Chapter 11

1

“Hello Lew.”

            Trevor had a smile on his face when he walked into the station; the same gloating smile infecting Becky’s gum-snapping maw behind the front desk as she peered out at the soap opera happening in her lobby. Lewis had hoped Barb would suffer the indignity of picking up her crazy old dad, but his luck wasn’t working out that way. Not today. Not when a plan he believed had been pretty solid from its get-go had turned to shit with such alacrity and force he was relegated to a time-out in the Reedy Creek police department while a drug dealer strolled the streets with the cops in his back pocket.

            “I figured you’d get a kick out of this,” he said, standing up and feeling his back groan. It took every effort of his disposition not to scream, not to grab Trevor by the throat; he nodded at Becky instead, the little pretentious bitch he never shared a word with as he sat for almost an hour. The silence between them was deafening, with only the constant snap of her gum and the clickety-clack of her keyboard as she pensively looked up at him every few minutes, most likely to make sure he was still breathing. If these were his twilight years he wanted the darkness stat. How could his very being have become so fucking embarrassing? He’d thought about his life. Sitting in silence allowed such contemplation, and all he could come up with was an inquiry that would have rattled Betty to the bone, had she not been mad at him at the moment, only adding to the indeterminable quiescence: was it worth it? Was life worth it? Everything you’ve done up to this point, everything, what has it meant if little twats can judge this brief moment while excluding the experience that led up to it?

            They strolled out into the parking lot to Barb’s Acura Integra, the area desolate as evening crept on; the cops had all probably gathered at the Overdose scene, to check if the subject shit himself as his life struggled out of him. Sometimes cops could be that morbid. That curious. Because the two were often entangled, weren’t they?

           “So what happened? Lady on the phone was curt. Brief. But you totalled your car?”

            Lewis looked at Trevor, waiting for him to turn on the car, anything, but he just stared. Stared with those little prick eyes of his, and he remembered when he first met the boy, first had him over for dinner, excited to talk baseball. To talk movies, like Eastwood and those spaghetti westerns that had him itching to draw from his holster as he strolled the sidewalk. But Trevor had just talked about participatory democracy, or some such nonsense that had proliferated on college campuses and was working the hippies into a tizzy. The little shit didn’t know anything about Willie Mays or Carl Yastrzemski or Mickey Mantle or Roger Maris…fucking Maris and his 61st homerun still a-buzzing with that asterisk some purists would always dangle to protect the Bambino, or the negro Hank Aaron who would, soon enough, stand athwart Babe Ruth himself as the grand master of home runs. No, this kid talked about Tom Hayden and some Port Huron Statement, about civil disobedience and the Students for a Democratic Society. Lewis had heard enough about their silent protests at the campus, and preferred that jurisdiction remain out of his purview because he didn’t give a fuck. Lewis did not care about what this little shit thought he was entitled to. He didn’t. And he remembered how upset Barb was with him that first dinner date, how mad she’d been that he would talk to her boyfriend that way.

            “It’s safe for you,” Lewis had said, sitting at the head of the table in the arrangement that had been tradition for his father before him. Betty had silently scolded him. He remembered just as much. Her eyes could be as cold as ice. Colder.

            “How do you mean?” the little shit asked, with that tone…that tone of derision born out of so little respect for his elders, for authority. Lewis wanted to talk to the boy’s parents, to ask how they could have let him persist in his defiance, how they didn’t take the belt to his bare ass until he conceded.

            “I mean you’re safe in school. And it sounds like the profs coddle you there. It sounds like they, well, encourage your entitlement. Education is your ticket out of the draft. You know boys younger than you are heading to Vietnam. I think they’d prefer the safety of that chair you’re mocking.”

            The boy named Trevor, in his first year of University, hair grown long in its own defiance of squares, to Bible-thumpers with clean cuts and no attitude, set down his fork. His roast was getting cold. The boy had barely touched it. Betty hadn’t taken offense; the boy had mentioned he wasn’t big on meat, and preferred to respect the sanctity of animals. But Betty had gone ahead and put the roast in the oven anyway, even with Barb harassing her that her new beau was practicing vegetarianism. “Those boys could just go to Canada. There’s a choice, even in conscription; your body isn’t the possession of the state. It isn’t. I don’t go to school to escape the war. I go to school to end the war. End all war. And the SDS will change things. Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson, they’ll be memories soon.”

           Lewis smiled. “I may not have gone to school like you. But I know a thing or two about history. And I remember a few young men saying the same things you are.”

          “Yeah, like who?”

