Chapter 8: Subject Present

Vince Corbin drove himself to the police station that afternoon, in his own white truck, with a lawyer in a gray suit in the passenger seat.

I watched them come up the front steps from a window on the second floor.

He was bigger than he had looked in the dark.

He had on a clean work shirt with his name stitched over the pocket, and he held the door for a woman with a stack of files.

"He's here to explain," Burke said, beside me. "It's what they do when they have nothing else."

"He buried her."

"Maybe. But he was smart enough to be the first one in the door, and I can't hold him for being smart."

They put Vince in an interview room, and I was not allowed in.

I sat on a hard bench in the hallway with my hands between my knees.

Twenty minutes later the door opened and he came out with the lawyer, calm and unhurried.

He walked straight past my bench.

Then he stopped.

"Ma'am," he said, and he took off his cap. "I heard about your friend. I'm real sorry."

I couldn't speak.

"I did a job for her in March. I laid some boards." His eyes went to my face. "I wish I'd known. I wouldn't have taken the money."

"You put her there," I said.

"I put down a floor," Vince said quietly. "Whatever's under it, nobody told me."

The lawyer touched his arm, and they went down the stairs, and I sat with my nails dug into my palms.

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