She might have said something else to somebody else.”
“And if you gather the somethings together, a picture might emerge.”
“Well, don’t you think it’s possible?”
“I know it’s possible,” I said, “and so will Sussman. They’ll go through her address or her Rolodex, whatever she had, and they’ll check out every listing. He might be in there, as far as that goes. Just because she wouldn’t say his name doesn’t mean he didn’t give her one. If he also gave her a number, it’ll be in her book.”
“You think they’ll get him that way?”
I didn’t, but I said it was possible.
“All right, here’s another thing I was thinking. She might have gone back to her shrink. She stopped therapy years ago, but she’s been back a few times for a couple of sessions here and a couple of sessions there. And I remember having the feeling recently that she might have gone back. I don’t know what triggered it, but it was a feeling I got.”
“And she might have said something about the guy to the therapist?”
“Well, you know, if she can’t feel free to say anything to anybody else . . .”
“That’s a point.”
“But would the shrink say anything? Isn’t everything you tell your shrink privileged?”
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I said it was, but that there was a gray area here. When the patient was dead and the investigation was trying to uncover the killer, that would override doctor-patient privilege for some physicians, and not for others.
“Her shrink’s name is Brigitte Dufy. She’s French, she’s got the same last name as the painter Raoul Dufy, and she may even be a relative. I know Monica asked her but I don’t remember what the answer was. As if it matters. She grew up around here, her father was a sous-chef at the Brittany du Soir. You remember that place?”
“Yes, of course.”
“It was terrific, I wonder what happened to it. One day it was just gone. Anyway, Brigitte grew up here with a neighborhood accent that was solid Hell’s Kitchen Irish. Monica liked to call her Bridget Duffy.
They’ll probably find her name in Monica’s address book, but maybe not. You know how when you copy an address book you don’t bother transferring the names of people who’ve dropped out of your life? Because why bother, since you’re not going to call them again? Well, if she’d stopped therapy . . .”
I said I’d mention it to Sussman in the morning.
“I can’t stand that she’s gone,” she said. “But I’ll get used to it. That’s what life is, getting used to people dying. But I can’t stand the thought of somebody doing this to her and getting away with it. And I don’t want to get used to it.”
“They’ll get him.”
“You promise?”
How could I promise something like that? Then again, how could I deny her?
“I promise.”
“Is there anything you can do?”
“Besides get in everybody’s way? I don’t know. I’ll see if I can come up with anything.”
“I don’t expect you to get out there and find him,” she said. “Except, see, the thing is I do. You’re my hero, you know. You always have been.”
“I think you’d be better off with Spider-man.”
“No,” she said. “No, I’m happy with the choice I made.”
17
In a Kinko’s on Columbus Avenue, he sits at a computer terminal, where a small hourly fee provides him with utterly anonymous Internet access.
He goes to the Yahoo website and, at no cost and in a matter of minutes, he opens an account with a user name that is just a meaningless jumble of letters and numbers. It would be difficult to remember, but he won’t need to remember it because he’ll never use it again. It’s a one-time-only account, almost certainly untraceable, but if they trace it they won’t get any farther than this computer, open to the public and used by dozens of people every day.
He remembers wondering how anyone was ever caught and convicted a century ago, in the absence of forensics. But didn’t science aid the criminal with one hand while it aided the criminologist with the other? He’d come across a line somewhere that had always struck him as the perfect explanation of Darwinian evolution: If you build a better mousetrap, Nature will build a better mouse.
He meditates upon this principle for a spell, then brings himself reluctantly back to the present moment. He clicks on write mail and begins typing:
I am writing to you because it troubles me to think of the unfortunate parents of Jeffrey Willis, for whose murder Preston Applewhite recently paid the ultimate penalty. Hard as All the Flowers Are Dying
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it is to lose a son, it must be harder still when his body is never recovered. One hates the thought of one’s own flesh and blood lying forever in an unmarked grave, although, on reflection, I can’t see that I’d much prefer lying in a marked grave. It is, I should think, one and the same to the person lying there.
Still, it seems only right for me to tell you that the spirit of Preston Applewhite (may all curse his memory!) came to me last night in a spirit of profound contrition. “You must tell the good people at the Richmond Times-
