A couple of weeks before Boris died, when it was clear that he might pass away at any time, we made a schedule so that someone would always be at home. None of us could bear the thought of Boris dying alone. If one of my parents couldn’t arrange to work from home, either Lila or I was allowed to stay home from school. One Tuesday it was my turn. Our habit on those days was to stay next to Boris’s side in the living room, from which he rarely budged. I’d done just that all day long, stroking his fur and reading aloud to him, when the doorbell rang.
It was Roxanne, a neighbor girl from two houses down. I’d babysat for her family for a few years, but since she’d turned ten a few months before her parents had started leaving Roxanne and her little brother, Robbie, home alone. The moment I opened the door, I knew something was terribly wrong. She had a look of sheer panic in her eyes, and all she said was, “Robbie’s choking! Nobody’s home!” I took a quick look back at Boris, who was staring up at me from his pallet on the living room floor. “I’ll be right back,” I promised. Boris let out a faint sound, lifted his head, and attempted to move. I could tell he was about to try to follow me, even though he’d not moved more than a few inches at a time in days. “Stay,” I said, then bolted out the door and ran to Roxanne’s house, where I found six-year-old Robbie, whom I’d never liked very much, writhing and blue-faced on the kitchen floor. I lifted him to his knees and did the Heimlich maneuver, and a big chunk of something flew out of his mouth. Roxanne, who was shaking and crying at this point, declared, “It was a frozen banana. I told him not to eat it!” I made sure Robbie was all right, told Roxanne to call her mother, and then raced home.
When I got there, Boris was lying on the floor of the entryway, perfectly still, eyes open but vacant. He wasn’t breathing. He had no pulse. While I was performing the Heimlich on the bratty kid down the street, Boris had died trying to get to me. Even though my parents commended me for coming to Robbie’s rescue, I never forgave myself for not being there for Boris, for letting him die alone.
Years ago, when I told the story to Thorpe during the picnic, he had listened intently. When I was finished, he remained silent for several seconds. I expected him to say something about what a sad story it was. I was shocked, then, when he finally spoke. “Wow,” he said. “What a perfect ending.”
There is an office on the third floor of Sloan Hall at Stanford, Thorpe had written in the final chapter of Murder by the Bay. In the office sits a man—tall, imposing, the kind of man whose very presence changes the chemistry in a room. His concentration is as fierce as his ambition. At this moment, perhaps, he is working on the Goldbach Conjecture, certain that he will one day find the proof. When he does, there will be no one to share the glory.
Looking back, I realized I should have put two and two together long ago. Thorpe hadn’t discovered the ending in the process of writing the book. He had written the book toward his perfect ending.
Twenty-two
WHEN I GOT HOME AT HALF PAST SIX, I threw my clothes into the washing machine, then showered to get the smell of Thorpe’s house off my skin. Even though he hadn’t smoked for two months, I came home reeking of stale cigarettes.
It was still too early to call the phone number he had given me. Despite my exhaustion, I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep, so I took Lila’s notebook from its hiding place beneath my bed and drove to Hayes Valley. I parked on Octavia and walked down the narrow alley, past the graffiti-spattered mechanic shops, past the black leather corsets on display in the windows of Dark Garden. A line stretched into the alley outside the Bluebottle coffee kiosk. On more than one occasion I’d seen unsuspecting customers step up to the counter and order a “half-caf double latte” or “short soy hazelnut cap,” only to be subtly rebuked by the barista, whose attitude made it clear that if they wanted some hyped-up, tricked-out excuse for a good, solid cup of coffee, they could take their business to Starbucks. I’d never been much for the bells and whistles myself, and couldn’t imagine watering my Coffea arabica down with soy milk or injecting it with flavored syrups. Bluebottle had no seating, just a small counter perched over the sidewalk, but in a way this added to the place’s charm.
