Jonathan Franzen - Strong Motion - A Novel

Dr. Seitchek again raised his eyes from the bottle of medicine. “I don’t think she has any idea.”

“That’s what she said? That she has no idea?”

“She didn’t say anything.”

“She could talk?”

“She was conscious and alert this morning. But she doesn’t appear to have any memory of yesterday afternoon. I don’t think she saw anything anyway.”

“But what did she say?”

Dr. Seitchek studied him as if there were fine print on his face. “Is there something you think she should have said?”

“I don’t know.”

“Something you want to tell me?”

“No.”

“Let me give you the detective’s number. I guess you know we’re offering a reward?”

Pleasant Avenue was deserted in the Friday late morning sun. Louis tried not to look at the blood on the stoop, but he couldn’t help seeing it, peripherally, as he went inside. He took Renée’s spare key from behind a patch of loose wallpaper in the stairwell.

Her apartment was very clean and very hot. He opened the kitchen window, letting a fresh northern breeze and the whitish noise of commerce on Highland Avenue trickle into the suffocating, coffee-scented stillness. He went to her bedroom and noted the bareness of her desk, where he’d last seen the pile of articles about induced seismicity and the Peabody earthquakes. There was again that atmosphere of finality, of control, of planned departure, that he’d noticed the first time he came here. It took him a conscious effort to break through the force fields she’d set up and search her desk and bookshelves. He looked inside every folder, every envelope. He searched her closets and her dresser, reaching down through socks and sweaters. Nowhere did he find anything remotely connected with Sweeting-Aldren, New England earthquakes, or injection wells.

He sat down on her bed and wondered if she’d thrown it all away. She’d thrown away her tapes and records, she’d thrown his own tapes and television and clothes into the hall, she’d thrown away a potential baby; maybe she’d thrown away their theory too.

He opened the drawer in her spavined maple nightstand. The last filled square on her calendar was Thursday’s, where she’d written NCHA 3pm , and more faintly, in pencil in one corner, the number 48. There was a penciled 41 in the previous Thursday’s square, a penciled 39 and the words 35 Federal, Salem, 6pm in ink in the Tuesday before that, a penciled 35 and a Washington Street address in the Friday before that, and a penciled H the day before that. Stretching back into May were 27 days whose whiteness was disturbed only by penciled L’s. Then came six boxes in a row with penciled X’s and another L . Then six completely white days leading back to the last Saturday in April, where she had written Party 8:30pm in ink and penciled in a solitary L .

Altogether there were eighteen L’s. He’d never seen her making these notations. He wouldn’t have been able to guess how many times they’d made love; now he didn’t have to.

The Salem address he recognized as Henry Rudman’s, but the Washington Street address meant nothing to him. He wrote it down on the Sheraton Baltimore notepad that she kept by her reading lamp. Then he put the calendar back in the drawer and smoothed the bedsheets where he’d been sitting.

It was nearly four o’clock before Howard Chun, sporting two black eyes and carrying a squash racket, came in to work at Hoffman Lab. Louis was waiting in the corridor by his office. He asked if Renée had mentioned that the Peabody earthquakes might have been induced by Sweeting-Aldren.

Howard unlocked his office and went inside. “Too deep,” he said. “Injection wells are shallow.”

“She found some papers that made it look like they drilled a really deep well in 1970.”

“Cost too much to pump. Take too much pressure.”

“Well, it was a theory she had. She was looking into it last month, and I want to know if she was looking into it last week. Because I think it might have been the company that shot her.”

“You tell the police?”

“I don’t want to unless I know she was looking into it.” Howard unlocked her desk and file cabinets, and Louis, to his unsurprise, found nothing. He crossed the hall to the system rooms, where Howard had logged on from several terminals. “Can I look in her computer accounts?”

“She never say anything,” Howard said.

“I know, but she was working on it.”

Howard logged on from yet another terminal, using Renée’s name and password. “You see her yet?”

“No.”

“She love you.”

“Does she?”

Howard nodded. “Love love love love,” he said, idly, as he employed a utility called XFILES. “These are text files she change or create since last backup, June 4. Far enough back?”

There were only six files — three brief letters to other scientists and three of her papers about Tonga. Louis scrolled through them all. “You’re sure this is everything?”

“Everything that’s here.”

“Is it possible for someone else to get access to her accounts?”

“Too easy, yeah. Got a stupid operator password. Just ‘OP.’ Really stupid.”

“I’m sorry I hit you. I was jealous of you.”

“Love love love,” Howard said.

An evening chill was creeping into the lobby of the building that the Washington Street address had led him to. The directory had a listing for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, but the night guard said to come back on Monday, because everyone had gone home.

“I have to see her,” Louis said, on the telephone.

“Maybe on Monday,” said Mrs. Seitchek, from her hotel room.

“I have to see her. When you go there in the morning, ask her if she thinks it might have been somebody from Sweeting-Aldren that. did it.”

“Sweet ’n’ what?”

“Sweeting-Aldren. The chemical company.”

“Louis, I think you should be talking to the police, not me.”

“Tell her I think it might have been Sweeting-Aldren. Will you just tell her that? She’ll know if she wants to let the police know. It’s not my decision.”

“Something’s going on here, and I think I have a right to know what it is.”

“I’m going to give you my number, and I want you to tell her what I said.”

It took him all of Saturday, in the earth sciences library upstairs from the university’s Peabody Museum, to track down and photocopy the handful of papers that Renée had started with six weeks ago. They were all there, however; they were all real. He reread the paper by A. F. Krasner, trying to smell the female mammal who’d composed it, but the prose, the very typeface, was old and withered.

The answering machine on Marlborough Street said: Louis, this is Liz Seitchek. You may meet me at the surgical ICU at ten tomorrow morning .

Channel 4’s Penny Spanghorn said that Renée Seitchek was in serious but stable condition at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. There had been statements of sympathy and outrage from NOW, Planned Parenthood, the mayor of Boston, and the president of Harvard. Police forces throughout the metro area were involved in the hunt for the assailant. The car driven by the assailant had been stolen from the Hertz rental-car lot at Logan Airport Thursday morning. There were no other strong leads.

The first-place Red Sox, meanwhile, were beginning a seven-game home stand at Fenway Park.

Eileen emerged from the master bedroom and looked at Louis mournfully. The king-sized bed behind her was covered with reference books and a supine Peter. Louis set down the orange juice he’d been drinking and put his arms around her. She squeezed him so hard it hurt. Then she gave him a plastic card and told him to go rent two movies.