          “Joseph Stalin, for one. And I’d bet there’re a lot of Ukrainians preferring that chair and roast to unmarked graves.”

          The boy laughed. It was a pitiable sound. At that moment, Lewis could have throttled the little shit and watched his eyes struggle beneath his contorted brow while his bowels loosened all over the chair in those final moments. He could. And he would not have felt any sort of remorse. Not at all. He’d killed before; it was his duty. And it was either him or the other. He didn’t like to think about it, but it was true. It was real. It was a part of who he was, who he’d become. But then, in Korea, he felt remorse. Now he would not have. Because this boy had every goddamn luxury and convenience at his fingertips, and he could do nothing but criticize his advantages. “Vietnam is just Johnson trying to put the Golden Arches in the Orient. It’s so blatantly obvious those boys aren’t murdering to fight communism, they’re murdering so McDonald’s, so hamburgers, can be flipped in the jungle the same way they are in the city. For money. For profit. To exploit the east. Put ‘em in our yoke. We don’t care about the Soviets, it’s so obvious we just care about money. About control. Do you think corporate control is any different than what Khrushchev’s doing?”

            “I think you’re asking the wrong person,” Lewis finally said. “I served my time. Served for my country. For you.”

            “I didn’t ask you to.”

            “You didn’t have to. That’s what makes us different.”

            “Dad, enough!” Barb called, and Trevor had only stared at him. Lewis had thought that would be the last time he’d see Mr Kramer. But it wouldn’t be. Because daughters sometimes fell too hard for those whom their parents disapproved. Not because the love was genuine, but the thrill was. And her generation, Trevor’s generation, was one that wanted to so readily discard of the world their parents had built.

            Lewis would always remember that dinner. He would always remember that plate, roast untouched and left to chill next to half-eaten potatoes and gravy, his daughter in her room listening to records as loud as she could while Betty washed the dishes in the kitchen just to keep her mind busy, to keep it from dwelling on the sanctimonious little asshole that had disrespected them both. “Do you think that little shit will ever come back here? Even if they date for a few more months.”

           Lewis had looked at Betty next to him, lying in the throes of their passion, the sheets tangled, her brow beaded with sweat and a lit cigarette perched from her lips. He took the smoke from her and took a deep drag, running his fingers through his hair, waiting for the rushing beat of his heart to pall. “He’d delight in coming back. He wants those arguments. I was talking to Eddie. He sometimes runs the beat by the school there. Those kids protest everything. Everything. Because America is one big fucking grievance to them. A racist cesspool, no matter what Martin Luther King tried to accomplish. I don’t see it meaning shit to them. I think he’ll come prepared, he’ll come with statistics, maybe, nothing we could ever verify without going to the library, but some sort of gotcha information that would leave my Stalin comparison in the mud. Because he knows what sort of combatant I am. And we were sparring, but it was in his ring. He fights with his mind, because he’s too much of a pussy to look at the real battle. He thinks it can all be won with talk.”

           Betty only smiled. She was beautiful. Always reminded him of Audrey Hepburn. He used to tell her that just to watch her blush. “I think you give him far too much credit. What I saw was a scared little shit with small pecker problems.”

           Lewis guffawed. He wasn’t sure that was a pleasant sight given his present nudity, and the resulting concavity of his chest as he wheezed in air to push out the loud chuckle. “Maybe that’s all it is. And if that’s true we can only hope Barb runs for the hills when he pulls it out to show her.”

           Betty rolled over and kissed Lewis firmly on the lips, going back to grab his own pecker. That was the end of a very good memory.

           “Lew?” Trevor repeated.

            He was back in the Acura. Kramer was looking at him. Older now. Family. It would have made the man sitting at that dinner table, the man lying in bed with Betty, grievously upset. But life played those cards. It didn’t matter what you put in. Sometimes fate was an asshole. “Sorry. I guess I’m more shaken up than I thought.”

           “What happened?”

           “I got into an accident.”

            Trevor looked away and turned on the car. The radio came on for a brief moment, but Trevor quickly turned down the dial. “Barb and I always wondered why you kept that car. Why you kept it on the driveway when you were always just inside. Watching TV. Reading. Having a drink in the backyard.”

           “Are you going somewhere with this?”

           “Well, yeah. Since we’ve been here, you haven’t done much or shown any interest to leave the house. And then suddenly you’re never home. You’re out and about. You’ve shaved. Combed your hair. Don’t get me wrong. Barb is thrilled. She thought you’d given up. I had too. Ever since I’ve known you, Lew, you were an ornery bastard. That’s what I liked about you.”

           “That right?”

