“For over a year, yes.”
“Why?”
He took the ME’s report out of the file. “There are inconsistencies in this report. Time of death is about ten hours off, according to our experts.” He pointed to something Jake had circled. “This body weighed a hundred and eighty-six pounds. But you know Max was a much bigger man than that-must have been over two-fifty.”
I looked at the document in front of me. “Okay. So this was a small-town medical examiner. He made some mistakes. It happens all the time. What did he say when you interviewed him?”
“He’s dead,” Agent Grace said. “He had a fatal car accident just a few days after he filed the report, right around the time this body was cremated.”
I noticed how he kept saying “this body.”
“What do you mean accident?” I asked, mimicking his inflection.
“I mean someone accidentally cut his brake lines.”
I scanned the report, feeling desperate and afraid. “Esme Gray identified the body,” I said weakly. “They were lovers once. She would have known it wasn’t Max if it wasn’t.”
Agent Grace looked at me with something like pity on his face. “Esme Gray is not exactly unimpeachable.”
I thought about that last night with Max, how he’d started to cry, how my father had appeared, a dark form in the entryway, how he’d taken Max into his office and shut the doors on me. It’s the bourbon talking, my father said, before closing the door.
“So the FBI has been watching me since then, thinking if he was alive, if he would contact anyone, it would be me? Love, right?”
He nodded. “Has he tried to reach you, Ms. Jones?”
“Who?” I asked obtusely.
“Max Smiley,” he said impatiently. “Your uncle, your father, whoever the hell he is to you.”
“No,” I said, almost yelling.
“There was an overseas call to your number the night before last at around three-thirty A.M.,” he said sternly, leaning into me.
I remembered the call. Had forgotten about it until then.
“There was no one on the line,” I said more softly. “I mean, whoever it was, they didn’t say anything. I thought it was Ace.”
He looked at me hard, as if he were trying to see a lie in my eyes.
“If you’re monitoring my calls, then you know I’m telling the truth.”
“We’re not monitoring your calls,” he said, though I’m not sure why he’d think I’d believe him. “I subpoenaed your phone records this morning, trying to figure out why you went to Detroit.”
“Can you do that?” I asked, indignant. “I haven’t broken any laws.”
“If I thought you were aiding and abetting a wanted man, certainly, I could listen to your calls, have someone on you twenty-four seven.”
“That’s a lot of time and money for someone like Max. Meanwhile, I still don’t get what this has to do with your missing couple.”
Like the last time we’d met, he had a dark shadow of stubble on his jaw. I wondered if it was a look he was cultivating, something to make him look older, possibly unruly. He wasn’t like any of the other FBI agents I’d ever met. All of them had been stiff and clean-shaven, good boys with spotless records-or maybe that was just their shtick. Dylan Grace seemed lawless.
“I mean I really don’t get it,” I said when he remained silent. “You see my name in a notebook belonging to this missing writer, right? So instead of calling me and interviewing me, you make some arrangement with my photo lab to steal my pictures, then you accost me on the street and haul me in? It seems like you overreacted a little. I was a perfectly logical person for her to call-I’m practically the poster child for Project Rescue.”
He didn’t say anything, just kept those eyes on me.
“Okay, so there’s more to it,” I said after a moment of the two of us staring at each other. I thought about it a few seconds longer. “You plugged my name into whatever computers you have over there and you found out I was already under surveillance.”
He still didn’t say anything. It was pretty annoying.
“That’s right,” I said as he stood up and moved toward the door. “You get to ask all the questions. What is it you want from me?” I asked.
He opened the door. “Good night, Ms. Jones,” he said. “Sorry to have bothered you. I’ll be in touch.”
“Just tell me one thing,” I said, getting up and following him out into the hallway. “That overseas call? Where did it come from?”
“Why do you want to know?” he said, turning around.
“Just curious,” I said. “Maybe it was someone I know. You know, someone innocent.”
He considered it for a minute. Then: “London,” he said. “The call came from London. Know anybody there?”
I shrugged. “I guess not.”
After he left I tried to figure out what he’d gained by our conversation, and I couldn’t come up with anything. I’d received quite a bit of information, however. For the rest of the evening, I felt as if I’d gotten one over on Agent Grace. I wouldn’t figure out until later that he’d been the one to get over on me. He’d pressed all my buttons. Wind her up and watch her go.
ABOUT AN HOUR later as I lay on the couch watching a rerun of Gilligan’s Island, trying and failing to block out for a while everything that had happened and everything I had learned, I heard the key in the lock and Jake walked in. He wore a black wool coat over a gray V-neck cashmere sweater I had given him and a pair of Levi’s I think he’s had for ten years. He spotted me on the couch and moved toward me. I sat up and then went to him, let him take me into his arms. He held me hard, put his mouth to my hair. I pulled off his coat and he let it drop to the floor as he pressed his mouth to mine. The only feeling I had in my heart was desperation, this desperate need to connect to someone, to know someone well. I let him back me into the bedroom, let him lift my sweater over my head and watched as he lifted his off as well. I put my face to his chest and felt the silky hardness of his abs and chest.
“Are you okay?” he asked as he crawled on top of me on the bed, the frame creaking lightly beneath us. I could hear the television in the other room, see its blue flicker. I felt the heat of his body, watched his muscles flex and relax as he moved. I could smell the scent of his skin.
“Yes,” I breathed, putting my hands to his face. I felt the smoothness of his clean-shaven jaw, the ridges of his cheekbones. Everything about his face was so beautiful to me; when I looked into his green eyes, I could see his goodness, his strength. I loved him so much. It didn’t change all the reasons we couldn’t be together, but it kept me returning to his body, kept my skin seeking his skin over and over again in the sad dance we did.
The light coming from the doorway cast our shadows huge on the far wall, as the rest of the clothing that separated our flesh found its way to the floor. I let him take me hard, felt the need of his body and the greater need within him rocket through me, recognized the same need within myself. The song says that love is not enough (and we all know how true that is), but in that moment, in the electric pleasure of our lovemaking, in the sating of that awful need, I could almost believe it was enough and more.
“I WENT TO Detroit,” I said to him as he lay beside me, hand on my belly. “I talked to Nick Smiley.”
He didn’t seem surprised. Nothing I ever did seemed to surprise him. It was as if he’d already read the script of my life and was just waiting for events to unfold.
“Did he talk to you?” he asked, pushing himself up on his elbow. He seemed to be looking at a spot behind me somewhere.
“He did,” I answered.
“He’s crazy, you know,” Jake said after a minute. “Like clinically. Been in and out of psychiatric hospitals, has taken lithium for most of his adult life.”
I kept looking at his face; it seemed very still. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying forget about all of this,” he said with a sigh, finally meeting my eyes. “You said last night that you wanted to move on. Why don’t you? I’m going to try to move on, too.”
