“Why don’t we head back into the offices,” he says.
I follow Officer Keller through the door, down a narrow hall, and into a small room with a desk and three mismatched chairs. There are no photos or plaques or posters on the walls; no bookshelf, no personal touches at all. Just a desktop computer and some notepads and files.
“Dawn showed me your article,” he says. “It’s a little frustrating, actually. I mean, we’re not the ones who insisted on burying her without an autopsy. I don’t know why he called the newspaper instead of us if he had a problem.”
“He said he called, but didn’t hear back.”
“Do you know who he talked to?”
“I don’t,” I say.
Dawn comes in and sets two mugs of coffee on the desk.
“I’ll be right back with milk and sugar,” she says, and seconds later she is back with milk and sugar.
“Can I get you anything else?” she asks.
“We’re great, Dawn, thank you,” says Officer Keller. I imagine he spends quite a lot of time being polite to Dawn.
“Holler if you need me,” she says, beaming.
We each reach for our coffee and take a sip. I look up and he’s looking at me.
“Didn’t Chief tell you to call the State Police?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “Should I?”
“We haven’t had a homicide in Roseville in years, so Chief thought it was best if we hand the case over to the State Police. They have a lot more resources. That’s where the crime lab is. Mostly we do drug arrests, assaults, robbery, DUIs. Water deaths are particularly tricky. Even with an autopsy it can be difficult to determine a cause-or a time-of death.”
“That’s what I’ve heard,” I say. “So, I guess I should reach out to the State Police?”
Officer Keller nods. “I’m not sure who’s assigned. I’ve actually been meaning to follow up, though. We didn’t have much, unfortunately. The family was real adamant about getting her body to the funeral home. But I did get some photos.” He pauses. “Chief’s off today and he hates it when we call him for anything that isn’t an emergency. How about I call the State Police and see what’s going on?”
“Great,” I say.
Van Keller picks up his phone and presses a single button.
“Hey Dawn, could you get me Kevin Durant at the State Police? Thanks.” He looks at me and smiles. “She’s a nice girl, Dawn.”
“She definitely likes you,” I say, although I know I shouldn’t. I haven’t felt even remotely attractive in months. Some of it is about my hair-or lack thereof. But the real truth is that it takes confidence to flirt. And when I received the news that Aviva was alive, the knowledge of her sudden proximity, her now-definite realness, sucked away almost all the confidence I’d built up about who I am and how I interact with the world. I couldn’t find a way to imagine a future with her in it, and the notion of the emotional obstacle course I was going to have to conquer when she walked into my life seemed utterly exhausting, if not impossible. No matter who she is, I will have to find a way to live with her. Alone in my apartment, or bent over a computer at the city desk the past couple months, I did not feel up to the task. But now, sitting across from a stranger in whose eyes I am not an abandoned child but rather a professional woman from New York City, I feel stronger. When Van Keller looks at me he sees a reporter with the freedom and the curiosity to drive up to his little town and walk into his little police station and ask to see the chief. He sees a reporter with a source inside a notoriously tight-lipped community. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could look at myself and see those things, too?
“Sergeant,” says Officer Keller when Dawn connects him. “Thanks for taking the call. I wanted to follow up about the Pessie Goldin case.” A pause. “Pessie Goldin. Mother from here in Roseville. Found in her bathtub.” Another pause. Officer Keller squints like he’s hearing something that confuses him. “Well, do you think you could double-check?” A pause. “Okay, thanks.” He hangs up the phone. His smile is gone. “They’re gonna get back to me.”
“Cool,” I say, trying to keep the vibe light.
Officer Keller pushes his coffee away. He seems flustered. “So, you said your source hadn’t heard back from the chief?”
“Right,” I say. “He said a neighbor had seen a truck they didn’t recognize outside Pessie’s apartment the day she was found. He said he gave the license plate to the chief.”
“Really? When was this?”
“I’m not sure exactly. At least a couple weeks, I think. I’ve got the license plate number.” I take my notebook out of my purse and flip it open. “Do you want it?”
“Yeah,” he says, taking a pen from the drawer beside him. I read the number off and he writes it down. “New York plate?” I nod. He swivels his desk chair toward the computer and powers up the machine. “I think these things are older than you are.”
“You should see the ones we have at the Trib.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Oh yeah. It’s bad. Honestly, it’s kind of a miracle we get a paper out every day.”
He laughs. “We didn’t have the Internet on these until a couple years ago. Just this weird e-mail program and the state databases.” Click click click. “Chief probably wasn’t real friendly on the phone.”
I shrug. “I’m used to it. NYPD almost never even calls back, so even an official ‘no comment’ is better than I usually get.”
“You from the city?”
“No. I’m from Florida.”
“Oh wow, that’s a big change.”
“The cold is killing me. Seriously.”
I expect our banter to continue, but Officer Keller is suddenly still in front of his computer, mouth open. After a moment, he clears his throat and closes the page he was looking at.
“Do you, um, have a card?” he asks, standing up. “I should probably go ahead and let the chief… State Police should get back to me. I’ll… I can give them your contact info.”
“Okay,” I say, scribbling my name and e-mail and cell number on a piece of my notebook paper. “Were you able to run that plate?”
“Um, no. I think it’s a different database.”
Everything about our interaction has changed. Whatever came up on the plate search spooked him, and now he wants me out of his office.
“I’ll be in touch,” he says.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I landed at JFK Airport late at night. It had been twelve hours in the air and several sleepless nights preparing to leave Jerusalem. Etan wanted children; that was expected after we married. I was twenty-one and he was twenty-nine. He taught history at a yeshiva to boys who were just before bar mitzvah; they were still children in many ways, but Etan said that their minds were ready to take on serious ideas about the world. Etan had a lot of serious ideas about the world. Two months after we married we put on our gas masks and went to the roof to watch the missiles Saddam Hussein sent over. I did not love him, but like so many of the Israelis I met, he was passionate, and I trusted that he would be kind to me. I imagined I would have boyfriends, and I did. I agreed to marry because I could not bear living with my father’s brother and his wife any longer, but I was afraid to live without my family’s support. If I married Etan, his parents would give us an apartment in the Old City. Etan would teach and I would have babies. Until then, I would do for money what I had done in Florida: clean house.
I did not tell him about you, and I did not tell him that I was terrified of becoming pregnant again. I had never felt fear as strong as the fear I felt when I lay in bed and imagined becoming a mother again. I knew I would fail, and that my failing would spread misery. I had already left you and your father in the wake of my weakness; Etan would be disappointed, but he would be better off. I got the prescription from a Christian doctor, an American from New Jersey who was living in Israel while his wife wrote her dissertation. He was a nice man. After two years, I told Etan the doctor said I couldn’t have babies, and he believed me. He could have asked me for a divorce then. His parents encouraged him to, but he thought that the righteous thing was to honor his commitment to his wife. He would help create a new generation for Israel as a teacher, not a father. But then he found the plastic disk of pills. They must have fallen out of my pocketbook. I had become careless, I suppose. Perhaps I wanted him to find them; perhaps I was finished with our life together. Or perhaps I just did not care either way. That evening he confronted me.