Dry Ice

by Stephen White

  “If you say so,” I said.

  Kirsten touched my arm. It was a caution.

  “You didn’t happen to move anything when you were in there?” Sam asked.

  I opened my mouth. Kirsten squeezed my wrist. Her fin-gernails found flesh. “Don’t even think about answering that,” she said. “Move on, detective. You know better. I’m not predisposed to let this continue.”

  Sam bit his lower lip. I knew him well enough to know that he’d done it to keep a grin from erupting. Kirsten might not be predisposed to let him continue, but she hadn’t stopped him. In his mind he was up one goal. In Sam’s brand of hockey that’s a good lead.

  “I apologize,” he said.

  “Go on,” my lawyer said.

  Sam closed his eyes for a couple of seconds while he shook his head in slow motion. I could tell he was trying hard to be nice and that being nice to a defense attorney in the current circumstance was requiring a monumental effort. I also knew he was taking a risk with me right then, and I was more inclined to feel grateful than suspicious.

  Kirsten’s sharp nails were telling me that she didn’t share that bias.

  “Okay, I’ll try again. This is shaky ground. It is, Ms. Lord, isn’t it?”

  Kirsten didn’t respond. Where this kind of adversarial waltz was concerned she was an experienced dancer and saw the moves Sam was planning before he made them. He was going to have to try harder to get her to misstep.

  “Assuming, Alan, that you didn’t move anything when you were in there, like”—at that point he suddenly sped up his cadence, rushing to finish his thought before Kirsten could voice an objection—“let’s say, a very long ladder that’s currently hanging on a couple of big hooks just below the windows on the wall. Assuming you—”

  “Detective Purdy, I—”

  “Assuming you didn’t do something like that—then how in the hell did the vic get up to that rafter in the first place to tie off the rope before he jumped?”

  I looked at Kirsten. She was torn on how to counsel me. She kept her eyes on Sam as she thought it through, but eventually she said to me, “Don’t answer that one either.”

  I think she chose it because it was the default option.

  Sam stared at my befuddled face. Kirsten turned toward me too. It didn’t take a genius to know that I didn’t actually have a ready answer to Sam’s question.

  He nodded at me with satisfaction in his eyes. He had either just learned exactly what he had hoped to learn by intruding on my meeting with my attorney, or he’d received an unexpected bonus.

  Sam’s question was something I hadn’t considered, and it was much more intriguing to me than the duel I was witnessing between him and Kirsten. So how the hell, I was wondering, did Kol get up there?

  “If there’s something you’re not telling me, Alan, now would be a good time. A very good time,” Sam said.

  My lawyer stood up from her chair as though she were popping up from behind the defense table to announce a particularly strenuous objection. She took a step forward, placing herself physically between me and my best friend. “This interview, or whatever it is, is over,” she said. She compressed an impressive amount of authority into her voice.

  Sam put his pen and pad back into his shirt pocket. He hadn’t written a single word during our meeting, had probably never intended to. The implements were props.

  He ignored Kirsten’s admonition about the end of the meeting, as I assumed he would. Good cops, like good shrinks, and good lawyers, run stop signs. “Thing is? Without a ladder somebody who wanted to hang himself would have had to climb up one of those original old barn posts like a telephone lineman, and then shimmy across toward the middle of the gable on one of those big ol’ angled beams—I think they’re oak; you think they’re oak? Whatever, nice old wood—while he was hanging upside down up there like some kind of big monkey. I don’t see it coming down that way. Was your patient a circus acrobat or something like that?”

  He didn’t wait for a reply from me, or for a fresh admonition from Kirsten. He tipped an imaginary cap to her and said, “I’m sorry for the intrusion.”

  I waited until the front door had closed before I said, “He didn’t come over here to tell me he was off the case. He knew Lauren would tell me that later. He didn’t come over here to ask me what I did in the barn. He came over here to tell me something else.”

  “That’s what you’re thinking?”

