LITMIR.BIZ

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his lips, nodded heavily, opened the door farther and stood aside. “Come on in. Just keep it down. The kids—”

      “Are still in the hospital,” Mason said.

      So that was what he’d been lying about. The kids weren’t even home. The Louse looked alarmed, but Mason just went on.

      “They moved them over to Golisano yesterday before I was discharged. I checked on their condition just this morning. I’m glad to hear they’re doing better, by the way.”

      Guiltily, the vermin sighed and lowered his head. “Thanks to you,” he said.

      He moved aside to let us walk in, then pushed the door closed and didn’t say a word as we followed him through the living room with its beige carpet, tan sofa, and matching love seat and chair. Cheap coffee table that probably came from Walmart, and a modest 32-inch TV mounted to the wall. The dining room was stark. Dinette, chairs, a few photos of the kids on the walls. His wife must have stripped the place down when she left him. Didn’t seem like the act of a woman who thought there was a snowball’s chance in hell she was ever coming back.

      He led the way into the kitchen, a cluttered little room that looked as if it got a lot of use.

      “Coffee?” he asked.

      “Sure.” That was Mason. I didn’t want to socialize; I wanted to kick the guy in the balls. But not until I was positive he was the one who’d set the fire that had hurt Mason. I had that much of a hold on my temper, and to tell you the truth, I was fucking impressed with myself. I sat down in a kitchen chair. The table was metal with red Formica. The chairs were the same metal, with red vinyl cushions and backs. Very retro. I liked it.

      Mason stayed standing, but Rouse the Louse filled two more cups and sat at the table. “I wanted to come to visit you, Detective Brown, in the hospital, but between my lawyer and your colleagues...” He lowered his head, letting the gesture finish the sentence for him.

      “What did you want to do that for?” Mason asked.

      Rouse lifted his head slowly, met Mason’s eyes. I closed mine and tried to open my brain. To feel him. He said, “To thank you. You saved my kids’ lives. Damn near got yourself killed doing it, the way they’re telling it.” His gaze drifted to Mason’s arm as he said it. Some of the bandages showed from under his shirt sleeve.

      Mason turned away. He wasn’t good at accepting praise. “I just wish I could’ve gotten your wife out, too.”

      “So do I.” Rouse’s voice thickened on those words, and I shivered a little. I picked up heartbreak. Grief. Anger. Regret. Huge regret. Waves of it that made it hard for him to breathe. “I didn’t set that fire, Detective.”

      Mason shot me a look. I felt it, but I couldn’t let myself be distracted just then. I sipped my coffee. Let them think what they would about my closed eyes. Did I fucking care what an asshole who’d probably killed his wife and tried to kill his own kids thought about me? What do you think?

      “I read your statement.” Mason was scary when he was in cop mode. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought he knew everything and could prove it already.

      “I didn’t tell them everything in that statement,” Rouse said. “I didn’t want to make myself look more guilty. But then they found that hacksaw in my truck and arrested me. My lawyer’s telling me to keep quiet, but I can’t. I just can’t anymore. She’ll kill me, too, before she’s done. And the kids. God, the kids...”

      “Who are you talking about?” My eyes popped open as I asked the question. His tone, his fear, completely pulled me out of my focus. But not before I got that his fear was genuine. That didn’t mean it was based on anything real. But it did mean that he believed what he was saying.

      “I had an affair. That’s why Becky took the kids and moved into that freaking dump.”

      I shot Mason a wide-eyed look. This was the first I was hearing about an affair, and from the look on his face, it was news to him, too.

      Mason nodded, taking a notepad from a pocket. “So you had an affair. What does that have to do with the fire?”

      “It was her—don’t you get it? I told her it was over, that I wanted my family back. The fire was her revenge.”

      I felt my spinal fluid turning to ice.

      “This woman have a name?” Mason asked.

      “The one she gave me was Noelle Baker.”

      “What do you mean, the one she gave you?”

      “I don’t think it was real.”

      “Why not, Peter?” Mason was so good at this, I thought. Using his first name. Being his pal.

      “I’ve been trying to contact her ever since that night.” He shook his head. “Everything she told me was a lie. She said she had an apartment in Johnson City, on Bleeker. But I’ve been to every building on the street, and no one’s ever heard of her. She said she worked at Zales, you know the jewelry store at the mall?”

      “Oakdale Mall?” Mason asked.

      “Yeah. I called them, too. But no one there ever heard the name, either. And her cell’s no longer in service.”

      My head was spinning as I tried to sort out what he was saying from the emotions he was emitting. It wasn’t easy. It was better when I could keep quiet, close my eyes and just feel, but I’d let myself get sucked into his story.

      “Okay, so you had an affair with this woman. Noelle Baker. Your wife found out and—”

      “She didn’t just find out, Noelle fucking told her. Called her at home and ruined my life with a single sentence.” He shook his head, his mouth pulling into a tight grimace, tears welling up and spilling over. “I’d tried to end it with her. I knew it was a mistake. I loved my wife. Noelle was furious. She said she’d make me pay. And that night she called Becky and told her about us.”

      I wanted to say it wasn’t the other woman who’d destroyed his marriage but his own idiotic inability to keep his junk in his pants. But I didn’t because I could feel his suffering, and it was already plenty. I couldn’t make the guy feel worse than he already did, and I found I didn’t particularly want to.

      Maybe I was going soft.

      “She thought I’d come back to her once Becky left me,” he went on. “She came over here, pawing all over me. I told her there was no way in hell.” He closed his eyes. The lashes were wet. “She was like a crazy person. Screaming at me, tearing up the house.”

      “So you think she started the fire out of vengeance?” I asked before Mason could get a word in.

      “I don’t think it. I know it. No one else had any reason.” He looked from me to Mason and back again. “And then she put that hacksaw into my truck. It’s not mine. I never saw it before.”

      “Do you have a hacksaw?” Mason asked.

      “Yeah. It’s out in the garage. You want to see it?”

      Mason nodded, and we headed out together.

       4

      “Did you notice what I noticed out in the garage?” Mason asked an hour later.

      We were sitting at our favorite spot in the park, eating takeout we’d grabbed from the Spiedie and Rib Pit on Front Street and watching the Susquehanna River roll by. It was hot already, pushing up toward ninety, and I was glad I’d dressed in layers earlier because that meant I could remove them as needed. I was down to my tank top and sitting on the shady side of the picnic table because I hadn’t brought any sunblock.

      Mason sat in the shade, too, but he kept his sunglasses on. He looked hot in those solid black

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