Jake followed me into the kitchen. 'What are you talking about?'
'You know you're not about to reveal any of your sources on a big story. Obviously there are times I'm not going to be free to tell you everything I know.'
'That's not what I mean, Alex. I want what you keep bottled up inside. I want what you're thinking and feeling when this stuff is chewing your guts apart and keeping you up at night like you had toothpicks stuck in your eyelids.'
The muffin had burned to a crisp. I tossed it in the garbage and opened the package for another one. Jake took it from my hand and started the process over.
'There was a call last night. Right about midnight. Peter Robelon.'
'Shit,' I said, sitting at the dining room table. The body wasn't even cold yet and the vultures were beginning to pick at it. 'Did he know about Paige?'
'He said he heard a late news story on one of the local stations. They didn't give her name, but he recognized the address and Peter said he knew it was a loft building with only a few residential tenants.'
'Of course he knew exactly what the setup was. He'd hired a private investigator to snoop around the neighbors looking for dirt on Vallis. Don't tell me he was unctuous enough to be calling with his condolences?'
'He sounded perfectly appropriate. Thought it was tragic, wanted to make sure you knew about it-that kind of thing.'
'You make it sound like a pleasant conversation.'
'It was, actually. I guess he knew we're a couple. Said he recognized my voice from the tube. We talked for a couple of minutes. Did the six-degrees-of-separation thing. Friends of mine who are friends of his.'
I didn't say what I was thinking.
'Whoops, did I screw up again? You've got that Cooper pout on your face. Peter Robelon isn't your enemy, even if his client is guilty.'
'I know he's not my enemy. You want to chat with him, do it from your office. I don't trust the guy for a minute. You shouldn't either.'
'So I'll cancel my lunch date with him.'
'Keep it. Fine. Don't let me interfere with your endless efforts at intelligence gathering. When he gets indicted by one of my colleagues, Jake, I sure as hell don't want fifteen-minute phone calls showing up on the records from my place to his and vice versa.'
'What do you mean, indicted?' he called after me as I headed into the bathroom to shower and dress.
'He's a sleaze,' I said, closing the door behind me.
When I got back to the kitchen twenty minutes later, Jake had eaten the muffin and returned to the den. I fixed myself a bowl of cereal instead, and ate it alone at the table.
'What are you going to do today?' I asked when I finished eating.
'Read the paper. Go to the gym. Find someone who wants to have brunch at a charming sidewalk cafe like Swifty's and enjoy this beautiful day. Any takers?'
'If you can hold off brunch until two and let me go down to the precinct for a few hours to see what they've got, I promise to come back in a better mood.'
'I don't care if your disposition is better or worse, as long as you explain it to me. Help me understand it.'
'And you'll make an early-morning shuttle to D.C. tomorrow?' I asked.
'No. I'll go back on the six tonight. There's a White House briefing at nine and I can't take the chance of missing it.'
It was a subtle way of pressuring me. No chance for a bedtime reconciliation, so I had better get back uptown in time for brunch. I was disappointed, but also relieved. It was easier to have Jake out of town while all this mayhem was swirling around me. That, in itself, told me something about our relationship that I had been slow to acknowledge.
Nothing had developed at the First Precinct in the few hours since I left the squad room. Squeeks and his partner had slept on cots in the locker room and were already back at the crime scene, scouring for clues and tips.
I drafted a bunch of subpoenas for telephone records, even though no results would be available until the business offices opened again on Monday. I used numbers Paige had given me that were in my trial folder to call several of her coworkers at the investment bank-her supervisor and two friends-to notify them about the murder before they read about it in the newspapers. Mostly, I sat at a desk feeling useless and unhappy.
At one-thirty I went downstairs and hailed a cab, calling Jake to tell him I would meet him on Lexington Avenue, at the restaurant.
'A bit of good news for you, Alex. Peter Robelon just called again. He said to tell you that both he and Graham Hoyt had calls from Dulles Tripping today. The boy sounded fine. Said he had saved his allowance and taken a bus back upstate to the town he had lived in with his grandmother. Quite a mature ten-year-old. He was going to a friend's house. And yes, darling, he did have caller ID on the phone. The operator confirms he was calling from a pay phone upstate. I'll bring the number with me.'
'Thank God he's all right,' I said. 'I've got my cell phone with me. You could have told Robelon to call me.'
'After you said you didn't want phone records showing up between the two of you? I was trying to do the right thing, Alex. Sorry if I made another mistake.'
'No, no, no. You're right. I'm just so anxious to resolve this with the kid. I don't want him spinning further out of control when he finds out that Paige was killed.'
I took a Post-it out of my checkbook. 'Read me the number of the pay phone. I'll call it in to the detectives and they can pinpoint exactly what town it's in.' I wanted to get the business out of the way before I met him for lunch.
Jake was seated at a small, round table for two, surrounded by a chic-looking assortment of Upper East Side regulars.
'Did you take care of that message?'
'Yes, I did. The cops had actually tried to find the principal of the school in Tonawanda, to get a list of kids' names and addresses. Can't be done until tomorrow. The school's shut down completely for the weekend.'
I paused while the waiter took my order of a chopped Cobb salad and a Virgin Mary. It wasn't worth drinking in case we got lucky with a break in the case. Jake got the twinburgers with a vodka and tonic.
'Shall we start the day over? Aren't you going to ask me how I feel?' I asked.
'Sure,' Jake said, smiling. 'As long as you want to talk about it.'
I described how painful it was to learn about Paige's murder, and how much more it hurt to have some of the detectives think that I had failed to protect her in her final hours. I explained her complexities and how much she had chosen to keep hidden from me, despite my best efforts to elicit her trust. I talked about her willingness to tell me she had accidentally killed the burglar, without any probing, but that she had withheld information about one of her sexual partners.
'Do you think you know everything there is to know?'
'I don't believe that ever happens,' I answered. 'Subconsciously or not, we always filter what we tell other people.'
'Always?'
I looked up at him. 'Most of the time. And certainly to those with whom we're not intimate. People like Paige wanted me to think better of her, not be judgmental, not second-guess her choices.'
'So what do the cops make of this Harry Strait character?'
'A classic case of identity theft. The real Strait died of a heart attack while sitting at his desk at Langley. No controversy, no scandal, no crime. Someone plucked his date of birth and death out of the records or off his tombstone, no doubt forged a set of documents to accompany the name, and is walking around pretending to be Strait.'
'Any idea why?'
'Not a clue. And if he throws the stuff in a garbage pail tomorrow and decides to be somebody else, they may never figure out who he is. They'll go through everything in Paige's apartment and office pretty carefully. Maybe he left some contact information or something else that will reveal him to us.'
We walked back to the apartment and spent a few quiet hours together before Jake left for the airport. Everything about being with him soothed me and made me happy, if I kept it in the present tense. It was only
