“Wait,” she said suddenly. Everyone stopped, turning to look at her. “Which ones are the Nakamuras?”
Judging from the group reaction, she had definitely asked the wrong question. Even the couples looked dismayed, as if she had threatened them in some fashion.
“Does it matter?” Pasco said after a long moment.
“No, I guess not.”
And it didn’t, not to her or anyone else, she realized; not now, not ever again. When you got caught in this kind of identity theft, you probably had to give identity up completely. Exactly what that meant she had no idea but she knew it couldn’t have been very pleasant.
Pasco nodded and the other two escorted the couples out of the room. A few moments later, Ruby heard the kitchen door leading to the garage open and close.
“How did you know the Nakamuras would come here?” Ruby asked Pasco.
“I didn’t. Just dumb luck—they were here when I arrived so I took them all into custody.”
“And they didn’t resist or try to get away?”
“There’s nowhere for them to go. The Nakamuras can’t survive indefinitely here unless they could somehow replace the Muras.”
“Then why did you arrest the Muras?”
“They were going to let the Nakamuras supplant them while they moved on to a place where their daughter hadn’t died.”
The permutations began to pile up in Ruby’s brain; she squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, cutting off the train of thought before it made her dizzy.
“All right,” she said. “But what about this master criminal who convinced the Nakamuras to do all this in the first place? How could he-she-whatever know about Betty Mura’s aneurysm?”
Pasco’s face became thoughtful again and she could practically see his mind working at choosing the right words. “Outside the system, there is access to certain kinds of information about the elements within it. Features are visible outside that can’t be discerned inside.
“Unfortunately, making that information available inside never goes well. It’s like poison. Things begin to malfunction.”
“Is that really why Alice Nakamura died before the other girl?” Ruby asked.
“It was an extra contributing factor but it also had to do with the Nakamuras being in a world where they didn’t belong. As I said.” Pasco crossed the room to close the patio door and lock it. “What I was referring to were certain anomalies of time and space.”
Ruby shook her head, not understanding.
“It’s how Betty Mura ended up on a rooftop in midtown,” he clarified. “She just went there, from wherever she had been at the time. Undoubtedly the shock blew out the weakness in her brain and killed her.”
“Jesus,” Ruby muttered under her breath. “Don’t think I’ll be including that in my report—” Abruptly, the memory of Rafe Pasco lying in bed with her, his head resting on the pillow and looking at her with profound regret lit up in her mind. So sorry to have dropped in from nowhere without calling first. Not a dream? He might tell her if she asked him but she wasn’t sure that was an answer she really wanted.
“That’s all right,” Pasco said. “I will. Slightly different case, of course, and the report will go elsewhere.”
“Of course.” Ruby’s knees were aching. She finally gave up and sat down on the edge of the chair. “Should I assume that all the information you showed me about the Nakamuras—passports, the IRS, all that—was fabricated?”
“I adapted it from their existing records. Alice’s passport worried me, though. It’s not exactly a forgery—they brought it with them and I have no idea why they left it or any other identifying materials behind.”
“You don’t have kids, do you,” Ruby said, amused in spite of everything.
“No, I don’t,” he said, mildly surprised.
“If you did, you’d know why they couldn’t just leave her to go nameless into an unmarked grave.”
Pasco nodded. “The human factor.” Outside, a horn honked. “It’s time to go. Or do you want to stay here?”
Ruby stood up, looking around. “What’s going to happen to this place? And all the other things in the Muras’ lives?”
“We have ways of papering over the cracks and stains, so to speak,” he told her. “Their daughter was just found dead. If they don’t come back here for a while and then decide not to come back at all, I don’t think anyone will find that terribly strange.”
“But their families—”
“There’s a lot to take care of,” Pasco said, talking over her. “Even if I had the time to cover every detail for you, I would not. It comes dangerously close to providing information that doesn’t belong here. I could harm the system. I’m sure I’ve told you too much as it is.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked. “Take me to ‘court,’ too?”
“Only if you do something you shouldn’t.” He ushered her through the house to the front door.
“OK, but just tell me this, then.” She put her hand on the doorknob before he could. “What are you going to do when the real Rafe Pasco comes back from the Bahamas?”
He stared at her in utter bewilderment. “What?”
“That is what you did, isn’t it? Waited for him to go on vacation and then borrowed his identity so you could work on this case?” When he still looked blank, she told him about listening to the message on his cell phone.
“Ah, that,” he said, laughing a little. “No, I am the real Rafe Pasco. I forgot to change my voicemail message after I came back from vacation. Then I decided to leave it that way. Just as a joke. It confuses the nuisance callers.”
It figured, Ruby thought. She opened the door and stepped outside, Pasco following. Behind his car was a small white van; the print on the side claimed that it belonged to Five-Star Electrical Services, Re-Wiring Specialists, which Ruby thought also figured. Not-Rita was sitting in the driver’s seat, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. The tall guy was sitting in the SUV.
