Episode 3 · What He Saw

The investigator arrived the next morning with a photograph of Soles’s gate.

He asked permission before placing it on the blanket. Soles appreciated that until he saw the dark patch on the path.

— We can stop whenever you need to, the investigator said.

— I want to remember his face.

— Then start before you saw him.

Varren had gone to the workshop. The chair beside the bed was empty, and Soles found himself looking at it before he turned back to the photograph.

He described the bus, the drawing, the dogs. At the kitchen door, the words became harder to put in order. The man had been standing still. Soles remembered that clearly. The pistol had come up after he entered the yard.

— Did he say anything?

— No.

— Could he have mistaken you for someone else?

Soles pictured the moment before the shot. The man’s eyes had stayed on his face.

— He saw me.

The investigator wrote that down, then asked about the way the man held the gun. Soles tried to show him and discovered how little movement the bed allowed. He used his free hand against the sheet instead.

When they reached the fall, his breath shortened. The investigator put the photograph face down.

— Take your time.

Soles watched the blank back of the paper until he could speak again.

— He came over to me. He could have fired again.

— But he didn’t?

— Someone called from the street. A window opened. Then he left.

— Did you see which way?

He had seen shoes turning. Beyond that, the gate was a pale gap at the edge of his sight.

— I don’t know.

The investigator waited, giving him room to add something. Soles wanted desperately to fill it. He could almost see the man running toward the main road. Almost was the dangerous part.

— I didn’t see, he said.

They made the description together. Short hair, broad face, dark shirt pushed back from the forearms. The investigator asked him to keep certainty separate from anything he might have built around it afterward.

— You’ll show me photographs?

— When we have something useful to show you.

— How long?

— I won’t invent a date for you.

The answer irritated him. He also believed it.

Before leaving, the investigator asked about Kale’s work and the people who had visited the house. Soles began with the workshop, then his father’s crane shifts. His parents had worked, bought groceries, argued over plants growing through the fence. He tried to find the part of their lives that could have brought a gun into the yard.

The investigator listened without offering him one.

— If you remember someone asking about their movements, call me. Even if it seems ordinary.

He left a card beside the water cup.

Soles picked it up as soon as the door closed.

He entered the number into his phone and saved it. His thumb hovered over the call button. For now, he had nothing more to give the man. That would have to change.

Maxim came that afternoon carrying clean clothes and a charger with the cable tied in an angry knot. He was broad through the shoulders, with a square face, short dark hair and a neck that made every shirt collar look too tight.

— Hospital chairs, he said, testing the seat before sitting. Built by people with a grudge against visitors.

His cousin had oil beneath one nail. They had grown up together and now worked for the same firm: Soles on fitting and repairs, Maxim on deliveries and collections. They were cousins; neither had ever found the distinction from brothers particularly useful.

— How are the dogs?

— Lucky thinks I’ve moved in. Mina is reserving judgment.

Maxim showed him a video. Lucky walked through the kitchen with one of Soles’s slippers. Mina followed closely, pretending to be concerned about the theft. His mother’s apron hung from its usual hook.

Soles stopped the video before Maxim could turn toward the back door.

— Thanks.

Maxim put the phone away and began untangling the charger. He let the silence last.

— Did anyone ask you about Dad? Soles said eventually. Before Friday.

Maxim’s fingers stopped at the knot.

— What do you mean?

— His work. When he’d be home. Anything.

Maxim thought about it properly. Soles could see him going through the days, resisting the temptation to offer something just because he needed it.

— Nobody I can remember. I’ll ask at the port.

— The neighbors too. Somebody might have seen a vehicle.

— The police are doing that.

— Ask anyway. Then tell them what you find.

Maxim finished the knot and plugged the charger in.

— All right. But you’re staying in that bed while we do it.

Soles wanted to argue. The effort of the morning had left him trembling beneath the blanket. He hated that Maxim could probably see it.

— I need a picture of him, he said. Something better than what I can remember.

— Then work with the man who can help you make one.

He tapped the investigator’s card, gently enough that it stayed where it was.

That night, Soles found the garden without crossing the emptiness first.

He stood beneath the tree. Its trunk was dark gray, the grooves edged with a steady, low light. Above him, thin branches divided against a sky in which a few distant points shone.

He remembered the gun now.

He pressed a hand against his chest. The breath came easily here, and that frightened him almost as much as the pain waiting in the hospital. He crouched beside a cluster of narrow leaves and tried to close his fingers around them.

They passed through his hand.

Soles moved to the stone at their base. The marks he had almost read before lay clear beneath the light of the tree. A name, though it meant nothing to him.

He looked across the garden. Little stones stood among the plants, some half hidden beneath stems. Names everywhere. He reached toward the nearest flower and found the same emptiness.

A faint glow caught his eye beside the roots.

One small plant stood apart from the others. Its leaves were narrow and bent close to the ground. Light ran through the stem, weak enough that he had mistaken it for a reflection.

Soles extended one finger and stopped a breath short of the leaf.

He held his breath and looked down at the stone.

Leonatus.