James Adcox - Does Not Love

The second officer leaves and returns with a cup of coffee.

“Alright, so this guy you say you saw,” he says, putting the coffee down in front of Robert. “Was he tall or short?”

“Tall?” Robert says, unsure.

“Like would you say six-foot-three? Six-foot-four? Six-foot-five?”

“I don’t know,” Robert says.

“You don’t know how tall he was,” the second officer says. “Man says he’s seen the guy, doesn’t even know how tall he was.”

“There are problems of perspective to be taken into account here,” says the first officer. “Depending on the angle, of course—”

“Was this guy white or black?”

“It was hard to tell, it was dark… ”

“Doesn’t even know the ethnicity! Guy’s coming in here, says he can ID our perp, doesn’t even know the ethnicity!”

“It was dark,” Robert says. “And anyhow I never said—”

“Of course it was dark!” says the second officer. “It was night! You think we can just decide to do our job during the day? You think taxpayers would stand for that? You think, maybe, we can ask the criminal element to hold off on all illicit activities between the hours of eight pm to six am?”

“I’m sure he’s not suggesting that, Ivan.”

“You know what I’d like to do?” the second officer says to Robert. “I’d like to take that coffee you’re drinking right now and throw it in your smug, law-school face. Would you like that? Would you like it if I threw that coffee in your smug law-school face?”

“Of course he wouldn’t like that,” the first officer says. “Why would you even ask such a thing?”

“In terms of noses would you say that the man you saw had more of an upturned or a downturned nose?”

“I don’t know,” Robert says.

“I’d like to bash your head into the wall!” the second officer screams. “Would you like that? Would you like it if I bashed your smug, law-school face into this concrete wall, right here?”

“This is harassment,” Robert says. “I’m not under suspicion for committing any crime, am I?”

“Ivan has suffered a number of disappointments in his life,” the first officer tells Robert, sitting in the chair beside him, putting a hand on Robert’s shoulder. “Chief among them being that, coming from a family of lawyers, he was expected to follow in their footsteps. His mother went to Yale, top of the class. His father and brother both went to Brown, and didn’t do so bad for themselves, either.”

“I choked on the LSAT,” the second officer says, as if Robert were somehow at fault for this.

“He choked on the LSAT,” the first officer says with a shrug. “Of course we’re all sure that he would’ve made an excellent lawyer, but some people just aren’t good at standardized tests.”

“I never choked on no test before.”

“He’s a hell of a detective,” the first officer says. “We’re glad to have him on the force, as you can imagine.”

“I’d like to choke this fucking asshole,” shaking a fist at Robert.

“Ivan, really, enough. We’re going to have a lawsuit on our hands.”

“I can’t even stand looking at this guy. I need to get some air.”

The second officer glares at Robert and leaves.

“He has a gruff exterior, but his heart is pure,” the first officer says.

“Look, if I’m under any suspicion, I need to call my lawyer.”

“Who said you were under any suspicion?”

“So I’m free to go?”

“The world is a complicated thing,” says the officer, standing once again and beginning to pace, “full of many moving parts. You mentioned lawyers. You yourself are a lawyer, of course, and one of your firm’s clients, we happen to know, is Obadiah Birch Pharmaceuticals. And the man who was shot? A researcher, contracted to work with Obadiah Birch Pharmaceuticals. It is entirely possible that this is a coincidence, these two things coming together, a lawyer working for Birch Pharmaceuticals and a researcher, now dead, also working for Birch Pharmaceuticals. But you must understand that these are exactly the sorts of coincidences we look for, here in the force: the coming together of two such related things. We strive to put the world in some kind of order, to turn the chaos of sensation into the beauty of theory, of explanation.” He sighs pleasantly at this last phrase, a smile briefly playing across his lips; until, at the next moment, he frowns at a sudden thought, and his face bunches together, as if working it through with some difficulty.

“On the other hand — speaking of order — it stands to reason that the guy who plugged this researcher is the same guy who plugged the other researchers. And if that’s so, and if just for the sake of argument you were our guy, why would you, our guy, call 911 after plugging this researcher, when our guy didn’t call 911 after plugging previous researchers? Calling 911 doesn’t fit our guy’s MO. Unless — oh, this is the tricky part! — unless our guy’s smart enough to change his MO from time to time, to throw us off the trail. You’re a pretty smart guy, aren’t you, Mr. St. Clair? Smart enough to change your MO, just to throw a couple of old detectives off the trail? In which case we’d have to reexamine the entire concept of MO. Meaning, in effect, reexamining the concept of causality itself. What is an MO if not an essence, the hard core underlying the varying methods of the criminal? The theme that ties act to person? The concept, in other words, of order itself?

“I see you are trembling, Mr. St. Clair. It is a terrifying idea, living in a world without order. I understand why the idea would frighten you.

“Of course, it’s possible that is not the reason you are trembling. You look fatigued, Mr. St. Clair. You’ve had a long day. If I had had such a day, only to end up in an interrogation room in a police station, with some mincing dwarf of a police detective talking to me about MOs and causality and science, I think I might be trembling too. I would maybe want to get something off my chest. Possibly there is something you want to get off your chest, Mr. St. Clair. But not quite yet! First — yes, first, let me show you something. It is behind this door,” hand in place, readying himself to open it, “something that, I think, will bring this night to—” A polite knocking comes from the other side of the door. The detective opens it, just a crack.

“Ivan!” hisses the first officer. “What the hell. Where’s the other witness? How can we have the big payoff without the other witness?”

“There was another witness?” Robert asks.

“We never actually managed to pick up the other witness,” comes the second officer’s voice, from the other side of the door.

“Why wasn’t I told about there being another witness?” Robert says, standing. His voice is reaching what sounds, even to his own ears, like an uncomfortably high pitch.

“You told me they were bringing him in,” the first officer says, opening the door fully to reveal the second officer, looking sheepish. “How can we have the big payoff if they didn’t bring him in?”

“They were going to,” says the second officer. “And then they didn’t. He disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Vanished, into the moonlight. They found this,” he holds up a tuft of what appears to be brown fake fur. “And this,” he holds up a pair of black goggles. The officers stand hunched over the interrogation table, examining the evidence.

“Look, am I free to go or aren’t I?” Robert says, finally.

“Yes, dammit, yes,” says the first officer. “Did anyone once say, this entire time, that you weren’t free to go?”

“I’ve never seenanyone die before,” Viola tells the FBI agent. They’re sitting on the bed of the FBI agent’s motel room eating peanut butter crackers bought from a vending machine by the motel-room door. Viola twists each pair of crackers apart before she eats them. “You’ve seen people die before, right?”