"I'm trying to save you a trip to Seattle," Boldt said. "But I think I'm about done doing you any favors." He stood.

Walt rose from the couch, wondering how he might pull off obtaining a search warrant before Wynn thought to bleach every baseball bat in his collection, wondering what his father would think about his working hand in hand with a cop like Lou Boldt. And then wondering why that mattered to him in the first place.

20.

An image rose within the dreamlike swirl of color and the echo of a distant voice. Ethereal, foreboding, it felt more ghost than angel, and she turned away from it.

"I'm sorry." A man's deep voice that she experienced as penetrating, cold, s.e.xual, and dangerous. She clawed away from him, dragging herself on hands and knees, sensing the retreat was more memory than experience. She caught a glimpse of herself, naked but for a cotton thong, rushing to escape. Then felt him catch hold of her ankle and drag her back. She reached out, grabbing the leg of a chair, only to bring it down on top of herself.

"Take me back to that moment." A woman's voice as gentle and forgiving as silence. Where it came from, she had no idea. Was G.o.d a woman with a voice like a summer breeze? Why did she feel so compelled to comply, to do whatever this voice asked of her?

"Is there someone in the room with you?" The woman again.

"I owe you that. Much more than that." The man's voice now, his silhouette blocking the glow from a window. She knew that window-it existed in her present memory.

"I see a window," she heard herself say. "He's standing in front of a window."

"Tell me about him."

But as she looked again, she flinched and ran from what she saw, what she heard. She stepped back, arms out behind her like angel wings.

"He says he's sorry." She identified this as her own voice. But she couldn't be sure if anyone heard or who it was intended for.

"Sorry for . . . ?" The woman again, gently pressing. Always pressing.

"He's lying. He always lies."

"You know him?"

"Yes."

"Not a stranger?"

"No way."

"He's in the room with you?"

"Yes. I . . ." The silhouette distended and broke into two black blobs. The ephemeral quality suddenly made her doubt its authenticity.

"Do you recognize him?"

"Recognize? Him? Oh, yeah."

"Is he saying anything else?"

"He's . . . coming toward me. Coming for me. No! No! Not again! Not that! He'll kill me! He'll kill me this time. I've got to-"

A bell rang. A small bell. The kind her grandmother kept on the fireplace mantel and told stories about, tall tales of India and elephants, and she could practically smell the incense burning. Her eyes came open to soft lighting and the barely discernible image of a thin woman with graying hair sitting stiffly in a chair opposite her. Her grandmother? But no; she was long dead.

Her scalp itched. She felt pearls of sweat on her upper lip that tasted of salt as she licked them off. And then she identified the source of the incense: a small ceramic dish to the left of the thin woman.

"Whoa," she said. "Did I go under?"

"I believe so. Yes, Fiona."

"Did I say anything?"

"We'll get to that," Katherine said. Fiona took in the surroundings of the office and for a moment didn't recall coming here to this session. "Whoa," she said again.

"It can be a little surprising the first time," Katherine said.

"I'm totally disoriented."

"Understandable. You were somewhere else just now."

"I don't remember a thing."

"As it should be. We can work on that."

"Did I remember anything? Do you know how I hit my head? Do you know what happened?"

"The important thing is that you know you know what happened." what happened."

"I do? I remembered?"

"I believe so, yes."

"And did I tell you anything useful?"

"It's all useful. We don't want to get ahead of ourselves."

"There was a man. I think he was speaking to me . . . saying something to me . . . though I don't know what, exactly."

Trying to connect what she was being told with an unwilling memory, Fiona felt as if she were reaching into dark water.

"Don't force it," Katherine said. "There's no rush. The point is: you'll get there if you need to. You'll find it if it's important."

"Of course it's important. There's a piece of my life missing."

"Maybe for good reason."

"The only reason is because I hit my head."

"Not necessarily. We've discussed this."

"Protecting myself from myself? I don't buy that."

"And I'm not selling, just trying to help you to work this out."

Fiona felt herself cooling off. Whatever it was, it had to be something major for her to have gotten this worked up about it. But what, she had no idea.

"I need this," she said.

"We generally have what we need. The general misperception is that we need what we want."

"Be careful what you wish for."

"Words to live by," Katherine said.

"Can we try again?"

"Not today. Soon enough, though."

"Thursday's session?"

"We'll see."

"I need to know." She hung her head. It was everything she could do not to cry.

21.

"No, I'll handle it," Walt said into his BlackBerry, staring at the dairy case in Atkinson's Market. "I'm heading that way anyway."

On the other end of the call, Tommy Brandon said nothing.

Walt understood the source of his deputy's confusion: he rarely, if ever, refused the offer of help. Overburdened and overworked, he welcomed, even preached the need for such initiative. But here he was, pushing back on Brandon. And there was Brandon, not understanding-or understanding too well, Walt thought. Brandon was no slouch; he probably saw right through Walt's justification.

