Unknown - The Genius

‘etting Samantha on the phone took more work than I expected. The home number she’d given me rang indefinitely, and her cell phone went straight to voicemail. I left two messages the afternoon I received Victor’s second letter, and two more the next day. Fearing I was becoming a pest, I waited an agonizing twenty-four hours before calling her at work. She seemed surprised to hear from me, and not particularly thrilled. I told her I’d been trying her for days, then waited for her to offer an excuse. When she didn’t, I said, “I need to see you.”

“I don’t know if that’s the best idea.”

She sounded remote, and I realized she had misunderstood me. “It’s not about that. I got another letter.”

“Letter?”

“From Victor Cracke,” I said. When she said nothing, I added, “The artist?”

“Oh. I didn’t know you’d gotten a first one.”

“Your father didn’t mention it?”

“No. So you can contact him, then.”

At first I thought she meant her father, and that she was making a sick joke. “There’s no return address. You’re sure your father didn’t mention it.”

“Positive.”

“That’s strange.”

“Why’s it strange.”

“Because I assumed he would’ve wanted you to know what was happening with the case.”

“It wasn’t my thing. It was his and yours.”

“Be that as it may, I need to show you this. Let me pick you up, I can—”

“Wait,” she said.

“What.”

“I don’t think you should do that.”

“Why?”

“Because I just—I just don’t.”

I said, “It’s got nothing to do with that.”

“I understand. I still don’t want to get together.”

“Why.”

“Because I don’t want to.”

“Samantha—”

“Please. I don’t want to talk about it anymore, okay? I think it’s better for the both of us if we just forget all about it and go back to doing what we were doing before.”

I said, “I swear to you, it isn’t about that.”

And furthermore, what exactly did she mean by forget all about it. It might never happen again, but we couldn’t undo reality. I had enjoyed that night, and I thought she had, too. My fantasies had been feeding on its memory for two weeks, the film reel turning in my mind. At the time she seemed fine, but now I wondered if there had been something wrong with her that I, in my eagerness, failed to notice, an abstraction in her face that I had interpreted as ecstasy. And afterward: lying there, feeling fatigue, satisfaction, embarrassment, some small part of loneliness, need—had she felt something else, something unspeakable? She hadn’t seemed in any hurry to get me out the door. Did we look each other in the eye as we dressed? No, but that’s not uncommon. I had kissed her good-bye, and it had been a nice kiss. A lingering kiss. She hadn’t said anything indicating that she intended to blot me out.

She said, “If you’re trying to figure out a way to—” “To what.”

“To see me, then this—”

“Are you kidding, it’s got nothing to—”

“This is not the way to—”

“Are you even listening to me?” I could imagine her, hunched over her desk, the hand on the forehead, the pout. The other hand wiggling a pen. Inventing reasons to put me off. Sorry to have bothered with me; I was turning out to be clingy… .

“I’ll fax you a copy of the letter,” I said. “You can decide for yourself.” “Fine.”

Ten minutes later she called back. “All right,” she said. “Thank you.”

“But I still don’t think I’m the person you should be calling.” “Then tell me who to call.” “The police.”

“Your father said they wouldn’t be able to do anything.”

“They can do more than I can,” she said. “I’m not even in your borough.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

“I—”

“You’re the only other person aware of what’s going on. We still have the DNA to deal with, we still have transcripts left—”

“Whoa whoa whoa. I don’t have anything to do with this.” “He must have talked to you about the case.” “In passing, but—”

“Then you’re involved, whether you want to be or not. Don’t tell me you don’t care whether this gets finished or not.” “I don’t.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said. “Believe whatever you’d like,” she said. “He would’ve wanted—” “Oh please don’t start with that.”

“I’m involved. You’re involved. It might have been his, but he’s gone and it’s ours now and I need your help.”

“I can’t” she said and burst into sobs.

Right then I realized that I’d been—if not shouting, then at least speaking with great force. I began to apologize, but she would have none of it.

“You don’t get it, do you. I want to be away from all of this.”

“I really am sorry—”

“Shut up. I don’t care about the case. Okay? I don’t give a fuck about the case, or about your letter, or anything else. I want to be left alone. Do you understand me?”

“I—”

“Just acknowledge that you understand me. I don’t want to hear anything else.”

“I understand, but—”

“I don’t want to hear it. All right? I’m hanging up and that’s the end of it.”

“Wait—”

She was gone. I held the phone until it began to croak.

I CALLED THE NYPD. The person who answered seemed not to understand me, so I gathered up the letter and a copy of the first one (the original was still at the crime lab) and headed over to the station on West Twentieth. Construction in the lobby made it impossible for the desk sergeant to hear me; he directed me and a patrolman into another room, away from the clatter.

“Huh,” said the patrolman after I’d explained the story. He seemed thoroughly confused. “So you already talked to someone in Queens?”

“Not exactly. He was retired. And then he passed away.”

“Huh.” He picked up the letters, one in each hand, as though checking them against each other.

“We’ve been trying to track down … Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but is there anyone else I can talk to?”

He glanced at me. Then he looked at the letters. “Hang on.”

While he was gone I watched through a window of reinforced glass as a female officer asked a snotty-looking kid questions. Behind her hung a banner congratulating the tenth precinct on another quarter of record lows. On a bulletin board hung a sheet of statistics, and adjacent, a poster of the Twin Towers.

The patrolman came back. His name, I saw, was VOZZO. “I made copies,” he said, giving me back the letters. “We’ll want to have them in case the writer does anything actionable. It’s probably just a prank, though. I wouldn’t freak yourself out.”

“That’s it?”

“Unfortunately, there isn’t much more I can do for you.”

“It doesn’t look like a prank to me.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t, and I wish I could tell you more. From our end, though, I can’t do a whole lot, not with this.”

“And there’s nobody else—”

“Not at the moment.”

The dropping crime statistics and the 9/11 poster told me a story, a continuation of the one McGrath had begun. September 11 had changed the way crime got handled in New York. A couple of angry letters, an un-solvable murder—who cared.

“Anything else I can help you with?”

“No thanks.”

“Okay. If you need anything, here’s my card. You can call me.” He held up the photocopies. “Meantime I’ll hang on to these.”

I doubted that he’d hang on to them much farther than the next trash can, but I thanked him again and went back to the gallery.

ANTSY AT SPINNING MY WHEELS, I decided to return to the only evidence I had at my disposal: the cache of drawings. Ruby and I hadn’t nearly finished going through them, and the ones I’d seen had been given a cursory examination at best. Somewhere in that vast map, I hoped to find the road to Victor Cracke.