Zachary nodded. “I’ll let you know.”
He tried to push down the growing dread that something had happened to Philippe, that the killer had reached him.
It made sense that Philippe and the others had just gone underground because of the publicity.
That had to be why.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Z
achary, you’re looking pretty rough,” Pat observed. “Is it time for you to take another painkiller?”
Zachary’s head pounded and every part of his body throbbed or protested when he moved. “Yeah.” Zachary blinked his eyes. His lids were getting heavy and the pages in his notebook were starting to blur. “And I think I’d better be heading to bed.”
“The doctor told you to take it easy. This isn’t exactly taking it easy,” Pat chided. He got up and went into the kitchen, returning with a glass of juice and one of Zachary’s pills.
“Have you had any more contact with Dimitri?” Dougan asked, ignoring the fact that Zachary had said he was ready to go to bed.
Zachary rubbed his temples. Dimitri? Then he remembered the younger man who had been with Teddy at The Night Scene. Teddy, the big teddy bear and Dimitri, his date, who had wanted to talk to Zachary about Jose. About their broken date and the cell phone that went to voicemail.
“Oh, yeah. Dimitri. With Teddy. No, I haven’t heard anything else from him.”
“He did have a number of phone exchanges with Jose’s number before Jose’s phone went offline.”
“You got his phone logs.” Zachary tried to smother a yawn. “So that helps pinpoint when he disappeared. Or when his phone stopped taking calls.”
Dougan nodded. “It verifies what we already knew. So who is Teddy? Where does he fall into all of this?”
“I don’t really know. Ran into him at The Night Scene. He was kind of hitting on me at the bar, but then he had a date there.” Zachary shook his head. “I don’t really understand the rules in a place like that. Or maybe I’m just seeing men’s behavior from a different perspective than I ever have before.”
“Teddy Archuro? He’s been a fixture at The Night Scene for a long time,” Pat contributed. “I know him from way back.”
“You wouldn’t have any concerns about him?”
“No.” Pat looked at Mr. Peterson and they both shook their heads. “He’s been around for a long time and I’ve never heard anyone complain about him. Other than maybe to say that he’s too friendly.” Pat made a gesture to indicate Zachary and what he had just contributed. “But no, he’s harmless.”
“He’s not harmless unless I say he is,” Dougan said sharply. He closed his notepad and sat up. “If you have more contact with Dimitri, encourage him to talk to me. With half the witnesses disappearing and the other half refusing to make a statement, it’s difficult to conduct an investigation.”
Zachary nodded tiredly. “I’ll do what I can.”
Before going to bed, Zachary took one of the prescription painkillers and a sleeping pill. In spite of how exhausted he was, he knew that he wasn’t going to be able to shut off his brain and stop analyzing the case and the discussion with Dougan if he didn’t. Having a case debrief right before bed wasn’t the best idea. But Dougan was there at his own initiative and Zachary couldn’t very well brush him off.
He checked the security alarm settings before going to bed. Twice. There was no one visible outside when he looked out the window, other than one police car that had stayed to keep an eye on things for a few hours. Zachary knew what it was like to sit surveillance in a cold, dark car at night, and considered taking a cup of coffee out to the officer, but in the end he decided not to. To do so would mean disabling the door alarm and then re-enabling it when he returned to the house. Chances were, the cop already had a thermos of coffee in the car with him, which he would have to ration strictly to avoid inconvenient interruptions.
Zachary looked once more at the settings on the security system. There were footsteps in the hall and he looked up to see Mr. Peterson taking a last run to the bathroom before bed. When he returned, he gave Zachary a knowing smile.
“Everything is properly armed. Between you and Pat, it’s probably been checked a dozen times. You want a warm milk before bed?”
“No. I’m fine.”
“You need your sleep. You look like a zombie.”
Zachary nodded and headed back to the guest bedroom. “I’m sorry to still be underfoot. Depending on what happens tomorrow, maybe I’ll go home for a few days. Keep up by phone and email.”
It was a good thing he had kept an emergency bag with clothes and necessities in the car, since he hadn’t initially been planning to stay overnight, let alone for several days. But he needed to get fresh clothes or launder what he had, and he longed for his own space.
“It sounds like Dougan and his men are talking to people. You probably don’t want to get in his way. But don’t feel like you have to go home on our accounts. We’re happy to have you here.”
“You guys don’t need me kicking around here. If I can get the rest of the interviews done that I want to tomorrow… I’ll leave it to Dougan to check out these other places where Jose might have hung out. I wish Philippe would respond. I know he’s just gone quiet because he and the others don’t want any attention, but it still bothers me.” Zachary sighed. He knew his attention was bouncing from one piece of the case to another, and if he let himself, he would just keep babbling on.
“Maybe he’ll call you tomorrow. Or maybe by the weekend, he’ll decide that they’re safe and he can respond to calls. I’m sure the media attention just has him spooked. But that will die down as they don’t find anything new to report on.”
“Yeah. Okay, I’m going to bed for real now.”
“Get a good rest. You won’t make any progress on the case if you’re too tired to think straight. You’ll do better after a solid night’s sleep.”
