Berg looks troubled, a bit shell-shocked even. I gather that his typical calls are complaints of dogs leaving their feces in neighbors’ yards; doors left unlocked at the American Legion; the ever-popular 911 hang-up calls. Not this. Not murder.
There are only a handful of patrolmen on the island, Officer Berg being one of them. Oftentimes they meet the ferry down by the dock to be sure everyone boards and departs without any problems, not that there ever are. Not this time of year anyway, though I’ve heard of the change we’ll see come summer, when tourists abound. But for now, it’s peaceful and quiet. The only people on the boat are the daily commuters who paddle across the bay for school and work.
“What kind of questions?” I ask. Otto sits slouched in a chair in the corner of the room. He fidgets with the fringe of a throw pillow, and I watch as strands of blue come loose in his hands. His eyes look weary. I worry about the stress this is causing him, having to hear from a police officer that a neighbor was murdered. I wonder if he’s scared because of it. I know I am. The very idea is unfathomable. A murder so close to our own home. I shudder to think about what went on in the Baineses’ home last night.
I glance around the first floor, looking for Imogen, for Tate. As if he knows what I’m thinking, Will says to me, “Imogen isn’t home from school yet,” and Officer Berg, taking interest in this, asks, “No?”
School ends at two thirty. The commute is long, but still, Otto is home most days by three thirty or four. The clock on the fireplace mantel reads ten after six.
“No,” Will tells the officer, “but she’ll be home soon. Any minute,” he says, citing some tutoring session that Will and I know she didn’t have. The officer tells us that he’ll need to speak with Imogen, too, and Will says, “Of course.” If she isn’t home soon, he offers to drive her to the public safety building tonight. It’s a catchall building, where a couple of police officers double as EMTs and first responders in the case of fire. If our home went up in flames, Officer Berg would just as likely appear at my door in a fire truck. If Will or I had a heart attack, he’d come in the ambulance.
Only seven-year-old Tate has been spared from the police officer’s interrogation. “Tate is outside,” Will tells me, seeing the way my eyes look for him. “He’s playing with the dogs,” he says, and I hear them then, the dogs barking.
I give Will a look, one that wonders how smart it is to leave Tate alone outside when there was a murderer on our street just last night. I stray toward a rear-facing window to find Tate, in a sweatshirt and jeans, a wool hat thrust down over his head. He’s having a go with the dogs and a ball. He lobs the ball as far as he can—laughing as he does so—and the girls dash after it, arguing over which will be the one to carry it back to Tate’s waiting hand.
Outside, there’s evidence of a fire in the backyard firepit. The fire is dying down now, only embers and smoke. There’s no longer a flame.
It’s far enough away from Tate and the dogs that I don’t worry.
Officer Berg sees the smoldering fire, too, and asks if we have a permit for it.
“A permit?” Will asks. “For the fire?” When Officer Berg says yes, Will goes on to explain that our son Tate had come home from school begging for s’mores. They’d read a book about them, S is for S’mores, and the rest of the day, Tate had a craving for them.
“The only way we did s’mores back in Chicago was in the toaster oven. This was just a quick treat,” Will says. “Completely harmless.”
“Around here,” Officer Berg tells him, uninterested in Tate’s craving, “you need a permit for any open fire.”
Will apologizes, blames ignorance, and the officer shrugs. “Next time you’ll know,” he says, forgiving us this one transgression. There are bigger issues at hand.
“Can I be excused?” Otto asks, saying he has homework to do, and I see this discomfort in his eyes. This is a lot for a fourteen-year-old boy to handle. Though much older than Tate, Otto is still a child. We forget that sometimes. I pat him on the shoulder. I lean in close to him and say, “We’re safe here, Otto. I want you to know that,” because I don’t want him to be scared. “Your dad and I are here to protect you,” I tell him.
Otto meets my eyes. I wonder if he believes me when I’m not so sure myself. Are we safe here?
“You can go,” the officer tells him and, as he leaves, I find my way to the other arm of the sofa, Officer Berg and I bisected by a velvet sofa the color of marigolds, the furniture left behind in the home all midcentury, and not, unfortunately, midcentury modern. It’s just old.
“You know why I’m here?” the officer asks, and I tell him that Will and I heard the siren late last night. That I know Mrs. Baines was murdered.
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and I ask how she was murdered, though the details of her death have not yet been released. They’re waiting, he says, until the family has been notified.
“Mr. Baines doesn’t know?” I ask, but all he’ll say is that Mr. Baines was traveling for business. The first thought that crosses my mind is that, in cases like this, it’s always the husband. Mr. Baines, wherever he is, has done this, I think.
Berg tells us how the little Baines girl was the one who found Mrs. Baines dead. She called 911 and told the operator that Morgan wouldn’t wake up. I sharply inhale, trying not to imagine all the things that poor little girl might have seen.
“How old is she?” I ask, and Berg replies, “Six years old.”
A hand rises to my mouth. “Oh, how awful,” I say, and I can’t imagine it, Tate finding either Will or me dead.
“She and Tate are in school together,” Will declares, looking at Officer Berg and then me. They share the same teacher. They share the same peers. The island school serves children in grades kindergarten through fifth while the rest, those in middle school and beyond, have to be ferried to the mainland for their education. Only fifty-some students go to the elementary school. Nineteen in Tate’s classroom because his first grade is combined with the kindergarten class.
“Where is the little girl now?” I ask, and he tells me that she’s with family while they try to connect with Jeffrey, traveling for business in Tokyo. The fact that he was out of the country doesn’t make Jeffrey Baines any less culpable in my mind. He could have hired someone to carry out the task.
“The poor thing,” I say, imagining years’ worth of therapy in the child’s future.
“What can we do to help?” I ask Officer Berg, and he tells me he’s been speaking to residents along the street, asking them questions. “What kind of questions?” I ask.
“Can you tell me, Dr. Foust, where you were last night around eleven o’clock?” the officer asks. In other words, do I have an alibi for the time the homicide occurred?
Last night Will and I watched TV together, after we’d put Tate to bed. We’d lain on different sides of the room, him spread out on the sofa, me curled up on the love seat as we do. Our allocated seats. Shortly after we’d gotten situated and turned on the TV, Will brought me a glass of cabernet from the bottle I’d opened the night before.
I watched him for a while from my own seat, remembering that it wasn’t so long ago that I would have found it impossible to sit this far away from Will, on separate sofas. I thought fondly of