  It was apparent that Kirsten didn’t share my assessment of what had just happened. I pressed my case. “Sam isn’t buying the suicide,” I said.

  “I got that. But that wasn’t Sam’s purpose with this little show.”

  “What was?”

  “He was trying to see what bait you were going to snap at.”

  “I didn’t say a thing.”

  “You didn’t have to. You should have seen your face when he asked you about the ladder. I’ve been in the prosecutor’s shoes, Alan. I know how it’s done. At this stage of the game, a suspect doesn’t have to speak in order to answer. He wasn’t looking for anything he could use in court; he was looking for a hint on where to look next.”

  “He’s off the investigation.”

  “I barely know the man, Alan, and I know that whether or not he’s officially assigned to this case any longer, he’s not off this investigation.”

  She was right. I said, “I was that obvious?” I knew I had been. With another cop, I would’ve been better able to keep a therapist’s visage. Not with Sam. With Sam, the doors and windows were usually open.

  “When we’re all done with this?” Kirsten said. “I have some girlfriends who would love to play a little high-stakes poker with you. For now please, please forget that Sam’s your friend. He’s a cop. You’re a suspect in the investigation of a suspicious death. There are lots of ways for cops to play a suspect. You just witnessed one of them. You said it yourself—Sam Purdy is good. I don’t disagree.”

  “A suspect?” I’d been struggling with the personal responsibility I was feeling that one of my patients had committed suicide. I had been worried about the effect of Kol’s death on the viability of my clinical practice. I’d started worrying about financial liability and the long-term impact on my family.

  Kirsten said, “A person of interest, if you’re a fan of euphemisms.”

  I hadn’t been worrying about criminal responsibility.

  “Read between the lines,” she said. “If Sam’s not buying suicide, he’s talking homicide. I think we can agree to rule out accident unless you have some great news you’ve been keeping from me about your patient and high-stakes sexual asphyxia.”

  I had actually been allowing myself the luxury of believing that Kol’s murder—if Sam was right—would absolve me of responsibility for failing to anticipate his suicide. Kirsten was insisting I attend to a much more sinister scenario.

  “Sam knows I wouldn’t kill anyone.” After a second I added, “Like that.”

  Her eyes grew wide. I saw the frailty in my argument instantly.

  “Why would I kill Kol?” I asked.

  She leaned forward. “They know you knew the victim, right? Sam’s already guessed he was your patient. Your wife knows that the body was discovered in a building you had no good reason to enter. Sam may or may not know that this guy is the same patient who had the volcanic nosebleed in your waiting room. He will soon.”

  “Yes,” I said. “That means—”

  She held up a hand and shook her head. “I’ll tell you what it means: When homicide is a consideration, the police keep an eye out for perpetrators. Killers. Suspects. Persons of interest. You knew the victim. You found the body. You were here alone around the likely time of death. You had access to the crime scene. Like it or not, Alan, you’re on their radar. Currently, the brightest green blip.”

  I opened my mouth to argue. I was going to argue motive.

  The cops might have been able to hang me with means, and ma
ybe with opportunity. But what reason could I possibly have for killing my own patient?

  I paused, my mouth open, as Kol’s voice in my head—unbidden—provided me with more reason to be cautious. “I mean it’s not like what happened with…your dad.”

  I had a motive. A motive I didn’t want to discuss with Kirsten, or with anybody else.

  She rescued me from the impasse in my internal dialogue. She said, “Remember, I know what it’s like to be a target.” She allowed that thought to pool on the surface and begin to penetrate my porous shell before she continued. “It’s like recognizing that someone you love has died. The first stage is denial.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  LAUREN AND I entered the twilight of the day under the jointly constructed pretense that the latest series of marital earthquakes hadn’t done any structural damage.

