“I have done nothing wrong,” I continue, as a strange calm fills my bosom. I don’t know where this quiet resolve is coming from, but I hold fast to it. “I wed a man who I thought was free to marry. I love his child. I have done all I can to give that little girl everything she needs for a happy life, including taking her to her real mother when it would’ve been far easier for me to keep her for myself. I cared for Belinda, I practically delivered her child,and I searched for her day and night after we got separated. I have taken no gold of hers. None. And, yes, I manage Kat’s trust, but I can show you every receipt of everything I have bought since I became her guardian. I have paid for our room and board. I have bought her clothes for school and crayons and paper and I’ve replaced puzzles and dolls and books that the fire stole from her. I’ve put money into a savings account that will be Kat’s when she is older, and I’m saving some each week to build a house for her so that no matter what happens to me she will always have a home in which to live. What does it matter what my name is, I ask you? A name is nothing. It is just words on a piece of paper. This is who I am. Despite everything that has happened to me, despite everything that’s been done to me, I am still a person who knows how to love people. This is who I am.”
Deputy Logan continues to stare at me. I cannot tell what he’s thinking other than he is contemplating what I have just said.
“You would maintain this under oath if it came to it?” he asks. “That you have done nothing wrong?”
“I would.” By all that is good, I would.
He pauses for a moment and then turns to the woman. “I think it is time we give Mrs. Hocking a break, Mrs. Fielding. I will call you back in when I resume my questioning.”
Mrs. Fielding’s fingers become still over the funny-shaped keys on her machine. She seems a bit surprised, but then she stands and walks from the room, closing the door behind her.
“I don’t want a break,” I tell him. “I want to go. I have nothing else to say.”
Deputy Logan regards me silently for a moment. “I want to believe you, I do,” he says, “but I think you know what happenedto Martin Hocking, despite you having told me that you don’t. I think you know where he is. And considering what you and I both know about him, I want to know why you won’t tell me.”
I swallow hard and say nothing.
“I’ve got quite the predicament,” he continues. “I think Martin Hocking well deserves whatever fate might have befallen him, because, like you, I think he killed Annabeth Bigelow Grover. I think he killed her mother. I think he forced Candace’s father’s car off the road.”
He pauses for a minute, studying me. Then he continues. “And I know things about Martin Hocking that you do not. I know that his parents are not dead, as he no doubt told you. I know that when he was a child he hurt animals just to see them suffer, and I know that when he was sent away to a boarding school he was expelled for insubordination and verbal abuse against his fellow classmates. I know that when he was sixteen and his older sister confided in him that she wanted to kill herself because she’d had her heart broken, he offered to help her do it. I know that he swung the rope over the barn rafter, made the noose, and helped her into it. I know he watched her hang and did not try to help her when she regretted her decision immediately and tried to pull the rope off. She was saved at the last moment by their father.”
My heart is pounding and I feel nausea rising from the very core of me as I picture Martin doing this terrible thing. I see a young woman—his own sister—hanging and her feet wildly kicking and her hands grasping at her throat and Martin just standing there. Just standing there watching her die. I see their father rushing in, screaming at Martin,What have you done!I can’t stop seeing it. I made for Martin a cozy home and tastymeals, and I laundered his clothes and brought him tea. I shared his bed. I let him share mine. I did all of this for a monster. I put my hand to my mouth to quell the queasiness, and the marshal just barrels on.
“I know that he was banished from the home after this and that he rode the rails west for several years, learning how to fool unsuspecting people into trusting him. I know that during these years he was itinerant he collected birth certificates and death certificates that he could use to create false identities. I know his name isn’t even Martin Hocking. It is Clyde Merriman.”
The deputy stops for a moment as I struggle to take it all in. The room now seems to lack sufficient air. I feel light-headed and afraid.
“I didn’t know,” I whisper, and I taste bile in my mouth.
“I know you didn’t,” Deputy Logan says.
He waits for a moment so that I will hear those words fully.
“I’m aware that you didn’t know we’ve had our eye on the man you knew as Martin Hocking for a long time,” he continues several seconds later. “And I know you are not in possession of Belinda’s gold. I know which assayer’s office Clyde Merriman took the gold to. I know which identity he used to convert the gold to cash. I know he has a safe-deposit box in a San Francisco bank with said cash tucked inside it. I know he was a terrible person who has killed perhaps as many as ten people.”
“Ten?” The word is a gasp off my tongue. Ten people dead by Martin’s hand. Ten!
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
Belinda and I could have been numbers eleven and twelve. Easily. Hot tears spring to my eyes and I squeeze them back in as best I can. Two slip out anyway. Beneath my shirtwaist and corsetmy lungs are heaving. I cannot still the rapid rising and falling of my chest. Surely the marshal can see I knew none of this.
“That’s horrific!” I whisper.
“Indeed. As I said, he was a terrible person. But I am a servant of the law, not of my own opinion, and it does not matter what I think about Clyde Merriman,” he says. “What matters is what can be proven in a court of law, and because I have more suspicion than I have hard evidence, you may have done the world a favor if harm has befallen him and you are the person you say you are.”
“I am,” I say, and my voice sounds like a child’s, weak and naïve.
“So you say. But I have a problem.” He opens up the file, reaches in, and pulls out a document. He pushes it toward me.
It is a certified copy of a death certificate from County Down in Ireland for a Sophie Clare Whalen.
My vision is suddenly blurred. The room seems to sway; the whole world seems to sway, just like it did the morning of the quake.
“Where did you get this?” I hear myself ask.
“I told you. We’ve been investigating this man for a long while. We’ve looked into his activities. All of them. We’ve looked into the women he has married. It wasn’t difficult to follow your immigration trail back to where you started. You left Ireland as Sophie Whalen. You obtained a passport with Sophie Whalen’s birth certificate. But that’s not who you are. Because Sophie Whalen is dead.”
“What do you want from me?” My voice is not much more than a whisper.
