The Other Cage

Dominic Hargrove did not know the name.

I had not expected that. I had expected, God knows, a great many things: anger, shame, an attorney, a tirade. I had expected the lazy contempt of the man in the bull-hide chair. What I had not expected, and what I have never since been able to put out of my mind, was a face of perfect, polite, bewildered blankness.

They had taken him to Jefferson, to a private room on the sixth floor, with a view of the river and a bunch of white lilies on the sill that someone had sent before he was even out of the cellar. He sat propped against four pillows, in a blue gown, with a drip in the back of his hand. His color had come back. The gray had gone out of his face, leaving only a kind of waxy pallor, and the dark rings under his eyes. His hair had been combed by a nurse. He looked like a handsome man who has had a bad night.

Leo and I stood at the foot of the bed.

Behind us, in the corridor, two uniformed officers and a man from the FBI were arguing in low voices about jurisdiction. Beyond the window, the Schuylkill went by, brown and slow under a clearing sky.

"Mr. Hargrove," said Leo. "You know who I am."

"Captain Maddox." The voice was a husk. "I'm obliged to you. I'm told I owe you a considerable debt."

"You owe it to him." Leo jerked his thumb at me. "Dr. Vaughn."

Dominic turned his head. The pale eyes passed over me with a courteous, glassy interest, as over a piece of furniture in a hotel, and came to rest.

"Of course," he said. "The English fellow. Thank you."

"Mr. Hargrove, we need to ask you about a night in October, fifteen years ago."

"Do we?"

"Sunflower House." Leo's voice was flat. "Germantown. A girl named Stella Marsh."

I was watching his face.

…

It is my business to watch faces, and I have watched ten thousand. I have seen the flash of recognition in a thief who sees the badge, and the smile of the man who has been waiting for the question. I have seen guilt, and fear, and fury, and the particular grim relief of a man who has stopped pretending. I know the micro-expressions by their duration: a quarter of a second, a fifth, a tenth.

I saw nothing.

There was no tension at the corner of the mouth. There was no tightening of the lids. He did not blink. He did not swallow. His eyes remained on Leo's face with a look of mild, courteous, slightly puzzled attention, the look of a man who is trying to recall where he has heard a name.

"I'm sorry," said Dominic. "Who?"

"Stella Marsh."

"I'm afraid I don't—" He frowned. "A child, you said?"

"Nine years old. She was blind."

"Oh." He shook his head slowly. "No. I'm sorry. I don't recall. We did a good deal of that sort of thing at school, you understand. The Society. Charity work. Visits to institutions. It was expected of us." He gave a small apologetic smile. "I suppose we must have met a great many children."

Leo said nothing. I saw the muscle in his jaw leap.

"Was there an incident?" said Dominic. "Is that what this is about? Because if so, I'd like my attorney present. I have the greatest respect for the Department, naturally. But I've had rather a shock."

He was not lying.

I knew it at once, with the sort of cold exactness that I have only for such moments. I had seen the face of a liar, and this was not it. There was no effort in it. It was not a mask. It was a face with nothing behind it to hide. He had really, truly, entirely forgotten.

…

I do not know how to describe the horror of that.

I had spent months of my life, and the lives of four people, and the whole of one terrible night, learning every detail of what had been done to a child of nine in the dark. I knew the weight of the iron door. I knew the number of the dogs. I knew the exact minute at which she had stopped knocking. I had seen the face of the man who had loved her, and watched him wait fifteen years in a cellar to build a mirror of her death.

And the man for whom he had built it did not remember her name.

It was not our fault, I thought. Get Mr. Hensley.

He had said it, on the night. It was in the reconstruction, in a witness's account of what the others had heard him say. Standing on a step, in the rain, with a cigarette. A tall fair boy with a lovely face, giving an instruction in the tone of a prefect asking for the register. And then he had gone back to school, and sat his exams, and taken a place at a university, and married, and made a great deal of money; and somewhere along the way the night had slipped from him, as a coat slips from a peg, and fallen on the floor of some back room of his mind, and been swept up and thrown away.

He had been pulled from a glass box in a cellar in front of a hundred thousand people. He had very nearly died. And he sat in a blue gown, with lilies on the sill, and said in a puzzled voice: Was there an incident?

"Atticus," said Leo.

I realized I had not moved.

"Doc."

"Yes. Yes, quite." I heard my own voice, steady and distant. "Mr. Hargrove, I'm sorry to have troubled you. You must rest."

"Not at all." The courteous smile again. "I'm so grateful."

I went out into the corridor and stood against the wall, and put my hand over my eyes, and breathed.

…

"Where is he?" said a voice.

It was not a voice that I knew. It came from the far end of the corridor, beyond the lifts, and it was loud and sharp and used to being obeyed. I took my hand from my face.

A procession was coming down the hall.

At its head, walking fast, in a charcoal overcoat with a velvet collar, with his silver hair brushed back from a high pale forehead and a fixed expression of grave concern, came Frank Holt.

