Rising Sun: A Novel (38 page)

“Let’s rock it,” she said.

She began to make the image go forward and back, one frame at a time. Flipping from one to the other. In one frame, the vertical slit was missing. In the next frame, it was there. The vertical bar lasted for the next ten frames. Then it was gone, never to reappear. But the fuzzy spot in the corner was always present.

“Hmmm.”

She pushed in on the spot. Under ever-increasing magnification, it disintegrated until it looked like a cluster of stars from an astronomy picture. But it seemed to have some kind of internal organization. I could almost imagine an X shape to it. I said so.

“Yes,” she said. “Let’s sharpen.”

She did that. The computers worked on the data. The fuzzy cluster resolved itself. Now it looked like Roman numerals.

“What the hell is that?” I said.

She kept working. “Edge trace,” she said. The outline of the Roman numerals appeared more clearly.

Theresa continued to try and resolve it. As she worked, in some ways the image seemed to get better, and in some ways, less clear. But eventually we could recognize it.

“It’s the reflection of an exit sign,” she said. “There’s an exit at the far end of the room opposite the elevators, is that right?”

“Yes,” I said.

“It’s being reflected in the glass of the scroll. That’s all it is.” She flipped to the next frame. “But this vertical bar of light. That’s interesting. See? It appears, and is gone.” She ran it back and forth several times.

And then I figured it out.

“There’s a fire exit back there,” I said. “And a staircase going downstairs. That must be the reflection of the light from the stairwell as someone opens the door and closes it again.”

“You mean someone came into the room,” she said. “From the back stairs?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting. Let’s try and see who it is.”

She ran the tapes forward. At this high magnification, the grainy image spattered and popped like fireworks on the screen. It was as if the smallest components of the image had a life of their own, their dance independent of the image they assembled to make. But it was exhausting to watch. I rubbed my eyes. “Jesus.”

“Okay.
There.
”

I looked up. She had frozen the image. I couldn’t see anything but erratic black-and-white dots. There seemed to be a pattern but I couldn’t tell what it was. It reminded me of the sonograms when Lauren was pregnant. The doctor would say, The head is here, that’s the baby’s stomach there.… But I couldn’t see anything. It was just abstract. My daughter still in the womb.

The doctor had said, See? She wiggled her fingers. See? Her heart is beating.

I had seen that. I had seen the heart beating. The little heart and the little ribs.

Under the circumstances, Lieutenant, don’t you think—

“See?” Theresa said. “That’s his shoulder. That’s the outline
of the head. Now he is moving forward—see him getting larger?—and now he is standing in that far passageway, looking around the corner. He is cautious. You can see the profile of his nose for a moment as he turns to look. See that? I know it’s hard. Watch carefully. Now he is looking at them. He is watching them.”

And suddenly, I could see it. The spots seemed to fall into place. I saw a silhouetted man standing in the hallway by the far exit.

He was watching.

Across the room, the lovers were wrapped up in their kiss. They didn’t notice the new arrival.

But someone was watching them. It gave me a chill.

“Can you see who he is?”

She shook her head. “Impossible. We are at the limits of everything. I cannot even resolve eyes, a mouth. Nothing.”

“Then let’s go on.”

The tapes snapped back, full speed. I was jarred by the sudden return to normal size and normal movement. I watched as the lovers, kissing passionately, continued to cross the room.

“So now they are being watched,” Theresa said. “Interesting. What kind of a girl is this?”

I said, “I believe the term is
torigaru onnai.”

She said, “She is light in her bird?
Tori
what?”

“Never mind. I mean she is a loose woman.”

Theresa shook her head. “Men always say things like that. To me, it looks like she loves him, but she is troubled in her mind.”

The lovers were approaching the conference room, and Cheryl suddenly twisted away, attempting to break free from the man.

“If she loves him, she’s got a strange way of showing it,” I said.

“She senses something is wrong.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps she hears something. The other man. I don’t know.”

Whatever the reason, Cheryl was struggling with the lover, who now had both arms around her waist and was almost dragging her into the conference room. Cheryl twisted once more at the door, as the man tried to pull her in.

“A good chance here,” Theresa said.

The tape froze again.

All the walls of the conference room were glass. Through the outer walls, the lights of the city were visible. But the inner walls, facing the atrium, were dark enough to act as a black mirror. Since Cheryl and her lover were near the inner glass walls, their images were reflected in the glass as they struggled.

