“She was a fine pianist herself.”
“You rarely speak of her, but always with the highest regard. You speak even more rarely of your father—with cold indifference.”
“We were never close. He was so often away on concert tours.”
“Your coldness signifies more than dislike.”
“Tell me, doctor, what else does it signify?” she asked, and was dismayed to hear the dismissive note in her voice.
“Deep distrust,” he said.
She broke their staring match, but then resumed it, lest he read some arcane meaning in her disengagement. “All children have issues with their parents.”
“Dear, you must excuse me if I push some buttons.”
“Isn’t that what you’ve already been doing?”
“I can’t play the piano as well as you, but I’m a reasonably competent button-pusher.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands on the table. “It isn’t sexual.”
She frowned. “What isn’t?”
“The problem with your father. You weren’t molested. You have none of the issues of a sexually abused child.”
“He’s a creep, but he likes younger women, not children.”
“He married a year after your mother’s suicide.”
“What could I do about it?”
“You wanted to do something.”
“He dissed my mother’s memory by marrying Eugenia.”
“That isn’t the issue, is it?”
“It’s an issue with me.”
“But not the issue.”
“He was banging Eugenia’s brains out when my mother was alive.”
“Is that crude expression meant to stop me from going further?”
She shrugged. “Go where you want.”
“Why do you believe your father killed your mother?”
Earlier, she had pushed aside her half-full wineglass. Stunned by his insight, she picked up the glass and drank.
Moshe sampled a little of his wine, as if this drink they took together was some kind of communion that bonded them.
“There’s always an autopsy after a suicide,” he said.
“There’s supposed to be, but there isn’t always. Depending on the jurisdiction and the circumstances, the coroner has discretion.”
He said, “So did you have evidence of any kind?”
“He’d flown out that morning. He was supposed to be in a hotel four hundred miles away. He had a concert in another city the next night. Yet when I woke, I heard them arguing.”
“What did you do when you heard them?”
“Put the pillow over my head. And tried to go back to sleep.”
“Did you go back to sleep?”
“For a while.” She set her wineglass aside. “He was there that night. I heard him. I have another reason to be sure he was there. But no hard proof. And he’s a master of intimidation, manipulation.”
“You were afraid of him.”
“Yes.”
“You’re still angry at yourself for having been afraid of him.”
She said nothing.
“Do you blame yourself?”
“For what?”
“When you heard them arguing, you went back to sleep. If you’d gone to them instead, do you think your mother would now be alive?”
“No. I think…I’d be dead, too. He would have staged it to look like she killed me before killing herself.”
Moshe’s silences were as exquisitely placed and maintained as those in Mozart’s K. 488, which had been playing earlier.
Jane said, “What I blame myself for is never speaking up later. For letting him intimidate me.”
“You were only a child.”
“Doesn’t matter. In the crunch, you give it or you don’t.”
Moshe corked the wine bottle, which was almost half full.
He said, “This obsession doesn’t begin with Nick’s death. It has roots that go back nineteen years.”
He ate the strawberry that earlier he had set aside.
He said, “You want vengeance for both Nick and your mother—but that isn’t the primary thing you want.”
She waited as he took off his glasses, plucked the display handkerchief from his breast pocket, and polished the lenses.
He said, “You want to break this conspiracy, imprison whoever’s behind it, kill them if necessary, resolve the injustice, balance the scales, so there will be no danger that your boy might forever have the feeling that there’s something he should have done or still could do to right the wrong. You can’t spare him from grief, but you want to spare him from the guilt that has eaten at your heart all these years. Could that be the case?”
“It is the case. But there’s so much more. I want for him a world where people mean more than ideas. No swastikas, no hammer-and-sickles, no bowing down to inhumane theories that result in tens of millions dead. I see the look you’re giving me, Moshe. I know I can’t change the world. I’m not suffering from Joan of Arc syndrome. Those things are what I want for him, but if all I can do is spare him from the guilt, I’ll have done something worthwhile.”
He put on his glasses. “If you realize precisely what powerful emotions drive your obsession, maybe you’ll recognize when emotion begins to trump reason. If you can subdue the temerity that emotion fosters, rein in the recklessness, you might have a chance.”
“The slimmest chance is all I need to keep going.”
“Good. If your assessment of the situation is correct, the slimmest chance is probably all you have.”
2
* * *
IN THE SAN FERNANDO VALLEY, in her motel room, Jane had neither the energy nor the clarity of mind to review the material that she had gotten from Jimmy Radburn. She put the heavy trash bag full of documents in the closet.
She didn’t need vodka or music to sleep. She was in bed by nine o’clock and soon in dreams.
Near midnight, gunshots woke her. A racing car engine. In fact, two cars. Tires squealed. A man shouted, his words unclear. Three more shots in quick succession, perhaps return fire.
She drew the pistol from under the pillow where no head had rested. She sat up in the dark but didn’t get out of bed.
A metallic shriek suggested one vehicle sideswiped another. Maybe one of the two in motion had skinned a parked car.
Then they were away. The Doppler shift of engine roar, fading to lower frequencies, receded in two directions, as if the drivers, following the exchange of gunfire, had fled from each other.
She remained sitting up for a while, but nothing more happened. No police siren in the night. No one had reported the gunfire.
She put the pistol under the pillow once more. After all, this wasn’t the murder capital of the country. That honor belonged to Chicago, although other jurisdictions strove to be competitive.
As she was lying down again, she thought the incident had been only white noise, the continually simmering violence and chaos that was the backdrop of contemporary life. People became so accustomed to the white noise that episodes of violence with greater meaning, such as the rapid rise in suicides, escaped their notice.
She didn’t lie awake. She thought of Travis safe with Gavin and Jessica, the German shepherds taking turns patrolling the house at night, and she slept.
3
* * *
JANE WOKE AT 4:04, showered, dressed, and sat at the small round dining table to pore through the medical-examiner reports on suicides in thirty-two jurisdictions. Four were from large cities, twelve from medium-size cities, eight from suburbs, and eight from areas of lower population, where one county coroner served all the surrounding little towns.