Jonah remained standing awkwardly by the kitchen, counting fissures in the ceiling. Soleimani walked to the window, peered through the savaged blinds. He looked down at the pile of cushions and clucked his tongue. Using a handkerchief, he reached into the cushions and withdrew a small, cloudy glass pipe with burnt ends. He sighed, wrapped it up, and pocketed it.
THE PLAYGROUND CHAINLINK gave a noisy crosshatched view of the FDR’s junction with the Triborough. Most of the equipment had been busted up or stolen, leaving a swing set with a lone intact seat. On it they found DeShonna, chewing her hair and singing to herself, heedless of the cold in a denim jacket and jeans a slightly darker blue. She did not see them approaching until Soleimani whistled. Then she glanced up, and her expression shifted from self-involved to dull.
“Hi DeShonna,” said Yvette. “You remember me?”
The girl nodded.
“Are you out here all by yourself?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’d your Aunt Veronica go?”
“I don’t know.” She kicked the ground.
“Did she tell you you could come out here and play?”
She shrugged.
“Aren’t you cold?” Jonah asked.
“Yeah.”
“I think you should go inside,” said Jonah. “Your head might freeze and fall off.”
DeShonna half-smiled.
“Let’s get you upstairs,” said Yvette.
The girl shook her head.
“Well I’m going upstairs,” Jonah said. “I’m turning purple.”
That earned a giggle.
Yvette said, “I’ll take her inside. I’m going to have to talk to the mother at some point, you don’t have to hang around.”
“We don’t have anything else to do,” Soleimani said.
They cajoled DeShonna into joining them. As they rode up she shyly reached for Jonah’s hand.
“It smells like shit,” she said.
“You said it,” said Yvette.
Their knocking took twice as long to revive the cousin, who had ditched her baby but continued to stand crooked, as though her spine had remolded itself to bear weight on one side. She yelled at DeShonna for leaving the house. “You always runnin off.”
Yvette stepped in and diverted the conversation to the pocket of slime. In the meantime, Soleimani and Jonah sat with DeShonna in the room she shared with both her cousins and the baby boy, whose name, she informed them, was Marquise. Soleimani asked how she was feeling about her mom; how she liked living with her aunt; if they had talked about starting school. She gripped a limp teddy and chewed her hair, refusing to make eye contact with the doctor. Occasionally she shot a look at Jonah, whose smiles elicited one-fifth reciprocation.
After a few minutes, Soleimani excused himself to go to the bathroom. Sensing that the questions were closing her up, Jonah said nothing. They sat listening to baby Marquise shift in his blankets. “He’s pretty,” she said. She touched his nose. “I want a baby.” The idea of her breastless body swollen with child made Jonah want to throw up.
Soleimani came in and announced that they were leaving. DeShonna went back to staring at the ground, and did not reply when the psychiatrist told her that she could call him whenever she wanted.
Yvette stayed behind to talk to the cousin, whose name was Adia, and Jonah and Soleimani tramped south down Third Avenue. The doctor complimented Jonah’s listening skills.
“It is a gift,” Soleimani said. “Certain people, you know you can trust them.”
At 100th Street he shook Jonah’s hand and headed back toward the HUM parking structure. Jonah continued south, passing the Islamic Cultural Center with its verdigris dome and looming minaret. Scarved women and a man in a dishdasha waited for the bus.
All week long he had been taking different routes home, stretching the two-block commute from HUM to the dorms into ludicrous hour-long excursions. He now walked to 86th Street, land of headless, tinsel-decked mannequins sporting fluorescent fleeces. Inside Strawberry, a clerk picked a zit. He went into Barnes & Noble and toyed with the magazines, which gave him a nice, homey feeling. Enough was enough, he decided. He went outside, walked one more block west, and doubled back.
She was across the street.
He saw mostly hair as she ducked behind a newsstand. But he knew it was her.
He ran into the subway and jumped on the uptown train. He went one stop, getting off with the intent to switch to a downtown train. Then he changed his mind: she might have seen him go into the subway; she might’ve followed on the next train. Or she might be waiting at 86th. He didn’t know. He wouldn’t put it past her to be anywhere.
THREE HOURS LATER, he got home.
ON SUNDAY HE checked the e-mail account he’d used to contact First Lady, and found nine new messages, eight of which were garbage.
Dear Sam—
I am flattered at your interest in my work and am happy to discuss it further with you. While I prefer not to give out my phone number, if you are located in the New York area, I would be willing to meet you somewhere public.
As a word of warning, I must inform you that copies of my work are not cheap, as purchasing them requires a certain standard of commitment on the part of the buyer. For every price, however, there is a taker, and perhaps you are that person.
FL
He hit REPLY.
Dear First Lady:
I live in Florida but good timing, I’m in New York for a business trip. I have conferences all day and can be available by seven in the evening on Tuesday.
Name the place and I’ll be there with bells on.
