The court made a mistake...
No, I thought, the court didn't make a mistake. Lauren couldn't handle it, and had never been able to handle it. Half the time, she skipped on her weekends. She was too busy to see her own daughter. Once after a weekend she returned Michelle to me. Michelle was crying. Lauren said, "I just don't know what to do with her." I checked. Her diapers were wet and she had a painful rash. Michelle always gets a rash when her diapers aren't changed promptly. Lauren hadn't changed her diapers often enough during the weekend. So I changed her, and there were streaks of shit in Michelle's vagina. She hadn't cleaned her own daughter properly.
Don't you think the court made a mistake?
No, I didn't.
Under the circumstances, don't you think -
"Fuck it," I said.
Theresa stabbed a button, stopped the tapes. The images froze on the monitors all around us. "What is it?" she said. "What did you see?"
"Nothing."
She looked at me.
"I'm sorry. I was thinking of something else."
"Don't."
She started the tape again.
On multiple monitors, the man embraced Cheryl Austin. Images from the different cameras were coordinated in an eerie way. It was as if we could see all sides of the event - front and back, top and sides. It was like a moving architectural blueprint.
And it felt creepy, to watch,
My two monitors showed the view from the far end of the room, and from high above, looking straight down. Cheryl and her lover were small in one monitor, and in the other one, I saw only the tops of their heads. But I watched.
Standing alongside me, Theresa Asakuma breathed slowly, regularly. In and out. I glanced at her.
"Pay attention."
I looked back.
The lovers were in a passionate embrace. The man pressed Cheryl back against a desk. In my top view, I could see her face, looking straight up as she lay back. Beside her, a framed picture on the desk fell over.
"There," I said.
Theresa stopped the tape.
"What?" she said.
"There." I pointed to the framed picture. It lay flat, facing upward. Reflected in the glass, we could see the outline of the man's head as he bent over Cheryl. It was very dark. Just a silhouette.
"Can you get an image from that?" I said.
"I don't know. Let's try."
Her hand moved swiftly across the controls, touching them briefly. "The video image is digital," she said. "It's in the computer now. We'll see what we can do with it." The image began to jump, growing larger in increments as she zoomed in on the picture frame. The image moved past Cheryl's frozen, grainy face, her head thrown back in an instant of passion. Moved down from her shoulder, toward the frame.
As the picture enlarged, it became more grainy. It began to decompose into a pattern of dots, like a newspaper photo held too close to your face. Then the dots themselves enlarged, formed edges, turned into small blocks of gray. Pretty soon I couldn't tell what we were looking at.
"Is this going to work?"
"I doubt it. But there's the edge of the frame, and there's the face."
I was glad she could see it. I couldn't.
"Let's sharpen."
She pressed buttons. Computer menus dropped down, flashed back. The image became crisper. Grittier. But I could see the frame. And the outline of the head.
"Sharpen again."
She did that.
"All right. Now we can adjust our grayscale..."
The face in the frame began to emerge from the gloom.
It was chilling.
Enlarged so much, the grain was severe - each pupil of the eyes was a single black spot - and we really couldn't see who it was. The man's eyes were open, and his mouth was twisted, distorted in passion, or arousal, or hate. But we couldn't really tell.
Not really.
"Is that a Japanese face?"
She shook her head. "There's not enough detail in the original."
"You can't bring it out?"
"I'll work on it later. But I think, no. It won't ever be there. Let's go on."
The images snapped back into full movement. Cheryl suddenly shoved the man away, pushing his chest with the flat of her hand. The face disappeared from the picture frame.
We were back to the original five views.
The couple broke and she complained, pushing him repeatedly. Her face looked angry. Now that I had seen the man's face reflected in the frame, I wondered if she had become frightened of what she saw. But it was impossible to tell.
The lovers stood in the deserted room, discussed where to go. She was looking around. He nodded his head. She pointed toward the conference room. He seemed to agree or accept.
They kissed, clinched again. There was a familiarity in the way they joined and parted, joined again.
