"Don't worry, they understand. We've worked it all out."
Her look faltered, and she turned away. "I don't know, Robert. Dear God, I should at least—"
"It will be better like this, believe me." I hesitated. "But we have to decide what to do about the car."
She closed her eyes now: I was afraid she might begin crying again. "I feel so sick about that. If only I'd told them…" I held her hand. There wasn't much I could say. If she'd remembered the car, the police might have found him. And if only I'd called out to my father — just once — he might have stopped. Yes. That was true. But it's also true that if people want to kill themselves, they'll find a way… I was suddenly very tired. I leaned back until my head rested against the partition. It trembled slightly as someone came in. This was another detective, black, carrying a Styrofoam cup of coffee. A phone began ringing in another room. Out in the hall, someone was whistling. I caught Katadotis giving me a look, but then he glanced away. For him, I thought, this scene was routine, and all our terrible emotions were as familiar as the highway signs on the road he took home every night. A feeling of unreality passed over me. I thought about May. Why hadn't she remembered the car? And the question I'd asked last night in Halifax came back again. How much of this had she known from the very beginning? But none of that made any difference now — because this was the end. Besides, we were all liars here. We were all acting parts. May was the Grieving Daughter, I was the Concerned Friend, Katadotis was the Dutiful Bureaucrat. But what we actually felt probably had little to do with Harry Brightman. I wondered if May wasn't feeling relief; at least the suspense was finally over. Maybe she even felt vindicated: everyone had doubted her, but now all her fears had proved true. As for myself, Brightman had almost passed out of my mind in the past twelve hours — if he had any emotional reality at all, it was only because of the peculiar correspondence his death had with my father's. And Katadotis, behind his concern, only wanted to be rid of us as fast as possible.
Beside me, May cleared her throat, but her voice was still rough. "What about the car?" she whispered.
"We have to get it back to Toronto. They'll release it now if we'll take it away. I could drive it back to your place and they'd send a policewoman with you on the plane."
She thought for a moment, then nodded. "All right… but I don't want anyone with me. You drive the car, but I'll go by myself."
"You shouldn't. Not alone."
"I'm all right now. I'll go over to Windsor and take the train. I'd like that, I think. I'd have time to pull myself together." She touched my hand. "But you're sure you don't mind, Robert? You've done so much already, I feel badly…"
This appeal — given what I'd been thinking — only sharpened my pangs of conscience. In fact, I wasn't at all sure that she should be traveling alone, and I now imagined catastrophe piling upon catastrophe, with May wandering around empty train stations overcome by hysterics. On the other hand, it was clear to me that I was going to end up dealing with the car one way or the other and I preferred doing so now. The whole business was over, I told myself, I might as well get it over with.
I levered myself up and crossed the room to Katadotis. "I'll take the car," I told him, "but she wants to go back alone."
His eyes flickered over my shoulder, then turned glassy. "She probably knows best, Mr. Thorne."
"Yes. But get a car to take her across the border."
"No problem there."
He went into his office. I helped May on with her coat, and when Katadotis returned we all went outside. November was here; there was a wintry chill in the air and the sunshine was brittle as glass. In silence, feeling a little awkward, we stood together inside the carved stone entrance of the headquarters building and stared out at the street. Then a scout car — that's what they call them in Detroit — pulled up at the curb and Katadotis motioned us into the wind. May took my arm as we went down the steps, leaning on me so hard that I had to stiffen myself. She was no mystery now… she was an exhausted, middle-aged woman whose father was dying over and over and over again — but she still couldn't believe it. I said, "Listen, are you sure you're going to be all right?"
She kissed me lightly on the cheek. "Bless you, Robert. Please don't worry."
"I'll probably be back tonight, but late."
She nodded, then smiled almost sheepishly. "I don't know what to say, Robert. If you hadn't been here I don't know how I would have got through this."
"Forget it. I'll see you tonight."
She gave me another quick kiss, then nodded at Katadotis and got into the car. Almost solemnly, Katadotis and I watched the car disappear, but as soon as it did I could feel his mood shift. Now, man to man, we could get down to business.
And what a business it was.
"If you'll just follow me, Mr. Thorne, we can walk to the morgue."
We headed down Beaubien. I hadn't been in Detroit for years, but the place seemed even more desolate than I remembered. The streets were deserted. The buildings around us were like the ruins of some earlier, greater civilization, long since overwhelmed. Only by lifting your eyes above the cheap aluminum storefronts and street-level squalor could you see the remains of past glories: skyscrapers from the twenties and thirties, many of them stone, their facades elegantly carved, their proportions supremely confident. Now most of their windows were boarded up and behind the grimy glass of others I read faded, despairing signs advertising bargain-basement rents. I felt depression creep over me — from this town; from this errand. We turned a corner, onto Lafayette. The morgue was across from the Water Board, behind Sam's Cut Rate Drugs. Katadotis signed me in and I followed him down a hall and through some doors to a long, half-lit, white-tiled room where the temperature was always 38 degrees Fahrenheit— just as it is in morgues all over the world. The banks of stainless-steel crypts, behind meat-locker doors, lined the walls. Waiting for Katadotis to scrounge up some official, I started to count them, remembering that night in Brightman's study when I'd counted his pictures. Yes — there was the true reason for my depression: I'd never discovered their secret, and Brightman, occupying one of the 186 slabs before me, had rendered all my questions irrelevant. Except, it turned out, he wasn't there at all. Katadotis came bustling back with a frown on his face. "There's been a screw-up, Mr. Thorne. They've still got him downstairs."
He led me outside, to an elevator. Descending a floor, we stepped into a large, low basement room. Fluorescent lights gave off a wan blue haze and the tiles were a dirty-brown color. Every sound seemed to echo in the chill air. Four steel tables, like a line of perspective, were spaced through the room, with three men grouped around the one farthest away. I could hear a low murmur: "Kidney, 156 grams… spleen, 333…"
Katadotis turned grim. "Sorry, Mr. Thome. No reason you should have to go through any of this."
I could have told him I'd done the obligatory stint as a police reporter, but that would have been bravado. He marched off. I grew conscious of a wet, washed smell in the air and realized I wasn't trying too hard to breathe. I licked my lips: but you could taste that smell too. I watched Katadotis consult with the men around the table and after a moment he beckoned. Unhappily, legs stiff, I crossed the room. Coming up to the table I told myself not to look, but of course you do: a corpse, half covered in a baby-blue plastic sheet. But at least it wasn't Brightman — I wouldn't have to look at his guts — for now Katadotis stepped around the table and gestured me beyond it. Here, pushed casually into a corner, was a wheeled stretcher. Katadotis murmured, "I don't know how this happened, Mr. Thome. They should have sent him up hours ago."