  Neither of us was inclined to cook but our decision to have a pizza delivered wasn’t well considered. We hadn’t bothered to warn the sheriff’s deputy parked outside to expect a visitor from Abo’s. When the delivery guy drove his big Ford pickup down the lane as though he were trying to lock in the best time in the quarter-mile at Bandimere, he blew right past the deputy’s SUV. Neither Lauren nor I saw what happened next, but when the knock came at our door the deputy was standing a few steps behind the pizza delivery guy with his hand hovering close to his holstered handgun.

  The pizza guy’s eyes had that red-lights-in-the-rearview-mirror look.

  The cop suggested that the next time we were expecting someone we should—maybe—let him know in advance.

  After dinner—we’d ordered enough for the deputy, too—Lauren took Grace away for a bath and twenty minutes later handed me a warm, pink, sweet-smelling little girl in fresh pajamas. Her flannel pj’s were covered with puppies jumping over rainbows on their way to distant planets. As I cradled my sleepy daughter against my chest on the amble down the hall to her room, I watched Lauren retreat to the master bedroom. She was walking slowly, staying close to the wall—she didn’t want to limp or lose her balance in front of Grace.

  We liked to think we fooled our daughter. We knew we didn’t.

  Gracie and I laughed and cuddled. She helped me read the night’s stories before I tucked her into bed. I consoled myself that we may have succeeded in insulating her from evil for one more day.

  The day had been warm, and the evening was too. From the bedroom door I could see that Lauren was enjoying the light breeze on one of the two narrow chaises on the small deck outside our bedroom. Her shoulders were covered in a chenille throw I’d given her for Christmas the previous December. The throw was the color of the crema that forms on top of a well-crafted cup of espresso. That night, in the muted light on the deck, her black hair was the coffee.

  Before joining her outside I found the shoe box with her bong on the high shelf in the closet. I carried the bong to the kitchen and added water and a few fresh flutes of lemon peel to the reservoir. I splashed a little Zinfandel port—Lauren had recently discovered she had a taste for it—into a glass and carried everything back to the bedroom. I also retrieved her tiny stash of dried buds from a locked drawer in her dressing table, and grabbed a disposable lighter.

  I placed everything on a table between the two chaises before I handed her the port. She took a small sip. After a slow minute I lifted the bong and offered it to her.

  “No,” she said. I thought she’d spoken sharply but allowed that it may have been hypersensitivity on my part. It had been the type of day that could have left me prone to that vulnerability. Two beats passed before she added, “Thank you. I know you’re trying to help. But I think I’ve explained that I don’t think it’s something I should do anymore. It’s not something I’m going to do anymore. Respect that, okay? Please.”

  She had explained. But she hadn’t disposed of the bong, or flushed her stash down the toilet. To me, that indicated ambivalence. I could have argued that point with her, but I wasn’t that stupid. Or at least not quite that stupid.

  “Gracie’s in dreamland,” I said. “Playing with Teryl all day wiped her out. She’s sound asleep. She’ll never know.” I touched her on the arm. “Even if she does figure it out we can find a way to explain it to her. It’s obvious you’re in pain. Nothing else seems to help as much as the dope does.”

  Lauren shook her head, her eyes focused on the shallow moonlight above the Divide, not on me. She sighed with frustration before she continued. “I have it…under control right now. Do I look like I’m in pain?”

  Like “Does this dress make me look fat?” it was not a question that begged an answer in the affirmative. “You did earlier,” I said, straddling the fence she seemed intent on erecting between us.

  “Maybe I was, but I’m managing okay right now. Nice night,” she said.

  “Better than the day that preceded it,” I said. I was trying to be sardonic, and I was also trying to goad us to confront the mastodon that had edged its way into our relationship that afternoon.

  She sipped some port and wetted her lips with her tongue before she said, “We’re in difficult places. Professionally. Both of us. Until we know better what’s what with all this, we probably shouldn’t talk about it.”

  Professionally? Did Lauren really think this was just a professional problem?

  Her words were relatively benign, her argument somewhat reasonable. But I felt the fissure between us quake into a chasm. My concern about her and me was much more personal than professional.

