They took me into town, past the local college and the shops that surrounded it; then down the main drag with the lawyer’s offices, the courthouse, and the coffee shops. I watched Robin’s condo slide past. People were out beneath a pink sky, shadows stretching out. Nothing had changed. Not in five years; not in a hundred. There were storefronts that dated back to the past century, businesses in the fifth generation of the same family. And here was one other thing that had not changed: Adam Chase, under suspicion.
“Want to tell me what this is all about?” I asked.
“I think you know,” Grantham replied.
Robin said nothing. “Detective Alexander?” I asked. Her jaw tightened.
We moved onto a side street that led to the tracks. The Salisbury Police Department was on the second block, a new, two-story brick building with cop cars in the lot and flags on a pole. Grantham parked the car and they led me in through the front. It was all very cordial. No cuffs. No cell. Grantham held the door.
“I thought that this was a county case,” I said. “Why aren’t we at the sheriff’s office?” The sheriff’s office was four blocks away, in the basement under the jail.
Grantham answered. “We thought you might prefer to avoid those particular interrogation rooms… given your previous experience there.”
He was talking about the murder case. They’d picked me up four hours after my father found Gray Wilson’s body, feet in the water, shoes thumping against a slick, black root. I never learned if he was with Janice when she went to the cops. I never had the chance to ask and liked to think he’d been as surprised as I was when the cuffs came out. They transported me in one of the sheriff’s marked cars. Rips in the seat. Face prints and dried spit on the glass divider. They took me to a room under the jail and hammered me for three days, hours at a stretch. I denied it, but they didn’t listen, so I shut up. I never said another word, not once, but I remembered the feel of it, the weight of all those floors above you, all that concrete and steel. A thousand tons, maybe. Enough to squeeze moisture out of the concrete.
“Considerate of you,” I said, and wondered if I was being sarcastic.
“It was my idea.” Robin had still not looked at me.
They took me to a small room with a metal table and a two-way mirror. It may have been in a different building, but it felt the same: small, square, and shrinking by the second. I took a breath. Same air. Warm and moist. I sat where Grantham told me to sit. I disliked the look on his face, and guessed it was habitual when seated on the cop side of bolted-down furniture on the blind side of two-way glass. Robin sat beside him, hands folded tightly on the gray steel.
“First things first, Mr. Chase. You are not under arrest, not in custody. This is a preliminary interview.”
“I can call an attorney?” I asked.
“If you think you need an attorney, I will certainly allow you to call one.” He waited, perfectly still. “Would you like to call an attorney?” he asked.
I looked at Robin, at Detective Alexander. The bright lights put a shine on her hair and hard lines on her face. “Let’s just get this farce over with,” I said.
“Very well.” Grantham turned on a tape recorder and stated the date, time, and names of everyone present. Then he leaned back and said nothing. The silence stretched out. I waited. Eventually, he leaned into me. “We first spoke at the hospital on the night that Grace Shepherd was attacked. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“You had seen Ms. Shepherd earlier that day?”
“Yes.”
“On the dock?”
“That’s right.”
“You kissed her?”
“She kissed me.”
“And then she went south along the trail?”
I knew what he was doing, establishing a pattern of cooperation. Getting me used to it. The repetition. The pacing. The acquiescence on established issues. Harmless issues. Just a couple of guys chewing the fat.
“Can we cut to the chase?” I asked.
His lips compressed when I broke his rhythm; then he shrugged. “Very well. When you told me that Ms. Shepherd ran away from you, I asked you if you chased her and you told me that you did not.”
“Is that a question?”
“Did you pursue Ms. Shepherd after she ran from you?”
I looked at Robin. She looked small in the hard chair. “I did not attack Grace Shepherd.”
“We’ve spoken with every worker on your father’s farm. One of them is prepared to swear that you did, in fact, chase Ms. Shepherd after she ran from the dock. He is quite certain. She ran, you followed. I want to know why you lied to us about that.”
The question was no surprise. I’d always known that someone might have seen. “I didn’t lie. You asked me if I chased her and I said that it wasn’t that kind of running away. You filled in the blanks yourself.”
“I have no patience for word games.”
I shrugged. “I was unhappy with how our conversation ended. She was distraught. I wanted to speak further. I caught up with her a hundred feet into the trees.”
“Why didn’t you tell us that?” Robin asked. It was her first question.
I met her eyes. “Because you would ask about the conversation.” I thought of the last words that Grace had given to me, the way she shook under the shade of the low branches. “And that’s nobody’s business,” I said.
“I’m asking,” Grantham said.
“It’s personal.”
“You lied to me.” Angry now. “I want to know what you said.”
I spoke slowly, so that he would not miss a single word. “No fucking way.”
Grantham rose from his seat. “Ms. Shepherd was assaulted a half mile from that spot, and you misinformed us about your actions at the time. Since you’ve been back, you’ve also put two men in the hospital and been implicated, at least peripherally, in arson, a methamphetamine lab, and the discharge of a firearm. We just retrieved a corpse from your father’s farm, a body that you, coincidentally, discovered. Things like this happen infrequently in Rowan County. To say that I am intrigued by you would be a massive understatement, Mr. Chase. A massive understatement.”
“You said that I’m not in custody. Is that right?”
“That is correct.”
“Then here is my answer.” I held up one hand, middle finger extended.
Grantham sat back down. “What do you do in New York, Mr. Chase?”
“That is none of your business,” I said.
“If I contact the authorities in New York, what will they tell me about you?”
I looked away.
“What brings you back to Rowan County?”
“None of your business,” I said. “The answer to every question you ask, except may we call you a cab, is ‘none of your business.’ ”
“You’re not helping yourself, Mr. Chase.”
“You should be investigating the people that want my father to sell, the ones making threats. That’s what Grace’s assault is really about. Why, in the name of God, are you wasting your time with me?”
Grantham flicked a glance at Robin. His lips drew down. “I was not aware that you knew about that,” he said.
Robin spoke quickly. “It was my call,” she said. “They had a right to know.”
Grantham pinned Robin with those washed-out eyes, and his anger was unmistakable. She’d stepped over a line, but refused to waver. Her head was up, eyes unblinking. He returned his attention to me, but I knew that the matter was not closed. “Can I assume that everyone has this information now?” he asked.
“You can assume whatever you want,” I said.
We stared at each other until Robin broke the silence. She spoke softly. “If there is anything else that you want to tell us, Adam, this is the time.”
I thought of my reasons for returning and of the things that Grace had said to me. Then I thought of Robin, and of the passion we’d known such a short time ago; her face above me in the half-light, the lie in her voice when she told me that it meant nothing; and I saw her at the farm, when she’d asked me to please step to the car, the way that she’d pushed our past down deep and draped herself in cop.
“My father was right,” I said. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
I stood up.
“Adam…” she said
But I walked out, walked to the hospital. I slipped past the nurse’s station and found Grace’s room. I was not supposed to be there, but sometimes you just know what’s right. So I passed through the dark crack of her door and pulled a chair close to her bed. She opened her eyes when I took her hand, and she returned the pressure that I gave her. I kissed her forehead, told her that I would stay the night; and when sleep reclaimed her, it left a trace of comfort on her face.