The Marriage Lie(44)

16

“Five business days?” I say to the female officer behind the Public Request Unit desk, my voice tipping into a light yell that’s only partly from frustration. The Seattle Police Department lobby is a cavernous space of concrete and tile, and the racket of people coming and going makes me wish I’d brought earplugs. “Why does it take five days to make copies of a file from an incident that happened over fifteen years ago?”

“No, five days for us to contact you about your request, and whether or not there will be any charges associated with getting it to you. We’ll also let you know at that time if any records or portion of the records are exempt from disclosure. In that case, they’ll be withheld or redacted accordingly.”

Dave leans an arm on the countertop. “So let me get this straight. Five days until we hear whether or not we’ll be able to get a copy of the police report?”

“That’s correct.”

“Isn’t there any way to expedite the process? Like with an extra fee or something?”

The woman lifts a bushy brow that tells him he better not be pulling out his wallet.

Frustration stabs me between the ribs. Five days from now we’ll be back on the East Coast, and unless we find another lead before then, no closer to finding out why Will boarded that plane. Five days feel like an eternity.

The officer leans to the left, looking around Dave’s shoulder to the man behind us. “Next.”

Dave steps into her line of sight. “What do you need from us to get things rolling?”

She passes us a pile of forms and a pen clipped to a clipboard. “Fill these in.” She lists again to the left. “Next.”

This time we step aside, carrying everything over to a couple of empty chairs by the window. I fall into mine, helplessness pressing down hard enough to make me breathless. “Now what? I’m out of ideas, Dave. Where are we going to look next?”

“Well, we could go back and case the neighborhood again, or maybe try to track down some more classmates. Other folks might have a different story to tell.”

“You think so?”

Dave wrinkles his nose. “Honestly? Both options feel like a wild-goose chase to me.”

“Yeah. To me, too. And now that we have a copy of the yearbook, I can track down those folks anytime. I don’t need to be here to do it. There’s got to be something else, something we’re missing.”

We fall silent, thinking.

I lean back in my chair and replay the conversations with Coach Miller and the old man at the community center, and something about them nags at me. Something one of them said, some detail one of them dropped doesn’t sit right, but my thoughts are like a kitten batting at a ball of yarn. Whenever I’m close to catching it, it rolls away.

I imagine the teenage Will waiting outside that burning building, watching firemen carry his parents out, one of them in a body bag. Was he really surprised to see his father alive, like that old man said? Even after everything I’ve learned about his life here, I can’t imagine Will knowingly set the fire in the hope that his parents would become victims. No matter how awful his parents were, they were still his parents, and they weren’t the only lives he would be putting at risk by lighting that match. The Will I knew would never do such a thing.

And yet, the old man claimed he wasn’t the only one who suspected Will was guilty. Though they couldn’t prove it, the police did, too, enough so they assigned someone to keep him out of trouble.

I sit up straight, pointing my pen to the lobby lights. “That’s it.”

Dave frowns. “What’s it?”

“The old man said that Will was assigned a case officer after the fire. That’s who we need to talk to next.”

“Okay, but how? He never said a name.”

“No, but maybe it’ll be in the police report.”

“It wasn’t in the redacted version I read online, but surely something that essential would be included in the full version. You keep working on those.” He points to the papers on my lap, rising out of his chair. “I’ll go see what I can find out from our friendly lady officer.”

I watch him set off across the lobby, heading back to the ten-deep line at the requests desk with all the nonchalance of a Sunday stroll, and something squeezes in my chest—warmth and sunshine and fraternal love. Dave dropped everything to fly with me to Seattle. He left his job, his husband, his life to cart me around this strange city, to pick me up every time new news about my husband knocks me down. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay him.

As if he feels me watching, he swings back around and makes a writing gesture with his hand. I smile, blow him a kiss, then return to the forms.

I’m starting in on the second page when my cell phone chirps inside my bag, and I scramble to dig it out. After my unfinished conversation with the blocked number, Dave and I agreed I should keep my phone at easy access and the ringer volume high. Whoever the sender is, he likely lived in Rainier Vista at the time of the fire, and he seems to have a very different perspective than what we heard from the old man and Coach Miller. Creepy stalker or not, I want to talk to him. I want to find out what he knows. And so I’m more than a little disappointed when it’s my father’s name that lights up the display.

“Hi, there, punkin’,” Dad says in that easy, steady way of his, and I plug my other ear with a finger so I can hear him. “What’s with all the racket? Where are you?”