There was no denying that taken as a whole the facts had a certain heft to them, but the evidence could be configured a variety of ways, telling a variety of stories. When Evan got involved, there was a single outcome, and that outcome demanded certainty before the fact. He lifted his melted drink and wiped the condensation ring with his sleeve, leaving the desk surface spotless.
Morena’s cell phone rattled on the desk, indicating an incoming text.
TMRW NITE. 10. HAVE HER READY.
Evan stared at the words, waiting for his disgust to abate, for his anger to settle into something calm and unbroken. Then he texted back.
I’LL BE WAITING.
5
Other Things
Evan returned his highball glass to the kitchen, washed and dried it, and put it away. The refrigerator contained an array of items, neatly spaced on the clear shelves. He drank a bottle of water as he coated an ahi steak with coriander, paprika, and cayenne pepper and seared it in a pan. When it was ready, he garnished it with a sprig of parsley from the living wall and set the plate down on the island counter, centering it between knife and fork. The fish flaked perfectly beneath the blade. He paused with the bite halfway to his mouth.
The Band-Aid box, visible through the thin plastic of the drugstore bag, glared back at him. Kermit’s big green head, that watermelon-wedge smile.
Evan exhaled. Put down his laden fork.
Picking up the bag, he headed out.
He could hear the ruckus the moment he stepped from the elevator. Blaring TV, a boy’s high-pitched voice, Mia’s admonishments muffled through the door of 12B. The Honorable Pat Johnson stuck his turtle head out of condo 12F, swinging a lazy gaze to Evan as he passed. “I suppose she has her hands full,” the judge said charitably, and withdrew.
Evan’s first two knocks went unheard. He knocked louder, and then the door was flung open.
Mia, hair aswirl, kitchen towel stuffed quarterback style down her sweatpants, stood holding a steaming pot. Behind her, Peter ran laps around the coffee table, up over the couch, and around the kitchen, stirring up a wake of Legos, action figures, and comic books. A manic Daffy Duck cartoon provided an inadvertent score. Stray crayon marks marred the walls from waist level down. Pursuing an imaginary adversary, Peter waved a lightsaber, which emitted a futuristic wail piercing enough to vibrate one’s teeth. He had a coaster over one eye, pirate fashion, secured with what appeared to be duct tape. A bowl of mac and cheese was inexplicably overturned on the counter.
Evan held up the bag for Mia to see.
Hands full, she gestured with her elbows. “Can you just … uh — come in. For one sec. Please. I’m just—” Her head snapped around as her son zoomed past. “Tell me that’s not duct tape.”
Peter halted in his tracks. “If I set a place, can Evan Smoak stay for dinner?”
Evan sat before a bowl of spaghetti with red sauce and a fruit-punch juice box with a bendy straw.
“I’m so sorry,” Mia said. “I forgot to pick up anything else at the grocery store—”
“This is fine,” Evan said. “Really.”
Across from him Peter beamed. His hair was missing a few patches at the sides where Mia had cut the duct tape free. “Wanna see my room?”
“Maybe after dinner,” Mia said.
“It’s that one, there.”
From the Batman stickers, Kobe Bryant poster, and pirate-themed KEEP OUT! sign, Evan had gleaned as much.
“My bedroom is on the same corner,” Evan said. “I’m straight up nine floors.”
“I thought you were in 21A, not 21B.”
Evan hesitated.
Mia produced a quick smile. “He’s got a bigger place, honey.”
“Oh,” Peter said. “You’re richer than us.” Mia took in a gulp of air. Before she or Evan could respond, Peter tilted his arm up, examined a fresh scrape on his elbow. “I need one of the new Band-Aids for this.”
“Another cut?” Mia said. “How’d that happen?”
“Dodgeball.”
“I thought dodgeballs were soft.”
“Yeah, but the ground isn’t.” Peter shot a look over at Evan. “I’m adopted,” he said. “Which sucks, ’cuz I’ll never really know where I came from. My mom couldn’t have babies, because she has poor-quality eggs. My dad died.” His head swiveled back to Mia, who was wearing a frozen simulation of a smile. “Can we get a Christmas tree?”
Evan was still acclimating to the collection of non sequiturs that constituted the conversational patter of an eight-year-old.
Mia tilted her forehead into her hand, clenched her bangs in a fist. “We talked about this, Peter. It’s too early.”
“It’s December fourth!”
“It’ll be dead by the time Christmas gets here.”
“Then we can get another.”
“We’re not rotating trees, Peter.”
And so it continued, Evan taking it in silently. He reached back into his memory to find a reference point for this domestic scene but found nothing.
They finished the meal, and Mia asked Peter to put his laundry away.
As Peter disappeared into his room, Evan rose to help Mia clear. She neither asked for the help nor thanked him for it.
They washed and dried, side by side.
“You’re probably wondering how I afford living here on a DA’s salary,” she said. “My husband’s life-insurance money.”
“Oh,” Evan said.
“It’s nice and safe here.” Mia handed Evan a plate with a few suds still on the back, so he handed it back, and she passed it again through the water. “As a DA I sometimes get threats.”
“Direct threats?”
“Usually it’s shit we pick up online. The idiots these days, they brag about everything on Facebook. What they’ve done, what they’re gonna do. Their accomplishments.”
“That doesn’t seem so clever.”
“If they were smart, they wouldn’t be thugs.” She shrugged. “We live in a celebrity culture now. Or a wannabe-celebrity culture. The name of the game is visibility. If you aren’t tweeted, liked, YouTubed, or Instagrammed, you don’t exist.” She scrubbed hard at a stubborn bit of dried sauce, her hands pinking up beneath the steaming tap. “Fine with me, though. Makes it easier to keep tabs on guys I’ve put away.”
“That ever get scary?”
“Sometimes.”
“Let me know if you ever need me to keep an eye out.”
She smiled, gave him a little bump with her elbow. “You’re sweet. But these guys are killers. Not importers.”
“Good point.”
“How about you?” she asked.
“I’m not a killer.”
“Very funny. You know what I mean.” She circled her hand in the air. “Where are you from? You have family in the area? All that.”
“I don’t have family anymore.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
She handed Evan the last plate, and he dried it and set it in the cabinet. A photo magnet of Peter with a soccer ball pinned a sheet of paper to the refrigerator. It was a handwritten note: “Act so that you can tell the truth about how you act. — Jordan Peterson.”
“What’s that from?” Evan asked.
“A book I read,” Mia said. “I try to post rules from it around the house, change them out every coupla days.”
“That’s a lot to keep track of.”
“It’s a lot of work,” she said, “raising a human.”
Evan flashed on a memory: Jack standing beside him at the firing range, hand on his boy-thin shoulder, assessing his shot grouping.