Page 90 of Into the Fire

Nash tilted his head.

“Dante finished packing at eight,” I said. “The rig sat here overnight behind a locked door, and at seven he picked it up and wore it to the plane. Somewhere in between, a man opened that bag, moved a line, and closed it clean enough that four of us handled it in the morning and saw nothing. I want you to show me how to do that.”

“We’ve been over all of this,” Nash said. “Twice. With the deputy and with Niebur.”

“We’ve talked about it. We haven’t done it.”

He got it and took the boot down off the crate.

We set it up as it had been. We packed a practice rig and laid it on the table where Dante’s had sat. It hit the wood with the dense canvas thud every rig makes.

I took Dante’s place: finished packing, stepped back, and went out the door the way he’d gone out that night. Nash took his own chair in the loft office, where he’d been that evening with his paperwork before Marty ran him home.

“Now you’re the man,” Nash said. “Door’s locked. You’ve got a key. Go.”

I unlocked the door, crossed to the table, and stood over the rig.

“Open it,” Nash said.

“Talk me through it. You’re the expert.”

Nash had me open the bag and showed me which stows came loose first, where the line lay, how it moved, and how the stows went back. Then he had me pack it back and unpack it.

“For me,” he said, “call it four minutes. Five with the wrist. For anyone who’s packed a chute for a living, under ten. That’s putting the stows back in sequence and getting the bag tension right so the next set of hands feels nothing.”

Ten minutes. I’d been thinking about the crime as an hour of nerve in a dark building. I envisioned a man with a flashlight and all night to work. It wasn’t that. It was something that could happen in the length of a phone call, or a trip to the ready room and back. Somebody could have done it inside an ordinary errand.

“The tower,” I said. “Same exercise.”

We went out into the cold and stood at the cones. Nash talked me through the link with his good hand in his jacket pocket, and we did the arithmetic on a hacksaw and a piece of hardware that size. It would take less time than the bag. Three minutes, maybe, for a man who’d already decided which link.

“Now you,” I said. “The night the rig sat here. Where were you, minute by minute, and who saw you.”

“Boone—”

“I’m not asking you if you did it. I asked you that already, and I was wrong to ask it the way I did. I’m asking you to stand where you stood, because I want to know whether you could have done it.”

He looked at me for a long moment. Then he walked me through everything.

He couldn’t have done it. Nash was in the office that evening, and Teller brought the letdown rope to prove he could tie it. Teller couldn’t, and that took twenty minutes. Ramirez came in behind Teller returning hardware and stayed to watch the lesson. Marty took Nash home at nine because of the ankle, and his truck sat at his own house all night because he couldn’t work the clutch in the boot. During the lunch hour, when the link was cut, he’d been in his office with a procession of men at his door.

“Are you done with me?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

Nash nodded. “Took you long enough,” he said.

I was at the door when I thought of one more question.

“Nash. Who comes through this loft that you don’t clock?”

He didn’t understand at first. “I clock everybody.”

“No. Is there anyone who comes through and it doesn’t register? I mean, is there someone you consider part of the building?”

He was quiet for a second.

“Shep, daily, that’s his job. Hollis with cargo rigging. Teller lately, on account of the rope. Ramirez returning hardware. Fellhauer, all week, for streamers and the spotting gear. Ground crew hands when there’s a fire on. Marty with paperwork. You.” He looked up at me. “That’s not a list, Boone. That’s the base.”