Chapter XV · Under the Bench

The lawyer pulled the chair in front of the desk closer to the door. The investigator watched him, but said nothing. He had called him in for nine; the lawyer had arrived at five to nine, his overcoat over one arm and a folder so thin it fit beneath a palm.

Copies from the detention-center visitor log lay on the desk. The investigator had put them there before the lawyer came in. On top was the line signed the day before Kerr changed his statement.

— You went to see him three times, the investigator said.

— I was his lawyer.

— In a different car every time.

The lawyer looked at the numbers entered in the register. He did not seem surprised they were there.

— They were vehicles made available to the administration.

— I can verify that.

— Then verify it.

The investigator said nothing for a few seconds. In the next room, a metal cabinet drawer opened and was shoved closed again with too much force. The lawyer shifted his overcoat from one arm to the other.

— You came before Kerr changed his statement, the investigator said. Then he said he had killed to cover up the fraud. Now we have the crane log, the invoices, and the name of the man who signed them. The fraud existed. That does not make the rest of the statement true.

— I know.

It was the first answer the lawyer had given without trying to turn it back into a question. The investigator looked at him more closely.

— What do you know?

The lawyer set the thin folder on his knees. He kept it closed.

— Kerr wrote two pages before he died.

The investigator did not reach for his pen. He let the lawyer continue.

— In his own hand. They are not the statement you received.

— Where are they?

— Somewhere I can retrieve them from by noon.

— Then you should have started with that.

— I did.

The lawyer lowered his eyes to his overcoat. His fingers smoothed the hem even though there was not a wrinkle in it. The investigator remembered the same man standing in his chief’s doorway six years ago. He had seen him only for a moment then. It had been enough to recognize, later, the way other people made room when he entered somewhere.

— What do you want? he asked.

— Immunity for what I did in Castell’s name. In writing.

The investigator leaned back. In the next room, the metal cabinet shut again.

— I do not have the authority to give you that on my own.

— You have the authority to ask.

— And if the answer is no?

— The pages stay where they are.

The lawyer had said it without raising his voice. The investigator looked at him, then at the folder on his knees.

— What is in there?

— A copy of a request I want you to read.

He did not hand it over. The investigator saw that the paper in the folder interested him less than the half-open door to the corridor.

— Kerr is dead, the investigator said. When did he write the pages?

— After the statement he gave with me present.

— How did they reach you?

The lawyer tightened his hand on the folder cover.

— That has to be in the agreement too. Everything I can tell you about them.

The investigator stood. For the first time since entering, the lawyer turned his head quickly. The investigator did not go to the door; he took a file from the shelf and set it beside the register.

— You will wait for an answer. It will not be quick.

— I have until noon.

— Why noon?

The lawyer did not answer at once.

— Because after that I can no longer promise the pages will remain with me.

The investigator walked him out into the corridor. The lawyer put on his overcoat, fastened only the middle button, and headed for the stairs. When he passed the two officers working at the table by the entrance, he slowed. He looked at them, then at the wall behind them. The investigator saw it, but did not stop him. First he needed the answer to the immunity request. And Soles.

Maxim answered the phone with one hand on the steering wheel. He was in a freight yard, waiting for a warehouse to be opened for him.

— Is he with you? the investigator asked.

— Soles? Yes.

— Come to headquarters. Kerr’s lawyer says he has two pages Kerr wrote before he died.

Soles took the phone from Maxim’s hand. The investigator heard the engine switch off.

— Did he bring them? Soles asked.

— No. He wants immunity before he turns them over.

— Do you know what they say?

— Not yet.

Soles looked through the windshield. The warehouse gate was opening slowly. A man waved for them to come forward, then lowered his arm when he saw they were not moving.

— We’re coming now, Soles said.

He handed the phone back to Maxim. Maxim listened to the rest of what the investigator had to say, hung up, and lowered the window.

— I’m not unloading today, he called to the man at the gate.

— You haven’t even gone in.

— That’s why I’m telling you now.

He raised the window and pulled the truck away from the entrance. The man remained beside the gate with his hands on his hips.

Soles rested his elbow against the door. His rib had been bothering him at every pothole since morning. Now he had forgotten it.

— Kerr wrote after the confession, he said. After he blamed it on the fraud.

— That’s what the lawyer said?

— That’s what the investigator said the lawyer said.

— There are two people between us and those pages, Maxim said. Let’s not start reading what we don’t have yet.

At the traffic light, Soles asked for the phone. He called Tesa first. She answered after several rings, footsteps sounding around her. Soles told her only what they knew: the lawyer claimed to have the pages, wanted immunity, and had not turned them over yet.

Tesa was silent for as long as it took Maxim to cross the intersection.

