eon. If that person had been lying on the floor, she’d have pounded him to dust with her racing feet. “Look, fellow … lady”—she glared at my sexually ambiguous form—“whatever the hell you are. I don’t have time to stand around while you get your act together. Either get the asshole who did this or—”

  “Which asshole is that?” I asked with renewed hope.

  “How the hell should I know? One minute I’m running—”

  “Running where?” I struggled to keep my voice calm. The rule is Cools don’t remember the days of their deaths. Too traumatic, the Sub-Authority says. (Too much bother for him, I say. If they could run that final day’s tape, Cools would spend eternity watching, rewinding, and caterwauling. Each time they’d see some new affront—hospital roommates who screamed, snored, or blared the TV, sisters who looked more longingly at their jewelry than them, brothers who stepped out for a smoke at the moment of death.… The Cools would languish in recrimination long after they should have taken the Sub-Authority’s offer and moved on. Gladly would they take up the cudgel in memory of their dying selves and stalk out after that offending sibling or roommate—who might well be right here!)

  Much as it’s a nuisance to my job, I see the Sub-Authority’s point. The rule had never been broken—until Tasha Pierce. If I could just squeeze enough from her memory to pinpoint the “asshole” who had caused her death. “Running to where?” I repeated, glancing down at those white running shoes with their undone laces.

  “Nowhere,” she said, shoving my question out of the way with a flourish of hands.

  On earth she might have been lying, but here Cools don’t have that option. I grabbed her hands, held them down, and tried to elicit what she did know. “Tell me what you saw as you were running.”

  Her small face lightened; her hands squeezed into fists; she jerked forward.

  “Tell me!”

  She let out a frustrated snort. “Trees, buses, people, cars.”

  “And your meeting with Selwyn, where was that to be?”

  “His office, of course.”

  “In the building you worked in?”

  “Where else?” Her eyes added: you idiot.

  “You were running there. So then, Ms. Pierce, what building were you coming from?”

  That stopped her.

  “The leaves, the trees, the people: what buildings were behind them? Which buses did you see?”

  Her forehead wrinkled, and her eyes almost closed. She was peering inward for all she was worth.

  And apparently she wasn’t worth much. With a shake of the head she announced, “That tack’s not working. Look, honey, I’m not a detail person. Was when I started. Had to be. But now, I’m dealing with the big picture. I’ve got lackeys to sweat the details. You’re going to have to come up with something else.”

  I could have said … Instead I pressed my wings tight to my sides and descended halfway through the floor she had assumed to be solid. A figure-eight flight would have been more effective, but alas, up here we can do little more than they do in the NBA.

  “Hey, Angel, don’t think you can blow me off with that collapsing routine. I’ve seen magicians better’n you.”

  I shrugged and turned toward the corridor. “I’ll get back to you.”

  “I should live so long. Well do lunch, right?”

  I started to reply, but clearly Tasha Pierce was not one to allow extraneous words, at least ones that weren’t hers. “Look, I know all the ways of blowing people off. ‘I’ll get back to you’ means: fat chance. I’ll call you right back, means ‘I’ll get back to you.’ The great thing about being personnel director is never having to bother with that shit. I don’t deal with that call-’em-back garbage like I had to coming up through the ranks. Then you’ve got pests bugging you all the time. ‘Did you get my resumé?’ ‘How come you haven’t called me back about the interview?’ ‘Do you have any other jobs?’ as if I had nothing on my mind but them. Now, thank God, I’ve got a secretary for that. She holds my calls; I deal with them at my convenience. I don’t have time for calls and messages; they wait.”

  And so shall you. For all I cared about her convenience she could spend eternity bitching right here. As long as I didn’t have to keep running into her. Only the reminder that I had my own reasons for taking this case kept me from speaking out loud. I tried again. Normally I start with suspects’ possible motives, but with Tasha Pierce to know her was to be motivated. Whoever killed her should be wearing a big smile. “Let’s talk suspects. Your secretary?”

  “On my team. I go, she goes. S
he’s probably back in the typing pool already.”

  “Assistants, sub-directors, people in line for your job?”

  “I’m not a fool. In business you don’t have colleagues, you’ve got subordinates. They rise above subordinate status, you move ’em out the door. Otherwise you turn around and they’re sitting in your chair.”

