Lash sat a moment longer, preparing himself. Then he opened the door, came around the car, and walked toward the house.
The sound of the doorbell echoed hollowly through the rooms beyond. As the chimes died away, silence briefly returned. Then, the tread of feet descending stairs. The outside light came on, and the eyehole cover was scraped away. A moment later, the thud of the deadbolt; the barred door pulled back; and there was Mary English, blinking out into the glow of the streetlight.
She was still wearing her work clothes, but she had clearly been interrupted in washing up: her lipstick was gone, but the mascara remained. Although it had been only a year since the last therapy session with her husband, she now looked far older than her forty years — there were hollows beneath her eyes the makeup couldn’t hide, and a tracery of fine lines ran away from the corners of her mouth. Her eyes went wide with recognition, and in them Lash read a complex mix of emotions: surprise, pleasure, hope, fear.
“Dr. Lash!” she said a little breathlessly. “I–I can’t believe you’re here. What is it?”
Lash took a deep breath. “I think you know what it is, Mary.”
“No, I don’t know. What’s happened? Do you want to come in? Have a cup of coffee?” And she held the door open for him.
Lash remained in the doorway, trying to keep his voice cool, his face expressionless. “Mary, please. This will only make it worse.”
She looked at him, uncomprehending.
For a moment, Lash hesitated. Then he remembered how it had been the first time he’d confronted her, on this same stoop, and he forced himself on.
“Denial won’t help, Mary. You’ve been harassing me again — phoning my house, tampering with my mail. I want you to stop it, please, and stop it now.”
Mary did not speak. But as she looked at him, she seemed to age even more. Her eyes slowly fell away from his, and her shoulders slumped.
“I can’t deal with this again, Mary. Not right now. So I want you to agree to stop this before it escalates again. I want you to say you’ll stop this, say it to my face. Please, don’t force my hand.”
At this, she looked up again, her eyes glittering with sudden anger.
“Is this some kind of cruel joke?” she spat at him. “Look at me. Look at my house. There’s barely a stick of furniture in it. I’ve lost custody of my child. It’s a struggle just to see him alternate weekends. Oh, God…”
As quickly as it had come, the anger receded. Tears traced muddy lines of mascara. “I’ve complied with the judge. I’ve done everything you asked.”
“Then why is my mail missing again, Mary? Why all the hang-up calls?”
“You think that’s me? Do you think I could bring myself to do that, after all that’s happened… after what your judge did to my life, to my—” Further words were choked off by a sob.
Lash hesitated, not quite sure what to say. The anger, the sadness, seemed genuine. But then again, borderlines like Mary English did feel anger, misery, depression. It was just misdirected. And they were very good at dissembling, at twisting things back on you, making you, not them, the guilty party…
“How could you come here like this, hurt me this way?” she sobbed. “You’re a psychologist, you’re supposed to help people…”
Lash stood in the doorway, silent and increasingly uncertain, waiting for the emotions to play themselves out.
The sobs ceased. And a moment later, her shoulders straightened.
“How could I possibly have ever been attracted to you?” she asked in a quiet voice. “Back then, you struck me as a man who cared, who had it all together. A man with a little sense of mystery.” She brusquely wiped away a tear. “But you know what I decided, lying here awake at night, alone, in my empty house? Your mystery is the mystery of a man who’s got nothing inside. A man who’s got nothing of himself to give.”
She reached behind her, fumbled with a box of tissues on the hall table, cursed when she found it empty. “Get out of here,” she said quietly, without meeting his gaze. “Get out of here, please. Leave me be.”
Lash stared at her. By old habit, half a dozen clinical replies came to mind. But sorting through them, none seemed appropriate. So he simply nodded and turned away.
He started the car, did a U-turn, retraced his route down the street. But before he got to the corner, he pulled over to the curb and stopped. In the rearview mirror, he could see that the front light of 9148 Jefferson had already been extinguished.
What had Richard Silver said, in that vast room floating sixty stories above Manhattan? It’s reassuring, knowing you’re assisting us. Here, staring out into the dark, Lash felt no such reassurance.
NINETEEN
The following morning, as he walked from a Manhattan parking garage, Lash stopped outside a magazine shop, set into the base of a vast apartment house and drowned in the shade of the facing buildings. He stepped inside, his eye quickly scanning the headlines of local and national newspapers: the Kansas City Star, the Dallas Morning News, the Providence Journal, the Washington Post. He breathed a small sigh of relief on finding no stories detailing double suicides among happily married couples. Leaving the shop, he turned right on Madison Avenue, heading for the Eden building. Now I know how Louis XVI must have felt, he thought; getting up each morning under the shadow of the axe, never knowing if this was to be the day of ultimate revelation.
Though he remained tired, he felt a little better about the night before. Borderlines like Mary English were excellent liars, actors in their own way. He’d done the right thing. He’d have to keep a close eye for future signs of stalking, just in case.
He arrived in the lobby a little early but Tara Stapleton was already there waiting for him. She was wearing a dark skirt and sweater, without jewelry of any kind. She smiled briefly, and they exchanged a few pleasantries about the weather, but she seemed as remote as she had the day before.
Leading him past the security perimeter and down a wide unmarked corridor, Tara instructed him in crisp sentences on the finer points of getting in and out of the inner tower. Although there were two entrance portals at Checkpoint I, the morning crush of employees meant a five-minute wait. Tara spoke very little, so Lash listened discreetly to the conversations going on around him. There was excited chatter about a memo that had circulated recently, reporting client applications were up thirty percent. There was remarkably little talk about last night’s ball game or how the morning commute had gone. It was as Mauchly said: these people genuinely loved what they did.
Once past the checkpoint, Tara showed Lash to an office reserved for him on the sixteenth floor. The door had no key, but was opened by a bracelet scanner. The office was windowless, but pleasantly bright and large, with a desk and table, a large empty bookcase, and a computer, also sporting a scanner. The only other feature was a small panel, set low in one wall, allowing access to the inner tower’s omnipresent data conduit.
“I’ve arranged to have all the results for the Thorpes and Wilners brought to you,” she said. “We’ll have the data terminal online for you this morning, and I’ll show you how to access records as needed. You’ll need to scan your bracelet before you can log on. Here’s my extension and cell number if you need to reach me.” She placed a card on the table. “I’ll come back for you at lunch.”