know this woman in order to discover what was happening.
'What the hell did you do for the NSA?' Gideon asked the computer.
And why does she need a Daedalus?
2.03 Tue. Mar. 17
GIDEON drove across the Verrazano Narrows Bridge as late morning light was picking out the New York skyline. He headed into Brooklyn with almost no sleep, looking for Julia Zimmerman's family.
The Zimmerman family lived on a block of narrow frame houses. Again, he was cautious about pulling up to park, circling twice before he pulled to the curb on the side of the street opposite the Zimmermans' address.
Their house dated from the early 1900s and had made it nearly a century without any vinyl siding. The clapboards were painted a cream color that was almost yellow, and the trim was colored a deep violet. The postage-stamp front lawn, all two feet of it, was spilling over with brown plants that marched back to the porch. Gideon thought it must be quite a garden in the spring. Right now, in mid-March, it seemed long dead.
It made Gideon think of Rafe and Kendal.
He crossed the street without his crutch. He limped, and his leg hurt, but he bore the pain. When he climbed up onto the Zimmermans' porch, he could lean against the doorframe and rest his leg.
Gideon stood there a while, looking at the porch. There was a patio set hiding under vinyl covers. Depressions in the candy-striped vinyl had collected dirty water. In a corner next to the door, a ceramic gnome, about three feet high, stood half-facing the wall, as if trying to hide.
Gideon checked his watch. It was about ten-thirty.
He pressed the doorbell and inside he heard chimes play the first few bars of 'It's a Small World.'
He stood there a long time, waiting, not knowing exactly what to expect. Given the neighborhood, he wouldn't be surprised if Julia's parents looked out on the porch, saw a black man, and dolled the cops.
The front door swung open behind the screen, and a small, wrinkled, gray-haired woman peered at him through the mesh. She wore a floral print blouse that was at odds with the time of year. 'Can I help you?'
From deeper inside the house he heard a male voice ask, 'Who is it, Ellie?'
That answered Gideon's primary question. From the records he'd unearthed, he knew that Julia's parents were named Ellice and David Zimmerman. Gideon gave Ellice his most reassuring expression. It was something he did a lot as a cop, and it rarely worked—people were always convinced that he was about to tell them someone had died. Fortunately, since he worked robbery, he didn't have that job much. For all the supposed glamour of the homicide boys, they still told a lot of mothers that their children were dead.
That was all running through his head as he asked, 'Are you Ellice Zimmerman?' He was picturing her reaction when he identified himself, and asked about her daughter. Some parents, faced with that, would turn hysterical—
Ellice nodded, 'What can I do for you?'
'You're Julia Zimmerman's mother?' Gideon continued.
Ellice smiled, and her eyes lit up. The transformation was eerie, the way all suspicion was wiped from her face. Before she was almost dour, with deep frown lines crossing her jaw. But at the mention of Julia's name, her face took on a youthful cast that seemed to erase decades. Now Gideon could see some of Julia that he'd seen in her pictures. 'Yes, dear. Yes, I am.'
Gideon smiled back and said, 'I'm Detective Gideon Malcolm, from the Washington D.C. Police Department.' He braced himself for the inevitable torrent. A cop asking about a child, that always opened an emotional can of worms, and Gideon braced himself for Ellice's reaction. Why are you looking for her? What’s happened to her? Why aren’tyou doing anything about it? She never did anything wrong. ..
Ellice managed to surprise him.
'You must come in,' she said as she pushed open the screen door. Gideon began to feel that there was something more deeply wrong about Ellice's expression. 'Come on, wipe your feet.'
Gideon did as requested, disturbed that she hadn't even asked for his identification.
'Who is it, Ellie?' The male voice repeated. It came from upstairs.
Ellice called up the stairs. 'It's one of Julia's friends.
He's from Washington.' She held out a hand and said, 'Can I take your jacket?'
Gideon looked at her hand, spotted and trembling slightly. He thought of the gun clipped to his belt. 'If you don't mind, I'd like to keep it on.'
Ellice walked into the house and asked, 'Can I get you some coffee, tea—'
Gideon followed into her living room and nodded. 'Coffee would be great, thanks.' Did she just not hear him say 'detective' or 'police?'
'Please, sit down,' she motioned to a long yellow couch.
Gideon sat and looked around at the house that Julia Zimmerman must have grown up in. The decor was a few decades out of sync. The wallpaper was faded geometric shapes on a mylar backing that was worn to a matte gray. A pair of olive-green enamel table lamps flanked the lemon-yellow couch. A long dead console television sat across the room from an equally ancient Hammond organ whose fake wood-grain lamination was separating from the particleboard beneath it. A fat pink princess phone sat on one of the end tables like a dead salmon.
Unlike Julia's mantel, the mantel here, across from the couch, was covered with pictures. The frames crowded the space and climbed up the wall to either side of the flat mirror mounted above the faux gas fireplace. Most of the pictures seemed to be of Julia or the younger woman— Gideon suspected a younger sister.
Gideon stared at a number of the pictures and had the eerie realization that none of them seemed to be more recent than Julia's high school graduation. He heard someone coming down the stairs, preceded by the odor of pipe smoke.
The man stepped out into the living room. David Zimmerman was a tall man, stockily built. His hair was still brown, but had receded considerably. He wore thick trifocal glasses that fractured his eyes when he looked at Gideon. He was shaking his head, and seemed about to say something when his wife returned with the coffee.
'David.' Her voice was almost aggressively cheerful. Gideon watched David frown at her, but Ellice didn't seem to notice. 'This is Gideon, one of Julia's friends from Washington.'
'Uh-huh,' David said. Gideon could read David's expression. Whenever he was in a position to see someone's wife go flying off the handle—screaming, crying, or otherwise going nuts—about half of the husbands would take on this same attitude of detached wariness. It was a way of broadcasting, This all is her problem, I'm just married to it.
It probably wasn't even conscious on David's part.
'I'm sorry Julia isn't here.' Ellice sat down, cradling a cup of coffee in her hands. She was staring at Gideon, or maybe through him. 'Maybe if you wait here a little while, you can catch her when she comes home. Don't you think so, David?'
David Zimmerman didn't say anything. He just sucked on his pipe and silently took a seat in an overstuffed leather recliner. He kept his eyes on Gideon, as if he were sizing him up.
'It's so nice to have one of Julia's friends here. She doesn't tell us anything about what she does anymore. Does she, David?' She said it as an aside that didn't really wait for her husband's answer. 'I suppose it happens to everyone. Children growing up, having their own lives.'
She stared momentarily into her coffee, and for those few moments it seemed the cheerful facade crumbled. For just a moment, her face, shadowed and bent, took on the aspect of someone who was grieving.
Then she turned back to Gideon and it was as if it had never happened. 'So how do you know Julia? Are you one of her friends from college?'
Gideon shook his head. 'No. I'm just trying to find out a few things.'
'Well, I'm certain that Julia can help you. Our daughter is a genius.' She glanced at David who contributed another 'Uh-huh.' Now Ellice was beaming. 'I know, every mother thinks that of her child. But Julia really is. She went off to college when she was only sixteen.' Ellice walked up to the mantel and picked up a picture. The trembling in her hand became more pronounced as she held the picture. For a moment Gideon was afraid that she
