For CYRUS R. VANCE, Jr., District Attorney, New York County, whose wisdom, vision, integrity, courage, loyalty, and gift for friendship inspire me

ELEVEN

“YOU want to make sense of this alphabet soup for me?” Mike asked Daniel. “These are the bits that were clinging to the inside rim of the toilet bowl. Didn’t go down with the rest. You mind telling me what you were trying to get rid of?”

I walked to the countertop and looked at the scraps of paper. Daniel’s expression was glum, but he didn’t respond.

“Is this Naomi’s handwriting?” I asked, nudging a few pieces toward him.

“Yeah.”

“Can’t you understand how important it is that we learn everything there is to know about her?”

Mike’s displeasure was palpable. “So far there’s not a whit of evidence to connect a killer to Naomi’s body. I just came from the autopsy and there’s nothing. No seminal fluid, so no DNA inside her—”

“I said I don’t want to hear about it,” Daniel said, closing his eyes and waving Mike away with one hand.

“Listen up, buddy. Hearing about it might be the only way to reach you. Whoever did this to Naomi had the time and place to slaughter her like an animal. It didn’t happen here, obviously. And it likely didn’t happen on the street, or someone would have found a whole mess of blood by now.”

Daniel clapped his hands to his ears and Mike pulled them away just as fast.

“Could be she was abducted by a stranger, but my money’s on somebody who knew her well enough to hate what she stood for. Hate everything about her. You don’t get this personal with your violence — you don’t sever the head of a woman — unless you’re so full of vitriol that swinging the ax is what gets you off.”

Daniel tried to keep his eyes squeezed shut so the tears that had formed wouldn’t be visible to us.

“Who did she know, Daniel?” I asked, softening the tone to get him to talk to me. “Who were her friends?”

“I told you, she didn’t have friends,” he said, turning to face me.

“We’ll get the names of the people who demonstrated with her. At least the ones who were also arrested. Did she talk about them?”

“Maybe so. But I didn’t listen. There were antiwar groups and pro-choice marches. Save the whales. Protect the rain forests.” He was mocking her now, ticking off a list of issues, just like Mike had done, only this list was for real. “Anti-smoking, pro-mammograms, anti-handgun, pro-opening the borders, free Tibet.”

“And most recently a full-on involvement with a religious organization,” I said.

“Not up my alley, Ms. Cooper. I was the get-out-of-jail-free card. I was there when she needed me. That’s all.”

“How much time did you spend with her after she was released the first time?”

“Hardly any. We had lunch together once when I was between jobs. And she came to a Christmas party with me, when the first show I worked on was breaking up.”

“A party?”

“Yeah. Naomi said she wanted to meet new people. She was living in an ivory tower.”

“I don’t get it,” Mike said. “She was on the barricades, Daniel. She was on the street for all these causes. It doesn’t get more common ground than that.”

“No, I meant her intellectual life. She was taking courses and everyone was so serious. She said she wanted to hang with me ’cause I made friends easily and I didn’t have the emotional baggage that she did.”

“Where was she taking courses? The ivory tower?” I asked.

Daniel looked sullen again. “I don’t know, Ms. Cooper. Some religious school, I guess.”

“Did she actually meet any of your friends?” Mike asked.

Daniel squirmed and looked away. “Like, I knew they weren’t her type anyway. She came ’cause she thought there’d be actors and people she could talk to. By the time Naomi got to the party, it was mostly a bunch of inebriated stagehands and prop guys.”

“Did she stay? Did she hook up with anyone?”

Daniel gave Mike his best what-are-you-crazy expression. “I think she stayed long enough to insult a couple of the crew. I mean, just talking her usual way to them — stuff nobody really cared about.”

“Did she leave with you?”

“Nah. Naomi left before I did. I wasn’t in the mood to get stuck taking her home, getting a lecture about how we should be family and all that. It was her new kick, and quite frankly it didn’t interest me a bit.”

“So what have we got here?” Mike asked, pointing to the scraps of paper.

“Junk. I was just trying to clean up. Gonna have to start packing and sorting out Naomi’s things.”

“Clean up? If this place was any neater,” Mike said, “I wouldn’t think anyone lived here. Who put you in charge?”

“Like I said, I’m the next of kin.”

“Let me guess. Your sister inherited some money when Rachel was killed.”

“I–I, uh, don’t really know. I don’t know much about that.”

“You went to her bank to withdraw money when she was arrested, didn’t you?” I asked. “Any idea how much was in her account?”

“Oh, no. This isn’t about money,” Daniel said, shaking his head.

“Did Naomi have a will? You know who her lawyer is?” Mike had a laundry list of questions ready to pop.

“Sure she had a will. Ever since her mother — since Rachel was killed so suddenly — Naomi was always spooked about being… well, like, ready to die.”

“Who’s the lawyer?” Mike asked, opening dresser and night-table drawers with his vinyl-gloved hand.

“How the hell would I know?” If I’d thought Daniel Gersh was jumpy ten minutes earlier, he was bouncing off the walls by now.

Mike turned back to the small rolling bag he had removed from the closet earlier and hoisted it onto the couch.

“You’ve got no business touching that,” Daniel shouted, circling the kitchen counter and moving to the middle of the room.

“I think I’ve got a better claim to it than you have at the moment,” Mike said, bending over to unzip it. “The luggage tag says it belonged to Naomi. Did she keep it loaded or was that you, planning how to take some of her things away while I waited at the front door?”

Mike threw back the lid. The suitcase was practically full. I could see a checkbook on top of a stack of other papers. He picked it up and lifted the cover. “Well, well. It’s Naomi’s. Three thousand, seven hundred, ninety-six dollars and change in her checking account, packed and ready to go.”

Daniel’s hands were flailing. “It’s not what you think, Detective. I didn’t want anybody stealing anything from here.”

Mike laid the checks on the arm of the sofa and started to dig through the rest of the things. I didn’t see any items of clothing, but there were spiral notebooks, manila file folders, and, crammed among them, what looked like the kind of ritual prayer shawl that had started the brouhaha at the Wailing Wall.

Mike opened one of the pads and began to read aloud. It was a diary that Naomi had written in the period after her mother’s death. The language was full of despair, appropriate to the dreadful circumstances of the bombing.

He set it aside and picked up several volumes, flipping through two or three of them before coming to a more recent period that documented her stay in New York. He held up the pages to reveal that strips had been torn out of the journal — paper that matched the scraps on the kitchen countertop.

“What’s with this, Daniel? What have you got to hide?” Mike asked, circling back to the sink with the notebook.

Daniel had no intention of answering. Before Mike or I could get anywhere near to stop him, Naomi’s brother turned and bolted out the door of the apartment.