I held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
She closed the door, undid the chain, and opened it again. Disappointingly, the skirt and filmy top had been replaced by a robe and a shapeless flannel nightgown. She stepped aside to let me enter.
“I’ll put on some coffee.”
The apartment had a dingy look: a small living area with high-set windows facing the street, a galley kitchen with dishes teetering in the sink, a narrow hallway that led, presumably, to the bedroom. The couch, which faced an old tube-style television, was heaped with laundry. There were few books in sight, nothing on the walls except a couple of cheap museum posters of water lilies and ballerinas.
“Sorry it’s such a mess,” she said, and waved at the sofa. “Just shove that stuff aside if you want.”
Nicole’s back was to me. She filled a pot at the tap and began to pour the water into a stained coffee machine. Something peculiar was happening to me. I can only describe it as a kind of astral projection. It was as if I were a character in a movie, observing myself from a distance. In this divided state, I watched myself approach her from behind. She was sifting ground beans into the machine. I was about to put my arms around her when she sensed my presence and spun toward me.
“What are you doing?”
My body was pressing her against the counter. I began to kiss her neck. “What do you think I’m doing?”
“Tim, stop. I mean it.”
I was burning from within. My senses were swarming. “God, you smell so good.” I was licking, tasting. I wanted to drink her.
“You’re scaring me. I need you to leave.”
“Say you’re her.” Where were these words coming from? Who was talking? Was it me? “Say it. Tell me how sorry you are.”
“Goddamnit, stop!”
With surprising strength, she shoved me away. I fell against the counter, barely staying on my feet. When I looked up, she was pulling a long knife from a drawer. She aimed it at me like a pistol.
“Get out.”
Darkness was spreading inside me. “How could you do it? How could you leave me standing there?”
“I’ll scream.”
“You bitch. You fucking bitch.”
I lurched toward her. What were my intentions? Who was she to me, this woman with the knife? Was she Liz? Was she even a person, or merely a mirror in which I beheld the image of my wretched self? To this day, I do not know; the moment seems the property of another man entirely. I do not say this to exonerate myself, which is impossible, only to describe events as accurately as I can. With one hand I reached to cover her mouth; with the other I grabbed her arm, jerking the knife downward. Our bodies collided in a soft crash, and then we were falling to the floor, my body on top of hers, the knife between us.
The knife. The knife.
As we hit the floor, I felt it. There was no mistaking the sensation, or the sound it made.
The events that followed are no less strange to my memory, benighted by horror. I was in a nightmare in which the great, unrecallable act had been committed. I rose from her body. A pool of blood, rich and dark, almost black, was spreading beneath it; more was on my shirt, a crimson splash. The blade had entered just below the girl’s sternum, driven deep into her thoracic cavity by my falling weight. She was looking at the ceiling; she let out a little gasp, no louder than a person would make who had suffered a mild surprise.
Is my life over? Is that all? This stupid little thing and that’s the end?
Bit by bit, her eyes lost focus; an unnatural stillness eased across her face.
I turned to the sink and vomited.
The decision to hide my tracks was not one I recall making. I did not have a plan; I merely enacted one. I did not yet think of myself as a killer; rather, I was a man who had been involved in a serious accident that would be misunderstood. I stripped to my undershirt; the girl’s blood had not seeped through. I cast my eyes around for the things I might have touched. The knife of course; that would have to be disposed of. The front door? Had I touched the knob, the frame? I had seen the shows on television, the ones with the good-looking detectives combing crime scenes for the minutest evidence. I knew their prowess to be wildly overstated for dramatic purposes, but they were my only reference. What invisible traces of me were, even now, touching down upon the surfaces of the woman’s apartment, awaiting collection and study, pointing to my guilt?
I rinsed my mouth and washed the knobs and sink with a sponge. The knife I cleaned as well, then wrapped it in my shirt and deposited it carefully in the pocket of my coat. I did not look at the body again; to do so would have been unbearable. I scrubbed the counters and turned to appraise of the rest of the apartment. Something seemed different. What was I seeing?
I heard a sound, coming from down the hall.
