Katherine closed the folder, shoved it away from her, and said, “Nothing personal at all. I wonder where they put it.”
“How do you know ‘it’ even exists?” Vivi asked her. “Even if your analysis is picture perfect and right on the nose, what makes you think they would put it down on paper? What makes you think they would leave themselves open to an EOC lawsuit?”
“It’s a Republican administration, Vivi. They don’t have to worry about an EOC lawsuit. And I know there’s at least one personal evaluation, because; Donegal Steele wrote it. Marsha Diedermeyer saw him.”
The Dripmaster had emptied a full complement of coffee into the glass pitcher at its base. Vivi took the pitcher out, put it down in front of Katherine on the table, and turned around to get cups and spoons. When she turned back, her face was set and mulish, the way it got when someone expected her to help clean up after dinner, just because she was a woman.
“Katherine,” she said, sitting down, “listen to me. Get Donegal Steele out of your mind for a minute. Think about Miss Maryanne Veer.”
“What about Miss Maryanne Veer?”
“Somebody just tried to kill her.”
“Maybe,” Katherine said. “Maybe not. It could have been an accident. That’s why I sent you to get the file, Vivi. I didn’t want to have something lying around that would give them an excuse to incriminate us. You know that’s what they want to do. Especially that idiot David Markham.”
“I don’t happen to think David Markham is such an idiot,” Vivi said, “but that’s beside the point. What do you think of the other one, the one Father Tibor asked up to lecture?”
“Gregor Demarkian? What am I supposed to think of him? A typical authoritarian male with delusions of genital superiority.”
“Well, Katherine, that’s all well and good, but delusions or not, Demarkian happens to have a certain reputation.”
“A reputation for what?”
“A reputation for catching murderers.”
“You mean like Nero Wolfe?” Katherine laughed. “Oh, for God’s sake, Vivi, lighten up. The man’s a fascist. He was in the CIA.”
“FBI.”
“Same difference.”
“I don’t think they think so,” Vivi said, “and don’t give me a lecture on false consciousness. I couldn’t stand it. Katherine, I just went into an office ordinarily protected by a woman someone just tried to murder and stole a file. Under the circumstances, even a raging feminist might start to think that the reason someone tried to kill that woman was to get that file.”
“That file?”
“Or some other file sitting in that office, yes. Katherine, that Gregor Demarkian person thinks like a policeman, even if he isn’t one officially anymore. And he’s no hick like David Markham.”
“So?”
“So,” Vivi said, taking a deep breath, “what we have to do now is wait till the coast is clear and put the file back.”
The coffee in Katherine’s cup had a smoky film on top, as if it had been injected with dust. Katherine picked up her spoon and stirred it. Sometimes she found it hard to take, just how much she disliked Vivi Wollman. Sometimes she found it hard to take Vivi, period.
Still, Vivi was waiting for an answer, and Katherine supposed she owed her one. In Katherine’s experience, you always ended up owing women something, usually something you didn’t have to give.
“Well,” she said, still staring into her coffee cup, “here’s what I think. I don’t think we have to put that file back. I think you have to put that file back. And I think you ought to do it soon, Vivi, because if you don’t the whole world is going to begin wondering about that guilty look on your face.”
2
JACK CARROLL HAD GROWN up in places that had inspired him only with the determination to get out and go somewhere else, but in spite of the conventional demonology of those places—and there was a demonology; when he had first come to college and encountered it Jack had been shocked—he had never seen anyone killed until he saw Miss Maryanne Veer fall to the Independence College dining room floor. Of course, Miss Maryanne Veer had not been killed, not yet. They had taken her out to County Receiving and were doing their best for her. Jack’s private opinion was that their best was not going to be good enough. That raw skin, that strangled gurgling scream she had tried to heave up from deep inside her chest—there had been such pain and finality about it that it had frozen him where he stood, with his hand on Chessey’s back and his mind on their private tryst of the morning. Part of him had been watching, unbelieving, unable to move. Part of him had been thinking about sex. There had been something so obscene about the juxtaposition that he had been on the verge of being violently ill. He was still oh the verge, now, almost three hours later. It didn’t matter at all that he had not been thinking about sex the way he usually thought about sex. He had not been having fantasies about what might happen someday when he and Chessey both went totally out of control. He was no longer sure that Chessey was capable of going totally out of control, or that he was, either. What had been bothering him was the idea that their separate commitments to self-control were coming from opposite directions, working at cross-purposes. In the beginning, Chessey had held back out of principle and he out of fear of losing her. Lately their positions had seemed to be reversed, although Jack didn’t think that what Chessey was most afraid of was his own walking out. He wondered what she was afraid of. He had been wondering if her fear was something he ought to do something about, when Miss Maryanne Veer hit the floor.