Here She Lies

smile.
    “What about Zara’s brother?” Julie asked. “I heard he works in construction. I heard he’s a not-so-nice guy.”
    “I heard that, too,” Lazare said. “And I checked it out. All her relatives are in Hungary — the bad brother’s just a rumor. Not unusual in these cases. Violent death kind of uncaps people’s imaginations. Makes our job a little harder, but it’s human nature, can’t be helped.”
    “What now?” Julie asked.
    “Sit tight. There’s no real reason for the two of you to worry. Chances are this was a random incident. But just to reassure you, I’m putting a security detail on your house. Unmarked car, maroon sedan. He’ll be parked outside. Best thing is to leave him alone — don’t visit him, no coffee and such. It’ll just draw attention.”
    I was a little surprised to be offered the extra support from what I assumed was a small local police force. But he himself had said that they rarely saw this kind of crime and I guessed they felt more comfortable erring on the side of caution. So did I.
    Julie and I simultaneously thanked him and this time he smiled in full. The matched set effect; we were used to it.
    “How long?” Julie asked.
    “As long as you need him. We’ll see how this thing plays out.” Lazare bent down to pick up his empty glass. And then he hesitated, sat back and looked at me.
    “Annie, I hope you don’t mind my asking, but why did you leave home yesterday?”
    That phrase, leave home, threw me off. It sounded so final.
    “I guess you already know, since you’ve been talking to Bobby,” I said.
    “In your own words.” He clicked his pen twice, drawing the ballpoint in and out, and waited for an answer.
    “Bobby’s been unfaithful.”
    “And you can substantiate that,” he said, not phrasing it as a question, but I answered anyway.
    “Yes.” One clear word, no ambivalence, so he wouldn’t ask again.
    “That’s good,” he said, “because someday you may need to fall back on that to comfort yourself.”
    “What exactly did Bobby tell you?” My tone had sharpened. I didn’t care.
    Detective Lazare slipped his pen into his shirt pocket and closed his notebook. The gestures seemed contrived to reassure me that he was just curious or this was off the record or some other ineffectual apology meant to gloss over the intrusive line of questioning. “Annie, I’m not taking sides in this. I’m just adetective doing his job, wondering why so much happened in one family in one day. Wouldn’t you?”
    Of course I would. I did wonder that. But we had started this meeting in the spirit of shared information and now I felt, well, guilty. I didn’t understand why. Or why he would want me to. I didn’t answer his part-rhetorical, part-combative question and after an awkward moment he offered an olive branch of sorts.
    “Well, anytime you feel like talking,” he said, “my door is open.”
    Julie glanced at me and I knew she was thinking the same thing I was: that if I needed a therapist, I’d find one. She stood and reached for his glass, which he handed her without a word. He used the armrests to push himself up from the canvas chair.
    By way of good-bye, he said, “Cases like this, they’re tough. Woman like that. Comes from a nice family over in Hungary. Her people were poor; she was helping support them, sending money home. From what I hear she was a political activist in her town until things got a little too hot and she lost her job. Came here on a short visa and stayed. Immigrants like her, well, they’ve all got their story, don’t they?”
    It came at us like her eulogy — brief, helpless — and we listened. Softened. He was a master at saying two things at once: remember, Zara is the victim here and I’m just a guy doing my job.
    Julie walked him through the house to the kitchen door.
    Sitting alone in the yard, I realized the detective had left behind the fax of Thomas Soiffer. I suspected he had left it on purpose; he wanted us emotionally involvedin this, to open us, in case our proximity to the murder held some special secret. Had he rattled me on purpose, just to test my reaction? I studied Soiffer’s photo and the longer I looked at it, the more that grizzly face seemed to gain dimensions of cynicism and rage. I could see him with a knife in his hand, slipping through the twilight, behind Zara, one sinewy hand grabbing her hair to yank back her head, the other drawing the blade across her neck like a violin bow.