"I drove up to the cabin after."
"After what."
"After the Clark fire. I wasn't going home to the city at three in the morning. The cabin is closer off the road I took back."
"You told me Monday morning you slept at the cabin."
"Yes, Chief."
"You also told me Monday morning you drove home to your apartment after the scene and then to the cabin the next day."
"No, Chief. Monday morning I told you I went to the cabin."
"You told me the northwest cabin."
"Yes, Chief."
"Alone?”
"Yes, Chief."
She looks at me. She doesn’t believe me.
I look at her.
Her eyes are the color they were on Wednesday, which is a color I would never have called blue in this room before this week. They are a cold gray. Her jaw has set. Her hand on the folder is flat.
"You smell like a woman's scent. It isn’t yours,” she says.
My face does not move.
My face does not move because I made my face not move on the stairs coming up here this morning. I stood on the fourth-floor landing for twenty seconds and I put my face where I wanted it. I should have known Val would smell me. I cannot get my clothes clean of Evangeline despite the coffee and engine oil. I washed my hair last night in my own shampoo and I know it smells like cedar not like whatever it is she smelled like on the pillow, but I was in bed with her from ten last night until four this morning, and she was under my hands and my face and my mouth, and there is no soap that takes the scent of a woman off you when you’ve been so covered in them all night.
"I have a guest at the cabin," I say.
"Who?”
"A friend."
"A friend?” Her voice is silky and dangerous sounding.
"Yes, Chief."
"From where?”
"Out of state."
"Name?”
"Rachel Doyle."
I say the name of a woman I went to the academy with, who moved to Oregon in 2011, who I have not seen in nine years, who would not know I had used her name in this office this morning, and who would cover for me in this office if I called her at five and asked, which I would not.
"Rachel Doyle?”
"Yes, Chief. I went to the academy with her.”
"When did Rachel get in?”
