Under a Watchful Eye #2
"I'm not asking you to believe anything. I'm telling you what happened."
He studied me. I could feel the study, the way he was weighing each word I'd said against some internal scale I could not see. His face did not change. The weariness around his eyes did not lift.
"His wife died six years ago," I said. "He told me that. Was that true?"
Harding hesitated. It was the first break in his rhythm, a fractional pause before he answered. "Yes. That was true."
"Then some of it was real."
"Some of it," he said. "Not enough."
I looked down at my hands. They were still flat on the table, still folded, the knuckles pale but not white.
I had not moved them since I sat down. I thought about Julian's hand on my back in Tallinn, the way he'd guided me past the men in dark suits as if I hadn't seen them, as if my seeing them was an inconvenience he could smooth over with a touch.
I thought about the breakfast table in Stockholm, the way he'd looked at his watch and then at the door and then at me, in that order, and I thought about how I had known, even then, that something was wrong, and how I had chosen not to ask.
"I met him three months after my husband died," I said. "I was not in a state to ask the right questions."
"Grief makes people vulnerable."
"Yes."
"It also makes people easy to use."
I looked up. Harding's expression had not softened, but something behind it had shifted, a small adjustment in the angle of his attention. He was still watching me, still measuring, but the measurement had changed its purpose.
"I know I was used," I said. "I've known that since the moment he walked away from me on the dock. What I don't know is why you think I had anything to do with his death."
"Because people lie, Mrs. Vance. Because people who seem innocent often aren't. Because you're the only link we have, and until I can verify everything you've told me, you're going to remain a person of interest in this investigation."
"A person of interest."
"That's what you are."
The fluorescent light flickered once, a quick stutter that made the room jump and then settle. Harding did not look up at it. His eyes stayed on me.
"The bag," he said. "You'll need to turn it over. Today."
"I understand."
"And you'll need to remain available for further questioning. Don't leave the city without notifying this office."
"Am I under arrest?"
"No."
"But I'm not free to go."
"You're free to go. You're not free to disappear."
He stood. The chair scraped against the floor, a sound that was louder than it should have been in the small room. He picked up the folder and the recorder and walked to the door and then stopped with his hand on the handle.
"One more thing," he said. "Did he ever mention anyone else on the ship? Anyone he met with, anyone he seemed to know?"
I thought of the men in Tallinn, their dark suits and their stillness, the way Julian's voice had gone flat when I asked about them. I thought of the other times, the meetings he'd excused himself for, the phone calls he'd taken on the upper deck where he thought no one could hear.
"No," I said. "He didn't mention anyone."
Harding nodded once and opened the door and left. The door closed behind him with a click that was almost gentle, and I sat alone in the cold room with the mirror and the buzzing light and the knowledge that I had just lied to the FBI.
The woman in the grey suit came back after what felt like a long time and led me out through the hallway and the lobby and the glass doors into the parking lot, where the heat hit me like a wall and the light was so bright I had to shield my eyes.
I walked to my car and got inside and sat with the engine off and the windows up and the sun turning the interior into an oven.
Julian Smith was dead. The bag in my closet was evidence in a murder investigation.
I had carried it through customs and across an ocean and into my home, and I had not opened it, and I had not asked the questions I should have asked, and now a detective with tired eyes and a voice like gravel thought I was involved in something I could barely comprehend.
I thought about the men in Tallinn. I thought about Julian's face when I'd described them, the way he'd denied seeing anyone, the way his charm had snapped back into place like a shutter coming down.
I had chosen to believe him. I had wanted so badly to believe him that I had silenced every instinct that told me not to.
I started the car and drove home with the air conditioning on full and my hands at ten and two on the wheel, and when I got back to the apartment I went straight to the bedroom closet and opened the door and looked at the bag.
It sat where I had left it, behind the box of Richard's sweaters, the dark leather dull in the dim light.
I did not touch it. I closed the closet door and walked back to the living room and sat on the couch and waited for the FBI to come and take it away.
Two agents arrived an hour later, a man and a woman who did not give their names.
I pointed them to the closet. The woman lifted the bag with gloved hands and carried it out, and the man handed me a receipt and told me I would be contacted if anything further was required.
They left, and the apartment was quiet again, and the clock on the cable box still read 12:00, and the air conditioner cycled on and off, and somewhere on the roof the mourning dove began its three-note call.
I stayed on the couch until the light outside the blinds turned orange and then purple and then went out entirely, and I did not move, and I did not cry, and I thought about a man who had held my hand on a ship in the middle of the Baltic Sea and told me I deserved to be happy, and how I had believed him, and how believing him had brought me here, to this room, to this silence, to the slow and certain understanding that nothing I had touched in the last thirty days had been what it appeared to be.