Notes on an Execution, page 21
“Essex,” Saffy said, too quickly. “I’m here to hike.”
“Well,” Rachel said. “You’ve come to the right place.”
As Rachel launched into a description of the most popular hiking trails in the area, Saffy nodded along, one ear attuned to the sounds outside. Blue’s and Ansel’s laughter, humming easy through the glass.
“I’ll be back soon,” Saffy promised as she paid the bill. Rachel nodded, studying Saffy just a moment too long before she swiped the plate away, eggs congealed along the porcelain.
* * *
Tupper Lake was small. Pretty. It looked similar to the other half dozen towns that surrounded Lake Placid—Saffy drove slowly, studying the quaint, threadbare streets. The lake was a murky shade of algae-logged green, crumbling docks sinking into the water. There was a little library with a slanted roof, a middle school and high school combined. A museum, a McDonald’s, a Stewart’s gas station. A defunct ski mountain dotted with abandoned chairlifts. A squat little motel sat a few blocks from the Blue House—when she saw the truck, parked lazy in the lot, Saffy’s stomach dipped.
A muddy white pickup.
Ansel was staying.
There was more to this, Saffy knew, as she turned up the air conditioner, pulled her sweaty hair from her neck. Tupper Lake was part of the story that had obsessed her for years, haunting, inexplicable. It was Ansel’s story, it was Lila’s story—it was the story of Saffy’s own heart, that tangly, knotted thing.
* * *
What do you want, Saffron? Laurie had asked, in their session the week before.
The question was plain and direct. Saffy had blanched as Laurie peered out from beneath her low-perched glasses—a series of landscapes hung above her desk, sweeping fields and marshy ponds. They had been discussing Phillip, a pilot Saffy had dated the previous year. She’d broken it off when things got too serious, when he started grunting disappointed if her work phone rang after dinner.
You crave success at work, Laurie said, when the question had curdled. That much is obvious. But I’m interested in the things that live beneath that craving. A desire for acceptance? Admiration? Love?
I have plenty of love, Saffy had snapped. And it was true. She had Kristen and the boys, who flung themselves at Saffy’s waist when she arrived late on weeknights, toting boxes of Entenmann’s donuts. She had men like Phillip, or Brian, or Ramón from the Counterterrorism Unit, who came along occasionally, and did the things she asked. She had Corinne and her team of investigators. She had long nights solving puzzles. The sludge of police work felt bearable, through this lens: a love affair between herself and the truth. But that concept was becoming increasingly elusive. Saffy could not fathom the purpose of truth, if she could not trust it to prevail. It had started out so simple: Saffy wanted to catch bad men and put them away. But this was not love either. It was something hard, something angry—it was also the thing Saffy knew most intimately about herself.
Laurie stared her down so long, Saffy squirmed, the boil of hurt rising until it bubbled up, a choke. She stung. She seethed. She did not say another word. Halfway through the session, Saffy stood and walked out.
* * *
The farmhouse sat ten miles outside Essex. A stretch of rural wilderness, chaotic, untamed. Saffy’s GPS led her down a dirt road cratered with potholes, her tires bumbling over fallen branches and abandoned construction equipment as the tentacles of greenery loomed above. When she finally reached an opening, the voice on her phone crooned their arrival.
The land was abandoned. Long empty. The remnants of a house sat ruined in the clearing. The structure had collapsed on itself. Flecks of yellow paint dotted the exterior. Saffy imagined it might have been pretty once—the back porch was still intact, the beams sagging and splintered, overlooking the mountains. The farmhouse had been discovered by squatters, or teenagers looking for a spot to party; it was the kind of place Travis’s old crew would have loved, heedless and spooky, safe for the wrecking. Garbage littered the rolling field beyond the house, and graffiti snaked up the boarded windows.
Saffy crunched through the debris, the sound of her footsteps lost to the breeze. As she approached, the house seemed to sigh. The closer she came, the more uncomfortable she felt—the house radiated an ailing, ghostly energy.
Saffy would not go inside. The front steps creaked beneath her weight, and from the entry she could see a smattering of old furniture, torn apart by people or animals. The fireplace was filled with trash. The windows had been broken, and afternoon sun streamed through shards of shattered glass.
