The detectives are making their way towards the doorman, who is chatting amiably with one of the residents, when the front doors open behind them and Abby Markham strides in, sweaty and breathing hard from a recent jog. She spots the pair immediately and approaches, pulling off her headphones and running a hand through her short, damp hair. "Wish I could say I was surprised to see you, detectives."
Her tone is resigned but not rude and Alex notices that her face is still pale and pinched. The run was probably as much about fleeing from her grief - and the chaotic situation her family is in - as it was about fitness. Alex remembers those days, the ones that seemed so surreal that she had to inflict physical pain on herself just to prove that she still existed. They come back sometimes, though the visits are rare, but even so she knows exactly how Abby feels.
"We'd like to ask you a few more questions about your sister if we could," Bobby offers, using his friendly "sorry to impose on you" tone. He's already tilting his head to the left while he gazes at her and Alex knows he's trying to glean every clue he can from the way she behaves from here on out. It's an off-putting method of interviewing suspects, Alex feels, but she has to admit that it gets results.
Abby pales at the words "your sister" and narrows her eyes in confusion at Bobby's stance, but replies steadily, "Come on then."
Her apartment is on the ninth floor of the building and reflects the tastes of someone well brought up. The walls are done in soft, muted tones, a Sandra Lerner painting tops her mantle, and books of classic literature with leather bindings fill her neat, white bookshelves. Even her furniture is elegant and classical, Alex notes upon entering directly behind Abby. Bobby will be impressed.
Sure enough, as soon as they're in the door, he's nosing around – quite literally – hands folded behind his back as he scans her reading collection and admires the painting.
"Can I get you something to drink?" Abby offers, helping herself to a bottle of water from her fridge and in no visible hurry to talk to them about her sister. Alex senses she's taking as long as possible to collect herself but nothing about her behavior indicates she's hiding anything – so either she's innocent or she's an actress of Oscar caliber. Time will tell.
"No thanks," Alex shakes her head, still watching Bobby with bemused interest from the corner of her eye. If he starts picking things up, she may have to step in; he tends to make people nervous about the safety of their possessions.
"Water would be great," Bobby says, distracted and bent to a ninety-degree angle to better examine the bottom bookshelf, hands still behind his back.
Abby stares at him with a skeptical expression. "Sure…"
Alex offers a half-smile. "He likes your book collection."
Abby still looks dubious as she reaches for another water. "I've heard his methods are… unorthodox – but seeing him in action is… uh…"
"Words can't describe it," Alex finishes for her.
"You can say that again," Abby says gratefully, reaching into a cupboard for a clean glass.
Alex moves into the living room and seats herself in an overstuffed chair by the sofa while her partner rights himself and lifts a dog-eared paperback from the coffee table, flipping it open to reveal carefully underlined passages and margins filled with scrawled notes in different colors of ink.
"You like Faulkner?" he asks Abby, lifting his eyes as she pads in from the kitchen with his water in her hand. He holds up the book so she can see the cover.
She nods and hands him the glass, ice cubes clinking. "Yeah – I had a professor in college who made him really accessible. He's got some good insights."
"Absalom, Absalom – this is the one he wrote while he was reading Moby Dick, isn't it?" Bobby is getting into a conversational mood now and Alex settles herself more firmly in the chair. There will be questions pertinent to their investigation in there somewhere, she knows – eventually.
"Yeah," Abby seats herself on the couch and folds her legs beneath her. Her tone becomes grandiose and a bit sarcastic as she summarizes the story, "The classic tale of a family unable - and unwilling - to escape their fate."
She pauses and a smirk crosses her face. "I like to reread it now and then to prove that my family isn't as bad as I think they are – or at least I used to..."
"You've read it often, though," Bobby observes. Abby stares at him like he's just sprouted two heads so he gives a reassuring laugh and indicates her writing on the pages. "You've made notes on top of notes here."
She shrugs. "There's a lot to think about – questions about fate and observations on how the timing of things is important. I mean, an hour late can mean you miss dinner or you miss saving someone's life. Faulkner asks whether we control time or it controls us. He implies that fate may already have chosen our ultimate path and that the time at which events occur is predetermined to steer us on that course."
"But Faulkner also tells a story," Bobby reminds her, eagerly adding his own thoughts. He hefts the book in his hand again. "Take this one, for instance. Absalom was David's son. He killed his half-brother for raping his sister, fled Jerusalem, and ultimately returned to usurp his father's power. Faulkner's tale plays pretty true to that if I recall."
Abby's jaw drops slightly and she shoots a glance at Alex, who can't even feign surprise at his revelation. Yes, Bobby's read the Bible. He's also read the Koran, the Talmud, and basically everything else he can get his hands on. He's a walking card catalog and not much he says in reference to obscure facts known only by other true scholars throws Alex anymore. Abby, however, is unused to this so Alex steps in.
"His library card gets more exercise than most tri-athletes," she offers dryly.
