Sprawled across the new desk in the jail cell is unexpected proof that Irv has been doing some actual police work in between juvenile pranks like photographing her in her current state. He has—based on a cursory assessment—done a solid job of pinpointing the most likely spots where Marcus will show up for supplies—assuming any of their grander assumptions are accurate.
“Frank’s people will do the legwork and put up the posters,” he says.
“Before you said flyers. Now you said posters. Posters are bigger, right?”
“Yuge. By the way, I think you have something on the corner of your mouth there. What is that, a piece of muffin? I hope that doesn’t show up on the poster.”
Irv notices that Sigrid, though plain at first sight, has a beautiful neck. She has a quality he’s seen many times in blondes: One moment they are the boring women next door who are as interesting as drying laundry, and the next—as though transformed with sunlight—they become angular and sultry. Sigrid has clearly been spending a lot of time in the wrong light, but her neck is a revelation and invites questions Irv hasn’t thought to ask before.
“How did you catch me at Target?” Sigrid asks.
“I bribed Juliet and she ratted you out when you called in for help. Melinda was supposed to lose you, and I had Cory out back in case you went that way, which you did. But for the record, you actually did shake her. And she’s totally confused, poor kid.”
“How could you have known to bribe Juliet?” Sigrid asks. “You couldn’t have possibly known I was coming from Oslo, and I went directly to you after leaving Marcus’s house. So how did you know of my connection to her?”
“I didn’t. I bribed her before you got to town when we searched his house with the warrant. Told her I’d pay one hundred dollars for any information about Marcus, especially if he came back or anyone came around asking for him. Let me guess,” Irv adds. “You paid her something too?”
“Two hundred.”
“So she collected your two hundred first and then ratted you out for an additional one hundred from me.”
“She’s a criminal mastermind,” Sigrid says.
“Well . . . that’s six pieces of gum she doesn’t need to chew,” he says.
“What I’m worried about here, Irv,” says Sigrid, crossing a leg, “is that you have a very specific idea about what happened and now you’re working your way backwards toward proving it. It’s harder to be proved wrong that way, and investigators have a tendency for theory-fixation.”
“I like it when you talk shop like this,” Irv says.
“This is what I can talk about best in English.”
“What’s hardest for you to talk about in English?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Well played.”
“What I try to emphasize at home, with my staff,” Sigrid says, “is how to take an exploratory approach rather than building a formal hypothesis, testing it, and reformulating it with findings. Investigation shouldn’t be an experimental science, both because it’s the wrong approach and also because cops aren’t scientists trained at falsifying claims. In my experience, if an investigator picks a hypothesis too soon it starts to look like a convenient conclusion rather than a target for refutation. You know Charles Peirce?”
“No.”
“Founder of Pragmatism?”
“Sure,” he lies.
“He talked about the ‘provisional entertainment of an explanatory inference.’ It means we have to hold an idea loosely at first and allow new pieces of knowledge to enrich our understanding rather than sum things up too quickly and be wrong too early. It requires an open mind and a comfort with ambiguity that most cops don’t have. It also requires police leadership that isn’t pushing cops to close cases as soon as possible.”
“I’m not the top of the food chain, Sigrid. There is a big and hungry leadership above my head that thinks I like look like a cupcake.”
“You need to get us the time we need to learn and act wisely.”
Irv gives Sigrid a wide-open and innocent smile that Sigrid doesn’t buy for a second but still, and strangely, has some effect on her. He actually opens his arms expansively as if to physically pull Sigrid into his charismatic orbit: “So,” he says, “this is the part where I’m supposed to argue with you, and be the tough guy, and put you in your place because you’re . . . you know . . . just a woman. The thing is, that’s not going to happen. I like women. I think they’re swell. And I’m OK with ambiguity. It’s the sea in which I swim. So let’s break with convention and say that I find you reasonable and articulate. Tell me then, O Wise One of the Far North: How do you suggest we come at a recorded statement that includes the phrases ‘I did this, I did this’?”
“As facts in your case for which we don’t yet have a basis for interpretation.”
“That . . . is actually convincing. You’re serious about this investigative stuff, huh?”
“I am an investigator,” Sigrid says.
“The pickle that I’m in, Chief—and this has nothing to do with my love for ambiguity or women, because let’s face it: they’re a matched set—is that I’m worried that your neo-zen-pragmatism is going to slow us down. And I have reasons to speed things up, and it isn’t because I’m an idiot.”
“Why do you want to speed things up?”
“Put simply, because something is chasing me.”
“Doing things right usually speeds things up,” Sigrid says.
“You know what? That can be true. But it isn’t always true. Because it’s most true when people care about the quality of the results. Usually they don’t, though. They care about perception, and it’s easier to perceive something in motion, and fast is more exciting than slow. My worry, Sigrid, is that the results they want are for themselves. They want conclusions that make them look good. Not everyone wants justice. Certainly not everyone I work for.”
“You work for the people who elected you.”
Irv doesn’t reply. He sits there, quietly, looking
