head down on the table and surrendered. The afternoon air is thick; it's difficult to hold her head up in it.
'The guy you shot?' he asks finally. 'That's the only person you ever killed?'
'Yeah.'
'But it's still with you? You still see it.'
'Yes. But there are things I feel worse about.' She pictures Rae-Lynn, the one she couldn't save, who spent her last six weeks fucking and doping and falling. Caroline bought Rae-Lynn a sandwich like this once; she can still see the tiny girl wolfing it down.
Clark nods. 'There aren't even names for some of the crimes we commit.'
It hits her like a kick to the side and she wonders for a moment if he can see right through her, to the bone. He is staring at her across the table, that one eye imploring. She would like to dismiss him, to let this whole thing go, pass it on to Sergeant Spivey to deal with Monday morning, and get some sleep. Sleep. But he says things like that and… Jesus. She puts her head down on the table and laughs bitterly.
'What's the matter?' he asks.
'I'm tired, Clark.'
Then she feels his hand on the back of her neck, rubbing it, just underneath her hair. His hand is big and warm; the fingers find strands of tension in her neck and shoulders and he pushes, his hand constricting around the back of her neck. Caroline hears herself sigh. Then she pulls away, snaps upright, and stands.
He looks at his own hand, as if it has acted without his knowledge.
She's surprised to hear what's on her mind come out of her mouth. 'Did you really kill someone, Clark?'
The question catches him. He looks down at the legal pads and runs his fingers along the pages, as if ordering the words, tidying them up. But sometimes there's nothing you can do. He gives up and his hands go back to his lap. He looks up at her and laughs. 'If I hadn't, and if we had met some other way, do you think-?'
She sees the sandwich, the table, the legal pads, the pen, and his hands – a random collection, an idiot's still life.
'Yeah, probably,' she says, without a trace of either flattery or flirtation. And when he doesn't say anything else, she turns and leaves.
3
Alone is easy on the weekends. Usually by this time on Saturday afternoons Caroline Mabry has forgotten that other people even exist, and has settled in front of the television or the computer screen, finally at ease with herself after a week of awkwardness at the office. And so it comes as something of a surprise to see all of these people out on a sunny Saturday, hurrying in and out of their cars, into restaurants and shops. Everything seems so compact and tied down for these people: skis racked on top of their cars, children strapped into safety seats in the back. They all seem to be going someplace, the same place – some active, lively, family place – where everything is buckled down and safe. Compared with these people she feels untethered, flapping all over the place as she wanders through downtown Spokane, the melting snow puddled up on the streets beneath her.
Clark Mason's apartment is in Browne's Addition, a 130-year-old neighborhood of decaying mansions and grand family homes, most of them converted into apartments. She parks in front of Clark's building, an old two-story square, split into four apartments. There are four mailboxes on the paint-chipped front porch; she reads that C. Mason lives in A, on the first floor. One of the other mailboxes is covered with skateboarding stickers and another belongs to a girl named Lisa Miller, who has dotted the i's in both her first and last names with crescent moons.
She peers through the window of Clark's apartment. There is no body. No blood. That's good. Or not. She recognizes the style of furniture as early college – ragged couch, bookshelves made from planks and cement blocks. There are books everywhere, and she feels a twinge, remembers his big hand on the back of her neck, and thinks, Great, I finally meet a guy who actually reads and he's either crazy or a murderer. Or both.
She walks around the side of the house and looks in the windows – a small bathroom with a soap-on-a-rope hanging from the shower, a bedroom with an open futon and a row of suits in a small closet – and then negotiates weeds and old lumber to make her way around to the back, where the porch is clear except for a bowl-shaped barbecue grill and a red picnic table. No blood, no feet sticking out of closets. If Clark Mason did kill someone, he didn't do it here.
When she comes back around to the front of the house, there is a man climbing the porch two steps at a time, an older man in slacks and a polo shirt, maybe sixty, dignified looking, with short gray hair and a day's gray beard. Caroline thinks about the skateboard stickers and the crescent moons and guesses the man isn't here to see those tenants. Sure enough, he walks to Clark's door and pounds on it. 'Clark!' he yells. 'You in there?'
The man turns around and sees her. He has sharp, washed-out blue eyes and that easy quality that attractive older men have. He also has the most drastically cleft chin that she has ever seen, like someone has taken one shot at splitting his head with a maul.
'Excuse me,' she says. 'Are you looking for Clark Mason?'
'Yes.' The man eyes her suspiciously.
Caroline offers her badge. It takes a second to register with him, and when it does, he reaches out and grabs her forearm. 'Oh, my God. Is he okay?'
'He's fine.'
'Oh, good.' He lets go of her arm. 'He left a message on my machine yesterday. He sounded horrible. I was worried.'
'Are you his father?'
'No.' The man regains his dignified air. 'I'm…' But he seems unable to tell her exactly what he is. 'I was his campaign manager. Are you sure he's okay?'
'He's fine,' Caroline says. 'He's down at the station.'
'Thank God,' he says. 'I've been calling him the last two days. Finally I just decided to drive over.'
'Over?'
'From Seattle. I live in Seattle. Clark tried to reach me yesterday. He sounded so desperate. I was worried that… I don't know… he would commit suicide or something.'
'Actually,' Caroline says, 'he says he killed someone.'
The man's jaw drops.
'We found him in an abandoned building, and when we tried to ask him some questions he said he wanted to confess to a homicide.'
'Who?'
'He won't say.'
'No,' he says. 'That's not possible. Clark wouldn't hurt a flea.'
Caroline extends her hand. 'I'm Caroline Mabry. I'm a homicide detective.'
'Richard Stanton.'
It takes a moment for the name to register, for Caroline to remember Susan Diehl's reticence about the name of the man she was sleeping with when she and Clark were married. When Caroline had asked Susan if Clark knew the man, what had Susan said?
'Can I talk to him?' Richard Stanton asks.
'He's down at the station, giving his statement. When he's finished, I'll let him know you asked about him.'
'Look, there must be some mistake. It's inconceivable that Clark could hurt anyone, let alone kill someone.'
'He said he was 'responsible for someone's death.''
Stanton looks at the ground, concentrating, and then he slaps his head. 'Oh, wait. I know what he's talking about. Jesus. That stupid, sweet kid.'
