Chapter 5
MAX
Three taps, pause, two taps.
"Come."
I push the door open.
Val is at her desk in the day light for once, late morning sun coming through the window at her back and cutting a hard line across the carpet between us.
The green-shaded lamp is off. The city past the window is silver.
She has two folders in front of her and her reading glasses on her nose and a cup of tea that isn't steaming anymore.
Her watch is on the desk beside the cup.
She is wearing her full uniform jacket. When she wears the jacket before noon it means somebody outside the station is coming in, or somebody outside the station was here already.
"Sit."
I sit.
I keep my back straight, as I always do in this chair. My hands are on my thighs. The arrangement starts the second the door closes. I wait.
She takes the reading glasses off and sets them on top of the first folder and looks at me.
"Clark fire," she says. "Walk me through it."
"Ignition at oh-three-fifty, panel room, east wing lower level. Accelerant distribution was per plan along the document storage and under the HVAC intake. Point-of-origin scorch mark was placed at the breaker panel."
"Timing."
"Three minutes twelve to ignition. Four minutes to second-floor venting. I was off the property in under six."
"You were seen."
"No."
"Cameras?”
"None that read a face. The service gate has a unit. I cleared it with my head angled off. Kessler's contractor was keeping the feed."
"Kessler?”
"On shift when the call came in. He signed the report this morning. Faulty wiring, failed breaker, ignition consistent with long-term arc fault."
"You watched him sign it."
"No. I was off shift. I read it after."
She nods once. She puts the reading glasses back on and opens the folder I can see and turns a page I cannot. I do not look at the page. I have never looked at a page in a folder on her desk without permission. That's the arrangement. I have sat in this chair a thousand times and not looked.
"Daniel Clark?” she says.
"Confirmed in the east wing. Fire crew pulled the remains at oh-four-forty."
"You were off the property by oh-three-fifty-six?”
"Yes."
"So you know this because?”
"I read the incident summary before I came in."
She turns another page. She does not look at me. "The wife?”
Wife. I feel it in my chest before I answer. I feel it in the scar on my forearm, which I do not touch, because I am in her office and I have been in her office a thousand times and I do not touch the scar in this chair.
"Yes, Chief."
"She was out of town."
It is a sentence, not a question. She is offering me a line.
She has done this my whole career. She says the thing the report says, and I confirm the thing the report says, and we both know the thing the report says is the thing the city is going to believe, and that is how we do what we do.
I have said yes, Chief to a line like that four times before.
I sit in the chair.
I can say yes, Chief.
I can say yes, Chief and she will turn the page and we will move on to the next point on the list and I will walk out of this office and drive to the cabin and the woman in my bed will stay in my bed and nobody outside this station will know she is there.
I have said yes, Chief to a line like this so many times.
The next time arrives.
I feel the next time arriving the way you feel a step you know is coming in the dark.
It's the half-second before your foot goes down.
I have time to set my face. I have time to choose what tone I am going to use.
I have time to know that whatever I say in the next two seconds is a thing I am going to live inside for however long this lasts.
"Yes, Chief."
It comes out steady. It comes out the way yes, Chief has always come out. It is a lie this time, and it is the first one I have ever told her and it sounds exactly like the truth.
She turns another page.
"Authorities can't reach her," Val says.
"She was supposed to be in Aspen. The travel agency booking hasn't been claimed at the hotel.
The father on Long Island hasn't heard from her in six weeks.
Her phone is off, which could be the fire, could be travel, could be she threw it in a river.
They have a BOLO out. They will escalate it to missing by end of day.
Thursday at the latest they will put her on the news. "
"Yes, Chief."
"Any thoughts?”
She does not look up when she says this. She is not looking at me on purpose. She does this when she wants a read on my voice without my face giving me a chance to help the voice.
"None, Chief."
"No thoughts?”
"She was supposed to be in Aspen. If she wasn't in Aspen, somebody else knows where she was. Not us."
"Not us."
"No, Chief."
"You didn't see anyone in the house?”
"I cleared the east wing visually. Daniel was the only one on the floor. I didn't do a west wing sweep. I wasn't briefed on the wife being there."
