Miracle Creek(32)

After a moment, Abe said, “You’re no more a suspect than anyone else.”

What did that mean? Abe said things like this a lot, things that were meant to be reassuring but, really, when you thought about it, left wiggle room the size of a cathedral. Like after the police investigated Pak for negligence and Abe said, “You’re as good as cleared.” You were either cleared or not—how could anything other than actually cleared be as good as cleared?

Abe continued. “There are some … inconsistencies. The insurance call, for one. Did you make it?”

“No,” Pak said. Young wanted to shout at Pak to elaborate, to say he had no reason to call because he already knew the answer. Before signing, she’d helped him translate the policy, and they’d laughed over the idiocy of American contracts taking multiple paragraphs to say obvious things even children know. She’d specifically pointed out the arson section. (“Two pages saying they won’t pay if you burn down your own property or get someone else to!”)

“You should know,” Abe said, “the company’s retrieving the recording of the call.”

“Good. That will prove I am not caller.” Pak sounded indignant.

Abe said, “Did anyone else have access to Matt’s phone during the morning dive?”

“No. Mary left house at 8:30 for SAT class. Young cleaned up breakfast. I was always alone for first dive, every day. But…” Pak’s voice trailed off.

“But what?”

“One day, Matt said he had Janine’s telephone, and Janine had his telephone. They exchanged, by mistake.” Young remembered. Matt had been upset; he’d almost skipped the dive to get his phone back right away.

“Was this the day of the call? The week before the explosion?”

“I am not sure.”

There was a long silence, then Abe said, “Did Janine know who your policy was with?”

“Yes,” Pak said. “She recommended the company. Same one her office use.”

“Interesting.” Something about this last exchange seemed to break Abe’s caution; his normal fast, up-and-down cadence—the vocal equivalent of merry-go-round horses—returned. “Now, this other business of your neighbor. Did you leave the barn that last dive?”

“No,” Pak said. His unequivocal denial made Young flinch, wonder who she’d married, this man who could lie so effectively, absolutely, with no hesitation.

“Your neighbor says he saw you outside for ten minutes before the explosion.”

“He is lying or his memory is wrong. I check electric lines that day, many times, check if power company is there to fix. But always during breaks. Never during dives.” Pak sounded confident, almost arrogant.

Abe, his stiffness fully broken, said, “Listen, Pak. If there’s anything you’re not telling me, now’s the time. You suffered a major trauma. It’s enough to make anyone fuzzy. It’s natural to get a few things wrong. You wouldn’t believe how many witnesses swear they remember perfectly and tell me X, then I tell them something somebody else said, and bam, they remember something they’d completely forgotten. The important thing is to come clean now, before you’ve testified. You just tell the jury everything the first time, it’ll be fine. You wait until later, though, that won’t fly. Suddenly, the jury wonders, What’s he hiding? Why’d he change his story? Then bam, Shannon screams there’s their reasonable doubt, and everything falls apart.”

“That will not happen. I am telling the truth.” Pak’s voice rose, got louder.

“You have to realize,” Abe said, “your neighbor’s very convincing. He was on the phone, telling his son about you fooling with the balloons in the power lines and whatnot. The son verified it. The phone records match up. Your story and theirs can’t both be true.”

“They are wrong,” Pak said.

“Now, what I can’t figure out,” Abe continued as if Pak hadn’t spoken, “is why you’d fight this. That’s a golden alibi right there, a neutral party verifying you were nowhere near where the fire started. Shannon can yell and scream all day long about you not opening the hatch, but none of that changes the fact that Elizabeth set the fire. So for my purposes, getting that woman in prison, I’m fine with what Spinum says. What I’m not fine with is you lying about it. Because you lying about anything makes me wonder what you’re covering up, you know?”

Mary started chewing her hair again, the sound of her teeth gnawing on her hair growing louder in the silence, more insistent, matching the rhythm of Young’s crescendoing heartbeat in her ears.

“I was in the barn,” Pak said.

Mary shook her head. Her face was one big frown, scrunched in agitation, and the scar across her cheek popped out, puffy and white. “We need to do something. He needs help,” Mary said in English.

“Your father told us to do nothing. We must do what he says,” Young said in Korean.

Mary looked at her, her mouth open as if to say something but unable to produce a sound. Young recognized the look. Right after Pak came to America, when he told them he’d decided to move them to Miracle Creek, Mary had fought with him, cried and yelled that she didn’t want to move to the middle of nowhere where she knew no one. When Pak scolded her for disrespecting her parents’ authority, she’d turned to Young. “Tell him,” she’d said. “I know you agree with me. You have a voice. Why can’t you use it?”