— And what is the investigator doing?

— Trying to get the agreement.

— I understand.

She did not sound as though she understood less. She sounded as though she understood everything.

— I’ll meet you there, she said.

Soles hung up and found Krista’s number. Maxim saw it before he pressed call.

— Are you telling Varren too?

— Krista can stop by his place more easily than we can.

— I didn’t ask who you were sending.

Soles looked at him. Maxim kept both hands on the wheel, eyes on the road.

— Yes, Soles said. We tell him.

Krista was putting her camera into its bag when the phone rang. She pulled it out from beneath the stack of papers she had brought from the archive and answered with the bag still open.

Soles repeated the news. At the word “immunity,” Krista took her hand off the camera latch.

— Has he handed them over?

— He didn’t bring them. He promised to bring them by noon if he gets the agreement.

— Where is he keeping them?

— We don’t know.

Through the phone, Krista heard the truck’s turn signal. Maxim told Soles they were two streets from headquarters.

— Does Varren know? she asked.

— Not yet. Can you stop by his place?

Krista looked at the papers on the table. Among them was the copy of the request for Key Fourteen, with her real signature. She had kept it there since finding it, though she knew by heart where every letter sat. Varren had told her why he had used the key and asked for time to speak to Soles himself. She had promised not to take that time from him. Kerr’s pages changed what Soles was about to learn today, though; Varren needed to know they were coming.

— I’ll go, she said.

After hanging up, she put the copy in the folder beside the photographs. She left the camera on the table. She took only the papers and the car keys.

Varren’s gate was open. The pool pump could be heard in the yard, its uneven hum louder for a few seconds, then nearly gone. Varren stood beside the chair under the eaves. He had an open toolbox on the table and was trying to fit a screw into the part he held between his fingers.

He looked up when he saw her.

— Is Soles all right?

Krista stopped a few steps away.

— Yes. He’s with Maxim. They’re going to the investigator.

Varren set the screw on the table. He did not let it roll; he placed the part beside it at the edge of the toolbox.

— What happened?

— Kerr’s lawyer was called in. He says he has the two pages Kerr wrote before he died.

The pump started again, covering the noise of the street for a moment. Varren waited for it to quiet.

— The ones they were looking for in the cell?

— Yes. He is offering them in exchange for immunity.

Varren looked at the folder Krista held beneath her arm. She tightened her grip so it would not slip.

— Has he given them to the investigator?

— No. He wants the agreement first. He said he would bring them by noon.

Varren turned his head toward the clock beneath the eaves. Krista followed his gaze. It was still morning; even if the lawyer changed his mind twice, there was time to reach headquarters.

— Does Soles know what they say? Varren asked.

— No. None of us does.

— Then I’m coming too.

He closed the toolbox. The screw remained on the table beside the part he had not managed to fasten it into. Varren took his coat from the back of the chair and came toward the gate with Krista.

— Should I wait for you? she asked, pointing toward the car.

— Go ahead. If the lawyer arrives, Soles shouldn’t have to wait for me before he reads them.

Krista nodded. Varren held the gate for her as she went out, then stopped with his hand on the wood.

— You did right to tell me.

— I knew you’d want to know.

He added nothing. He pushed the gate after her and left it ajar.

Krista started the car. At the end of the street, she waited for a cyclist to pass and looked in the mirror. Varren had come out of the yard with his coat over one arm. He was walking quickly in the opposite direction from headquarters. The cyclist passed in front of her, and by the time Krista could move, Varren had already disappeared around the corner.

The lawyer stopped in front of the building and called the investigator before going up.

The hour he had given him was approaching. He had chosen it himself so the answer could not be put off forever. After the morning visit, he found it harder and harder to believe the pages would stay hidden.

— I’m at the office.

— I have the answer to your request. Come with the pages and we’ll discuss the document.

The lawyer looked up at the second-floor windows.

— Send someone to escort me.

— Two officers are coming.

— Send Soles and Maxim too.

This time, the investigator did not answer at once.

— Are you sure you want them there?

— I’m sure a locked door won’t help me.

Soles and Maxim arrived before the two officers. They had left the truck on the narrow street in front of the building, blocking half the entrance. Maxim got out, looked at the upstairs windows, then at the lawyer waiting for them beneath the sign.

— Where are the pages? Soles asked.

— In my office.

— And until now?

The lawyer gestured toward the door.

— I didn’t want to go in alone to get them.

Maxim walked past him and opened the building door. Inside there was a staircase with an iron railing, two dried-out potted plants, and the woman at the front desk, who stood when she saw them. The lawyer told her to wait outside until they came back. The woman took her coat from the back of her chair and left without asking why.

