Schuyler opens a file, takes out a yellowed paper, and slides it across the desk.
Not what Paul expected—an old newspaper article?
“Have you seen this?” he asks. Paul shakes his head as he studies it: an article from theSomerset Daily Register, from June 1934. “Local Girl Attacked by Afternoon Intruder.” Ancient history. Below the title, there’s a picture of a young, unsmiling girl. Her head slightly tilted, her shoulder-length hair neatly curled.
A high school portrait, Paul notices first.
Judith, he notices next. Judith is the “local girl.”
He looks up at Schuyler, who doesn’t speak. Paul reads the article, learning how Judith, sixteen, was attacked in her home. She was making herself an after-school snack when the screen door opened and shut behind her. A large, middle-aged man strode in, grabbed her, and pushed her to the floor. He pinned her down with his heavy body and told her he’d kill her if she struggled, so she lay still. Then he “touched her inappropriately,” the article says, and afterward “harmed and disfigured her.” Harmed and disfigured her…chilling in its vagueness. Paul feels disgusted but curious, too—where and how did he disfigure her? He saw no sign of disfigurement, though he only ever saw Judith’s face, neck, and hands. Does the detective know? He looks up again to find the man watching him, gauging his reaction.
“This is shocking. Terrible,” Paul says, hoping to sound sincere because heissincere, but it’s hard with the detective’s gaze boring into him, judging him. “Where did you—how did you find this?”
“In a locked file cabinet of hers, down in the darkroom. Mixed in with bills, medical records, that kind of thing.” Paul remembers seeing the file cabinet and asking Tom about it; he remembers, too, Tom’s halting response.
“Did Tom know about this?” he asks, gesturing toward the paper.
The detective shakes his head. “Not until I showed him. He seemed genuinely shocked.” Paul nods, taking this in. He is and isn’t surprised that Judith hid this from Tom. He is, because they were married for so long; he isn’t, because he could see Judith stuffing this away, trying to keep it from tainting her wholesome family life. But how could she have hidden her “disfigurement”—wherever it was? She must have lied about it to Tom.
“Does that track?” Schuyler asks. Paul looks at him, confused. “Does it make sense to you she would have kept this from her husband?”
“It does,” Paul says. “She was extremely private, you know.”
“But this was her husband. You think they had a good marriage?” Schuyler asks, lightly enough, but Paul knows he’s being asked a seriousquestion—one whose answer could have serious consequences for Tom, the former prime suspect. Is he back at the top of their list? Paul thinks it’s highly unlikely that Tom is the killer, but his answer could nudge Schuyler away from suspecting Paul himself. And if Tom were the focus of the murder investigation again, he wouldn’t have time to deliver on any of his various threats to Paul’s—Judith’s show.
“I don’t really know,” Paul says, not wanting to overplay it. “I think so? They seemed—well, it was a long marriage, wasn’t it? I never saw them together, and I’ve only met Tom a few times, but I can’t imagine he’d be the type of man who’d appreciate knowing…thatabout his wife. I can see why she might hide it from him, or even be afraid he’d find out someday,” he said, shrugging as he delivers this suggestive last line.
“It’s sad, and strange, isn’t it?” Schuyler asks, and Paul thinks, at first, he means the state of their marriage. He’s about to agree when Schuyler goes on. “To go through something like this as a kid, and then to go through a similar experienceagain, some thirty years later.”
“And die,” Paul adds, then clears his throat. Why did he mention her dying? But Schuyler doesn’t seem to hear; his eyes are fixed on a spot to the right of Paul, who sits wondering over the sudden change of topic. What happened to Schuyler’s interest in Tom?
“Yes,” Schuyler says finally. “And die at the hands of yet another unidentifiable attacker who vanishes into thin air. They never caught the first assailant, either.” Schuyler folds his arms over his chest and keeps gazing into the distance.
“Could it be the same man?”
“He’d be old.”
“Itispossible, though.”
Schuyler shrugs. “I suppose.” Paul, relieved not to be Schuyler’s focal point, warms to the idea of the two of them sitting here, batting ideas back and forth. But he does wonder where the man is heading. Schuyler leans forward then, steepling his fingers, and stares at Paul as if scouring him, measuring him up, making a decision.
“The thing is, there was only one set of fingerprints on the knife found at the scene in the parking lot: Judith’s.” Paul nods solemnly; he read that in the newspaper. He didn’t find it strange. He figured the killer must have been careful and worn gloves. He waits for Schuyler to say something to that effect, but the man sighs and squints through the glass wall of his office, still weighing his words.
“Look, there are details I can’t divulge, but I will say it’s a—it’s a strange case. Made even stranger by this background information,” he adds, nodding toward the old article still in front of Paul. “So, as you know, I wanted to ask you a few questions. We got a bit sidetracked here, but I needed you to know the context, if you weren’t already aware.”
“I was not,” Paul says, wanting to reiterate his ignorance. Paul swallows dryly, longs again for a cigarette. Finally asks if he can smoke.
“Sorry.” The detective offers a wan smile, the first sign of vulnerable humanity Paul has seen. “My wife made me quit last year and I’ve stuck to it. I can’t have anyone smoking in here or I’ll pick it up again. Dying to, by the way. But she says it’s bad for my health.” He chuckles at this funny notion of his wife’s, and Paul tries his best to chuckle along.
“What was your relationship like with Judith?” Schuyler asks, his gray-green eyes fixed again on Paul. Paul tries not to show his sudden alarm at this shift in topic—to hisrelationshipwith Judith. Did Schuyler emphasize the word, or was it his imagination? He wonders, too, if it was all a ruse, that story of Schuyler’s wife. Maybe he uses nicotine deprivation to make his suspects squirm. Paul struggles to master himself. To be still. To remember how the two of them were bantering just now, and how interested Schuyler has been inTom, not in him.
“Um, it was good. I was sort of her mentor. You know, encouraged the photographs she was taking. They were incredibly good.”
“Yeah, I saw them in the magazine.Harper’s, right? You were responsible for that, weren’t you?” He makes it sound like a crime.
“Yes,” Paul says, swallowing. “And next up is the Doven Gallery show. Should be a pretty big deal. Judith told me—she asked for myhelp publishing her work just before she died—so I did what I could.” He regrets speaking, but Schuyler’s silent stare pushes him on. “I just want as many people as possible to see her work. She had real talent…” he says, letting his words trail off. He waits anxiously for Schuyler’s follow-up questions, sounding in his mind just like his harasser’s:Are you a fucking parasite? Did you kill her, Paul?
But Schuyler only nods distractedly, as if Paul has said nothing of consequence.