She did not like to picture them here. Two little boys, playing games on the unfinished hardwood. A child, a baby. No mother had been good here. No father had been kind. Saffy knew abandonment, she knew tragedy, she knew loneliness. She knew violence, from the lifetime she had spent chasing it—she knew how it lingered, how it stained. Violence always left a fingerprint.
* * *
When Saffy finally returned to the station, the afternoon was tense, subdued. The troopers were hunched over their paperwork, worryingly well-behaved—they’d been blasting a terrible combination of Tim McGraw and Flo Rida from their desks for weeks, but all was quiet now. When Saffy arrived, Jamie eyed her from reception.
“The superintendent is here. Corinne brought him to the backroom.”
The superintendent was a burly man from Albany, whom Saffy had only met twice. When she solved a serial rape case that had dogged Moretti for years, the superintendent drove up to shake Saffy’s hand, take a photo, congratulate her. And when everything spiraled with the previous BCI captain, with Kensington and the Lawson case, the state had sent the superintendent to suggest a voluntary retirement.
There was nothing to congratulate now. Saffy felt a singular sense of doom as she entered the backroom. The superintendent sat in a creaky chair across from Corinne, holding a paper cup of water, miniature in the thick of his hands. Lewis and Taminsky looked particularly unkempt today, sheepish, their ill-fitting shirts awkward and untucked.
“Captain Singh.” He stood for a handshake—Saffy had perfected the motion, spine straight, grip firm. “Sergeant Caldwell was filling me in about the Lawson case.”
Corinne glanced up, apologetic.
“You’ll continue investigating until the retrial? The DA has been in touch with our office, too. They’re not happy.”
“Of course, sir.” Saffy blistered beneath the severity of his gaze.
“I’m very curious what you’ll find,” the man said. “This case is getting a lot of press, and our image as an institution has suffered. We took a chance on you, Singh. I’d hate for this whole diversity initiative to flounder over one bad case.”
Diversity initiative. This was the first Saffy had heard of such a thing. It was true that, at thirty-nine, she was the youngest BCI captain appointed in years, that she was the only woman, and the only person of color, ever to hold the position within Troop B. But her stats had gotten her the title. By the time she’d risen to lieutenant, Saffy had the highest arrest record in the state.
Still, she withered under the superintendent’s stare. After reviewing the case and issuing another cryptic warning, the superintendent finally took his leave—when he had gone, the room seemed to deflate with his absence. A buzzing paranoia nipped at the edges of Saffy’s consciousness, a fly too subtle to swat.
* * *
Kristen’s house was beautiful in the summer. A jumbo-sized Craftsman perched in a cluster of vacation homes, with a yard that opened directly onto the shores of Lake Champlain. Saffy entered without knocking and followed the boys’ laughter down the front hall. “I want to be the ninja!” one of them yelled, as the other shrieked with delight.
“You look like shit,” Kristen said, handing Saffy a glass of chardonnay. Kristen had just renovated her kitchen, and everything was gleaming bright. Jake nodded hello as he stirred a pot of red sauce, a pile of LEGOs abandoned at his feet. “Bad day at work?”
The story spooled out in skeleton. The Lawson case, the superintendent, the condescension of his threat. She did not mention the diversity initiative—Kristen wouldn’t understand. Kristen listened attentively, manicured nails tapping along the counter as the boys zoomed in and out. They were five and eight years old now, raucous as they elbowed past Saffy to chase the dog under the table, a purebred miniature poodle.
“I don’t know,” Saffy said. “Sometimes I wonder if this job even makes a difference. Or if I’m going to spend the rest of my life drowning in bureaucratic bullshit.”
“This is about more than detective work,” Kristen said. “What have you always said? The system needs changing from the inside. Well, you’re here now. You’re inside.”
As Kristen clucked her consolations, a sense of tragedy loomed above, like a cloud threatening to burst. This happened sometimes, when Saffy looked at Kristen’s life. When she retreated upstairs to read the boys a bedtime story, their hair wet from the bath as they snuggled up against her in their racecar pajamas. She did not want what Kristen had. She could not imagine having children—she’d never felt the tug Kristen described, that primal need for a baby. But there was something to be said for this brightness. This sweetness. The heft of Jake’s hand as he tousled the boys’ hair, the scent of cooked basil wafting through the air. As Saffy tried to ingest Kristen’s words, the feeling swarmed, dire, devastating. She wondered if it might kill her. Laurie’s words came back, too cruel in that immaculate kitchen. What do you want?
