The Broken Window

He’d never seen her apartment-the place wasn’t disabled accessible-but he knew that the rooms were chockablock with evidence of her history. He’d seen many of the pictures, of course: Amelia Sachs as a pretty young girl (with freckles that had long since vanished) who didn’t smile a lot; as a high school student with mechanics tools in hand; as a college-age daughter flanked on holidays by a grinning cop father and a stern mother; as a magazine and advertising model, her eyes offering the chic frigidity that was au courant (but which Rhyme knew was contempt for the way models were considered mere coat hangers).

Hundreds of other pix too, shot mostly by her father, the man with a quick-draw Kodak.

Sachs had studied Rhyme’s bare walls and had gone where the aides-even Thom-did not: the boxes in the basement, scores of cartons containing evidence of Rhyme’s prior life, his life in the Before, artifacts hidden away and as unmentioned as first wife to second. Many of these certificates and diplomas and family pictures now filled the walls and mantelpiece.

Including the one he was presently studying-of himself as a lean teenager, in a track uniform, taken after he’d just competed in a varsity meet. It depicted him with unruly hair and a prominent Tom Cruise nose, bending forward with his hands on his knees, having just finished what was probably a mile run. Rhyme was never a sprinter; he liked the lyricism, the elegance of the longer distances. He considered running “a process.” Sometimes he would not stop running even after crossing the finish line.

His family would have been in the stands. Both father and uncle resided in suburbs of Chicago, though some distance apart. Lincoln’s home was to the west, in the flat, balding sprawl that was then still partly farmland, a target of both thoughtless developers and frightening tornados. Henry Rhyme and his family were somewhat immune to both, being on the lakefront in Evanston.

Henry commuted twice a week to teach his advanced physics courses at the University of Chicago, a long, two-train trek through the city’s many social divides. His wife, Paula, taught at Northwestern. The couple had three children, Robert, Marie and Arthur, all named after scientists, Oppenheimer and Curie being the most famous. Art was named after Arthur Compton, who in 1942 ran the famed Metallurgic Lab at the University of Chicago, the cover for the project to create the world’s first controlled nuclear chain reaction. All the children had attended good schools. Robert, Northwestern Medical. Marie, UC-Berkeley. Arthur went to M.I.T.

Robert had died years earlier in an industrial accident in Europe. Marie was working in China on environmental issues. As for the Rhyme parents, only one remained of the four: Aunt Paula now lived in an assisted-care facility, amid vivid, coherent memories of sixty years ago, while experiencing the present in bewildering fragments.

Rhyme now continued to stare at the picture of himself. He was unable to look away, recalling the track meet… In his college classes Professor Henry Rhyme signified approval with a subtle, raised eyebrow. But on the playing field, he was always leaping to his feet in the bleachers, whistling and bellowing for Lincoln to push, push, push, you can do it! Encouraging him over the finish line first (he often was).

Following the meet, Rhyme supposed he’d gone off with Arthur. The boys spent as much time together as they could, filling the sibling gap. Robert and Marie were considerably older than Arthur, and Lincoln was an only child.

So Lincoln and Art adopted each other. Most weekends and every summer the surrogate brothers would go off on their adventures, often in Arthur’s Corvette (Uncle Henry, even as a professor, made several times what Rhyme’s father did; Teddy was a scientist too, though he was more comfortable out of the spotlight). The boys’ outings were typical teenage venture-girls, ball games, movies, arguing, eating burgers and pizza, sneaking beer and explaining the world. And more girls.

Now, sitting in the new TDX wheelchair, Rhyme wondered where exactly he and Arthur had gone after the meet.

Arthur, his surrogate brother…

Who never came to see him after his spine was cracked like a piece of defective wood.

Why, Arthur? Tell me why…

But these memories were derailed by the ringing doorbell in his town house. Thom veered toward the hallway and a moment later, a slightly built, balding man wearing a tuxedo strode into the room. Mel Cooper shoved his thick glasses up on his thin nose and nodded to Rhyme. “Afternoon.”

“Formal?” Rhyme asked, glancing at the tux.

“The dance competition. If we’d been finalists, you know I wouldn’t have come.” He took off jacket and bow tie, then rolled up the sleeves of the frilly shirt. “So what do we have, this unique case you were telling me about?”

Rhyme filled him in.

“I’m sorry about your cousin, Lincoln. I don’t think you ever mentioned him.”