“So that’s it?” Ruby said, watching Pasco lock the front door. “You close down your case and I just go home now, knowing everything that I know and that’s all right with you?”
“Shouldn’t I trust you?” he asked her.
“Should I trust you?” she countered. “How do I know I’m not going to get a service call from an electrician and end up with all new wiring, too?”
“I told you,” he said patiently, “only if you use any of what you know to engage in something illegal. And you won’t.”
“What makes you so goddam sure about that?” she demanded.
Forehead creasing with concern, Pasco looked into her face. She was about to say something else when something happened.
All at once, her mind opened up and she found that she was looking at an enormous panorama—all the lost possibilities, the missed opportunities, the bad calls; a lifetime of uncorrected mistakes, missteps, and fumbles. All those things were a single big picture—perhaps the proverbial big picture, the proverbial forest you sometimes couldn’t see for the proverbial trees. But she was seeing it now and seeing it all at once.
It was too much. She would never be able to recall it as an image, to look at it again in the future. Concentrating, she struggled to focus on portions of it instead:
Jake’s father, going back to his wife, unaware that she was pregnant—she had always been sure that had been no mistake but now she knew there was a world where he had known and stayed with her, and one where he had known and left anyway—
Jake, growing up interested in music not computers; getting mixed up with drugs with Ricky Carstairs; helping Ricky Carstairs straighten out; coming out to her at sixteen and introducing his boyfriend; marrying his college sweetheart instead of Lita; adopting children with his husband Dennis; getting the Rhodes Scholarship instead of someone else; moving to California instead of Boston—
The mammogram and the biopsy results; the tests left too late—
Wounding the suspect in the Martinez case instead
of killing him; missing her shot and taking a bullet instead while someone else killed him; having the decision by the shooting board go against her; retiring after twenty years instead of staying on; getting fed up and quitting after ten; going to night school to finish her degree—
Jury verdicts, convictions instead of acquittals and vice versa; catching Darren Hightower after the first victim instead of after the seventh—
Or going into a different line of work altogether—
Or finding out about all of this before now, long before now when she was still young and full of energy, looking for an edge and glad to find it. Convincing herself that she was using it not for her own personal gain but as a force for good. Something that would save lives, literally and figuratively, expose the corrupt and reward the good and the worthy. One person could make a difference—wasn’t that what everyone always said? The possibilities could stretch so far beyond herself:
Government with a conscience instead of agendas; schools and hospitals instead of wars; no riots, no assassinations, no terror, no Lee Harvey Oswald, no James Earl Ray, no Sirhan Sirhan, no 9/11—
And maybe even no nine-year-old boy found naked and dead in a dumpster—
Abruptly she found herself leaning heavily against the side of the Mura house, straining to keep from falling down while the Dread tried to turn her inside out.
Rafe Pasco cleared his throat. “How do you feel?”
She looked at him, miserable.
“That’s what makes me so certain,” he went on. “Your, uh, allergic reaction. If there’s any sort of disruption here, no matter how large or small, you’ll feel it. And it won’t feel good. And if you tried to do something yourself—” He made a small gesture at her. “Well, you see what happened when you only thought about it.”
“Great,” she said shakily. “What do I do now, spend the rest of my life trying not to think impure thoughts?”
Pasco’s expression turned sheepish. “That’s not what I meant. You feel this way because of the current circumstances. Once the alien elements have been removed from your world—” he glanced at the SUV “—you’ll start to feel better. The bad feeling will fade away.”
“And how long is that going to take?” she asked him.
“You’ll be all right.”
“That’s no answer.”
“I think I’ve given you enough answers already.” He started for his car and she caught his arm.
“Just one more thing,” she said. “Really. Just one.”
Pasco looked as if he were deciding whether to shake her off or not. “What,” he said finally.
“This so-called allergic reaction of mine. Is there any reason for it or is it just one of those things? Like hayfever or some kind of weakness.”
“Some kind of weakness.” Pasco chuckled without humour. “Sometimes when there’s been a divergence in one’s own line, there’s a certain...sensitivity.”
Ruby nodded with resignation. “Is that another way of saying that you’ve given me enough answers already?”
Pasco hesitated. “All those could-have-beens, those might-have-dones and if-I-knew-thens you were thinking.”
The words were out of her mouth before she even knew what she was going to say. “They all happened.”
“I know you won’t do anything,” he said, lowering his voice and leaning toward her slightly, “because you have. And the conscience that bothers you still bothers you, even at long distance. Even in the hypothetical.”
Ruby made a face. “My guilty conscience? Is that really what it is?”
“I don’t know how else to put it.”
“Well.” She took a breath, feeling a little bit steadier. “I guess that’ll teach me to screw around with the way things should be.”
Pasco frowned impatiently. “It’s not should or shouldn’t. It’s just what is.”
“With no second chances.”
“With second chances, third chances, hundredth chances, millionth chances,” Pasco corrected her. “All the chances you want. But not a second chance to have a first chance.”