  I asked about family: distant. Friends: none to speak of. Expectant heirs—no will, because it clearly had not occurred to her either that she would die, or that it’s more blessed to give. “Selwyn,” I last-gasped. “What about Selwyn? Blackmail, exposure, love, revenge? Any motive at all?”

  “Selwyn? Puh-lease! Selwyn is sixty-three years old, biscuit-shaped, and too damned self-absorbed to entertain love or revenge. If the man had done anything worth blackmail I’d have died from shock instead of … whatever.”

  It was with some small amount of pleasure that I said, “I’ll get back to you.”

  But by the time I got back to my corridor that little light of glee had faded. This case was my only chance to check out my own death. There was a reason I’d suddenly known so much about Tasha Pierce. Maybe it was the Boss’s plan to help me, or it could have been the Sub-Authority tantalizing me for his own amusement. Whichever, I couldn’t dismiss Tasha Pierce.

  And besides, I wondered as I glided and thumped back and forth, forth and back through the empty corridor (smacking my head more than once on the Sub-Authority’s unnecessarily low ceiling), how had the woman died? New York is a big city and she’d probably alienated half of it. But murder? If guns were shot and knives thrown at all the rude and self-absorbed, survivors would have their choice of cabs at rush hour.

  But Tasha Pierce had died—in a way she couldn’t accept.

  I slowed to a flutter. A door beckoned. All the doors on the corridor beckon. The Sub-Authority views unauthorized entry as kindly as does a hotel dick. If he catches me again—But I’m careful. It’s an addiction, peeking into these rooms, I know that. On earth I’d be grist for twelve-step, but here what’s an addiction going to do, kill me?

  One little peek. It’d take only a minute.

  I checked to my left. Hall empty. To my right. Clear. I stood dead-still (no great feat for me now). Silence. Then I grabbed for the handle, and pushed open the door.

  Inside is a well-appointed dining room. Dinner is over, coffee cups are nearly empty, brandy snifters still half full, the brandy line is still at the neck of the bottle despite the eight glasses poured from it. (That kind of thing—candle oil that burns overlong, multiplying loaves and fishes is commonplace here. The celestial answer to recycling.) I focus on the man at the end of the table. You’d think the man would be smiling—well, you’d think that if you’d been here a lot less time than I have. These are the rooms of those who couldn’t accept the offer at the Court of Final Appeals. In these rooms nobody smiles.

  He is shouting and slamming his fist on the table as he makes his point. His muddled words echo off the walls. And the echo infuriates him. His face reddens. He shouts louder. He glares down the table, grabs his brandy snifter and swallows too much of the honey-colored liquid, coughs loudly—so loud no one could interrupt him.

  But no one will interrupt him—because he is alone. If he lifted his eyes from his snifter, if he took the slightest break from planning his verbal assault or delivering it, he would realize that. The silence of the empty room would reverberate if, just for an instant, he would listen.

  That he is forever unwilling to do.

  I shut the door, turned.

  And gasped.

  The Sub-Authority was rounding the corner. Had he spotted me peering into one of the forbidden chambers? I didn’t wait to find out.

  I flew down the corridor with feet racing about six inches off the floor as if that would speed me out of danger, and ended up back in the courtroom lobby. Not the best spot to hide out. In fact, there was only one place I could be sure of escaping the Sub-Authority. Earth.

  Here’s the deal: Cools are not the most reliable witnesses. At best, they remember selectively; at worst, they conceal. And as for objectively judging other people, for Mother Teresa: How much did she help the suffering in Calcutta? would come after What did she do for me? The Sub-Authority understands innate duplicity (in fact it was his committee that first proposed Original Sin). So he realizes I can’t count on my clients to be honest about their former lives. I have to do legwork in the field. The field below. I can choose to visit any time in the client’s life or the week thereafter.

  But like I said, the Sub-Authority understands conniving, he sees evil intent in all actions, particularly mine, so I’m limited to one visit. Usually I interview the client at length, weigh the possibilities, and choose the most potentially most valuable scene.

  Usually.

  Now I just skidded to a halt in front of the elevator and hit Down.

