The City of Mirrors
Page 78

The little girl was awake and looking about. Six months, a year—I was not a good judge of these things. A mobile of cardboard-cutout animals dangled above her crib. She was waving her arms and kicking her legs against the mattress, causing the animals to jostle on their strings; she made the sound again, a joyful little squeal. See what I can do? Mama, come look. But in the other room her mother lay in a pool of blood, her eyes staring into time’s abyss.
What did I do? Did I fall before her and beg her forgiveness? Did I pick her up with my unclean hands, the hands of a killer, and tell her I was sorry for her motherless life? Did I call the police and take my shameful vigil beside her crib to wait for them?
None of these. Coward that I was, I ran.
—
And yet the night does not end there. You could say it never has.
A flight of stairs led from Old Fulton Street to the Brooklyn Bridge walkway. At the midpoint of the bridge, I removed the knife and bloody shirt and dropped them into the water. The hour was approaching five A.M.; soon the city would arise. Already the traffic was thickening—early commuters, taxis, delivery trucks, even a few bicyclists, their faces masked against the cold, whizzing past me like wheeled demons. There is no being who feels more anonymous, more forgotten, more alone than a New York pedestrian, if he so chooses, but this is an illusion: our comings and goings are tracked to a fault. In Washington Square I bought a cheap baseball cap from a street vendor to hide my face and found a pay phone. Calling 911 was out of the question, as the call would be instantly traced. From information I got the number for the New York Post, dialed it, and asked for the city desk.
“Metro.”
“I’d like to report a murder. A woman’s been stabbed.”
“Hang on a second. Who am I speaking to?”
I gave the address. “The police don’t know yet. The door’s unlocked. Just go look,” I said and hung up.
I made two more calls, to the Daily News and the Times, from different pay phones, one on Bleecker Street, the other on Prince. By this time, the morning was in full swing. It seemed to me I should return to my apartment. It was the natural place for me to be and, more to the point, I had no place else to go.
Then I remembered my abandoned suitcase. How this might connect me to the girl’s death I could not foresee, but it was, at the very least, a thread best cut quickly. I took the subway uptown to Grand Central. At once I became aware of the station’s heavy police presence; I was now a murderer, sentenced to a preternatural awareness of my surroundings, a life of constant fear. At the kiosk, I was directed to the lost and found, located on the lower level. I showed my driver’s license to the woman behind the counter and described the bag.
“I think I left it in the main concourse,” I said, attempting to sound like one more flustered traveler. “We just had so much luggage, I think that’s how I forgot it.”
My story didn’t interest her even vaguely. She disappeared into the racks of luggage and returned a minute later with my suitcase and a piece of paper.
“You’ll need to fill this out and sign at the bottom.”
Name, rank, serial number. It felt like a confession; my hands were shaking so badly I could barely hold the pen. How absurd I was being: one more filled-out form in a city that generated a felled forest of paper every day.
“I need to photocopy your license,” the woman said.
“Is that really necessary? I’m in a bit of a hurry.”
“Honey, I don’t make the rules. You want your bag or don’t you?”
I handed it over. She ran it through the machine, gave it back, and stapled the copy to the form, which she shoved into a drawer under the counter.
“I bet you get a lot of bags,” I remarked, thinking I should say something.
The woman rolled her eyes. “Baby, you should see the stuff that comes in here.”
I took a cab to my apartment. Along the way, I inventoried my situation. The girl’s apartment, as far as I could tell, was clean; I’d washed every surface I’d touched. No one had seen me enter or leave, except the cabbie; that could be a problem. There was the bartender to consider, as well. Excuse me. You’re Professor Fanning, aren’t you? I couldn’t recall if he’d been within earshot, though he’d certainly had a good look at both of us. Had I paid with cash or a credit card? Cash, I thought, but I couldn’t be sure. The trail was there, but could anyone follow it?
Upstairs, I opened the suitcase on my bed. No surprise, the morphine was gone, but everything else was there. I emptied my pockets—wallet, keys, cellphone. The battery had died in the night. I plugged it into the charger on the nightstand and lay down, though I knew I would not sleep. I didn’t think I would ever sleep again.
My phone chirped as the battery awoke. Four new messages, all from the same number, with a 401 area code. Rhode Island? Who did I know in Rhode Island? Then, as I was holding it, the phone rang.
“Is this Timothy Fanning?”
I didn’t recognize the voice. “Yes, this is Dr. Fanning.”
“Oh, you’re a doctor. That explains it. My name is Lois Swan. I’m a nurse in the ICU at Westerly Hospital. A patient was brought here yesterday afternoon, a woman named Elizabeth Lear. Do you know her?”
My heart lurched into my throat. “Where is she? What happened?”
“She was taken off an Amtrak train from Boston and brought here by ambulance. I’ve been trying to reach you. Are you her physician?”