“I’m sorry. I seem to lose it every time you two show up.” Sidney spoke
slowly, her eyes clamped shut. She seemed smaller than Sawyer had
remembered, as though crisis on top of crisis were causing her to
collapse inward.
“Where’s your little girl?” he asked.
“With my parents,” Sidney replied quickly.
Sawyer nodded slowly.
Sidney’s eyes fluttered open and then closed again. “The only time
she’s not asking for her father is when she’s asleep,” she added in a
hushed voice, her lips trembling.
Sawyer rubbed tired eyes and drew closer to the fire. “Sidney?”
She finally opened her eyes and looked at him, gathered around her
shoulders the blanket she had taken from the ottoman, lifted her knees
to her chest, and settled back into the chair. “Sidney, you said you
went to the crash site. I happen to know that’s true. You remember
running into somebody out there? My knee still aches.”
Sidney started, her eyes seeming to dilate fully and then slowly recede
as she stared at him.
Sawyer continued to look at her. “We also have a report from the deputy
on duty that night. Deputy McKenna?”
“Yes, he was very nice to me.”
“Why did you go there, Sidney?”
Sidney didn’t answer. She wrapped her arms tightly around her legs.
Finally she looked up. However, her eyes were fixed on the opposite
wall rather than on the two agents. She seemed to be looking over a
great distance, as though she were reaching back to the painful depths
of a great hole in the earth; to a dismal cavern she had thought at the
time had swallowed her husband.
“I had to.” She abruptly closed her mouth.
Jackson started to say something, but Sawyer stopped him.
“I had to,” Sidney repeated. The tears started to tumble again, but her
voice remained steady. “I saw it on TV.”
“What?” Sawyer leaned forward anxiously. “What did you see?”
“I saw his bag. Jason’s bag.” Her mouth trembled as she said his name.
One shaky hand fluttered to her mouth as though to corral the utter
grief concentrated there. Her hand dropped back down. “I could still
see his initials on the side.” She stopped again and dabbed at a tear
with the back of her hand. “It suddenly occurred to me that it was
probably the only thing … the only thing left of him. So I went to
get it. Officer McKenna told me I couldn’t have it until the
investigation was over. So I went back home with nothing. Nothing.”
She said the word slowly, as though it summarized the desolate status of
the life she had left.
Sawyer leaned back in his chair and looked at his partner. The bag was
a dead end. He let the silence persist for about a minute before he
began speaking again. “When I said your husband was alive, you didn’t
seem to be surprised.” Sawyer’s tone was low and calming, but there was
an unmistakable edge to it.
Sidney’s response was biting, but the voice was tired. She was
obviously running out of steam. “I had just read the article in the
paper. If you wanted to see surprise, you should have shown up before
the paperboy did.” She wasn’t about to go into the humiliating
experience at Gamble’s office.
Sawyer sat back. He had expected that very logical answer, but was
still gratified to hear it from her lips. Liars often opted for
complicated stories in their effort to avoid detection. “Okay, fair
enough.
I don’t want to drag this conversation out, so I’m just going to ask you
some questions and I want some straight answers. That’s all. If you
don’t know the answer, so be it. Those are the ground rules. Are you
willing to do that?”
Sidney didn’t respond. Her weary eyes swung between the two FBI agents.
Sawyer hunched forward some more. “I didn’t make up those accusations
against your husband. But in all honesty, the evidence we’ve uncovered
so far does not paint a real benign picture of him.”
“What evidence?” Sidney asked sharply.
Sawyer shook his head. “I’m sorry, I’m not at liberty to say. But I
will tell you it’s strong enough for an arrest warrant to have been is