“Can I just show this to you? Can I just tell you what I’m looking at here?”
“No.”
“Yes,” she says.
“Paige. No.”
“Yes.”
She doesn’t stamp her feet, but she might as well. She is like a defiant child, but somehow serious, more serious than me. She is more of a Spec than I have ever been, has more of whatever it is that puts a person in law enforcement—she has started and she can’t stop. She cannot leave it be and that is her truth, bone truth, deep true, she could not leave the matter of Mose Crane because that’s who she is—and who am I? I’m the one who is told that it is over and just agrees that it’s over, just goes home and gives up. Gets lost in a fake reality, curled under my covers, hiding from what’s real.
And that’s been it the whole time, hasn’t it? Arlo told me to hold this young Speculator back, to ballast her, keep her calm and deliberate and cautious like I am calm and deliberate and cautious, but I never wanted to. I don’t want to make another me—I want another Charlie. The parts of her I’m supposed to tamp down are the parts I like the best.
Paige went back to the office because she’s not like me, she’s like him, she’s like Charlie, she’s Charlie, and she won’t stop. She can’t.
“All right, kid,” I say, and hold out my hand. She puts the stretch into it. “Let’s see what you got.”
Two minutes later we are crouched in front of my wall-mounted, in the center of the living room, staring at the front door of Mose Crane’s apartment.
I glance at Aysa’s somber face, blanketed in the light of the wall-mounted. She has not seemed to notice that I have no furniture. She has not seemed to notice that I am in my underclothes, or that my house is a mess, and she certainly hasn’t looked with curiosity into the bedroom and wondered why there’s a copy of The Everyday Citizen’s Dictionary lying on the floor like a spent shell.
On the screen is the same static shot of Crane’s front door.
Ms. Paige says “Go” and “Fast,” and reality races past, one minute, two minutes, three minutes passing in a rush, and then here he comes. “Slow it down,” she says, and we watch him enter: a man in a gray suit, moving quickly, eyes cast down, holding his hat down on his head as he rushes up the stairs. The stretch does not show his face. I get as close as I can to the monitor but I can’t see it.
“Do you see?” says Aysa.
“See what?”
“That’s him.”
“Who?”
She looks at me, and then back at the screen. I stare.
“Are you—sure?”
“One hundred percent.”
“Stop,” she says, and the image pauses and I recognize him in that instant—a face turned slightly to one side, a high brow, a chin tucked downward. It’s Doonan, all right.
Do you know the idiom, my right hand? Mr. Doonan is my right hand.
“When is this? Is this—is it during the missing two weeks?”
She shakes her head. “Laszlo. This is yesterday. Two hours and nine minutes after Crane falls off the roof.”
“Wait,” I say. “Wait.” My mind is pinwheeling, turning over itself, but I can’t keep up with Aysa Paige. “Go,” she says, and Doonan goes, walks briskly up the steps and stands at Crane’s door, his back to us, his face once again hidden from the capture by his hat, and he knocks, shifts on his heels a moment, and then the door opens.“Wait,” I say again. “You said this was yesterday. Two hours and nine minutes after the fall. But doesn’t that mean—”
“Yes,” she says, snapping her fingers impatiently, pointing at the upper-right corner of the screen. “There’s no one home. Look at the time.” The stamp at the top right shows 10:54. “We’re going to be there at eleven oh one.”
“Who is?”
“You and me. Laszlo. Come on. It’s yesterday. It’s the day he died. It’s ten fifty-four. He’s already dead. He’s at the morgue by now, and we’re going to get to this apartment in a few minutes.”
“And no one was home.”
“That’s correct.”
“Aster comes up the stairs. She lets us in.”
“Yeah, but watch. Back ten.” The stretch backs up ten seconds and then resumes, and Doonan knocks again, and the door opens again. There is someone inside. A shadow of a person, and Doonan is laughing at whatever the person says, a murmur of low happy greeting, and then he steps inside.
“Whoa,” I say. I’m leaning closer in my chair. We slow it down to watch it again, frame by frame.
Paige is good, but I’m good too, and I can see that what Petras’s right hand is enacting here is a kind of dumb show. He is playing for the captures. He puts his hand on the handle, seemingly trying it but really picking the lock, working the cheap lock quickly and expertly with small tools. And then he stands back, makes a big show of checking his watch, and then the door opens, as if from inside, but it’s really Doonan pushing it open, with the tip of one of those brown shoes he pushes the door open and turns his body to block the person at the door, because there is no one at the door. He says hello to nobody, laughs at a pleasant word of welcome that nobody makes, and enters at nobody’s invitation.
“Shit,” I say, and Paige says, “I know,” and then we watch it again slow. I explain to Paige how he does it, how Doonan, the soft unassuming administrator,
