by G. H. Ephron
My spirits sank as I realized Annie was putting her protective armor back on. She must have sensed my disappointment, because she said, “Oh, I’m sorry, Peter. Didn’t I mention? My skating group was making a pit stop here to pick me up. It’s our weekly nightskate.”
I watched as Annie put her skates back on. The place was starting to clear out as Annie strapped on her helmet.
She touched my shoulder. “Sorry. I should have said something earlier.”
“Right,” I said. Though I suspected this was part of my payback for being such a dope. Several of her cohorts whooped and whistled when Annie gave me a kiss. Then they left.
I finished the last of my ice cream, ditched our trash, and picked up the folder Annie had left for me. I wasn’t looking forward to reading the autopsy results, and I no longer wanted to be alone when I did. I’d have to get into the driver’s seat if I wanted bad luck and events to stop conspiring to keep Annie and me from going home together.
Back in my living room, I pulled out the typewritten sheets. As I read, I tried to shut down everything but my intellect. The technical jargon made it easier to remove myself from what this was—a minute analysis of Channing Temple’s death.
According to the report, there was powder residue on the right hand. Bruising around the eyes. The back of the head was blown away, the hair soaked with blood. Except for a cut on the upper lip, there was no other external injury. Maybe the gun bucked when she pulled the trigger.
Injury: a single bullet wound. The entry wound was through the soft palette exiting six inches from the top of the head and just off the right midline. They found gunshot residue in the mouth. The bullet coursed through the right cerebellar hemisphere, nearly completely transecting the junction between the medulla and the upper-cervical spinal cord. Had she survived, she’d have been blind, vegetative, and partially paralyzed.
I turned to the toxicology report. The results were positive for lorazepam. That would be the Ativan.
Everything taken together, it certainly looked like suicide. Still, I couldn’t help wondering. How much Ativan was there in her stomach? How much had been metabolized? I needed more information. MacRae’s office could easily get the details. Maybe not if I asked, but … I swallowed my pride and called Annie, knowing she wouldn’t be home yet. I left her a message, asking if she could prevail upon the kindness of MacRae and find out what I wanted to know.
As I hung up, I wondered, would any amount of Ativan and altered judgment be sufficient to make Channing’s suicide comprehensible?
10
THE NEXT morning, I went to see Olivia. She hadn’t been coming out of her room except for meals. She was curled up on the bed, facing the wall, but at least she wasn’t hiding in the wardrobe.
I knocked on the open door. She didn’t respond. “Olivia,” I said. Still no response. I walked over to her. She had earphones on and a CD player on the bed. I touched her shoulder and she jumped, ripped the earphones from her ears and snarled, “I told you …” She stopped abruptly when she saw it was me. The anger that twisted her face evaporated.
She sat up. Her hair was damp, and she had on a plaid flannel pajama bottoms and a skinny black T-shirt with green letters slashed across it. PIT O’ CHAOS. A pair of well-worn pink bunny slippers completed the outfit.
“You were expecting someone else?”
She narrowed her eyes at me, some of the anger creeping back. “No.”
“How are you feeling today?” I asked.
“Like roadkill,” she said, and started putting the headphones back on.
I smiled to myself and refrained from pointing out that this colorful term was one her mother had been fond of using, too. “That doesn’t sound great. How about coming down to the dining room with me for a talk?”
She shrugged. I took it as a yes.
I stood to one side. She put the headset on the bed, slid off, and started out of the room. I was getting ready to follow her when I noticed three little balls of brown fuzz lying on the white bed cover. I picked one up and rolled it between my fingers.
As we left her room, Olivia gave a nervous glance toward Matthew Farrell. He was standing in the hall watching.
“He’s always staring at me,” Olivia said. “Creepy. What’s wrong with that guy, anyway.”
I waved at Matthew and got a wooden wave back. “Why don’t you ask him that?”
“Can I do that?”
“Of course you can. Just be prepared for the same question in return.”
When we got to the dining room, Olivia took a seat. I poured myself a cup of regular coffee and a cup of decaf for her. I shuddered as she shoveled in two heaping spoonfuls of sugar.
“So how does roadkill feel?” I asked.
“Shitty.”
“Let me guess. You’re feeling anxious. Like there’s something important that you’re forgetting to do. And kind of jet-lagged. Some people say they feel like they’re underwater.”
“Maybe if you gave me some Ritalin”—she took a sip of coffee—“or something other than this decaffeinated shit.”
I wondered if the pent-up anger was the withdrawal talking, or if she’d been upset by whatever visitor had been in to talk to her earlier that morning.
“Hang in. You’re halfway there. Another few days and your body will be weaned.”
She gave a snort of disgust. “Yeah, right. In a few days, then what? What if I still can’t concentrate?”
It was a good question. She might very well continue to crave the drug even after her body was free of it. That was exactly what Channing was testing a treatment for—the psychological addiction that lingers long after the physical need ceases. Kutril.
The voice in my head chided: Can’t use it. Hasn’t been approved yet for this use. Still, Channing called it effective and without side effects.
