Among the Ruins Page 13

  Rachel dropped the paintbrush, busying herself in the kitchen.

  “You want a drink?”

  “Do you have beer?”

  Rachel liked the occasional beer, but she’d emptied her fridge in honor of Zach’s arrival. He was over the legal drinking age, she just had a healthy respect for alcohol, given their family history.

  The “Waltz of the Flowers” continued to play in the background.

  She passed him a Canada Dry.

  “Sorry, I’m out.”

  They sat and talked for a few minutes, catching up on each other’s news. When Rachel told Zach about Nate’s involvement in her latest case, his eyes grew round and wide.

  “No shit,” he said.

  “No swearing,” she answered. “And yeah, it’s true. People like him, they tell him things they probably wouldn’t tell me.”

  She was remembering Max Najafi’s intense interest in Nate’s performance at the piano.

  “He’s like your Watson.” Zach smirked. “With a corncob pipe and whatnot.”

  “You’re thinking of Frosty the Snowman,” Rachel said drily. “And yeah, he’s exactly like my Watson.”

  Zach finished his drink and reached for his paintbrush. Rachel had told him his room in her condo was his, he could do anything he wanted to it.

  After she’d made the offer, she’d had a sudden vision of Zach painting the whole room black, shuttering its windows and creating a collage of zombies in various stages of decay. But Zach was still under the influence of his Viennese art experience. He’d decided to paint a large mural on one wall, a tree spiraling out from a smaller tree, each of the leaves picked out like the tiles of a gold mosaic, gold leaf on oil, the bedroom wall for his canvas.

  Rachel’s job was to help him seal the wall with primer.

  She’d left the windows in the condo open. A mild breeze drifted through the room as they worked. Zach’s room had a view of the park. He took a vivid interest in the maples and alders coming into leaf. He’d always paid close attention to the natural world, a form of escape from their father.

  “Ray,” he said. “How come you’re still on your own? Why don’t you have someone?”

  Rachel swept a swathe of dull gray paint up the wall with her brush.

  “My hours are irregular. Most guys don’t like that.”

  “But some must be willing to put up with it,” he persisted. “You’re not exactly hideous.”

  “Gee, thanks.” Rachel cracked a smile. “I’ll be sure to put that on my online profile. ‘Works with cops. Isn’t exactly hideous.’”

  Zach grunted a laugh. “I’m just saying. What about this guy Nate? He seems cool.”

  Zach had met Nate at one of Rachel’s hockey games.

  “A bit nerdy but a possibility. He seemed into you, I thought.”

  He was painting with more technique than Rachel, his strokes aligned and steady.

  “You figure? What makes you think that?”

  Now Rachel wished she’d worn her hair down so she could shield her face. But her brother didn’t notice the red blotches on her skin.

  “He came to your game, didn’t he? And from what I remember, it was freezing that day.”

  The day of the all-stars game. The game her mother had promised to come to but hadn’t shown up for.

  “He’s a friend of the boss.”

  “But you’re working with him now,” Zach said with the insular familiarity of a brother who’d always been part of her life, and felt he could freely comment.

  “That doesn’t mean anything.” She reached down to scoop more paint from the tray, wondering why Zach couldn’t have let her use a roller. She had the shoulders for a roller, but Zach said painting with a roller lacked artistry.

  Artists were not the most practical of people.

  “You want pizza for dinner?”

  “I was thinking sushi.”

  They had come to the middle of the wall, and now brother and sister had no choice but to look each other in the eye.

  “It’s not because of me, is it? Mum said you haven’t dated much, I thought maybe me being gone—it was holding you back. Now I’m here, I’m probably cramping your style.”

  Rachel held her breath. Zach cared about her, he wanted her to be happy. She managed a rusty chuckle.

  “Trust me, I have no style to cramp, and that has nothing to do with you.”

