New Jersey

Bergen County - The Town of Teaneck

Cedar Lane - Same Day

Standing in Teaneck – curled red and yellow autumn leaves around his feet – Leo waited as Nara charmed answers from store owners, working the main street with guile and grace that confirmed she would have made an excellent agent. Leo wondered what career she would eventually take. He imagined she would make an inspirational teacher, much like his wife. Quite unexpectedly, he felt a desire to cry, pained to think of her future knowing that he would have no part in it.

Nara emerged from a grocery store, walking up to Leo. He composed himself, asking:

—Any luck?

—Yates still lives here. His wife died a few years ago.

—Did they give you an address?

She hesitated.

—Leo, I want to say this one more time, don’t be angry with me. There would be no shame in letting this rest.

—Nara, a day hasn’t passed when I haven’t thought about what happened to Raisa. For me, there’s been no rest and there can be none, not until I find out the truth. I’m tired, Nara, I’ve been thinking about this for so long. I want what you suggest: I want to rest. I want to sleep without waking up in a cold sweat, thinking about what happened. I must end this.

—What are you going to do when you come face to face with him?

—I don’t know what he’s going to say so I can’t predict what I’m going to do.

Nara’s concerns grew. Leo smiled, taking her hand.

—You’re behaving as though I was crossing a moral line from which there’s no turning back. You must remember that this used to be routine for me. I’ve arrested many innocent men and women. I hunted people down for the State, good people, knocking on doors without knowing anything about the suspect except that their name was on a list.

—Would you still do that?

—No. But I am going to hunt down the person responsible for killing my wife.

Leo paused, wondering if Nara would want no further part in this.

—Did they give you an address?

She looked up at the sky.

—They gave me an address.

***

The front yard was overgrown, knee-high weeds and dense bushes – a patch of land entirely out of place in a street where the other yards were immaculately neat and trim. Following the overgrown path, weeds brushing his shins, Leo approached the front door with Nara by his side. There was no car in the driveway. He knocked and then glanced through the window. The lights were off. He tried the door handle. It was locked. Moving quickly, he took out a tension wrench and a paperclip from his pocket. Nara looked at him in quiet disbelief, appearing unable to fathom that he was by profession an agent of the secret police and that he’d broken into the homes of countless suspects. In seconds the door was open. Leo pocketed the tools, entering the house. After a beat, Nara followed, shutting the door behind her.

Yates lived in a large family home laid out over three floors with a basement and a back yard, a model of suburban normality. Yet instead of being familiar and comforting, the atmosphere was unsettling. Everything spoke of decay and neglect, from the wilderness of the front yard to the bland comforts of the interior, decorated in neutral colours, with mock-antiques and a glass cabinet filled with porcelain trinkets. The carpets were plush, as thick as Leo had ever seen, like the fur of an Arctic animal, and were colour-coordinated with the wallpaper – but the colour had been bleached by sunlight over many years. It was a family house without a sign of a family: there were no photographs except for one lonely wedding picture, a handsome man and a beautiful wife, both veiled in dust.

As they explored, each footstep caused a puff of dust, rising up before settling over the toes of their shoes. Only the kitchen showed evidence of recent use. The lines between the tiles were black with dirt. Washing up had been stacked in the sink, coffee cups and encrusted plates. Leo checked the refrigerator. There were cartons of milk. In the freezer was a tower of packaged meals – he counted seven.

Leo could tell that Nara’s curiosity had been piqued: a desire to continu colous muddled with her anxieties. It was their second search of a suspect’s house together as mentor and student. Leo said:

—I don’t think Agent Yates is the kind of person to keep a journal.

—What kind of a person is he?

Once again, Leo recalled Elena’s words in her diary:

This house would not have allayed her fears. In deciding whether to explore upstairs or descend to the basement, Leo chose the gloom of the basement, guessing that it might appeal to Yates.

Rectangular patches of carpet had been nailed to the wooden steps down to the basement with no concern for appearances, making it baffling why the alteration had been done at all. The answer was on the ceiling, covered in black soundproof foam. The concrete floor had also been carpeted in a patchwork of material, using the remains of carpets from upstairs. This wasn’t about aesthetics or comfort, it was about noise, the creation of a quiet room, a cocoon shut off from the world.

There was a tatty chair positioned opposite a large television set up on a small side table. There was a second refrigerator, this one containing bottles of beer, neatly lined up, labels facing forward. There was a stack of newspapers, recently read, crossword puzzles filled in. Leo looked through the home-crafted bookshelves. They contained various biographies of sporting heroes, reference books, a dictionary for the word games that Yates seemed to occupy himself with. There were magazines about fishing. There was pornography. The room was like a teenager’s den buried under a decaying, apparently respectable family house.

The carpeted stairs and soundproofed ceiling meant that neither Leo nor Nara heard Yates arrive. Only when Leo turned to address her did he see the man standing at the top of the padded steps.