Empire of Lies (35 page)

The clouds darkened and billowed over the avenue. I hurried away from the morgue.

I was thinking,
God help me. God help me.

When Rashid's secretary left for home that evening, I walked into the professor's office and hit him with a hammer. I would not have thought I could do such a thing, but in the end it was easy.

I'd been sitting in the park before that. Sitting on a bench in Central Park for hours, trying to figure out what to do. There was no one I could call, no one I could ask. My wife would tell me to act sensibly, go back to the police, straighten things out. The police, the FBI: They thought I was a killer; they thought Piersall and Diggs were cranks; they thought Rashid was innocent. The time was draining away, sand through an hourglass. And I was the only one who knew.

I watched the people pass, watched them walking by under the plane trees, by the statues, against the backdrop of the Great Lawn. I watched their faces. New York is a good city for faces. There are so many, all so different from each other, about as many different kinds as there can be. Overwrought as I was, I grew quite sentimental about it. You know: watching the black and the white and the yellow faces, different religions and no religion, straight-arrow and all the variations on the theme of strange. All of them going wherever they were going, doing whatever they were going to do. Making machines or businesses or works of art, debasing themselves for gain or praying for salvation, slavering after celebrities or caring for their children or mindlessly murdering time. The endless repetition of the human equation, of the original thought in
the mind of God, free to work itself out each alone and all together into the pattern of history, our history. Yes, I grew quite sentimental. I thought: What a wonderful idea for a country this is. What a wonderful place for those men to have imagined for us, those men from the old days, those dead white European men. "A republic," they said, "if you can keep it." What a wonderful idea.

After a while, I got off the bench and went to buy a hammer.

I walked as if I were in a trance. My head felt as if it were full of cotton. My thinking was slow and muddy. My body seemed like a burden I was dragging behind me, a sack of wet sand. I knew now what I had to do, and yet there were still so many doubts, so many questions. Was Casey Diggs really the boy Serena had seen murdered in the swamp? Had she really seen it? Had it really happened? And the things Piersall said about Diggs—and the things Diggs said about Rashid—were any of them true? What was real and what wasn't?

The questions nagged me, bothered me, haunted me as I crossed the park. I couldn't answer them and I couldn't make them stop. At one point, I even began to wonder: Was it possible that Curtis was right? Had I killed Anne Smith and somehow repressed the memory? I mean, I could remember going up the stairs to her apartment well enough. I could remember running away. Was it possible I had blacked out what happened in between?

And yet, still—still—I knew what I had to do. And at the same time these questions played and replayed in my brain, I found myself going about the terrible business at hand. Hunting down a hardware store on Columbus Avenue, picking out the hammer, duct tape, a box cutter, a small sanding sponge that I could stuff into Rashid's mouth. Because they had Serena. Because they were going to attack the city—the country—my country and all its faces. Because I was the only one who could stop it. And Rashid was the only one who knew the plan.

When I look back now, the whole thing seems lunatic, impossible. But at the time, it seemed inevitable, a matter of destiny. I knew what I had to do.

I rode up to the university on the subway, sitting on the molded seat with my plastic shopping bag from the hardware store on my lap. Under the rattle of the train, the questions in my brain faded to a dim distance. I stared into space, my head stuffy, my thoughts dull. I jounced passively with the train's rattling rhythm.

When I reached my stop, I trudged wearily up the station stairs. My bag hung heavy in my hands. I was glad to step up onto the sidewalk and feel the cool wind blowing. There was moisture in the air now—not raindrops, just a refreshing dampness. That revived me a little as I trudged across the street to the campus.

The administration building was another of these grand, massive Roman places. It looked like the Pantheon with an expansive dome up top and a bold colonnade in front. Just the sight of the long sweep of stone stairs leading up to the entranceway made me feel tired. I actually had to stop to rest halfway through the climb. I thought:
I really am not feeling very well.
Then I started walking again. I really seemed to be in an altered state of mind at that point, feverish and detached. But I knew...

