Chapter 11
MAX
Five a.m.
I leave the cabin while she is still asleep.
I leave her a note under the french press because I left her a note under the french press.
Stew in the fridge. Eggs. Bread. I'll be in by seven.
I sign it. I didn't sign yesterday's. I sign this one.
M. I put the note down. I stand at the counter and I look at the single letter I have put on the paper and I think about how small it is and how much it has in it.
I drive down the county road in the dark.
The headlights cut the pines. The heater is loud. The radio I don't turn on. I have a travel cup of coffee in the holder between the seats, which I made from the beans I ground yesterday. The coffee is good. I drink it. I drive.
I am thinking about her.
I have been thinking about her for forty-one miles.
I have been thinking about her for four days and I have done a professional job of thinking about her while doing other things.
This morning I am thinking about her as the thing I am doing.
She is in my bed still warm from where I was.
I got up at four and I made her coffee and I stood at the side of the bed and watched her sleep for a minute and then I bent and I kissed her temple and she made a small sleep sound and she turned her face into the pillow.
I left.
I left and I have been driving and I have been thinking about her, the way she held my wrist at the tub, the way she said I have never had sex with a woman, I'd like to, the way she sobbed into my shoulder after, the way I felt her come apart against my mouth, the way her bandaged hand moved on my back when we slept.
I am thinking about her the way I think about a fire I am driving toward.
I am using the same part of my brain. The same narrow locked-in beam.
I have never used the fire part of my brain for a person before.
I turn onto the interstate.
Traffic is light. The sky over the city is beginning to come up gray at the rim.
I can see downtown from here. Station 9 is at the north edge, twelve floors of red brick and steel, a tower with Val's office on top and a flag that is always lit. I drive toward it. I am thinking about the woman I’m keeping secretly in my bed.
I am thinking about her while driving toward the woman who controls everything in my life but doesn’t know about this.
Those are the two sentences. I hold them.
---
The stairwell.
Three taps, pause, two taps.
"Come."
I open the door. Val is at her desk. The green-shaded lamp is on at seven a.m. because it is not full light outside yet. Two folders in front of her. Her jacket is on. Her watch is on her wrist today, not the desk. She has a cup of coffee steaming at her elbow. She does not look up when I come in.
"Sit," she says.
I sit.
"Fire on Fourth yesterday?”
"Storage units, yes,” I respond.
"You were on scene before any other crew."
"Yes, Chief."
"What do you think about it?” Val asks and I know what she is asking.
"Smelled like a home job. Gasoline. Lazy. Not a pro."
"So we're clear of it?”
"Yes, Chief."
"Kessler's going to report an accelerant of opportunity. No suspect. File going to the back of the pile."
"Yes, Chief."
"Good."
She turns a page. She lifts her coffee. She sips. She sets it back on the desk.
“The Clark Fire.” She speaks and her voice is factual.
I sit very still in the chair. Evangeline Clark is in my bed.
"Yes, Chief?”
"The investigation into the Clark fire has gone public. The widow is officially missing. The father on Long Island has given a press conference. Her photograph is on the seven a.m. feed this morning."
"I know.”
"You know?”
“Well, I heard. On the radio on the drive in. I heard him speak."
I did not hear him speak. I did not have the radio on. I lie clean. I lie the way the lies have started coming, easy, small, steady, because I have been practicing lately lying to Val.
"Right," Val says. I don’t know if she believes me. She is the most unreadable person I have ever met.
She turns another page.
"The investigation wants a statement from all of us. You, Kessler, the first-in crew, the arson board. They are going to interview each of us formally by Friday."
"Yes, Chief."
"You'll walk through your statement before the interview. You'll walk through it with me."
"Yes, Chief."
"You’ll tell them what you told me."
"Yes, Chief."
"You saw no one in the house. You were at the scene in an off-duty capacity because you saw the smoke column from the road on your way home to the northwest cabin. You called it in. You helped the first-in crew establish perimeter. You did not enter the structure."
"Yes, Chief."
She looks up.
The look is the look. It is the look I have sat across from fourteen years. She has used it on suspects. She has used it on liars. She has used it on an assistant chief in Pittsburgh in 2008 that I watched her use it on. She has never used it on me.
She is using it on me.
"Hale."
"Chief."
"Were you at your apartment Monday night."
