“You didn’t arrest him.”
“We might later. We have no victim. Three men on a tape, and an unknown woman.”
“It was a rape. You know who the woman is.”
“We don’t have her. We have no case.”
“Did you believe what Jensen told you, about wanting to be arrested?”
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t absolve him, Sam.”
“No, it doesn’t. But it would free him. I’ve seen it with others. They end up not being able to live with it. Remember the case I told you about years ago. The guy who killed his family. We knew he did it, but we couldn’t prove it. Couldn’t get enough evidence. He went on with his life. Lived alone, went to work, bought new furniture, started dating. Then one day, I’m sitting at a coffee shop downtown and he comes in, sits beside me, and confesses. Just like that.”
“I’d like to know Dylan Cross’ mind. I went online and saw that church she designed in the desert. It’s so elegant and simple. If you were passing, you’d have to stop and look inside. Maybe she’s somewhere in the desert, Sam, thinking of another building.”
“You should be a detective, Maggie.”
She laughs.
“I might have liked that in another life.”
She gets up and puts two more beers on the table.
“I thought you stopped at one,” I say.
“It’s a special night.”
The lamp glows. The rain is still falling. The kitchen is clean but old. It holds parts of my childhood: the pantry, the curved silver faucet, the crucifix above the sink.
“Tell me one thing, Sam. When you talk about her, she’s different from anyone else. It’s in your voice.”
“She got away. She’s unsolved.”
“Yes, but something more. I hear it in you.”
“I’ll find her.”
“What will you say to her?”
We drink our beers. A long quiet passes.
“Okay, Sam, I won’t talk about it anymore.”
“I’ll catch her.”
“I hope so, but then I hope not.”
Maggie looks into her glass.
“She’s beautiful,” she says.
“Yes, she is.”
Maggie gets up and goes to a drawer. She holds up a Baggie and smiles.
“Let’s get high.”
“I’ll arrest you.”
“Out of your jurisdiction, Detective.”
“I thought you quit.”
“Some things from the old days stay with you.”
She opens the back door to the small porch facing the alley. We step out. Rain is falling, but not as hard as before. Maggie lights up. We pass the joint back and forth. We laugh. I tell her about Ortiz, how jumpy and frenetic he is. His endless phone calls and texts and worries about the mayor. I show her a text: “What the fuck, Sam? Vacation? We gotta find her. Can’t have some broad with a mask running around loose killing architects.” Followed by, “No. Stay on vacay. You need a break. But if we get a tip on her, your ass is on the next flight back.” Maggie likes stories about Ortiz. She believes he’s a good man and that he understands me. Maggie never liked my father, but she has a favorite story about him.
Late one night, after he won a fight, she thinks it was in Providence, he and my mother—it was before I was born—came up this same alley while Maggie was sitting on the porch. It was summer, getting close to autumn, and the air was cool. She heard them laughing, and when they got to the porch, she saw that my father was carrying a crate of Chinese takeout. “We ordered the whole goddamn menu, Maggie,” he said. “We didn’t know what you’d be in the mood for.” They came inside and unloaded the crate on the table—boxes and boxes of food, like a banquet. Maggie thought it was frivolous and wonderful, and she looked at my father, who was excited and drinking a beer. She studied his bruises, cut eyes, and swollen hands, and she believed, for a moment, that he was magnificent.
Maggie goes quiet. Me too. When the joint’s done, she tamps it out, squeezes my hand, and kisses me on the cheek. “Good night, Sam.” She opens the door and disappears into the house.
I sit alone on the porch, listening to the rain and not minding the cold. After an hour or so, I go inside and lock up, shut the lights off, and walk upstairs. I peek into my mother’s room, trace her outlines in the dark, and think of her as Maggie saw her on that night with the Chinese food and the fighter she loved. What must it all have seemed to my mother then? The rough man and his hidden tenderness and the way his voice echoed down the alley. His strength and unpredictability. The way he bled. I close her door and go down the hall to my room. It’s almost dawn. I climb into bed and see Dylan Cross, like Maggie said, sitting in her church in the high desert, candles all around, her mask beside her on the pew, a man singing hymns.
Chapter 27
Impressive firewall, Sam.
It took me an extra thirty seconds to get in.
You’re not writing as much, my little diarist. I understand, but I hope you get back to it. It’s how I know you. It’s important that you write. I’ve been following our story in the Times. Jensen unchained. Killer vanished. My house looks great on YouTube; so does my church in the desert. So many architects talking about me as if they knew me. Poor McKinley. Such a sad old man. I feel worse for John and Isabella having so many questions thrown at them. I’ve told them not to worry, that it will end soon. People get bored and move on. It’s amazing, though, isn’t it? The story of me told by everyone except me. I guess I’ve become a cutout to fill in and color. My own little noir shadow. No, that’s not true. I am more than that. You know that, don’t you? You would like where I’m living now. I meditate every day. I draw.