* * *
And then there was Lila. A shadow in the glow of Kristen’s glory. Lila never would have joined them, here in Kristen’s kitchen. She would have inhabited her own crystalline world, a few miles down the road, or maybe a few towns over. Never far from home. Her own snacks in the cabinet, her own overflowing trash cans, her own windows streaked with greasy fingerprints. Saffy could see her clearly, a silhouette on a well-worn couch, the television muted as she unbuttoned her shirt. The baby would have latched, suckling. The hot release of milk. Her house would have murmured, ordinary, as a garbage truck idled gently on the street. A regular Tuesday. Lila would have been a woman by now, leaning down to inhale the milky sweet of her baby’s scalp—a mother, no longer a girl at all. Grown, transformed, spectacularly new.
* * *
Four days before the trial, Kensington cornered her in the parking lot. It had been two weeks since Saffy discovered the Blue House, and though her team had been working tirelessly, the Lawson case had not budged. Two of the troopers had been caught dealing weed behind the Bullseye tavern, and Saffy had been forced to fire them. It was a long summer evening, the kind Saffy might have once spent drinking beers out by the river in a crowd of camping chairs, fishing poles dunked into the water, smoke swirling from fat, lazy joints.
“Captain,” Kensington said, a grumbling voice from behind.
One of Kensington’s strengths as an investigator: his ability to blend in anywhere. Saffy was consistently astonished by Kensington’s mediocrity, how his performance did not matter as long as he flashed that smile, clapped the superintendent on the back like a fraternity brother.
“Do you have a second?” he asked.
“Sure.” Saffy set her coffee cup on the roof of her car, crossed her arms, and waited.
“I—I wanted to say I’m . . .”
“Spit it out, Lieutenant.”
“I’m sorry.”
Saffy studied him, square-jawed and hollow in the sunset parking lot. It was audacious, and so like him, to throw her to the wolves then demand her forgiveness for it.
“I didn’t mean to put you in this position. The investigation, I made a big mistake. It was lazy, and I’m sorry.”
“Thanks for that,” Saffy said.
“How about a beer?” he said, sheepish. “It’s been a while. Lion’s Head shouldn’t be too crowded yet.”
“Just go home, Kensington,” Saffy said, filling with a frustration she could not name. With Kensington, with this job, this town—with the beauty of the pink sky, deteriorating over the parking lot, a saturated fuchsia she was too jaded to enjoy.
It was only later, as the sugary dusk lulled her home, that Saffy recognized the scene. Kensington, that practiced penitence. Ansel Packer framed in her bedroom door at Miss Gemma’s. I’m sorry, Saff. Please, forgive me?
That night, Saffy dreamed of the Blue House—she was walking barefoot through the restaurant. When she lifted her heels, they were slippery with crimson. Blood. Rachel held a pot of coffee, her face drooping like the fox, her eyes pecked out, skin half-decomposed. Blue sat on the dilapidated deck, cross-legged with Lila. Lila was alive, and they giggled as they braided daisy chains on the splintered wood. Lila was dead, and Blue looked up at Saffy, confused and ravaged, cradling the bones.
* * *
Two days until the retrial. Saffy’s desk felt like a cage, emails blaring from her inbox, sleeplessness crashing in a series of waves. The visit from the superintendent had sent the station into a spiral, circling rumors about layoffs—the troopers were stressed, bitchy, low on morale. When Saffy’s phone pinged, she checked it idly, expecting more spam from Kristen’s favorite furniture store. The name jumped out instead, the address she’d been waiting for.
The agency.
We regret to inform you—
A fog, descending.
We have located your father, Shaurya Singh.
Deceased, since 2004.
Her office rushed, zooming out of focus. Saffy stumbled from her chair and out into the bullpen, Corinne calling after—Captain? Are you okay? No oxygen. As the parking lot materialized, as the blazing summer evening curled pink into the horizon, as Saffy gasped in the humidity, she knew where she would go.
Back to the very start.
