Rachel Alexander 02 - The Dog who knew too much

partner, ba -da-boom, the cops go after one person, the schmuck usually ignores the Miranda warning, places himself at the scene, changes his story five times, then confesses.
    Or no one seems to be guilty. The person was wonderful, his friends were wonderful, everything was wonderful. Until you start to turn over the rocks and watch the worms crawl out.
    This case was driving me crazy. There was no one I didn ’ t suspect. Maybe it was because she had so much. Everyone who knew her had reason to be envious.
    It would be only human, wouldn’t it?
    Lisa did everything well. She was beautiful. She had money. Her father bought her this gorgeous apartment, full service, great light, all paid for.
    But that wasn’t half of it. She was smart, I thought, now heading north along the waterfront area, the Hudson dark and forbidding to my left, the wind going through Lisa’s thin jacket. She was talented, focused, and lucky too, I thought, but then I began to shake my head. Lucky? Well, she was lucky until the end. Then she got very unlucky.
    I thought about the people in her life, all of them in my life now. Any of them could have done it.
    The only one I really liked in all this was Avi . So I began to wonder if I was being blind, no one to shout from the shore and head me in the right direction, blind because I liked him so much, admired him, as if that meant he weren’t capable of murder.
    I had been sort of skipping over him because I thought he was so special. But all kinds of people commit crimes, and he could have done it I thought about how sweet he’d been to me. Not sweet, really—generous would be more to the point. I guess I’d prefer it if it were one of the others. And then I found myself talking out loud, a typical New Yorker. Is this pathetic, I said, or what? I’m supposed to be a fucking detective.
    Jesus, I was cold. I crossed West Street again, but instead of getting out of the wind, I walked along the other side of the traffic, finding myself headed toward Bank Street . I crossed the street and walked into the Westbeth courtyard, across the street from the studio, the place where Paul was killed, and sat facing the school and looking up.
    It was late now, very late, but the studio lights were on, the only ones on in the whole building. I wondered who was there. For a moment I had the eerie feeling that if I went upstairs, it would be Lisa, sitting at Avi’s desk, the way she used to, doing the paperwork, Ch’an at her side. I shivered at the thought.
    It was probably Avi , catching up on the work Lisa used to do for him.
    From the very beginning, I didn’t want it to be him, so I kept looking for ways it could be the others. But now that I was thinking about it, it occurred to me that the tradition in t’ai chi—no, not just t’ai chi, all the martial arts—is for serious students to remain with their master for years and years, and not go off on their own, not leave or anything, until the master dies. And Lisa had told him she was leaving, she was going to break with tradition and go off to study in China .
    Of course, I thought, standing up, then sitting down again. Her note. It was on his desk. What was that they said in real estate? Location, location, location. How could I have missed this?
    I could go upstairs, I thought. We need to talk, I could say. Of course, he’d say, looking at me the way he always did, as if there weren’t anything that might happen that could be more important than whatever it was I had come to say, as if there were no tomorrow and nothing existed but now.
    He’d wait. All I would hear would be the sound of my own breathing.
    It’s not going well, he might ask, your search for answers? You haven’t learned anything? And I could shrug and say, oh, I’ve learned a lot, just not enough.
    I’ve made a big decision, I could say, just to make sure I had his complete attention. What is that, Rachel? he’d say, and then I’d tell him that my intention had been to learn about Lisa, to understand her life so that I might understand her death. I could tell him how arrogant a notion that was, to think I might become privy to the complexity of another human being by meeting her colleagues, her mentor, her sweetheart, as if, by looking through her books, wearing her clothes, or sleeping in her bed, I would suddenly know who she was, how she felt. What happened, I could say, is that I only learned more about me, who I am, how I feel.
    Rachel, he’d say. But I’d