“Just so. Not at all the sort of thing a respectable paper would lead with. Did I misunderstand your request for follow-up?”
“No. What’s the headline?”
“ ‘Avenger Twins Out For Blood,’ with a crime scene photo filling the remainder of the page.”
They wouldn’t print a picture of Karp in that state. What had I left? “Describe it.”
“Bloody handprints in a nice arc up the wall, body draped in a stained sheet and half covered in videocassettes, some of which are rather artistically unspooled over the victim’s eyes.”
A mock-up.
“The story itself is quite delightful. Another interview with the unbalanced young woman who claims to have been abused by the victim, this time with some interesting detail. Let’s see. They’re now calling Karp a serial abuser. Quotes from anonymous victims. A sick man, says one. An evil psychopath, says another. All very breathless. The real focus of the piece, however, seems to be these twins. At least on first pass. There’s a sidebar—two sidebars. One headed ‘Angels of Vengeance?’ and the other ‘Well-Versed Agents.’ Two rather unattractive artists’ impressions.”
“What do they look like?”
“Sweet but moronic thugs: corn-fed football players who have found god.”
“Even the woman?”
“Especially the woman.”
“Police comment?”
“Just the official statement: ‘We continue to pursue a variety of leads with all due diligence.’ However, reading between the lines I’d say the Daily Post has an unofficially sanctioned source inside the department. They have a lot of hard information disguised as tabloidese. In sidebar one, that’s the angel argument, if one can dignify such sloppy prose with that label, we’re told that all the tapes have been wiped clean, as though by a powerful magnetic source ‘not unlike that which could be produced by the healing auras said to emanate from saints.’ There is said to be no sign of a struggle, and no blood visible to the naked eye except on the victim and his immediate surroundings. It contradicts the crime scene photo, of course, but no doubt they’re assuming their readers have the average IQ of a second grader. But that’s a very specific qualification, ‘visible to the naked eye.’ The kind of phrasing used by a careful police press liaison.”
Or a prosecuting attorney.
“The second sidebar is equally informative. No fingerprints, they say, or, rather, four or five different sets, but none bloodstained.”
I’d worn gloves every time.
“No sign of forced entry. Evidence of information theft: the photocopier was on, and when the police arrived, the laptop—which is supposed to switch to sleep mode after sixty minutes’ nonuse—was fully powered.” I’d missed that. “Evidence, too, of prior surveillance of the victim—a café waitress and a gallery owner apparently remember someone who could fit the description. There is some speculation—”
“When was the suspect seen in the café?”
“The day of the assault, apparently. The morning. Ah, now this is interesting, fuel for the angel argument, perhaps—no earthly sustenance, and so on. According to the witness, she drank only water.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. Not the café where I had left the book, then, the book with the shiny cover that would hold fingerprints so well. “You were saying something about speculation.”
“Indeed. Professionals, they think: the surveillance, the wiped tapes, no fingerprints, and the laptop. ‘Sensitive documents,’ they say darkly. In other words, industrial espionage.”
Industrial espionage. That wouldn’t make any difference one way or the other to the official NYPD investigation. It might involve some of Karp’s corporate clients who would be anxious to discover whether confidential information about their retail operations had been leaked to the big wide world. A corporate security team would have more money and more time.
The toilet flushed. I didn’t really want to talk about this in front of Tammy.
“I don’t see what the Post’s interest is in all this.” There were literally dozens of more sensational stories in New York every week.
“Do you remember the original witness, the woman who was with the victim?”
“I remember that there was one.” And the shine and swing of her hair.
“Her name rang a bell, so I ran a search.”
I waited grimly. There was no point trying to hurry Eddie when he was in this kind of mood.
“She’s the daughter of the GOP’s next senatorial candidate for the state of New York.”
He paused, so I obliged. “And what’s the Post’s editorial stance?”
“Oh, very good. As yet uncommitted.”
“I see.”
“Precisely. One suspects the entire story—espionage flimflam, avenging angels, juicy hints of sexual perversion and all—is being built to keep reader interest alive, without annoying either the Democrats or Republicans, until the Post’s publisher makes up his mind which way to jump—that is, until he can work out which party could do him more favors on the Hill. Was she consorting with an evil abuser, and therefore probably a pervert herself, in which case what does that say about her father? Or was she an innocent involved with a sweet man who—”
Politics. Nothing to do with me.
“—all vastly entertaining.”
Unless, of course, the police had evidence they weren’t talking about: if they had found the book, or Karp had woken up. “Any information on a change in Karp’s—the victim’s—condition?”
“I don’t—Ah, here we go. He is now in a persistent vegetative state, which they helpfully translate for the reader as ‘a permanent vegetable.’ The patient’s doctors won’t comment on his condition in any detail, but ‘a consultant hired by the paper’ to review information already in the public domain says he would be surprised if the man lived another week, even with all the artificial assistance, which in his view is a needless waste of… yadda yadda yadda… oh, and he seems to think that as soon as the hospital finds a relative they’ll see if they can get permission to switch him off. He won’t survive that, the expert says, and even if he does, and I quote—where do they come up with these people?—he’d have the mental capacity of a Twinkie.”
Another metal bed in another white room.
We drove to Asheville the next morning, Tammy chattering, me answering in monosyllables.
I bought bedding, and a bed, plus armoire and dresser, and a couch, and mirror, shelving, a garbage can, and half a hundred other items.
“You don’t have to do this just for me,” she said, not meaning a word of it, but they were all things I’d need to get at some point.
On the way back we stopped at a car rental place, where I suggested something with four-wheel drive, enough horsepower to carry her up and down the mountain roads, and the weight to keep her safe if the snow came early.
“Why, how long do you think you’ll be gone?”
“I don’t know. A week or two. It’s hard to say.” Hard to say because apart from the fact that I would drive to Arkansas and learn how the girl was being treated, I had no idea what I was going to do. Tammy said nothing but she got that pinched look that meant she was afraid.
“You know people here now,” I reminded her. “Now, how about a Subaru wagon?”
The bed and chest went up into the loft easily enough, but the armoire took some maneuvering up the narrow stairs. Tammy grunted in satisfaction when we lifted it into place. “I’ve never been so strong.” She flexed her right biceps, then looked around. “Needs a rug.”
We stayed up late that night, Coleman lamps burning, while Tammy hammered up shelves and I hooked up the toilet and stove. By the time I carried in a bucket of water and flushed the toilet successfully, Tammy was wiping down the shelves and arranging food and crockery to her satisfaction. The bears would be hibernating about now and wouldn’t cause any trouble.