Episodul 48 · The Fifth Cup

On Monday evening, Soles’s kitchen was too small for five people who did not know what to do with their hands.

Maxim stood leaning against the refrigerator, arms crossed. Tesa sat on the windowsill, hood up though the house was warm. Krista sat at the end of the table with the slim folder closed before her and her hands resting upon it. Varren cut bread on a board into even slices and laid them on a plate in the middle of the table, though no one was eating.

Soles told them everything. Kerr’s request. The time. The two pages.

— Two pages, Maxim repeated. Kerr. Who hasn’t written two pages in his life.

— Maybe he wrote them with his left hand, Tesa said. Looks more sincere.

Tesa hadn’t even expected anyone to laugh.

— The supplier asked for a permanent change of driver, Maxim said. He told the depot today.

He looked at Soles.

— The pump works fine.

No one commented. Varren cut another slice and handed it to him without a word. Maxim took it and sat holding it, uneaten.

— Kerr knows who sent him, Tesa said after a while. And whoever sent him knows Kerr knows.

Varren set the knife down beside the board.

— Then Kerr is the safest man in the city, he said. He’s locked up. Guarded. No one can get to him.

Soles thought of the locked rooms in Elias’s photographs. He had wanted to go today; the investigator could only arrange tomorrow. He did not like hearing how safe Kerr was from someone who sounded so certain.

Tesa raised her eyes to him from the windowsill.

Maxim checked his watch. Krista kept her hands on the closed folder.

— Who else knows about tomorrow? Tesa asked.

— The investigator. The people at the detention center.

— And?

— And his lawyer. That’s procedure.

Tesa clenched her jaw. She looked out the window into the dark yard, as if searching it for a gray car.

— His lawyer, she said. The tidy one.

— I can’t stop him from finding out, Soles said. That isn’t my decision.

— I know it isn’t.

Krista pushed the folder a little farther onto the table.

— I have the name, she said. Of the second signatory. I’m not telling you tonight. After Soles speaks to Kerr. If Kerr names someone, I want to compare the names without having put mine in Soles’s head first.

— Methodical, Maxim said.

— Careful, Krista said. It isn’t the same thing.

She had barely looked at Soles since arriving. He had left the chair beside her empty.

Varren slid the plate of bread closer to her.

— Tomorrow at ten, he said calmly. And by eleven we’ll know more than we know now. It’s the first time we’ve been able to say that.

Maxim nodded. Krista nodded too, without raising her eyes. Tesa watched Varren from the windowsill, her head against the cold glass, and did not nod.

At nine forty on Tuesday, the investigator was waiting for Soles on the steps of the detention center, not inside.

Soles saw him from the gate. He stood with his hands in his pockets, staring at the gate as though waiting there could make the visit possible.

In the parking lot, a gray car eased out between the others. Its rear plate was half caked with mud. Soles stopped and watched it until it disappeared around the corner of the building. No one waved at him this time.

— Kerr is dead, the investigator said.

Soles did not move.

— At six, in his locked cell. The guard reports no visitors during the night. No visible injury. The preliminary opinion is his heart. There will be an examination.

— The pages.

The investigator looked away.

— We didn’t find any pages.

— He wrote two pages. You told me.

— The guard told me he asked for paper and a pen and sat bent over them until late. That much I know. In the morning, the pen was on the table. The paper wasn’t. Not in the cell, not among his things, not in the wastebasket by the door.

The investigator took one hand out of his pocket and passed it over his face.

— We’re searching. Perhaps he destroyed them.

— Before a visit he asked for?

— He could have changed his mind, the investigator said.

— I know he asked to see me. Only me. I know he wrote two pages he wouldn’t give to anyone else. And I know that by morning both he and the pages were gone.

The investigator looked back toward the locked doors.

— They’re treating his confession as the whole answer to your parents’ deaths. I have no other suspect I can put before them. I’m sorry.

Soles turned and walked down the steps.

He stopped beside the space the gray car had left. He pressed a hand against his chest and felt his own heart beating. Kerr had been alive yesterday. So had the words on those pages.

Not until I find out who did this.

The key had been in his hand. For one night. One whole night.

That evening they gathered at Soles’s house again. No one had suggested it. They simply arrived one after another, without calling first.

Maxim had come back from work early. He stood in the kitchen doorway, truck keys still in his hand.

— I should have come with you.

— You couldn’t have changed it, Soles said.

Maxim sat down as though his knees had only just accepted that.

Tesa came with her hands in her pockets and her face white. She did not sit on the windowsill. She sat at the table, in the chair nearest the door, and kept her jacket on.

— They killed him, she said. I don’t care what the doctor says. They killed him so he couldn’t talk! And now no one will ever talk.

Krista came last. She draped her coat over the chair back and sat at the end of the table, as she always did. She took a piece of paper folded twice from her pocket and placed it in the middle of the table beside the empty bread plate.

— The name, she said. Don’t read it yet. I’m not sure I want anyone to read it anymore.

No one reached for the paper.

Varren had arrived between Tesa and Krista. This time he had not brought bread, only the folding chair, which he unfolded by the corner of the table. He went to the stove, put the kettle on, and waited in silence for the water to boil, his back to them.

Varren filled the mugs. Soles’s was the one with the chipped handle. He set it before him without asking.

He kept the fifth in his hand and sat down.

No one spoke. Tea steamed in five mugs. The folded sheet lay white in the middle of the table, and no one looked at it for more than a moment.