What is the worst thing? The deaths of millions? A whole world lost? No: the worst thing is the sound I heard.
Details I had failed to notice emerged in my vision. The pile of laundry, full of tiny pink garments. The bright toys of plush and plastic strewn across the floor. The distinctive, fecal aroma masked by sweet powder. I remembered the woman I had seen coming from the building. The timing of her departure had been no accident.
The sound came again; I wanted to flee but could not. That I had to follow it was my penance; it was the stone I would carry for life. Slowly I moved down the hall, terror accompanying my every step. A pale, vigilant light shone through the partly open door. The odor grew stronger, coating my mouth with its taste. At the threshold I paused, petrified, yet knowing what was required of me.
The little girl was awake and looking about. Six months, a year—I was not a good judge of these things. A mobile of cardboard-cutout animals dangled above her crib. She was waving her arms and kicking her legs against the mattress, causing the animals to jostle on their strings; she made the sound again, a joyful little squeal.
See what I can do? Mama, come look.
But in the other room her mother lay in a pool of blood, her eyes staring into time’s abyss.
What did I do? Did I fall before her and beg her forgiveness? Did I pick her up with my unclean hands, the hands of a killer, and tell her I was sorry for her motherless life? Did I call the police and take my shameful vigil beside her crib to wait for them?
None of these. Coward that I was, I ran.
And yet the night does not end there. You could say it never has.
A flight of stairs led from Old Fulton Street to the Brooklyn Bridge walkway. At the midpoint of the bridge, I removed the knife and bloody shirt and dropped them into the water. The hour was approaching five
A.M
.; soon the city would arise. Already the traffic was thickening—early commuters, taxis, delivery trucks, even a few bicyclists, their faces masked against the cold, whizzing past me like wheeled demons. There is no being who feels more anonymous, more forgotten, more alone than a New York pedestrian, if he so chooses, but this is an illusion: our comings and goings are tracked to a fault. In Washington Square I bought a cheap baseball cap from a street vendor to hide my face and found a pay phone. Calling 911 was out of the question, as the call would be instantly traced. From information I got the number for the
New York Post,
dialed it, and asked for the city desk.
“Metro.”
“I’d like to report a murder. A woman’s been stabbed.”
“Hang on a second. Who am I speaking to?”
I gave the address. “The police don’t know yet. The door’s unlocked. Just go look,” I said and hung up.
I made two more calls, to the
Daily News
and the
Times,
from different pay phones, one on Bleecker Street, the other on Prince. By this time, the morning was in full swing. It seemed to me I should return to my apartment. It was the natural place for me to be and, more to the point, I had no place else to go.
Then I remembered my abandoned suitcase. How this might connect me to the girl’s death I could not foresee, but it was, at the very least, a thread best cut quickly. I took the subway uptown to Grand Central. At once I became aware of the station’s heavy police presence; I was now a murderer, sentenced to a preternatural awareness of my surroundings, a life of constant fear. At the kiosk, I was directed to the lost and found, located on the lower level. I showed my driver’s license to the woman behind the counter and described the bag.
“I think I left it in the main concourse,” I said, attempting to sound like one more flustered traveler. “We just had so much luggage, I think that’s how I forgot it.”
My story didn’t interest her even vaguely. She disappeared into the racks of luggage and returned a minute later with my suitcase and a piece of paper.
“You’ll need to fill this out and sign at the bottom.”
Name, rank, serial number. It felt like a confession; my hands were shaking so badly I could barely hold the pen. How absurd I was being: one more filled-out form in a city that generated a felled forest of paper every day.
“I need to photocopy your license,” the woman said.
“Is that really necessary? I’m in a bit of a hurry.”
“Honey, I don’t make the rules. You want your bag or don’t you?”
I handed it over. She ran it through the machine, gave it back, and stapled the copy to the form, which she shoved in a drawer under the counter.
“I bet you get a lot of bags,” I remarked, thinking I should say something.
The woman rolled her eyes. “Baby, you should see the stuff that comes in here.”