The question.
The question is not about Monday night. The question is about whether I am going to say yes plain, or whether I am going to pause before I say it, because the pause is what she is watching for.
I do not pause.
"Yes, Chief."
The lie comes out at the same rate all my lies are spilling out. It is the same rate. I know the rate now. I know it the way I know the four-minute mark.
"Monday night?”
"Yes, Chief."
"Officer Lark ran the plate of a dark Ford parked on county road seventeen at oh-four-forty Tuesday morning.
The plate was yours. The truck was empty.
He didn't stop. He wrote it up as a passing observation.
He gave me a courtesy call yesterday afternoon because he thought I should know one of my people had a truck sitting on a county road at four in the morning on the night of a fire. "
My throat does a small thing.
She watches the throat.
"What was your truck doing on county road seventeen at four in the morning, Hale."
I have two seconds.
"I drove up to the cabin after."
"After what."
"After the Clark fire. I wasn't going home to the city at three in the morning. The cabin is closer off the road I took back."
"You told me Monday morning you slept at the cabin."
"Yes, Chief."
"You also told me Monday morning you drove home to your apartment after the scene and then to the cabin the next day."
"No, Chief. Monday morning I told you I went to the cabin."
"You told me the northwest cabin."
"Yes, Chief."
"Alone?”
"Yes, Chief."
She looks at me. She doesn’t believe me.
I look at her.
Her eyes are the color they were on Wednesday, which is a color I would never have called blue in this room before this week. They are a cold gray. Her jaw has set. Her hand on the folder is flat.
"You smell like a woman's scent. It isn’t yours,” she says.
My face does not move.
My face does not move because I made my face not move on the stairs coming up here this morning.
I stood on the fourth-floor landing for twenty seconds and I put my face where I wanted it.
I should have known Val would smell me. I cannot get my clothes clean of Evangeline despite the coffee and engine oil.
I washed my hair last night in my own shampoo and I know it smells like cedar not like whatever it is she smelled like on the pillow, but I was in bed with her from ten last night until four this morning, and she was under my hands and my face and my mouth, and there is no soap that takes the scent of a woman off you when you’ve been so covered in them all night.
"I have a guest at the cabin," I say.
"Who?”
"A friend."
"A friend?” Her voice is silky and dangerous sounding.
"Yes, Chief."
"From where?”
"Out of state."
"Name?”
"Rachel Doyle."
I say the name of a woman I went to the academy with, who moved to Oregon in 2011, who I have not seen in nine years, who would not know I had used her name in this office this morning, and who would cover for me in this office if I called her at five and asked, which I would not.
"Rachel Doyle?”
"Yes, Chief. I went to the academy with her.”
"When did Rachel get in?”
"Saturday."
"She flew into Redwater?”
"She flew into Boise and drove. She likes to drive."
"And she's at your cabin?”
"Yes, Chief."
"Rachel Doyle? Who you were at the academy with?”
"Yes, Chief."
I’m digging a big hole here.
She sits with it.
She sits with it long enough that I can see her thinking.
I have watched Val think in this chair for fourteen years.
I know the look. She is running what I just said against what she knows, and she is looking for the seam.
She has three possible seams. One is the plate of my truck on the county road.
Two is the scent she can smell on me. Three is whatever else she has that she has not put on the table yet.
"How long is Rachel staying?” She says the name Rachel like she is damn sure it is a lie.
"Through Thursday."
"Good."
"Yes, Chief."
"When she leaves, you come back to the city and you sleep at your apartment."
"Yes, Chief."
She closes the folder. Both hands on the desk. She leans an inch forward.
"Hale."
"Chief."
"I have not in fourteen years caught you in a lie."
"No, Chief."
"If I catch you in one now, it's going to be the last one I let go."
My mouth goes dry.
"Yes, Chief."
"I am not asking you any more questions this morning."
"Yes, Chief."
"Go."
---
I go down the stairwell.
I do not stop on the landing.
I go all the way to the bay.
I do not put my forehead on the wall. I do not press my thumb to my scar.
I walk into the bay and I take my coat off the peg and I put it on.
I walk past the probie. I walk past Dani, who is at the coffee urn and who looks at me and does not speak.
I walk out into the yard. I walk to my truck. I get in. I close the door.
I sit with my hands on the wheel.
Val knows.