25

Detective Waterman was late. I leaned on my elbows in the coffee shop in downtown Oakland, feeling out of place. Men in dark business suits plodded in carrying folders and briefcases, and women with tired eyes eased into chairs, slipping off their shoes under the table where they thought no one could see.

Detective Waterman was suddenly across from me, snapping her own briefcase shut. She noticed my surprise at her sudden appearance and smiled with her eyes. “There’s a back entrance,” she said. “I always park on Franklin, zip up an alley. A shortcut.”

I felt into the big manila envelope and brought out the pile of papers, the photocopies of Anita’s journal. I had overscored some of the words with yellow marker. It took a few minutes. I let Detective Waterman find these phrases herself, and waited while she leafed through the loose pages, then stacked them against the tabletop to keep them straight.

“We’ve interviewed her fellow employees,” she said at last. “They were all very generous with their time. They work people pretty hard at American Shelf and Filing. It’s one of two American Shelf plants in the country,” she said. “The other one’s in Toledo, Ohio.”

She gave me another smile, trusting her smile, knowing it had power, the white streaks in her hair catching the fluorescent light. “Her boss was very helpful. Showed us her workstation, let us sift through all the inventories she’d been doing. The security service, American Protection, has someone on-site twenty-four hours a day. We questioned their staff, looked through their logs for suspicious vehicles, loiterers. Almost every business has a problem in that neighborhood, having to ask someone in a sleeping bag to move aside when they open the office in the morning.”

I nodded, just to show that I was listening. I was a little impatient. Anita did not run off with someone who slept on the sidewalk.

“We got a list of her friends from your father. He called all them already, of course. She was in the French club, played tennis. It’s been a slow process, driving out to see each of them. I hate interviewing people by phone.”

“It would save time.”

“How would they know I’m a real cop?” she said. “I could be a crank, calling up to be a pain in the ass. I could be the perpetrator, calling up to intimidate. Besides, people can lie over the phone better than they can when I’m looking at them.”

I liked this, a detective referring to herself as a cop, saying pain in the ass. She was being open, taking a little extra trouble.

“But I’m surprised there aren’t more friends,” she said. “Anita is such an active, bright young woman.”

“We are both slow at getting to know people,” I said. “We’re friendly, but not that close to our fellow citizens.” I phrased it this way to make it easier to say, like a joke. I didn’t like this, feeling defensive about our choice of friends. “The French club didn’t sit around speaking French. They corresponded with French students, took a group of people from Avignon down to Disneyland. Anita liked to go places.”

“Anita was president,” said Detective Waterman.

“It wasn’t like being president of the student body,” I said.

“You sound jealous,” said Detective Waterman. “Like you didn’t want to share Anita with anyone else.”

I didn’t like the detective as much as I had.

“Your family is very important to you,” said Detective Waterman.

For some reason this brought tears to my eyes. “You can see that she was meeting somebody,” I said when I could talk. “Read the journal.”

“Her journal means more to you than it does to me,” she said. “Because you knew her.”

“She comes right out and says it, on paper.”

“I think that she knew we would be reading it, so she left out everything revealing.”

“You mean you don’t want these,” I said, taking the stack of pages away from her. I had made them at the Copymat on MacArthur, not wanting the assistant manager to do it, standing there, putting the journal facedown on the glass, breathing that dry, chemical heat copiers give off.

She made her voice sound gentle, aware that my feelings were hurt. “I’ll take them along. You’re right. They might prove useful.”

I felt like breaking up the chairs around me, metal seats screwed onto metal legs. I would never manage to break one, although I could bend one up pretty well if I worked at it. “Look at these lines about the soul. Selecting its own society, and then shutting the door.” My yellow marker had slightly smeared the words, the Day-Glo yellow looking slightly greenish in the coffee-shop light.

“What do those lines mean to you?” she asked, an English teacher with handcuffs.

