Kucenic’s tearing a napkin into confetti. He rubs his knee and so I ask him to tell me about his limp.
“Dominic, you’re in some serious trouble—we both are. These cops showed up shortly after I terminated you—they just knocked on my door one night, around eight or eight thirty, told me that they had to talk to me about you,” he says. “There were three of them, District soldiers—I never saw their faces. Those black masks, the armor. Their badges were blacked out so I couldn’t ping their profiles or badge numbers. I figured they wanted to talk to me about your arrest, maybe your background, have me sign some more paperwork—”
“But they wanted to know about Hannah Massey—”
“They wanted to know everything about our involvement with that case,” says Kucenic. “Who researched her? Who saw the files? How you found the body, where you were looking, why you were looking there, what you were working on. They took all the files related to that case, corrupted my copies with a worm. They wanted to know everything about you. Were you a good worker, how involved were you with the firm, everything—”
“And you told them?”
“I told them what they wanted to know, of course I did, but they knew everything already, Dominic. They made it clear to me that case #14502 no longer existed—that it would be erased, and that I shouldn’t work on anything even remotely associated with it, that I would be monetarily compensated for the loss of workload. They told me they’d take care of communicating with State Farm, that no questions would be asked. They said they appreciated my cooperation, and that if I continued to cooperate I would be safe. That’s what they said, that I would ‘be safe.’ They said that you might try to contact me, but that I was not to respond—”
“You’re with me now,” I tell him.
“I’m going to report this the moment you leave,” he says. “I’m going to call the District police and tell them that you’ve been here—what else can I do? You just showed up—”
“Did they hurt you? I asked about your leg—”
“A parting gift,” says Kucenic. “I shook their hands, told them I would cooperate. I followed them to the door—and that’s when one of them turned back to me. He pulled his nightstick and punched me with it, here in my chest. The hit knocked me over, and the man struck me twice in the knee—”
“Jesus. I’m sorry,” I tell him.
“It’s all right, Dominic,” he says. “Just—you don’t know what you’re involved in. Just do what they want you to do, whatever they tell you. Just get clear of this thing—”
2, 5—
I want to see Hannah again—
Paths through Nine Mile Run—someone documented all this and re-created it here, every footpath and every bridge over every muddy creek, the trees and the undersides of leaves. Plenty of JSTOR footage fills in the gaps where people never filmed, acres of this area important to environmental scientists studying the long-term effects of brownfields. Theresa and I walked here in autumn, late autumn arcing toward winter, just a few weeks following our miscarriage. We never fought, like some couples we knew, some of our friends slipping into skirmishes following a few drinks or harried days of work. We only had a few significant fights in all the years we knew each other, most of them about nothing, nothing at all, but I hurt her once here in these woods and I’m unable to walk here now without reliving the pain I caused her. Theresa loved this park—the other city parks were beautiful, but too manicured for joggers and families with strollers. Nine Mile Run remained untended in spots, spots where she could wander off-trail and find flowers growing in patches of sunlight. Despite the countless other strolls we’d taken through these paths, my memories wander back to this single afternoon and the shame of hurting her. Layering, the trickle of nearby water. Layering, birdsong. Layering, cool shade and the smell of soil. Wind in the leaves. I remember Theresa wearing a cardigan the color of tree bark, her hair the color of the golden leaves dying on their boughs. We’re holding hands, her fingers cold. She was distracted, looking over her shoulder into the woods and the shadows gathering there.
“Maybe—I don’t know, maybe there’s a silver lining to losing her,” I remember saying. “Maybe we’re better off without having kids. All the hassle—”
She slumps instead of screams, collapsing to the trail like her lungs have been pulled from her.
“I’m sorry,” I think I remember saying, stammering something, trying to comfort her but failing. I still don’t know why I said those words, and every time I think of them my chest tightens in nauseous self-recrimination. A jogger runs past without stopping and I wait until he’s long past and disappeared from view before speaking again. “Are you all right?” I ask her.
She stays on her knees, her head bowed into her hands, saying, “No, no, no,” until the light fails and the damp seeps like dead fingers through her clothes and she lets me help her to her feet and walk with her.
We walk here now, in patches of late afternoon sun, to the creek to watch the dying light lie like scattered diamonds on the surface of the water. We were alone that evening, coming to terms with our loss, with a miscarriage just like the thousands of other miscarriages that occur every day, every year, but ours so unlike the others because it was our daughter, our child that never was.
Night gathers. I leave Theresa on the path, her cries about our child filling the spaces between the sounds of the woods. I use low-hanging limbs to keep my balance as I scuttle down the slope, down near the watershed. I’m looking for the body. The Archive resets to late April, the clock resets to a little before seven in the evening. I find Hannah half buried in mud and watch her white body as the sun sets and night falls. I adjust my light filters, continue watching.
Think.
Load notes for case #14502 and resume my research where I’d left off for Kucenic and State Farm, tracking Hannah during her final hours before she was reported missing—on campus, at Carnegie Mellon, a few weeks before spring semester finals.
She’s slept in late this morning, the night before a raucous double rehearsal for her acting troupe’s Spring Carnival performance of Spamalot. Hannah’s role is the Lady of the Lake, and in these final hours in the Archive she trudges through a late spring dusting of snow still singing the music she’d learned the night before, fullvoiced despite the relatively early hour. In a few weeks, her troupe will stage Spamalot without her, dedicating the show to her, the missing girl, the stage festooned with flowers. The programs will feature her high school senior portrait and a tribute written by her friends, and after each performance the actors will stand among the exiting crowds taking up a collection to aid in the search efforts. But now, this morning, Hannah sings “Diva’s Lament,” a freshman Psych major in Barbie-pink boots and a camel hair coat, blonde waves tumbling from beneath her knit beret. She’s effortless, burgundy sweatpants and a plaid sweatshirt, comfy stuff for a day shuffling between the library and her semester’s remaining few classes. I’ve followed her this morning before—
Before, though, I’d followed her to determine if she perished in the bomb or perished sometime earlier, an insurance dispute—but now I need to see who killed her, to make sure Timothy killed her, to link them together if I can—or discover who killed her. Save the evidence somewhere safe, somewhere I can access and disseminate if I have to—leverage against Timothy to protect myself until I can figure out what to do. Hannah has a quick breakfast at the University Center, of coffee and a cinnamon scone—she flips through Vanity Fair’s spring fashion issue. I canvass the University Center while she eats, checking the faces of the people around her, of everyone with visibility of her, but there’s no one threatening here, no one paying particular attention, just the faces of dead students and dead faculty and family, most likely everyone perishing in the burn when they returned the following semester for the resumption of classes. Following coffee, Hannah can’t make it across campus without being stopped every few feet by friends—other actors, girls on the track team, classmates, dorm mates, professors she’s friendly with—it takes her nearly forty-five minutes to make the five-minute trek to her Psychology lecture in Porter Hall. A freshman survey, eighty or so kids filling out the seats.