He was so fucking gorgeous like this, he who was a potent figure in his own circles but a spectator in this one, a wife if you will, lying here looking at her with those impossible agate eyes of his, hair electrically disordered, face bristling with stubble. It seemed for a moment that she could stop, she could just stop; she could blow off her job and move with Simon into
She got out of bed. "Call you later," she said.
"Right," he answered.
They both paused. Now would be the time for one of them to say "I love you." If they were at that point.
"Bye," she said. "Bye," he answered.
It was Halloween at the office. She'd never felt the air so agitated. This was what never actually happened: a psychopath announcing his intentions, with every indication of follow-through. This was movie stuff.
Ed was just shy of coming in his pants. His hair, what was left of it, seemed to be standing on end. "Hot damn," he said.
"They find anything in Bed-Stuy?" she asked. "Nope. I wish / could talk to him." "And what would you say?"
"I think he needs a father figure."
"Do you?"
"Don't be offended. You're doing a fine job with him."
"In my way."
"No offense. I just think maybe a guy could get more out of him. It's the luck of the draw, him calling here and attaching to you."
"You don't think a woman is as effective with him?" "Hey. Don't get all Angela Davis on me."
Ed was one of the new breed, the guys who seemed to think that if they were right up front about their sexism and racism, if they walked in and sat down and just
"I wouldn't dream of it," she said.
"A bad dad is telling him to do bad things. A good dad might have a better chance of telling him to do good things. A mother figure doesn't have the same authority. She's a refuge. She can't contradict the bad dad. She can only console."
"I can't tell you how much I hope you're wrong about that."
"I hope so, too. We're going to
Ed had the killer buzz in his voice. He had the pure, shining conviction of the almost smart. When Ed went on like this, Cat heard
"Yeah," she said. "We're going to get him."
Pete came into the cubicle, with black coffee for her.
"You're sweet," she said.
"We're nowhere," he told her.
"We're never
"They've run dental records on more than two thousand missing kids. They got no matches to the teeth we found."
"Disappointing."
"It's like that first kid appeared out of thin air."
"Or nobody knows or cares that the first kid is missing."
"I know, I know. It's funny, though." "I agree. It's funny."
Ed broke in. "Or somebody never cared enough to send their kid to a dentist."
"Always a possibility," Cat said. "Have you noticed how he starts to disintegrate as he gets agitated?"
"Go on," Pete said.
"His coherence fades. He starts throwing out lines from Whitman. Or, as he would say, from home."
"He gets more and more random," Ed offered.
"Maybe," Cat said. "Or maybe, in his mind, he gets less and less random. I have a feeling that the poem
Cat wanted to say, I have a feeling, but she couldn't say that kind of thing in front of Ed. He'd use it against her. She was the girl with the degree from Columbia, who'd read more books than all of the men put together, who'd gone into forensics because she hadn't managed to establish a private practice. She was overaggressive and under-qualified. She was someone who relied on feelings.
She said, "It's just an idea, Ed. This seems like an excellent time for us to give free rein to our ideas, wouldn't you say?"
Queenly bearing, schoolmarm diction. She really had to quit that. Problem was, it worked. Most of the time.
"Sure, sure," Ed said. "Absolutely."