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And finally:
“Tragedy!”
I followed that link, my heart in my throat, to a three-page article in the Post-Dispatch.
The grand opening of Matt Woods’s new Elements Building ended in tragedy last night when twenty-eight-year-old Peter Borjat died in the partial building collapse.
I sat back, feeling as if I’d swallowed rocks.
Instead of a picture of a happy family including Matt, what I saw was somehow worse. A haunting picture of a wide-open room with gabled ceilings and skylights, soaring steel girders and polished pine floors. Chandeliers glittered and cocktail tables still held half-filled martini glasses, as though the drinkers had just gone to the bathroom. A woman’s red high heel lay next to a gaping, jagged hole in the corner. A curvy steel sculpture jutted out of the black crater like a horrific swizzle stick.
I clicked onto the second page.
Officials now say that the floor collapse was caused by poor construction. The remodel of the two-hundred-year-old warehouse was incomplete and insufficient for the planned usage of the space. According to investigators, the floor in question was not properly reinforced.
“The lives of everyone at that party were in jeopardy,” Inspector Phillip Jefferson states. “It’s a blessing there weren’t more deaths.”
“The plans for that particular space were changed last minute,” Matt Woods said in a written statement. “That, however is no excuse and I take full responsibility.”
A picture was coming together in my mind and it wasn’t pretty. Poor construction? The death of a twenty-eight-year-old man?
My stomach twisted and churned, acid rising in my throat.
And I thought my demons were bad?
Matt had blood on his hands.
However, the next story muddied the picture in my mind.
Architect Proves No Knowledge of Poor Construction.
In deposition today, Matt Woods proved he had no knowledge of what his general contractor was doing to cut costs in the construction of the Elements Building.
Woods, who has been unreachable since the tragedy, appeared grief-stricken and shocked outside the courtroom. Despite the ruling, he defended the contractor.
“What happened,” Woods said, “was my fault as much as it was my contractor’s. This was a partnership. My condolences and sincere regret go out to Peter’s family and friends. I know there is nothing I can do to repair your loss and I am deeply sorry for my role in this tragedy.”
I rubbed my hands over my face.
Hero? I wondered. Or bad guy?
There was only one way to find out.
11
MATT
The sky was still bruised, but pink touched the eastern clouds so I figured it was close enough to day to get to work.
I rose from the chair I’d spent the night in and pulled on the clean clothes that Margot laundered for me at the end of each day. I barely felt the denim and cotton. Or the sting of my blistered palms. I was dimly aware of an ache in my stomach, but food, I’d learned, wasn’t going down so well these days.
I filled my thermos with water in the bathroom and stepped outside into the hot damp kiss of a Louisiana summer morning.
All of it, the burn of my tired and sore muscles, the heat of the day, the buzz of insects, seemed somehow removed, disconnected from me.
Instead, my ears roared with the screams of metal and the thundering splinter of wood.
“Matt?”
Everything went silent at the sound of Savannah’s voice. I turned looking for her in the shadows, wondering if this was another figment of my imagination.
Another ghost coming to get a piece of me.
Savannah sat on the steps, her bare legs, honey-colored and long as the horizon, curled up to her chest. Her eyes, wide and liquid in the dark, looked up at me. Right through me.
She knows. The thought was like a gong in my empty chest. It made sense, of course—she was a researcher and my crimes were hardly hidden.
“I brought coffee,” she said, holding out a mug.
It smelled good, bitter and dark. My body practically screamed for the caffeine.
“No thanks,” I said, stepping past her toward the courtyard. She brought the coffee because she wanted to talk. And I wanted to start digging trenches for the box hedge maze.
“Matt,” she said, that Southern accent winding through the courtyard to curl around me, like smoke from some internal fire. “I know about the accident.”
I didn’t answer, just opened the shed and started taking out my tools.
“Did you know?” she asked from a few feet away. “About the floors?”
Did I know? Strange that everyone thought that knowledge meant guilt. Or that lack of knowledge meant innocence. As if it were that easy.
“Does it matter?” I asked, kicking a clod of dirt off the sharp edge of my shovel then throwing it on the ground.
“Of course—”
“I don’t want to talk about this, Savannah.” I gave her a hard look.
“Well, if you want to keep punishing yourself in my courtyard, you’re going to have to talk.”