Theresa saw it, too. "She knows him."
"Yes. I'd say."
Still kissing, the couple moved awkwardly toward the conference room. At this point my monitors were no longer very useful. The far camera showed the whole room, and the couple moving laterally across it, from right to left. But the figures were tiny, and difficult to see. They were moving between the desks, heading toward -
"Wait," I said. "What was that?"
She went back, frame by frame.
"There," I said.
I pointed to the image. "See that? What's that?"
As the couple moved across the room, the camera tracked past a large Japanese calligraphy scroll hanging on the wall near the elevator. The scroll was encased in glass. For a brief moment, there was a glint of light in the glass. That was what had caught my eye.
A glint of light.
Theresa frowned. "It's not a reflection from the couple," she said.
"No."
"Let's look."
She began zooming again. The image jumped toward the hanging scroll, growing grittier with each step. The glint enlarged, broke in two fragments. There was a fuzzy spot of light in one corner. And a vertical slit of light, running almost the length of the picture.
"Let's rock it," she said.
She began to make the image go forward and back, one frame at a time. Flipping from one to the other. In one frame, the vertical slit was missing. In the next frame, it was there. The vertical bar lasted for the next ten frames. Then it was gone, never to reappear. But the fuzzy spot in the corner was always present.
"Hmmm."
She pushed in on the spot. Under ever-increasing magnification, it disintegrated until it looked like a cluster of stars from an astronomy picture. But it seemed to have some kind of internal organization. I could almost imagine an X shape to it. I said so.
"Yes," she said. "Let's sharpen."
She did that. The computers worked on the data. The fuzzy cluster resolved itself. Now it looked like Roman numerals.
I IXΞ
"What the hell is that?" I said.
She kept working. "Edge trace," she said. The outline of the Roman numerals appeared more clearly.
Theresa continued to try and resolve it. As she worked, in some ways the image seemed to get better, and in some ways, less clear. But eventually we could recognize it.
TIX
"It's the reflection of an exit sign," she said. "There's an exit at the far end of the room opposite the elevators, is that right?"
"Yes," I said.
"It's being reflected in the glass of the scroll. That's all it is." She flipped to the next frame. "But this vertical bar of light. That's interesting. See? It appears, and is gone." She ran it back and forth several times.
And then I figured it out.
"There's a fire exit back there," I said. "And a staircase going downstairs. That must be the reflection of the light from the stairwell as someone opens the door and closes it again."
"You mean someone came into the room," she said. "From the back stairs?"
"Yes."
"Interesting. Let's try and see who it is."
She ran the tapes forward. At this high magnification, the grainy image spattered and popped like fireworks on the screen. It was as if the smallest components of the image had a life of their own, their dance independent of the image they assembled to make. But it was exhausting to watch. I rubbed my eyes. "Jesus."
"Okay. There."
I looked up. She had frozen the image. I couldn't see anything but erratic black-and-white dots. There seemed to be a pattern but I couldn't tell what it was. It reminded me of the sonograms when Lauren was pregnant. The doctor would say, The head is here, that's the baby's stomach there. ... But I couldn't see anything. It was just abstract. My daughter still in the womb.
The doctor had said, See? She wiggled her fingers. See? Her heart is beating.
I had seen that. I had seen the heart beating. The little heart and the little ribs.
Under the circumstances, Lieutenant, don't you think -
"See?" Theresa said. "That's his shoulder. That's the outline of the head. Now he is moving forward - see him getting larger? - and now he is standing in that far passageway, looking around the corner. He is cautious. You can see the profile of his nose for a moment as he turns to look. See that? I know it's hard. Watch carefully. Now he is looking at them. He is watching them."
And suddenly, I could see it. The spots seemed to fall into place. I saw a silhouetted man standing in the hallway by the far exit.
He was watching.
Across the room, the lovers were wrapped up in their kiss. They didn't notice the new arrival.
But someone was watching them. It gave me a chill.
"Can you see who he is?"
