"I didn't kill her. You know I didn't."
"You walk away from me, and I can't help you anymore."
"You searched my mind. I saw you do it. You saw that I was innocent."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"You know it's true."
"I'm telling you: You walk away, you're done. No one will be able to help you."
"You'd've arrested me by now if you thought I was guilty."
"We can talk about it as we drive."
"No. I'm not going."
"I'm telling you-"
"Arrest me, Detective. Arrest me or let me go."
We stood there, stood there, a moment like forever, his hand on my elbow, his eyes on mine. I could feel us balanced on a vanishing edge-him and me and Serena and the city-balanced there motionless while the gears of the corpse factory turned, the great equation of its limitless design working itself out with nothing to skew the end result-nothing except that butterfly flutter in both our breasts.
Then Curtis's hand opened. He released his hold on me. I went on standing there, staring at him.
"You are making a very big mistake," he said.
But at the same time, his arm lowered to his side. And still I went on-went on standing there. I couldn't believe what was happening. I couldn't believe he was setting me free.
"I have to do this," I said. I sounded unsure. I sounded as if I were waiting for him to talk me out of it.
"You try to leave town," he said, "and I'll bust you on the spot."
I took a slow, hesitant step backward.
"Mr. Harrow," he said, "you ought to reconsider-"
I took another step back. Another. Detective Curtis stood where he was, stood by the car, holding the passenger door open as if inviting me to change my mind, as if expecting me to change my mind.
I stopped backing away. I stood again, looking at him. Then I blinked. Then I turned around. I started walking out of the parking lot, walking away. I felt distant from myself, as if I were floating above my body, watching it go. I didn't know yet where I was headed. I just knew I was alone. That there was only me. Only me who understood. Only me who knew. Only me who could stop it.
The clouds darkened and billowed over the avenue. I hurried away from the morgue.
I was thinking, God help me. God help me.
The Patriot Acts
When Rashid's secretary left for home that evening, I walked into the professor's office and hit him with a hammer. I would not have thought I could do such a thing, but in the end it was easy.
I'd been sitting in the park before that. Sitting on a bench in Central Park for hours, trying to figure out what to do. There was no one I could call, no one I could ask. My wife would tell me to act sensibly, go back to the police, straighten things out. The police, the FBI: They thought I was a killer; they thought Piersall and Diggs were cranks; they thought Rashid was innocent. The time was draining away, sand through an hourglass. And I was the only one who knew.
I watched the people pass, watched them walking by under the plane trees, by the statues, against the backdrop of the Great Lawn. I watched their faces. New York is a good city for faces. There are so many, all so different from each other, about as many different kinds as there can be. Overwrought as I was, I grew quite sentimental about it. You know: watching the black and the white and the yellow faces, different religions and no religion, straight-arrow and all the variations on the theme of strange. All of them going wherever they were going, doing whatever they were going to do. Making machines or businesses or works of art, debasing themselves for gain or praying for salvation, slavering after celebrities or caring for their children or mindlessly murdering time. The endless repetition of the human equation, of the original thought in the mind of God, free to work itself out each alone and all together into the pattern of history, our history. Yes, I grew quite sentimental. I thought: What a wonderful idea for a country this is. What a wonderful place for those men to have imagined for us, those men from the old days, those dead white European men. "A republic," they said, "if you can keep it." What a wonderful idea.
After a while, I got off the bench and went to buy a hammer.
I walked as if I were in a trance. My head felt as if it were full of cotton. My thinking was slow and muddy. My body seemed like a burden I was dragging behind me, a sack of wet sand. I knew now what I had to do, and yet there were still so many doubts, so many questions. Was Casey Diggs really the boy Serena had seen murdered in the swamp? Had she really seen it? Had it really happened? And the things Piersall said about Diggs-and the things Diggs said about Rashid-were any of them true? What was real and what wasn't?
The questions nagged me, bothered me, haunted me as I crossed the park. I couldn't answer them and I couldn't make them stop. At one point, I even began to wonder: Was it possible that Curtis was right? Had I killed Anne Smith and somehow repressed the memory? I mean, I could remember going up the stairs to her apartment well enough. I could remember running away. Was it possible I had blacked out what happened in between?
And yet, still-still-I knew what I had to do. And at the same time these questions played and replayed in my brain, I found myself going about the terrible business at hand. Hunting down a hardware store on Columbus Avenue, picking out the hammer, duct tape, a box cutter, a small sanding sponge that I could stuff into Rashid's mouth. Because they had Serena. Because they were going to attack the city-the country-my country and all its faces. Because I was the only one who could stop it. And Rashid was the only one who knew the plan.
When I look back now, the whole thing seems lunatic, impossible. But at the time, it seemed inevitable, a matter of destiny. I knew what I had to do.
I rode up to the university on the subway, sitting on the molded seat with my plastic shopping bag from the hardware store on my lap. Under the rattle of the train, the questions in my brain faded to a dim distance. I stared into space, my head stuffy, my thoughts dull. I jounced passively with the train's rattling rhythm.
When I reached my stop, I trudged wearily up the station stairs. My bag hung heavy in my hands. I was glad to step up onto the sidewalk and feel the cool wind blowing. There was moisture in the air now-not raindrops, just a refreshing dampness. That revived me a little as I trudged across the street to the campus.
The administration building was another of these grand, massive Roman places. It looked like the Pantheon with an expansive dome up top and a bold colonnade in front. Just the sight of the long sweep of stone stairs leading up to the entranceway made me feel tired. I actually had to stop to rest halfway through the climb. I thought: I really am not feeling very well. Then I started walking again. I really seemed to be in an altered state of mind at that point, feverish and detached. But I knew…
There was a pleasant lady with dyed blonde hair at an information counter just inside the door. I asked her where Rashid's office was, and she gave me directions in a friendly tone of voice. It was that easy. It reinforced my sense that this was inevitable, that it was meant to be.
Off I trudged again, out between the columns and back down the long, long sweep of stairs.
The office was not far. It was in a large, impressive building of brick and stone. The building was set in a peaceful corner of the campus. There were yellow plane trees on the path outside and a spreading black maple tree, its leaves a brilliant red. There was a bronze cast of Rodin's The Thinker under one of the trees. As I approached, a few students went walking past it, laughing, chatting, carrying their books in their arms or in packs on their backs. How stately and peaceful and academic it all looked. I continued along the path toward the building, carrying my plastic bag with its hammer and duct tape and box cutter and the sponge I would stuff in Rashid's mouth.