Ridley Pearson - In Harm's Way

“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.

“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.”