I breathed deeply, enjoying the huge aroma of the Yemen Sana’ani, before taking my first sip. I tasted hints of apricot, tobacco, wine, and spice. The first sip of the morning was always the best, when I could feel the cobwebs of my mind clearing, the blood rushing to my head. I tuned the world out and opened Lila’s notebook, determined, once again, to try to make sense of it.
On the page where I’d left off, Lila had written down the Continuum Hypothesis: There is no infinite set with a cardinal number between that of the small infinite set of integers and the large infinite set of real numbers.
The next couple of pages contained notes on the problem’s history. I was reminded of a conversation we had late one night in her bedroom, after our parents had gone to bed. I couldn’t quite place when the conversation had occurred—maybe weeks before she died, maybe months?—but I remembered the gist of it.
The Continuum Hypothesis was special in that it was the first problem on David Hilbert’s famous list of twenty-three unsolved problems, which he proposed in 1900. In the early sixties, someone had proved that the Continuum Hypothesis could never be determined to be either true or false. But the famous mathematician Paul Erdos had another take on it. His thought was that, if there were such a thing as an infinite intelligence, it might have the knowledge, which is lacking in humans, to decide whether the hypothesis was true or false.
“So unless the human race somehow manages to get infinitely smarter,” Lila said, “the planet will die out without us solving this basic problem about infinity.”
“What if your Goldbach Conjecture is the same sort of problem?” I asked. “What if you spend the next thirty years pursuing a proof that doesn’t exist?”
“Then at least I’ll know I tried,” Lila said. “At least I’ll know I did everything I could, and I didn’t give up.”
Every day since my meeting with McConnell, I had come up against the limits of my own knowledge, the frailty of my imagination. If the situation had been reversed—if it were my body that was found in the woods—I knew that Lila would not have taken some story in a book at face value. With determination, she would have examined the facts and methodically pieced the puzzle together. I was convinced that she wouldn’t have stopped until she knew the truth. And I was certain it wouldn’t have taken her twenty years to begin the search.
At eight a.m., I took the slip of paper from my wallet and dialed the phone number. A woman answered on the second ring. “Good morning,” I said. “Is this the number for Mr. James Wheeler?”
“This is Delia Wheeler. Are you calling about a bill?”
“No.”
A dog barked in the background. “Are you sure? Because the only person who ever called him James was his mother, God rest her.”
“I promise I’m not a bill collector.”
“This is Jimmy’s number, then. Who am I speaking to?”
“You don’t know me, but our paths crossed a long time ago. Lila Enderlin was my sister.”
“Who?”
“Lila Enderlin.”
She paused. I could hear the dog, closer now, panting near the phone.
“We don’t know anything about that,” Delia said.
“I’d just like to come by and talk to Mr. Wheeler for a few minutes, please.”
“The police talked to him thirty years ago,” she said. “He told them everything.”
“Twenty,” I said.
“What?”
“It was twenty years ago that Lila died.”
Another pause. “I could’ve sworn it was 1979. Lord, if my mind goes, too, we’re sure up the creek.”
“Are you still living on Moultrie?” I asked.
“We are.”
“I can come by anytime.”
I fully expected her to shoot me down, at which point I’d have to start pleading, so I was sur
prised when she said, “Well, I guess we’ll be here all day. Jimmy can’t go out anymore and I don’t like to leave him alone.”
“I’ll be there in an hour. Thank you so much for seeing me.”
The house on Moultrie was a brown-shingled cottage with dark yellow trim, the front door situated just a few feet from the sidewalk. The street was packed with cars, so I had to drive around for a couple of minutes before finding a spot.
I was just about to ring the bell when the door opened. A tiny, pale woman, about four foot eleven and no more than ninety-five pounds, stood before me in a Google T-shirt and black pants. Her long brown hair was in a ponytail, and she wore pink blush and matching pink lipstick. She was even younger than I expected—probably in her early sixties.
“Ellie Enderlin,” she said, studying my face. “My goodness.” She seemed about to say something else, but instead she just stepped aside to let me in.
