Chapter 30 Mack
Mack
As soon as he opened the door to them, Mack knew that he was going to prison.
He could easily picture the iron bars slamming in his face; the sloppy beige food he would eat; that bar of soap forever out of reach in the treacherous communal shower.
For all his procrastinating on his novel, Mack had been blessed with a writer’s imagination, and so by the time the two police officers stepped into his front hall, he had already worked his way through to how his daughters would grow to hate him, just as he had hated his own incarcerated father.
Mabs and Gigi would callously reject his attempts to help them (ha—as if he’d have any money to send them!), and then the circle of life would be complete.
The cops were a man and a woman, and underneath their navy winter jackets they had guns and handcuffs.
Mack saw officers like these two every day—on campus, around town, in traffic, in Starbucks—but this was the first time he’d ever been sickened at the sight of them, afraid enough to really consider his answer when the female asked if they could come inside for a minute to talk.
She did all the talking. As Mack perched on the sofa, trying to ignore Hailey lurking in the basement stairwell, the cop broke it to him:
“Mr. Evans, it’s always tricky to make a visit like this,” she said, and Mack felt vomit rise in the back of his throat. “I can tell I’m missing a lot of information. Maybe you can fill in some of the blanks for me.”
She was baiting him, playing dumb. This was just like Law his heart was pounding in his chest. How could these two not hear the drum of his nervous system?
“Now, I’ve interviewed Ms. Ewing, and she has told us that despite the rumors that have circulated, there was no sexual contact of any kind between the two of you, which I’m sure you’ll say is correct, right?”
“Yes,” said Mack. “Correct. Of course that’s correct.”
“But opening your home to students, plying them with alcohol—it’s not a good look.
It makes people think the worst of you, and then we get dragged in.
That’s how I get Ms. Ewing’s father on the phone to me telling me you were partying with his teenager, and he doesn’t think that’s cool, even if she does.
It’s not cool, you understand what I’m saying? ”
“Yes,” said Mack.
“And then the rest of these kids get all riled up, and the dean is coming at me, telling me to charge you with improper fraternization. And you know what? There ain’t no such thing. It’s a waste of our time.”
“I’m sorry,” Mack said. “It’s just I—” What he wanted to explain, finally, was that he, Mack, had had a professor once who’d taught him to toast Milton with whiskey, who’d sent words like rockets into Mack’s brain at parties that lasted till five in the morning, who’d shown him and probably hundreds of other adoring undergrads that this life of knowledge was what they wanted, instead of huge houses and fancy cars.
“Well?”
“Never mind.” The rules had changed; even Mack could see that now.
“Uh-huh.” The cop filled her lungs and rolled her eyes, and then she set her card on the coffee table.
It read Maylee Briggs, Community Outreach, PCOS.
“You got lucky this time, Mr. Evans. Lucky for you we’ve got better things to do.
But I know these students were drinking underage at your home and I also know they were smoking weed with you.
Next time, don’t give kids booze and drugs, okay? Let them get it for themselves.”
Her partner chuckled. Mack did not.
“Consider yourself officially warned. This is on file, and I don’t want to be back here again, you understand what I’m saying to you, Mr. Evans? Professor Evans?”
“Yes.”
“Man of few words, I see.” Officer Briggs and her partner stood up, and Mack led them numbly back to the front door.
He felt like they’d just got there; he also felt like they’d been inside his house for a thousand years.
There were so many things he wanted to ask them and to tell them that he was afraid to open his mouth at all, so he didn’t.
Especially once he saw that the mail had just been put through the slot.
One large white envelope in particular caught his eye as the officers stepped right over it.
He could just about read the return address without his glasses on: Gray Skies Road.
Mack hugged the envelope to his chest as he watched the cops walk to their patrol car.
Their conversation was pretty much drowned out by the sound of that constantly crackling radio, but he did catch it when Officer Briggs said to her partner, “Creeps like that are exactly why I didn’t waste my money on college. ”
* * *
Relief had snuck up on Mack; even as he agonized over this injured boy, even as he held in his hands an envelope from Sunshine Enterprises with a PHOTOGRAPHS: DO NOT BEND stamp on the front, the abject fear that he was about to be led away in cuffs gave off an undeniable fizz as it left his body and was replaced with a strange feeling of lightness, at least until he slid his finger along the flap of that envelope.
He looked at the photographs first, and saw himself in the woods in black and white, his eyes glowing like a raccoon’s, almost as bright as the reflective strips on his Sauconys.
His khakis and his Thanksgiving-dinner-appropriate button-down were muted, but he could almost watch his arms and legs move as he flipped through the dozen or so images.
In all of the pictures his cigarette glowed unmistakably, and then that dot of light grew larger and larger, until the final photo was just a ball of fire engulfing the dark void of the shed.
Mack had to look twice before he noticed the shadowy figures in the background, fleeing the scene on the opposite side from the camera: it took his breath away to see the teenagers, how close to the fire they had been.
One of them carried the flames away with him, his arm aglow in a brilliant cloud that Mack could almost feel the heat of even now.
“What is it?” Hailey asked him from the doorway. Her face was ashen; the cops had freaked her out too. So his wife did care if he got hauled off to prison—Mack still had that going for him.