I took a cab to my apartment. Along the way, I inventoried my situation. The girl’s apartment, as far as I could tell, was clean; I’d washed every surface I’d touched. No one had seen me enter or leave, except the cabbie; that could be a problem. There was the bartender to consider, as well.
Excuse me. You’re Professor Fanning, aren’t you?
I couldn’t recall if he’d been within earshot, though he’d certainly had a good look at both of us. Had I paid with cash or a credit card? Cash, I thought, but I couldn’t be sure. The trail was there, but could anyone follow it?
Upstairs, I opened the suitcase on my bed. No surprise, the morphine was gone, but everything else was there. I emptied my pockets—wallet, keys, cellphone. The battery had died in the night. I plugged it into the charger on the nightstand and lay down, though I knew I would not sleep. I didn’t think I would ever sleep again.
My phone chirped as the battery awoke. Four new messages, all from the same number, with a 401 area code. Rhode Island? Who did I know in Rhode Island? Then, as I was holding it, the phone rang.
“Is this Timothy Fanning?”
I didn’t recognize the voice. “Yes, this is Dr. Fanning.”
“Oh, you’re a doctor. That explains it. My name is Lois Swan. I’m a nurse in the ICU at Westerly Hospital. A patient was brought here yesterday afternoon, a woman named Elizabeth Lear. Do you know her?”
My heart lurched into my throat. “Where is she? What happened?”
“She was taken off an Amtrak train from Boston and brought here by ambulance. I’ve been trying to reach you. Are you her physician?”
The nature of the call was becoming clear to me. “That’s right,” I lied. “What’s her condition?”
“I’m afraid that Mrs. Lear has passed away.”
I didn’t say anything. The room was dissolving. Not just the room, the world.
“Hello?”
I made an effort to swallow. “Yes, I’m here.”
“She was unconscious when they brought her in. I was alone with her when she woke up. She gave me your name and number.”
“Was there a message?”
“I’m sorry, no. She was very weak. I wasn’t even sure I heard the number right. She died just a few minutes later. We tried to reach her husband, but apparently he’s overseas. Is there anybody else we should notify?”
I hung up. I placed a pillow over my face. Then I began to scream.
22
The story of the girl’s death was plastered on the front pages of the tabloids for several days, and in this manner I learned more about her. She was twenty-nine, from College Park, Maryland, the daughter of Iranian immigrants. Her father was an engineer, her mother a school librarian; she had three siblings. For six years she had worked at Beckworth and Grimes, ascending to the rank of associate editor; she and the baby’s father, an actor, were recently divorced. Everything about her was ordinary and admirable. A hard worker. A devoted friend. A beloved daughter and doting mother. For a time, she had wanted to be a dancer. There were many photos of her. In one, she was just a child herself, wearing a leotard and performing a little-girl plié.
Two days later I received a call from Jonas, relaying the news of Liz’s death. I did my best to act surprised and discovered that I actually was a little, as if, hearing his broken voice, I were experiencing the loss of her for the first time all over again. We talked awhile, sharing stories of the past. From time to time we laughed over something funny she had done or said; at others, the phone went silent for long intervals in which I heard him crying. I listened to the spaces in the conversation for any indication that he’d known, or suspected, about the two of us. But I detected nothing. It was just as Liz had said: his blindness was total. He couldn’t even imagine such a thing.
I was still slightly amazed that nothing had happened to me: no knock on the door, no dark men in suits standing beyond the chain, displaying their badges.
Dr. Fanning, mind if we have a word with you?
None of the stories mentioned the bartender or the cabbie, which I took to be a good sign, though eventually, I believed, the law would come calling. My penance would be extracted; I would fall to my knees and confess. The universe could simply make no sense otherwise.
I took a shuttle to Boston for the funeral. The ceremony was held in Cambridge, within sight of Harvard Yard. The church was packed. Family, friends, colleagues, former students; in her too-short years, Liz had been much loved. I took a pew in back, wanting to be invisible. I knew many, recognized others, felt the weight of all. Among the mourners was a man whom, beneath his puffy alcoholic’s face, I knew to be Alcott Spence. Our eyes met briefly as we followed Liz’s casket outside, though I do not think he remembered who I was.