“Thank you for letting me come over on such short notice.”
“Well, I doubt I can help you, but it’s nice to have a visitor.”
To the right of the entryway was a blue curtain, partially opened to reveal a nook just big enough for a bed. On a narrow table at the foot of the bed was a small television, the lights of which played over a yellow quilt. No sound came from the TV. There was someone in the bed—James Wheeler, I assumed—but because of the curtain I could only see his feet, white and bony. Next to the feet, a small black dog slept. We passed through the entryway into a small, immaculate living room. It was a shotgun house, with the kitchen in the back, and a bathroom off the kitchen. A tea kettle rattled on the stove.
“Sorry for the mess,” she said. “I didn’t have time to clean.”
“It looks perfect.” I sniffed the air—ginger and cinnamon. “What smells so good?”
“Oh, that’s just coffee cake. I’d have made you lunch if you came later.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I grew up in Mississippi,” she said, opening the oven to examine the cake. “My mother would roll over in her grave if I had a guest over and didn’t offer them something to eat. Just last week Matthew—that’s our oldest—took me to a lady’s house out in Pinole to buy a wheelchair that he found on the computer. For Jimmy, you know. The lady didn’t so much as offer us a glass of water.”
Only after we were sitting at the table with the cake arranged on a pretty china platter between us did Delia Wheeler bring up the purpose of my visit.
“It’s that Peter McConnell fellow that did it,” she said, looking into my eyes with conviction. “I read that book, it’s clear as day he was the one. It was a terrible thing. I feel so for your parents, hon. For you, too, but especially your parents. I can’t imagine if somebody did something like that to one of my boys. It still breaks my heart to think of it.”
I nodded. “It’s been a long time, but not a day goes by that I don’t think about my sister.”
“If I remember correctly, that McConnell fellow just up and disappeared. Did they ever end up arresting him?”
“No.”
“That’s a shame. Nothing can bring her back, I know, but if it was my own, I’d want somebody to be held accountable.”
She sipped her tea and chewed thoughtfully. “Honestly, hon, I’m not sure why you’re here. I don’t see what we can do for you.”
“I understand your husband talked to my sister the night before she died. I thought he might be able to fill in some blanks for me.”
“I wish he could,” Mrs. Wheeler said, “but Jimmy had a stroke three years ago. He hasn’t spoken since. He used to communicate by writing, but he can’t even do that anymore.” She stretched her fingers and fiddled with her wedding ring. “Jimmy wasn’t in the book. I remember. I went out and got it from the library as soon as it came out, and I read the whole thing cover to cover. I was scared out of my mind that he might be mentioned by name. I worried he couldn’t handle it, after everything that had happened. I’m just wondering, hon, how did you know about him?”
“I talked to a detective who worked on the case,” I said. The truth was far too complicated.
She frowned. “Then you must know what happened to Jimmy after.”
I shook my head.
“The police took him in for questioning. It was horrible. They showed up one night when we were getting the kids ready for bed and hauled him off like some kind of criminal. I stayed up all night, praying and crying. The kids were scared to death. When he came back the next morning, he looked awful. They hadn’t let him sleep, hadn’t given him anything to eat. They tried to make him confess. They just kept saying, ‘You’re the janitor. What’s the janitor doing talking to a pretty young college student?’
“But he was just like that, you see. He talked to anybody who would listen. And I’ll be the first to admit, he talked way too much. Once he had your ear, he wouldn’t let go. Drove me crazy, but now that he can’t talk, I miss it. Your sister was such a sweet girl, she always said hello to him in the hallway. He really liked her, but not in the way the police wanted to believe. We had two boys, and Jimmy had always wanted a girl. He told me once, before all this happened, that if we had a daughter, he wanted her to be like Lila. She was a good girl, he said, always acted modestly, never talked loud or tried to attract attention to herself.”