He held the photographs out to her and turned his attention to the letter that had come with them. It read:
Dear Mack and Hailey Evans,
Thank you for your cooperation so far. Shame about the bystanders, but sometimes these things can’t be helped.
Overleaf please find your revised statement. We’ll be in touch again soon about settling your account.
Again there was no sign-off, and no mention of the photographs of Mack committing arson and . . . assault? Manslaughter? He flipped the paper over, eyeballed the account statement, and passed it to his wife.
“But there’s no money off the total,” was what Hailey said after a minute. “We still owe forty-seven grand, even though you . . . you did what they asked for.”
Mack closed his eyes. He had seen it too.
“It actually says ‘Demolition of outbuilding near 411 Fullerton Close’ and then has zero as the value.”
“I saw,” Mack told her. “I guess burning down a building with someone in it doesn’t bring in much bacon these days, you know?”
When he finally opened his eyes, Hailey was staring at him.
It was maybe the first sustained eye contact they’d had in days, since he’d screamed at her after the Shoreby party.
She’s started in on him for running away—for running home—and so he’d given it right back to her: Stay the fuck away from me!
is what he’d said, and she had listened.
Charged silence had become their furniture, each of them afraid to ask the unthinkable questions that followed them everywhere.
But the police visit had broken the spell, and the last of Mack’s anger had left the building with those cops. Hailey must have felt the same.
“I really thought that was it,” she said.
“Yeah, me too.”
“But . . . why? Why on earth would you do it?” It didn’t quite sound like an accusation, so Mack didn’t take it that way.
“I don’t know. I was so drunk. And so mad. I guess I wanted to see what would happen. And obviously I had no idea . . . I mean, that shed couldn’t have looked more deserted. If I’d been sober, maybe I would’ve known it was a setup. This guy is going to ruin me.”
The four feet or so between them felt more like four hundred.
“He must have known the kids were in there,” he continued. “He knew. Sunshine Enterprises knew, I mean. Otherwise why the camera, for some old shed?” He took the photos back from Hailey. “Who is this guy? Why is he doing this to us?”
Hailey leaned against the banister, her face in her hands. “We don’t know for sure it’s him, Mack. But David Rainier hates me because I was trying to help his wife.”
On the tip of Mack’s tongue was You helped her by screwing her husband? He did not say it, but of course Hailey could read his mind.
“It was only once, you have to believe me. I was drunk too, and angry and—”
“Angry at what?”
Hailey shook her head. “Not angry. So, so stressed. I can’t explain it. Rebekah—his wife—was trying to rip off the firm, and I . . . I know how it sounds, Mack. There’s no excuse; I’m not trying to make excuses. It’s crazy. But so is . . .”
Mack could fill in the rest: So is burning down a building. But Hailey had done it first, had set this chain of events in motion.
Sort of.
Not that Mack’s own record had been spotless . . . but still.
Their thoughts ended up in the same place. “You didn’t sleep with her, did you?” Hailey said now, softly.
“I told you I never touched her.”
“I believe you. But then why weren’t you outraged? Why didn’t you tell me sooner, ask for my help? How could you just sit back and do nothing while she trashed your career and your reputation?”
“She didn’t. Tech did. They completely overreacted.
What was I—are we really talking about this now?
That’s the least of our problems. This guy could send me to prison, Hailey.
” He shoved the photographs back at her.
“I might have killed someone, do you understand this? Maybe he wanted me to. Maybe that was the plan.”
“We’d have heard about it if this boy died. It would be on the news.”
Her coldness picked at the scabs of his rage.
“Okay, great, so I’ve only maimed him for life, and your boyfriend can hang me for it whenever he wants to.
” But as he said this, instead of running from her, he went and threw himself down on the stairs next to her.
Beneath her; it felt like a surrender. Someone had him by the balls, and for once it wasn’t Hailey.
“I mean, why all these weird letters and . . . statements? This is someone pretty fucking crazy, Hailey, to do this. Is this guy crazy?”
“His ex-wife thinks so.”
“So what am I supposed to do? Spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, waiting to go to prison? What the fuck am I supposed to do?” Mack’s heart was racing; his chest was tight.
He stood up to shake it off, and for one fleeting second he glimpsed a final and terrible way out of this nightmare.
The scariest thing was that imagining this brought him comfort, then, when he thought of his daughters, it brought tears.
Great, he was crying again, in front of his wife, who hardly ever cried. At least not until recently.
Hailey put her hands on his shoulders; it was the first time she’d touched him in weeks.
“There has to be a way out of this. If my job has taught me anything, it’s that there’s a way out of everything.
If it’s David doing this, we’ll find something on him and head him off; or if the worst happens, we can say the photos were fake, we can say you acted under duress—there are so many things we can say.
” From below, Mack saw her straighten her back and harden her jaw, and it made him feel safe, it pushed away that dark thought that was trying to sneak its way back into his brain again.
“I’m going to call Dennis,” Hailey said, “and I’ll go after this guy head-on.”
Mack felt so grateful for her resolve that the dirty and damning retort that popped into his head never found its way to his lips.