Chapter 5 The morning after

Morning came the way it always does after the worst nights of a person's life, indifferently and on schedule, the light arriving through the curtains without asking whether it was wanted.

Ethan had not slept. He had lain on the guest bed in Dennis and Rachel's house with his jacket still on and his eyes either open or closed and neither state had offered him anything resembling rest. At some point around four in the morning he had become aware that he was not going to sleep and had stopped pretending otherwise. He sat up and put his feet on the floor and sat in the dark with his hands on his knees and let the hours pass.

He showered at six. The guest bathroom had a bar of soap that smelled like something floral and unfamiliar and he stood under the water for a long time and let it run and tried to locate himself inside his own body. He had read once that the body holds shock differently than the mind does, that the mind processes in language and narrative while the body processes in sensation and that sometimes the two are on completely different timelines. He believed that now. His mind had been working all night, cycling through images and questions and the particular arithmetic of grief. His body felt nothing. His body felt like a building that had been vacated.

He dressed in the same clothes he had worn yesterday because he had nothing else.

Rachel was in the kitchen when he came downstairs. She looked up when she heard him and did not say good morning because good morning was not a thing that applied to this particular morning and she was smart enough to know it.

"Coffee," she said, and poured him a cup without waiting for an answer.

He sat at the kitchen table and drank it slowly. Dennis came down twenty minutes later, already dressed for work, and sat across from him with his own cup and they existed together in the quiet for a while. Outside the kitchen window the neighborhood was starting its day, a dog walker passing on the sidewalk, a car backing out of a driveway two houses down, the ordinary machinery of a Tuesday that was not ordinary at all.

"I have to go to the station this morning," Ethan said. Give my formal statement.

Do you want me to come with you?

No. I need to do it alone.

Dennis nodded. Do you have a lawyer?

Ethan looked at him.

"I'm not saying you need one," Dennis said carefully. I'm saying it might be worth having one available. Just in case.

He was right and Ethan knew he was right. I'll think about it.

"Think about it before you go in, not after."

He thought about it on the drive to the station. He decided against it, at least for now, because arriving with a lawyer would shift something in the way Detective Simmons looked at him and he needed her to look at him clearly. He had nothing to hide and he wanted that to be visible from the first minute. A lawyer could come later if it became necessary. Right now what he needed was to be seen as what he was, a man who had come home to a destroyed life and who had nothing to offer except the truth.

The station was a low building on Fenwick Street with a parking lot that was already half full when he arrived at eight forty. He sat in his car for a moment before going in, hands in his lap, looking at the entrance. Through the glass doors he could see the front desk and the movement of people inside, officers and civilians passing in the institutional lighting of a place that never quite stops being in motion.

He went in and gave his name and was taken to a room that was smaller than he expected, with a table and three chairs and a mirror along one wall that he was not meant to think too hard about. He sat in the chair they indicated and waited with his hands flat on the table.

Detective Simmons came in seven minutes later with a folder and two cups of coffee in paper cups, one of which she set in front of him before sitting down. He noted the gesture. It was deliberate without being theatrical. She was good at making a room feel less like what it was.

Thank you for coming in, Mr. Caldwell.

"Of course."

She opened the folder and they went through everything systematically. His movements the day before, start to finish. The library, the route, the time. His relationship with Sarah, with Lily, with Noah. She asked about his finances without calling it that, framing questions about stress and pressure in a way that was designed to sound conversational and that he saw clearly for what it was. He answered everything without hesitation.

She asked about his father.

He paused for the first time.

"My father has been out of the picture for a few years," he said. We're not in contact.

Can you tell me a bit about that?

He drifted. It was gradual. He was dealing with some things that he chose to deal with alone and at some point the distance became permanent. I don't have an address for him. I wouldn't know how to reach him if I needed to.

Detective Simmons wrote something down. And Raymond Holt. You mentioned he was your father's closest friend.

Yes.

How often do you see Mr. Holt?

A few times a year. Holidays sometimes. He'll call occasionally. He kept his voice level. He called five times last night after I found my family.

Simmons looked up from her notepad. Five times.

Yes. The first call came in at four twelve.

She held his gaze for just a moment and something moved behind her eyes that was too brief to read. Then she looked back down and wrote something and the moment passed.

Have you spoken with him?

Not yet.

We will need to speak with him as part of the investigation. Anyone connected to the family.

I understand.

She asked a few more questions, closed the folder, and told him they would be in touch. She walked him back to the front and shook his hand at the door and held it just a fraction of a second longer than necessary, not in a threatening way but in the way of a person who is deciding something.

"Mr. Caldwell," she said, before he turned to go. I want you to be careful about conducting your own investigation into this. I understand the impulse. I have seen it many times. But it rarely ends the way people hope, and it can compromise what we are trying to build.

He looked at her. "I understand."

"I hope you do," she said.

He walked to his car and sat in it and looked at the five missed calls from Raymond Holt still sitting on his phone screen.

Then he opened his contacts, scrolled to Raymond's name, and stared at it for a long time.

He did not call.

Instead he typed a single text message and sent it before he had time to reconsider.

It said: We should talk. Are you free tomorrow?

He set the phone face down on the passenger seat and started the engine.

The reply came before he had left the parking lot.

It said: Of course. I've been thinking about you all night. Come for dinner. Seven o'clock.

Ethan read it twice.

Then he put the car in drive and pulled out onto Fenwick Street and thought about a man who had called five times starting at four twelve and who had been thinking about him all night and who had answered a text message in under forty seconds.

He thought about what kind of man moves that fast.