Zachary nodded. He went back to his room, swallowed a couple of pills, one for anxiety and one to help him sleep. He stripped down and slid into bed, waiting for sleep to come.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
H
e was groggy when he awoke. Someone was shaking him by the arm and he didn’t know why. He just wanted to return to the darkness and sleep. His body needed rest. His sleep was often restless and disrupted, but he was so deep in the well that he couldn’t open his eyes.
The shaking persisted. Zachary tried to push the hand away. A foster mom or group home worker trying to get him up for school? He was too tired. He was sick or it was too early in the morning. The middle of the night. Why would they try to get him up in the middle of the night?
“Zachary. Come on. Talk to me.”
Zachary groaned, trying to protest.
“Try to sit him up. See if that helps.”
Zachary tried to fight back against the manhandling, but that just woke him up further, when he wanted to return to the darkness.
“Zachary. Wake up.”
He hurt all over. He felt bruised down to his bones and his head was thudding, feeling huge and ungainly like a lead balloon. He tried to hold it still, as it was making him nauseated whenever it flopped one direction or the other. He put his hands up to his face to brace it and help hold it still.
“Are you awake? Zach?”
“Why?” Zachary groaned. “Why won’t you let me sleep?”
“It’s late. You’re always an early riser.”
He was aware of fingers on his wrist, pressing over the pulse point. He tried to remember. Was he in the hospital? Had he been in an accident? That would explain why his body hurt so much, but not why they were trying to wake him up. At the hospital, they let him sleep, unless there was some test or procedure they had to do.
Zachary managed to get his eyes open a crack. At first, he couldn’t comprehend his surroundings and figure out where he was. He frowned and blinked and tried to clear the blurriness from his eyes and sort out the inputs.
“Lorne?”<
br />
“Yes. Are you okay?”
Zachary tried to rub away the pain in his head, but his face and head were too tender.
“What’s wrong?” Zachary asked, trying to focus. “Did something happen?”
“You scared the hell out of us, Zach.” Pat’s voice was nearby, but Zachary didn’t want to turn his head to look at him, still too woozy. “How many pills did you take?”
How many pills? Zachary rubbed his tender eyes and looked around, at the side table and at Pat, then all the way back to Mr. Peterson, studying him closely.
There were several pill bottles beside the bed. Pills he always took. He didn’t remember being depressed the night before and trying to overdose. None of the bottles appeared to be empty, though his eyes still weren’t focusing properly. He tried to remember. Painkillers, anti-anxiety, sleeping pills. He’d been feeling pretty rough before bed. The long day and his physical injuries must just have caught up with him. His body had just been more exhausted than usual, so he had slept heavily once his brain had let him.
“I was just really tired.”
“It’s almost eleven o’clock,” Mr. Peterson said.
Eleven? For someone who was used to waking before six, that was very late. It was no wonder they had been concerned.
“I think… I just did too much yesterday. Can I get one of those pain pills? My head is killing me. And my side…” He tried to readjust the way he was sitting. It must have been Pat who had pulled him into a sitting position. Zachary’s bruised ribs had flared up in protest.
Neither man answered him right away.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Pat said. “You were really deep under. You shouldn’t be taking anything that could depress your system.”
“Just a pain pill. Just one.”
“I’ll get you a Tylenol.”
Zachary looked at the pill bottles on the table. He would just get one himself. But he would have to move, and they seemed very far away. He knew that Tylenol wasn’t going to even begin to address the pain.
He let his eyes close again. “Then get me two Tylenol. The strongest you got.”
Pat left the room and Mr. Peterson stayed there with him. He sat down on the edge of the mattress, rocking the bed and making Zachary seasick. Pat returned a couple of minutes later with two red pills and a glass of water. He helped Zachary take them, supporting the glass so he wouldn’t drench himself.
“Are you okay?” Mr. Peterson asked.
“I’m just tired. I need more sleep.”
“I knew you weren’t getting enough rest. But this is more than being tired. Being tired doesn’t depress your breathing.”
Zachary didn’t have an answer for that. He was listing to the side and tried to make himself comfortable, his consciousness already starting to drift.
“Gather up the pill bottles,” Pat said. “We won’t leave them in here. I’ll call the pharmacist, go over the doses and the possible interactions. We’ll make sure he doesn’t take too many tonight.”
Zachary remembered fleetingly that he was going to go back home, so they would have to give him his pills back. But then he was asleep again.
When the fog started to lighten and the pain broke through, Zachary tossed and turned for some time before finally waking up. He was curled up in a ball on top of his pillows in a distinctly uncomfortable position. Very slowly, he eased his body into a straight line and put his head on one of the pillows. But his restlessness was starting to assert itself, his brain working on the problem of the missing men. What he could remember of Mr. Peterson and Pat waking him earlier in the day niggled at the back of his brain.
He rolled slowly over, waited until his brain stopped sloshing around in his skull, and stretched his arm out until his fingers touched his phone. He pulled it toward himself. He held it in front of his face, squinting at the screen. It was mid-afternoon.
