The fire engines began to leave the Dale estate at dawn, followed by the black-and-white police cars that had arrived in their wake six hours earlier. Last in the procession were the ambulances, lights as still and dead as their charred cargo.
The house was a ruin, roof gone, stone walls standing but scorched and black with soot, the interior gutted. Once the fire had escaped the sterile confines of the laboratory, it had devoured the aging wood that had sheltered five generations of Dales.
From the back of the police car, Lisa Takara watched the remaining investigators begin to wrap the smouldering shell in yellow ribbons.
They had been kind so far, accepting her clumsy answers and blank passivity as evidence of shock. So far she had told them only the truth—that she had fled the laboratory alone when it became apparent that Martinez and Parkinson would not leave. That she had hidden in the woods in fear of the confused guards, who had now vanished. That she had no idea what had happened in the rest of the house.
But they would want more than that sooner or later and she needed the safety their solicitude brought her to give herself time to think. Telling the rest of the truth led to only two possible fates, each of them unbearable. A discreet stay in a psychiatric ward “for her own good” and the end of her future in the scientific world if she were disbelieved. And if she were believed, a repeat of Havendale, with only the names of the masters changed. She would lose more than her reputation . . . she would lose her freedom. And so would they: the woman whose terrible story she had overhead, the man who had stood with her life in his hands and let her live.
At last, the house vanished behind the trees. She turned around in the seat, tugging the smoky blanket closer about her shoulders. In the rear-view mirror, she saw the young police officer’s eyes flicker towards her. “You all right back there, Dr. Takara?”
“Yes. Thank you. I might just close my eyes for a moment though.”
“Go ahead. I’ll wake you up when we get to the station,” he said solicitously. Lisa nodded and closed her eyes.
Behind the safety of her mask, her mind formulated and tested the composition of her possible lies, while her fingers absently folded and refolded the scrap of paper in her pocket, a tattered card bearing a phone number she had never called.