Chương 6
His mother had polished one of them before the retirement ceremony. She had complained that he never cleaned anything properly.
Marcus had teased him about the same thing that morning.
You look like you slept in that jacket.
Nate had said, I did.
Marcus had straightened one ribbon with two fingers.
Then Leah called.
Three times.
Nate sat on the closed toilet with his jacket across his knees.
For the first time since the crash, he cried.
Not loudly.
No dramatic collapse.
His face simply stopped cooperating.
He pressed the heel of one hand against his mouth and waited for it to pass.
It did not pass.
Eventually somebody knocked.
“You okay in there?”
It was a man’s voice.
Nate looked at the door.
“No.”
A pause.
“Sorry, man.”
The stranger walked away.
Nate laughed again.
This time the laugh turned into something painful.
He changed into the gray sweatshirt.
When he returned to Ben’s room, his uniform remained folded in the duffel.
Two days passed before Ben was strong enough for investigators to interview him.
During those two days, Marcus never called.
Their mother did.
Elaine Foster was sixty-eight and could turn denial into a moral position.
“Nobody knows what happened,” she told Nate over the phone.
“A drug was put into Ben’s IV.”
“That doesn’t mean Marcus did it.”
“He was in the room.”
“He was worried.”
“Mom.”
“He loves that boy.”
“Mom.”
“He loves you.”
Nate stood beside a vending machine in an empty corridor.
“That isn’t evidence.”
“Don’t speak to me like I’m one of your subordinates.”
“Then stop speaking to me like I’m twelve.”
Silence.
Nate rubbed his forehead.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you aren’t.”
“I’m not.”
She sniffed.
“Your father used to accuse people when he was scared.”
“Don’t.”
“You sound like him.”
Nate closed his eyes.
It was a low blow.
Effective because it was low.
“Marcus protected you from him,” Elaine continued.
“I know what Marcus did for me.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“He gave up half his life.”
“He also may have tried to drug my son.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No.”
Nate opened his eyes.
“That’s the problem.”
His mother began to cry.
Quietly.
Nate hated that he could identify the moment she started crying even when she tried to hide it.
“I can’t lose both my boys,” she said.
Nate stared at a package of peanut crackers behind the vending-machine glass.
One dollar and seventy-five cents.
He had no idea why he noticed the price.
“You may not get to choose.”
The child interviewer met with Ben while Nate watched from another room.
He was not allowed to participate.
Ben wore hospital pants, a T-shirt Rachel had bought him with a cartoon shark on it, and one yellow sock because he had lost the other.
The interviewer asked simple questions.
She spent a long time talking about school.
Ben complained about multiplication tables.
Nate almost lost patience.
Then he understood what she was doing.
She was making sure Ben could tell the difference between knowing, guessing, and remembering.
When they finally reached Marcus, Ben became quieter.
“Uncle Marcus came in when the nurse left.”
“How do you know it was your uncle?”
“He’s my uncle.”
“What does he look like?”
Ben described the beard.
The green uniform.
The small scar under Marcus’s chin from when he fell off a bicycle at thirteen.
Nate had been five when it happened. He remembered Marcus bleeding into a towel and telling him not to wake their mother.
“What did your uncle do?”
“He looked in Mom’s bag.”
“What bag?”
“The blue one.”
Nate knew it.
Leah’s canvas tote.
It had been recovered from the crash.
“What happened next?”
“He asked me where she put it.”
“What did you say?”
“I said I didn’t know.”
“Did you know?”
Ben hesitated.
Nate stopped breathing.
“I knew where she hid something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know what it was.”
“Did your mother tell you?”
“She said it was boring grown-up stuff.”
“Where did she hide it?”
Ben picked at the shark on his shirt.
“In Dad’s thing.”
“What thing?”
“The picture.”
Nate’s mind moved immediately to a dozen photographs.
Then Ben said, “The one he won’t throw away even though Mom hates it.”
Nate knew.
His academy graduation photograph.
Not the framed portrait his mother displayed.
The ugly panoramic print of his graduating class, nearly four feet long, kept rolled inside a dented aluminum map tube.
Leah hated it because Nate had carried the thing through six moves and never once displayed it.
Why do we still own this?
History.
It’s sixty men with identical haircuts.
History can have identical haircuts.
The tube sat on a shelf above the workbench in their garage.
Ben said Leah had opened it three nights before the crash.
“She put something inside?”
Ben nodded.
“Did you see what?”
“No.”
“Did she say why?”
“She told me if Uncle Marcus asked, I should say I didn’t know.”
The interviewer waited.
Ben swallowed.
“She looked scared.”
Nate placed both hands on the observation table.
The interviewer asked one final question.
“Did your uncle do anything near your IV?”
Ben frowned.
“He touched the bag.”
“Did you see what he did?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I was sleepy.”
“Did he say anything?”
Ben’s face changed.
“He said, ‘I’m sorry, buddy.’”
Nate looked away.
Sloan stood beside him.
Neither spoke.
When the interview ended, Nate said, “We need to go to my house.”
Sloan shook her head.
“We need a warrant.”
“It’s my house.”
“And potentially evidence connected to multiple investigations.”
“I can give you permission.”
“You can.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
“For you to understand that if we do this correctly, your permission is documented, the search is documented, and nobody gets to say later that evidence was planted by a grieving husband trying to destroy his brother.”
Nate looked at her.
“You really do ruin everything.”
“Yes.”
It took another hour.
Nate rode with Ortiz.
May you like
Sloan followed with two investigators.
Police had already driven past the house several times since the hospital confrontation, but nobody had entered.
