Chapter 6: Blood on the Marble

Killian's POV

I drove Chantal and the boy back to the hotel in Rockport and sat in the lobby until the boy was asleep.

Then I drove forty minutes back to Port Alder and parked on the quay.

The bakery had a room above it with one window.

I turned off the engine and watched the window.

I had spent twenty-three days looking for that window.

The morning after the fireworks, I came home at eight-forty with last night's frosting still on my cuff.

I remember the frosting because I wiped at it all the way up the front steps.

The hall was cold.

There was a wide dark stain on the marble.

A trail of it ran across the floor to the telephone table.

A smear of it stood on the wall at the height of a woman's hand.

I stood there with my keys.

"Mireille?"

I called her name through every room.

I called her phone, and it rang on the dresser upstairs, beside an empty velvet box.

I called every hospital in the city, and the fourth one said, "Yes, Mrs. Hayes was admitted at one-forty a.m."

I had left her at one-ten.

I did the arithmetic standing in the hall.

She had been on the floor for half an hour, alone, and then she had gotten herself to the phone.

I had told her to stop faking.

Chantal had told me she would.

Chantal had said it on the roof, with her hand on my sleeve and the cameras gone.

"She'll fall apart tonight," she said.

"She did it at her father's funeral, remember? She fainted right when you were about to leave."

"Don't let her work on you, Killian."

I remembered the funeral.

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