  I considered the possibility that I was catastrophizing and that the day had jaded my perspective. “We’ve always been able to find ways to talk about things without…being too specific,” I said. “We can do that same dance. We can do it right now. We’re good at it. I think it’s important. Essential even.”

  “This time is different,” she replied with no hint of fresh contemplation. “This thing today, it involves both of us. Professionally, I mean. Your patient, my case. Usually it’s just one of us that has to do the confidentiality two-step. Right now, it’s both of us. That makes it trickier.”

  “Your case? You won’t be involved with what happened here today—not for something that took place right next door. And certainly not if it’s even tangentially related to your husband. As—I admit—it appears to be. If it actually turns out there was a crime involved, somebody else in the office will handle this.”

  I waited for her to say, “Of course.” She didn’t. That’s when I knew that the case she was referring to wasn’t just Kol. Kirsten had identified the blood on my shoe as the nexus. Apparently, she’d been right. I asked, “Lauren, does the man who died in the barn have something to do with the other case, the one with Sam?”

  I meant the grand jury case, of course, but I couldn’t say it. Lauren wouldn’t acknowledge the grand jury case. If I wanted to talk about the grand jury, I had to couch my words in code.

  “You know I can’t talk about things that I can’t…talk about,” she said. She took a long draw from the port, leaving only an opaque puddle in the bottom of the glass. Her purple eyes were the color of the port stain. The color of the night sky.

  She reached over and took my hand. “I’m sorry about your patient. It has to be hard.”

  Her words felt like a cold compress. The late-day gravel-and-honey timbre that the hour and her fatigue had allowed into her voice was something that I always associated with intimacy. I sensed some welcome lift beneath my wings.

  “It is hard,” I acknowledged. “Thanks.” Lauren shifted her weight, bent a leg, straightened it. Did it all again. It was an effort to interfere with spasticity in her calf or her quad or her hamstrings. I knew what she was doing with her leg was merely a gesture; it wouldn’t help. She did many useless things to try to temper the whims of multiple sclerosis. Futile calisthenics was only one of them. Ironically, smoking dope from a lemon-scented bong on our deck facing the Front Range had been one of the few useful ones.

  When she spoke
again her voice was lower. And less certain. “Were you kidding a minute ago? About what you said?” she asked.

  “What I said about what?”

  “About the man who died in the barn.”

  “Jesus, no. I was hoping you’d tell me if he was somehow related to what you’ve been doing with Sam. I’m trying to figure out all the ways this is complicated. If it came across as a joke, I apologize.”

  She glanced over at me, disbelief painted on her brow like a tattoo. “You could tell me how you knew the person in the barn if that person wasn’t one of your patients, right?”

  “Yes.”

  She swung her legs over the edge of the chaise. She put her left hand on my knee. “Okay then. Will you tell me how you knew that person?”

  Lauren was asking me to tell her a story by refusing to tell her a story. Where the grand jury was concerned I had asked her to do the same. I played along. I said, “I’m sorry, I can’t…tell you.”

  With that denial I had just informed my wife that Kol was my patient. I considered it no big deal; within moments of getting back home after dropping Grace off at Teryl’s house, Lauren had figured out that the dead guy in the barn was my patient. I had done nothing since to dissuade her. Given that she had already guessed, I was wondering why she wanted me to make the indirect admission aloud. I couldn’t figure it out. I said, “I wish I could tell you more.”

  She stood suddenly, leaving her glass on the table. Then she turned her back to me, cocked out one hip, and rested her elbows on the deck railing. “I don’t know what’s going on, Alan, but I don’t like it. I don’t know why you’re being this way with me. But with everything that’s happened—that’s happening—it makes me uneasy about…whatever else you might not be telling me.”

  I stood, too. I was suspecting that she’d begun alluding to Michael McClelland’s escape from custody and the note he’d left on our door, but I wasn’t sure. And what way was I being with her? I didn’t know the answer to that. I knew I felt an immediate need to close the gap between us, so I stepped closer and put my arms around her from behind.