The two officers arrived as they were climbing the first steps. Maxim asked them to stay downstairs by the entrance.

— If anyone comes out, one of them said, we stop him.

— Yes, Maxim said. Watch where he comes out from too.

The officer looked at him for a moment, then shifted his eyes to the walls of the house.

Upstairs, the lawyer unlocked the office and stepped aside. Maxim remained in the doorway.

Soles went in first. His rib and palm hurt when he breathed too deeply, so he tried to breathe shallowly. The window was closed. The cabinet beside it stood exactly where it had been, but in one corner, where its leg pressed into the carpet, the floor creaked without anyone touching it.

He raised a hand.

The lawyer remained between them, the drawer key clenched in his fist. The office was narrow: the door behind Maxim, the desk across the middle, the window beyond it, the tall cabinet beside the window. Below the window, a man’s height beneath the sill, lay the low roof of a shed in a narrow back yard, sheet metal laid over an old beam that went into the wall. The end of the beam that stuck out past the shed was dark and soft-looking, as if the rain had been eating it for years.

Soles noted the rotten end, then the space beside the cabinet.

He could see nothing there. But he could feel pressure in the wall, like a man on the other side of a door shifting his weight before coming in.

— The drawer, he said. Quickly! Don’t stand by the walls.

The lawyer went around the desk. He unlocked the bottom drawer and pulled out a thick envelope folded over at one end. At the same instant, an arm came out of the wall beside the cabinet, and the hand closed on the lawyer’s collar and yanked him backward toward the plaster.

The lawyer trapped the envelope against his chest with his forearm and went with the pull, his heels skidding on the carpet.

Soles was already over the corner of the desk. He caught the wrist at the lawyer’s collar. Under his fingers he felt a cord, old and knotted. He did not pull the man out. He pulled the lawyer free, his heel braced against the leg of the desk, until the fingers opened and the lawyer stumbled against the window.

The arm withdrew into the wall.

Soles stood still in the middle of the carpet, away from every wall, and listened with his feet.

Where.

The pressure moved behind the plaster toward the corner by the door, then stopped. He turned toward it a moment before the Hunter stepped out there, whole, dusting nothing from his sleeves.

The Hunter did not look at the lawyer. He looked at Soles’s coat, over his ribs, where the blade was.

— Don’t take it out, Maxim said from the doorway.

Soles had no intention of taking it out. That was the point of all of them. They wanted the blade in his hand and his hand in trouble.

The Hunter came at him across the carpet, open-handed, aiming low at the rib. Soles turned the rib away and took the blow on his forearm. He let it drive him back toward the desk: wood between him and the window, no plaster within the man’s reach. The Hunter followed. His weight settled on his back heel before the next blow, the way it always did with them. Soles felt it through the floorboards.

He did not hit. He took the next push and added to it, his left palm flat on the Hunter’s shoulder, sending him further the way he was already going. The stitches in the palm tore, one, two, and warmth spread under the dressing. The Hunter’s hip struck the edge of the desk, and for a moment he was bent over the wood with nothing but air and furniture around him.

Soles reached for the chair behind the desk. The Hunter caught his coat and dragged him against the wood. Fingers slid beneath the coat and hooked the leather strap across his ribs.

Soles slapped at the hand with his torn palm. The pain opened his fingers. The Hunter pulled the strap tighter, pinning the wrapped blade against Soles’s chest, and worked a thumb beneath its knot.

He wants it out. He wants me reaching for it.

Soles kept his right hand on the chair. He shoved it between them, but a leg caught against the desk. The Hunter’s thumb lifted the edge of the leather.

Soles tipped the chair onto its side and drove it forward again. This time the legs caught the Hunter below the waist. The hand left the strap to stop the chair. Soles backed away with the wood between them, his empty right hand shaking over its back.

— The window, he told the lawyer, without turning his head.

In the doorway, Maxim had his back to all of it.

He had seen the second man at the far end of the corridor, by the stairs, and recognized him with difficulty, like a man in a photograph taken in bad light. Beneath the bank, in the lantern light, beside the slab. At the tunnel entrance, water running over his shoes. The two pictures slid over each other and would not settle.

— That’s the one who held Tesa, he said.

The man started down the corridor toward them.

Maxim slammed the door. The man’s hand came through the wood before the latch caught, as if the door were water, and closed on Maxim’s sleeve above the wrist.

Maxim braced a foot against the frame. The pull took his hand through the door, then his forearm. He saw the wood where his arm should have been, with his elbow almost touching it, and stopped trying to wrench backward.

His wrist was still inside the sleeve. The man held cloth as well as him.

