Concentrate. I shake my head, my shoulders, like a wet dog.
“Hello, this is Alex.” Another man, I think, although the voice is so light and glassy that I’m not entirely sure, and the name’s no help.
“This is—” I need a name. Missed a step. “Alex. I’m another Alex.” Jesus. Best I could do.
If there’s a secret handshake among Alexes, this Alex does not extend it. “How can I help you?”
“Well, I’m an old friend of Alistair’s—Mr. Russell’s—and I just tried him at his New York office, but it seems he’s left the company.”
“That’s right.” Alex sniffs.
“Are you his . . .” Assistant? Secretary?
“I was his assistant.”
“Oh. Well, I was wondering—a couple of things, actually. When did he leave?”
Another sniff. “Four weeks ago. No, five.”
“That’s so strange,” I say. “We were so excited for him to come down to New York.”
“You know,” says Alex, and I hear in his or her voice the warmth of a revving motor: There’s gossip to be shared. “He still went down to New York, but he didn’t transfer. He was all set to stay within the company. They bought a house and everything.”
“Did they?”
“Yes. A big one in Harlem. I found it online. A little Internet stalking.” Would a man relish behind-the-back talk this much? Maybe Alex is a woman. What a sexist I am. “But I don’t know what happened. I don’t think he went anywhere else. He can tell you more than I can.” Sniff. “Sorry. Head cold. How do you know him?”
“Alistair?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, we’re old college friends.”
“From Dartmouth?”
“That’s right.” I hadn’t remembered that. “So did he—I’m sorry to phrase it this way, but did he jump or was he pushed?”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to find out what went down. It’s all super-mysterious.”
“I’ll ask him.”
“He was so well-liked here,” Alex says. “Such a good guy. I can’t believe they’d fire him or anything.”
I make a sympathetic noise. “I do have one other question for you, about his wife.”
Sniff. “Jane.”
“I’ve never met her. Alistair tends to compartmentalize.” I sound like a shrink. I hope Alex doesn’t notice. “I’d like to get her a little ‘welcome to New York’ present, but I’m not sure what she likes.”
Sniff.
“I was thinking a scarf, except I don’t know what her coloring is.” I gulp. It sounds lame. “It sounds lame, I know.”
“Actually,” says Alex, voice dropped low, “I’ve never met her, either.”
Well, then. Maybe Alistair really does compartmentalize. Such a good shrink I am.
“Because he totally compartmentalizes!” Alex continues. “That’s the exact word.”
“I know!” I agree.
“I worked for him for almost six months and never met her. Jane. I only met their kid once.”
“Ethan.”
“Nice boy. A little shy. Have you met him?”
“Yes. Ages ago.”
“Nice boy. He came in once so they could go to a Bruins game together.”
“So you can’t tell me anything about Jane,” I remind Alex.
“No. Oh—but you wanted to know what she looks like, right?”
“Right.”
“I think there’s a photo in his office.”
“A photo?”
“We had a box of stuff to send down to New York. Still have it. We’re not sure what to do with it.” Sniff and cough. “Let me go check.”
I hear the phone scuff the desk as Alex sets it down—no Chopin this time. Chew my lip, peek at the window. The woman is in the kitchen, staring into the depths of the freezer. For a lunatic moment I imagine Jane packed in there, her body glazed with frost, her eyes bright and rimy.
The scratch of the receiver. “I’ve got her in front of me,” says Alex. “The photo, I mean.”
My breath catches in my throat.
“She’s got dark hair and light skin.”
I exhale. They’re both dark-haired and light-skinned, Jane and the impostor. Not helpful. But I can’t ask about her weight. “Right—okay,” I say. “Anything else? You know what—could you maybe scan the photo? And send it to me?”
A pause. I watch the woman across the park slide the freezer door shut, leave the room.
“I’ll give you my email address,” I say.
Nothing. Then:
“Did you say you’re a friend of . . .”
“Of Alistair’s. Yes.”
“You know, I don’t think I should be sharing his personal materials with anyone. You’ll have to ask him about this.” No sniff this time. “You said your name was Alex?”
“Yes.”
“Alex what?”
I open my mouth, then click the End Call button.
The room is silent. From across the hall, I can hear the tick of the clock in Ed’s library. I’m holding my breath.
Is Alex calling Alistair right now? Would he or she describe my voice? Could he dial my landline, even my cell phone? I stare at the cell on the desk, watch it for a moment, as though it’s a sleeping animal; I wait for it to stir, my heart thrumming against my ribs.
The phone lies there immobile. An immobile mobile. Ha.
Focus.
60
Down in the kitchen, drops of rain popping against the window, I pour more merlot into a tumbler. A long swig. I needed that.
Focus.
What do I know now that I didn’t know before? Alistair kept his work and home lives separate. Consistent with the profile of many violent offenders, but otherwise not useful. Moving on: He was prepared to relocate to his firm’s New York branch, even bought property, shipped the whole family south . . . but then something went wrong, and he hasn’t landed anywhere.
What happened?
My flesh creeps. It’s cool in here. I shuffle to the fireplace, twist the knob by the grate. A little garden of flame blooms.
I ease myself onto the sofa, into the cushions, the wine tilting in the glass, my robe swirled around me. It could use a wash. I could use a wash.
My fingers slip into my pocket. Again they brush Little’s card. Again they release it.
And again I watch myself, my shadow self, in the television screen. Sunk in the pillows, in my dull robe, I look like a ghost. I feel like a ghost.
No. Focus. Next move. I place the glass on the coffee table, prop my elbows on my knees.
And realize I have no next move. I can’t even prove the existence, present or past, of Jane—my Jane, the real Jane—much less her disappearance. Or death.
Or death.
I think of Ethan, trapped in that house. Nice boy.
My fingers push their way through my hair, as though they’re plowing a field. I feel like a mouse in a maze. It’s experimental psych all over again: those tiny creatures, with their pinprick eyes and balloon-string tails, scurrying into first one dead end, then another. “Come on,” we’d urge them from overhead as we laughed, placed bets.
I’m not laughing now. I wonder once more if I should talk to Little.
But instead I talk to Ed.
“So you’re going a little stir-crazy, are you, slugger?”
I sigh, drag my feet across the study carpet. I’ve tugged the blinds down so that that woman can’t watch me; the room is striped with dim light, like a cage.
“I feel completely useless. I feel as though I’m at a movie and the film is over and the lights are up and everyone’s filed out of the theater and I’m still sitting there, trying to work out what happened.”
He snickers.
“What? What’s funny?”
“It’s just that it’s very you to liken this to a movie.”
“Is it?”
“It is.”
“Well, my points of reference are somewhat limited these days.”
“Okay, okay.”
I’ve said nothing about last night. Even as I think of it, I wince. But the rest unspools like a celluloid reel: the message from the impostor, the earring in David’s apartment, the box cutter, the phone call with Alex.
“It feels like something out of a film,” I repeat. “And I’d think you’d be more alarmed.”
“About what?”
“For one thing, about the fact that my tenant has a dead woman’s jewelry in his bedroom.”
“You don’t know that it’s hers.”
“I do. I’m sure of it.”
“You can’t be. You’re not even sure that she’s . . .”
“What?”
“You know.”
“What?”
Now he sighs. “Alive.”
“I don’t think she’s alive.”
“I mean that you’re not even sure that she exists, or ever—”