Ruby didn’t say anything.
“This is what poisons the system and makes everything go wrong. You live within the system, within the mechanism. It’s not meant to be used or manipulated by an individual. To be taken personally. It’s a system, a process. It’s nothing personal.”
“Hey, I thought it was time to go,” the man in the SUV called impatiently.
Pasco waved at him and then turned to Ruby again. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“You will?” she said, surprised. But he was already getting into his car and she had no idea whether he had heard her or not. And he had given her enough answers already anyway, she thought, watching all three vehicles drive away. He had given her enough answers already and he would see her tomorrow.
And how would that go, she wondered, now that she knew what she knew? How would it be working with him? Would the Dread really fade away if she saw him every day, knowing and remembering?
Would she be living the rest of her life or was she just stuck with it?
Pasco had given her enough answers already and there was no one else to ask.
Ruby walked across the Mura’s front lawn to her car, thinking that it felt as if the Dread had already begun to lift a little. That was something, at least. Her guilty conscience; she gave a small, humourless laugh. Now that was something she had never suspected would creep up on her. Time marched on and one day you woke up to find you were a somewhat dumpy, greying, middle-aged homicide detective with twenty-five years on the job and a hefty lump of guilty conscience and regret. And if you wanted to know why, to understand, well, that was just too bad because you had already been given too many answers already. Nothing personal.
She started the car and drove away from the empty house, through the meandering streets, and did no better finding her way out of the West Side than she had finding her way in.
THE ROSE WALL
JOYCE CAROL OATES
Joyce Carol Oates is the author of a number of works of fiction including, most recently, the novel Mudwoman (Ecco/HarperCollins) and the story collection The Corn Maiden and Other Stories (Grove Atlantic). She is a 2011 recipient of the President’s Medal for the Humanities and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Throughout the protracted summers of my childhood and well into autumn, frequently as late as November, the wall at the base of our garden bloomed with climber roses. The bushes were luxuriant—they were carefully tended—and grew to a height of nine or ten feet. There were clusters of red roses bright as drops of blood; there were small, rather anemic pink roses that grew across the archway over the garden gate; there were rich yellow roses—my favorite—that glowed with light on even overcast or mist-shrouded days.
The rose wall, I called it—that section of the wall. The rose wall, which was so beautiful.
The wall itself, the real wall, was made of granite. It surrounded our house and grounds on all sides—an enormous rectangle—sturdy and functional and rather ugly except at the base of the garden where the roses bloomed. Most days I never noticed the wall. None of the children noticed the wall. You couldn’t see it because it was always there, there was nothing to see or think about, everything was in its place and never changed. At the foot of the long gravel drive there was an enormous gate made of oak and iron which was kept bolted most of the time, so that the gate too was part of the wall, and invisible.
One day I asked our nursemaid why there were “sharp things”—spikes—growing out of the top of the wall. Without troubling to look toward the wall she told me that they had always been there. Yes, but why?—I asked. She did not reply. Why? I asked. Annoyed with her—our female servants were usually sullen and slow, and not very bright—I pulled at her arm and made her look at the wall, at the spikes: Why are they there? I asked. But her gaze was stubbornly averted; her reply was so low I could not hear. Ask them yourself, I seemed to have heard. Ask s
omeone else, she must have said.
When my mother came to kiss me goodnight that night, after my bath, I asked her about the sharp things and she looked startled. Sharp things, she said, what sharp things? What do you mean?
In all our city, my father said, only a half-dozen houses were so grand as ours; and all were in our hilly district, behind high walls of stone or brick or granite. From our playroom on the third floor we could see the city sloping away below—chimneys, orange-tiled roofs, church spires, the tower and cross of the great cathedral, and the blue-glittering surface of the Aussenalster. How lovely! On exceptionally clear days, when the mist burned off by mid-morning, we could even see the highest towers of the old castle many miles to the north. Sometimes it looked like an ordinary stone building, faint and near-colorless with distance; at other times it looked glowering and iridescent, like a reflection quivering in water.
How lovely, visitors to the playroom would exclaim, leaning on the windowsill and breathing deeply the fragrant air that arose from the garden below. Oh yes, my mother or grandmother or one of my aunts would say, laughing, oh yes certainly—from here.
In my childhood there were many servants. No one could keep their names straight. It didn’t matter—they came and went, speaking their strange dialects, nursemaids and cooks and handymen and gardeners and drivers and maids and washerwomen. Some lived inside the wall with us, in the servants’ wing; others came by way of a rear gate, and entered the house by way of the kitchen. What a gabble we children heard if we eavesdropped! Most of the servants were peasants, difficult to train—and difficult to trust. They lied, they stole, they sabotaged things; they disappeared and my father was forced to send the police after them, to have them arrested. Where do they come from, we children asked, and the reply was always the same: From out there. One of the adults would make a careless gesture of the hand, indicating the city, or the countryside in the distance—the world beyond the wall. Where do they come from? Oh, from out there, where else?—out there.
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