Maxim bent his knees and worked his arm back through his coat, keeping the shoulder in place. The sleeve tightened around his elbow. For a moment he could get no farther. He pictured his hand left on the other side when the man let go.

He pulled harder. His knuckles scraped the lining; his fingertips cleared the wood, then the cuff. He tore the empty sleeve at its seam and threw his freed shoulder against the door. His hand was still there. He clenched it before he trusted it to help hold the door.

The door would not hold him. Maxim remembered the stairs, the cupboard beneath them, the officers below. Faces crowded in with the pictures, more than he wanted, but the landing gave him one useful thing.

The only place on this side of the office where a man could stand behind the wall was the landing.

He stepped away from the door, toward the window.

The plaster beside the doorframe bulged, cracked in a long line, and the second man came out of it exactly where Maxim had been standing, in a fall of white dust that landed across Maxim’s back. The man looked at the empty place in front of him, surprised, for half a second.

Maxim picked up the second chair by the door and drove its legs into his knees.

Behind them, the lawyer found the window painted shut. He drove his elbow through the pane, reached through for the outside catch, and cut the side of his right hand open on the glass. The window swung out.

— There’s no ladder, he said.

— There’s a roof, Soles said. Below the sill. Don’t step on the end of the beam. It’s rotten.

Someone was running up the stairs. The officer with the broken nose appeared in the doorway with his baton out, saw a man half out of the wall and Maxim with a chair, and stopped. The second Hunter was already sinking back into the plaster, sideways, the way a swimmer goes under.

— Get away from that wall! Maxim told him. Go down. Wait for us by the truck.

The officer looked at the plaster that was moving. He went.

Soles lowered himself over the sill first. The rib stopped him halfway, and for a moment he hung there by his elbows, unable to breathe either in or out. Then he dropped onto the sheet metal, onto the end nearest the building, where the beam went into the wall. The metal banged. The beam held.

The lawyer climbed out with the envelope buttoned under his coat, and Soles caught his good arm and brought him down on the solid end beside him.

In the office, the man with the knotted cord had come around the desk. Maxim met him with the chair, legs out, and backed toward the window a step at a time, the way he would have backed a truck into a narrow yard, without looking, because he already knew.

— Maxim! Soles shouted.

Maxim threw the chair, turned, and went over the sill.

Maxim came down where Soles’s hand was, and the sheet metal boomed under the three of them, and the beam groaned along its whole length and held.

The man with the cord did not climb after them. He came out of the wall below the sill, the way they always came, and dropped onto the roof to cut them off from the yard.

He landed on the far end of the beam.

The rotten wood went with a soft, wet crack. The sheet metal folded in half under him, and he went through it into the dark of the shed with a crash of crates and tins.

Nobody stopped to look.

Soles went off the edge of the roof onto the stacked crates, then the trash can, then the yard, with the lawyer between him and Maxim. The gate to the side street was bolted from the inside. Maxim drew the bolt. The truck was where they had left it, half across the entrance, with both officers beside it now. The one with the broken nose was waving them on.

Behind them, inside the shed, something shoved at the bent sheet metal from underneath.

They were in the truck before it came out.

At headquarters, the investigator was waiting outside his office. He looked first at the envelope, then at Soles, who had one hand pressed beneath his ribs. Maxim remained near the door, rubbing the red mark above his wrist. His fingers still moved when he asked them to. The faces of the men from the corridor kept piling over one another in his mind although he no longer wanted to see them.

The lawyer took the envelope from under his coat.

— The agreement, he said.

The investigator showed him the document on the desk. The lawyer read it standing, one hand braced on the wood. He signed. Only then did he open the envelope and take out the two pages Kerr had written, folded together. He placed them in front of the investigator.

The investigator noted the time of delivery before reading them.

He set the pen beside the register and pulled the pages toward him. He still did not begin reading. Across the desk, the lawyer kept his right hand pressed to his overcoat, hiding a cut that had left blood on the cuff.

— You’re staying until I see what you brought me, the investigator said.

— I signed the agreement.

— And I received two pages. Now we verify that they’re the pages you were talking about.

The lawyer looked toward the door. People moved through the corridor; there were footsteps, a voice asking for a file, the phone at the officers’ desk. He stayed.

Soles took his hand from beneath his ribs when the investigator looked at him. It did not fool him. Soles had not tried very hard.

— Someone is coming to look at all three of you, the investigator said. The lawyer, you, and Maxim.

— I’ve got nothing wrong with me, Maxim said.

— Then that man will have less work.

Maxim wanted to answer. He stopped because, for a moment, he could no longer tell whether the officer passing in the corridor was the one who had come up the stairs after them or the one who had guarded the entrance. He knew both faces. He could see clearly the broken nose of one, the pale patch in the other’s eyebrow, where each of them had stood on the steps of the lawyer’s building. The more he tried to put them in order, the more other faces came to mind. He fixed his eyes on the door handle and kept them there until the door closed.

