Episodul 12 · The Empty Chair

By the time the investigator reached the workshop, Soles was in the ambulance and Maxim was trying to answer questions through a bag of ice.

The paramedic had washed Soles’s hand. A cut opened between his left thumb and forefinger. Under the shirt, the older dressing had loosened and a little blood had come through. Every time someone touched his chest, he waited to be told that he had undone everything the hospital had managed to repair.

— Can you hear me on this side?

The man stood on his left.

— Some of it.

He moved to the right and repeated the question. Soles nodded.

The investigator stopped beside the open doors. Behind him, police were taking the van driver’s details. Someone from the workshop had brought out the sheet Kerr had signed.

— They know him there, Soles said.

— We’re speaking to them.

— He had a gun. The driver saw it.

— I know.

The paramedic asked the investigator to leave room. Soles leaned forward, trying to keep him there.

— He went through the yard.

The investigator put a hand against the door.

— I heard your message. You gave me the address. You told me who he was. That helped. Now let them look at you.

It was the first thing anyone had said that made going to the hospital feel less like abandoning the search.

Maxim climbed in beside him.

At the emergency department, they checked the old wound, treated the hand and kept him until they were satisfied he could go home. The waiting took most of the afternoon. The new bandage left his fingers free; it did nothing for the ringing. He was given instructions he made Maxim listen to as well, because the words kept disappearing when the nurse turned to his left.

He had no new hole in his chest. He repeated that to himself while they waited for the discharge sheet.

Maxim asked something from his left, and Soles answered the question he thought he had heard. His cousin moved to the other side and tried again. This time Soles understood. The adjustment was so small that Maxim made nothing of it. Soles could think of little else until Varren came through the door.

Varren arrived with Soles’s coat.

— Your cousin says you went out to look at a building.

Maxim looked up from his chair.

— We did.

— You inspected it very thoroughly.

No one laughed. Varren put the coat around Soles’s shoulders and sat down without asking for the story yet.

The investigator called while they were still there. Kerr had left through a rear gate before the first officers arrived. His description and the photograph had gone out. The workshop workers were being interviewed, and the signed sheet was being checked.

— And the man who sent him? Soles asked.

— We haven’t established that anyone sent him.

Soles shut his eyes. The correction was fair. He hated it anyway.

— He’s done this before. He knew what to do.

— That doesn’t tell us who was paying him.

— It tells you there could be someone.

— Yes. It could.

He held on to that small agreement until the call ended.

Varren drove them home. Maxim’s truck had been left at the workshop with permission from the police. Nobody suggested retrieving it that evening.

At the house, Lucky barked until Soles spoke. Mina waited beside the step. He bent toward her and stopped halfway, so Maxim lifted her onto his lap after he had sat down.

— There, Maxim said. Management has arrived.

She put her paws on the clean part of his shirt and sniffed the bandage. Soles rested his good hand along her back.

Varren found the kettle. He made tea, put food on plates and left the plates within reach. Only when Soles had eaten something did he ask what Kerr had said.

Soles gave him the words as he remembered them. The invitation to talk alone. The order to put the phone away.

— He wanted something off the phone, Maxim said.

— Or he didn’t want another call, Varren replied.

The photograph lay on the kitchen table where Soles had left the spare copy. Kerr’s face was unchanged by everything he had done that afternoon.

— I should have stayed in the cab, Soles said.

Maxim put down his mug.

— Yes.

— You should have too.

— Yes.

Soles had prepared an argument. The second answer left it with nowhere useful to go.

Maxim leaned forward, the ice wrapped in a dish towel against his face.

— I thought if I got between you, he couldn’t reach you. Then he did. I don’t need you explaining how stupid that was.

— I wasn’t going to.

— You were taking a breath for it.

Varren carried his plate to the sink, leaving them the space beside the table.

— I nearly went after him, Maxim said. Even after the gun. Then I looked down and you were holding my pant leg like you did when we were little.

Soles remembered a crowded market, his cousin walking too fast, Mary telling them to stay where she could see them.

He had not thought about that afternoon for years.

— You always walked too fast.

— You always stopped to look at things.

Maxim’s voice had roughened. He pressed the towel to his nose again.

— Don’t make me choose between chasing him and finding out whether you’re still breathing.

Soles looked at Mina instead of answering too quickly. Her weight was warm and inconvenient against his chest. He wanted his mother to come in and tell him to put the dog down before the tea went over.

The chair opposite him was empty.

The soldier had called after two men who never turned. Soles looked at the towel against Maxim’s face. His cousin had turned back. Chasing Kerr had not been the only thing either of them could have chosen.

— I won’t go after him without telling you, he said.

Maxim lowered the towel.

— Telling me before. It doesn’t count if I can already hear the gun.

Soles nodded. Varren returned with the kettle and asked who wanted more.

Later, after Varren left, Soles sent Krista a short message. He told her what had happened and that the police had her photograph. He still had the originals she had lent him.

I’ll bring them back when you can spare a few minutes.

Her reply came while Maxim was shutting the curtains.

Tomorrow afternoon. And come to the public entrance this time, not after him.