"I'll say," Abby's tone still matches her expression of wonder. Alex has to give her credit, though - she recovers quickly and turns back to Bobby, sounding more like a college student than a cop when she says, "You have to remember that he plays with the story in his version, though, and brings in the question of fate when he implies that Thomas Sutpen doomed the family right from the beginning. See, Faulkner always wanted to write about a man who wanted sons…"
"…and was destroyed by them," Bobby finishes for her, seating himself on the couch on the opposite end from Abby, near Alex's right elbow. He's settling down now and Alex can tell he's preparing to get down to the business of their investigation.
Abby's face is visibly impressed. "Very good, Detective Goren. It's hard to find another cop who understands literature – or who's read a book, for that matter."
"He's a rare find, all right," Alex agrees with her, slightly under her breath, which earns a half smile from the young woman but Bobby ignores.
He continues, eyes sharpening as his words gain focus. "It follows the Bible story pretty closely, though, right? I mean, the illegitimate son tries to marry his half-sister."
Alex can't help but admire her partner right now as she sees how masterfully he's just steered the conversation. He's laid out the framework of a scene and now he's starting to add color, bit by bit. She waits for her cue to enter.
Abby nods, her expression closing off in an indication that she's seen the change in conversation occur too. "Yeah."
Bobby leans back ever so slightly and Alex knows it's her turn to speak now – he gave her the opening with his nonconfrontational, "I'm just like you" good cop routine and now she has to be the bad cop and ask the hard questions.
"Did Faulkner ever write about a younger sister getting pregnant by her older sister's boyfriend?" Alex asks pointedly.
Abby inhales sharply and says nothing but Alex doesn't back down. "Amy stole your boyfriend – a man you loved. That must have made you angry."
"Look," Abby shakes her head, attempting to gain control of herself, "I didn't kill my sister. I know it looks like I had the perfect motive, but believe me, I didn't do it."
She pauses to set her water bottle on the coffee table, then looks at them both evenly. "Yes, Keith and I dated for five years and yes, I loved him. Six months ago, he even proposed."
She looks down at her hands as she continues. "Now, I know that's every little girl's dream come true, but it wasn't mine. Believe me, I gave it a lot of thought, but I realized it would have meant quitting my job and becoming everything I've spent the last few years trying not to be. Everyone makes a big deal about me joining the force on a dare, but the truth is I was looking for something to do with my life that didn't leave me teaching Moby Dick to a group of bored, Ivy League-bound prep schoolers. And this job is the first thing I've found that I'm really good at." She pauses and leans back. "Needless to say, Keith didn't like that. We broke up and the next thing I know, he's using the old 'I'll date your sister to make you jealous' trick to try to win me back."
"It obviously didn't work," Alex comments.
"It might have," Abby tells her with a shake of her head, "until Amy came to me and said she was pregnant and that she and Keith were getting married."
Bobby steps in now. "That must have been a shock."
"A shock, detective?" Abby repeats bitterly. "That is the understatement of the century. But more than shocked, I was confused. I mean, Amy and I weren't always terribly close, but she knew everything that was going on with Keith and I and she had to know that he was using her to get to me. Amy wasn't dumb and I can't figure out for the life of me how she got herself into the situation that she did."
"Have you asked Keith about it?" Alex finds herself agreeing with Abby about the lack of visible logic in the situation. Their case keeps getting harder instead of easier.
Abby's face becomes stony before Alex's eyes and her answer is clipped. "Keith and I don't exactly talk the way we used to, Detective Eames."
Bobby's head has begun to swivel and Alex can tell that he's trying to assess what she's just told them for clues. In the meantime, he looks sly and plays the devil's advocate. "Maybe he stopped pretending and picked her over you."
Abby shakes her head rapidly. "No way. Keith wanted me back and…"
She censors herself quickly and Alex raises an eyebrow to her partner, who blinks to indicate that he too realizes they've struck a nerve and possibly informational gold.
"You and Keith were still together while he was with Amy, weren't you?" Bobby lowers his voice and seeks out her eyes with his own.
"No," Abby shakes her head again and her eyes rise to meet his. "No, I wouldn't let him. It's just…" She trails off again, then picks up quickly – louder. "Oh what the hell. You're going to find out somehow anyway."
"Find out what?" Alex puts in.
"Friday night," Abby begins, "after the rehearsal dinner and after I was at O'Malleys with my squad, I came home and found Keith sitting outside my door. He was pretty upset and said he needed to talk to someone so I let him in. I'd been drinking and wasn't thinking very clearly or I would have realized my mistake and gotten rid of him. Anyway, one thing led to another and we slept together. In fact, that's how I forgot to set my alarm. When my dad called, he woke both of us up."
"Keith certainly got around in your family," Alex observes unabashedly.
"It wasn't like that," Abby tells her quickly. "We just… we still have a connection. But before I left to go to Amy's we agreed we'd made a mistake and it should end right there. We also agreed that no one could find out - my dad especially. He already thinks I'm the family black sheep."
"You've lied to your father about a lot of things in the past," Bobby infers.
