Chapter 32: Protected Area

Callum fit the caliper into the wrong compartment of his case and noticed only after the lid was shut. Sau-lin watched him notice. The cellar windows had gone from gray to a flat white while he worked. Upstairs, Fong's had stopped selling rice cookers and begun the lunch rush. On the folding table the charred key lay in its open evidence bag, where Sau-lin had put it herself. A black line still ran across her palm, though the iron had not marked her skin. He had spent the morning on the door. The char agreed with her memory at every point he could test, and the one sentence he would have put in a report was the plain one: the plate had been on the alley face since before the fire, and the bolt was thrown from outside. Saying it to the woman who had stood on the other side…