a passage full of food imagery. Milk and honey. It probably means raisins. Plump, and possibly candied or sugared.”
“They kill themselves for raisins?”
“I’d love to see their faces.”
“Are you a linguist?”
“I speak English,” I said. “And French. And why would a woman bomber want virgins anyway? A lot of sacred texts are mistranslated. Especially where virgins are concerned. Even the New Testament, probably. Some people say Mary was a first-time mother, that’s all. From the Hebrew word. Not a virgin. The original writers would laugh, seeing what we made of it all.”
Theresa Lee didn’t comment on that. Instead she asked, “Are you OK?”
I took it to be an inquiry as to whether I was shaken up. As to whether I should be offered counseling. Maybe because she took me for a taciturn man who was talking too much. But I was wrong. I said, “I’m fine,” and she looked a little surprised and said, “I would be regretting the approach, myself. On the train. I think you tipped her over the edge. Another couple of stops and she might have gotten over whatever was upsetting her.”
We sat in silence for a minute after that and then the big sergeant stuck his head in and nodded Lee out to the corridor. I heard a short whispered conversation and then Lee came back in and asked me to head over to West 35th Street with her. To the precinct house.
I asked, “Why?”
She hesitated.
“Formality,” she said. “To get your statement typed up, to close the file.”
“Do I get a choice in the matter?”
“Don’t go there,” she said. “The Israeli list is involved. We could call this whole thing a matter of national security. You’re a material witness, we could keep you until you grew old and died. Better just to play ball like a good citizen.”
So I shrugged and followed her out of the Grand Central labyrinth to Vanderbilt Avenue, where her car was parked. It was an unmarked Ford Crown Victoria, battered and grimy, but it worked OK. It got us over to West 35th just fine. We went in through the grand old portal and she led me upstairs to an interview room. She stepped back and waited in the corridor and let me go in ahead of her. Then she stayed in the corridor and closed the door behind me and locked it from the outside.
Chapter 8
Theresa Lee came back twenty minutes later with the beginnings of an official file and another guy. She put the file on the table and introduced the other guy as her partner. She said his name was Docherty. She said he had come up with a bunch of questions that maybe should have been asked and answered at the outset.
“What questions?” I asked.
First she offered me coffee and the bathroom. I said yes to both. Docherty escorted me down the corridor and when we got back there were three foam cups on the table, next to the file. Two coffees, one tea. I took a coffee and tried it. It was OK. Lee took the tea. Docherty took the second coffee and said, “Run through it all again.”
So I did, concisely, bare bones, and Docherty fussed a bit about how the Israeli list had produced a false positive, the same way that Lee had. I answered him the same way I had answered her, that a false positive was better than a false negative, and that looking at it from the dead woman’s point of view, whether she was heading for a solo exit or planning to take a crowd with her might not alter the personal symptoms she would be displaying. For five minutes we had a collegiate atmosphere going, three reasonable people discussing an interesting phenomenon.
Then the tone changed.
Docherty asked, “How did you feel?”
I asked, “About what?”
“While she was killing herself.”
“Glad that she wasn’t killing me.”
Docherty said, “We’re homicide detectives. We have to look at all violent deaths. You understand that, right? Just in case.”
I said, “Just in case of what?”
“Just in case there’s more than meets the eye.”
“There isn’t. She shot
“They kill themselves for raisins?”
“I’d love to see their faces.”
“Are you a linguist?”
“I speak English,” I said. “And French. And why would a woman bomber want virgins anyway? A lot of sacred texts are mistranslated. Especially where virgins are concerned. Even the New Testament, probably. Some people say Mary was a first-time mother, that’s all. From the Hebrew word. Not a virgin. The original writers would laugh, seeing what we made of it all.”
Theresa Lee didn’t comment on that. Instead she asked, “Are you OK?”
I took it to be an inquiry as to whether I was shaken up. As to whether I should be offered counseling. Maybe because she took me for a taciturn man who was talking too much. But I was wrong. I said, “I’m fine,” and she looked a little surprised and said, “I would be regretting the approach, myself. On the train. I think you tipped her over the edge. Another couple of stops and she might have gotten over whatever was upsetting her.”
We sat in silence for a minute after that and then the big sergeant stuck his head in and nodded Lee out to the corridor. I heard a short whispered conversation and then Lee came back in and asked me to head over to West 35th Street with her. To the precinct house.
I asked, “Why?”
She hesitated.
“Formality,” she said. “To get your statement typed up, to close the file.”
“Do I get a choice in the matter?”
“Don’t go there,” she said. “The Israeli list is involved. We could call this whole thing a matter of national security. You’re a material witness, we could keep you until you grew old and died. Better just to play ball like a good citizen.”
So I shrugged and followed her out of the Grand Central labyrinth to Vanderbilt Avenue, where her car was parked. It was an unmarked Ford Crown Victoria, battered and grimy, but it worked OK. It got us over to West 35th just fine. We went in through the grand old portal and she led me upstairs to an interview room. She stepped back and waited in the corridor and let me go in ahead of her. Then she stayed in the corridor and closed the door behind me and locked it from the outside.
Chapter 8
Theresa Lee came back twenty minutes later with the beginnings of an official file and another guy. She put the file on the table and introduced the other guy as her partner. She said his name was Docherty. She said he had come up with a bunch of questions that maybe should have been asked and answered at the outset.
“What questions?” I asked.
First she offered me coffee and the bathroom. I said yes to both. Docherty escorted me down the corridor and when we got back there were three foam cups on the table, next to the file. Two coffees, one tea. I took a coffee and tried it. It was OK. Lee took the tea. Docherty took the second coffee and said, “Run through it all again.”
So I did, concisely, bare bones, and Docherty fussed a bit about how the Israeli list had produced a false positive, the same way that Lee had. I answered him the same way I had answered her, that a false positive was better than a false negative, and that looking at it from the dead woman’s point of view, whether she was heading for a solo exit or planning to take a crowd with her might not alter the personal symptoms she would be displaying. For five minutes we had a collegiate atmosphere going, three reasonable people discussing an interesting phenomenon.
Then the tone changed.
Docherty asked, “How did you feel?”
I asked, “About what?”
“While she was killing herself.”
“Glad that she wasn’t killing me.”
Docherty said, “We’re homicide detectives. We have to look at all violent deaths. You understand that, right? Just in case.”
I said, “Just in case of what?”
“Just in case there’s more than meets the eye.”
“There isn’t. She shot
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