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Suddenly, this is no longer news about a missing woman, young enough to be your daughter, or about a mother and father, terrified enough to be you. It becomes: Doesn't Condit look like the wound-tight kind of guy who might do away with an inconvenience or a threat? And what about that wristwatch box he tossed in the trash?
There is a tantalizing mystery here--don't get me wrong. And it would be unnatural not to try to picture what happened to Levy and who did it. But, I don't know about you, I feel kind of cheap every time I consider this business as if it were a thrilling detective novel to be read during a summer thunderstorm because I don't know a single thing about the character of Gary Condit or about serial killings in the District or about the guy who works at Levy's health club or her landlord or the other people living in her apartment house.
What I do know is that the world is a pitiless and dangerous place. In 20 years of observing portions of it, I have seen, or seen the aftermath of, children blown apart by car bombs in Beirut; kindergartners slaughtered in a schoolroom in Israel; hunted young men dying of starvation in Sudan; other young men and women hacked to death with machetes in Rwanda, their bodies hoisted like logs over waterfalls and carried into muddy rivers; still others decapitated in Cambodia, with kids forced to do the decapitating.
This is what people will do to one another. Given who they are and their individual circumstances, they will do absolutely anything to one another. The accumulation of this knowledge leaves one revulsed, heartbroken and, in some dark way, amazed. But it does not leave one with much to say. Chandra Levy's story is about what people will do to one another, and I don't feel like writing about that.