  It would have overwhelmed Zach if she’d said, I’d rather have you here than anyone else in the world. I’d trade anything for you, I’d do anything for you. I’m trying not to breathe too hard in case it scares you away. I want us to talk. About these last seven years, about everything in between. Everything you did, everyone who helped you, everyone you’ve come to love.

  “I appreciate it, Zach. Don’t worry. If someone decides it’s worth his while to take me on, we can work out a system.” And then changing the subject from herself: “What about you? This thing with Ashleigh over for good?”

  Zach took his paintbrush and swiped just the tip of Rachel’s nose with it. A droplet fell on her tongue, and she coughed.

  “Hey!”

  “Subtle,” he responded. He wasn’t as dejected as at their last meeting. “I think so. I guess it was time. You can go a little crazy in Europe, but when you’re back home facing the cold light of day, things start to look different.”

  Rachel wiped the paint off her nose with the back of her sleeve.

  They took their brushes to the laundry room sink and began to wash them in a companionable silence. Rachel wondered if she dared to say a little more.

  “Will you be okay?”

  Zach flicked a little water in Rachel’s face. She spluttered. She’d forgotten this about brothers—the physical teasing, the delight they took in immature pranks. A knot inside her chest began to ease. She splashed him back. They giggled as if they were ten years younger.

  “Plenty of fish, Ray.” Zach patted himself down with a towel. “Anyway, I realized something.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

  “I don’t like girls who spell their names ‘Ashleigh.’ I was out of her league, right from the start. She was slumming around with us, she didn’t know how to paint. Everything she knew was something she’d cribbed from the Internet.”

  Ouch, Rachel thought. Ashleigh had probably wanted to enjoy a dizzy summer in Vienna with Zach. Now Zach was judging her with all the harshness of disappointed youth.

  She pondered the most tactful thing she could say without alienating her brother.

  “She must have wanted you to like her, then maybe it got harder to pretend she was someone she wasn’t. I’m glad you parted on good terms, though.”

  She’d never had the chance to knock this lesson into her brother’s head, but Don Getty had taught him anyway. When a woman was done with you, you didn’t bully or belittle her, stalk her friends, call her names, or use violence. You expressed gratitude for the time you’d been given, then opened your hands and let her go.

  Police work meant Rachel was frequently seeing the worst of people.

  She was glad Zach wasn’t in that category.

  “I’m proud of you, Ray,” he said to her. “I know I said it was your fault, me leaving, but what did I know? I was a kid. I thought all cops were like Da.”

  Rachel’s throat seized up. Her hand fastened onto her paintbrush like a claw. Zach’s brown eyes didn’t waver from hers. His voice was shaky but determined.

  “I know what the news says about your cases, but you’re the bravest person I know. The things you do matter.” He sounded younger suddenly, uncertain. “Don’t they?”

  Rachel swallowed. “I think they do. It matters to me that Zahra Sobhani was murdered. I want to know why. I want to do what I can to help.”

  “So what happens next? What are you hoping to find at the ROM? I could come with you,” he suggested.

  Rachel was surprised. “You want to help with the case?”

  Zach’s aversion to policing had been th
e dividing line between Rachel and her brother.

  “I could hang around the museum, there’s a new design exhibit I could check out.”

  Rachel laughed.

  “After the dinosaur exhibit, you mean.”

  Zach looked sheepish. “What’s wrong with that?”

  A powerful wave of love squeezed Rachel’s heart. She had often taken Zach to the ROM to see the dinosaurs, memory’s harbor, a place of consolation, free of their father’s violence.

  “That sounds good. Maybe you could do something for me while you’re there. See if there’s anything in the collection that might have been of interest to Zahra.”

  She told him about the coronation of the Shah. She was wondering if Zahra might have had another reason to find herself at the museum.

  “She had guts,” Zach said. “To take on a regime like that.”

  “You know about it?”

  “Students in other parts of the world interest me. I’m lucky, you know?”

  They left their brushes to dry in the sink. Rachel picked up the phone to order sushi.

  She was crushed by her brother’s admission.

