It is the detective, again. He is walking toward the paarolawats, with his hand out. He is going to shake hands with a zombie! I move quickly to stand in his way and I say, “Detective, I just remembered something I forgot to tell you.”
“Yeah? That’s great, ma’am. Do you know old Eightball Swett, here? Mr. Swett is one of our colorful neighborhood characters …”
I grab his sleeve. “No, he’s not. Could we go to your car? I mean right now!” Because the thing has begun to move, a couple of quick shuffles and he’s reaching out his hand. They can move pretty fast over short distances, although, depending on how ripe they are, if they push it any they tend to lose bits and pieces.
The detective picks up my tone and lets me drag him to his white Impala. We both get in, and the paarolawats is right there as I close the door with a slam. He paws at the window and a bit of him sticks to the glass like bird shit. Now I’m practically crying, “Please drive, please drive drive drive drive drive!”
When we are well away, he says, “Would you mind telling me what that was all about?”
“I was just nervous. That man made me nervous.”
“Nervous?” he says. “That palsied piss-bum made you nervous, when less than an hour ago I saw you take down a big strong gangbanger practically without breaking stride?” I am silent. He says, “We need to have a talk, Jane.”
“I told you, my name is Dolores Tuoey,” I say, barely convincing myself.
“Jane Doe. I should say, Dr. Doe, really. I read your paper on the Olo. Some of it went past me, but what I could understand was pretty amazing.”
Last shot. “I’m not Jane Doe. People were always getting us confused.”
“Really? Whereabouts was this?”
“Bamako. In Mali. I was a nurse-midwife there and she was doing some anthro work upcountry in the Boucle de Baoule. We ran into each other from time to time and … people commented. Jane’s dead, I heard.”
“Yeah, and she must be buried under a plain tablet in Calvary Cemetery in Waltham, Mass., with ‘Sister Mary Dolores Tuoey, S.M.’ on it. You know, Jane, the problem with phony ID, especially if it’s based on a real person, is that it’s like a model of the Golden Gate Bridge made out of toothpicks. They look sort of okay, but they won’t bear any real weight.”
He gives me a bright cat smile. “So why’d you fake the suicide?”
“I have to pick up my daughter,” I croak. My mouth feels full of fine sand.
“Yeah, she’s at Providence. Okay, no problem.” He turned south onto Dixie Highway. “Actually there is a small problem: where did you get the daughter? You sure didn’t have one when you sailed away into the sunset. Your dad would have noticed it. I met your dad the other day, as a matter of fact. He doesn’t miss much, Jack Doe.”
I say nothing, feeling miserable, like a kid caught out in a dumb fib. In silence, then, we arrive at Providence. Luz is with her little gang of girls, gossiping. I wave and call out. Luz comes up to the strange car, her face clouding. I get out and hug her, and tell her our car is getting fixed and the nice policeman from this morning is going to drive us home.
Which he does, and makes no move to drive away out of my life, but gets out and follows us up the stairs as if invited. I make Luz her snack, carrot cake and lemonade, popping another two pills privily as I do so, and I offer some refreshment to him. He accepts, and we all snack away like a thermonuclear family. Luz is uncharacteristically quiet; she is used to the dyad, or Polly’s family, or school, and also she picks up the tension. I prod her about her day. She sang. Some of the kids got their costumes, but she did not. She hopes to be a robin or an owl. Or a fish. As we talk, I see that she keeps casting sidelong looks at him, at her little arm and his big hand and wrist on the table, and no wonder, they are almost exactly the same color. She asks if she can go play with Eleanor across the street. I watch her from the landing as she trots across and rings Dawn Slotsky’s bell.
“Nice kid,” he says. “She seems to get on with you pretty good. It’d be a shame to see her end up in some foster home.”
“Why? Are you going to arrest me?”
“I might. It seems to me you’re looking at obstruction of justice, imposture, uttering false instruments, conspiracy to commit murder. Or murders.”
In my worst nightmares, it has never occurred to me that I would be in undeserved danger from the police, that someone might think I had committed a crime that I actually didn’t commit. I sit down, collapse actually, in the chair across from him. Maybe this is also part of Witt’s plan! To stick me with his killings. Yes, that would be a Witt thing to do, to close all doors for me, leaving only one open, one that led to him. And amusing.
The cop says, “What you have to understand is that all the stops are out on this one. We have the closest thing to unlimited resources. We will, for example, find out where that kid came from, and we will find out what you did for every day of your life since you sank that boat. I’m not being a hard-ass here, but that’s just the way things are. If you’re not on our side in this, then you’re on his side, and if that’s the case, we’re going to drop the jailhouse on you. You’ll be under the jail. Do you understand me?” I say nothing. Things are emerging. They think I am some kind of accomplice? I have speed thoughts. Get the Mauser, kill this cop, grab Luz, take his car, escape?no, steal a boat, escape by water, Ifa said, oh, and the chicken, got to have the yellow bird, but what about the others? No, actually, the flaw is that I am not a murderer, or maybe I am, maybe I …
I start to shake, like someone with a bad flu. Perhaps it is the amphetamine, or more magic, all chemicals anyway. He is looking at me peculiarly. He can see inside my head. I wait; he is boring into my brain, and I am so ashamed; it is worse than being naked in Mrs. W.’s office. I can’t stay on my chair. I see myself lying on the floor, from a distance. I am getting smaller and smaller. Now I see Dolores Tuoey in my kitchen. She is wearing her funny little nun scarf on her head and her acacia-wood crucifix, and lugging that big canvas bag she always had with her; she is walking away from me, down a corridor that does not exist in my kitchen, it is a shady covered arcade, like they have in the Petit Marche in Bamako. I want to shout out, Hey, Dolores, where are you going? But there is something in my mouth, an extra-large tongue perhaps, or a fur-covered creature, or a young vulture. So I can’t shout at all and she gets smaller, and stops and turns around and smiles and waves, the way she did when our paths crossed in Bamako. Good-bye, Dolores, see you in heaven!
I am actually on the floor, I find, and he is bathing my face with a cold, damp, dish towel, very tenderly. I sit up, fast, and get to my feet; I am in the bold, self-confident phase of amphetamine now, with the appropriate teeth-grinding jaw lock. Also, I am completely Jane again. Running and hiding are over. I am so glad not to be waking up in my hammock in the moonlight! And am I ever ready to talk!
“Well, Detective Paz,” I say, “you got me.”
“You’re Jane Doe.”
“Yes, Jane Clare Doe, Ph.D., of Sionnet, New York.”
He nods, he is pleased with himself. “Okay, I’ll call an officer to take care of the kid and then we’ll go downtown and you can make a full statement.”
“No, actually, we’ll stay right here, and I’ll tell you what you need to know. I’ve got as much interest in stopping him as you do?more, probably. But the first thing you need to do is forget your usual procedure. If you insist on taking me downtown, I’ll shut my mouth and stand on my right to remain silent except for my phone call, which will be to the firm of lawyers that has been twisting the legal system on behalf of my family since 1811, and I assure you that they will leave your police department a smoking ruin. So I’ll help, but on my terms only. Your choice.”
It is so lovely to be bold Jane Doe again. Perhaps I’ve pushed him too far. He scowls, nods, sits down, takes out his notebook. “Okay, shoot; but if I smell any horse manure, it’s going to be a small room downtown, and bring on your lawyers.” I sit across the table from him. He says, “You said ‘him.’ That’s your husband, Malcolm DeWitt Moore.”
“Yes.”
“And you believe he’s the one committing these murders, the pregnant women, Wallace and Vargas and Powers?”
“It’s certain.”
“Did he kill your sister, too?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You’d have to ask him that.”