           “Doesn’t matter. We’ve had our ups and downs. Nature of the biz, they say. But we’ve been wondering what could entice you to dress up. To look in the mirror and do something about what you don’t like seeing.”

          “You wanna know what I’ve been up to.”

          “Well, frankly, yeah. I do.”

           “I’m not sure that’s any of your business, Trevor. And I’m not sure why you’d care. Seems to me you’ve got your own thing going here since we left Suffolk. And I’m not sure what that even is.”

           Trevor exhaled. “I’m not sure either.”

           “You wanna elaborate on that?”

           “Not if you’re going to keep mum about what’s kept you out of the house, or why your Tercel is a write off.”

            Lewis looked out into the parking lot, at the cameras on the light posts. At the camera above the doorway into the station. He didn’t know how many were out there, but there were enough to prove they were wrong. That they were infringing on everything he’d fought to preserve. “It’s this place, Trevor. Seemed like a shot in the dark for you to come here, to pull your family here. It just doesn’t seem…right.” It was not the first word he wanted to use, but the one upon which he finally settled.

          “Right?”

          “Maybe I’m just talking out of my ass. I’m old. It’s expected of me.”

          “Well, maybe you are, maybe you aren’t. What’s not right about this place?”

           “I guess it was convenient you got the invitation to come when you did.” Lewis looked at Trevor and watched the man twiddle his thumbs. It was a touchy subject, and the man’s fingers still looked off, knotted in some way to prove they’d once been the products of some misfortune. “And for what? You’re not teaching here. In fact, I’m not entirely certain what you’re doing. Maybe that’s none of my business. Maybe it’s a government thing. You look at all of these cameras everywhere—” Yes, why not provoke the conversation further, and bring to light some of the observations he’d made of this place, of this desolate surveillance project where the drug dealers have full immunity and the video of their clients to prove it. “—and you start to wonder just what in the hell is going on. Who is watching us?”

             Trevor masked any shock at the question. Like he’d trained himself to. Lewis was a good judge of character, and he could read split second reactions. It was in that split second where the truth usually resided. Not in the answers that came next. “I’d assume the feds are keeping tabs on their pet project. I’d assume the cameras are a tab. And I’m a tab. I know you couldn’t care less about what I’ve written. And that’s fine. I’ve never truly cared what you thought. But the government has started taking productive measures to ensure what I’ve written, what I fear we’re doing to this planet, will not come to pass. They’ve indebted me a bond, a long-term proactive measure to combat eventualities. Maybe that’s just a fancy way of saying I’m here for PR, my face and name, sell the Federal program to academia, you know, part of the insurance that what they’re doing with this corn, this ethanol, will make up for what the Rockefellers, the Standard Oils and Robber Barons did to our environment. I’m here to represent the human toll.”

            “That sounds like a lot of gobble-di-do to me.”

             “It always did,” Trevor laughed. “I once hated you for it. But you were there for us when it mattered most.”

              “I was there for her. For Adam. For Patty.” He thought about the dinner again, about the way Trevor never shook his hand, not as he was introduced and not as he left the house, pecking Barb’s lips with a perfunctory, impassioned kiss that was only rubbing salt in a gaping wound.

              “That’s why I respect you, Lewis. Because you’re the family man I never was.”

              “You made that choice.” He watched Trevor’s eyes flirt with his fingers, his hands clasping and unclasping, as if he was holding onto something he wanted to let go. “Why did you come, Trevor? To make me feel guilty for what I’ve done? I thought Barb would have wanted to make sure I’m okay…”

               “I didn’t tell her,” Trevor said. “Didn’t tell her about your accident. Didn’t tell her where I was going.”

               “Why the hell not?”

               “What did you do when you found out about Betty? About the illness?”

                Don’t you dare say her name! He thought about them as they lay, talking about their first impression of the boy who would soon take their daughter’s hand, who would put a ring on her finger without first asking for Lew’s permission the way he had with Betty’s father. But he remembered just what he’d done. He remembered because it was the same reaction he’d given when Betty had miscarried Rose, the little girl that never was.

               “I wondered if I’d not done enough. If I wasn’t a good enough man. If I’d done something to offend God. I hated God. I fucking hated Him. But it was selfish. I was selfish when I found out because my first thought was about what I’d do if she was ever gone. That was my first inclination. And I hated myself for it. Why? Why would you ever need to know that?”

               He wanted to strike Trevor. The feeling rose like water boiling at the bottom of a well and it took clenching his fists until his nails bit quarter-moons in his palms to calm the vigor that broke out a sweat on his neck. But he couldn’t do that, couldn’t hit the man sitting next to him. Because his head was resting on the steering wheel now only to mask his crying. Tears rolled down the tip of his nose and dripped on his lap like a leaky faucet.