He wondered if he’d been too quick on the draw; perhaps she wouldn’t get the e-mail until Wednesday, and would assume that he’d left town; then he’d have to find another excuse for being in New York….
But at six oh three P.M. she wrote back.
Meet me in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art at quarter past seven. I’ll be wearing a red jacket.
• 29 •
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2004.
ADOLESCENT AND CHILD PSYCHIATRY, WEEK TWO.
THE CROWDS THAT blanketed the steps of the Met during more clement months had long since dissipated, leaving no short-distance camouflage. He watched from afar as she approached, her jacket against the white-dusted steps like a wine stain on a hotel bedsheet. She didn’t look surprised to have been stood up, leaving after five minutes.
He tailed her at a distance as she disappeared into the park at 85th, walking along the reservoir bridle path, pitch-black and too cold for all but the most intrepid joggers. His feet on gravel, louder than he liked.
On the west side of the park she picked up her pace, and he did, too, huffing to a building on the corner of 96th Street and Columbus whose signage advertised luxury rentals and whose doorman welcomed her with a tip of his hat.
It was possible, he supposed, that this wasn’t her building; maybe it was her boyfriend’s place. He could easily imagine her stringing along lovers, the female equivalent of those sad-sack bigamists who end up on Springer, sparred over by four nebbishy deluded housewives. He tol me I wud the only one he errer loved.
He took out a five-dollar bill, crumpled it in his fist, and crossed the street.
“The woman who came in here?” he said to the doorman, holding up the money. “She dropped this outside.”
“How’s that?”
“She got off the bus and it fell out of her purse. She came in like a second ago.”
The door man smiled. “Good man.” He picked up the house phone and pressed a button. “Miss Cove? A gentleman here has some money you dropped outside? Okay.” He hung up. “She’ll be down in a minute.”
“You know what,” Jonah said, “that’s all right. Tell her it was a Good Samaritan.” He put the money down on the reception desk and walked out.
KATE SAID, “I saw what I saw.”
“Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I—”
“Do you
understand what you’re saying?”
“I saw what happened, Jonah.”
“That’s what I’m trying to explain.” There was a long silence. “Kate.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m your brother.”
“I know.”
“You really think that about me?”
“…no.”
“You think I’m some sort of monster.”
She said, “I never thought that.”
“You did.”
“Well you hit her, what am I supposed to think?”
“You’re supposed to give me the benefit of the doubt.”
She said nothing.
He sighed. “Listen.”
Fifteen minutes later, he stopped talking.
Kate said, “Holy fucking shit.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Holy fucking shit.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“I didn’t want to get you involved.”
“Jonah, this is, that’s, lunacy.”
“I know.”
“You let her in the house?”
“I—”
“You let her near Gretchen?” Kate was yelling now. “What are you thinking?”
“If you’d listened to me instead of running off to have ladies’ night—”
“I can’t believe you, Jonah.” She was doing her best Disappointment, which normally stopped him dead in his tracks. “I can’t believe you could be so irr—”
“Shut up. Shut. Up. You can scream at me as much as you want in five minutes, but for the time being, give me some assistance so I can get her out of my hair before she does something bad to me, can you do that for one second?”
A silence.
Kate said, “I’m sorry.”
He exhaled. “I don’t care.”
“I—I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions.”
“Forget it. You have to keep this to yourself.”
“I apologize.”
“Listen to me: I don’t care what you thought about me,” he lied. “Promise me you’re not going to say anything to Mom and Dad.”
“They don’t know? They should know.”
“They don’t need to, they’ll just freak out.”
“I’m freaking out.”
“Everything is under control. Promise me you’re not going to tell them.”
“I think it’s a better idea if—”
“I don’t care if you think it’s a better idea. All right? Now promise me.”
Kate said, “I promise.”
“Good. Thank you. Now get your yearbook. Her last name is Cove.”
He listened to her dragging the footstool, breathing hard, turning pages.
“I’ll be darned,” she said quietly.
“She’s there?”
“She’s there.”
“What’s her first name.”
“Carmen.” The phone fell away from Kate’s mouth, was shoved back. “There she is. I remember her now. Oh my God. She looks completely different.”
“Different how.”
“Back then she had this…butch haircut. She used to wear overalls all the time. I thought she was a lesbian.”
“Can you send me a copy of the page?”
“Jonah.” A change crept into Kate’s voice. “Jonah, this can’t be her.”
“What.” He waited. “What’s wrong.”
“This girl…she was—she moved out of the dorms after her roommate died. Jonah, her roommate was murdered.”
ALTHOUGH KATE HAD always been big woman on Campus—familiar with faces and good for a salient factoid—in this case all she could say was It was in the papers.
The online archives of the Yale Daily News yielded a series of articles, the first of which was dated November 20, 1992.
MISSING JUNIOR PROMPTS INQUIRY
NEW HAVEN—Police said yesterday that they had no information about the disappearance of a Calhoun College junior.
