I look at the papers and then I raise my gaze. I don’t know what this action of his means. I have already confessed. I have already acknowledged what these documents mean.
“Take them,” he says softly, looking down at the papers.
“Pardon?” I whisper.
His gaze travels back up to mine. “I am the only one who knows you are Saoirse Whalen. I am the only one who knows who you truly are. I have not yet shared these documents with my superiors. It was premature to say anything until I talked to you. If you take these documents now, they will be out of this file and out of my investigation.”
“But... but you corresponded with officials in Ireland at the county offices. They know about me! Won’t they come for me now?”
“I requested copies of public records related to Sophie Whalen and Saoirse Whalen McGough of Donaghadee. It was not necessary to supply a reason. I said nothing about how these documents relate to an Irish immigrant named Sophie Hocking.”
“But... but what if the public records people mention it to the magistrate? What if they tell him that a U.S. marshal was asking for these records?”
“Do you think they will?”
“People like to talk.”
The deputy leans back in his chair. “You may someday have to answer for what happened on that boat in Donaghadee as you had to answer for what happened at your house here in San Francisco. All of us at some point, either in this life or the next, have toanswer for our actions, Mrs. McGough. I will surely have to answer for mine in this moment. Take the documents.”
He lets this sit between us for a moment, this notion that we choose our actions at the moment when we must and he is choosing to let me go free. He is going to pretend he doesn’t know my true identity, or what I did. He could get fired for this. Perhaps arrested and sentenced to prison for it. But he is doing it anyway.
“Why are you letting me go?” My voice is no louder than a whisper.
“Because I believe you. I believe in justice, too, but I know that sometimes it is not delivered in the way it should be. Sometimes it is not delivered at all, and the evil man walks free.”
A vein in his neck is pulsing faintly and I detect a slight sheen misting over his eyes. Deputy Logan has been wronged by evil, as I have been. He lost someone he loved because of it, as I have. Perhaps more than one person.
But his loss was not vindicated by the forces of nature, as twice mine were.
“Take them,” he says, and the glistening in his eyes is blinked away.
I reach for the papers. I place them atop one another, quarter-fold them, and place them in my handbag.
“Take the handkerchief, too.”
I look up from the handbag. “What?”
He nods toward his handkerchief, which smells of him and is wet with my tears.
“Why?”
“So that you do not forget.”
He says nothing else and I realize that he is asking me to remember this transaction we are making, he and I. I am to takethe handkerchief and keep it as a token of our covenant of silence. He will never reveal what I did, and I likewise will never expose him for letting me go. I reach for the handkerchief and place it in my handbag next to the folded papers.
“I am going to ask Mrs. Fielding to return so that we can finish. I will be quick. You will answer as if I had shown you none of those documents. Agreed?”
“Yes.”
“I am going to file a report stating that Clyde Merriman was in San Francisco on April 18, went missing during the earthquake and fire, and is quite likely a casualty of the disaster. The police here will likely declare him dead in time. The name Clyde Merriman is surely dead. If he is indeed still alive, he will take advantage of being declared deceased and will likely resurface as someone else and I will have to start over. You, on the other hand, surely have nothing to worry about. He will think you’ve done him a favor if he indeed survived.”
The thought of that disgusts me. “He didn’t. He couldn’t have!” I say.
“I hope you are right.”
I say nothing as I push past any doubts that Martin didn’t crawl out of that house alive.
“Are you ready for me to bring Mrs. Fielding back in?” Deputy Logan says a second later.