The investigator unfolded the two pages and spread them across the desk, keeping them away from the ring of water left by a glass.

The lawyer stepped closer.

— Those are the two, he said.

— I’ll ask you after I read them.

Tesa knocked at the door. She came in before the investigator answered, holding the arm in the cast close to her body. She looked at Soles, then Maxim. White dust covered one shoulder and the back of his coat.

— You went to his office, she said.

— He invited us, Maxim replied.

Tesa saw the lawyer and the pages spread across the desk. She understood how much had happened between Soles’s phone call and her arrival without asking another question. She touched Maxim’s arm lightly with her good hand to see if it hurt, then went to Soles.

— The rib?

— Still there.

— That’s not what I asked.

Soles tried to draw a deep breath and gave up halfway. Tesa saw his face before he could smile.

— Someone’s looking at you after we’re done here, she said.

The lawyer moved toward the door. Tesa made room, but he did not pass. He had stopped beside the signed agreement lying at the corner of the desk.

— That’s it? she asked.

The investigator looked at the document.

— Yes.

— The pages are with you.

— Yes.

— And he walks.

No one answered at once. The lawyer pulled his overcoat tighter over the cut on his hand. Tesa looked at the man who had once gone into the investigator’s chief’s office and left behind her brother’s statement, filed away. She wanted to feel something at the sight of him hurt. All she had was the fatigue in her arm and the wish that the pages on the desk would tell the truth.

— You have questions for me, the lawyer told the investigator. You can ask them after you verify the handwriting.

— I will.

— Then I’ll wait outside.

The investigator called an officer and asked him to take the lawyer into the adjoining room. They could look at his hand there and stay with him until the investigator finished reading. The lawyer left without looking at the pages again. Tesa followed his steps down the corridor. Even now he did not walk like a man in a hurry.

When the door closed, the investigator took Kerr’s last signed statement from the file. He placed it beside the two pages. Soles had never seen the signature. When the investigator read him the fraud story, he had kept the file turned away.

— Is that his handwriting? he asked.

— It looks like it. I want it checked, but we can read what he left here.

The investigator pulled the first page closer. Kerr had written tightly, the lines dropping toward the margin. On the second page he had pressed harder. The impressions of some letters could be felt through the paper. The investigator read the beginning in silence, then looked up at Soles.

— You can step outside until I’m finished.

Soles looked at the pages.

— Because they’re my parents?

— Because I haven’t read all of it either. I don’t know what’s on the second page.

Soles pulled the chair in front of the desk toward him. He sat carefully, turning the backrest aside so it would not press his rib.

— I’m reading it here.

Maxim remained standing beside him. Tesa went to the window and back. There was nowhere in the room she could stand without seeing the pages. She leaned against the filing cabinet and waited.

The investigator gave Soles the first page. He did not point to where he should begin.

Kerr had written after changing his statement. At first he did not explain why he had said something else. He went back to the night Kale and Mary died, to the things he had done and the things he had been ordered to do. The port fraud existed, but it was not why he had been sent to their house.

Soles read the paragraph again. The paper trembled slightly in his hands. He lowered it to the desk without letting go.

— Castell said he didn’t order that, Maxim said quietly.

— He did say that, the investigator replied.

He did not add that they had not believed him. Enough people had been in that room when Castell said it, and Soles remembered every answer he had received then.

Farther down, Kerr described the man who hired him: slim, narrow-faced, chestnut hair, straight eyebrows. Soles read the line again. Varren’s face came to mind. The features matched; he could still hope they matched someone else too. There was no name written there. The investigator took a blank sheet from the file and noted that the description had to be checked against the people they could identify. Soles stopped at the end of the paragraph and looked for a moment at the white space after it, as though the name should have followed there.

— He didn’t ask him? he said.

— It doesn’t say that he did, the investigator replied.

Soles moved to the next lines. Maxim leaned slightly closer, but not enough to read over his shoulder. It was easier to look at the paper than at everyone else’s faces.

Kerr came to the boy. The writing crowded together again. Soles remembered the yard as he had seen it from the path, not as it looked in Krista’s photographs: the open gate, the light above the back door, the man beside the kitchen door with the pistol held against his thigh. He remembered lying on the paving and waiting for the second shot. It had not come.

On the page, Kerr had written that he fired out of fear. The boy was not to be touched.

Soles looked up.

— He knew I was there?

— Not before he saw you, the investigator said. At least that’s what it says here.

