The Last Equation of Isaac Severy(62)

He returned to his desk to gather his things and lock up the cabinets. The coffee he’d poured earlier was now cold. Even so, he picked up a spoon and stirred it absently, imagining that if he moved the spoon counterclockwise for long enough, he might be able to suck the heat back into the mug. Longer still, and the cream would unmix itself and swirl back into the hypnotic pattern it had once made. But there was no fighting the laws of thermodynamics. One couldn’t uncool coffee, just as one couldn’t unkill a person.

E. J. paced nearby, wobbling slightly on her heels. Must be date night with her husband. For nineteen years, E. J. had thrown her life into saving the city’s imperiled children, yet despite everything she’d seen in those years, she managed to conduct herself with extraordinary lightness. He had the sense that the second E. J. got home to her husband, she could kick off her shoes, let her job roll off her back, and enter into the ease of spousal banter. That’s the kind of detective she was. She didn’t need to use rage as a release; she didn’t need to meet violence with violence, as he did. She could just switch it all off.

But these past weeks, E. J. had been acting strange: first mothering everyone in the office, and then retreating. Now this emphatic pacing. Her behavior worried him, and he might have asked her about it had he not wanted to invite similar questions about himself. For instance, he’d hardly shown his face at work for the past two weeks. If it hadn’t been for Hazel catching him in the Cadillac that morning, he’d likely still be sitting there now.

E. J. caught him looking in her direction. She scratched her scalp with the corner of a lime green folder.

“You have a second, Greg?”

He hesitated. Curious though he was, he didn’t really have time for a chat. It was his fourth wedding anniversary, and Goldie was preparing a fussy meal that had taken days of planning. She wanted him to be excited about the dinner, though she knew full well that whether it was steak flambé or a ham sandwich, it was all the same to him. Whatever reaction Goldie was looking for, he usually managed to simulate the appropriate response. He was lucky she was rotten at detecting emotional mimicry.

“What’s on your mind, E. J.?”

She zigzagged to his desk and placed in front of him a mug shot of a hollow-cheeked, dead-eyed woman whose gray hair was pulled back from a face that showed no emotion except for the beginnings of a smile. E. J. tapped the photo with a lacquered nail.

“Recognize this harpy?”

He did: that rubber-band crease of a mouth that wanted to stretch into a full smile but settled instead on a smirk. It nauseated him how little shame these criminals displayed on camera. It was the rare mug shot that showed honest disgrace or regret. Most of these people—child molesters, abusers, rapists—held their chins high, as if they had made the decision before the photo was snapped that they were going to retain some motherfucking dignity. Some even smiled, as if looking cheerful were somehow an imaginative response to having been caught doing something deeply horrible. It was the smile of guilt that Gregory had come to know well, the one that said, “Funny how life has led me to this moment, isn’t it?”

He shrugged. “They all start to look the same.”

She slapped the back of his head. It was supposed to be playful, but it hurt. “You think I’m an idiot? I know you don’t forget.”

“The Burgess case,” he said at last. “Rita? Rhonda?”

“Rhoda. Rhoda Burgess, wife of that sadistic fuck who kept those kids chained up in his basement?”

His gorge rose. “Sure. He didn’t even touch them, as I recall, just recorded their gradual starvation for some internet racket. Ran the whole thing out of his house in Castle Heights, until someone from the gas company came to check the meter and found a skeleton trying to break out of a basement window.”

“Mr. Burgess got life,” E. J. said, jabbing the photo again. “While the missus here—”

“Skipped away scot-free.”

“Not a day in prison. Claimed she didn’t know what hubby was doing down there all those years. Cried and carried on in front of the judge.”

“So, what do we have on her?”

“She’s dead.”

“Even better.”

“Died back in August. Took a dive off a downtown overpass. Her head was promptly flattened by a bagel truck.”

“Great. Tape a K on her face and put her on the wall with the rest. We owe the driver a drink.”

“Don’t be patronizing.”

“Well, sorry if I don’t get all misty over the suicide of a woman too stupid to realize there was a miniature concentration camp in her basement.”

“She didn’t kill herself.”

“No?”

“A witness came forward. Homeless guy who lives under the overpass says he saw the whole thing. Says the woman was pushed. There’s more.”

E. J. lined up the green folder beside Rhoda’s photograph and flipped back the cover to reveal at least ten more mug shots.

Gregory sifted through the pile. They were mostly men, a few women—cases that had appeared on his desk at some point. He knew their faces well: the bad skin, the vacant eyes. “Looks like our typical deck of cards,” he observed.

“Really?” She pointed across the office to the karma board. “Half of them have been staring at us for years.”