Four Live Rounds

“Well, it won’t be a problem anymore, will it?”

“What?”

“Money.”

Swicegood got up without a word, turned off the tape recorder, left the room. When the door closed, Will looked at his watch: 10:47 P.M. His hands shook. His throat closed off.

He’s trying to pin this on you. You could lose your wife and daughter. His eyes ran over as it hit him—Devi could become an orphan. What broke him more than anything, even the prospect of prison and what would happen to someone like him on the inside, was the possibility that he wouldn’t be there for his daughter when the disease finally claimed her. The reality that Devlin would probably die within the next five years was something he looked square in the eye every day. But what he imagined as he sat in that interview room was a dismal morning several years in the future at the maximum-security facility in Florence. A guard would walk down the long corridor to his cell, rouse him, tell him through the bars that his daughter had passed away in the night. He couldn’t fathom anything worse than that. Devi is not dying alone. You cannot let that happen. She is your purpose. Your heart.

The door to the interview room opened. Swicegood sat down across from Will, set a steaming Styrofoam cup of coffee on the table.

He said, “Before we continue, let me say this. This is my job. I operate on instinct. Go where it says go. That’s what I’m doing right now. If you didn’t have anything to do with this, I am so, so sorry. All right, back to business.”

He started the recorder, seemed softer, calmer. Will straightened himself in the chair.

“Look at me, Will.” Everything faded into a distorted darkness except for Swicegood’s eyes. They worked like magnets on Will’s, holding his gaze, his focus, with such intensity that it hurt him to blink. “Somewhere inside of you,” the detective said, “you want to tell me the truth. Been doing this a long time. I’ve seen it in many pairs of eyes, and I see it in yours.” His voice had dropped in pitch and evened out into a soothing monotone that might have lulled Will toward sleep were it not for those blue magnets. “Do you know how good it would feel to just say it, Will? The relief? You know how much easier it would make things for you and your daughter? You’re young. You talk to me now, we might have some wiggle room with the DA.” Will felt the gravitational force of the detective’s eyes trying to coax something out of him. The air buzzed with Swicegood’s desire to hear it, and Will suddenly understood how a person could make a false confession. Anything to make that buzzing stop. “But once I’ve got a body, Will, it’s over for you. Life. Or maybe they strap you to the execution table in Florence, put a needle in your arm. I hope you buried her deep, because the coyotes will find her. Sniff out the rot. Dig her up. And someone will stumble across the bones, and that’ll be that. But I don’t need the body. You know why? Because everyone knows she’s dead. And the little secret about juries? About society? They want closure. Wrongs righted. Threads tied up. People like you swept away into prison, out of sight, so they don’t have to think about depravity while they’re tucking their little ones into bed at night. You want to take a chance on a jury? You want to stand there on verdict day, your knees quaking, your life, your daughter’s, in the hands of twelve strangers who might be willing to trade reasonable doubt for closure? You up for that, Will?”

Will stood up, trembling with rage. He didn’t know if his wife was alive or dead, and this man was accusing him of her murder.

“I didn’t kill my wife, and I don’t know where any of this is coming from. You charging me, Teddy?”

“Where’d you bury her?”

“Are you charging me?”

Swicegood cleared his throat. “I’ll be talking to the DA first thing in the—”

“Then I’m done here. Am I free to go?”

Swicegood chewed his bottom lip. “For the moment.”

“Take me home right now. I don’t want my daughter waking up and not finding me there.”

Swicegood stopped the recorder. When he pushed his chair back, the Styrofoam cup tipped over, black coffee spilling across the table, falling in a thin dark stream onto the floor.

NINE

Will whispered into his daughter’s ear, “Wake up, Devi.” She stirred, turned away from him. He sat her up in bed. In the blue glow of the night-light, he watched her eyes open slowly.

She looked around the room, then looked at her father. “Where’s Mom?”

“She isn’t here, honey. Now listen, this is important. We’re gonna get you dressed now.”

“But it isn’t morning yet.”

“I know. We’re going on a special trip.”

“Where?”

“No more questions.”

In the darkness, Will helped his daughter dress.

“I’m going to carry you,” he said. “I need you to be very quiet. Don’t make a sound.”

He picked her up, walked to the bedroom door, and slowly pulled it open. The hallway was dark, quiet. He crept down it, heard Rachael’s mother snoring in the guest room.

Rachael’s sister, Elise, was asleep on the sofa in the den. The creak of the front door opening made her shift, but she didn’t wake.

Three A.M is one of the few comfortable hours in Ajo in the summertime, a cool, fleeting reprieve. The Beamer’s trunk was already packed with suitcases. Will put Devlin in the front seat, buckled her in. He climbed behind the wheel, shifted into neutral, let the car roll silently to the end of the driveway before shoving the key into the ignition.

“Where are we going, Daddy?” Will looked at his daughter, shook his head in disbelief at all that had changed in twenty-four hours, at how quickly, when the wrong stars align, it all comes apart. You will not die alone.

“I don’t know yet,” he said. And he turned the key and put the car into gear, driving slowly and without headlights through the subdivision.

The highway north out of Ajo was empty and shining in the moonlight. Aside from his wallet and a suitcase of clothes, he’d taken only one other thing—Rachael’s college sweatshirt.

They would not see their home again.

TEN

Two days later, Rachael awoke on a small, hard mattress. She sat up in a tiny room, barely the size of a walk-in closet, and illuminated by only a single bare lightbulb that swung from the ceiling.

Her head pounded and her mouth was dry, but she felt alert again.

The walls and the floor were covered in thick yellow foam. She saw five jugs of water in a corner, and beside them, a box filled with bags of potato chips, apples, candy bars, and packs of crackers. She heard a humming sound beyond the soundproofed walls.