Hank told her what he could. Rusk had been interviewed about his relationship with Cutter. He denied receiving evidence from Hank. When confronted with a date and a place, he said Hank had misrepresented their conversation. Then he suggested Hank had reason to blame others for Michael's death.
“Would he say that if they didn't have something?” Sarah asked.
Cal answered from the doorway. “He'd say it if he wanted them to spend time looking somewhere else.”
Hank raised a hand.
“We don't know. Let her ask.”
Sarah watched the two men.
“Thank you,” she said to Hank.
He nodded.
At dinner, he ate little. Afterward he went to the porch and sat without his jacket though the air was cold. Sarah brought it out and put it on the empty chair beside him.
“I don't know what I believe yet,” she said.
He looked up.
“I believe you helped me. I believe you loved my dad. I believe you failed him. I don't know where the rest goes.”
Hank nodded slowly.
“That's more honest than I was at your age.”
“It isn't about being better than you.”
“No. You're right.”
She sat beside him.
“What did you owe Cutter?”
The question seemed to find the exact place he had hoped to protect.
“He helped me once.”
“How?”
“When I was young, I did something stupid. A fight. A man got badly hurt. Cutter paid for a lawyer.”
“Were you guilty?”
“Of hurting him? Yes.”
Sarah let that settle.
“Was it self-defense?”
“Started that way. Didn't end that way.”
He looked out at the dark street.
“I thought owing him meant I had to keep hearing him out. Keep believing there was a line he wouldn't cross. By the time I understood the debt never ended, I'd let it shape more decisions than I could count.”
“Did my father know?”
“Yes. He told me a favor wasn't a deed to your soul.”
Sarah stared at her hands.
“That sounds like something worth hearing.”
“It was. I wish hearing had been enough.”
Inside, a dish clinked against the sink. The house smelled of bread and the lemon cleaner Ruth insisted was superior to every other cleaner in Oregon.
Sarah said, “When he called me, he knew I'd tell you.”
“Yes.”
“He wants you thinking about what you owe him.”
“Yes.”
“Then don't.”
Hank gave a tired smile.
“I can't stop a thought arriving.”
“No. But you don't have to open the door and feed it.”
For a moment he looked at her with such startled recognition that she felt her father's face move through her own.
“He would have liked arguing with you,” he said.
“I would have liked letting him lose.”
Hank laughed, and the sound came out broken.
Tuesday morning, investigators found the SUV in a repair garage owned by one of Cutter's associates. Pike was not there. Brandt was. Velez told Sarah he had been taken into custody on an outstanding warrant while the new allegations were investigated. A gun had been recovered from the vehicle. They were still establishing who had carried it.
Sarah listened without feeling the relief she expected.
“One is still out,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Does he know where we are?”
“We haven't found evidence that he does.”
“That's careful.”
“It's true.”
After the call, Sarah wrote Pike's name on a piece of paper and stared at it. Making him letters rather than a face did not reduce him. It did remind her he was a person the world could locate, question, charge. Not a force that lived in mirrors.
Hank asked if she wanted to go for a walk with Ruth. An officer was nearby, the route had been discussed, and the weather had cleared. Sarah almost refused because it felt like another supervised hour.
Then she saw the application on the table and thought of how small fear could make a life if it was allowed to choose every room.
She put on her shoes.
They walked only three blocks. Ruth told her the names of plants in the yards and got two wrong with great confidence. Hank stayed a few steps behind until Sarah asked him to stop making it look like a procession.
He came alongside.
A little girl rode past on a pink bicycle, her father jogging behind with one hand hovering near the seat. The girl shouted that she could do it. The man let go.
Sarah stopped watching before they reached the corner.
Hank saw. He did not say anything.
When they returned to the house, Diana was on the phone with Lena. She had been crying, but her voice was steady.