            “Jesus, Trevor.” He didn’t know what to do. Hadn’t truly seen the man this way. He’d seen him afraid, seen him physically broken, but not desperate. This sort of desperation went beyond money, went beyond the Low Breed, those assholes who dressed Wall Street but did their business in the alleys.

            “She doesn’t want anyone to know. Not yet. Not till the news is firm. She was probably going to tell you over coffee or something. Like it’s no big deal. I can’t hold it in, Lew. I had to say something. I never thought I could to you. Because I felt the same way you did. Selfish.” Trevor looked at Lewis and his eyes were opaque with welled tears. He looked scared. Helpless. “Thought about what I’d be without her. What would happen to the boys?”

            “Christ, Trevor, what are you talking about?” Did he want to know? No. No, he did not. But that was inescapable. Why else would Trevor ever agree to pick up Lewis from the police station? It wasn’t about gloating. It was about a confession he didn’t want to share. And for that one moment Lewis respected him. Had to. Because he feared every word that would come next.

            “We’ve been going up to Davenport. To a clinic there. There’s a specialist who does biopsies. Barb found something. And for a long time she…well, she ignored it. Cause she was scared. She’s sick, Lew. Our girl’s sick and there’s nothing I can do for her but wait.”

            The tears that had seemed self-contained within his hollowed sockets finally spilled out. They trailed down his cheeks in ribbons, and for the longest time he didn’t brush them away with his sleeve. He just let them run their course, leaving Lewis to sit in a puddle of his own misunderstanding, his heart caging him with the tattoo of a leaden drum.

            He didn’t know why but he thought only of what Lazarus said to him as he stumbled out of his van. The words scarred him the way a shotgun blast scarred Lazarus.

            You did this to her.

2

Ned called Cole Moore from a payphone on Main. He gave the vic’s address. When news leaked to the press, it was best to keep it discreet.

3

“My girl and I, we can sometimes get pretty loud.” The guy was a douchebag. Ned could tell. First impressions were often the truest form of prejudice, and though making crass presumptions based on that first reaction could get one in a lot of trouble, the truth was, they were simply correct more often than not.

            “How do you mean?” But he knew, didn’t he? The guy, Jared, was right out of school and must have worked at the distillation plant. This place was one of the newer apartment complexes in northeast Reedy Creek where the support staff, some only on short-term contracts, could rent out space to sleep and fuck. And this guy was doing a lot of the latter.

            “She’s a screamer. Look, we don’t mean to be rude about it, but the place has thin walls. The guy lived alone, but apparently he had headaches or something. I felt bad for him ‘n all, but that ain’t gonna keep me from having fun. Beth either. That’s my girl.”

            They were standing out in the hall of the place. There were three floors with what looked like eight apartments per floor. From what Ned could tell. Considering its relative novelty, the place was a dump. It was something the mayor agreed to as the corn money lined his pockets. Ned had seen the mayor’s new digs, just out of town on an acreage that was as surely above his paygrade as this entire conversation was just Jared’s means of bragging to a stranger about his prowess in the sack. The corners cut to get this place built in time for the Corners left it a rural ghetto, the sort of tenement Ned figured New Yorkers would walk around if they wanted to keep their wallets.

            “Guy, well, he usually would knock on the walls. A few times he even came over. Poor fucker. Beth would always want to make him cookies or something, but I wasn’t sure the guy would even eat them. Seemed the type that would suspect they were poisoned or something, and just chuck them once he was inside. Ya know. Like the spooked type.”

            “So you and your girlfriend have been fornicating for a few days and nights here, and you grew concerned when you didn’t hear any knocking on the wall or your door. That correct?”

            “Sounds about right.”

            “How long do you figure?”

            “Honestly, a few days or so. Not sure. We sometimes work different shifts, so we’re coming and going. Anyway, you get used to things around here. Routines. And maybe knowing the guy could hear us, ya know, maybe it was an aphrodisiac, weird as that sounds. Excited Beth. So she wasn’t in the mood tonight. Cause she didn’t have an audience.”

            You’ve both got a screw loose, Ned thought, wishing Cole would just get here. To throw a wrench in things and put Napolitano in a fit. The sheriff was inside the apartment with the body, taking a look around at things, one hand covering his nose. Decomposition was a bitch, and if the body had been in there for a few days, degradation of the tissue would have had a heady jumpstart.