Theresa ran the tape forward, frame by frame, looking for an image that might hold up. From time to time, she zoomed in, probed the pixels, zoomed back out. It was difficult. The two people were moving quickly, and they were often blurred. And the lights from the skyscrapers outside sometimes obscured otherwise good images.

It was frustrating.

It was slow.

Stop. Zoom in. Slide around in the image, trying to locate a section that had enough detail. Give up. Go forward again. Stop again.

Finally, Theresa sighed. “It’s not working. That glass is murder.”

“Then let’s keep going.”

I saw Cheryl grab the door frame, trying to keep from being pulled into the conference room. The man finally pulled her free, she slid backward with a look of terror on her face, and then she swung her arms back to hit the man. Her purse went flying. Then they were both inside the room. Silhouettes moving quickly, turning.

The man shoved her back against the table, and Cheryl appeared in the camera that aimed straight down on the conference room. Her short blond hair contrasted with the dark wood of the table. Her mood changed again, she stopped struggling for a minute. She had a look of expectation.
Excitement. She licked her lips. Her eyes followed the man as he leaned over her. He slid her skirt up her hips.

She smiled, pouted, whispered in his ear.

He pulled her panties away, a quick jerk.

She smiled at him. It was a tense smile, half-aroused, half-pleading.

She was excited by her own fear.

His hands caressed her throat.

Standing in the darkened laboratory, with the hiss of skaters on the ice above, we watched the final violent act, again and again. It played on five monitors, different angles, as her pale legs went up, onto his shoulders, and he crouched over her, hands fumbling at his trousers. With repetition, I noticed small things not seen before. The way she slid down the table to meet him, wiggling her hips. The way his back arched at the moment of penetration. The change in her smile, catlike, knowing. Calculating. How she urged him on, saying something. Her hands around his back, caressing. The sudden change in mood, the flash of anger in her eyes, the abrupt slap. The way she fought him, first to arouse him, and then later, struggling in a different way, because then something was wrong. The way her eyes bulged, and she had a look of real desperation. Her hands pushing his arms, shoving his coat sleeves up, revealing the tiny metallic sparkle of cuff links. The glint of her watch. Her arm falling back, palm open. Five fingers pale against the black of the table. Then a tremor, the fingers twitching, and stillness.

His slowness to understand something was wrong. The way he went rigid for a moment, then took her head in his hand, moved it back and forth, trying to arouse her, before he finally pulled away. Even looking at his back, you could almost feel his horror. He remained slow, as if in a trance. Pacing around the room in aimless half steps, first this way, then that. Trying to recover his wits, to decide what to do.

Each time I saw the sequence repeated, I felt a different way. The first few times, there was a tension, a voyeuristic
sensation, itself almost sexual. And then later, I felt progressively more detached, more analytical. As if I was drifting away, moving back from the monitor. And finally, the entire sequence seemed to break down before my eyes, the bodies losing their human identities altogether, becoming abstractions, elements of design, shifting and moving in dark space.

Theresa said, “This girl is sick.”

“It looks that way.”

“She is not a victim. Not this one.”

“Maybe not.”

We watched it again. But I no longer knew why we were watching. Finally I said, “Let’s go forward, Theresa.”

We had been running the sequence to a certain point on the tape counter, and then going back to run again. So we had seen a part of the tape again and again, but we hadn’t gone farther. Almost immediately as we went forward, something remarkable happened. The man stopped pacing and looked sharply off to one side—as if he had seen something, or heard something.

“The other man?” I said.

“Perhaps.” She pointed to the monitors. “This is the area in the tapes where the shadows do not seem to match up. Now, we know why.”

“Something was erased?”

She ran the tape backward. On the side monitor view, we could see the man look up, in the direction of the exit. He gave every appearance that he had seen someone. But he did not appear frightened or guilty.

She zoomed in. The man was just a silhouette. “You can’t see anything, can you?”

“Profile.”

“What about it?”

“I am looking at the jaw line. Yes. See? The jaw is moving. He is talking.”

“Talking to the other man?”

“Or to himself. But he is certainly looking off. And now see? He has sudden new energy.”

The man was moving around the conference room. His
behavior purposeful. I remembered how confusing this part had been, when I saw it the night before at the police station. But with five cameras, it was clear. We could see exactly what he was doing. He picked up the panties from the floor.