“It’s Emily Dickinson,” I said, surprised at the bitterness in my voice.

“I recognized the lines,” said the detective. Her eyes slipped slightly out of focus. She was thinking. The lightning flashes in her hair were slightly yellow, the way white hair gets in the sunlight.

“And look at this,” I said, an edge to my voice, “from a poem about a snake.” I sat back, waiting while the detective read.

But never met this Fellow

Attended, or alone,

Without a tighter breathing

And Zero at the Bone—

“Yes, that’s always been one of my favorites,” said the detective thoughtfully.

“The police sit around reading poetry, listening to the dispatcher,” I said. I sounded spiteful; I couldn’t stop myself.

“I was an English major,” the detective said. “Cal State Hayward. My husband left me. I started working as a desk cop in Berkeley, got so I could knock my martial arts instructor down with one hand tied behind my back, so to speak, and now here I am.”

“That makes sense,” I said.

I didn’t mean that her life story met with my approval. I meant that I was starting to feel a little better.

“How do you do it?” I said after we had both been quiet for a while.

“Find missing people? It’s the computer that does it, really. We rake in names, numbers—”

“Knock a man down with one hand tied.”

“I use my radio, get backup.” She laughed, a private joke, something she knew and I didn’t.

The restaurant was very neat, mustard and ketchup containers lined up with the napkin dispenser on every table.

“I see what you mean, though,” said the detective. “She might have had a secret boyfriend. You know what my next question is, don’t you?”

I didn’t.

“Will you tell me what you know, or do I have to figure it out myself?”

I couldn’t talk.

“Brothers know things. They know a lot of things, without even being aware of it.”

“You mean—if I went to a hypnotist I could remember all the details.”

“I mean that you were used to covering up for her. And maybe—I’m not saying you are—it’s possible you’re doing it even now.”

A waitress had not come near us, ignoring us in our corner table. Detective Waterman had suggested this place. She had a court appearance, she had said, and she would be happy to see me. This was her usual spot, I realized. She sat here across from someone two or three times a week, talking kidnappers and sex slave masters into confessing.

I said, “The case is going pretty badly, isn’t it?”

Detective Waterman gave me a professional look, no expression.

“If I’m your best hope,” I said, full of feeling.

“Okay, I’m sorry,” she said, looking around, briskly moving the briefcase a little farther away from her chair, sliding it along the floor, looking around for the waitress. Little lines had appeared in her face, in her cheeks, her forehead. When she held her face a certain way she looked fresh, pretty. When she made a thoughtful expression, she looked worn-out.

“If you want to knock someone down quickly,” she said, “you hit him in the back of the knee.”

“With your fist,” I said, not asking, just trying to get the mental image.

“With your hand. Or a weapon.”

“A nightstick.”

“I use a sap,” she said.

I didn’t know what she was talking about.

“A leather strap, weighted at one end.”

I nodded, mystified but beginning to understand.

“You carry a gun,” I said.

“In here,” she said, reaching one hand down to her briefcase. She was businesslike, her smile gone, realizing she didn’t know me very well.

“An automatic, or a revolver?” I asked.

“A Beretta. An automatic. All the police are gradually switching to automatics. Military cops made the switch years ago. Automatics are much more reliable than they used to be.”

“So you know a lot about gun safety,” I said.

Her eyes shifted briefly to one side, and I could tell she was wondering about my mental state.

I told her about Merriman.

Two nights later I finally called Paula. I needed to talk to her, but before I could, there was a question I had to ask.

“What do you mean, you underestimated me?” I gave the word a peculiar twist, stretching it out. I sat on the edge of my bed, Bronto sitting on the windowsill, looking out at the night. He had been washing himself and had left his tongue sticking slightly through his whiskers, absentmindedly, like a person forgetting to tuck in his shirt.

“It’s just, for so long,” she said, not sure how to express herself, perhaps trying to be polite, “for so long I had the impression all you ever thought about was sex.”