At ten o'clock, Lee's phone rang. It was Kathy, and she sounded terrible.
"Can you meet me? I need to see you." "Where are you?"
"The Life Cafe. How ironic," she added with a laugh that turned into a sob.
"What's wrong?"
"I'll tell you when you get here." "I'll be right there," he said.
Kathy was sitting at a table in the corner when Lee arrived, staring out the window. Her eyes were swollen and puffy, rimmed with red, and her face wore an expression Lee had never seen on her before: she looked forlorn. When she saw him she looked up and smiled, but it was a mournful smile, and her mouth trembled at the edges.
"What is it?" Lee said, kissing her gently on the cheek. Her skin tasted salty. "What happened?" he asked, taking a chair across from her.
Kathy sucked in a long, slow breath, and gazed across the room at the thin fingers of sunlight snaking through the maze of lace curtains.
"My roommate in Philly called my cell phone this morning. My cat died in the night."
"Oh, no-I'm so sorry. Had he been sick?" "Not really-but he was very old."
"How old?"
"I don't even know-he was a rescue cat. It's odd," she said. "He was there, and now he's not. It feels impossible that his consciousness could disappear so abruptly, and so-finally. I have this strange lingering feeling of his presence, as though he's still around in some way." She let out a deep sigh, heavy with unshed tears. "I don't mean anything mystical about it, but there is something profound about it-almost as if he's left an energy footprint of some kind."
"When my grandmother died, I saw women on the street who reminded me of her for weeks afterward," Lee said. He looked away, afraid she might ask him about his sister, but to his relief, she didn't.
The waitress appeared, a sweet, moonfaced young thing with clanking goth jewelry and a purple streak in her short black hair. Lee ordered a coffee-the coffee at the Life Cafe was strong and dark and good.
"It's weird," Kathy said, absently wrapping her paper straw cover around her index finger like a white ring. "Ever since she called, all I can think of is him, slinking into the bedroom, or padding into the kitchen to demand food. Except that he's not there at all."
"Maybe there is some kind of an energy footprint-who knows?" Lee said. "There are still so many things we don't understand yet."
"I never thought absence itself could have such a strong… presence."
Lee tried to push from his mind those awful days and nights of thinking about Laura, of picturing her last hours, her last moments, the recurring nightmares of seeing her dead body-but only in his dreams. He never had the chance to mourn her properly, because there was never a definitive moment when anyone could say that she was dead-though he knew in his heart that she was. In those days every young woman reminded him of his sister, and he resented them for being alive when she wasn't.
"At least I didn't have to make the decision to-you know," she said.
"Oh," he said. "I had to do that for my dog.
"What was that like?"
"It caught me off guard. I wasn't prepared for how difficult that decision would be, even when it was inevitable. It was uncomfortable and somehow it felt wrong to have that kind of power over another living creature. And then I was shocked by how irrevocable it was. Afterward I had the impulse to take it all back, to reverse my decision and bring him back to life-as if that were possible."
She smiled wanly. "I should know as well as anyone how irreversible death is, but when it's someone-something?-so close to my heart, part of me doesn't understand how that could be." She looked at him with that rueful little half-smile he found so endearing. "Does that make any sense at all?"
"Of course," he replied, saying the words she needed to hear. "Sure it does."
"I don't know how people do it for members of their family," she said, shaking her head. "If it's that hard to do for a dog, I can't imagine-oh, God, I'm sorry," she said, her face reddening. "I didn't mean to-I mean, I didn't mean to be insensitive."
He put his hand on hers. "We've all suffered losses, and we all have to grapple with death at some point."
"It's just hard for me right now, coming on top of the work I'm doing at the site. It's too much death-too much loss."
"That must be so hard for you," he said.
She bit her lower lip and stared at her coffee cup. "I don't know how much longer I can do this work. I'm used to identifying bodies, but… so many. The enormity of it. I keep thinking it will get better, but it's only getting worse."
"Maybe you should talk to someone about it."
"You mean like a professional?"
"Yeah."
"I'm no good at that." She stirred her cold coffee. "The other day there was a pocketbook next to one of the… victims. A little red purse, and in it there was a rabbit's foot keychain, like the kind I had when I was a kid. I started wondering if she had children, and if one of them had given her the keychain…" She pulled air into her lungs, shuddering as she did.
Lee's cell phone rang.
"Excuse me," he said, rising from the table. He hated talking on his cell phone in public, especially restaurants. He saw the call was from Chuck and ducked outside to answer it.
He stood against the wall of the cafe, underneath the black and yellow awning. Across the street in Tompkins Square Park, some kids were playing basketball, shouting and grunting as they lunged for the ball. A couple of young mothers were pushing strollers up Avenue B, laughing as they exchanged stories. A rumpled elderly man was walking an equally disheveled looking terrier. It all looked so normal.
He flipped open his phone. "Hello?"
"It's me. I got some bad news," Morton said.
"What?"
"It's Krieger. I think he's got her." He ceased to hear the sounds of the basketball game across the street, to feel the breeze on his face or smell the exhaust fumes from the M8 bus as it rumbled past. His entire world narrowed to the cell phone in his hand and the voice at the other end.
"What?"
"She sent an e-mail last night that we only just saw a few minutes ago. It seems she went out without any backup-to the seediest damn tranny bar in the Village. They found her purse this morning."
"Christ. Where was it?"
"On Sixth Avenue, Midtown." "And no one saw him?"
"We can't find anyone who did so far. Or if they did, they're not talking." "Jesus, Chuck-"
"I know!" Chuck said. He sounded exhausted and exasperated-and dangerously close to exploding. Chuck could be pushed beyond most people's limits-but when he did finally blow, Lee knew from experience, you had better watch out.
He felt a tug on his sleeve and turned around to see Kathy standing there.
"I'm sorry, but I have to go," he said to Chuck. "I'll call you back in two minutes."
He turned back to face her.
"What is it?" she said when she saw his expression.
"Krieger's missing."
Over on the basketball court, a young man missed a jump shot and cursed. "Son of a bitch!"
The words floated across the street, and Lee registered them as appropriate to his situation.
Son of a bitch, he thought. Son of a bitch.