Conflict of Interest

Marisela cuts the trunk carpet out of the Bronco with a razor knife and seals it in a metal can, and the whole time Paloma stands on the porch steps with her arms wrapped around herself like she's cold. It's eighty-one degrees.

"I haven't put gas in anything but that tank in a year," she says to nobody. "I don't own a gas can. I don't own a lawn mower. Lettie's nephew cuts the grass."

"Ma'am, you'll want to save that for your lawyer," Spruill says pleasantly.

"I'm saying it to Ethan." She points at you.

Every deputy in the gravel turns to look at you. You keep your eyes on the can in Marisela's hands and write the evidence number in your notebook.

"Chain of custody goes through Investigator Carrizo," you say. "Not me. Not you, Spruill. Her."

"Sure, sure." He grins. "We all want this clean."

Headlights swing up the oak avenue. A long silver Mercedes rolls to a stop behind the cruisers, and the driver's door opens, and Conall Kavanagh steps out into the blue lights like he's arriving at a garden party.

You haven't been this close to him in five years either.

He's fifty-eight and looks like the portrait of a senator: silver hair brushed back, a seersucker jacket at ten at night, a tan from the boat. He sponsors the Christmas parade. He gave the new wing to the library. When you were married to his niece, he shook your hand at every Sunday dinner and called you son and never once looked you in the eye.

Behind him, from the passenger side, comes a man about your age. Tall, dark-haired, with the kind of face they put in magazine ads for bourbon. Pressed khakis, loafers without socks, a heavy steel watch that catches the blue light. He walks straight past the deputies and up the porch steps to Paloma and puts his hand on the small of her back.

She doesn't move away from it. She doesn't lean into it either. She goes very still.

"Stanhope Manigault," he says to the yard in general, in a smooth Charleston voice. "I represent Miss Kavanagh. Nobody speaks to her without me. Investigator Spruill, I'll want a copy of that warrant."

"Got it right here, counselor."

Conall walks over to you. He stops close, closer than he needs to, and smiles with all his teeth.

"Well, now," he says. "Look who's come up in the world."

"Mr. Kavanagh."

"Conall, please. We were family." He puts a hand on your shoulder like a man patting a horse. "I was so proud to hear you'd gone to the Marshal's office. Truly. A boy from Station 3 with a state badge. Your mother would've been proud." The hand squeezes. "But you understand, son, you can't be anywhere near this. You were married to my niece. That's a conflict of interest. Any lawyer in the state would have your report thrown out before lunch."

"My chief knows."

"Does he." Something flickers behind Conall's eyes, fast as a match. "Well. Felton's a careful man. I'm sure he'll come around." He lets go of your shoulder. "My family wants this finished quickly and quietly. Neely Hatchell has worked for us for thirty years. We're devastated. Devastated. We want whoever did this found. Whoever it is."

He says it looking at the porch, where Paloma is standing with Stanhope Manigault's hand on her back.

A door opens in the main house. Aisling Kavanagh comes down the long front steps in a silk robe and pearls, because of course she wears pearls at ten at night. Sixty, slim, still lovely, with Paloma's cheekbones and none of her warmth. She looks at the cruisers. She looks at the evidence can. She looks at her daughter.

She looks at you for exactly one second and then looks through you, like you're a fence post.

"Conall," she says. "Make them turn those lights off. The neighbors."

"The nearest neighbor's a mile off, Aisling."

"Then he has excellent eyesight."

You almost laugh. You don't. Nothing about tonight is funny.

Spruill doesn't arrest her.

"Lab first," he says, swinging into his cruiser. "I want it to stick. When it comes back, I'll come back." He tips two fingers at Paloma like a hat. "Don't leave the county, Miss Kavanagh."

Stanhope walks Paloma inside. At the door she turns around and looks for you in the dark one more time, and you look away first. You hate that you look away first.

Marisela loads Biscuit into the van. She waits until the cruisers are gone.

"So, Ethan," she says. "Ex-wife."

"Yeah."

"You didn't mention her in four years."

"Nothing to mention."

"Uh huh." She closes the van door. "For the record, an alert means accelerant was there. It doesn't mean she put it there. Dog doesn't know who opened the tailgate."

"I know that."

"I know you know. I'm saying it out loud because your face looks like you forgot." She climbs into the driver's seat. "Go home, Ethan. Sleep. You look like the warehouse."

You don't sleep.

Your cottage on Fiddler Creek has one bedroom, a screened porch, and a dock that leans a little more every hurricane season. You rented it when you were twenty-five and a firefighter, and you never left, not even after it was a house you'd shared with somebody and then a house you hadn't. You told yourself it was the rent. It wasn't the rent.

You sit on the porch with a beer you don't drink. The marsh breathes. The tide's coming in, and the cordgrass ticks and whispers with it, and somewhere out in the dark a heron says something rude.

You think about the pour pattern. The loop in the burn trail, crossing back on itself.

You've seen that loop before. Once. Five years ago, in the ruins of the Sweetgrass Cannery on Hagood Creek, the night a man named Dub Yarbrough died. You were twenty-eight and riding the ladder truck, and you pointed at that pattern on the floor and asked a question, and nobody ever answered it.

You think about Paloma's face at the gate on that grainy video. Her hand on the bars. Standing there nine minutes.

You think about her hand on your desk. The click of the ring.

It's sitting on your kitchen counter right now, because you couldn't leave it on a desk in an office with a broken lock. That's the only reason. You tell yourself that's the only reason.

At 12:47 your phone lights up on the porch rail.

You know the number before you read it. You never deleted it. You told yourself that was laziness, too.

The text is from a contact you renamed five years ago at two in the morning, drunk and angry, and never renamed back. It just says Don't.

You pick up the phone.

Are you awake? Sorry. I shouldn't. I'm doing it anyway.