Chapter 17: Joan Hears It

Joan Whitaker sat on the edge of the motel desk with her coat still on.

Two deputy marshals stood in the hall outside.

A third was in the parking lot with a coffee and a very good view of the road.

She had her black glasses pushed up into her hair, tired and grim after a long night.

"Start at the beginning," she said.

"Both of you."

"And if either of you leaves out one fact because you think it will worry me, I will take your phones and your shoelaces."

Nico looked at Ray.

Ray started with the text.

He told it flat, in the order he had learned to give a report.

He gave her the booking and the billing page, and then Nico's list.

Nico added the list, folded in his pocket and soft from a day in the snow.

Joan read it through carefully.

When she finished, she took off her glasses and pressed her thumbs into her eyes.

"I asked you where you were, Mr. Stavros," she said. "Three times."

"I know."

"You called me from a gas station at four in the afternoon and told me you were safe, and you hung up."

"I didn't know who was listening."

"That is the first sensible thing anybody has said to me in five days." Joan put the glasses back on. "It's also an insult."

"It was never you," Ray said. "We both knew that."

"Did you?"

"Yes."

"Then why did it take you so long?"

He thought about it honestly.

"Because she was the person who got me out of bed in the morning," he said. "For four years."

Joan did not say she was sorry.

She looked at his wrists, and at the gauze.

She looked at the way Nico sat very close to him on the bed, and she seemed to put something together without being told.

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