An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England_ A Novel - Brock Clarke [118]
"No," I said, "it wasn't."
"Of course it was, Sam," he said, and then patted his coat pocket where the envelopes were, the incriminating letters inside them.
"If it were me," I said, "then why would I leave the letters behind?"
It was clear that Detective Wilson hadn't thought about this, hadn't thought about the evidence except that it existed and that it proved what he wanted it to prove, evidence ― as I'll put in my arsonist's guide ― being just a more concrete form of wishful thinking. "Because you wanted to get caught," he said weakly. He hit his coat pocket, but harder this time, as though punishing the letters for letting him down.
"Why would I want to get caught?"
"Maybe you left the letters by accident," he said.
It made me feel so good to hear someone else say "accident" that I nearly forget about all of my own, which is why I then had another one. An accident, that is. "Come on. You can do better than that. I burned down five houses and then accidentally left letters at all of them?"
"I only named four houses," Detective Wilson, recouping quickly.
"Oh," I said.
"But you're right. There was a fifth house torched last night." I knew which one it was and so didn't bother to listen to him say it. I did, however, think of Peter Le Clair's letter in my pocket, could hear it calling to its siblings in Detective Wilson's pocket across the table. "I didn't find a letter there. But I know it was you who burned that house, too. Do you want to know how I know?"
"No," I said. After all, I knew everything Detective Wilson was going to tell me, knew what Thomas Coleman had told him, knew that he'd driven to New Hampshire to find me. What I didn't know was what was in the manila envelope, and how it got on my table in the first place, and whether Detective Wilson had already looked inside.
"Are you listening to me?" Detective Wilson asked.
"No," I said. "Should I have been?"
"Yes," Detective Wilson went on. "I was telling you how your Thomas Coleman called me and said you were about to burn down the Robert Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire."
"How did he know that?" I asked him.
"That's not important," he said, and when Detective Wilson said that, I was sure he didn't know the answer, "not important" being just one of the things we call that which we don't know. "What are you smiling at?"
"I'm not smiling," I said, although I was. Clearly Detective Wilson hadn't followed me to New Hampshire, which had been my big fear; clearly he hadn't seen me at the Robert Frost Place, at the bar, at the fire. And since he didn't have the letter, he clearly didn't know it was Peter who'd written to me, Peter being one of the other people who'd say with certainty that I'd burned down the Robert Frost Place. That was what I was smiling at, even though I said to Detective Wilson, "I'm not smiling."
"Ever since you came back to your parents' house," Detective Wilson said, "there's been trouble."
"That's true."
"You should never have come back," he said. Detective Wilson said other things after that, but once again I wasn't listening to them. I was thinking about what he'd just said ― You should never have come back ― and how Deirdre had said the very same thing earlier that day. As every detective knows, the rhetoric of crime and the rhetoric of crime solving are the very same, and if Detective Wilson were trying