Chapter 17
MAX
The cabin door closes behind her.
I hear the lock turn.
I wipe my hand on the inside of my coat pocket.
I turn.
I’ve watched her fuck enough times. She has seen me before. But this feels different. Usually I am not fucking missing women and lying to Val about it.
Val is at the front of her car.
She has not moved. The headlights are still on.
The car is the dark sedan she drives when she does not want a person to see her coming.
The engine is off. She is in the wool coat she wore to the meeting and the dark trousers and the boots she wears to fire grounds, and her hair is down, which I have seen Val with her hair down four times in fourteen years.
She kills the headlights.
The drive goes dark.
The porch light is the only light. The porch light is small and yellow and it falls on the boards behind me and on the front fender of the truck and on Val's face from the side.
She looks tired. She looks like a woman who has driven forty miles after the day she has had to do a thing she does not want to do.
"Walk with me," she says.
"Yes, Chief."
I follow her.
She walks past the truck and past the porch and past the side of the cabin to the path that runs into the pines behind the cabin where I have a woodshed and a stack of split larch and a clearing with a chopping block in it.
I have used this path twelve times since November.
I have not walked it with another person in it.
She walks fifty feet into the pines.
She stops at the chopping block.
The pines close the porch light out. There is starlight at the top of the trees and there is the small moon over the ridge and there is no other light. She turns to me. I cannot see her face. I can see the shape of her against the pines.
"Hale."
"Chief."
"Sit."
I sit on the chopping block.
She does not sit. She stands in front of me with her hands in her coat pockets and her boots planted, and she lets the count go for a long beat.
She is letting it go because she wants me to feel the count.
I feel the count. The count is the count I have felt in her office four times in fourteen years, before she has put a thing on me that has hurt.
"That woman. I want you to tell me her name. Do not lie,” Val says.
I do not lie now.
I do not lie now because pretending now would be the thing that breaks me, and I have decided in the dark of the truck cab on the way home that I am not going to be broken in front of Val by my own pretending.
"Evangeline."
"Clark?”
"Yes, Chief."
"The missing woman. The Clark widow."
"Yes, Chief."
"In your cabin?”
"Yes, Chief."
"For how many days."
"Six."
"Six."
"Yes, Chief."
She is quiet a count.
"Hale."
"Chief."
"You pulled her out of the burning house?”
"Yes, Chief."
"On Monday night."
"Yes, Chief."
"You told me you didn't enter the structure."
"I lied, Chief."
"Yes."
"I lied to you Tuesday morning. I lied to you Wednesday. I have been lying to you for six days."
"Yes. You have.”
"Yes, Chief."
She is quiet. Ominously so.
She is quiet for a count I do not measure. I sit on the chopping block with my hands flat on the wood on either side of my thighs and I listen to her breathe. Her breath is the same breath she has at fire grounds. It is a breath I have set my own breath by for fourteen years.
"Why?” she says.
I look up at her.
I cannot see her face.
"Why what, Chief?”
"Why did you save her?”
"I went back to the fire.”
She looks at me, expectantly.
"I set the fire. I walked off the porch. I stood at the gate. I stood at the gate for a count and I went back."
"Why, Hale?”
"I saw her in the upper window."
"You saw her in the upper window?”
"Yes, Chief."
"And."
"I had to go back.”
"That is not an answer."
"No, Chief."
"Why, Hale?”
I sit with the question.
I sit with it because the answer is the answer I have not said out loud since Monday and which the only person I have said any version of it to is the woman behind a locked door fifty feet away, and I have not said even to her the version Val is asking for.
The version Val is asking for is the version that begins with my own name and ends with hers.
"I could not light the second match," I say.
"Hale."
"I could not light the second match. I had two in my pocket. I had used the first one on the panel. The second one was to finish things. I stood at the gate at the bottom of the drive and I took the second match out of my pocket and I could not light it. I could not light it because I saw her in the window.”
She is quiet.
"Chief."
"Hale."
"I put my gear on and went back. I broke the front door.
I went up the stairs. I picked her up and carried her.
I was only just in time. Another minute and she would have been lost to the smoke.
I put her in my truck. I drove her here.
She has been here since Tuesday morning and I have lied to you about her since Tuesday morning.
I am telling you now because I have been caught. "
"Yes. You are.”
"Yes, Chief."
"And."