If only I could get my hands on Channing’s research data. Kwan would know if it was safe to put Olivia on the stuff. Maybe there was a copy of the report in Channing’s office. Or on her computer, if the hard drive could be salvaged. She’d said she’d given her report to someone to review. Daphne maybe?
I didn’t want to say anything to Olivia to get her hopes up.
Olivia gave me a sour look. “It feels like I’m going crazy.” She had her mouth clenched, her eyes wide as she tried to hold back tears.
“I work with plenty of people who are genuinely crazy, and you’re not,” I said. “Have you been thinking about what happened?”
She looked away. “It seems unreal.”
“I know what you mean. That’s part of what the mind does when something unimaginable happens to you.”
“It was just a few days ago, but it seems like years.”
“Do you remember, did you take any Ritalin that morning?”
“I took some.”
“How much?”
“Maybe two. Then I had a fight with my mother, and I took some more.” She stared at me, like she meant to look defiant. But I had the sense that underneath, she was breaking apart.
“You drove here?” I hoped that by asking Olivia to focus on the mundane facts, we could pull away the emotions and she’d be better able to understand what had happened and begin to deal with it.
“I was so angry that she made me come in. And then I can’t find the goddam car keys.” Olivia’s voice was raw. “And I get here and the elevator isn’t working so I have to climb up three flights of stairs. Then I get up there and her door is open, like she’s in there waiting for me. And I know I’m late and she’s going to be pissed. And I’m thinking, I’ll tell her how I couldn’t find my keys, and the fucking elevator isn’t working. And I don’t even know until I come in …” She sobbed. “And she’s sitting there in the chair. Her eyes are closed. The gun—” Olivia stopped, her hand rose, palm up and hung in midair. “And I go over to her. I want to take the gun away. But there’s something weird, a smell. And then a sound, something moving. I must have jumped, because I knocked over a cup.” Her words we
re coming faster now. “And now the room smells like coffee. And it’s making me sick. Like I want to throw up.” Olivia’s face twisted, and she began to heave, the tears coursing down her cheeks. “And she’s holding the gun …”
She gasped for air.
“Olivia,” I broke in, “relax.”
She took gulps of air but couldn’t seem to exhale.
“Breathe out, Olivia.”
Olivia gripped the table with both hands.
“Out through the mouth.”
Olivia’s eyes were open, startled. Finally, she blew air out.
“That’s right.” I lowered my voice. “Just slow everything down.” I said the words slowly, deliberately. “Nice and easy. Just breathe. In … and out. That’s good.” Redness ebbed from her face. “Keep breathing.”
Olivia’s breathing slowed.
“You okay?” I asked.
Olivia nodded. She pressed a hand to her chest.
“You can feel your heart pounding?”
She nodded again.
“Just keep breathing, no need to rush.” Her shoulders unhunched themselves. “You’ll feel your heart slowing down, slowing down.” I singsonged.
She leaned back. Gradually her hands lowered themselves to her lap.
“And I’m thinking,” she went on, her voice quiet and calm now, “it’s just like my grandmother. Only this time, it’s my fault.”
“Olivia, your mother loved you very much. She was concerned about you, yes. But if she did kill herself, it wasn’t because of anything you did or didn’t do. It wasn’t because of anything you said. You have to believe me. I knew your mother pretty well.”
Olivia stared down into her lap, her jaw clenching and unclenching.
“Do you remember going back into your mother’s office after the security officer arrived? Why did you go back?”
Olivia’s eyes darted back and forth. “She was alone. I didn’t want her to be alone.”
“Why did you throw the computer?”
“I don’t know.”
“And then you cut yourself.”
She stared straight ahead. “It was my fault,” she said, her voice flat. She seemed so small, and the burden she was carrying was oppressive.
“I know you probably won’t believe me,” I said, “but I understand what you’re going through.” Olivia looked at me, her mouth pulled taut at the edges. “When my wife was killed …”
“Kate,” Olivia whispered.
“Kate. She showed you how to make a pot, didn’t she?”
Olivia nodded, staring down into her lap. “She was nice to me.”
“She was a very nice person,” I said. “And she loved having you over, showing you how to work with the clay, use the wheel.”
I’d watched from the doorway of Kate’s sun-drenched studio on our top floor. Kate had sat on her stool with Olivia perched between her legs. Kate had guided Olivia’s hands. Together they’d made a pot grow up from a shapeless mound of clay. Kate had seen me and smiled. Later, she told me how nice it felt to have the little girl there, fitting into the contours of her own body. Olivia’s head smelled of baby shampoo, she said.
“Well, after she was killed, I felt terribly guilty. Like you’re feeling now. But I kept going, like you’ll keep going, because you don’t have a choice. And because each day it’s going to get a little easier. I know it’s hard to believe that, but it will.”
Olivia exhaled shakily. “Know what I said as I walked into her office? I go, ‘I hope you’re satisfied.’ And she’s sitting there, her eyes half-closed. I’m looking at her like, so what’s your problem? And I say it again, louder.” Olivia sobbed.
“She was dead by then, Olivia.”
“Grandma died like that,” Olivia said in a tiny voice. “Mommy found her.”
“You took the gun away from her?” I asked.
