Page 2 of Water's Edge

He took her hand and led her inside the darkened foyer.

Her eyes adjusted and she could see that both walls of the wide hallway were lined with boxes and stacks of clothing and dolls and appliances and lampshades. There was a narrow path and he was leading her through the clutter. Then she stepped in something sticky. Adrenaline coursed through her. Something was wrong.

“Maybe I should…” she managed to say, before he turned and slammed a fist into her face.

Two

I sit at my desk at the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office with posters of the craggy Olympic Range on the wall behind me. I can see into Sheriff Gray’s office to my left. His door is open and he’s leaning back, too far back, in his roll-around chair, the springs squeaking whenever he shifts his weight.

So annoying.

I swear, the chair could be used by the CIA to get confessions from the most hardened terrorist. I want to take a full can of WD-40 and douse the springs.

But I don’t.

I turn to the disheveled woman sitting in a chair beside my desk. She is holding a toddler with one arm and attempting to corral her eight-year-old serial-killer-in-training with the other.

“Miss Gamble, let’s move to an interview room,” I say, partly because I don’t want to cause her more embarrassment and partly because her kid can bounce off the walls in there. Literally. In the kids’ interview room are soft toys, carpeting, soundproof walls, posters of breaching orcas, the PAW Patrol, lighthouses.

Miss Gamble gladly gets up. Her ears are bleeding also. Whether it’s from the squealing made by the chair, the squalling toddler, or the whining, nasal, nasty mouth of her son is unclear. If I thought a can of WD-40 would work on the eight-year-old, I’d use it. But it’s not Miss Gamble or her kids that are getting to me. It’s her situation. It sparks memories. I try to set it aside. Sparks can be bonfires.

Miss Gamble is unmarried, trying to raise three children by three different fathers, and trying to do it alone. She is on public assistance, living in public housing, using food stamps in an unwise manner—for example, trading them for illegal substances—and I deduce from her belly bump she might have another baby on the way.

She leads the ones she already has into the children’s interview room. The interview room for adults is not like this space. Not even close. This one is meant to soothe and mollify. The adult side is designed to irritate and get them to confess just to get out of the room. I can testify that it works. At least, some of the time.

I take a seat, pick up the paperwork provided to me by the Port Hadlock Fire Department, and look at Miss Gamble, then at the eight-year-old.

She remains silent.

“Did you know your son was setting things on fire?”

It’s a straightforward question. Yes or no. She doesn’t answer. Just gives me those big brown eyes. I can’t sympathize. I don’t know enough about the family dynamics. Maybe the kid’s been abused?

When I ask the question, her little firebug’s eyes light up and a half smile plays at his lips. The sheriff is in the next room. I want to continue the questions, but I get up, go into the outer office, shut the door behind me, and return to my desk to clear my head. I wonder if he’s a bedwetter. If so, I know how the textbooks would classify him, and it stings me. I know from experience that while bedwetting often indicates a child’s future behavior, the trajectory is somewhat changeable.

I hear the sheriff’s chair give an emphatic squeal and know he’s gotten up. The floors vibrate under his plodding gait as he comes over to my desk.

“You okay?” he asks.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Is that kid really setting animals on fire?”

“Fire marshal says so.” The fire marshal actually said more than that, but Sheriff Gray doesn’t need to hear the descriptive language he used. The man was very upset. I’ve never seen a grown man cry, but after seeing the pictures of a family’s beloved pet, I don’t blame him. I felt queasy thinking about it, and it takes a lot to make me queasy.

“Well, I’m going to do you a favor,” Sheriff Gray says, handing me a Post-it note.

I read and look back at the kids’ interview room. I can hear banging on the wall. “What about them?”

“I’ll take care of them,” he says. “I’m the sheriff. I can do a referral to juvenile court the same as you, and I’ve done this job longer.”

Outside of a multiple murder in the Snow Creek area, the cases I’ve had lately have been thefts and high-dollar vandalism. The note the sheriff handed me has eight words printed in his perfect, steady hand.

It reads like a telegram.

Marrowstone Island.

Mystery Bay State Park.

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