enemies?' she asked.
Nolan frowned. 'Even if I did,' he said, 'what does this do to hurt me? Unless I pulled the pin on one of those grenades, which anybody who knows me knows I'm not going to do.'
'Maybe it's not about hurting you,' Riggio went on. 'Maybe it's about framing you.'
'For what?'
But Freed stepped in. 'Before we get to that,' he said, 'let's go back to your enemies.'
This time, Nolan broke a grin. 'I don't see it, really. I like people. I really do, and they tend to like me. My boss thinks it's a flaw in my character.' He shrugged. 'So I'd have to say no. No enemies.'
'Okay,' Riggio said. 'How about rivals?'
'In business?'
'Business, pleasure, whatever.'
He took his sweet time, savoring the anticipation. 'The only even remotely…' He shook his head. 'No, never mind.'
Freed jumped on it. 'What?'
'Nothing, really. Just a guy I knew in Iraq who used to date my girlfriend. But that was a long time ago.'
'If he's in Iraq,' Freed said, 'he's out of this.'
'Well, he's home now. Here.'
'And he's not over her? Your girlfriend?' Riggio asked.
'I don't know. He had a hard time with it at first, but now I haven't seen the guy in months. But, look, this is a dead end. He's a good guy. In fact, he's a cop. He'd never-'
Freed interrupted. 'He's a cop?'
'Yeah, here in Redwood City. His name's Evan Scholler. He got hurt over there and they let him out early.'
'So he would have had access to these types of grenades over there?'
'Yeah, but he wouldn't have taken any home. He did a few months at Walter Reed before he came out here.'
'Soldiers have been known to send illegal ordnance and contraband stateside as souvenirs on the slow boat,' Riggio said. 'It's a problem. It happens all the time.'
'Well, I don't know what Evan would have…I mean, what's the point of putting hand grenades in my closet? I'm not going to blow myself up with them. It's not like they're going to get rid of me as his rival.'
Riggio and Freed again shared a glance, and again exchanged the imperceptible nod. Riggio came forward, elbows on her knees. 'Do you know a man named Ibrahim Khalil?'
'No,' Nolan said. 'Should I?'
'He was a local businessman with ties to Iraq. He and his wife were killed last weekend.'
'Well, I'm sorry to hear that, but I've been out of town. I haven't heard about it.'
'Would Evan Scholler have known you were gone?'
Nolan shrugged. 'If he knew where I lived, he could have just checked to see if my car was in the garage. If it is, I'm home.'
'Has he ever, to your knowledge, been up here?' Riggio asked.
'No. As I say, we're not exactly pals anymore.' As though it had just occurred to him, Nolan added, 'But he's a cop. He could find out where I live easy enough, couldn't he? That's what it looks like he's done.'
Freed picked it up. 'So Sunday morning early you were with this same girlfriend that this Evan Scholler likes?'
'Tara,' Nolan said. 'Tara Wheatley. And, yes, she's the one. So what's this all about?'
'Those pictures you couldn't identify on your computer?' Riggio said. 'They were pictures of Mr. Khalil's house before somebody killed them and hit it with a fragmentation grenade, and before it burned down.'
'A frag grenade…' Nolan didn't want to overplay his apparent naivete. Both Freed and Riggio knew that he had seen combat, and they might even know more than that. This was about the moment in the interview that, against his own deep-seated reluctance to believe ill of a fellow soldier, he might finally come to accept the apparent truth. So he nodded somberly and met both of their gazes in turn. 'He's trying to set me up. Christ, he killed them, didn't he?'
16
The early evening sun baked the parking lot and the landing outside Tara 's apartment. She could feel its warmth in her hand through the closed and locked front door as she stood behind it. 'I told you, I won't see you. I don't want to talk to you.'
'I need to talk to you, though, T. Please. I need to explain.'
'There's nothing you can say to me. Nothing I'd believe. I can't believe you'd even come by here and try this. You
'No. I've been living the truth. And the truth is that I love you.'
'You don't lie to someone you love.'
'You're right. That was a mistake. I shouldn't have done that. I am so sorry.'
'Sorry's not enough. I don't want to talk about this. I need you to go away now.'
'I can't, T. I can't leave it like this. Could you please open up? Just so I could see you.' When she didn't answer, he went on, talking at the door. 'Listen, I knew you were confused about Evan, especially the timing about how we started. I thought that if you heard he'd been wounded…that you'd feel sorry for him, or like you owed him another chance…and that whatever happened, somehow I'd lose you.'
'And now that's what's happened.'
'I can't accept that, Tara. I didn't think he was going to live. I didn't think it would matter.'
'That's not the question, Ron. You lied to me. Everything we did was false, don't you understand that? If you couldn't stand to have Evan in the picture on any level, even if he was dying, how were we-you and me-ever going to amount to anything anyway?'
'We did amount to something.'
'No, we didn't. That's the worst part. We supposedly trusted each other. Now that can't ever happen again. Don't you see that?'
'Because of one mistake?'
'You really don't see it, do you?'
'I see somebody who was terrified he was going to lose the woman he loved, who wanted to make sure they had some time together without the distraction of a wounded ex-boyfriend, who might never be coming home alive anyway.'
'That's all you thought Evan was to me, a distraction?' The chain lock rattled and the door opened the couple of inches that the chain allowed. 'I'm not going to yell at you through the door anymore. I just need you to go. You're actually scaring me now, all right?'
'How can I be scaring you, T? I'm here begging you just to listen to me, to give me another chance.' He shifted his weight. 'Is it because of him?'
'Do I still love him, you mean? I don't know about that. I lost track of who he was, and now I don't know what I feel. But I know you're scaring me now. And why? Because you lied. And lied and lied.'
'I lied once, T. Once to try to protect what we were starting to have, that's all.'
'No, it isn't, Ron. What about Masbah?'
'What about it?'
'You firing on that innocent family. I Googled you and read all about it. You started that whole thing.'
Ron hung his head, wiped his brow against the glaring heat. 'I was trying to protect the convoy. I thought the car was on a suicide mission. You had to have been there, but I can't apologize for what I did.'
'The report said they'd stopped way back.'
'You can't believe everything you read. It was a damn close call and if I waited another two seconds, we all could have been dead.'
