“I don’t know,” I say, standing up, tucking away my little book. “Thanks very much for your time. And if you would just let Sophia know I’ll be calling again to set up a time to talk.”
Erik stands also, his brow furrowing. “You still need to speak to her?”
“I do.”
“All right, sure.” He nods, sighs. “This is a trial for her. All of it. But of course I’ll let her know.”
I get in the Impala but don’t go anywhere, not yet. I sit outside the house for about a minute, until I see Littlejohn shepherding Kyle out and across the lawn, thick with unbroken snow like vanilla buttercream frosting. A goofy ten-year-old, tromping in oversized winter boots, pointy elbows jutting out from the pushed-up sleeves of his windbreaker.
At Zell’s apartment, I saw the picture and I remember thinking he was an average-looking, even homely child. But now I’m revising that assessment, seeing him as his father sees him: a princeling, dancing in morning light as he marches across the snow.
I’m driving away and I’m thinking about the Tolkin interview, imagining Peter Zell on that night.
It’s January 3, it’s a Tuesday, and he’s home from work, settled in his sterile gray living room, staring at the screen of his small TV.
On January 2, the asteroid 2011GV1, known as Maia, had at last emerged from conjunction with the Sun, was again observable from Earth, was at last sufficiently close and bright for the scientists to see it clearly, to gather new sets of data, to know. Observations were pouring in, being compiled and processed at one collection center, the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, in Pasadena, California. What had been, since September, a fifty-fifty chance was about to be resolved—either one hundred percent, or zero.
So there’s Peter Zell on his living room sofa with his latest accumulation of asteroid-related articles spread out in front of him, all the scientific discourse and anxious analysis finally boiling down to predictions and prayers, to yes or no.
CBS had won the bidding war for broadcast rights. The world was ending, maybe, but if it wasn’t, they’d feast on the ratings coup for years. There was an elaborate preshow centered on the head engineer at JPL, Leonard Tolkin, the man overseeing that final burst of number crunching. “I’ll be the one,” he had promised David Letterman three weeks earlier, his smile twitching, “to give the good news.” Pale, bespectacled, in a white lab coat, a central-casting government astronomer.
There’s a countdown clock on the lower-right corner of the screen accompanying cheesy B-roll, tracking shots of Tolkin walking the hallways of the institute, scrawling columns of math on a dry-erase board, huddling with his subordinates around computer screens.
And there’s short, paunchy, lonely Peter Zell in his apartment, watching in silence, surrounded by his articles, glasses perched on his nose, hands flat on his knees.
The program goes live, featuring the newsman Scott Pelley, square chinned and grave, gray hair and solemn made-for-television face. Pelley watches, on behalf of the world, as Tolkin emerges from the decisive meeting with a stack of manila folders clutched under one arm, peels off his horn-rimmed spectacles, and begins to sob.
Now, driving slowly in the direction of the Somerset Diner, I’m trying to capture the memory of someone else’s feelings, trying to decide exactly what Peter Zell was experiencing in that moment. Pelley leans forward, all empathy, asks the magically stupid question that all the world needed to hear:
“So, then, Doctor. What are our options?”
Dr. Leo Tolkin trembling, almost laughing. “Options? There are no options.”
And then Tolkin just keeps talking, babbling really, about how sorry he is, on behalf of the world astronomical community, how this event never could have been predicted, how they had studied every realistic scenario—small object, short lead time; large object, long lead time—but this, this never could have been imagined, an object with such a near perihelion, with such an epically long elliptical period, such a staggeringly large object—the odds of such an object’s existence so vanishingly low as to be statistically equivalent to impossible. And Scott Pelley is staring at him, and all over the world people are sinking into grief or hysteria.
Because all at once there was no more ambiguity, no more doubt. All at once it was just a matter of time. Odds of impact one hundred percent. October 3. No options.
Many people remained glued to their televisions after the program ended, watching pundits and professors of astronomy and political figures stammering and weeping and contradicting one another on the various cable stations; waiting for the president’s promised address to the nation, which ultimately did not materialize until noon the next day. Many people ran to the phones to try to reach loved ones, though all the circuits were jammed and would remain that way for the week that followed. Other people went out into the streets, bitter January weather notwithstanding, to commiserate with neighbors or strangers, or to engage in small acts of vandalism or petty mischief—a trend that would continue and culminate, in the Concord area at least, with a small wave of rioting on Presidents’ Day.
I, personally, turned off the TV and went to work. I was in my fourth week as a detective, I had an arson case I was working on, and I had a strong suspicion, ultimately proved true, that the next day would be a busy and stressful one at police headquarters.
The question, though, is what about Peter Zell? What did he do, when the show was over? Whom did he call?
A summary review of the bare facts suggests that, behind his attempts to keep up a brave face, Zell had been despondent all along about the possibility of Earth’s immanent destruction. And with the confirmation of that fact, it’s not hard to imagine that on the night of January 3, seeing the bad news on television, he had been pitched past despondence and into a brutal depression. He had staggered around for eleven weeks in a haze of dread and then, two nights ago, had hung himself with a belt.
So why am I driving around Concord, trying to figure out who killed him?
I’m in the parking lot of the Somerset Diner, nestled at the three-way intersection of Clinton, South, and Downing. I’m contemplating the snow in the parking lot, churned up by the morning influx of pedestrians and bicyclists. I’m comparing this rutted, brown-and-white mess to the unbroken blanket of snow on the front lawn of the Littlejohns’ house. If Sophia had really been called out for an emergency delivery this morning, she had left by catapult, or teleportation machine.
The walls of the Somerset, where you first come in, are lined with photographs of presidential candidates shaking hands with Bob Galicki, the former owner, now deceased. There’s a picture of sallow Dick Nixon, one of stiff and unconvincing John Kerry, hand stiffly protruding like a broken piece offence. Here’s John McCain with his skull-face grin. John F. Kennedy, impossibly young, impossibly handsome, doomed.
The music from the stereo in the kitchen is Bob Dylan, something from Street Legal, which means Maurice is cooking, which augurs well for the quality of my lunch.
“Sit anywhere, honey,” says Ruth-Ann, rushing past with a carafe of coffee. Her hands are withered but strong, steady around the thick black handle of the carafe. When I used to come here in high school, we would joke about Ruth-Ann’s ancientness, whether she’d been hired for this gig or if they’d built the place around her. That was ten years ago.
I drink my coffee and ignore the menu, surreptitiously inspecting the faces of my fellow diners, weighing the relative melancholy in each of their eyes, the shell-shocked expressions. An old couple murmuring to each other, bent over their soup bowls. A girl, nineteen maybe, with an enervated stare, joggling a pallid baby on her knee. A fat businessman glaring angrily at the menu, a cigar clenched in the corner of his mouth.