the file on the table and introduced the other guy as her partner. She said his name was Docherty. She said he had come up with a bunch of questions that maybe should have been asked and answered at the outset.
‘What questions?’ I asked.
First she offered me coffee and the bathroom. I said yes to both. Docherty escorted me down the corridor and when we got back there were three foam cups on the table, next to the file. Two coffees, one tea. I took a coffee and tried it. It was OK. Lee took the tea. Docherty took the second coffee and said, ‘Run through it all again.’
So I did, concisely, bare bones, and Docherty fussed a bit about how the Israeli list had produced a false positive, the same way that Lee had. 1 answered him the same way I had answered her, that a false positive was better than a false negative, and that looking at it from the dead woman’s point of view, whether she was heading for a solo exit or planning to take a crowd with her might not alter the personal symptoms she would be displaying. For five minutes we had a collegiate atmosphere going, three reasonable people discussing an interesting phenomenon.
Then the tone changed.
Docherty asked, ‘How did you feel?’
I asked, ‘About what?’
‘While she was killing herself.’
‘Glad that she wasn’t killing me.’
Docherty said, ‘We’re homicide detectives. We have to look at all violent deaths. You understand that, right? Just in case.’
I said, ‘Just in case of what?’
‘Just in case there’s more than meets the eye.’
‘There isn’t. She shot herself.’
‘Says you.’
‘No one can say different. Because that’s what happened.’
Docherty said, ‘There are always alternative scenarios.’
‘You think?’
‘Maybe
Theresa Lee gave me a sympathetic look. I said, ‘I didn’t.’
Docherty said, ‘Maybe it was your gun.’
I said, ‘It wasn’t. It was a two-pound piece. I don’t have a bag.’
‘You’re a big guy. Big pants. Big pockets.’
Theresa Lee gave me another sympathetic look. Like she was saying,
I said, ‘What is this? Good cop, dumb cop?’
Docherty said, ‘You think I’m dumb?’
‘You just proved it. If I shot her with a .357 Magnum, I’d have residue on me up to my elbow. But you just stood outside the men’s room while I washed my hands. You’re full of shit. You haven’t fingerprinted me and you haven’t Mirandized me. You’re blowing smoke.’
‘We’re obliged to make certain.’
‘What does the medical examiner say?’
‘We don’t know yet.’
‘There were witnesses.’
Lee shook her head. ‘No use. They didn’t see anything.’
‘They must have.’
‘Their view was blocked by your back. Plus they weren’t looking, plus they were half asleep, and plus they don’t speak much English. They had nothing to offer. Basically I think they wanted to get going before we started checking green cards.’
‘What about the other guy? He was in front of me. He was wide awake. And he looked like a citizen and an English speaker.’
‘What other guy?’
‘The fifth passenger. Chinos and a golf shirt.’
Lee opened the file. Shook her head. ‘There were only four passengers, plus the woman.’
NINE
Lee took a sheet of paper out of the file and reversed it and slid it halfway across the table. It was a handwritten list of witnesses. Four names. Mine, plus a Rodriguez, a Flrlujlov, and an Mbele.
‘Four passengers,’ she said again.
I said, ‘I was on the train. I can count. I know how many passengers there were.’ Then I re-ran the scene in my head.
Stepping off the train, waiting among the small milling crowd. The arrival of the paramedic crew. The cops, stepping off the train in turn, moving through the throng, taking an elbow each, leading the witnesses away to separate rooms. I had gotten grabbed first, by the big sergeant. Impossible to say whether four cops had followed behind us, or only three.
I said, ‘He must have slipped away.’
Docherty asked, ‘Who was he?’
‘Just a guy. Alert, but nothing special about him. My age, not poor.’
‘Did he interact in any way with the woman?’
‘Not that I saw.’
‘Did he shoot her?’
‘She shot herself.’
Docherty shrugged. ‘So he’s just a reluctant witness. Doesn’t want paperwork showing he was out and about at two in the morning. Probably cheating on his wife. Happens all the time.’
‘He ran. But you’re giving him a free pass and looking at me instead?’
‘You just testified that he wasn’t involved.’
‘I wasn’t involved either.’
‘Says you.’
‘You believe me about the other guy but not about myself?’
‘Why would you lie about the other guy?’
I said, ‘This is a waste of time.’ And it was. It was such an extreme, clumsy waste of time that I suddenly realized it wasn’t for real. It was stage managed. I realized that in fact, in their own peculiar way, Lee and Docherty were doing me a small favour.
I said, ‘Who was she?’
Docherty said, ‘Why should she be someone?’
‘Because you made the ID and the computers lit up like Christmas trees. Someone called you and told you to hold on to me until they get here. You didn’t want to put an arrest on my record so you’re stalling me with all this bullshit.’
‘We didn’t particularly care about your record. We just didn’t want to do the paperwork.’
‘So who was she?’
‘Apparently she worked for the government. A federal agency is on its way to question you. We’re not allowed to say which one.’
They left me locked in the room. It was an OK space. Grimy, hot, battered, no windows, out-of-date crime prevention posters on the walls and the smell of sweat and anxiety and burnt coffee in the air. The table, and three chairs. Two for the detectives, one for the suspect. Back in the day maybe the suspect got smacked around and
