“What if you’re wrong?” Timothy asked as they crossed Park Avenue.
“I’m not.”
“But we’ll get in so much trouble. And we’re already in trouble. At least, Hugh and Barry and I are.”
“This is more important.” Amanda’s words came out in a puff of white air. She watched them disappear.
They walked another block in silence and came to a huge snowdrift on the corner.
“Can you fucking believe this snow?” He climbed up over the messy pile that was crusted with ice. She followed in his path, using the footprints he had made.
“It’s snowed every day for more than two weeks.” Amanda’s scarf had come undone and she wrapped it around her neck again as they trudged on. It was a cashmere scarf her mother had given to her last year. She never took it off anymore. Not because she was always cold-well, she was pretty much always cold-but because with her neck swathed she felt protected. Sometimes she’d pull it up and hide her mouth and chin in its soft folds. If she could have hidden her whole face, she would have. As it was, she wore long bangs that partially covered her forehead and eyebrows, and she’d recently started wearing lightly tinted glasses she’d found in her mother’s drawer. They had stupid gold C’s on the edges but she’d gotten black paint and covered over them. Her mother hadn’t noticed. As if. She hardly noticed anything Amanda did.
They continued west on Seventy-seventh Street until they got to Fifth Avenue, and then they walked two blocks north and entered Central Park.
It was only 8:00 p.m. and there were still people heading home from work, or taking their dogs out for a run. There were also some couples, arm in arm, who just seemed to be strolling.
“Weird, huh. Why are these people out?” Timothy asked. “It’s so cold.”
She looked around. There was a full moon and the snow was still falling. Everything was dusted white and sparkling. It looked like a dream. Someone else’s dream.
The deeper they walked into the park the fewer people there were. After a few minutes it was all quiet, and she could hear their boots crunching on the path. They went west and north. Neither of them hesitated about what direction to take. This was their playground; they’d grown up in the park. They’d been walked here in baby carriages, played in the sandboxes as toddlers, spent afternoons visiting the zoo. Their schools had brought them here for ice skating in winter and softball in spring. Once they were old enough, they’d come on their own to escape from their parents, sitting on the hills or the edges of ponds and fountains, disappearing with their friends into smoky hazes.
“I’ve never been here this late,” Amanda said.
Timothy shrugged. “There’re lights everywhere.”
“People still get murdered in the park, though. It’s always in the news when it happens.”
Timothy nodded. “But they’re alone. We’re not.”
A few more steps brought them to the crest of the hill. The pond where kids and hobbyists sailed toy boats was frozen over. The fresh coating of crystalline white on all the trees and benches shimmered. The sky looked like velvet, Amanda thought, suddenly remembering a dress that she’d had when she was eight or nine years old.
“Amanda, c’mon. Let’s get the damn thing and get outta here.”
“So, you’re nervous.” She smiled. It felt strange to smile on this mission.
“No, just cold.”
“I’m nervous, though. One of them is still alive.”
Even with the thick gloves they both wore, she felt it when he took her hand. She’d given three guys blowjobs, but this was the first time a boy had ever done that.
An oversize bronze Hans Christian Andersen held a book in his lap as he read one of his own fairy tales. Tonight his head was dusted white and the pages of the book were hidden under inches of snow.
As kids, she and her friends had sat at his feet while their teacher read them story after story, each with a happy ending.
She and Timothy approached the statue.
Hans sat on a bronze platform atop a large pedestal made of tightly fitted limestone blocks. Or, at least, they seemed tightly fitted, but there was a crack in between the third and the fourth blocks on the right side. Timothy had found it when he was a kid and his second grade class was here racing toy boats. He grew tired of hanging over the edge of the pond watching the stupid toys whizzing across the water, and he’d wandered off on his own.
“Timothy?”
Amanda was staring at him, her eyes wide, her cheeks red from the cold. Most of the time, when he looked at her, he forgot about the movie. She looked like any other girl to him. Most of the time.
He pulled his army knife out of his pocket, extracted the nail file, and inserted it into the crevice. He felt a connection and moved the file forward. The edge of a transparent CD case became visible. He reached for it and pulled it out.
Timothy held it flat in his hand and Amanda stared down at it, noticing how the moon was reflected in its surface, full and round and silvery. At that moment, it didn’t look lethal at all.
Monday Four days remaining
Fifty-Seven
Alan Leightman was sitting on the couch holding a large cup of coffee. I was still having trouble not calling him Bob. He kept wrapping his fingers, first of the right hand, then the left, around the cup as if he were warming himself. But by now, surely the coffee had grown cold. It was the idea of warmth he was in search of.
“She kept stirring the damn spoon around and around.”
“That bothered you?”
“Everything bothered me. My wife-the brilliant woman I’ve lived with for all these years-has turned into a drugged-out zombie who hates my guts.”
“What happened in the kitchen?” I asked, getting him to refocus.
“She said her coffee was cold and turned the heat on under the kettle. Once the water was boiling and the kettle was whistling, she did the strangest thing…she reached out and touched it.”
“What do you mean touched it-to see if it was hot?”
“Yes, but she had to know it was hot, it was whistling. She was burning her fingers on purpose. Twice. Why would she do that? And then she said she knew something that could help me with the police.” He rubbed his face. “But whatever it was, she said it wouldn’t matter, and she’s right-no one would believe her, she’s my wife. Everyone would assume she’d lie for me.” He shook his head. “She’s punishing me for what I’ve done to her. I deserve it, too.”
“Deserve it?”
He nodded. There was anguish in his eyes.
“Alan, if you want I can talk to-”
“No.” He was on his feet. “You can’t talk to the police. Do you understand? You can’t talk to anyone.”
“I wasn’t suggesting I go to the police. Sit down. I was going to say that if you want me to talk to you and Kira together, in therapy, I would.”
He collapsed back on the couch. “I didn’t write to those women. I certainly didn’t kill those women.”
“I have no doubt of that. None at all.”
And I didn’t.
“Dr. Snow, why was she burning her fingers?”
“Maybe she wanted to punish herself. Or sometimes inflicting pain distracts a person from a deeper pain.”
He nodded, twisted his hands in his lap. Crossed one leg over the other. Then uncrossed it. His eyes were darting around the room as if he was going to find answers hiding in the corners and behind the books.
“She blames herself for my addiction, doesn’t she?”
“It’s certainly possible.”
He nodded, nodded again. He was thinking. A moment went by.
“She takes responsibility for everything. Damn. She takes responsibility for the First Amendment.”
I was watching him put himself through some kind of difficult process. The pain intensified in his eyes and then he closed them. When he opened them a few seconds later, he seemed as if he’d resolved something, was almost elated.