with the fluorocarbons, part of the mist of ozone cooking the earth. Yes, I will yet live. And I think this is in all of us. And in Jay Rainey, too. The will to live. To pursue life is always to flee death, including murders in which one is somehow complicit, and this pursuit of life is not only essential to the survival of the species but also a courageous pull from the terror of biological anonymity. We want to be known. We want someone to know us. And there is something more, which obtained in the case of Jay Rainey. If you are a man, you cannot live without women, whence men come. I don't mean that men cannot live without women sexually, which of course they can, but rather without the fact of them, in the man's past, as mother and sister, as mitigating influence against all that is the most awful in man's murderous endocrinological nature. Women, it should be admitted, often make men better than they otherwise would be, save them from themselves. Jay could find lovers, of course, but except for Martha Hallock, his grandmother, he had no female who knew him, no woman who had insight into his essence, no female blood. Is it unreasonable to think he hoped, if only instinctively, that his daughter might someday look upon him and know him as no other female might, with the knowledge of shared flesh? As daughter to him, her father? On this, the answer is not lost. The answer is yes.
And then there is the matter of Jay's letters to Sally and what she might know.
This was the hardest thing of all. I studied the question. I really did. She did not understand why she had been kidnapped. She had not been harmed, at least not physically. Not a hair. She had spent less than one hour of her life in the company of some strange men. If she was traumatized, perhaps her stepfather and stepmother had seen to it that she had a trip to Disney World or a ski trip, some distraction that melted and obscured that one strange hour. An hour in a girl's life, what might it mean?
It was a grave responsibility. I could give her those letters, either directly or through Cowles, whose whereabouts I knew. But in the end, I did not. She had not asked to be born to doomed parents, she had not asked to think that she might have been abandoned. It was enough already, I supposed, that she'd experienced her mother's death. We have a responsibility to be merciful, I think, to save not just a life but the best version of a life, if possible. I do not think that I can ever forgive myself for the death of young Wilson Doan, and all that resulted, but I believe that I decided rightly when I took Jay's letters and watched their torn little pieces float down the Hudson River, releasing his daughter from the life she did not need to have. If this damns me, then it will not be for the first time, but I trust it does not. I will never be at peace with myself- how could I? — but the sight of those letters floating along the water gave me some hope, some fleeting belief, that the past may leave our bodies as surely as we will leave the earth.
I thought that question was resolved. But then David Cowles called me, at my office.
'I have a few questions for you,' he said. 'It took me a long time to contact you. I had to go through the old Voodoo owners, then some man named Marceno, through his office.'
'What can I do for you?'
'I can't seem to find Mr. Rainey, and-'
'He's dead,' I said.
'Dead?'
'But let me try to answer your questions anyway.'
An hour later, I climbed the stairs to Cowles's offices, wondering what he knew, what he wanted to know, what answers I'd provide him. He was waiting for me at the door, which he unlocked silently and locked again behind me. I followed him to his office. Sally was there.
'This is the man?' Cowles asked. 'This man was there, too?'
She turned. For a moment she looked older, the woman she would become. 'Yes.' She nodded at Cowles. 'He's the one who saved me.'
He motioned for me to sit, which I did, with some apprehension.
'Naturally I want an explanation,' said Cowles. 'I want to know why my daughter was snatched on her way home from school and driven fifty blocks south.' He drew a breath. 'She's been terrorized. It took her three weeks to tell us. My wife and I were shocked. We are this close to calling the police. We see no reason not to bring the full fucking might of the law down on you, Wyeth!'
'Daddy, I wasn't gone that long. They brought me to you.'
'You were taken!'
'It wasn't his fault, Daddy.'
'I don't know that I believe that.'
'Jay Rainey was not well,' I began. 'He had people after him.'
'What does my daughter have to do with that?'
'He was-' I wanted to be careful. 'He was unstable.'
'What the hell did he think he could accomplish by kidnapping my daughter?' Cowles bellowed.
Oh pal, I thought, you should stop now.
'It's very hard for me to say what he was thinking.'
'Sally,' said Cowles. 'I want you to leave my office so Mr. Wyeth and I can talk privately. But if you want to ask anything of Mr. Wyeth first, or tell him anything, then now is the time.'
'Okay.' She stood up. 'I guess I want to know if it was dangerous to me. Being in the car, I mean. Was I in any real danger?'
'Yes.' I nodded. 'But how much I don't know.'
'Why were you there?'
'I didn't want to be there.'
'But why were you?'
'I was trying to get Jay Rainey out of the mess he was in.'
'Did you?'
I waited for words to come to me.
'What happened, I mean?'
'He died, Sally.' Your father died, I thought. You'll never know him now.
'That man? How?'
'Mr. Rainey had a breathing problem. He was ill.'
'He was killed?'
'No. As I said, he had serious health problems.'
'Was he a nice man?'
'He was a man who had been hurt,' I answered. 'He meant well.'
'Did he want to hurt me?'
I looked at Cowles before I answered. 'No. In no way did he wish to hurt you, Sally.'
She heard this and something seemed to relax in her. 'So it was more sort of a big mistake, kind of?'
I nodded. 'A huge mistake, yes.'
Sally shrugged. 'Okay.' She looked at Cowles. 'Dad, I'm going to go check my e-mail, okay?'
'Sure, sure.'
'Will you be long?' she asked.
'No, but why?'
'I was hoping we could go past the sports store on the way home.'
'You got it,' he said.
She left and Cowles closed the door and faced me, unable to contain his anger. 'Which part of your sick story is bullshit?'
'What do you really want, Mr. Cowles?'
'I want to know why Rainey was obsessed with Sally.'
'I'm not going to tell you.'
'What?' He held his fists tight and I thought of Wilson Doan Sr., and how I'd been destroyed once already. 'I can go to the fucking police, Wyeth. They'll-'
'I know. And then, unfortunately, I'd have to tell them.'
'Unfortunately for you, you mean?'
I had an obligation here, an obligation to Wilson Doan and his wife, from whom I had taken a child, and I had
