now.”
“That’s fair.”
“Where did you see him?”
Justin paused, but didn’t seem reluctant. It was as if he had to play back a recording in his mind before he knew he could get it right. “He attacked my mother.”
“Shit!” Davis cursed with a reflexive gasp. “Is she all right?”
Justin nodded with a sneer that seemed inspired by equal amounts anger and guilt. “Yeah. She’s okay.”
“When did this happen?”
“Six years ago,” Justin said. “Right before she filed the lawsuit against you.” Davis considered that. “Just a coincidence, though. Now, who is he?”
“You don’t know?” The questioned betrayed disappointment, and that seemed to confuse the boy.
“I want to know what you know first.”
Davis nodded, asking himself if he needed more than an hour from Joan, if he should call with another errand before she returned from the office to find her husband and the Finn boy trading information like distrustful double agents. “He attacked my daughter.”
“Is she okay?” Justin asked.
“No,” Davis said. “She’s not.”
The story came out in a long exhale, and Justin seemed shocked by none of it. He listened and nodded and looked concerned. At other times he appeared relieved and even excited. He never interrupted. He allowed Davis to describe, to explain, to rationalize, to apologize. He seemed so sympathetic, so non-judgemental, Davis thought he could have cried in front of the boy, and almost did, twice.
“I feel bad,” Justin said when Davis was through and they had both thought silently on it for a few minutes. “I feel bad I don’t have more answers for you.” He sighed. “I can’t remember his name. It was like money or something. Mr. Cash, maybe? I think he lived in the city. I think he used to live in Northwood. Or his parents did.”
“His parents live here now?”
“They did six years ago. His mom introduced him to my mom. They talked but I wasn’t really paying attention. I remember everybody was saying he looked like me. When he was a kid, anyways.”
“What else?”
“He and my mom went to dinner one night. I thought I heard something after they came home and I went downstairs. I just saw the end of it. I think he tried to rape her, although she never said, exactly. My mom was crying. She kicked him out and he walked past me and I really looked at him this time, looked him in the face, in a way that I hadn’t done when we met in the store. It was like, you know how you look at an old picture of yourself and you don’t look like that anymore, and you don’t spend that much time looking at yourself in the first place, but still you just know the face in the picture is you? Right away. That’s what it felt like. Looking at him.”
“Do you think he saw the same thing you did? Do you think he saw himself in you?”
Justin picked at the carpet with his fingers. “I don’t know. I doubt it. He just wanted to get the hell out of there.”
“Does your mother have any idea?”
“Nuh-uh. Like I said, she thinks my donor was Eric Lundquist.”
Davis wanted to believe it. “Are you positive it was him? The guy who hurt your mom? He is your donor?”
Justin’s head bobbed with a barely perceptible motion, more like a vibration than a nod. “Oh, yeah, shit!” he said. “There’s another thing.” He pushed himself to his feet and lifted his shirt up over his head, turning his back to Davis. Davis stood up too and Justin turned his head, looking down over his shoulder, his shirt twisted around his forearms. “That.”
“What?” Davis leaned back and scouted the white plane of the boy’s backside. “What? The birthmark?” Davis put his hand very near it but never touched the boy’s skin. It was shaped like the top of a teakettle and disappeared under Justin’s belt. “He had this?”
“Exactly like it,” Justin said. “Right in that spot.”
“Jesus Christ,” Davis whispered.
Three rooms away, the back door opened and Joan shouted, “Hi, Dave!”
“Jesus Christ!” he said again. “You need to go now. But we need to keep talking. Saturday?”
“Yeah, I can do Saturday. Where?”
“I don’t know.” He heard Joan’s footsteps leaving the kitchen and pushed Justin toward the front door as the boy struggled to get his shirt back on. Davis took a card out of his wallet. “This is my cell phone. Call it tomorrow. I’ll figure it out.” Justin snatched the card and ducked out the door without saying good-bye.
“Who was that?” Joan had entered the foyer. He couldn’t tell what she’d seen.
“Hmm? A kid selling candles. For a band trip.”
“You ordered one?” Joan asked.
Davis realized he had his wallet in his hand. “Two,” he said. “They’re going to Saint Louis.” Christ, he hadn’t warned Justin, hadn’t told him not to tell anyone, hadn’t told him he might be in danger if this Cash fellow put together the same pieces Justin had. Now that he had run out the door, there was no way of telling him. Not without violating the restraining order or involving a third person.
Joan waved a bottle of shampoo and walked into the living room. She leaned over to shut out the draft coming through the window and picked up the open copy of Time of Death. “I’ve read that,” she said, handing it to Davis without a review. He took another card from his wallet and used it to mark his place before setting it down again.
– 61 -
Just as she was leaving private investigation and starting a new life, Sally, like millions of others, became immersed in Shadow World. The depth of the digital creation was fascinating to her. Every time she discovered a new spot in the game – a restaurant, a thrift store, a car wash – she sought it out on the real streets of Chicago and was always amazed when she found its twin. If she faced disappointment in the real world, she could usually find same-day redemption on her computer. The new duality of her life was both exciting and comforting, and her days were now divided almost equally – nine hours in the world, nine hours in the game, six hours sleeping.
Although they remained physically apart for more than three years, grown-up Justin never stopped visiting Sally in her dreams. The mornings after such meetings she felt invigorated but a little woozy, often unsure of what had been said, what intimacies had been exchanged. That sensation was almost always followed by sadness. Martha had been Sally’s friend, but she found it was Justin she missed most. Not the real, flesh-and-blood boy almost twenty years her junior, but, as Justin/Eric himself once put it, the idea of him. No real man would ever measure up. Now that they were friends again in Shadow World, she could actually get to know Justin, the ideal Justin, separated from his teenaged body.
It was getting so Sally was almost looking forward to a fresh Shadow World murder.
– 62 -
Female secretaries, paralegals, and summer interns at Ginsburg and Addams shared a regular appointment. Law firm politics stratified employees into sections and subsections – those with a law degree and those without, those with testes and those without – and so the workers who fell into both of the without groups, thrown together by sexism and caste, met informally once a week for happy hour at a bar called Martin’s (frequently called Martini’s, in an ongoing, unfunny joke). Once together and half full of gin and vermouth, they explored other things they had in common – the weather, fear of the Wicker Man, vacations, men, and horror stories about a senior associate named Sam Coyne.
