So I explained about Skip and the Metro crash, his deathbed confession, and how I came into the possession of a certain Julius Garfinkel shopping bag full of letters and photos.
‘And your theory is? Humor me. I’m a reporter. I like to get things straight.’
‘Sometime before September seventh of this year, Skip, who I now know is Nick, stole some love letters from his mother’s home. I figure Nick reads the letters, does the math, and realizes, based on his birthday, that he has to be Zan’s son, conceived on or about New Year’s Eve 1986. He has no idea who Zan is, but naturally he wants to find out. He’s just moved to Baltimore, doesn’t know anybody, and he doesn’t want to use his mother’s high-profile attorneys because they might tell her what her son is up to, so he hooks up with a fly-by-night he saw advertising on late-night television.’
‘Always a good plan,’ Chandler said. ‘Like thinking you’ll get better service by picking up bimbos in bars rather than paying for high-end call girls.’
‘The Tiger Woods effect,’ Jud cut in.
Chandler rolled his eyes, then said, not unkindly, ‘Wilson, do shut up!’
‘So, Nick meets with this lawyer, a guy named James Hoffner by the way, shows him the letters and photos, and Hoffner, to his credit, actually figures out who Zan is. He tells Nick, who decides to pay a call on the guy Hoffner tells him is his father to check it out for himself.’
‘Like you did.’
‘Exactly like I did. My research led me to the same conclusion, Mr Chandler.’ I glanced from Chandler to Jud and back again, silently requesting Chandler’s permission to go on.
Face solemn, Chandler raised a hand like the Pope issuing a blessing.
I took a deep breath. ‘That conclusion is that you are the Zan who wrote those letters.’
Chandler remained silent. I could almost hear the wheels going around. I can neither confirm or deny…
Meanwhile, Jud seemed to have stopped breathing. He sat frozen in his chair, mouth at half-mast.
‘But whether you are Zan or not doesn’t really matter,’ I hastened to add. ‘What matters is what Nick believed. He believed you might be his father, and so he called Lynx News and tried to get an appointment to see you.’
‘And Meredith Logan answered the phone.’
‘Right. Just like Jud did when I called, coming down to meet me when I showed up at Lynx asking to see you, pretty much on the same errand.’
‘And Nicholas murdered Meredith because?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe she wouldn’t let him in to see you, he got angry, frustrated. He lashed out, lost control.’
‘So, how is this theory of hers holding up?’ Chandler asked, addressing this question to Jud.
Jud aimed the remote. ‘Nick came into the library, that’s certain. Now, as I said, we’re trying to find out when and where he left it.’
Chandler flapped a hand. ‘Carry on.’
For the next ten minutes we watched library employees come and go through the D Street entrance at herky-jerky silent film speed. Finally, Nick showed up. When I shouted, ‘There he is!’ Jud paused the image, then clicked forward slowly, frame by frame.
‘That’s definitely Nick,’ I said, leaning forward. ‘And this time he is carrying a shopping bag. Can you make the image larger?’
Jud twiddled a dial and zoomed in on the bag. As the image came into focus I could clearly read: Julius Garfinkel & Co.
‘That’s the bag,’ I said, staring meaningfully at Chandler. ‘That’s the one Nick had when he sat next to me on the Metro.’
Next to me, Chandler stirred. ‘Pan over a bit, Jud, then zoom in on his face.’
Jud did as he was asked.
Chandler grunted, sighed. ‘So, let me get this straight. On the morning of September seventh around ten o’clock, a guy named Nick Aupry goes to the Library of Congress. Security cameras show him checking in at the Thomas Jefferson building, but he is not carrying anything but a notebook. Yet, when he left at three thirty – from the Madison building – he’s carrying a distinctive bag. How do you think that happened?’
I opened my mouth to speak, but Jud beat me to it. ‘Either he left the building during the day, or he didn’t. If he left, say to have lunch, he could have picked the bag up then and brought it back in with him. On the other hand, if he didn’t leave the library complex at all between ten o’clock and three thirty, somebody must have given it to him.’
I raised my hand. ‘Permission to speak?’
Chandler smiled, nodded, so I continued. ‘My working theory is that Nick left the library, met Meredith, they got in an argument, he strangled her, fled, and got back to the library in time to catch the Metro.’
‘If he left and came back, it’d be on one of the tapes,’ Jud reasoned.
Chandler pointed at Jud. ‘Put our people on it.’
‘Do you think Meredith had the package of letters?’ I asked. ‘That Nick took it from her after her killed her?’
Chandler shook his head. ‘We’ve been over that footage a hundred times. When Meredith left our building, the only thing she carried was her handbag.’
‘But if the tapes show that Nick didn’t leave the library all day,’ I pointed out, ‘then he couldn’t have killed Meredith. Somebody else did.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So, either someone on the library staff gave him that bag, or somebody brought the bag in from outside the library,’ Chandler speculated. ‘Jud, have them check the videos for that, too.’
‘That could take hours,’ I said. ‘Days. Do I get to hang around?’
Jud smiled. ‘We’ve got Mugspot.’
I smiled at the name. ‘Facial recognition software?’
He nodded. ‘I’ll check with our experts, but if it can be programmed to look for a certain face, maybe they can tell it to look for a face that’s square and has Julius Garfinkel written across its forehead.’
Chandler stood. ‘Get on it, Jud, and call me when you have something.’
Jud snapped to attention. ‘Right away, Mr Chandler.’
After Jud left carrying the disks, Chandler turned to me. ‘I’m grateful that you came to us first with this information, Mrs Ives. Meredith was dedicated to her job, perhaps too dedicated. If you’re right, she died in an effort, however misguided, to protect me, to keep someone from tarnishing my reputation. I’m having a tough time dealing with that.’
It didn’t escape my attention that Chandler, smooth-tongued and unflappable, had never admitted to being Zan. He held out his hand. ‘We’ll be in touch, you can be certain of that.’
‘What are you going to do with the information?’ I asked as he accompanied me down the hall.
He hesitated in front of an oversized painting of the Washington Monument, a fitting backdrop, I thought, for a television journalist. Pain lined his face, as if he were about to report on a plane crash, or the death of a president. All he needed was a microphone. ‘We’ll check out the videos, all of them. If Aupry looks like our guy, we contact the police. That goes for Hoffner, too.’
Into the awkward silence that followed, I said, ‘And then?’
Chandler seemed to be studying his reflection in his shoes. Without raising his head, he said. ‘Then? Then we break the story.’
The answer came sooner than I expected. I was still in Union Station, down in the crowded food court, polishing off my creamy chicken at Pasta T’Go-Go when Jud texted my cell phone.
‘Got it. C U soon?’
‘In 10,’ I texted back.
Fifteen minutes later, Jud and I were back in the screening room sitting in front of the large television screen.
‘The suspense is killing me,’ I said, as Jud cued up the video. ‘Can’t you give me a hint?’
Jud smiled enigmatically, aimed, and pressed play.