Paige does me the small mercy of answering in my stead. “No, Eddie,” she says softly. “The law does not allow for anything like that.” She gives me a quick look, and I take a breath, look up at the ceiling, keep my eyes there while I go on.
“All right, Ms. Tarjin. Listen.”
“Yes?” I look at her. The excitement of possibility shivers across her face. “Yes?”
“The one thing I can do is, I can call the prosecuting attorney.”
“You can?”
“Yes. Just about—”
“Oh—oh! Will you do that?”
“Just as far as—”
“Can you promise me?”
She clutches my shoulders. I wriggle in her grasp. “Yeah. I mean—sure. I promise. I can say—not as an official, but as a person—I can formally absolve Todd of that one lie, the one he told me.”
“Is that like—” This is Eddie now, trying on an adult voice, a formal persona. “Like not pressing charges?”
“Not exactly,” I say. “Not really. The PA is under zero obligation to listen to me.”
“But they will. They will, though. Right? They will.”
Ms. Tarjin is hugging me. Kelly is her name, I remember that now, Kelly Elizabeth Tarjin. She is pressing her face tightly against my wide chest. My eyes are still on the ceiling. I close my arms around her, just for a second. “It means his sentence, and I mean if the prosecutor agrees—”
“Could be half,” says Eddie.
“Uh, yes. Could be. Yeah.”
Ms. Tarjin lets go. She steps back. Musters a smile, just a hint of one, and I nod, hoping now I can sit down, drink my coffee.
“Okay,” I say, and then Ms. Tarjin reaches up and grabs a small tuft of my thick red beard and tugs it, just enough so I can feel it. I blink, and she lets go, and pats the side of my face. It’s like I’m a wayward animal, and she is—sweetly but firmly—bringing me to heel. I don’t know if I blush or not, but anyway, I feel like I’m blushing.
“And you promise?”
“I do.”
“Okay.”
And then they’re gone. I am aware of Paige looking at me, and of Arlo over at his desk looking at me also, and Mr. Cullers maybe even stirring from his stupor, but I just focus on my white paper bag, taking out the first of the doughnuts and taking a greasy bite.
“That was nice,” says Paige quietly.
I chew. I shrug. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay. I just wondered what the circumstances are that allow for that kind of decision.”
“We’re not talking about it,” I tell her.
“Okay.”
Arlo is smiling at his desk. I can feel him smiling. I scowl, turn to Aysa, press the point: “Okay?”
“Okay.”
I take a sip of my coffee at last. Sweet and lukewarm. “How’s the review going? Of the courtyard stretches.”
“Slowly.”
“All right, then.” I point at my chair, at my desk, at the monitor. “Better get back to it, then.”
“It’s just—”
“What?”
By now I know the look: keen, attentive, hesitant to just burst out with whatever realization she’s locked into, but determined not to let me move on with my life before she’s enlightened me. “Go on, Paige. What is it?”
“I had a bit of a speculation. This morning. I woke up and I just—because of what you found out yesterday, about the homeowner, his affair with the… the policewoman…” She is slowing down, waiting for me to interrupt, to tell her to sit down like I said and watch the damn stretches. Which I should do. I should lean on her with the full weight of my authority, tell her we will speculate further on this matter when I have decided that it has ripened anew for speculation. I’m supposed to be the ballast, after all. The problem is, so far she’s always been right.
“Go on, Ms. Paige. I’m waiting.”
“So we have Crane, right? We have this roofer—this mysterious roofer.”
“Adjectives,” I say, scowling, waving a hand, and she says, “We have this roofer. He’s there early, he’s there off schedule, right? Flat facts. Anomalous.”
I nod, sip the shitty coffee, while she barrels on: he’s early, he’s off schedule, he’s got these missing days, and then, meanwhile, we have the judge conducting an affair with a captain of the police, a big no-no for both of them. Aysa gives all of this to me, ramrod straight and rattling it all off, her whole chain of speculation.
And then the punch line: “I am speculating that Crane was up there on the roof to collect evidence of the affair, in order to blackmail the judge.”
“Or the captain,” I add quietly, and Aysa blinks. She was waiting for me to tell her she is wrong or crazy, but she is neither wrong nor crazy. She’s on to something. Of course she is.
“Yes, right,” she says, surprised. “Or the captain.”
“Okay,” I say. “Good.”
Since the Tarjins left, the room has returned to its usual bustle. Alvaro has taken up his position by the big board, a cigar stub jammed into the corner of his mouth, furiously updating the chart of ongoing investigations. Specs are coming off the elevator and getting on it, slamming drawers, slinging on their shoulder bags to head out into the field, files clutched under their arms. Arlo is a still point in the chaotic universe, hunched at his small desk, making his small notations. “So, Ms. Paige? What do we do now?”
“Are you—asking me?”
“I am indeed.”
I wait. I am trying to hitch her tremendous powers of discernment to operational effectiveness. If she is going to be Charlie, that’s what she needs to do.
“We need to get the reality. The stretches showing his death. That’s key. That’s—right?”
Just at the last moment does her confidence waver; only the little word “right?” comes out uncertain, high-pitched, girlish. I stare back at her evenly, playing the heavy. As if I am one step ahead of her, guiding her along; when in reality I am standing back, letting her go,
