Andrew Klavan - Empire of Lies

The clouds darkened and billowed over the avenue. I hurried away from the morgue.

I was thinking, God help me. God help me.

When Rashid's secretary left for home that evening, I walked into the professor's office and hit him with a hammer. I would not have thought I could do such a thing, but in the end it was easy.

I'd been sitting in the park before that. Sitting on a bench in Central Park for hours, trying to figure out what to do. There was no one I could call, no one I could ask. My wife would tell me to act sensibly, go back to the police, straighten things out. The police, the FBI: They thought I was a killer; they thought Piersall and Diggs were cranks; they thought Rashid was innocent. The time was draining away, sand through an hourglass. And I was the only one who knew.

I watched the people pass, watched them walking by under the plane trees, by the statues, against the backdrop of the Great Lawn. I watched their faces. New York is a good city for faces. There are so many, all so different from each other, about as many different kinds as there can be. Overwrought as I was, I grew quite sentimental about it. You know: watching the black and the white and the yellow faces, different religions and no religion, straight-arrow and all the variations on the theme of strange. All of them going wherever they were going, doing whatever they were going to do. Making machines or businesses or works of art, debasing themselves for gain or praying for salvation, slavering after celebrities or caring for their children or mindlessly murdering time. The endless repetition of the human equation, of the original thought in the mind of God, free to work itself out each alone and all together into the pattern of history, our history. Yes, I grew quite sentimental. I thought: What a wonderful idea for a country this is. What a wonderful place for those men to have imagined for us, those men from the old days, those dead white European men. "A republic," they said, "if you can keep it." What a wonderful idea.

After a while, I got off the bench and went to buy a hammer.

I walked as if I were in a trance. My head felt as if it were full of cotton. My thinking was slow and muddy. My body seemed like a burden I was dragging behind me, a sack of wet sand. I knew now what I had to do, and yet there were still so many doubts, so many questions. Was Casey Diggs really the boy Serena had seen murdered in the swamp? Had she really seen it? Had it really happened? And the things Piersall said about Diggs-and the things Diggs said about Rashid-were any of them true? What was real and what wasn't?

The questions nagged me, bothered me, haunted me as I crossed the park. I couldn't answer them and I couldn't make them stop. At one point, I even began to wonder: Was it possible that Curtis was right? Had I killed Anne Smith and somehow repressed the memory? I mean, I could remember going up the stairs to her apartment well enough. I could remember running away. Was it possible I had blacked out what happened in between?

And yet, still-still-I knew what I had to do. And at the same time these questions played and replayed in my brain, I found myself going about the terrible business at hand. Hunting down a hardware store on Columbus Avenue, picking out the hammer, duct tape, a box cutter, a small sanding sponge that I could stuff into Rashid's mouth. Because they had Serena. Because they were going to attack the city-the country-my country and all its faces. Because I was the only one who could stop it. And Rashid was the only one who knew the plan.

When I look back now, the whole thing seems lunatic, impossible. But at the time, it seemed inevitable, a matter of destiny. I knew what I had to do.

I rode up to the university on the subway, sitting on the molded seat with my plastic shopping bag from the hardware store on my lap. Under the rattle of the train, the questions in my brain faded to a dim distance. I stared into space, my head stuffy, my thoughts dull. I jounced passively with the train's rattling rhythm.

When I reached my stop, I trudged wearily up the station stairs. My bag hung heavy in my hands. I was glad to step up onto the sidewalk and feel the cool wind blowing. There was moisture in the air now-not raindrops, just a refreshing dampness. That revived me a little as I trudged across the street to the campus.

The administration building was another of these grand, massive Roman places. It looked like the Pantheon with an expansive dome up top and a bold colonnade in front. Just the sight of the long sweep of stone stairs leading up to the entranceway made me feel tired. I actually had to stop to rest halfway through the climb. I thought: I really am not feeling very well. Then I started walking again. I really seemed to be in an altered state of mind at that point, feverish and detached. But I knew…

There was a pleasant lady with dyed blonde hair at an information counter just inside the door. I asked her where Rashid's office was, and she gave me directions in a friendly tone of voice. It was that easy. It reinforced my sense that this was inevitable, that it was meant to be.

Off I trudged again, out between the columns and back down the long, long sweep of stairs.

The office was not far. It was in a large, impressive building of brick and stone. The building was set in a peaceful corner of the campus. There were yellow plane trees on the path outside and a spreading black maple tree, its leaves a brilliant red. There was a bronze cast of Rodin's The Thinker under one of the trees. As I approached, a few students went walking past it, laughing, chatting, carrying their books in their arms or in packs on their backs. How stately and peaceful and academic it all looked. I continued along the path toward the building, carrying my plastic bag with its hammer and duct tape and box cutter and the sponge I would stuff in Rashid's mouth.

Somewhere during the afternoon, I had lost track of time, but I suppose it was already after four o'clock at this point. I went into the building and plodded laboriously up two flights of stairs to the third floor. There was a long green hall with many wooden doors. The hall was empty and quiet, though I could hear voices murmuring behind the doors. Rashid's office was at the end, the door open. I walked to it and looked in. There was a secretary sitting at a desk inside. That surprised me. I didn't think professors had secretaries. But I guess Rashid was very famous and important because his theories got so much attention in the newspaper and that book of his had sold so many copies. The secretary glanced up at me inquiringly. I made a show of studying the number on the pebbled glass of the open door, my lips moving as I read the name. Then, with an embarrassed smile at the secretary, I gave her a wave of apology-you know, as if I had come to the wrong place. I went back down the hall to the stairs.

I went outside again. I stood under the yellow trees, beside The Thinker. I leaned my elbow against the statue's base and waited. I remembered I had seen The Thinker in Paris once, a smaller version perched atop a sculpture of The Gates of Hell. In Paris, he brooded over churning scenes of the damned in their torments. Here in America, he just stared down at the ground, as if he were trying to decide whether to send out for pizza or head across the street for some Chinese.

Somewhere close by, a clock was chiming the quarter hour. Somewhere a choir began rehearsing the St. Matthew Passion. "Oh, pain!" they sang. "Here trembles the tormented heart." They went over it several times, perfecting the harmonies. The students came and went along the paths, their sneakers kicking the leaves. White and black and yellow faces, laughing together. What a beautiful place, I thought dreamily, distantly. What a beautiful country. The choir sang far away. The clock chimed again. The Thinker pondered the earth.