  It wasn’t a skyscraper. (There aren’t really skyscrapers. If there were, my trips down wouldn’t end with such rude bounces.) The first bank of elevators only went down to the seventy-second floor and there I had to change to get to Selwyn Industries offices on the thirtieth, thirty-first, and thirty-second. I pushed 31, the car shot down, and when the doors opened I was facing a glass partition that announced:

  SELWYN INDUSTRIES

  Personnel Department

  Accounting

  Inside on the reception desk were two almost tastelessly huge bouquets with big black ribbons draped around their white wicker baskets. There were pale pink roses, white carnations, blue and violet irises, shoots of orchids in varying pastels, and exotic blooms I couldn’t name. Conspicuously absent were lilies. Between the two displays I recognized a photo of Tasha Pierce draped in black. Had the flowers been brought from her memorial service? Or were they office memorials, from her subordinates, or the esteemed Selwyn himself?

  I stepped back to contemplate that. Invisibility is great, but it does have a downside. People can’t see me, but I do have form. I have to be careful they don’t run over my toes with their supply carts, smack me with their tossed packages, or, worse yet, back into me, panic, and end up calling everyone in sight to feel around for the soft, cold body they can’t see.

  As if I had suddenly turned the volume to On, I could hear the laughter. Twitterings, giggles, great rolling guffaws from voices too sweet and delicate-sounding to be associated with those great rumblings of glee. Behind the desk the receptionist had to pause to control her laughter before she answered the phone. “No. I’m sorry,” she said, her poorly muted chuckle belying her words, “Ms. Pierce is no longer with us.” She barely got the phone disconnected before she announced, “Tasha pushed her way out,” and burst into giggles.

  I expected her to look around the seemingly empty reception area with a mixture of guilt and relief, but the woman showed no remorse at all. She spotted a middle-aged man coming down the hallway and called out, “Pushed her way out!” and both of them dissolved in laughter.

  “Gotta say,” he said, leaning an arm over her desk, “couldn’t happen to a more deserving woman.”

  “Danger of the fast lane, huh?”

  “And the slippery world of periodical publishing.”

  At this they doubled over. Three more people joined them. A brown-suited man was smacking his fist on the desk as he guffawed.

  “You know what they always tell you,” a woman in green forced out. They all doubled over again. Fists pounded, sides shook.

  I had assumed Tasha Pierce would not be widely mourned, but this! Marley’s Ghost drew more tears.

  The same thought must have crossed the mind of a woman in gray. She put a hand on the speaker’s arm. “Maybe we should cool it. Who knows who’s around. I mean, even Selwyn could walk up, and the way we’re going, we’d never hear him.”

  “Selwyn?” the guy in brown said, “you think Selwyn would care that she’s dead. He’s probably out celebrating over a piece of chocolate pie.”

  “Two pieces!”

  The bur
st of chuckles was muffled and the laughers glanced uncomfortably behind them. Clearly in Selwyn Industries derision was best aimed at the dead.

  “He’s probably just relieved never to see her again race into his office, plop that liter bottle of springwater next to the desk and bark out her choice for his secretary, his driver, or his—”

  “—wife?”

  Any attempt they made at control failed. Hands were slapping, arms swaying so much, I had to jump out of their midst, not for fear they’d notice me, but that in their hilarity they wouldn’t and I’d be battered black and blue (or the Hereafter equivalent: gray and gray).

  “I heard he tried to put her off an hour earlier,” a woman in yellow said. “But, of course, her secretary told him she was on her way.”

  “Was she?” a blue-suited guy asked.

  “Who knows? Even if she weren’t she wouldn’t have taken the call. She hadn’t answered any others this week. I wonder if she’s busy telling Saint Peter she’ll get back to him.”

  “Enough!” the woman in gray warned.

  “No,” I screamed. “Don’t stop.” But no sound came out.

  “We really ought to watch what we say,” she insisted.

  I wrinkled my forehead and concentrated on transmitting the thought: Gossip is a good thing.

  They hesitated. The women in yellow and gray were starting to leave when the blue-suited man asked, “But what is the official word? I mean the cause of death.”

  “Smothered in her towel.” And that sent them off again.

  The towel. That white towel she’d been clutching. I’d thought it was a strange talisman. Now it made sense. So she’d been smothered with her towel.

  No wait, smothered in her towel. Not with the towel, or by the towel, or even under it. But in it. How does one smother in the towel? She’d have to have been facedown to be in it. Was she attacked, and slammed down? But that wouldn’t smother her; she’d still be able to breathe through the towel. Unless her assailant wadded it up around her nose. But that would be being smothered with. Not in.

  Go on, I urged. Alas, discretion, the scourge of detection, had taken hold and one by one Tasha Pierce’s co-workers wandered off.