In Harm's Way

by Ridley Pearson

  “That didn’t happen.”

  “I’m just saying, you want to stick to the truth.”

  “I am. I didn’t do that. It’s not like that. I saw him once at the Limelight Room. That was it. Only then.”

  And a few minutes later, Fiona left the room without notice, Walt thought. He’d followed outside and had quizzed the kids working the valet parking. They’d all but identified the visitor as Martel Gale.

  “We… my deputies… conducted a search of the Engleton residence. We found no baseball bat by the front door of the main residence,” Walt said. He left out that none had been found at the cottage either. “We located the ones in the sports cabinet, as you’ve mentioned. But nothing by the front door. Can you account for that bat’s whereabouts?”

  “No idea.”

  “Has it been missing?”

  “No idea.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I have no idea where I left it. That night I saw you? I don’t know what I did with it. I could have left it outside, for all I know. Anyway, it’s not like I was hanging around in the main part of the house. I’ve been in the safe room.”

  “And why is that?”

  She looked as if he’d slapped her.

  “Did you leave the residence for a while?”

  “I did.”

  “In what vehicle?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “I’m afraid I have to ask you to answer the question.”

  “The truck. I’m not supposed to drive the pickup truck. Okay? I get it. I blew it. But I drove the truck. I went over to Yellowstone like Fiona said. But the campgrounds were full, so I slept in the truck a couple of nights, and couldn’t stand it, and came back here.”

  Like Fiona said. “You were in communication with Ms. Kenshaw during this absence?” He hated dragging her back into it. Could he find a way to just end it?

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “But you just said-”

  “She was bugging me. Okay? Leaving messages and stuff and, I don’t know, it was like my parents or something. I just wasn’t interested.”

  The answer felt rehearsed. She’d expected that question long before the interview had begun. It knocked him back on his heels. How much of this had been rehearsed? How much had he missed because of his own interest in the outcome of the interview? Would he pick up things in replaying the tape?

  “If you’re trying to get me to say something about Fiona, I’m not going to.”

  Walt’s chest tightened. Could he instruct Chalmers to shut off the video? Could he call a break to the interview?

  “What would I want you to say about Ms. Kenshaw?”

  She locked eyes with him. “I’m not going to say it,” she said.

  “Tell me about that night,” Walt said.

  “What night?”

  “Late the twelfth. Early morning the thirteenth.”

  “Nothing. There’s nothing to tell.”

  “Someone came onto the property-drove an SUV onto the property.” Speculation was part of any interrogation, but he knew he was on thin ice. “If you didn’t see him, as you’ve stated, you must have heard him. You could hear cars arrive, couldn’t you?”

  “There’s a bell that rings. It’s one of those electronic eye things at the gate.”

  This was new information for Walt.

  “When a vehicle enters,” Walt said.

  “Yeah. That’s how big the house is. You can’t hear squat in there. The gate’s like in a different zip code. Without the bell you’d probably never know someone was out there.”

  “Late night the twelfth.”

  “I told you: I didn’t see him.”

  “But you heard a bell.”

  “The bell rang a few different times. It wasn’t like I jumped up to see what was going on.”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “So you were used to visitors late at night?” He realized what he’d said-what he’d asked-too late.

  “I saw your car out there a couple of times. Your police car.”

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, glad that his face was off camera. He never had trouble thinking when in these rooms. An interview was supposed to sharpen his wits, engage him. The deeper he dug, the faster the sand poured back down in, burying him. He reminded himself he was not the one being interviewed. He reminded himself that he didn’t need to react to or explain anything. He was the one in charge.

  “So you’re suggesting you did in fact look outside when you heard that tone.”

  She looked stunned. “Maybe… I guess so.”

  “You did or you didn’t look out that night? Late night the twelfth, maybe the early hours of the thirteenth?”

  Her eyes told him the whole story: concealment, fear, an overwhelming sense of emotion.

  A knock interrupted him. He could have screamed. He was never to be interrupted during an interview. He collected himself, nodded, and let Blompier open the door for him.

  “Sheriff,” his receptionist said with urgency in her voice. “Peter Arian’s here.”

  Arian, a young public defender who was recently winning far too many cases as far as Walt was concerned, could only be there for one reason. But Walt played along.

  “So?”

  “He says he’s representing Ms. Tulivich.”

  Walt shut the door.

  “Ms. Tulivich, did you contact a lawyer? We were not aware of-”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  Fiona! he realized. Anger competed with resignation. He felt the wind knocked out of him. Mindful of the video, he kept his cool. “You’ll excuse me for a moment. The interview will now pause,” he said for the sake of the video.

  Sandbagged by a possible suspect. He thought he’d identified a seam to exploit, a way to let the system do his work for him. Fiona had just turned all that on its head.

  “But if there’s a lawyer here-”

  “It doesn’t work like that. I’ll be right back.”

  Out in the hall, he told his deputy, “Show Ms. Kenshaw to Interview two, will you please.”

  “Fiona?” the deputy clarified.

