Chương 5
Mina watched him choose each word.
It was not guilt by itself.
She knew that.
People became careful around police for all kinds of innocent reasons.
Still, the carefulness had a shape now.
The medication drawer.
The trash bag.
The certainty about Evelyn’s prescriptions.
The way he had wanted the coffin left closed.
The officer asked for Thomas’s full name and date of birth.
Thomas answered without hesitation.
Then he looked at Mina.
“You should get your hand treated.”
It sounded almost considerate.
That made her dislike it more.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding through the cloth.”
Mina looked down.
He was right.
The white linen around her thumb had turned pink.
The officer gestured toward a chair.
“Sit down before you pass out.”
“I’m not going to pass out.”
“You’re pale.”
“I’m always pale indoors.”
Mr. Salazar gave a nervous cough that might have been an attempt not to laugh.
The officer looked at Mina for a moment, then let it go.
“Don’t leave yet.”
“I won’t.”
Thomas said, “I need to get to the hospital.”
The officer turned to him.
“I’d like you to stay until another officer speaks with you.”
“My sister-in-law was just found alive in a coffin.”
“And you were present when she originally collapsed.”
“I already told you what happened.”
“Good.”
The officer’s tone remained neutral.
“Then telling it again won’t take long.”
Thomas looked toward the doors.
For the first time, Mina wondered whether he might actually run.
He did not.
He took out his phone.
The screen lit his face.
His thumb moved quickly.
Mina could not see what he typed.
The officer noticed.
“Please don’t contact anyone involved in the original incident until we’ve spoken to you.”
Thomas looked up.
“I’m texting my wife.”
“That’s fine.”
“I assume I’m allowed to tell her I’ll be late.”
“Yes.”
Thomas put the phone away.
His expression said he disliked needing permission.
Mina sat because her knee had begun throbbing.
The chair was upholstered in gray fabric patterned with tiny silver leaves.
She had noticed the same pattern the day before and thought it looked like hotel furniture.
The absurd memory arrived uninvited.
Evelyn had been in the coffin then.
Mina had stood six feet away and thought about upholstery.
She closed her eyes.
The room tilted.
When she opened them again, Mr. Salazar was holding out a bottle of water.
“Drink.”
“Thank you.”
Her hand shook badly enough that the cap clicked against the bottle neck.
Mr. Salazar unscrewed it for her.
He was a compact man in his late fifties with careful silver hair and the exhausted courtesy of someone whose profession required calm around other people’s worst days.
“I should have listened,” he said.
Mina looked at him.
He stared at the ruined coffin.
“When you told me about the sound.”
“You heard it too.”
“I heard something.”
“You said pipes.”
“I wanted it to be pipes.”
His voice lowered.
“I’ve worked funerals for thirty-one years.”
Mina took a sip.
The water tasted faintly of plastic.
Mr. Salazar rubbed his palms together.
“You hear strange things around caskets sometimes.”
“Like what?”
“Wood shifts.”
He shrugged.
“Air pressure.”
“Knocking?”
His hands stopped.
“No.”
They sat quietly.
Across the room, mourners were being separated into small groups by two additional officers.
Some protested that they had flights.
One man kept insisting he had seen the entire thing even though Mina remembered him arriving only after the axe struck.
A younger woman in black was crying into her phone.
The spilled lilies had been gathered into a damp heap near the wall.
The room no longer looked like a funeral.
It looked like a place where something had gone wrong and nobody yet knew how wrong.
Mina’s phone began vibrating inside the pocket of her orange uniform.
She pulled it out.
Daniel.
She answered immediately.
“Hello?”
For two seconds there was only noise.
Doors.
Footsteps.
A distant announcement.
Then Daniel said, “They’re working on her.”
His voice sounded thin.
“Are you at the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“Is she awake?”
“No.”
A pause.
“They intubated her.”
Mina pressed the phone harder against her ear.
“Did they say why?”
“She’s not breathing well enough on her own.”
His breathing became audible.
“They keep asking what she took.”
Mina looked across the room at Thomas.
He was speaking to another officer now.
“Tell them about the clonazepam.”
“I did.”
“And the migraine medicine.”
“I did.”
“They need to know everything in the house.”
“I know.”
“Daniel.”
“What?”
“Thomas knew the name of the migraine prescription.”
Silence.
Mina wished immediately that she had waited.
Daniel had enough happening.
But the words were already between them.
“He knows lots of things,” Daniel said.
“Does he?”
“What are you saying?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Then don’t do this.”
His voice sharpened.
Mina closed her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“No.”
He exhaled.
“No, I’m sorry.”
Hospital noise filled the gap.
Then he said, “They asked if she could have intentionally overdosed.”
Mina opened her eyes.
“What did you tell them?”
“That she wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t she?”
Daniel went quiet.
It was the wrong question.
Mina knew it as soon as she asked.
People often did not know what the people they loved were capable of in private.
Evelyn had been unhappy.
Not in the dramatic way strangers might imagine from photographs of a wealthy woman in a large house.
Her unhappiness had been quieter.
She stopped finishing books.
She left cups of tea untouched until the milk formed a skin.
Sometimes she sat in the laundry room because it was the only place in the house nobody came looking for her.
But Mina had never seen her behave like someone preparing to die.
Still, that was not proof.
Daniel said, “She was angry with me.”
Mina waited.
“About what?”
“Does it matter?”
“It might.”
Another pause.
“She wanted to leave.”
Mina sat straighter.
“Leave the house?”
“Leave me.”
May you like
The words were flat.
He had already said them to himself enough times that they had lost their edge.