* * *
The Blue House was a beacon in the night. Light flooded the interior of the restaurant, like a stage with no curtains. From her spot at the curb, headlights off, Saffy could see Blue and Rachel, working together behind the counter. Ansel sat at the bar, his fingers relaxed around the neck of a beer bottle.
Saffy watched, bruising. A summer moth clambered gently across the windshield. Blue skirted around her mother to wipe down the counter. Rachel held a wineglass up to the light. Ansel crossed his arms, hunched over the barstool. Saffy might have been watching two parents and a daughter, closing their restaurant late on a Saturday. They seemed comfortable. They moved with grace, the easy elegance of family.
The thought was heartbreaking, even in consideration: maybe this was nothing sinister. So simple after all. Maybe Ansel only wanted the same things Saffy did. To know, finally, where he belonged.
Her father was dead. Deceased. The only photograph she’d ever seen of him had disappeared after her mother’s death—she ached for it now. There were so many things she would never know. Her father’s childhood home, the God he had worshipped, his favorite pair of worn-out pants. The exact shade of his eyes, the inflection of his voice. This loss, a part of Saffy herself.
As Blue pantomimed something with her hands, Ansel laughed, his head thrown back. Their joy, palpable.
She hated him for it.
* * *
Saffy woke up in her car, dawn cracking misty over the lake. Fog swirled up from the water, a buggy cloud, already warm with July. She had not meant to stay, couldn’t remember dozing off—the exhaustion of the past few weeks had caught her unaware. She remembered Ansel’s truck pulling out from the driveway, the restaurant lights flickering off, Blue’s silhouette moving behind the upstairs curtain. Saffy’s mouth was thick and sour, her eyelashes caked shut with the makeup she’d applied before work the previous day. Her back twitched, spasmed.
It was early. Barely seven o’clock. Saffy drove, aimless, toward the mountains.
The trailhead was completely empty. Cathedral Rock, one of the hikes Rachel had mentioned. Saffy had never understood the appeal of hiking, but this was one of the most popular mountains in the Adirondacks, famous for the sweeping views from the fire tower at the top. Saffy grabbed her purse, packed with a plastic water bottle and the protein bars she kept tucked away for long nights at the station. She wore jeans and a pair of work flats, already layered with dust as she trudged toward the opening in the trees.
She walked. Saffy wound her way up the trail as the sun climbed parallel, a soft hand caressing her gently awake. She walked for minutes or hours she did not count—she had turned off her phone to save the battery—pushing until her thighs burned, until a pool of sweat had soaked her pants along her lower back. She walked until she reached the tree line, then along a ridge, where she could see the mountains spanning out below, offered up vulnerable.
The fire tower was perched on the summit, delicate and creaky. Beneath, the Adirondacks were indifferent, rolling hills painted a vivid summer green. When Saffy reached the landing, she peered out from the railing, letting the wind tangle her hair, chilling the sweat that dripped down her spine.
There was something about that girl. Blue. A feeling that dogged Saffy, relentless. It was envy, she realized, as the wind rippled the trees, miniature in the distance. It took a certain privilege to invite a man like Ansel into your world. To trust so freely. In the entirety of her life, Saffy had never once felt that sort of safety. As the world splayed beneath her, obscene in its beauty, Saffy marveled. She had known from a young age that everyone had darkness inside—some just controlled it better than others. Very few people believed that they were bad, and this was the scariest part. Human nature could be so hideous, but it persisted in this ugliness by insisting it was good.
By the time Saffy hiked back to the trailhead, the sun was high and sizzling. Her stomach grumbled and her shoulders had burned red—when she turned on her phone, she had eleven voicemails from Corinne.
Captain, call me.
It’s Lawson.
He’s dead.
* * *
Suicide, Corinne explained, as Saffy sped through town. The warden found him hanging from a bedsheet in his jail cell.
As Saffy wound through Tupper Lake, she let the anger flood. It was fury, yes—but it was more. She wasn’t even surprised. Men like Lawson always found a way out. She’d seen it so many times—how they squirmed through the cracks in a system that favored them. How, even after they’d committed the most violent crimes, they felt entitled to their freedom, however that might look. Stopped at a red light three blocks past the Blue House, Saffy pictured Marjorie, her hair matted with blood against the kitchen tile, the room swirling with smoke. She pictured Lawson himself, feet spinning above a jailhouse cot.