  “Interview two,” Walt repeated. “Mr. Arian will see me in my office.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He waited for the choreography to play out. Closing his office door, he met with Arian first.

  “Sheriff, I’d like to see my client, if you don’t mind.”

  “She’s not your client, Peter. She has not called for an attorney and you cannot solicit clients in this building. You know the rules.”

  “It’s one a.m. and I’m here to see Kira Tulivich.”

  “Take a seat at reception if you want, but you won’t see her until I’m done speaking with her.”

  “Her guardian appointed me-”

  “Kira Tulivich is not a minor, and you know it.”

  “She’s been under the care and responsibility of-”

  “Take it up with the courts if you want, counselor. But not here. Not tonight. She’s here voluntarily and she’s staying here voluntarily.”

  Arian stood. “By tomorrow, it’s a different playing field, Sheriff. Shorter field for me. Longer for you. You might want to think about that. I don’t like getting out of bed at one in the morning. Affects my mood in the morning.”

  “Take an Ambien. You’ll sleep like a baby.” Walt opened the office door. “Good night, counselor.”

  He then joined Fiona in Interview 2. She looked smug and confident, but it was a fragile veneer.

  “You’re pissed at me,” she said.

  He stared her down, unflinchingly.

  “I had to,” she said. “She’s entitled to representation.”

  His eyes darted to the soundproof door, ensuring it was shut tightly. “Do you really think the right thing to do is to play me? The two of you? I take it you have an end game in mind. You mind cluing me in on what it is exactly?”

  She glared back at him. “What’s tha
t mean?”

  “There’s a dead body in the hospital cooler and I need answers. You and Kira are right in the middle of this.”

  “You think I killed him?”

  “You’re protecting her. She’s protecting you. Do you actually think I can’t see that? Do you actually think you can keep this up? It’s a homicide, Fiona. It doesn’t get any more serious than this.”

  She squinted. “I’m worried about you.”

  He slapped the table. She jumped back.

  “Homicide! I’m talking about the fire. I’m talking about a baseball bat from Michael Engleton’s collection. I’m talking about you and Kira doing this dance that’s growing really old and is not going to hold up. You want attorneys involved? You’d rather have Peter Arian handling this than me? Jesus!” He breathed deeply, trying to calm himself. “You two had better get in front of this. I had a plan-one you’ve just made a hell of a lot more complicated. I hope to hell you have one, because this thing is coming apart on you-on both of you.”

  “You think I set that fire? Are you still playing like you didn’t do that for me? You want to talk? Talk.”

  “Me?” he asked incredulously. “This is me we’re talking about.”

  “And I’m supposed to believe you?”

  He reached across the table and took her hand in his. “Now. Right here, right now. You look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t set that fire.”

  “I didn’t set that fire.”

  His mind raced. “No way,” he mumbled.

  “I… told… you… I… didn’t.”

  “Kira? Do you think she could have overheard us?”

  “From inside that house? I don’t think so, Walt. You can’t hear anything from in there. It’s a fortress. And if she was in the safe room-a room I didn’t even know existed!-you really think so?”

  “You should never have brought Peter Arian into this. You send him packing. I can work this out if you’d just let me.”

  “Let you railroad Kira? I don’t think so.”

  “‘Some cases go cold,’ ” he said back at her.

  “What?”

  “You said that to me.”

  “Did I?”

  His patience tested, he fought to stay in his chair. “Yes, you did. I’m attempting to bring charges against her. You have to stay out of this.”

  “I will not stay out of it. I will not allow that. She’s been through-”

  “This is my job. My world. Stay out of it.”

  “Is that an order, Sheriff?” All life had gone out of her. She leaned away from him, nearly tipping over the chair.

  “If I can’t push Arian off the base, if he gets to her, then my game plan is over. At that point, you two will need to get in front of this.” A mechanical silence hung between them-the eerie whisper of HVAC. “Terry Hogue’s the best criminal lawyer in town. You call Terry.”

  “What plan,” she said. “You said you have a plan.”

  “Had,” he corrected. “I said I had a plan. With Arian in the mix, the evidence is going to come out, and that’s coming back to bite her.”

  But a worm started drilling through his head: the unidentified prints on the baseball bat; Fiona’s insistence she hadn’t set the fire; the probable height of Gale’s attacker. The bits and pieces began to come together in unexpected ways.

  “The fire was not a lightning strike,” he said. “You don’t talk about something and two hours later it spontaneously combusts. Do you see how it plays out if it’s forced to play out? Kira goes off the rails at the Advocates dinner. She’s unstable. She takes after him like she almost did to me that night. Then she takes the truck and runs. Comes back and hides. Overhears us, and sets the fire. There is evidence to support most of this. My plan… Well, at least I had one. I hope you do.”

  She was squinting and blinking and looked as if she was either going to cry or pass out.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I need a minute.” She sat there breathing deeply. He wasn’t sure what to do-an uncommon feeling in him. “I need to see Katherine. I need to talk to Katherine.”