A sly but slightly embarrassed smile finds its way to her face. "Let's just say that child psychologists make lousy parents and I owe my success as a cop to my dad." She pauses and drops her eyes. "People wonder how a high society girl like me can blend into the drug scene, how I can pick a dealer out of a crowd from a hundred yards away. They don't realize that I spent the better part of my teenage years hanging out in situations exactly like the ones I now get paid to break up."
"You were seeking his attention," Bobby nods in understanding and Alex watches him empathize with her. He thinks she's innocent; it's written all over his face and Alex can hear it now as he speaks with her.
"Yeah and I got it too – for the ten minutes it took him to send me to one of those anonymous upstate camps where they dry you out under a pseudonym while your friends back home think you're at a Swiss boarding school," Abby spits the words.
"Your brother, he's done some very similar things," Bobby starts fishing.
Abby shakes her head to indicate that he's made too much of a generalization. "Andrew has his own demons to deal with, Detective. If you want to know about them, you'll have to ask him yourself."
"We'll do that," Alex assures her.
"Just know that he wouldn't hurt Amy," Abby's tone softens and yet is at the same time emphatic. "Ever. They were twins; they had a connection."
Bobby nods sincerely, then rises in a sudden motion, prompting Alex to follow suit. "I think we've taken enough of your time, Miss Markham. You've been very helpful, though – thank you."
Abby stands too and walks them to the door. As she lets them out, she tells them, "Look, I've heard a lot about you and I know you're the best detectives Major Case has so this goes without saying, but please find out who killed my sister. Out of my entire family, she was the good one and she deserved better."
Alex and Bobby can do nothing but nod in assent as they depart. They're silent in the elevator, sobered by Abby's parting words, though Alex also finds that her mind has begun to wander again, not over the clues of the case, but rather about something Abby Markham said when she was talking with Bobby about Absalom, Absalom.
Yet he also makes the reader ask if we control time or if it controls us. He implies that fate may already have chosen our ultimate path and that the time at which events occur is predetermined to steer us on that course, Abby had said of Faulkner.
If that's true, Alex thinks, than the few ironic moments in her life that she stored away as coincidental were, in fact, always meant to be. And the more she reviews them in her mind, the more she begins to see the possible validity behind the idea that Abby described – which would mean that this place she's in right now is where she was meant to be all along.
Take, for instance, her reason for transferring to Major Case in the first place – a reason she shares with Bobby. That one event could spur two people in different departments to make the same change is not so unusual, especially when the event is a significant one. Yet it's never occurred to her until now that there might be something more to it than pure coincidence and an accident of timing.
Granted, it wasn't that Alex hadn't been considering a transfer before Michael's death in the line of duty, but the event had been the catalyst that finally made her file the paperwork. It was a horrific reminder her of her mother's greatest fear during her growing up years – the fear of that middle of the night phone call to say her father was never coming home. Her mother's phone call never came, thankfully, but watching Michael's parents – as well as her own – go through the aftermath of the one she received was enough to make her want to protect them from the feeling again. She announced she was quitting Vice the day after the funeral - and the looks of relief on her parents' faces validated her decision.
As for Bobby, she couldn't be sure of his line of thinking prior to Michael's death; all she knew was that her partner had been deep undercover when word of the murder of a fellow Narcotics officer from another squad hit the streets and reminded him of the danger he faced. Bobby had been so transformed into the character he was playing at the time that he was on the verge of crossing over onto the other side of the law. Michael's death was the jolt that brought him back to reality, prompting him to find a job that relied less on his chameleon-like acting abilities and more on his skills of deduction. Alex knows all of this about her partner because he told so one night over a late dinner when they'd been working for an eighteen-hour stretch and both were suffering the effects of being simultaneously wired and exhausted. Michael's name had remained unspoken – even mentally drained Bobby had enough tact to keep that to himself – but the date of Bobby's transfer lined up with Michael's death and Alex knew he couldn't be referring to anyone else.
It's almost funny, but back when Bobby had shared his epiphany with her, Alex recalled being strangely grateful that Michael had been the one to save Bobby and put him in the department where he truly belonged. She had also thought it a shame that they'd never met because she figured they would have liked each other. But thinking about it now in the elevator and in context with Abby's words, Alex feels a bit uneasy because she realizes that Bobby only came into her life after Michael left it. If Michael were still alive, she wouldn't have Bobby. The two men don't coexist, but rather one is present in her life because the other isn't. So if this is her fate and her pre-established path, then is she to believe that Michael was destined to die so that she could be paired with Bobby? And if that's the case, then she's facing a lot more questions than answers –none of will put her any closer to pulling out of this funk (or whatever it is she's in).
The elevator slides to a stop and the doors open, but neither partner moves. Alex is still lost in thought and it's only after she realizes that Bobby is staring at her – waiting for her to precede him through the doors – that she becomes alert.
"You okay?" he asks as the doors glide shut behind them and they make their way through the sunlit lobby.
"Yeah, fine," she replies nonchalantly, trying to sort her thoughts so that she's one hundred percent in the present and focused on the outside world.
Bobby still looks at her quizzically but he says nothing and lets her walk ahead of him through the double doors and onto the street.