Page 35 of Into the Fire

Boone took his statement and the operational chronology off the middle stack, already together, and laid the summary beside them.

“Fourteen twenty,” he said. “My statement. Lookout transmission, possible unidentified personnel, North Fork.” He pointed at the text. “I reported your radio call. It’s in my statement. Their summary of you doesn’t mention the figure at all.”

“They left it out.”

“You called it in before the entrapment. Before the injury.” His voice remained level. “That summary makes everything about the concussion, and the one thing you said before it is the thing that isn’t here.”

He was building the case, line by line, the way he built everything. Then he stopped building it and stared at the summary.

“I read this,” he said. “That fall. Before you left. Regional sent the preliminary package, and I read every page, and this one—” He touched it with one finger. “This one I read more than once. It pushed me toward doubting you.”

Out front, Marty’s phone rang, and he answered it.

“Boone. If somebody had already written this, you were working from a rigged record, you couldn’t have—”

“I knew you.” He interrupted and kept going. “We were together for two seasons. I knew how you called a fire. I knew you didn’t say things to make the world feel better, because God knows you never said anything to make me feel better. The report contradicted you, and I went with it because it was safer.” He shook his head.

“Okay,” I said.

He looked up.

“Okay,” I said again.

Boone went back to work. He asked Marty for three more boxes to make sure my Carson materials weren’t misfiled. Around noon, he touched my forearm and said, “Outside.”

I didn’t argue. I followed him and we sat on the Operations steps. He told me to stay, and he went to the kitchen, coming back with two sandwiches. He handed me one.

Shep found us before I finished my sandwich.

“There you are.” He planted himself on the bottom step. “I need a ruling. Softball. Fellhauer says a guy who hasn’t confirmed can’t be penciled in for shortstop, and I say penciling is literally what a pencil is for—”

“Who hasn’t confirmed?” I asked.

“You.”

“When did you ask me?”

“I’m asking now. I guess it’s more of a notification.”

“What’s the ruling on the base manager?” I nodded sideways at Boone.

“He’s down as an alternate.”

“I’m not an alternate,” Boone said. “Take me off the list.”

“See, an alternate would say that. An alternate would say no the first time around.” Shep stood, brushed off his jeans, and pointed at me. “Shortstop,” he said, and left before I could object.

I glanced at Boone. “Back to it?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

Together, we assembled a list of what should still exist. He wrote it down in block letters, the same he used on the board in the ready room: original interview notes, interviewer identification, date, time, a recording, if they’d made one. I tried to remember things I’d said that were left out of the summary. I knew that I’d talked about Dutch.

“Who talked to you after Carson? Who was in the room?” Boone asked.

I tried to remember, and I’d been trying since the binder. I saw the infirmary, a cot, and my head throbbing as if it were caught in a vise. Somebody offered me coffee, but I didn’t drink it. They asked me questions three different ways because I wasn’t explaining myself well enough. I saw someone across from me, but I never got a face.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I know there were two of them at some point. Maybe not at first. It’s—I don’t know.”