I sat quietly, listening. It was easy to believe that Lila would have been friendly with the janitor. She was most comfortable around people who didn’t fit into her peer group, people who wouldn’t demand more than a few minutes of her time, who wouldn’t ask for her phone number or invite her to a movie.
“Did the police ever talk to him again?”
She shook her head. “Oh, there was no need to. The reason they kept Jimmy so long that night was that he wouldn’t give them an alibi. He kept refusing to tell them where he had been on the night she died. But after a while they started getting rough with him, saying real terrible things, and he realized they honestly believed he could have done it. That’s when he told them about his second job—he worked at a steel mill in South City. We were having a real hard time back then, poor as church mice and a third baby on the way. He was working two full-time jobs to keep us afloat. But there was a strict policy at Stanford back then against moonlighting. That job was our bread and butter, and Jimmy couldn’t afford to lose it. He knew if he told the cops about the steel mill, it would make it back to his boss at Stanford, and he’d get fired.”
“So what happened?”
“He finally gave in and told the police, and they went out and talked to his boss on the night job, and sure enough, he’d gone straight from one job to the next. He clocked out at Stanford at seven p.m., then clocked in at the steel mill in South City at eight-thirty and worked all night. After that they left him alone.”
She reached across the table and took my hand. “I know why you’re here, hon, and I don’t blame you for trying to figure some things out. But I want you to know, it wasn’t Jimmy. You believe me, don’t you?”
I did.
“It tore him up what happened to her, and that they thought he could have done it,” she said. “Things fell apart after that. Within weeks he lost his day job at Stanford, I miscarried, and we almost lost the house. It changed him. He’d been so strong before, so eager. He grew up real poor, got a late start in life, and he had this idea that if he just worked hard we’d be able to move up in the world.
“The crazy thing is, now this little place is worth a fortune, but we’ll never sell. Jimmy hardly gets out of bed, he’s got all sorts of problems with his lungs and everything else. He worked his whole life for something he’ll never get to enjoy.”
There was a thumping noise from the front room. “Oh, that’s Jimmy,” Mrs. Wheeler said. “Two thumps. That means he’s thirsty.” She got up and poured water into a glass.
“Thank you so much,” I said, standing. I felt there was something else I had to say, even though I knew I was far too late. “I’m sorry your family got caugh
t up in all this.”
She smiled. “Well, what can you do? You just try to get by as best you can. Fortunately Jimmy and I were always pretty much head over heels for each other, that helps.”
I followed her through the living room into the entryway. She pulled the curtain back, and there was James Wheeler, a skeleton of a man with a wild swirl of gray hair. The dog had climbed up onto the pillow beside his head. “I’m here, hon,” Mrs. Wheeler said.
He looked up at me and for a moment, something flashed across his eyes. He raised an arm, as if to wave, but it dropped back to the sheet.
“I know,” Mrs. Wheeler said, holding the glass of water to his lips. “She looks just like her sister, doesn’t she?”
Twenty-three
ON SATURDAY, AS PROMISED, I MET THORPE at Opera Plaza. When I arrived he was still signing books, a line of customers stretching through the store. He looked up, saw me, and mouthed “Ten minutes.”
A good-looking guy walked into the store, carrying an ugly baby in a Maclaren backpack. He wore an expensive leather jacket, brown Skechers, and rocker jeans cut so low and tight it was a wonder he could walk. The baby wore a pink hat that said Nader 2008.
The guy’s shaggy haircut and sideburns were too perfect to be real. He was of the class of young, disaffected San Francisco hipsters who had long baffled me with their seemingly unlimited supply of free time and money, none of which they appeared to spend on food. He turned and gave me a lopsided grin. “Who’s the author?” he said.
“Andrew Thorpe.”
“Any good?”
“I haven’t read the book.”
I excused myself and walked to the coffee shop attached to the store, where I bought a tin of chocolate-covered espresso beans. Back at the store, I popped one in my mouth and let the chocolate melt on my tongue. By the time Thorpe was finished, I’d had a dozen and was beginning to feel the buzz.
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