"You weren't."
"No, Chief."
"And when you walked the service drive out?”
"Quiet. No movement."
"Tree line?”
"No movement."
"Second floor, west side?”
"I did not look at the second floor, west side."
Three lies now. I am counting them. I count the way I count laps and I have counted three lies to her in the last ninety seconds.
The first one was the wife. The second one was tree line.
The third one was the second floor, west side.
I am a woman who counts laps and houses and floors and beams and I am a woman who has now counted lies.
Four minutes to second-floor venting. I had said that two minutes ago, already knowing.
Already knowing that I had stood on a gravel drive and looked at a woman's hands on a window.
The report is not going to show that I stood there.
The report does not know I stood there. Only I know.
Only I know and the woman in the bed knows, and the woman in the bed does not know she knows.
Val turns another page.
"We'll see where she turns up," Val says.
"If she turns up in the river by next week, problem solved. If she turns up in a hotel in Aspen having a breakdown, problem solved with some mess. If she turns up at a precinct downtown…” She lets the sentence go.
She doesn't finish it. She doesn't need to.
"If she turns up anywhere that's a problem for us, we handle it then. "
"Yes, Chief."
"Your ears are up, Hale."
"Always, Chief."
"If anything anomalous passes your desk on this. Anything. A report, a tip, a name, a face?”
"You'll hear it the hour I do."
"Good."
She closes the folder. She sets both hands flat on top of it.
Her watch is off her wrist on the desk and I can see the back of it, scratched from years of a strap, the plate engraved with a phrase I have seen once and never asked about.
Her hands are broad and dry and they sit on the folder and they do not drum.
"You look tired," she says.
"Long night."
"Sleep all right?”
"Enough."
"Where?”
The word comes out of her soft. It's not the question it would have been out of somebody else's mouth.
She says it the way you say a word you have said every morning of somebody's life.
Where did you sleep, Hale? She has asked me that in debrief for eleven years.
It is part of the rhythm we have. I always answer.
I always answer plainly. If I slept in the bunk room, I say the bunk room.
If I slept at my apartment, I say the apartment.
If I slept at the cabin, I say the cabin.
I have never had a reason in eleven years not to say.
"Cabin," I say.
"Which one? You have two."
"Northwest."
She nods.
"Alone."
The fourth lie is already built before I open my mouth. I don't have to think about it. The fourth lie is the easiest thing I have ever said.
"Yes, Chief."
She holds my eyes for one more beat. Then she picks up her reading glasses and she folds them and she puts them in her jacket pocket and she sits back in the chair.
"Drills on the hour,” she says. "Run them. Your crew's gone soft on the live burn. I watched you Tuesday. You were a minute behind your own standard on the two-story. I want it under four."
"Yes, Chief."
"Your head is somewhere else, Hale."
"My head is where it needs to be, Chief."
"Prove it."
"Yes, Chief."
"Dismissed."
---
Out in the hall I stand with my back to her door for a three-count. Then I go down the stairs.
The stairwell is concrete. The stairwell is where I have had all of the thoughts I could not have in a room with other people in it. I go down one flight and stop on the landing and put my hand flat on the wall and let my forehead touch the back of my hand.
I have lied to Val four times.
I have known Val for nineteen years. I have worked for her for sixteen.
I have reported to her for fourteen. In that time I have never told her a lie.
Not about where I slept. Not about who I slept with, when I slept with people, which was not often.
Not about what I saw at a fire. Not about what I did on a run.
Not about what I ate, where I drank, who I hit at a bar in 2015.
I am a woman whose whole professional life has been built on a single operating principle, which is that Val Mercer gets the truth and gets it plain.
The arrangement is, she asks, I say. That's the deal.
That's the deal that kept me in a rank. That's the deal that got me my rank back.
I just broke it four times in nine minutes.
I press my forehead harder into the back of my hand.
I breathe out through my teeth. My scar is a low steady pull on the inside of my forearm, the way it gets when I have been holding my hands in fists without knowing.
I open the fists. I make myself open the fists.
I look at the back of my hand on the wall.
The skin there is red from the pressure of my head. I lift my head off it.