You said I would never have buildings again. I think you were angry; you didn’t mean that. I will have buildings, Sam. Somewhere. The world is vast and hard. It needs pretty things. I was thinking of the La Brea Tar Pits off Wilshire the other day. Millions of years old and holding the bones of animals we never knew, extinct long before a building, spire, cathedral, museum, prison was ever imagined. But they came, didn’t they, Sam? The things we build, the things that say this is who we are, the bones, glass, and stone of our imagination. Our angles and arches, the way we reach into the sky. My pencil moves, and white space becomes a dream. Maybe not in Los Angeles, but someplace new.
I suppose I’ll be a nomad for a while. A butterfly. Like my mother, fluttering about. I thought of her the other night, standing in her nightgown and twirling sparklers in the air. It must have been the Fourth of July. Of course, with my mother, it could have been any night. It’s funny what comes to you. The thoughts, I mean, spilling out and staying alive. Even the uninvited ones. Hushed voices from the deep. The air is clear here. I’ve found a good, small place with a garden and a view and a table outside under the eaves, where I eat dinner and drink wine in the dusk. You would like it. There are ruins in a nearby village. I go and listen to the stones. They speak of ancient architects, and when the light dims, their warmth recedes deep into their cores. Stones have souls. I believe this.
I was out walking the other day and passed a tennis court. Two boys were playing. One of them—I don’t know why—handed me his racket. I felt the grip, the weight of it, like a wing. The ball came, and, Sam, I was that girl in the picture again. The one you like so much, the one I left you. You’re right about that: there are moments we carry that stay the best of us. If only we had more of them. Why can’t we have more? I deleted the video. I hope you will too, but I know you can’t. Open case, right? Evidence, and all that. But remember me most as the girl in the tennis picture. That’s who I am, Sam. The real me. Not this thing they created. I’ve come to believe certain things about what happened. What I wanted from it all. Or what I thought I did. Hypothetically, of course. This is no confession.
I touched vengeance, Sam. I felt hate. Let it melt thr
ough me. It felt good, I must say. But it didn’t last. It did not bind the broken place, soothe the violated flesh. I carry it still—not vengeance, but memory. Of what was done to me. I have learned. We are supposed to learn from experience, become wiser. Vengeance does not heal. It leaves a hole. I am happy Gallagher and Jamieson are dead, but that is part of the hole—a happiness that, when I think of it, is not happiness at all, but loss. Their loss. My loss. Nobody won. The moment the mask went on, there were no winners. I don’t know that I would do it again, but there was a reclaiming of self—perhaps a different self, but still, that’s something. A small victory. I don’t think the self before ever comes back. It is an angel on a distant rooftop, looking down. This is what I believe. She doesn’t fly closer; she doesn’t fly away. She is there until we are no more. I forgave, though, didn’t I? Pathetic Jensen lives. I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t kill him. It ruined him too, in a way. That night. He is not the victim. No. That is my sole right. But I spared him. Somewhere in me, there is compassion. I like to think that. Makes me no saint, I know. But it is something. I am killer. I am redeemer. I wish I could draw all this in a building. Make people see all these things I feel, unexplainable but real. Inside me. Inside us. That would be some building. A renaissance. I will try. I am gone now, Sam. Gone like the air, a speck of dream. Maybe, just maybe, one day you’ll come find me.
Acknowledgments
I’m often struck by how people have come into my life, some many years ago, others newly arrived. They have shaped the stories I tell. This book is a culmination of those voices. I am indebted to Lindsay Maracotta for her wisdom in seeing things that needed to be pointed out. I thank my agent Jill Marr at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency, my editor Michael Carr, and everyone at Blackstone Publishing. Special thanks to architects Miriam Mulder and John Rock who offered invaluable insights into their world.
I am fortunate for the writers, reporters, editors, and friends who, in their inimitable ways, have left a mark: Tom Lowry, Bianca Lopez, Amy Kaufman, Daniel Miller, Rich Nordwind, Tom Hundley, David Lynch, Scott Higham, Peter Finn, Karl Stark, Jonathan Neumann, Dan Reichl, Barbara Demick, David Erdman, Tim Darragh, C. J. Chivers, Scott Kraft, David Zucchino, Raja Abdulrahim, Rami Khouri, Bob Williams, Randi Danforth, Matt Bose, Louise Steinman, Smitty, and the Slattery and Aigner families.
I am grateful for my parents, and my brothers and their spouses, David, Avi, Greg, Michelle, Peter, Jo-Ann, Mark, Eve, and my sister, Lisa. I am thankful for my children, Aaron and Hannah, enduring sources of wonder and pride. And for my wife, Clare, whose quiet grace is stronger than anything I know.
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