I said nothing. Diaz walked over to stand between me and O’Malley’s desk.
“When I first interviewed you, Sarah, I asked you if there was any reason someone might have seen you outside Stewart’s house the night he died. You said no.”
“I remember,” I said.
Diaz sat on the edge of the desk, like a teacher having an informal moment with a student after class. “I’m asking you now,” he said, “would you like to reconsider your answer?”
Don’t hesitate here. “No,” I said. “I wouldn’t.”
Diaz looked away, toward the window, then back at me. “We found blood in the carpeting of your car,” he said. “There’s also a diagonal groove in your right rear tire, damage caused by something it ran over. It’s as distinctive as a fingerprint.”
I didn’t say anything, but felt the muscles in my throat work, swallowing involuntarily.
“Sarah, I know what Royce Stewart did to your partner’s daughter. I know that the night Stewart died, you believed your husband was dead and that Shorty had an opportunity to help him and didn’t. There are highly, highly extenuating circumstances here.” He leaned forward until his half-folded hands almost touched mine. “I’m familiar with your record. I know you’re a good cop, Sarah, and I want to help you. But we’ve come to the point where you need to tell me what happened that night. If you don’t come out and meet me halfway, I can’t help you.”
In that moment, I wanted to tell Diaz the truth, and for the worst of all reasons. Not because I feared what would happen to me if I continued to obstruct justice, as I had been doing since that night in Blue Earth. Not because he had forensic evidence that might convict me whether or not Genevieve returned to confess. I wanted to tell him solely because I wanted so badly to believe what Gray Diaz was telling me with his words and tone and posture: that he wanted to help me.
I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry, Gray,” I said. “I have nothing further to add to what I’ve already told you.”
Diaz sighed. “I’m sorry, too, Detective Pribek,” he said, standing. “I’ll be in touch.”
Back in the conference room, I couldn’t remember what I’d been doing before. I looked at my notes, and they made no sense to me.
“Are you all right?”
I hadn’t heard Christian Kilander come in. “I’m fine,” I said, turning from the window.
I wasn’t lying. Calm had settled on me unexpectedly, and I understood why. Gray Diaz had made it pretty clear that this was my last chance to level with him. Maybe I should have taken it, but now it was too late. First-time skydivers must feel this way, just after they jump. There are a dozen chances to back out of a dive, but once they’ve stepped out into the air, they’re committed. Whatever happened, safe landing or bloody impact, the weight of decision was off their shoulders. Like them, I’d made my choice. Whatever happened from here on was out of my hands.
Kilander held out a fax. “This came for you, from Rockford,” he said.
I took it from his hand. Certificate of Live Birth, it read at the top.
“Sorry there wasn’t anything else,” Kilander said.
“No, that’s okay,” I said, still scanning the text. “Sometimes one thing is all you need.”
In retrospect, it might have been better if I’d taken some time to think, to sleep on what I’d learned. But I didn’t. At five-thirty that evening, I drove out to the lake.
The weather really was beautiful, a sunny day without a hint of the humid gray scrim that takes the bloom off many of Minnesota ’s summer days. I wasn’t surprised that the Hennessy kids were outdoors on this bright evening.
All four boys had divided up for a football game by the lake. It was an oddly matched game, but probably the best they could do: Aidan and Liam against Colm and Donal. Above them, Marlinchen presided over a grill on the porch, painting sauce onto chicken breasts and wings. She was wearing a white T-back tank shirt, cutoffs, and sunglasses with a copper-wire frame and greenish-silver mirrored lenses, a Discman on her hip. When she saw me, Marlinchen pulled the earphones off her head, to rest around her neck. “Sarah!” she said, looking pleased. “We’re having a little barbecue to celebrate school being out. We’ll probably have plenty to spare, if you can wait.”
She seemed in excellent spirits. That was going to change.
“I’m afraid I’m here on business,” I said.
“What kind of business?” she said.
“Your father has limited ability to answer yes-and-no questions, right?” I said. “That’s how you did the conservatorship hearing, as I understand it.”
Marlinchen glanced immediately up at the high window. “Dad’s resting right now,” she said. “What’s this about?”
“I need to ask some questions only he can answer,” I said. “About your cousin, Jacob Candeleur.”
“I don’t have a cousin named Jacob,” she said. “We don’t have any cousins, period.”
I took the birth certificate from my shoulder and gave it to Marlinchen. I saw Marlinchen absorb the names: Jacob, Paul, Brigitte.
“See the birth date?” I said. “He and you and Aidan were born only months apart.”
“How bizarre,” she said. Puzzlement had washed away the polite anxiety in her voice. “I never met him.”
“Your father didn’t like your aunt Brigitte, and kept her away from his children,” I said. “But it isn’t true that you never met your cousin Jacob. You grew up with him. He became your closest friend.”
“What are you saying?” But Marlinchen was beginning to understand. Her eyes went to the tall blond boy beneath us, who was letting Donal outrun him for a touchdown.
“That’s not your brother Aidan down there,” I said. “It’s your cousin, Jacob. Your father didn’t give him away to Brigitte when he was 12,” I said. “He gave him back. Aidan, I mean Jacob, said that Brigitte was affectionate and clingy, as if she’d always wanted to be a mother. And she did. To her own son.”
Marlinchen took off her sunglasses to make eye contact. “Is this some kind of a sick joke?” she asked. She enunciated as if speaking to a child. “There’s a rather gaping hole in your theory, you know. If that’s Jacob, where is the real Aidan?”
This was the hard part. “If I had to guess,” I said, “I’d say he’s buried under the magnolia tree.” I pointed. “I think he shot himself with your father’s gun, fourteen years ago, and your father buried him under your mother’s favorite tree. The choice of burial site was probably a misguided way of comforting her.”
“No,” Marlinchen said.
“You have memories of it: a loud noise, your mother being upset and sleeping in the same bed with you that night. For comfort.”
“It was a storm that upset her,” Marlinchen said.
“No,” I said. “You all say your father didn’t have any interest in cars or home improvement. Yet he laid the new carpet in the study himself, and he’s held on to a car for fourteen years saying he might fix it up someday. Fourteen years, Marlinchen.”
“What’s your point?”
“When Aidan shot himself, your father rushed him to the hospital in that car. The carpet in the study he simply replaced, because it was soaked in blood. The smaller splashes, in the hall carpet, he scrubbed out with bleach. But the car, where Aidan lost most of his blood? He couldn’t ever fully clean that up. That’s why he was afraid to ever get rid of the car. Afraid that a buyer might find remnants of blood, under the seats, in the carpet and floorboards. Ditching the BMW and claiming it was stolen would only have made it worse; it would have made the car of interest to the police if it was ever found. No, the safest thing was to clean it up as best he could and lock it away on his own property.”