I was so absorbed in planning out my questions for Blount, and for everyone else I could think of who might be there, that I forgot to eat. Noah came out of his bedroom around nine o’clock, made his way to the kitchen, and put some water on to boil. He took a box of mac and cheese out of the cabinet and asked, “Want some?”
“Oh, sure. Thanks.”
He limped over, sat on the couch, and asked, “You gonna get him out tomorrow?”
I looked at him. He was only half joking.
“No,” I said. “They’ve got what they need to keep him in.”
“So what’s the point?” He sounded angry.
“Well, what I’m there for,” I said, “is to find out everything I can about the evidence they’ve got. I get to cross their witnesses. I get to lock down their testimony, so they can’t change it later to fit any new facts we might dig up.”
He thought about that for a second. “Like what?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Whatever comes up that says Jackson didn’t do it or points to someone else.”
He closed his eyes and took a breath. “Dad,” he said, “I need to tell you something. But you got to promise not to get mad.”
“What is it?”
“I said you got to promise. If you flip out about this, I’ll just, I don’t know. I’ll leave. I’m not putting up with that.”
“I won’t get mad.”
He looked at me. Deciding whether he believed me, I thought. Then he pulled out his phone. “I’d bring this over,” he said, “but it’d be easier—”
I went to the couch and sat beside him. On his screen was a clumsy selfie—I could see part of his thumb over the lens—of him and Jackson laughing. Noah was holding a bong.
I took a deep breath. I was determined not to break the promise I’d just made. The sight of my kid doing drugs again, even pot, was straight-up terrifying given his history. And his mother’s.
I asked, “What’s the time stamp on that? And where was it?”
“Beachside Park,” he said, touching the photo to bring up the date. It said June 6, 10:48 p.m.
“What’s that on his shirt?” I asked. Jackson had on a white T-shirt with what looked like soot marks, as if he’d wiped his dirty hands off on it.
Noah sighed and looked down. “It’s from the, you know, the fire.”
“The ice cream stand?”
“Yeah. He smelled like smoke when he got to the park. You can’t see the beach from where we were, but I’d heard the sirens. He said he might’ve done something stupid, but he was smiling, like he was bragging.”
“You ask him what he meant?”
“Yeah, but he just shrugged it off. He did say something about practicing for Karl. He talked about those Viking funerals, you know, where they set a boat on fire and let it float away.”
“Funeral?” I asked. “He was talking about Karl and a funeral? Goddammit.”
“No, not like that. He’s into all this Viking metal—”
Something in my expression must’ve told him he was going to have to explain that. “It’s, like, heavy metal from Scandinavia. They sing about that kind of stuff, and he’s got a T-shirt with this flaming boat on it. That’s where he got the idea. He said he’d like to do that to Karl’s boat and then be there to see the look on Karl’s face when he found out.”
“Okay,” I said. “So just destroying Karl’s boat?” That would still be a crime, if he’d actually done it. But it wasn’t murder. “And the ice cream stand was practice?”
“I guess.”
I heard the water boiling in the kitchen. “You set here,” I said. “I’ll get it.” I went to dump the macaroni in. I didn’t have high hopes for what a jury would think of testimony that the defendant was talking about using the victim’s boat for a Viking funeral on the very night when, at some point in time that the coroner had not been able to narrow down, the victim died. Especially a jury around here, where one look at those T-shirts decorated with fire and skulls might set them worrying about Satan. I could see it now: Jury concludes local man killed in Satanic death ritual.
When I came back, Noah asked, “So, does that get him off?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I didn’t feel like sharing my view that such evidence might do more harm than good. “It doesn’t get him off tomorrow, anyway. The hearing’s all about their evidence, not Jackson’s defenses.”
“But, I mean, at some point,” he said, “they got to admit if he was setting a fire and smoking a bong, he wasn’t killing Karl.”
“Yeah, they might.”
“They might?”
I shrugged. “I’d have to present that evidence at trial. And that time stamp might be helpful, but we don’t know exactly when Karl was killed.”
“I got some texts too,” he said. “It’s not just that photo, for the time stamps. And his cell phone must know where he was when he texted me. But, Jesus, does he really have to rot in jail for—how far away is a trial?”
“Could be six-plus months, easily.”
“Oh, goddammit. I can’t believe an innocent person could be stuck in jail so long.” He let his head fall back against the couch. His eyes were closed.
I didn’t want to depress him by telling him how many innocent people ended up convicted. Or, for that matter, how much jail time Jackson might be looking at just for the arson.
I stirred the macaroni with a tablespoon, trying not to burn my fingers. Organizing the kitchen had not been my job when Elise was alive, and it was low on my list of priorities now.
From wherever she was, on some other plane or just inside my head, she nudged me. She wanted me to make sure he was okay.
I said, still stirring, “Now, I promised I wouldn’t