"And, Chief?”
"You are in love with Evangeline Clark.” It is a statement, not a question.
I do not answer.
I sit on the chopping block in the dark and I do not answer Val Mercer and the not-answering is the answer, and we both know it is the answer, and she does not press for the word.
"How long?” she says.
"I don't know."
"How long, Hale."
"I do not know how long, Chief. Probably straight away. And ever since.”
"All right."
"Yes, Chief."
She walks a step.
She walks a step away from me and a step back.
The step is a thing I have not seen Val do in this kind of conversation.
Val does not pace. Val sits or Val stands.
The step is the small thing that tells me she is not as far ahead of this as she has wanted me to think, and the step is what tells me she is going to say what she came to say.
She comes back. She stops in front of me.
"Hale."
"Chief."
"I am going to say a thing now and I am going to say it once."
"Yes, Chief."
"You are the woman I have built into the lieutenant of Engine 9 over fourteen years.
You are the woman I pulled out of a class of thirty in 2007 because I saw what you were and I knew what to do with it.
You are the woman I have put into rooms I have not put any other body into.
You are the woman I trust at a fire ground above any other body in this house. "
"Yes, Chief."
"And you have a missing widow in your bed."
"Yes, Chief."
"A widow whose face is on the seven a.m. feed. A widow whose father has given a press conference. A widow the city attorney used the word whereabouts about twice this morning in a meeting room that had Elise Warren in it."
"Yes, Chief."
"A widow whose husband you killed. Does she know that bit?”
The pines are quiet.
I do not move.
She has said the sentence I have not been able to say.
I sit with the sentence on the chopping block and I let it sit between us in the dark, and the wind moves the tops of the pines, and somewhere a long way up the ridge an owl calls once.
"Yes, Chief."
"You set the fire."
"Yes, Chief."
"At my order."
"Yes, Chief."
"You took the woman out of the fire."
"Yes, Chief."
"You have been fucking the woman you took out of the fire ever since.”
"Yes, Chief."
"In the cabin you go to when you do not want to be seen."
"Yes, Chief."
"And you are in love with her."
"Yes, Chief."
She lets the count go.
She lets the count go a long beat. The chopping block is cold under my hand.
The pines are black and the sky between them is full of stars now and the small moon is over the ridge, and Val Mercer is standing in front of me at the chopping block in my own woodlot saying the sentence I have not said, and I am sitting still under the sentence and I am not moving and I am not lying.
"Hale."
"Chief."
"This is the worst thing you have done."
"Yes, Chief."
"This is worse than the house."
"Yes, Chief."
"This is worse than Pittsburgh."
"Yes, Chief."
"You understand?”
"Yes, Chief."
"If this comes out, you are not a lieutenant. You are not a firefighter. You are a woman in a federal courtroom in a chair next to me, and the chair next to me is the chair I will not be able to keep you out of. The widow in your bed is the chair I cannot keep you out of. Do you understand?”
"Yes, Chief."
"Lena cannot keep us out of it. The mayor cannot keep us out of it. The investigation cannot be redirected away from a missing widow being found in the bed of the lieutenant who arrived first on the scene of her husband's fire. Do you understand?”
"Yes, Chief."
"Tuesday at ten you sit across from Elise Warren."
"Yes, Chief."
"If she has the cabin, you are done."
"Yes, Chief."
She is quiet a count.
"Hale."
"Chief."
"I am ordering you to end it. Set her free.”
I look up. My heart drops.
I cannot see her face. I can see the shape. I can see the way she is holding her hands in her pockets and the way she is set on her boots, and I have known this shape on her in front of me for fourteen years and the shape has always been the shape I followed.
I do not speak.
"Tonight," she says. "You go in. You wake her.
You tell her you cannot keep her. You drive her to the bus station in Boise in the morning.
Lena will come and drop you cash and a pre-paid phone and a name.
You put her on a bus. You tell her not to come back.
You do not write to her. You do not pick up if she writes to you.
You do not look for her. In a year, if she has not been found by anyone else, you ask me if you can have her. In a year. Not before."
I sit. A year.
"You hear me, Hale?”
"I hear you, Chief."
"Tomorrow morning at six you come to my house and you tell me she is gone."
"Chief?”
"Yes."
"I cannot do that.”
She does not move.
I have said the sentence I have never said to her before.
Never.