you should have asked me instead.” Not that it would have made a difference. “Besides, I’m an official police consultant.” I know it was lame. It was the best I could come up with on short notice.
“And they’ve hired you to work on the arson case?”
I lowered my eyes. “Not exactly.”
“Then what—exactly?”
He was right in front of me now, though, so when I lifted my head, there he was. Close enough to kiss. I was sorely tempted, too, but the door suddenly opened behind me, and I spun around like a guilty teenager at Make-Out Point, caught in a flashlight’s beam.
Peter Rouse stood there, pajama bottoms, white T-shirt, coffee mug in one hand, hair looking as though he’d combed it with an egg beater, bleary eyes. “No press. Come on, my kids are sleeping.”
Liar. Or so my NFP told me.
“We’re not press,” Mason said, flipping his badge at the guy.
Yeah, sure he wasn’t working. I’m pretty sure flashing your badge at a suspect is the definition of working. You know, for a cop.
Rouse the Louse met Mason’s eyes, and then recognition hit. He gaped a little, then said, “Shit. Yeah, I guess you would want to talk to me.” Then he looked up. “That’s it, right? Just talk. ’Cause like I said, my kids are in bed. So if you want anything else...”
My lie detector was blinking like a beacon.
“Like what?” Mason asked.
“He thinks you’re here to kick his ass. Or worse,” I clarified. “He’s not like that, Rouse.” I don’t know why I called him by his last name, but it’s just what came out. Frankly, I’m glad I didn’t slip and call him Louse. “I’m like that, but since he’s here to stay my angry hand, chances are you’re pretty safe.”
Rouse thinned 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.