She shook her head. "Impossible. We are at the limits of everything. I cannot even resolve eyes, a mouth. Nothing."
"Then let's go on."
The tapes snapped back, full speed. I was jarred by the sudden return to normal size and normal movement. I watched as the lovers, kissing passionately, continued to cross the room.
"So now they are being watched," Theresa said. "Interesting. What kind of a girl is this?"
I said, "I believe the term is torigaru onnai."
She said, "She is light in her bird? Tori what?"
"Never mind. I mean she is a loose woman."
Theresa shook her head. "Men always say things like that. To me, it looks like she loves him, but she is troubled in her mind."
The lovers were approaching the conference room, and Cheryl suddenly twisted away, attempting to break free from the man.
"If she loves him, she's got a strange way of showing it," I said.
"She senses something is wrong."
"Why?"
"I don't know. Perhaps she hears something. The other man. I don't know."
Whatever the reason, Cheryl was struggling with the lover, who now had both arms around her waist and was almost dragging her into the conference room. Cheryl twisted once more at the door, as the man tried to pull her in.
"A good chance here," Theresa said.
The tape froze again.
All the walls of the conference room were glass. Through the outer walls, the lights of the city were visible. But the inner walls, facing the atrium, were dark enough to act as a black mirror. Since Cheryl and her lover were near the inner glass walls, their images were rejected in the glass as they struggled.
Theresa ran the tape forward, frame by frame, looking for an image that might hold up. From time to time, she zoomed in, probed the pixels, zoomed back out. It was difficult. The two people were moving quickly, and they were often blurred. And the lights from the skyscrapers outside sometimes obscured otherwise good images.
It was frustrating. It was slow.
Stop. Zoom in. Slide around in the image, trying to locate a section that had enough detail. Give up. Go forward again. Stop again.
Finally, Theresa sighed. "It's not working. That glass is murder."
"Then let's keep going."
I saw Cheryl grab the door frame, trying to keep from being pulled into the conference room. The man finally pulled her free, she slid backward with a look of terror on her face, and then she swung her arms back to hit the man. Her purse went flying. Then they were both inside the room. Silhouettes moving quickly, turning.
The man shoved her back against the table, and Cheryl appeared in the camera that aimed straight down on the conference room. Her short blond hair contrasted with the dark wood of the table. Her mood changed again, she stopped struggling for a minute. She had a look of expectation. Excitement. She licked her lips. Her eyes followed the man as he leaned over her. He slid her skirt up her hips.
She smiled, pouted, whispered in his ear.
He pulled her panties away, a quick jerk.
She smiled at him. It was a tense smile, half-aroused, half-pleading.
She was excited by her own fear.
His hands caressed her throat.
Chapter 20
Standing in the darkened laboratory, with the hiss of skaters on the ice above, we watched the final violent act, again and again. It played on five monitors, different angles, as her pale legs went up, onto his shoulders, and he crouched over her, hands fumbling at his trousers. With repetition, I noticed small things not seen before. The way she slid down the table to meet him, wiggling her hips. The way his back arched at the moment of penetration. The change in her smile, catlike, knowing. Calculating. How she urged him on, saying something. Her hands around his back, caressing. The sudden change in mood, the flash of anger in her eyes, the abrupt slap. The way she fought him, first to arouse him, and then later, struggling in a different way, because then something was wrong. The way her eyes bulged, and she had a look of real desperation. Her hands pushing his arms, shoving his coat sleeves up, revealing the tiny metallic sparkle of cuff links. The glint of her watch. Her arm falling back, palm open. Five fingers pale against the black of the table. Then a tremor, the fingers twitching, and stillness.
His slowness to understand something was wrong. The way he went rigid for a moment, then took her head in his hand, moved it back and forth, trying to arouse her, before he finally pulled away. Even looking at his back, you could almost feel his horror. He remained slow, as if in a trance. Pacing around the room in aimless half steps, first this way, then that. Trying to recover his wits, to decide what to do.