There was a pleasant lady with dyed blonde hair at an information counter just inside the door. I asked her where Rashid's office was, and she gave me directions in a friendly tone of voice. It was that easy. It reinforced my sense that this was inevitable, that it was meant to be.

Off I trudged again, out between the columns and back down the long, long sweep of stairs.

The office was not far. It was in a large, impressive building of brick and stone. The building was set in a peaceful corner of the campus. There were yellow plane trees on the path outside and a spreading black maple tree, its leaves a brilliant red. There was
a bronze cast of Rodin's
The Thinker
under one of the trees. As I approached, a few students went walking past it, laughing, chatting, carrying their books in their arms or in packs on their backs. How stately and peaceful and academic it all looked. I continued along the path toward the building, carrying my plastic bag with its hammer and duct tape and box cutter and the sponge I would stuff in Rashid's mouth.

Somewhere during the afternoon, I had lost track of time, but I suppose it was already after four o'clock at this point. I went into the building and plodded laboriously up two flights of stairs to the third floor. There was a long green hall with many wooden doors. The hall was empty and quiet, though I could hear voices murmuring behind the doors. Rashid's office was at the end, the door open. I walked to it and looked in. There was a secretary sitting at a desk inside. That surprised me. I didn't think professors had secretaries. But I guess Rashid was very famous and important because his theories got so much attention in the newspaper and that book of his had sold so many copies. The secretary glanced up at me inquiringly. I made a show of studying the number on the pebbled glass of the open door, my lips moving as I read the name. Then, with an embarrassed smile at the secretary, I gave her a wave of apology—you know, as if I had come to the wrong place. I went back down the hall to the stairs.

I went outside again. I stood under the yellow trees, beside
The Thinker.
I leaned my elbow against the statue's base and waited. I remembered I had seen
The Thinker
in Paris once, a smaller version perched atop a sculpture of
The Gates of Hell.
In Paris, he brooded over churning scenes of the damned in their torments. Here in America, he just stared down at the ground, as if he were trying to decide whether to send out for pizza or head across the street for some Chinese.

Somewhere close by, a clock was chiming the quarter hour.
Somewhere a choir began rehearsing the
St. Matthew Passion.
"Oh, pain!" they sang. "Here trembles the tormented heart." They went over it several times, perfecting the harmonies. The students came and went along the paths, their sneakers kicking the leaves. White and black and yellow faces, laughing together. What a beautiful place, I thought dreamily, distantly. What a beautiful country. The choir sang far away. The clock chimed again.
The Thinker
pondered the earth.

When I next glanced at my watch, it was two minutes after five. I looked up and saw Rashid's secretary coming out of the building.

I passed her as I went in, carrying my bag from the hardware store.

What was I thinking then? I remember telling myself that it wasn't my fault. I had racked my brains for another way, but there was none, none. It wasn't my fault that Rashid had fooled the police. It wasn't my fault that he had fooled everyone, that he was protected from suspicion by his respectability and fame. It wasn't my fault that no one would listen to me, that I was alone and could think of nothing else to do.

I pushed into the building again. The hammer in the plastic bag tapped against my leg as I walked. When I returned to the third floor, I found the green hallway empty again, quiet again—even quieter than before, as if the people I'd heard murmuring behind their doors had all gone home. In my feverish mind, this was further evidence that it was inevitable, that it had to be, that it was not my fault. It was all so easy, you see.

Rashid's door at the end of the hall was closed now, but it didn't even occur to me that he might not be in his office or that I wouldn't be able to get in. I simply shuffled down the corridor with my thoughts foggy and my bag in my hand. I simply grasped
the cool brass doorknob, simply turned it. It turned easily. I simply pulled the door open.

I stepped into the secretary's office. It was empty now. The lights were off. A computer sat quiet on the desk. A phone sat dark. I closed the door behind me. It clapped shut, the latch clicking loudly. At once, there came a voice from the inner office.

"Patricia?"

I recognized Rashid's voice. The light precision of his Oxbridge accent flavored with a touch of the Middle East. A voice reminiscent of literature and tea.