Soles read the line again. He realized he had been pressing the paper with his thumb and pulled his hand away. He smoothed the sheet across the desk, from the center to the edge, until the crease he had made disappeared.

— If he’d been told not to touch me, why did he have the gun ready? he asked.

— That’s a question for the lawyer, the investigator said. Kerr only wrote why he fired.

— Out of fear.

Tesa pushed away from the cabinet. She was about to say something, but Soles had already taken the second page. He turned it to the written side and kept reading. There was not much text left. The last lines had been crossed out in one place, then started again below.

The investigator set his pen down. Maxim saw that Tesa had stopped by the window, her good hand tight around the edge of the cast. No one moved to ask Soles for the page.

At the bottom, Kerr had written the words he remembered from the order he had been given:

The boy is to arrive afterward. He must not be alone when he finds them.

Krista entered headquarters with the folder tucked under her arm and found Maxim on the bench in the corridor. One sleeve was torn at the shoulder. A streak of white dust clung to the other sleeve from elbow to wrist.

— Where’s Soles?

Maxim pointed toward the office door. Krista took one step, then stopped.

— What happened to you?

— We went to get some papers.

He tried to smile at her. He managed only half of one. Tesa came out of the office, closed the door behind her, and remained with one hand on the handle.

— They brought them, she said.

Krista loosened her grip on the folder.

— And?

Tesa looked toward the end of the corridor, where an officer was speaking on the phone.

— Did you see Varren?

— Yes. I told him before I came.

— What did you tell him?

Krista looked at the closed door.

— What Soles told me. That the lawyer had the pages and would trade them for immunity.

Tesa moved aside when the door opened. Soles came out with his coat unfastened. Someone had taped a fresh dressing over his palm, but the cuff was still stained. He stopped in front of Krista.

— Does he know we got them?

She shook her head.

— When I left him, you didn’t have them.

— Have you spoken to him since?

— No.

Soles nodded. He leaned his shoulder against the wall, very slowly.

— Don’t call him yet.

Krista looked at him without answering. That morning, Varren had asked whether Soles was all right before he knew why she had come. He had set the screw on the table to listen to her. She could still see it there beside the toolbox.

— What does it say, Soles?

He looked toward the investigator’s door.

— Kerr had orders not to touch me. I was supposed to arrive after he was done. And I wasn’t supposed to be alone when I found them.

Krista lowered the folder. Its corner struck her knee.

— When you woke up, Varren was there.

— Yes.

Maxim looked up at them. Tesa did not move from beside the door.

— That’s not all, Soles said. There’s a description too. No name.

Krista looked at Tesa. She saw her open her mouth, then close it again. She recognized the movement. They had both kept putting off this choice, and now they could not put it off any longer.

— Soles, Tesa said. At the slab, it was Varren.

He turned his head.

— What?

— He held it. While you got Krista out.

Soles remained with his shoulder against the wall.

— You said…

He stopped.

— I didn’t say it, she said. You believed it. I let you.

A man carrying a stack of files passed through the corridor. Maxim clasped his hands between his knees and let him pass without following his face.

— You’ve known since then? Soles asked.

— Yes.

— Since then.

Tesa nodded.

— When you came after me on the quay, he continued, you knew.

— Yes.

— When I thanked you.

— I knew.

Soles pushed his shoulder away from the wall. Pain stopped him before he could fully straighten. Krista took a step toward him, but he raised his good hand.

— And you?

— I found out later, she said. When I found the nighttime entries made in my name. We both talked to him.

— About what?

Krista told him about the key first. The request slipped among the exhibition papers, her signature, the nights Varren had gone to the warm water. She told him Varren carried something like Soles did, and found quiet there. When she reached the slab, Tesa took over. Varren had confirmed that he was the one who held it. He had asked them to let him tell Soles himself.

— And you let him, Soles said.

— Yes, Krista replied.

— For how long?

Neither of them answered.

Soles looked at Tesa.

— I heard him.

She raised her eyes.

— Then. He said, “Go. I’ve got it.” I heard him and told myself he was covering us. That you were at the door.

— It would have helped if you’d told me I was wrong.

Tesa lowered her hand from the cast.

— I know.

— Now you know.

She took the words without defending herself. Krista’s fingers had gone numb around the edge of the folder. She had read Varren. She had looked at him patiently, using what she had learned from the man who earned his bread from other people’s hands, and had been sure she was seeing the truth.

— He wasn’t lying about the water, she said.

Soles looked at her. Krista heard how the words sounded and shook her head before he could answer.

— I’m not trying to defend him. I… I watched him when he told us why he went in at night. When he said he held the slab. It was true.

In the yard, Varren had looked at the clock only after learning the pages had not been handed over. Not before. Krista remembered the order exactly, and that hurt.

