“I’m sure that’s how everything probably looks when you see it from the outside,” he said finally. “If you don’t know a system, if you don’t understand how things work or what the rules are, it won’t make any sense. The way a foreign language will sound like gibberish.”
Ruby grimaced at him. “But nothing’s that strange. If you listen to a foreign language for even just a minute, you start picking up some sense of the patterns in it. You recognize it’s a system even if it’s one you’re not familiar with—”
“Oh?” Pasco’s half-smile was back. “Ever listened to Hungarian?”
She waved a hand at him. “No, but I’ve listened to Cantonese and Mandarin, simultaneously at full volume when my grandparents argued. You know what I mean. For a system—or anything—to be completely incomprehensible, it would have to be something totally—” She floundered, groping for a word. “It would have to be something totally alien. Outside human experience altogether.”
Her words replayed themselves in her mind. “Christ,” she said, massaging her forehead. “What the hell are we talking about and why?”
Pasco pressed his lips together briefly. “You were saying that there are a lot of things about my case that don’t make any sense.”
“You got that right, my man,” she said feelingly and then let out a long sigh. “I suppose that’s the human element at work.”
“Pardon?” Now he looked bewildered.
“People are infinitely screwy,” she said. “Human beings can make a mess out of chaos.”
He surprised her by bursting into loud, hearty laughter. She twisted around in her seat to see that the whole room was staring at them curiously. “Thanks, I’ll be here all week,” she said a bit self-consciously and turned back to Pasco, trying to will him to wind down fast. Her gaze fell on the notebook screen again.
“Hey, what about her retainer?” she asked, talking over his guffaws.
“Her what?” Pasco said, slightly breathless and still chuckling a little.
“On her teeth.” Ruby tapped the screen with her little finger. It felt spongy. “Were you able to trace it to a particular orthodontist?”
“She wasn’t wearing a retainer and they didn’t find one in the house,” Pasco said, sobering.
“And what about her parents?”
“The Nakamuras have dropped out of sight again.”
“Popped out of existence?”
“I thought so at first,” he said, either oblivious to or ignoring her tone of voice. “But then that girl turned up on the roof yesterday, which leads me to believe they were still around. Up to that point, anyway. They might be gone by now, though.”
“Why? You think they had something to do with the girl’s death?”
“Not intentionally.”
Ruby shook her head. “Intentionally, unintentionally—either way, why? Who is she to them—the long-lost twin of the girl who died of heart failure?” Abruptly the Dread gave her stomach a half-twist; she swallowed hard and kept talking. “How long ago was that anyway, when you found Alice Nakamura?”
Pasco hesitated, his face suddenly very serious. “I didn’t find her. I mean, I only pinpointed the address. I wasn’t there when the police entered the house. The Geek Squad never goes along on things like that. I think the other cops are afraid of geeks with guns.”
“But you’re cops, too.”
“Exactly. Anyway—” He swivelled the notebook around and tapped the keyboard a few times. “That was about five and a half weeks ago, almost six.” He looked up again. “Does that suggest anything special to you?”
Ruby shook her head. “You?”
“Just that the Nakamuras have managed to lay pretty low for quite a while. I wonder how. And where.”
Ruby wanted to ask him something about that but couldn’t quite figure out how to word the question. “And you’re absolutely sure that girl—Alice Nakamura, I mean—died of natural causes?”
“None whatsoever. Also, she wasn’t abused or neglected in any way before she died, either. She was well taken care of. She just happened to be very sick.”
“Uh-huh.” Ruby nodded absently. “Then why would they just go off and leave her?”
“If they didn’t want to be found—and judging from their behaviour, they didn’t—then they couldn’t carry her dead body along with them.”
“All right, that makes sense,” Ruby said. “But it still leaves the question of why they don’t want to be found. Because they’re in on this identity theft thing, conspiracy, whatever it is?”
“Or because they’re victims of identity theft who have had to steal a new identity themselves.”
Ruby closed her eyes briefly. “OK, now we’re back to not making sense again.”
“No, it’s been known to happen,” Pasco insisted. “For some people, when their identity gets stolen, the thief does so much damage that they find it’s virtually impossible to clear their name. They have to start over.”
“But why steal someone else’s identity to do that?” Ruby asked. “Why not just create an entirely new identity?”
“Because the created identity would eventually trace back to the old one. Better to get one with completely different connections.”
Ruby shook her head obstinately. “You could still do that with a brand new identity.”
Pasco was shaking his own head just as obstinately. “The idea isn’t just to steal someone’s identity—it’s to steal their past, too. If I create a new identity, I really do have to start over in every way. That’s pretty hard. It’s easier if I can, say, build on your already-excellent credit rating.”
“Obviously you’ve never tried to steal my identity,” Ruby said with a short, humourless laugh. “Or you’d know better than to say something like that.”
“I was just giving an example.”
Ruby let out a long breath. “I think I’ll pay the coroner a visit, see if there’s anything he can tell me about how Alice Nakamura’s twin died. Maybe it’ll tell us something about—oh, I don’t know, anything. In a way that will make sense.” She stood up to go back to her desk.
“Hey—” Pasco caught her wrist; the contact startled her and he let go immediately. “What if she died of natural causes?”
“Jesus, you really can dream things up, can’t you.” Ruby planted her fists on her hips and gave him a hard look. “That would be entirely too much of a coincidence.”
“Natural causes,” said the coroner’s assistant, reading from a clipboard. Her ID gave her name as Sheila St. Pierre; there was a tiny Hello, Kitty sticker under the St. She was a plump woman in her mid-twenties with short, spiky blonde hair and bright red cat’s-eye glasses and, while she wasn’t chewing gum, Ruby kept expecting to hear it pop every time she opened her mouth. “Aneurysm. Tragic in one so young, you know?”
“You’re sure you have the right chart?” Ruby asked tensely.
“Unidentified Oriental adolescent female, brought in yesterday from a roof-top in east midtown, right?” Sheila St. Pierre offered Ruby the clipboard. “See for yourself.”
Ruby scanned the form quickly several times before she was able to force herself to slow down and check each detail. “How can a thirteen-year-old girl have a fucking aneurysm?” she said finally, handing the clipboard back to the other woman. “The coroner must have screwed up. Where is he? I want to make him do it again.”
“There’s no do-overs in post-mortems,” Sheila St. Pierre said, making a face. “What do you think we’re working with here, Legos?” She shifted her weight to her right side and folded her arms, hugging the clipboard to her front. “How about a second opinion?”