  Whatever the fate of supporters of the Green Movement, by no scale of measurement had Zachary been lucky.

  * * *

  When they’d finished their dinner and Zach had crashed on one of the couches, Rachel settled into work at her table. Her gaze took in the pools of mud in the marshy park, branches snapping back from the weight of snow, tender shoots scraping the air like fingers.

  Her laptop came on with a whir, a notice in her e-mail, along with instructions about a service called Telegram.

  She opened the top message from an unknown recipient, accompanied by an outsize attachment. She clicked on the file, ignoring her computer’s warning of the absence of a security certificate.

  It took a moment for the file to download.

  Rachel boiled milk on the stove, making cocoa for herself and Zach.

  By the time it was ready, the file flashed up on her screen.

  It was the transfer of a video. She watched it in silence, sipping at her drink.

  When she recognized Zahra Sobhani’s face, she understood what she was seeing. It was the day of Zahra’s detention at Evin, the last time Zahra had been seen alive.

  Rachel paid careful attention to the actions in the foreground, to the angle of the video, to the car just out of view, to the windswept chadors and head scarves, to the few men among the huddle of women—and then to the rapid denouement: guards, a struggle, a tall, imposing man with harsh, ursine features in a suit that fit him like a skin. And Zahra’s hands. On the camera, at her neck, reaching to someone in the crowd.

  Though instructions from Khattak would have been helpful, she didn’t think it was Khattak who’d sent her the file. It must have been someone he was working with in Iran, who knew how to transmit the video safely.

  She wondered what to do with the file. She could sit on it until Khattak was safely out of the country, or she could turn it over to Max Najafi. For a moment she toyed with the idea of sharing the video with Vicky before dismissing the possibility.

  The video might prove too much of a temptation.

  It was career-making, career-defining.

  And she could drag Khattak into a greater mess by trusting Vicky with his safety. Suppose she released the video while Khattak was still in Iran.

  Rachel looked over at Zach. He was grinning at his text messages, his rangy body relaxed, his ear piercings reminding her of a young Zach dressed as a pirate on Halloween.

  Now wasn’t the time to tell Max, she decided.

  She’d sent Vicky and Nate to track down The Lion of Persia. If they were able to find a copy of the film, she might learn more about the Shah’s military cap.

  And then she’d have something concrete to discuss with Max because she couldn’t go back to see him without offering him something in exchange.

  He’d been lost in his thoughts, contemplating Nate at the piano, the unfinished composition veering from its scripted course to something dark and exquisite.

  Had Max watched the music or the man?

  And Rachel realized she was searching for a weakness, the way she would with a suspect.

  26

  The Story of Piss-Pants

  Piss-Pants is dead. They claim many of us commit suicide, either in prison, or on the way to the hospital. But Piss-Pants really did commit suicide—like a pact he made with the devil he was bound to follow through. Someone helped him, while one of the others, the son of a cleric, recited prayers. I didn’t try to stop them, I was weak. I won’t be able to stand until my kidneys heal, otherwise I would have told him, it feels like this now—like the world is full of nothing but suffering and pain—but it will pass, and I would know, it happened to me as well. He was sobbing like a child, he said he wanted to die. He didn’t want it to happen again, it’s the same in every group. They take the youngest to the cell next door, then you hear the grunting and the screams. They shove the youngest back into your cell, naked and bloody, in a state of shock. Piss-Pants was dribbling saliva, his eyes unable to focus. “Kill me, kill me, kill me,” he said. Someone gave him a belt. The son of the cleric was the one who saw it through, the one who held his hand and looked deep into his eyes until he’d stopped breathing. When I think about the Islamic Republic, I’ll remember this son of a cleric and his prayers. He was the second youngest, the one they raped next, the fucking pedophiles.

  That’s the holy Republic.

  27

  Nate sat alone at a writing desk placed before a stretch of windows that paneled the lake into even sections like a triptych. In the first panel, a wall of sea foam; in the second, an arbitrary shifting of blues; in the final, a complement of sailboats dashed upon blue-gray waves.