Olivia’s eyes beseeched me. “I couldn’t let them find her that way. She’d have hated it.”
“Did you hear the gunshot?” I ask.
A guarded look came into Olivia’s eyes, like a pair of transparent membranes slid down over her eyes. “No.”
“You told me there was a funny smell.”
Olivia’s nose wrinkled. “Smoky,” she said.
Sounded like what I’d smelled. Probably gunpowder. That meant we’d both gotten there soon after the gun went off.
“You told me you heard something move. Can you describe the sound?”
She picked at a pimple on the side of her face. “I don’t know … .”
“Was it the sound of something in the room with you?”
She closed her eyes. “Maybe. Or maybe it was out in the hall.”
I wondered if it was me that she’d heard. “Were you holding the gun when you heard the sound?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t think so.”
“And then you spilled the coffee.”
“I backed up and knocked it over with my foot.”
“The cup was on the floor?”
She hugged herself. “Why do I have to keep talking about it? Why do I have to keep thinking about it?”
“I know talking about this is painful, but in the long run, it will help you stop remembering what happened all the time, the way you probably are now.”
Olivia stared at her hands, kneading them together. It was as if someone had turned on a tap—tears were suddenly streaming down her face. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my handkerchief. I brushed away the brown ball of fuzz I’d found on Olivia’s bed and handed the handkerchief to her. Sweater lint? Daphne had a nervous habit of picking the pills on her sweater sleeve, and she’d been wearing a brown cardigan when I last saw her.
“Was anyone here to see you this morning, before I came?” I asked.
Olivia looked down in her lap. Then raised her eyes to me. I could feel the wheels turning. “My father,” she said at last. “He brought me some clothes.”
“Anyone else?”
“No,” she answered quickly and looked away.
“The police want to talk to you,” I said. She chewed on her bottom lip and held the handkerchief tightly in a clenched fist. “They’re coming Monday morning. They’ll probably take your fingerprints.”
“Monday,” she whispered. It was only three days away.
11
I SENSED that Olivia was hiding something. Someone had been in to see her earlier that morning, probably Daphne. And there was more. Why sneak back into Channing’s office, pick up the computer, and pitch it through the window? It didn’t make sense. If she wanted to break the window and cut herself, the paperweight would have worked just as well.
Olivia had become agitated when the police officer emerged from the shrubbery with the laptop. Was she upset because he’d retrieved the computer? Or was she anxious about something else the police might find if they continued to look? Perhaps the second Acu-Med mug, the one that disappeared from the murder scene, had followed the laptop out the window.
For all the unanswered questions, it was still clear to me that Olivia’s grief was genuine. The cuts on her arms were very real, and far from superficial. On top of everything else, she was having a very rough time without her daily doses of Ritalin.
I called Daphne and left a message. Even if I couldn’t talk to her about Olivia, I could at least ask her about Channing’s research. She was probably familiar with the Kutril regimen. When I checked my messages a few hours later, Daphne had left word that she had time late in the day.
I headed over to the Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Unit just before five. I brought along a flashlight. I ignored the stares of curious passersby as I foraged in the bushes below Channing’s window. I found the broken branches in the surrounding yews, where the laptop had probably landed. I crouched and looked underneath. I flashed the light between the branches. The grounds at the Pearce are kept meticulous, so I wasn’t surprised there was no trash, no empty coffee cups strewn where no one could see. I searched systematically, in widening circles
. I found nothing but some shards of broken window glass.
It had been four days since the murder. Plenty of time for someone, innocently or otherwise, to have found the mug or collected the pieces. The only thing I knew for sure was that someone wasn’t Olivia. If she’d gotten off the unit, I’d have known about it.
I gave up and went inside. I took the elevator up to the fourth floor. There was a metal wastebasket against the wall, probably the one that had been used to prop the elevator door open when I’d last been here and found Channing dead.
I glanced up and down the hall. I could hear the elevator groan as it descended, and the hum of the overhead fluorescent lights. The carpet seemed radioactive green. My heart was pounding and my breathing shallow. I pushed myself down the hall.
The door to Channing’s office was padlocked. All that was left of the yellow crime-scene tape was a pair of raw marks where the varnish had been pulled from the doorjamb. I touched one of the abrasions.
I looked up and saw Daphne, standing outside her office. She looked haggard, her face drawn and pinched as if she’d aged a decade in the last few days.
I went into her office and sat. A blue-and-white ginger-jar lamp cast a warm glow over the papers and file folders stacked on the desk. On the windowsill, the flowers of an African violet were turning brown. Colorful chintz cushions that would have softened the institutional chairs and sofa were scattered about on the floor.
There was a laptop in a sleek, purple plastic case on her desk. The coffeemaker burbled in the corner, filling the room with the comforting smell of fresh coffee. I scanned the walls. There were diplomas and plaques, along with an array of photographs.
Daphne walked over to a photo of her husband. “I took this when we were in London. Just last year, before Robert …” She shuddered. “Robert says …” She gave a self-conscious laugh. “I imagine myself talking to him. It helps.”
With her finger, she traced around his face. “Robert was a great fan of Channing’s. She was there for us at the end, you know.”