Marisa Ashbrook ’94 was last seen leaving her room Monday night. She told roommates she was going to a party and has not been seen or heard from since.
“We’re treating this as standard missing persons,” said New Haven police Cmdr. Paul F. Reed. “We will investigate with every resource we have at our disposal.”
Reed added that investigators had not ruled out the possibility that Ashbrook had left campus of her own volition. The police have been in contact with her family, he said.
The next article, a week later, reported that Marisa Ashbrook’s friends and swim teammates planned a candlelight vigil.
In a third article, right before winter break, the reporter covering the story shifted to an elegiac tone. Marisa’s athletic achievements were lauded by her peers, who also recalled her sunny smile and charming Southern accent. Her ex-boyfriend called her the sweetest person you ever met.
The editor must have ordered the staff to pursue more active items, because Marisa disappeared from the headlines until the first week of March, when a group of hikers spotted an arm obtruding from a melting snowbank.
POLICE ID MISSING JUNIOR
NEW HAVEN—Police today confirmed that a body discovered in rural New Hampshire is that of a Calhoun junior missing since November.
Twenty-year-old Marisa Ashbrook ’94 was identified using dental records. Ashbrook, a member of the swim team, was last seen three months ago leaving her dorm room for a party. “This is a tragedy for the entire Yale community,” said university president Richard C. Levin. “We extend our condolences to the Ashbrook family.”
Although the Grafton County (NH) Medical Examiner’s Office has yet to certify Ashbrook’s death as a homicide, police there have already begun to investigate in cooperation with the New Haven County Sheriff’s Department, said a department spokesperson.
Because Ashbrook was discovered across state lines, the spokesperson added…
The archives of regional papers turned up the same photo: dirty blond hair; a rectangular face; expensive orthodonture, which had probably made identifying her a cinch. Jonah was sure her parents wept over that: her braces. And her prep-school clothes. Her allowance, her first car, her prom dress. Childhood illnesses; six A.M. practices. Her father was a Chattanooga tax attorney. Another article called her a promising young athlete, although nothing he’d read indicated that she’d been anything more than run-of-the-mill. A National Merit finalist. A perfectly pleasant, bright girl.
Then he found a blog called EVIL FORCES OF DOOM AND OTHER GORY STUFF. The author of EFODAOGS, as described on the ABOUT ME page, was an economics Ph.D. candidate at MIT and an armchair criminologist who liked to chew on cold cases. His analysis of the Marisa Ashbrook murder was detailed and grisly. Because the body had been under icepack for most of four months, he wrote, it had hardly decomposed.
Then why were dental records necessary to make the ID? Because before dumping the body, the killer worked her over pretty good. She’d been skinned.
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2004.
ADOLESCENT AND CHILD PSYCHIATRY, WEEK TWO.
He had been given by Belzer to understand that cops weren’t interested in issuing harassment violations; unless there was a bookable crime, no dice. Thus Jonah did his best to impress upon the officer at the Twenty-third Precinct the totality of Eve’s—Carmen’s—behavior. As much as he wanted to tell them about Marisa Ashbrook, he realized that claiming to have solved a decade-old murder was a surefire sign of crackpottedness; so he did his best to radiate Rationality, every now and again squeezing out Reasonably-sized pellets of panic in the form of tense chuckles.
It must’ve worked, because within the hour he received a visit from two uniformed cops: a swarthy block of a man and a woman with pensile breasts and kindly cow’s eyes. They introduced themselves as officers Degrassi and Villanueva.
“I know you,” said Degrassi. “Superdoc.”
They interrupted Jonah’s story with a promise to look into the matter.
“Call us back if she bothers you again,” said Vil
lanueva, giving him her card.
“THAT’S THE SMART thing,” said Belzer. “let them handle it.”
“I have to wait until she does something?”
“Welcome to New York.”
NEEDING CLOTHES, he returned that night to the apartment. To his surprise Lance was already there—and had been for two days.
“You told me you were going to stay at Ruby’s,” Jonah said.
“I lied, dude. I missed my stuff.”
“It’s not safe here.”
“Then why’d you come back?”
“I’m just picking up some socks, and then I’m leaving, and you need to, too.”
“Dude, I agree completely.”
“You’re full of shit,” Jonah said. “You said that before.”
“That’s cause I didn’t believe you.”
“And you do now?”
Lance paused. “I’m going to tell you something but you can’t get mad.”
“What.”
“Say you won’t get mad.”
“I don’t know if I won’t get mad,” Jonah said. “I might.”
“Then I can’t tell you. I need immunity.”
Jonah sighed. “Yeah, fine.”
They went to the editing room, where Lance turned on his AV system. “I found this today while reviewing footage for volume two of the selfumentary’s greatest hits.” He opened his media editor, found a file, hit the spacebar. A shot of the living room came up, marked 11/29/04 7:13 P.M.
“This is the night we left.” He fast-forwarded, the clock on the screen advancing by leaps and bounds to nine P.M. He hit PLAY.
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