I reached into my bag and brought out the hammer. As I walked around the secretary's desk to reach the inner office door, I held the hammer low against my thigh with my right hand. I held the plastic bag in my left. I also used my left hand to take hold of the doorknob. But just as I did, the doorknob turned. Rashid pulled the door open from inside.

I followed the door in, stepping across the threshold so that the professor and I confronted each other just inside his office. That gave me a clear shot at him. There was no desk or chair or anything in my way. I had plenty of room for a good swing of the hammer. Again, it seemed perfect; inevitable; meant to be.

The office was small and close. There was a wooden desk cluttered with books and papers. There was a window behind it, with a view of autumn leaves close to the glass. Every open space of wall had a bookshelf on it, and every shelf was chockablock with books, upright volumes and volumes stacked on their sides and some stuffed into the spaces above the ones that were upright.

Rashid, I saw, was dressed casually but elegantly. He was wearing khaki slacks and had on a heavy black woolen cardigan over an open-collared shirt. With his thick, coiffed black hair and those classic features, with the background of the books and the
cluttered desk and the autumn leaves, I thought he looked like a photo spread in a magazine: The Famous Professor at Work.

When he saw it was me instead of Patricia, a friendly, inquiring smile began to take shape on his lips.

Then I lifted the hammer above my head.

Rashid's eyes widened with shock and surprise. He had just enough time to throw his hands up in front of his face. But I swung low, whipping the tool around in a scything arc so that it struck him with full force on the side of his left thigh.

Rashid let out a strangled syllable of pain. He stumbled to his right, his body twisting. Then he crashed down to the floor on his side.

I fell on top of him, clutching the back of his neck in my left hand, driving his face into the edge of a braided rug, pinning his arms under my knees.

I leaned down close to his ear. "Scream and I'll bash your brains out," I said softly.

I believe I would have done it, too—although now, suddenly, beneath the dull fever in my mind, beneath the dull muttering mantra—
it's not my fault
—there was another voice speaking, muffled and distant. It was a high, wild, panicky voice screaming at me from far, far away, screaming that this was madness, that in the name of humanity I had to stop, that in the name of sanity I had to let him go. I had to run. I had to get the hell out of here.

"Who are you?" said Rashid, his smooth voice strained with pain. "What do you want?"

I didn't bother to answer. I knew there was no time. I knew I had to act quickly before he could think, act, fight back. I had already set the hammer on the floor and as he spoke, I was already reaching into the bag again. Now I had the sponge. I shifted my grip off the professor's neck and grabbed his coiffed black hair. I pulled his head back violently. I wanted it to be violent. I wanted
him to be afraid, too afraid to try anything. I wanted to terrorize him into silence. As his head came off the floor, his mouth opened. I stuffed the sponge in. I was strangely aware that my face was contorted and twisted and terrible as I did this. I could see his eyes catch sight of me, and I could see that the sight frightened him.
It's not my fault,
I thought.

After that, I went to work with the duct tape. I did it with shocking speed, the speed of a madman. I taped his mouth shut so he couldn't spit out the sponge. I taped his wrists together behind his back. I taped his ankles together. Winding the tape around him with movements that were blurred, frenzied and yet utterly precise. Slashing through the tape with the box cutter and moving on. Like a madman jacked on adrenaline, desperate not to slow down, not to think, not to hear the screaming voice in my mind:
In the name of humanity ...
Going quick, quick, quick before that voice broke through the dull, fevered refrain:
It's not my fault.

Water dripped on my hands as I worked. I thought it was sweat, but when I went to wipe my forehead, the skin there was hot and dry. I heard a strange, choked, high-pitched sob and was startled a moment later to realize it had come from me. Then I understood. I touched my cheek with the back of my hand. There were tears there. I quickly wiped them away.

I roughed the bound professor of literature onto his back with his taped hands trapped under him. I knelt over him, straddling him, bracing my left hand against his chest, holding the hammer in my right hand, holding it up where he could see. His eyes were white orbs in that olive skin. There was fear in them—a lot of fear—but there was ferocity and defiance, too. I could see he meant to resist me and with nauseating certainty I realized I was going to have to go through with this all the way.