Andrew Klavan - Empire of Lies

"Look," I said to Curtis, "why don't you just ask me whatever you want to know? I haven't got anything to hide." That only got me more silence. So I said: "What is it exactly you suspect me of?"

He turned those cold eyes on me again. He wasn't smiling anymore. "I don't recall saying I suspected you of anything."

I felt my stomach curdle as if he'd caught me out at something, some revealing error. "Come on," I said. "You leave me waiting around for an hour. You send Lauren in to weasel information out of me. You read me my rights. What am I supposed to think?"

"I'm just trying to find your daughter, Mr. Harrow. That's all."

"You sure seem to be taking your time about it."

"We're doing what we can."

He had turned back to the windshield. His hard gaze seemed to stare right over the red brake lights ahead of him and the taxis' yellow rooftops, straight into the distance, at the liquid steel of the sky.

"Do you understand that the people she's with may be terrorists?" I asked him. "They may be part of that Wall Street attack they were planning today-you know that, right?"

He gave a slight, almost-imperceptible shake of his head.

"What?" I said. "You don't believe me?"

"According to our information, it seems unlikely."

"You don't think these guys murdered Casey Diggs, then, the way Serena said?"

"We're checking that story out."

I couldn't tell whether he meant he was checking Serena's story or checking my story about Serena's story or what. I was afraid to ask. In fact, every time he spoke, I felt that clammy chill again on the back of my neck, that sour bubbling in my stomach. It was not that there was anything accusatory or suspicious in his tone. There was only that mild, disdainful curiosity as to exactly what kind of scumbag I was going to turn out to be.

We turned east after a while and headed across the park. I brooded out the window on the clustered autumn trees, their red and yellow leaves. The sight made me ache for the suburban woods of home. It occurred to me that if I checked my phone right now, there'd probably be a message on it from my wife. She probably called me back while I was in the interrogation room where there was no reception. I didn't check the phone. I didn't think I could bear to hear her voice.

We came out of the park onto Fifth Avenue. The Metropolitan Museum of Art lorded it over the boulevard with its majestic columned front, like some palace in an imaginary Rome. The cars were moving faster, and the blue Dodge sped along beneath a line of yellowing sycamores. Wherever we were going, we were getting there faster now-which made me grow even tighter with suspense. The anxiety was making me jittery-jittery and increasingly pissed off. This bastard-his silences-I couldn't tolerate them anymore.

I turned on him. "Do you know about Diggs, about Casey Diggs?" He didn't answer. "You know about his theory about Professor Rashid?" Detective Curtis chewed the inside of his lip. "If the guys who took Serena killed Diggs, they were probably protecting Rashid, weren't they? Which means they were probably in on the Wall Street attack." Again, I caught that nearly imperceptible shake of the head. "You keep shaking your head. Why don't you believe me?" No answer. "What about the fact that one of the terrorists they arrested today was one of Rashid's students? What do you make of that?"

Finally, I got something out of him. We had stopped at a light at Grand Army Plaza. The buildings were low here and the boiling sky was big. The massive, mingled, steely clouds rolled and raced over the mansard roof of the hotel, over the statue of General Sherman on horseback, over the narrow side streets leading to the river. Curtis turned to look at me. What a look-I could almost feel him rifling my soul. I could see him going over the contents of my conscience with his dour cop intelligence. What must it take, I thought, to turn a man into a man like this? A whole lot of hours bearing witness to the blood toll of human malice and folly, I had no doubt. It must've taken a lot of dead bodies on a lot of floors to make Curtis Curtis.

He turned away. And the light turned green and we started moving again. Whatever it was he was searching for in me, I got the feeling he hadn't quite found it yet. I waited for him to say something. He didn't.

"All right, well, you got me-I'm baffled," I said, throwing up my hands. "Diggs says Rashid is a terrorist and then Diggs disappears. You bust a bunch of terrorists planning to blow up Wall Street, and at least one of them is Rashid's student. Why the hell aren't you investigating Rashid himself…?" I was about to go on, but the words died in my mouth. I never finished the sentence. Instead, I guess I sat there like an idiot for a few seconds, staring at the detective's expressionless profile, mouthing thoughts I didn't speak, as an idea took shape in my mind. I wasn't sure I should say it aloud but finally, still unsure, I did. "You're not investigating Rashid," I said, "because Rashid is working for you." No reaction from him. "That's it, isn't it? He's working for you or for the FBI or for someone. That's why you ignored Diggs. And Patrick Piersall, too. That's why you shut them both down, publicly dismissed their ideas. You were protecting Rashid because he was your inside man. Diggs got it right, didn't he? There was a conspiracy centered around Rashid-a conspiracy to bomb Wall Street. Only what he didn't understand was that Rashid was an informer the whole time. Rashid turned them all in to you guys. That's how you got them. Right?"

One more time-the last time-I thought I saw that little smile play at the corner of his thin lips. I knew I had guessed the truth. I had gotten it exactly.

"But then…" I said-or started to say. I started to say: But then where was Serena? Why did they take her? Why did they kill Diggs? I mean, if Jamal and the others weren't terrorists, who the hell were they?

There was no point in asking. Those were obviously the exact questions he was wrestling with himself. And he thought something-something "downtown" that he was taking me to see-might help him find the answers.

So we went downtown-downtown and east to the river-to Bellevue Hospital. We had to go around, up from the south, to reach it on the one-way avenue. I only caught a glimpse of it: a sullen brick fortress over a century old set amidst the greater medical center of modern towers all white stone and glass. Then Curtis turned the Dodge into the parking lot of a side building. It was a low, grimy tiled box wedged in a corner of the vast complex. What was this place? I'd never seen it before. It was set beside a long, large garage or warehouse with several loading bays. Some trucks and ambulances were parked out front.

I tried to take a look around, but Curtis was on the move again. He snapped off the car's engine and leapt out almost in a single movement. Again, I had to hurry to keep up. I didn't reach his side until he was standing at the entrance to the grimy little structure. He flashed his badge at a security camera. The door unlocked with a buzz. It was only then-just as I was about to step inside-that I spotted a small plaque on the wall next to me: CITY MORGUE.

"Not Serena," I said softly, following Curtis down a faceless hallway of tiles and glass and metal doors.

He shook his head. We turned a corner. He pushed through another door. I went after him.

I found myself crowded with him now into a small, sterile green room. There was a folding panel stretched across the middle of the floor, dividing the space in half. There was nothing else there except, on a metal table to my right, a small closed-circuit television set. There was a picture on the set, black and white. It was a picture of a corpse on a gurney. The corpse was covered by a sheet, head to toe. I gazed at the image on the TV-gazed stupidly, confounded out of any feeling whatsoever, even a feeling of expectation. I couldn't imagine who it could be, lying there-who it could be, I mean, who might have anything to do with me.