Chương 6
Caleb exhaled.
“A video.”
“What video?”
“I recorded Sutter after Rourke drove away.”
Lena closed her eyes for a moment.
“You just said Rourke drove him away.”
“He came back.”
“When?”
“Twenty minutes later. He said Sutter had forgotten something.”
“What?”
“The gun case.”
“Did Sutter come inside?”
“No. I went out to the car.”
“And recorded him?”
“He asked me to.”
“What did he say?”
“That Vale had ordered him to sign corrected inspection forms for Harrow Street. That he refused. That Vale hit him.”
“Why didn’t you give that video to police?”
“He told me to keep it unless something happened.”
“Something happened nineteen days ago.”
“I thought he was hiding.”
“Luis Ortega died two days ago.”
Caleb’s voice cracked. “I know.”
“Was the video stored anywhere else?”
“I sent it to myself.”
“Which account?”
“My personal email.”
“Can you access it now?”
A long pause followed.
“I deleted it.”
Hollis turned away and muttered something under his breath.
Lena pinched the bridge of her nose.
“From the trash folder too?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Vale called me after Sutter was reported missing. He said people who spread false accusations could lose their licenses.”
“Did he mention the video?”
“No.”
“But you believed he knew.”
“Yes.”
Lena looked at the empty space in the duffel.
“Did you destroy any other copy?”
“No.”
The old tablet had become more important than the gun.
By midnight, a judge had signed warrants for Caleb’s email account, the fire department’s network records, and Battalion Chief Egan’s city vehicle. Officers found Egan at home. He surrendered his keys and denied entering Caleb’s apartment.
When shown the neighbor’s identification, Egan changed his account.
He said Vale had ordered him to retrieve city property.
When asked for the order in writing, he said it had been verbal.
When asked how he obtained Caleb’s apartment key, he claimed Rourke had given it to him months earlier for emergency welfare checks.
Rourke, interviewed at the county jail in the presence of an attorney, denied ever possessing the key.
He also asked whether Caleb was safe.
Lena sat across from him in a small interview room that smelled of disinfectant and old coffee. Rourke had changed into a gray jail uniform. Without his jacket and badge, he seemed smaller, though still broad enough to crowd the molded plastic chair.
His lawyer, Sheila Benton, was a compact woman with silver bracelets that clicked when she wrote.
“You understand,” Benton said, “that my client is speaking only about immediate safety concerns. He is not waiving his right to silence regarding any alleged evidence offenses.”
“I understand.”
Rourke looked at Lena. “Vale sent Egan?”
“That is what Egan says.”
“Then Caleb isn’t safe.”
“Why?”
“Because Sutter made a recording.”
“You knew?”
“I knew he planned to.”
“Did you see it?”
“No.”
“Did you tell Vale?”
“No.”
“Who knew about the tablet?”
“Everyone at the station knew Caleb took old equipment home.”
“Was the tablet truly wiped?”
“It was supposed to be.”
Benton touched Rourke’s wrist. “Stay within the safety issue.”
Rourke ignored her.
“Old tablets cached inspection forms,” he said. “Sutter used them on site before the department changed systems. If he opened Harrow Street files, copies might still have been stored locally.”
“Copies of what?”
“The original violation reports.”
Lena placed photographs of the forms from Rourke’s locker on the table.
“Are these originals?”
“Photocopies.”
“Whose handwriting?”
“Sutter’s on the first two. Not on the corrected form.”
“Who created the corrected form?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why were these in your locker?”
“Sutter gave them to me.”
“When?”
“The night he was hurt.”
“You told the missing-person detective you had not spoken to him for a week.”
“Yes.”
“Why lie?”
Rourke stared at the forms.
“Because I had spent thirty-two years learning what happened to people who accused senior officers without proof.”
“And in those thirty-two years, did you ever become one of the senior officers people were afraid to accuse?”
Benton’s bracelets stopped moving.
Rourke leaned back.
“That’s not a safety question.”
“No.”
“Then I’m done.”
Lena gathered the photographs.
As she stood, Rourke said, “Vale didn’t start the fire.”
She paused.
“How do you know?”
“He wouldn’t risk flames. He likes paperwork because paperwork burns people slower.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the warehouse was already a death trap. He only needed everyone to believe nobody had known.”
Outside the jail, Lena found Benton waiting beneath a fluorescent security light.
The lawyer pulled her coat closed against the night air.
“He is not a good liar,” Benton said.
“He maintained one for nineteen days.”
“He is not a good liar when the lie belongs to him. He is excellent when he thinks he is protecting someone.”
“Did he authorize you to tell me that?”
“No.”
“Then why are you?”
“Because he believes accepting blame is the same as taking responsibility.”
Lena put her hands in her pockets.
“Isn’t it?”
“No. Sometimes it is just vanity with bruises.”
Benton walked toward the parking lot, then stopped.
“His wife left him Monday,” she said. “She was not visiting her sister.”
Lena thought of the reading glasses beside the bowl of keys.
“Why?”
“She found messages from Sutter on the disposable phone. She believed they were planning to expose Vale and that Owen was going to lose his job. He told her she did not understand duty.”
“And she left.”
“She understood it perfectly. She was tired of duty meaning everyone but her.”
The next morning, Lena visited Luis Ortega’s widow.
Elena Ortega lived in a small yellow house near the highway with her adult daughter and two grandchildren. Plastic toys covered the living-room floor. A vase of grocery-store flowers stood beside a framed wedding photograph in which Luis wore a cream-colored suit and looked startled by his own happiness.
Elena did not offer Lena coffee.
She sat at the kitchen table with both hands around an empty mug.
“They said he should have left,” she said.
May you like
“Who said that?”
“The company man. He said Luis was trained to evacuate.”