Zachary swore softly. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept that late. Maybe never. Maybe when they’d been adjusting his meds, when he was off of his antidepressants and couldn’t get out of bed. He’d been in the hospital, but he couldn’t remember the details, his brain still refusing to work the way it was supposed to.
He pushed himself slowly up until he was sitting, hunched over and waiting for the world to stop spinning. He might have fallen asleep sitting there for a short time, but sitting up told his brain that he was supposed to be awake, and he gradually felt more alert.
Progress was slow, but he managed to pull his clothes on and start the long trek to the bathroom.
“Well, look who’s up,” Pat greeted. “Need a hand there, granny?”
Zachary grunted at him and continued his way down the hall.
He used the john, and splashed cold water on his face, and leaned with both hands on the counter, breathing and trying to work up the wherewithal to make it back to the bedroom again.
“Come to the kitchen,” Mr. Peterson told him, when he opened the door.
Zachary knew that if he went back to the bedroom he was probably going to go back to sleep, so he followed Lorne into the kitchen, bright with afternoon sunshine.
Zachary squinted in the light and managed to make it into one of the kitchen chairs.
“Good to see you on your feet again.”
“Yeah. Sorry about that. Guess I really crashed.”
“That was more than just being tired.”
Zachary cleared his throat. Mr. Peterson put a glass of water in front of him, along with one of the pain pills. Not Tylenol, but his prescription. Zachary took it gratefully with several long swallows of the cold water, thirsty after his long hibernation.
“I didn’t overdose. I was just tired from doing so much.”
“I believe you that you didn’t intentionally overdose.” Mr. Peterson waited until Zachary looked at him. He raised his eyebrows and spoke with emphasis. “But you did overdose. The pharmacist Pat talked to said that if you took a few of those pain pills along with a few sleeping pills, it could be very dangerous. Even if you’re used to taking the sleeping pills.”
Zachary shook his head. “I didn’t. I just took one pain pill before bed and one sleeping pill. They said that was safe.”
“Well, we’re going to have to watch you closely to see how you react if you plan to do that again. You remember how when we first started you on meds, you had a couple of bad reactions.”
It was a long time in the past. Zachary remembered throwing up at school from his day meds, and then Mr. Peterson having to take him to the hospital after his night meds. He’d started too many prescriptions at once and the ER doctor had been pretty annoyed that the Petersons hadn’t introduced them individually to monitor for adverse reactions.
“Yeah… I remember that. But they didn’t make me sleepy.”
“You can have different reactions to different meds. I don’t know if you’ve been on these painkillers before, or if you’ve combined them with this same cocktail.”
Zachary wanted to protest, but he couldn’t find a way to counter what Mr. Peterson was saying. He felt like a kid again, being lectured for a mistake that he’d made at school. Mr. Peterson wasn’t saying it in a critical way, but it was almost worse for him to be so patient and understanding about it. Zachary didn’t want any pity.
“Have you ever had a reaction like this? Where you couldn’t wake up or were breathing so slowly?”
“I don’t know.” Zachary took another drink of the water. “Maybe.” He had the shadow of a memory from long ago of the police trying to wake him up, back when he was eleven or twelve. But what would they have been trying to wake him up for? He couldn’t pin the memory down properly. More clear was the outraged voice of Mrs. Pratt, his social worker in his head: You were so doped up you couldn’t keep your eyes open.
He frowned, trying to remember, but he couldn’t quite grasp it.
“Maybe once, in foster care. I can’t remember.”
Mr. Peterson put a cup of coffee and a slice o
f toast on a plate in front of Zachary. Being late in the afternoon, it wasn’t really breakfast time, but it was Zachary’s first meal of the day. He nibbled the toast without objecting.
He felt out of sorts getting started so late in the day. But once he’d had his coffee and the pain meds had started to work, he was at least feeling like himself again. He went through his notes from the day before, adding in other thoughts as they came to him, trying to work through everything he had learned from each person he had talked to, including Dougan.
He had promised Dougan that he would do what he could to encourage Dimitri to talk to the police, so he searched out Dimitri’s number on his phone and called him. There was no answer. Zachary hung up when he got the voicemail message, thinking about it. It shouldn’t surprise him that so many of the numbers he called just went through to voicemail. People had call display. They either ignored the unknown number or knew it was Zachary and didn’t feel like having to talk to him. Dimitri was sure to know who he was now, after having seen all of the news coverage. He would know that Zachary wasn’t a personal friend of Jose’s, but had been asking his questions under cover. He wouldn’t have the same motivation to talk to Zachary on the phone as he had to talk to him when he had viewed Zachary as the friend of a friend, and maybe a potential date.
He tapped his finger on the phone for a few minutes, then decided to text Dimitri, encouraging him to talk to Dougan to potentially help the police find the serial killer who had been running rampant in their community for years.
There was no immediate response. Zachary wasn’t surprised. Even when texting with a friend or acquaintance, there often was not an immediate response. People were driving, in meetings, or doing other things. Dimitri would need time to review the message and decide whether he wanted to respond.
They Thought He was Safe Page 19
