“When did you first meet Deniz?” asked the detective. He stared at his screen, the answer clearly before him.
“If you already know,” said Catherine, “then why are you asking me?”
The detective asked again.
Kristin interjected, “I’m going to instruct her not to answer unless you can explain to me why this is relevant.” The detective leaned back in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest. “This man, Deniz, is a person of interest to us, a troublemaker who has incited riots against his government.” Then the detective pointed an accusatory finger at Catherine. “She is deeply connected to him.”
“They work together, that’s it,” said Kristin. “This questioning is uncalled for.”
The detective motioned for Kristin to step behind his desk. Two documents split the computer screen. The first was the payroll from the Istanbul Modern, which listed Deniz’s steadily increasing salary dating from late 2006, when he had presumably begun work there. The second document was a scanned form from the Central Authority dated only a few weeks prior to the first salary entry. It was William’s birth certificate. Aside from William’s name there were only two others on it.
Kristin read over the document, glancing at Catherine, who had now clasped her hands together and pulled them between her knees, hunching into herself. Outside the glass office Deniz tended to Peter, who stubbornly tried to open his eyes, but without success. “Is it illegal for an American to adopt a child in this country?” asked Kristin, but her voice was heavy, tinged with defeat.
The detective ignored her, resuming his line of questioning with Catherine. “Your husband is Murat Yaşar?”
Catherine nodded almost imperceptibly.
“This boy William is his adopted son?”
“What difference does that make?” asked Kristin, but the detective continued.
“Who else knows who the boy’s father is?”
“How is that relevant?” asked Kristin, cutting off the line of questioning.
The detective planted his elbows on his desk and wove his fingers together. “You’re right,” he said. “It isn’t relevant to this arrest. We just thought you and your colleagues at the consulate would like to know what we know about Murat Yaşar.”
“All right then,” said Kristin. “Now we know.”
“Good,” said the detective. “And so do we.” Kristin stepped out from behind the desk. She took Catherine by the arm, guiding her to her feet. “She is married to an important man,” the detective continued. “I don’t think he’d like this information about his wife and son out in public.”
“Are you going to let Peter and Deniz go?” Catherine interjected.
The detective shuffled through his desk drawer, producing two notarized forms replete with stamps and official seals. “These are copies of their release orders. We’ll have them out of here this afternoon.” He offered up the documents to Kristin, who folded them in half and tucked them into her coat pocket. Kristin then led Catherine toward the door, where they passed unnoticed by Peter, who still struggled to see, and by Deniz, who attended to him.
It was late morning and outside the precinct the day was clear and bright and a steady wind was coming from the east and it smelled like the sea. Catherine and Kristin said awkward goodbyes as they approached their cars. Catherine offered to let Kristin pull out first. Kristin then fumbled through her purse. A general anxiety—only heightened by the protests—had caused her increasingly to misplace her keys, though she soon found them. Reversing into the street, however, Kristin noticed Catherine as she approached the passenger side of her black Mercedes. Catherine crouched down, discerning something, and then she ran her fingers over the door, on the exact spot Kristin had dented a few hours prior. Catherine glanced out into the street, clearly recognizing the damage Kristin had done before she’d sped away.
Normally, Kristin would have stopped and taken responsibility, but she was in a rush. She was holding a single piece of information in her memory. Before she forgot the details, she needed to pull over and jot down a name and address she had glimpsed on the birth certificate the detective had shown her. It was the information on file for William’s mother.
Three-thirty on that afternoon
The terrier begins to bark, its black and nimble mouth forming the piercing yips, which echo off the four cramped corners of the parking attendant’s booth. Catherine lifts the dog into her lap, kneading at its white fur, trying to soothe it. When this doesn’t work, the attendant opens a roll of crackers from his bag and offers a few to the terrier, who turns his nose away. “Maybe he’s cold,” says William, and the boy removes his sweatshirt and wraps it around the dog so that only the terrier’s head sticks out. This does nothing to silence the barking. And now William sits in front of the television in only his T-shirt, so Catherine removes her blazer and drapes it around the boy’s shoulders. The parking attendant then offers Catherine his coat, but she refuses, not wanting to wear his clothes. She tries to suppress a chill, but once again begins to shiver.
The dog continues to bark. William chooses to ignore it. He returns his attention to the television. The attendant wipes the fog from the window, searching outside. Perhaps the dog is trying to warn them of something, but through the curtains of rain the attendant can at best see only a few feet ahead. Catherine glances down at her phone. She has tried Peter more than a half dozen times. None of her calls have gone through. Her anxious mind projects a series of worst-case scenarios: perhaps Murat has intimidated Peter into abandoning their rendezvous, or perhaps Peter has confessed her location to Murat and her husband is on his way to the park at this moment, or, and worst of all, perhaps nobody is coming for her and William, not Murat, and not Peter. She imagines that maybe both her husband and her lover have determined she is no longer worth the trouble.
She can’t figure out what to do next. She can’t hear herself think in competition with the television and the dog, which are both her son’s, and so she can’t hear herself think in competition with him. She continues to shiver, while in a similar nonvoluntary response, tremors of resentment spread from her center toward her limbs, directed at William, as if she might reach over and strike him in desperation. Instead, she snatches the dog from his lap.
“Give him back!” William leaps up from his stool.
“He’s too loud,” says Catherine. “He’s going outside for a minute.” She peels the sweatshirt off the terrier and makes for the door, so that her back faces William, who then lunges after her, reaching for his dog, who, strangely, has fallen silent in the struggle over his fate.
“He’s not too loud for me,” says the attendant.