I was distracted by Amy lighting another cigarette. It’s the simple things that seem the most wrong. Even though it was clear to me that I was not there with someone I understood, I didn’t want her to leave. Once this person left, whatever she was now calling herself, I could be left with no one at all. So I started asking questions again.
“What was Anderson’s ghost machine?”
She sighed. “You shouldn’t know about that either.”
“Tough. I do. What was so important that a guy like Bill had to be killed? And his wife and child?”
“He chanced upon something that allowed the eye to glimpse certain things.”
“Christ, Amy—just be straight with me. What things?”
“The clue’s in the title, Mr. Whalen.”
“The machine meant you could see ghosts?”
“Souls. While they’re waiting to come back again. They’re all around us, they live in a…Trust me, it was a bad machine. No good would have come of it. People are better off not knowing certain things.”
“So Cranfield paid Bill to drop his research.”
“Joseph was a kind man, and he had become rich and powerful and gotten used to handling things his own way. Even people with his experience forget the broader picture once in a while. It was a mistake. It should have been discussed among the Nine.”
“Who are they?”
“The people who look after things. Make strategic decisions. First among equals. You know the kind of thing.”
I realized that another man was sitting on the bench in the Square now. He was not communicating with the first man, just sitting at the other end, watching the world go by. And a woman in her late fifties was standing by herself on the other side, near the totem pole.
“Unfortunately, the money made Anderson aware he was onto something,” Rose said. “He started hinting about his work to people on the Internet.”
“That was his big crime? Hinting?”
“There will come a time when the Internet will be our best ally. Sooner or later someone there will have said everything that can be said, proved every cross-eyed piece of lunacy, and then there’ll be no distinction between what’s true and what’s not. We’re not there yet.”
“So your people had Anderson murdered.”
“Nothing should have happened to his family.”
“But now I know some things. So—”
“You think you know, that’s all. And I’m sure you realize how it sounds. How seriously did you take Gary when he told you what he thought he knew?”
“So what happens to me?”
“That’s up for discussion—though not with you.” She hesitated. “I find myself unable to mandate the usual course of action. Amy’s still strong. But that will pass.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” I said. My voice felt shaky. “She’s pretty tough.”
“We do, however, know about the night when you allegedly chanced upon suspicious activity in Los Angeles. We know that your colleagues and Internal Affairs elected to accept your version of events on the basis of exemplary previous ser vice and on the fact that the four men you shot dead would not be missed by their own mothers. But I also know, because Amy knows, that’s not the way it was. You went out that night looking for two of those men, and you took your gun but not your radio or your badge. What happened was premeditated. Amy could testify to that.”
“She wouldn’t,” I said.
“Maybe. But I would.”
“In which case I’d start talking.”
“And all that gets you is a cell with thicker padding on the walls. Your record is not your friend here. Nor your personality in general.”
There was coldness in her voice now that made me realize I’d spoken with this woman at least once before. The day I’d seen Amy, on the pier, for some of the time I’d been dealing with Rose. And before that? Presumably. Maybe from the day we met, those moments when my wife had seemed just a little different, unaccountable, not quite like herself. As we all do, from time to time.
When had Rose started to take fuller control? When we lost the child that would have kept us together? Could an event like that have made Amy start to withdraw deeper inside herself, leaving the stage empty? Or was it just something that was destined to follow its course, an assumption of power that happened according to schedule?
“So who’s the guy in the pictures on your phone?”
She smiled. It was a warm, private smile, the kind to make a husband sad. “His name’s Peter, since you ask.”
“I didn’t ask his fucking name. I asked who he was.”
“Oh, sorry. He’s a computer programmer, Jack. He lives in San Francisco. He’s twenty-four. He plays guitar in a band. He’s very good. Is that more what you meant?”
I didn’t know what I’d meant. “How long have you been seeing him?”
“We’ve only met once. Night before last, in L.A.”
“That’s why you were down there?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “How come you had pictures of him, if you never met before?”
“One of our other helpers tracked him down. She took some pictures, sent them to me. She had the preliminary conversation with him, which is one of the tasks the shepherds perform. We exchanged text messages after that.”
“I still don’t get it. What do you mean, ‘tracked him down’?”
The smile still hadn’t left her face, and it made me aware how long it had been since I’d seen a glow like this on her. I wondered how much of that was my fault and how much of it had been outside our control.
“A long time ago,” she said, “there lived a young woman who was very, very much in love. With a jazz musician. An incredibly talented man, someone who could create music like nobody else, who could…Well, I guess you had to be there. But this man was also someone who couldn’t come to terms with the nature of who he was, of the way things worked in his head. He fought himself. He drank too much. He died very young. But I’ve found him again now, and it will be different this time.”
“So is he here? In Seattle?”
“No. He needs time to adjust. But the first meeting went very well. I think he’ll come here soon. I hope so.”
“Do you love him?”
“I always have.”
For a moment I hated her very badly, of course, yet still I didn’t want her to go. I’d spent the last seven years of my life with someone who at least looked like this woman. I knew that when I stood up, the first step I took would be into a world I’d never been to before.
She was glancing across at the square more often now. There were now five or six people standing there, unconnected but in the same space.
I looked at her face, remembering all the ways I’d seen it, all the places.
“Did you do anything about Annabel’s birthday?”
She grinned, and for a moment it was different, and in her eyes I saw something of a woman I used to know. More than something. A lot.
“Check,” she said. “Girl’s going crazy in Banana Republic ’round about now.”
Then she was gone. “Don’t worry,” Rose said briskly. “Amy will continue to do her jobs, perform her roles in other people’s lives. No one but you will ever know.”
“And what about me?”
“What about you?” she said, and the conversation was over. Her cup was empty. I’d run out of time.
“What is it about this place?” I asked nonetheless. “This square? Why does it feel like it does?”
“There are places where the wall is thinner,” she said. “This is one of them. That’s all.”
I counted the people now standing beneath the trees, as if they were eight strangers, looking in different directions. One of them over the far side, I now noticed, was Ben Zimmerman.
“I only see eight.”
“Joe was the ninth,” she said. “A replacement has been selected.”