He cursed Brandon's efficiency. In studying topographic maps and Google Earth images of the area around the location of Gale's body, all in an effort to widen their canva.s.sing, Brandon had made an interesting, and possibly damaging discovery: the Engleton property-where Fiona lived-was technically immediately adjacent to the crime scene, if one discounted four hundred feet of elevation. Looking from high above, only the blur of the scree field separated them.

If Gale had not been tossed from a pickup truck, then he had likely fallen to his death from the eastern edge of the Engleton property, though the condition of his clothes did not suggest he'd been hiking. The contradictions needed clarification.

Someone needed to question Fiona-and quite possibly Kira-and Walt was not leaving that to anyone else.

He reviewed his exchange with Brandon, searching for a believable if inelegant way out.

"She has some photos of the scene for me," he said, realizing, upon reflection, how stupid it sounded: Fiona e-mailed her photographs to the office. He had to end the conversation-quickly.

"Listen, I'm in Atkinson's trying to buy string cheese. Nikki is very picky, and I can't for the life of me remember which brand it is she likes. For her, there's only the one. I'll take the Engleton place. You divvy up the rest and we'll hope someone saw something."

"Got . . . it," Brandon said, intentionally clipping his words so that Walt would not miss his unspoken message.

A man stepped up and, without so much as looking at the shelves, snagged a carton of milk from the case and dumped it into his cart, on top of several 12-packs of beer and a half-dozen bags of beef jerky.

Walt recognized him immediately from his driver's license photo: Dominique Fancelli, stepfather of Dionne Fancelli, the pregnant highschooler. A dozen options crowded Walt's mind: confrontation, arrest, intimidation. Maybe he could steer him out back and just beat the s.h.i.t out of him and take his chances with voters. Paying no attention to the string cheese, Walt placed it into his cart, his eyes never leaving the man.

He pushed his cart, following the man down the paper aisle. Watched him load up on paper towels and toilet tissue and consider an air freshener. Stood there watching, hoping the man might turn and provoke him. Not much could test his patience, but this man had Walt's heart going arrhythmic in his chest.

Fancelli continued toward the checkout lanes and Walt followed as if on surveillance, holding back yet fully focused on the target. Reminding himself how unprofessional it would be to confront the man, Walt turned his cart away and headed for the fresh bread beneath the Country Bakery sign. He was considering a loaf of raisin bread when Fancelli appeared in his peripheral vision, leaving with a bag of groceries in hand. A teenage girl, no older than thirteen, pa.s.sed him on her way into the store, and Fancelli ogled her bare legs and tank top. Before Walt could even make sense of it, he'd abandoned his cart and rushed through the swinging door.

Fancelli was halfway across the parking lot, zeroing in on a tricked-out pickup truck, swinging the bag like a schoolboy.

"Fancelli!" Walt marched in long, stiff strides, reaching the man as he turned around. Fancelli's eyes flared at sight of the uniform. His brow furrowed. The bag slowed its pendular motion.

Walt invaded the man's s.p.a.ce, putting his face to Fancelli's, unbothered by their height difference.

"How's Dionne doing?" he asked, a bit breathlessly.

Fancelli leaned away but did not take a step back, his eyes creased, his lips suddenly bloodless and thin. His nostrils flared.

"Give her my best."

The man's head nodded, nearly imperceptibly.

Walt stepped away and offered him his back as he returned to the store.

"No problem," Fancelli croaked out.

Walt stopped and looked over his shoulder at the man, visions of Emily and Nikki playing before his eyes. For all the reasons bullets were manufactured, this seemed a way to put one to its best possible use. He caught his hand actually touching the grip of his sidearm. He turned back and walked on, a fraction of a second gone, but a lifetime pa.s.sed.

[image]

He arrived at the top of Fiona's driveway to the yellow profusion of the Engleton flower beds, the air gauzy and charged with a glow of late afternoon. He was slightly out of breath and light-headed, antic.i.p.ation roaring in his ears.

Knocked on the cottage door. Stepped through as she answered.

"I've missed you. You've been awfully quiet." The hopeful yet sad look in her eyes prompted him. He took her chin in his right hand, placed his left on her hip as if dancing. She didn't object, and though he saw distance in her eyes as he kissed her, she returned his offer as if he was somehow the answer she'd been awaiting. As they spun, she shoved the door closed with the palm of her hand and they crashed across the coffee table and fell to the couch, this time without a hint of amus.e.m.e.nt. She infused the act with a seriousness, a disconnected commitment, and he sensed the danger of the moment, but was unable to hold himself back. If talk had been required, it was too late for both of them. If he'd thought himself bulletproof, he was not. She closed her eyes tightly as he joined her, a mask half of pleasure, half of pain that caused him to reconsider, but again, he couldn't stop. He fell atop her with a gasp, surprised and alarmed by his urgency and the unshakeable knowledge that somewhere in the middle of their frantic actions she might have asked him to stop if she'd been so inclined.

"Wow," she said, confusing him, because she sounded so happy. "I ought to answer the door more often."

"I didn't plan that," he said.

"Which makes it all the more wonderful."

"It's not really me, to do something like that."

"Well, then maybe you'll change." She kissed him.