Sigrid follows him inside and sits on the bench opposite his.
“Is this jail new?” she asks.
“Why, because it’s so clean?”
“They usually smell bad.”
“We don’t use it much. We prefer to take people out back and shoot them.”
“I see.”
“Now, the dumpster . . . that smells terrible.”
“OK.”
“So,” says Irv, crossing his legs and placing the file on his lap. “Your brother is missing and his girlfriend is dead and you’ve come here to find him, and to do that, you’ve been to his house and—not finding him—you’ve come to the police. How am I doing so far?”
“You haven’t found him, so . . . not so well, Sheriff.”
“It’s a process. What can you tell me?” he asks.
“About Marcus?”
“I’m sure not interested in Norway.”
“My father corresponds with him. Marcus stopped writing. Pappa became worried. He tried calling and emailing. He thought it would be best if I came to look for him.”
“He wasn’t overreacting a bit?”
“It was a good time for Marcus and I to see each other anyway, and I have some leave. I heard wonderful things about upstate New York.”
“I doubt that.”
“Your turn,” Sigrid says.
“Fine. Professor Lydia Jones, Ph.D., thirty-nine years old, never married, born in Syracuse, New York, and moved here for a university position seven years ago. Made tenure in the department of philosophy specializing in . . . Wait a second.” Irv removes some bright red reading glasses that are more suited for a woman, puts them on, and continues, saying “. . . the politics of race and the history of identity politics in America. That’s some pretty heavy and sophisticated stuff. She wrote three books—two academic and one for a popular audience—seven peer-reviewed articles . . . all of which have colons in the titles, so they must be important . . . and she died by defenestration at Eighty-Six Brookmeyer Road two weeks ago. Autopsy performed. Toxicology negative. Small rip on the right shoulder of her sweater, demonstrating a struggle—forensics insists it was incompatible with a mere snag for some fancy reason—and there were traces of skin under her fingernails. Always a popular touch. We have a DNA match between those samples and your dear brother’s, which we collected at your brother’s house with a warrant. We have issued an APB—that’s an all points bulletin in our vernacular—and we are still looking for him. But now that you’re here,” Irv says, removing his glasses, “I think we have a much better chance of bringing him in without anyone getting hurt. So welcome to the show.”
“May I see the file?”
Irv hands it to her. She takes it and does not immediately open it. She wants to hear the story from Irv first. This will give her a basis for comparing interpretations, which is crucial for undermining his confidence in his own case.
“Any eyewitnesses? Video?”
“As a matter of fact, we found a guy named Chuck who saw your brother exit the building Lydia fell from, run to her body, check it, call 9-1-1, confess, and then run away. So I’m feeling pretty good about things, but I’m always open to scrutiny and abuse.”
“That’s it?”
“What’s it?”
“Your case against Marcus. That’s it?”
“I’m not making a case, but yes. An eyewitness and a confession. Two of my favorite things. It feels pretty solid. Or at least a good start until we talk to him.”
“Nine-one-one’s the emergency number in America?”
“Yes. They route the calls and send fire or police or EMTs.”
“How do you know Marcus called it?”
“We have the recording, we have the witness saying he placed a call for a matched duration at a matched time. And if that isn’t enough, I plan on using you to ID his voice, under oath. And that ought to square that circle.”
“What did he say?”
“‘She’s dead. She’s dead. She’s dead. I did this. I did this.’ You’re welcome to hear it, of course. In fact, you’ll be required to.”
“He said, ‘I did this’ twice?”
“Yes.”
“What else do you have?”
“I have trace elements of his skin under her fingernails, which is a nice example of Locard’s Law playing itself out.”
“You’re referring,” says Sigrid, “to Locard’s 1904 piece on scientific method and criminal cases?”
“I’m referring to something a guy named Howard says about transfer always happening. I was repeating it in an effort to impress you, which has backfired.”
“We don’t know if there was a criminal act,” Sigrid says. “Locard’s Law may be an illusion. Transfer of physical evidence between the victim and perpetrator does often happen as Locard theorized, but for all kinds of reasons. That’s where we’ve made advancements since 1904. The general can never be a substitute for the particular.”
“Huh,” Irv says.
“You have a witness to a phone call,” says Sigrid, “Marcus’s skin under her nails but without any sense of how it got there, and an ambiguous message on an emergency call.”
“I also have him running away from the scene.”
“What else?”
“And away from the police.”
“What else?”
“And his family.”
“What else?”
“What do you mean, ‘what else’? I have Marcus running away from his job. From his apartment. He left everything behind to an opinionated hooker.”
“So it isn’t exactly open and shut.”
“We have not decided to arrest him for the charge of murder yet, no. I admit that it is circumstantial, but the golden triangle of motive, means, and opportunity is starting to form a nice equilateral shape that I find pleasing.”
“That’s a heuristic. It’s not an algorithm for proving causality,” says Sigrid.
Irv smiles at her. His face brightens immediately and all sense of seriousness and weight is not only erased but seems to have been part of another past. He looks to Sigrid as though smiling is his natural state, and it is only by rallying his small reserve of adulthood and maturity that he can appear stern and focused.
“Why are you smiling at me?”
“I like the way you said that, especially for a woman for whom English is not her first language. No, it isn’t a conviction machine. I—for example—have motive, means, and