— I read the truth, she said. I just asked the wrong question.

Soles did not answer. Maxim rose from the bench more heavily than he had sat down.

— Where is he now? he asked Krista.

— He said he was coming here.

— Did he leave when you did? Maxim asked.

— I saw him come out of the yard. He went the other way.

— I’m going to his place.

— I’m coming with you, Maxim said.

Tesa pushed away from the door.

— Soles…

— I’m not going there to hit him.

The words came out harsher than he intended. He looked at her, then lowered his voice.

— I want to see if he’s home.

— The investigator needs to know what he told us, Krista said.

Soles looked at the folder she still held.

— Tell him.

He turned to the office and knocked once. When the investigator opened the door, Soles told him where they were going. Varren’s name sounded strange in the room full of files.

The investigator held him in the doorway for a moment.

— You read a description and an order. That’s all we have for now.

— I know.

— If he’s there, you call me.

Soles nodded. The investigator looked at Maxim, who nodded too.

At the exit, Tesa caught up with them.

— After we talk to him, we’ll come too.

Soles held the door until Maxim went through. He did not tell Tesa not to come. He did not turn toward her either.

In the truck, Maxim lowered the sun visor even though the sun was not in his eyes. He needed a piece of road without faces in it.

Soles noticed.

— You still see them?

Maxim nodded.

— Which ones?

— All of them.

Soles turned his gaze back to the windshield.

— Pull over if you can’t drive.

— I can.

After a few moments, Maxim added:

— If I can’t anymore, I’ll stop.

It was the answer Soles had asked for, and one Maxim would once have turned into a joke. He left it alone.

— You don’t have to decide right now what you believe about him, he said.

— I haven’t decided.

— Good.

— He was in our house after the funeral.

Maxim did not answer.

— And at Dad’s locker, Soles continued. I kept trying to figure out who had been there before me.

— You asked.

— Yes.

Soles looked at his bandaged hand resting on his knee. In his mind he saw the empty locker, the shelf, and the space left by the things taken from it. Something else was missing from the memory too. He knew he had once stopped over one particular thing. He no longer knew what it had been.

He tried to move closer to the thought and found nothing behind it.

Maxim stopped the truck a few houses from Varren’s gate. They both got out. Soles went first.

The gate stood ajar.

— Varren?

No one answered. The pool pump hummed beneath the stone at the edge. On the table under the eaves sat the toolbox, a small part, and a screw. The chair was empty.

Maxim knocked on the house door twice, then went around to look at the back. Soles stayed by the pool.

He knew the place before he looked at it. Beneath the stone ran the pipes he had laid. He knew where they met, where he had made the joint Varren had made him check twice, and which slab could be lifted without moving the others. He had worked here with his own hands.

The bench stood against the edge of the pool. Soles placed his good palm on the backrest.

He remembered how many times Varren had lifted the bench to check whether water had appeared beneath it. He had access to that place without having to explain to anyone what he was looking for. Soles thought of the things taken from his father’s locker. He still did not know what he hoped to find; he decided to look.

Maxim came back.

— He’s not out back. The door’s locked.

Soles slid his hand down from the backrest to the end of the bench. Beneath its weight he recognized the joint he had made.

— What are you looking for? Maxim asked.

— The pipe access.

Maxim looked at the pool.

— Under the bench?

— I built it.

Soles dropped to one knee and regretted it immediately. He stayed still until the stab of pain passed, then reached his fingers beneath the edge of the wood. He found the recess where he could grip the cover.

Maxim caught his arm.

— Show me.

Soles showed him where to lift and where to hold. The bench came free of the stone with a short sound. Maxim leaned it against the wall, and Soles pulled up the hatch cover.

Inside, it was dry. Beside the pipes, on the stone clear of the joints, lay a small notebook.

Soles did not pick it up at once.

Dark cover, page edges bent from use. No place where he had seen it before came to mind. The blank stayed blank.

— Is that it? Maxim asked.

— I don’t know.

Soles took it out and opened it on the bench.

He recognized the handwriting.

He bent over the first page. Shifts, times, short notes written wherever there was room. His father pressed harder on numbers than on letters. Soles ran a finger along the edge of the paper without touching the ink.

— It’s Dad’s.

Maxim crouched beside him.

Soles turned the pages slowly. He found days when Kale had worked, days when he had swapped shifts, and one marked only “Off.” Beneath it was a note of several lines.

Varren, S.’s client, came looking for me at the port. Asked about shifts. I told him.

Soles read it again, then turned the notebook toward Maxim.

Maxim read it. He said nothing.

The pump stopped. Soles looked at the raised bench, the dry place beside the pipes, and the table where Varren had left the screw.

