“Well don’t keep me in suspense. What does it mean?”
“It’s an observation about human nature,” Dixon said. “One difficulty we have in running these background checks is that our information-gathering apparatus is so effective, we end up drowning in data. Of course we have technology to help sort through it, but even machines have their limits, and a brute-force search of an entire life—particularly one that hasn’t been all that well-lived—eats an enormous number of computing cycles. So we try to find clues to help us narrow the search space…Loosely translated, Der schlechte Affe hasst seinen eigenen Geruch means that people are most deeply offended by moral failings that mirror their own. The minister who preaches a tearful sermon against fornication: he’s the one you’ll find sneaking out of a brothel at midnight. The district attorney who crusades against illegal gambling: look for him at the track, betting his life savings on Bluenose in the fifth.”
“If you’re trying to say that people are hypocrites, that’s not exactly a newsflash. And what’s it got to do with me?”
“Who told you to search John Tyler’s office?”
“No one.”
“You just intuited somehow that there was something to find?”
“No, I was just being nosy. I’m like that.”
“How many other offices did you search?”
“Well…none.”
“What about the nurses you’ve been having breakfast with? Did you go through any of their purses?”
“No.”
“What about their lockers?”
“No, but—”
“So you’re not that nosy. Why single out Dr. Tyler?”
“I thought he was cute, OK?”
“Oh. So you were stalking him?”
“No! I was just checking him out…I mean, I don’t know, maybe I did get a vibe off him.”
“A vibe.”
“Yeah, like you said, an intuition. That there was something not right there.”
“But then what about the nurses?”
“What about them?”
“Two of them have been stealing painkillers—shorting their patients’ dosages—and giving them to their boyfriends to sell. Strange you didn’t get a vibe about that. Maybe if they were taking the drugs for personal use, your intuition would have picked up on it…”
“Look, where are you going with this? You think I zeroed in on Tyler because I’m like him?”
“Are you?”
“Hey, if you’re worried I’ve got my own collection of magazine clippings, you’re welcome to search my apartment.”
“We already did.”
“OK…So you know your schlecky-affa-whatever theory doesn’t hold water.”
“It’s often a related transgression, rather than the exact same one,” Dixon said. “Just to be thorough, I ran a check of your reading history to see if there were any signs of inappropriate sexual interest.” He held up the batch of printout he’d been looking at when I came in. “That search was more fruitful. Tell me, do you recall stealing a book from the San Francisco Public Library when you were twelve years old?”
It was such a left-field question I almost laughed, but the funny thing was, I knew exactly what he was talking about. When he said, “Do you recall,” it was like my brain got zapped with some kind of flashback ray.
And what was he talking about? What was the book?
Ana?s Nin’s Delta of Venus. Moon’s mother had a copy, and Moon and I used to read it to each other during sleepovers. Eventually I decided I wanted a copy of my own, and hooking it from the library was easier than shoplifting it.
“How do you know about that?”
“Library Binding,” Dixon said.
I thought he was talking about the anti-theft strip: “But I didn’t take it out the front door.”
“No, you tossed it out of the second-floor girls’ bathroom window. That branch of the library lost a lot of books that way.”