"Tree line?”
"No movement."
"Second floor, west side?”
"I did not look at the second floor, west side."
Three lies now. I am counting them. I count the way I count laps and I have counted three lies to her in the last ninety seconds. The first one was the wife. The second one was tree line. The third one was the second floor, west side. I am a woman who counts laps and houses and floors and beams and I ama woman who has now counted lies.Four minutes to second-floor venting.I had said that two minutes ago, already knowing. Already knowing that I had stood on a gravel drive and looked at a woman's hands on a window. The report is not going to show that I stood there. The report does not know I stood there. Only I know. Only I know and the woman in the bed knows, and the woman in the bed does not know she knows.
Val turns another page.
"We'll see where she turns up," Val says. "If she turns up in the river by next week, problem solved. If she turns up in a hotel in Aspen having a breakdown, problem solved with some mess. If she turns up at a precinct downtown…” She lets the sentence go. She doesn't finish it. She doesn't need to. "If she turns up anywhere that's a problem for us, we handle it then."
"Yes, Chief."
"Your ears are up, Hale."
"Always, Chief."
"If anything anomalous passes your desk on this. Anything. A report, a tip, a name, a face?”
"You'll hear it the hour I do."
"Good."
She closes the folder. She sets both hands flat on top of it. Her watch is off her wrist on the desk and I can see the back of it, scratched from years of a strap, the plate engraved with a phrase I have seen once and never asked about. Her hands are broad and dry and they sit on the folder and they do not drum.
"You look tired," she says.
"Long night."
"Sleep all right?”
"Enough."
"Where?”
The word comes out of her soft. It's not the question it would have been out of somebody else's mouth. She says it the wayyou say a word you have said every morning of somebody's life.Where did you sleep, Hale?She has asked me that in debrief for eleven years. It is part of the rhythm we have. I always answer. I always answer plainly. If I slept in the bunk room, I say the bunk room. If I slept at my apartment, I say the apartment. If I slept at the cabin, I say the cabin.
I have never had a reason in eleven years not to say.
"Cabin," I say.
"Which one? You have two."
"Northwest."
She nods.
"Alone."
The fourth lie is already built before I open my mouth. I don't have to think about it. The fourth lie is the easiest thing I have ever said.
"Yes, Chief."
She holds my eyes for one more beat. Then she picks up her reading glasses and she folds them and she puts them in her jacket pocket and she sits back in the chair.
"Drills on the hour,” she says. "Run them. Your crew's gone soft on the live burn. I watched you Tuesday. You were a minute behind your own standard on the two-story. I want it under four."