  “Who’s Katherine?”

  “Katherine,” she said, as if that answered him. Standing from the chair, she hurried toward the interview room door.

  “Don’t walk out on me,” he said.

  She glanced over at him, turned, and was gone.

  43

  “It was like a door opened, or something,” Fiona said.

  “Okay.” Katherine crossed her legs and brushed the front of her blouse.

  Fiona had been made to wait a half hour while a client finished her session. Katherine had pushed back the next appointment to accommodate Fiona’s arrival.

  “Will you hypnotize me?”

  “Perhaps there’s no need. Tell me about it.”

  “Walt mentioned… He started talking about that night. And I don’t know… like I said, it was like a door coming open.”

  “It happens. Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “I’m not sure what there is to tell.”

  Katherine offered her a sly but affecting grin as if she knew there was much to tell.

  “He was there,” Fiona said.

  Katherine said nothing. Did not ask her for a name. Barely moved at all.

  Fiona felt at the center of a wind storm, leaves and sticks swirling, each with a message written on it. Words. Names. Parts of sentences. Like a magnetic word game for the refrigerator, a hundred thoughts or glimpses of thoughts awaiting some semblance of order. Her instinct was to try to stop it, to try to grab hold of one or two and begin organizing them, but the more she reached, the more the cloud moved away from her.

  She felt the tears spring to her eyes before she knew what was happening, before she had a chance to protect herself from them. The leaves moved closer. “What a bastard,” she whispered dryly.

  “You’re safe here,” Katherine said.

  “Prick.”

  “Take your time.”

  “He just arrived, you know? Unannounced. All of a sudden, just there at the door, like I expected him or something. Such a prick. So typical.” She sniffled and dragged her wrist across her nose, creating a snail line. Katherine leaned forward and offered a tissue. Fiona saw it more as a flag of surrender and refused it. “I didn’t know why he was there. I thought maybe to kill me. You know? After the trial and everything. But it wasn’t even him. Not the Marty I knew. Had known. Whatever.”

  She looked out through the blur: Katherine, with her expressionless face. How did people do that? Sit there, impassive, while the other person eviscerated herself? She might have been waiting for a cake to finish baking. If she’d had knitting…

  “I backed inside, and he followed without invitation. When he spoke, it was like it wasn’t even him. Like he was channeling someone else. I couldn’t process it all. Round peg, square hole. Him, soft-spoken and polite. Me, loud and demanding. I told him to get out, and he stopped and turned around. This is Marty we’re talking about. The Gale Force. I told him to wait, and he stopped, and it was like I controlled him. Me, controlling him. Try that one on for size. He stopped again. ‘What are you doing here?’ I said, and he spoke to the door, not to me. His back to me. His hand on the doorknob. Maybe he didn’t want to be there. That’s what was going through my head: this guy shows up and he doesn’t want to even be here. And it was like he was reading my thoughts-I always thought he could. He tells the door how he’s part of a program and that part of the steps of that program-And I cut him off. Scornfully. Abusively. Marty Gale reformed. As if. And he waits me out, politely, I might add, and then starts into it again like it’s something he’d rehearsed, and maybe he had for all I know. How it’s something he’s got to do, for me and for him. For both of us. Wants me to know this is not a gift, not a negotiated truce, but a requirement to his sobriety, and how what it amounts to is an apology.

  “He says that word,” she continued, “and as he does, he looks over his shoulder at me. Delivers it like
a spear into my heart. An apology. Marty. You know how long I’d waited for that? For that one word: apologize? All the shit I’d been through with him. The hell. The endless hell of it all. And me too weak to leave, and him too overpowering to allow me to. Too Marty. Too unpredictable and dangerous. And here it is, and it’s not ‘better late than never.’ Never would have worked for me just fine, thank you. Apologizing. Turning toward me now. Tears, real tears, streaming down his face. How he didn’t know the guy he’d been, how the things he’d done-” She pursed her lips and realized her eyes were clear now.

  “I think he stepped toward me. I must have stepped back. Whatever happened to him happened after that. Maybe once I fell, he came to help me. Maybe K-Maybe someone showed up and saw him bent over me like that. How should I know? What a bastard.”

  “Is that where your memory stops?” Katherine said.

  “It’s not like I remember hitting my head. But yeah, I’m assuming that’s what happened. Why? What? Are you saying I didn’t hit my head? Are you saying…? That my memory stops there because I did something to him? Is that why you’re looking at me like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Don’t give me that crap! Like that! Like you’re looking right now.”

  So Katherine looked away. But the seed was planted and Fiona sank into a well of despair. A dark, cold, unmerciful place.

  “I thought you were supposed to help me,” Fiona said.

  44

  “You want to talk to her again, you’re going to have to charge her.”

  Peter Arian carried confidence in a way that disarmed juries and wooed judges. A surfer through college, he was Armani-ad handsome. Even at nine a.m., his eyes had a Hollywood sparkle. He spoke like a southern Californian despite his San Francisco roots.