Gregg Hurwitz - The Crime Writer

There were several TV trays on the floor by the couch, and I cleared them to the kitchen, washed them off, loaded one with tacos. I folded the blankets on the couch, stacked the pillows, and poured Lloyd a drink. Pictures of him and Janice were everywhere hung on the walls, magnetized to the refrigerator, framed atop bookcases. Wedding portraits with awkward Lloyd, all big ears and blond curly hair, clinging to Janice's arm as if he still couldn't believe he'd landed her. Janice smiling from a lime green Gremlin, her feathered hair poofing beyond the frame. The standard fifteen-year anniversary shot, arms around shoulders, before the Eiffel Tower. I'd never met Janice, but I noted with some sadness that the most recent picture of Lloyd was at least five years old. She'd been dying since I'd met him.

I turned off the TV and sat in the reading chair, listening to the house creak, imagining Lloyd's split life, divided between the couch and the bedroom. How he probably stayed out here to breathe a little easier. How he'd shored himself up to make that walk to see his wife. How he probably spent his nights creeping from this end of the house to that seam of light.

Staring down the dark hall, I realized that I feared, greatly feared, what that bedroom might look like.

Fear of death. It's what we share. We ward it off in ineffectual ways, practice brushing against it, swimmers in dark waters. The obsessive bodybuilder. The weekend stunt pilot. The pool-hall slut. We drink too much. We put off surgeries. We whistle past old folks' homes. When it comes down to it, we all fear what's behind that door at the end of the corridor. That's why I write dark little potboilers. To pretend I'm poking at death with a stick. That's why people read them on subway trains and airplanes and think they're facing their deepest and darkest.

The seam in my head, the seam in Genevieve's lovely pale skin, the seam beneath that door. All cracks in what we think we're holding together. I'd never felt so attuned to the vulnerability around me, the chinks and fissures. They're everywhere. You just have to pause. And look.

The hall lightened briefly, and then I heard Lloyd's approach. I handed him his drink. He set down his knapsack, sank into the couch, took a gulp, and emitted a sigh. "Thanks, Drew. This is nice."

"Tacos and Bacardi. Old family recipe. How's Janice?"

He waved me off. "It's back. Other breast now. Third time through, make or break."

"Where's she being seen?"

"Cedars."

"I've heard they have a great onc team." The longer my remark hung in the air, the more hollow it seemed.

The glow of the lamps blacked out the nice view from the back windows. Lloyd finished his drink and said, "Pour you one?"

"I'm still on water."

"Oh, yeah." He filled his glass again, unwrapped a taco, took a bite, and set it down. "I'm real sorry for what you've been through, Drew, but I'm not allowed to talk to you. You're a suspect."

"I haven't been charged. I produced proof that I had nothing to do with "

"I heard."

"Look, Kaden and Delveckio already revealed a fair amount to me. I just want to talk through what I already know. We can start with Genevieve, even. I have the murder book, the trial's over. No way for you to misstep there."

Halfway through his second rum and Coke, Lloyd blinked heavily, suggesting a nod. "Don't you remember it all from the trial?"

"It's blurry. I'd like to hear it again from you."

There was an awkward pause, and then Lloyd said, "Pretty damning, Drew."

"You thought I was going away for it?"

"I couldn't imagine a jury convicting you with a brain tumor in a jar, but the evidence…" His long fingers gripped the mouth of his glass, tilting the dark liquid beneath. He contemplated the rum mix. I knew how that silent conversation went.

I said, "Your report showed that Genevieve had no defensive wounds, no skin beneath her nails."

"Katherine Harriman argued that's because she knew you."

"But Katherine Harriman, unlike me, didn't know Genevieve. Genevieve was tough to surprise, especially if she was up out of bed with an intruder in her bedroom. She wouldn't be one to embrace the knife. If she'd seen the blade, she'd have gone down clawing and biting."

"It was a forceful thrust. Death would have been pretty much instantaneous."

"Prints on the knife?"

"Besides Genevieve's and her kid sister's? Just yours."

"Suspect profile?"

"You know, the usual. Left-handed male, hundred eighty-five pounds, diabolical gleam in the eyes."

"Left-handed from the angle?"

He glanced at the watch on my right wrist. "Uh-huh. Slight slant."

"Male?"

"Power behind the stab."

"Body moved?"

"Yeah. A bunch." Another awkward pause. "By you. Your seizure started as a complex partial. Not the thrashing kind, more of a break in consciousness with automatisms lip smacking, repetitive finger movement. People can walk around, even. Complex partial seizures have been used as a defense in shoplifting cases, though that's pushing it. But you would've been functional enough to manipulate Genevieve Bertrand's body. Until your seizure generalized into a grand mal."

"Would I have been able to stab her in that state? The complex partial?"

"Not likely. I agree with Harriman that your break probably occurred after the murder." He studied my face, then said softly, "I'm sorry, Drew."

I sat back, rubbed at the soreness in my eyes with the heels of my hands. "I had a dream my first night home. I was driving over to her house that night. In a frenzy. She kept a key under a plant pot on her porch. I cracked the clay saucer getting to it. When I woke up, I drove over to her place." Would I tell him the rest? Could I? Lloyd's house was so still I thought I could make out the faint sigh of hospital equipment from the other end. "The saucer was cracked. It wasn't cracked the last time I remember seeing it. I think I dreamed a piece of memory. I think I'm starting to put together fragments of what happened that night."

He frowned severely, taking this in. "What do you mean when you say you were in a frenzy?"

"I was sweating a lot. Feeling panicky."

"Do you recall any unusual smell?"

The band of skin at the back of my neck went cold. My voice tangled in my throat, so I nodded.

"Bitter? Like burning rubber?" Lloyd didn't have to wait for an answer; he could read my face. "It's called an olfactory aura. They often occur just before seizures."

I remembered hearing about auras, but I hadn't put the information together with my dream. "Can I ask you about something else?"

"The question is, can I answer?"

"I want to know about sevoflurane," I said.

Lloyd pulled on his glasses, as if they helped him think better, and said cautiously, "What about it?"

"You found traces in Kasey Broach's bloodstream."

"Kaden and Delveckio revealed that to you?"

I couldn't tell if he was shocked or angry. "The night of the dream, when I woke up, I was really groggy and I had blurred vision. I also had a cut on my foot I think someone might have knocked me out and stolen blood to frame me."

Lloyd let out an unamused cough of a laugh. "Drew "

"Just hear me out, Lloyd. I did some research on sevoflurane today. It's a perfect drug for that. Easy to inhale, quickly induces anesthesia, nonpungent odor. It leaves the bloodstream quickly, so it's hard to test for. No strong aftereffects, so I wouldn't know I'd been drugged."

"Did you know?"

"Well, the killer had a running start, because I mostly figured I was insane to begin with. But here's the thing sevoflurane also produces amnesia."

"So you're thinking…"

"I'm thinking the gas dumped me back into the same memory wasteland of brainspace as my tumor did. It helped me retrieve part of that night." My voice was loud, excited. Lloyd started to say something, but I held up my hand. "I found out sevoflurane also gives a 'good duration of action,' but I think I woke up early. I might have seen the intruder in the street in front of my house, which means I came to sooner than he wanted. I'm wondering why. Maybe I have a higher tolerance from my checkered past."