The Immortalists(61)

‘Ruby.’

‘That her name? Cute kid, even when she was screaming. Your sister ran; I must’ve scared her. I didn’t mean to. Soon as I saw her, I wanted to talk to her. So I decided I’d go to her opening. I’d stay afterward, I figured, and make sure we were clear. No hard feelings. Nothing for her to be nervous about.’

They stared straight ahead. It was the gift of parallel bar seating, Daniel thought: that you could have a conversation without ever looking the other person in the eye.

‘Night before, I couldn’t sleep. I get to the Mirage early. I’m pacing outside the theater when I see the three of them come in, Klara and her man and the baby,’ said Eddie. ‘She’s arguing with the guy – I can see it from a mile away. When he goes into the theater, she takes the baby in the elevator. The elevators are glass, so I get in the one beside her: keep my head down, watch to see where she gets off. She dropped the baby at a day care on seventeen before she rode up to forty-five. She didn’t seem to know where she was going until a maid came out of the penthouse suite. When the maid left, Klara slipped in.’

Daniel was grateful for the dimness of the bar and the liquor, grateful that there were places one could go at one in the afternoon for darkness. The beard he’d just started to grow was salty with tears.

‘Friday night,’ Eddie said, ‘and everyone was out. I’d never heard Vegas so quiet. And here’s what you learn, being a cop: peaceful is nice, so’s quiet, but if it goes on too long it’s not peace and quiet. I ran down the hall and I knocked on the door. “Ma’am,” I shout. “Miss Gold.” But there’s no answer. So I got a key from the front desk and I went back up.’ He drank until his beer was finished. ‘I shouldn’t say any more.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Daniel. He had already lost her. What he heard now would make little difference.

‘At first, I didn’t know what I was seeing. I thought she was practicing. She was strung up on the rope, like in her show; she was spinning, just barely; but the bit hung off beside her jaw. I laid my hands on her. I wanted to heal her. I tried to breathe into her mouth.’

Daniel was wrong. What he heard did make a difference. ‘That’s enough.’

‘I’m sorry.’ In the dark, Eddie’s pupils were oversized, gleaming. ‘She didn’t deserve it.’

Elvis’s ‘Love Me Tender’ came on the jukebox. Daniel gripped his glass.

‘So how did you get the case?’ he asked.

‘I was the one who found her. That counted for something. And then I argued. Major murder cases, crimes that cross state boundaries, kidnappings – those are all under the jurisdiction of the FBI, not the police. Sure, it looked like a suicide, but my radar was up and something was off. I knew they’d crossed state lines. I knew she’d been stealing. And I knew I had a funny feeling about Chapal.’

‘Raj,’ said Daniel, startled. ‘You suspect him?’

‘I’m an agent. I suspect everyone. Do you?’

Daniel paused. ‘I barely knew him. I do think he was controlling. He didn’t like for her to stay in touch with us.’ He squeezed his eyes shut. It was horrible, this use of the past tense.

‘I’ll look into it,’ Eddie said. ‘You have any other suspicions?’

Daniel wished he had other suspicions. He wanted a reason, but all he had was a coincidence. When Simon died, Daniel had not thought of the woman on Hester Street. His death was so shocking as to erase all other thoughts from Daniel’s mind, and after all, Simon had never shared his prophecy. But Daniel remembered Klara’s: the woman had said she’d die at thirty-one. And that was exactly the age she had been.

‘There’s only one thing I can think of,’ he said. ‘It’s horseshit. But it’s strange.’

Eddie lifted his hands. ‘No judgment.’

Pain ricocheted in Daniel’s skull. He wasn’t sure whether it was the alcohol or the impending disclosure, which he had not even made to Mira. When he finished telling Eddie about the woman on Hester Street – her reputation and their visit, the timing of Klara’s death – Eddie frowned. He’d look into it, he said, but Daniel didn’t have much hope. He sensed he’d disappointed the agent – that Eddie wanted secrets or conflict, not the childhood memory of a traveling psychic.

Six months later, when Klara’s death was ruled a suicide, Daniel was not surprised. It was the simplest hypothesis, and the simplest hypothesis, he’d learned, was usually right. His advisor in medical school had been a student of Dr. Theodore Woodward and liked to quote what Woodward told his medical interns: ‘When you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras.’

Fourteen years later and ten states east, Daniel enters the Hoffman House to meet Eddie again. The Hoffman was a fortification and lookout during the Revolutionary War; now it serves burgers and beer. Aside from its architecture – Dutch rubble construction, white shutters, low ceilings, and wide-planked wood floors – the only reminder of the Hoffman’s history is the annual arrival of war enthusiasts, who come to reenact the British Burning of Kingston.

At first, Daniel was intrigued by the reenactors. He was certainly impressed by their attention to detail. They make their costumes by hand, based on original documents and paintings, and carry their weapons in white linen haversacks. But they grate on him now: the women bustling around in petticoats and white bonnets, the men scrambling with fake muskets like actors run amok from a community theater. The cannons still make him jump. What’s more, the premise annoys him. Why rehearse the drama of a war long past when there’s one in the present? The reenactors’ determination to live in a different time unnerves him. It reminds him of Klara.