I had not seen him in three days. He had been in Washington: a conference on interagency cooperation, a dinner, a call at the Justice Department that had been in his diary for months. He had flown back at dawn, when the stream began, in a Bureau aircraft, and by the look of him he had not slept. But he was immaculate. His tie was straight. His shoes shone. At either side of him, with the broad, blank, dangerous faces of men who are paid to stand between a person and the world, walked two men in dark suits with wires in their ears.

"Captain Maddox," said Holt.

"Commissioner."

"I came as soon as I could." He took Leo's hand in both of his, and shook it warmly, and held it. His voice was mild and grave. "I can't tell you what it meant to me, to see that stream. I watched the end of it on the plane. My dear fellow. I cannot say how proud I am. You've done the department a service that will not be forgotten."

"Thank you, sir."

"Is he here? The Hargrove boy?"

"In there. He's all right."

"Thank God." Holt released his hand. "And the other? The—what do we call him—Wren?"

"At the Roundhouse. In holding."

"Good." The pale eyes passed along the corridor, past Leo, past me, and settled on the door. "I'll take over the interview. I think it's best, in the circumstances, if it comes from the top. The press will be—well. You can imagine."

He took a step toward the door.

…

"Commissioner Holt."

It was a quiet voice, but it stopped him.

Briona Lang was standing at the end of the corridor, by the fire door. I had not seen her come. She was alone, in her gray suit, with a leather folder tucked under one arm and her hands clasped in front of her, and she stood with the stillness of someone who has been waiting for a long time in the right place.

"Special Agent Lang." Holt turned. His smile did not alter. "I'd wondered where you'd got to."

"I've been busy."

"I'm sure." He glanced at her folder. "I assume you'll be filing a report. I'd be glad of a copy. We'll want to coordinate."

"I'm afraid that won't be possible."

"Oh?"

"As of a quarter past twelve today, the Bureau has assumed primary jurisdiction over this investigation." She said it quite evenly. "That includes the arrest of Arlo Wren, the custody of the evidence recovered at 114 Wayne Avenue, and the interview of any witness or subject. It was authorized in Washington. I have the paper here." She lifted the folder an inch. "Signed by the Deputy Director."

There was a short silence.

"On what grounds?"

"Interstate transmission of a threat. Conspiracy. Wire fraud." She paused. "And a document dump, delivered this morning at two minutes past eleven to the offices of the United States Attorney for the Eastern District, containing evidence of obstruction of justice by a ranking officer of the Philadelphia Police Department."

Holt did not move.

His face was perfectly composed. It was a good face, strong and gentle and benevolent; a face for a plaque. His eyes were steady. His smile had not slipped by a millimeter. But I was watching his hands, which hung at his sides.

The right one was shaking.

I counted. I could not help it. I had counted the tremor of a hundred hands. It was very fine, a dry, rapid, involuntary flutter of the forefinger against the seam of his trousers, such as I should not have seen at a distance of more than a few feet. Six, in ten seconds.

"I see," said Holt, quietly.

…

He did not argue.

I have often wondered at that. He was a man who had stood on a podium in front of two thousand people and talked a mob down from a riot. He had a gift for it, an easy warmth, a kind of fatherly reasonableness. He might have said any number of things. He might have blustered, or begged, or threatened. He might have named a lawyer. He did none of them.

He stood in the corridor with his two bodyguards at his shoulders and looked at Briona Lang for a long time. Then he said, in a tone of faint, polite regret:

"Of course. I'll be at my office, should you need me."

"We'll know where to find you, sir."

"I'm sure you will."

He turned. He walked back along the corridor at the same brisk pace, with the two men falling in behind him, and the lift doors opened and he stepped into it without a backward glance. As the doors closed he lifted his chin and straightened his tie.

I let out my breath.

"Is it done?" I said.

"Not yet." Briona had come up beside me. She spoke very low. "He's got until tonight. After that I don't think he'll be able to leave the building." She looked at the closed lift. "Did you see his hand?"

"Yes."

"I've seen that before," she said. "In an interview. A man in Baltimore. He'd killed his wife. He sat there for eleven minutes denying it, in a perfectly level voice, and all the time his finger was going like a sewing machine." She shook her head. "It's the only part of the body that doesn't know how to lie."

I thought of a pen in my own pocket, clicking, two fast, one slow, in a lecture hall. I did not say so.

"Dr. Vaughn," said Briona. "Wren's asking for you."

I looked at her.

"He's been in the cell for an hour. He's not said a word to anyone. Then he asked the guard, very politely, whether Dr. Vaughn would be willing to come. He said he wanted to ask him something." She hesitated. "He said, 'Tell him it's about the hand.'"

"What hand?"

"I assumed you'd know," said Briona.

I did not.

But I found, as I walked to the lifts, that I was holding my own right hand in my left, quite tightly, as one holds a small bird, to keep it from shaking.