The notebook had been here.

While Soles searched, while he forgot what he was searching for, while Varren listened to him talk about the empty locker, the notebook had been here.

Maxim called Tesa and told her where they were.

— They’re close, he said when he hung up.

Soles closed the notebook and held it out.

— You keep it.

Maxim put it in the inside pocket of his coat. When he bent to lift the hatch cover, Soles caught his arm.

Something had changed in the wall beside the gate. Soles felt the pressure before he found it. Another weight was coming through the house.

— Leave the bench, he said.

Maxim straightened beside the open hatch. An engine sounded at the gate, then Krista’s voice.

— Don’t come in! Soles shouted.

The man came out of the wall before he finished. His coat was streaked with rust from the shed roof. He rushed Soles, going around Maxim without looking at him.

Soles stepped back. His heel touched the edge of the open hatch. He shifted his weight and took the blow on his arm, too close to the rib. The air went out of his chest. The man caught his coat, and Soles drew the blade.

The blade appeared between them. The Hunter changed his grip at once: he released the coat and seized Soles’s wrist.

Maxim hit him from the side. The man staggered but did not release Soles. The second came out of the house wall and struck Maxim behind the knee. Maxim fell beside the bench, his ankle twisting beneath him.

Tesa came through the gate and struck before the second man could turn. Her fist caught him beneath the ear. The man crashed into the table; the toolbox fell open.

Krista came in after her and pulled the gate wide.

— Maxim, toward me!

He tried to get up. His leg would not hold him. He crawled to the chair beneath the eaves and pulled himself upright by the backrest.

Beside the pool, Soles could feel his fingers being forced open one by one. He twisted the blade outward. The Hunter struck him in the cheek with his forehead. Soles kept the hilt in his palm and braced his free hand against the pool stone. Blood ran from his nose over his lips.

He could have pushed with all his strength. He could feel the pool beneath his free hand, the masonry, the weight of the water. One wrenching movement and the place he had built would have come apart with them inside it.

He did not push.

He lowered the blade, tucking his elbow against his body, and let the man think his arm was giving way. When the Hunter pulled, Soles stepped with him. He got under the shoulder and drove it into the upper arm.

The Hunter made a short sound. His grip loosened. Soles tore the blade free and retreated to the water’s edge.

A crack came from the table. Tesa had blocked a blow with the cast. The other man caught her by the collar and drove her toward the wall.

Krista picked up the toolbox from the ground.

The man saw the movement and turned toward her. Krista raised her eyes over his shoulder toward the gate.

— Now! she shouted.

His gaze flicked that way for a moment. His shoulder turned after it, while his front knee remained under all his weight. Krista tightened her grip on the box.

There.

The single word was clear and close. Krista saw the weight on the forward knee. She chose what to do with it. She swung the toolbox with both hands into the forward knee. Metal struck bone. The man folded, and Tesa tore his hand from her collar and hit him again with her good fist across the face.

Krista remained with the toolbox raised. Her arms were trembling. The lie had come out so naturally that, for a moment, it had pleased her.

The Hunter Soles had wounded withdrew toward the wall. The other tried to follow, but Maxim put the chair in his way. The man struck the backrest, broke it, and dropped to one knee.

Soles came toward him with the blade clenched in his fist.

The Hunter looked at the blade, then at the four of them. He pushed off on his good leg and reached the wall. The stone swallowed his shoulder, his head, the hand stretched behind him.

Soles stopped two steps from the empty place.

Tesa listened first, breathing in short breaths. Nothing else moved.

— We’re leaving, she said.

Maxim checked his coat pocket for the notebook. When he tried to put weight on his leg, his face went white.

— I’m not driving, he said.

Krista set the toolbox down.

— My car’s at the gate.

Soles still held the blade. He looked at the blood on it. Tesa handed him a rag from the table. He took it without meeting her eyes.

Maxim gave Krista the notebook, open at Varren’s name. Tesa read over her shoulder.

— It was under the bench, Maxim said.

Krista looked at the paler rectangle of dust on the dry stone where the notebook had lain.

— We take it to the investigator.

Out of habit, Soles bent toward the hatch cover, then stopped and straightened.

Tesa and Krista walked Maxim to the car between them, in short steps. Soles remained last in the yard.

The screw Varren had not managed to put back was still on the table.

Soles looked at it and remembered the bread from the night before. Varren had given him the end with the thicker crust without asking whether he wanted it. He knew.

Tesa called to him from the gate.

Soles turned his head. She was waiting with one cheek swollen and the cast cracked. Beyond her, Maxim was trying to get his leg into the car, while Krista held the notebook with both hands.

Soles walked toward them. He did not close the gate.