  Blue, gray, white.

  The ages of a man.

  He was thinking of three women.

  The first was Zahra Sobhani, whom he’d known at a remove, gracious, brilliant, committed to a cause. She’d spoken at the film festival about the Iran of her youth, the Iran of her memories and dreams, and of her hopes for its future. She hadn’t spoken of Roxana.

  He cast his thoughts back to the music room in Max Najafi’s house, where a cluster of family photographs had lined one wall of the hallway. He found he couldn’t remember the faces, distracted by the splendor of the Bosendorfer. When he’d played it, the memory of Zahra’s life seemed to be contained in its full, round voice.

  Zahra Sobhani had been something of a cipher.

  She’d worked the festival circuit like the professional she was, and if in the midst of the celebration of her work, she’d thought of Roxana, no momentary abstraction had betrayed it.

  The second woman to trouble Nate’s thoughts was Sergeant Rachel Getty, a woman whose many talents had left a lasting impression. He hadn’t known her long, and he couldn’t say his knowledge had depth, yet they’d shared things that accelerated closeness, deepening it without requiring explanation. He was beginning to feel Esa’s absence was not an obstacle to knowing Rachel better.

  She was sturdy, practical, eminently sensible, her pleasant face sharpened by perception. There was an unexpected softness to her as well, when speaking of her brother, when she’d questioned Max—when she’d once tried to convince him Esa’s life was immediately at risk.

  If Zahra Sobhani had kept her feelings contained, Rachel was clear and direct. There’d been a moment in the reference library when he’d thought Rachel had looked at him, not as an affable partner but as a man with depths of his own.

  When he’d touched her shoulder, he’d seen attraction in Rachel’s eyes, and then just as quickly, a flash of hesitation and self-doubt.

  He doubted she saw herself as the men around her saw her: strong, capable, determined.

  She didn’t recognize the fascination she’d inspired in Vicky D’Souza.

  * * *

  Vicky wasn’t the third woman on his mind.

  Thinking
of the mournful pleading in Max Najafi’s eyes turned Nate’s thoughts to the woman in question.

  You could get my mother back from Iran. There must be someone you know.

  He did know someone. He didn’t know how much pull she would have, but if there was one thing Nate knew about Laine, she would know the right people. And she would know how to influence them.

  He was working on a new book and, in a quirk peculiar to himself, wrote the first draft in longhand before it was consigned to his study with his other manuscripts. They were filed in what his sister Audrey called his “Cabinet of Curiosities.” All save the first draft of Apologia. That one he’d burned. It had laid bare the raw dissolution of self that had accompanied the end of his affair with Laine. Like a manuscript page reduced to embers, or a skeleton leached in lye.

  A man made less a man and more a stranger to himself.

  He’d stopped talking to Laine, and he didn’t want to speak to her now.

  There were others who could help him without exacting a pound of flesh, whereas Laine would carve him out at the heart.

  He’d be foolish to knock on her door, when Esa had forgiven him the consequences of the affair. Nate had testified against Esa at Laine’s word. He’d blindly believed any man would be susceptible to Laine’s miraculous beauty, her sacramental enchantment.

  Too late he’d learned her fascination for him wasn’t the stuff of miracles or legends.

  It was a deadly entente.

  And in the games Laine had played to intrigue Esa Khattak, Nate had found himself the sacrificial lamb on the altar.

  * * *

  Later, he and Esa had made it up, their friendship too deep to run aground. They had talked of everything and everyone, bridging that rupture of time and loss.

  Except they had never spoken of Laine.

  Esa hadn’t needed to, and Nate had never found the courage.

  His book Apologia was meant to fill in that silence.

  Nate looked out at the flanks of Lake Ontario, gathered to the shore by an unseen hand and released in small diminishments.

  He wanted to draw the waves to himself, wanted to draw back the years to a time he’d never known Laine.