            “So I came to the door and knocked. I wanted to see if he was home, cause if he was, Beth, ya know, well, she might change her mind. He didn’t answer though. I kept trying. Thought maybe cause of his headaches that he might not’ve heard or something. Thing was, the door was unlocked. I’m glad I tried the knob. Thing pushed right in.”

            Interesting. Cole will have his theories about that. Sure as shit he will. He looked at a camera at the end of the hall. He wondered if Jared knew it was there. A lot of people didn’t know there were cameras in Reedy Creek, and if they did see them, perhaps they just shooed thoughts of them away as necessary pieces of the system, of authority. That old man knows about them. Trevor Kramer’s father-in-law.

            “I called for him. Would be rude as hell to just barge in, right? Nothing. But it smelled strange. Like old garbage or something. It wasn’t right. Rotten eggs, I guess. Like when you drive by sulphur mines. I went in. And fuckin’ hell, there he was, his face all bruised and…I don’ know, swollen. Like his tongue was too big for his mouth. And there was a needle sticking in his arm. That’s when I called you.”

            “Thanks Jared. You’ve been a great help.” And there was partial truth to that, even if the guy was a certified douchebag. Because he opened up the very clear possibility that the unlocked front door was the same as the sheared brake line on the Audi.

4

“Christ, he just knows, doesn’t he?” Andy said. Cole had showed up and was standing outside, talking to Jared. The guy seemed to love the attention. Ned hadn’t seen Beth venture out into the hall and figured she knew what Jared was prattling on about and thought it would be wiser not to test people’s judgment of her if she slipped out.

            “Well ain’t this a fucked-up night. First an old man blindsides Lazarus on Main, and then we’ve got an OD.” Ned wondered why Andy used Lazarus’s nickname. The epithet was born from gossip. Maybe it was easier as a means of pinpointing the reference. “Have you heard of Nembutal?”

            Ned hadn’t. Andy was gracious enough to have covered the body with a bed sheet pulled from the guy’s bedroom. He’ll never sleep in that bed again. It was a sad thought. He remembered thinking the same thing about Wilson’s Audi. The finality of death always left one with a bad taste. He kept stealing glances at Cole, jotting down notes on his pad. This would be in the Post tomorrow. He wasn’t sure Jared’s tall tale about epic sex would make the edit, but he might find a name drop Beth would consume in all of its glory the next time she ever feigned disinterest in rattling the neighbors if Jared was acting amorous. Did you call him because you wanted him here, or did you call him because you wanted to hear his voice?

            It was a very strange and sobering thought. He looked back at the bed sheet. The body underneath, a man named Clayton Miller, worked in the treatment plant as part of the janitorial staff. He was a Creeker through and through. A lifer. Ned assumed the rent control at the place, a gift from ol’ Uncle Sam, was more than enough to entice the guy to pick up from his digs and lay down residence within this cocoon. It had more than obviously saved him enough money to invest in the leather La-Z-Boy, which would never not smell like the guy’s body. He would probably have to be buried in it. Unless he wanted to be cremated. Do guys like this have wills? That he didn’t know. But the guy was organized. His place was immaculate. Clayton kept a tidy ship. He wondered if Andy knew about the unlocked front door, but didn’t tell him. If he did, good for him. Ned didn’t believe he was much of a detective. That was truly Cole’s doing, though. He was sent on the errand of following a guy named Trevor Kramer because he was a part of the E10 council that gave him the liberty to stroll in and out of Andy’s office to share closed door meetings. Andy was not a cop in Philadelphia. The station was led to believe he was a federal transfer. It pissed off a lot of the vets in the Creek who thought the badge was theirs. It would have pissed off Ned as well had he put in his time here for the promotion. To be groomed for it.

            And he’d learned a lot about Trevor. He couldn’t wait to talk to Cole. Couldn’t wait to smell the man’s aftershave as they spoke.

            He shook away that thought.

            “It’s prescribed,” Andy said, looking at the vial on the table next to the chair. There were a few magazines. Nothing intriguing. It was the sort of stuff Ned expected a guy like Clayton to read. Andy looked at his watch. “Might still be time to make it to the pharmacy. Get some answers about this stuff. Shit, maybe the vic made his way to the place, I don’t know, a few days ago for a re-fill.”

            “Witness outside said the guy had headaches.”

            “Jesus, any prescription to cure headaches that can kill you ought to be banned.”

            “Well it did cure his headache.”

            Andy only chuckled. “I’m going to wait for the M.E. here. Make sure Moore doesn’t find his way in to take a snapshot of the body. Last thing we need here is to spook the Corners with a front-page photo of some janitor choking on his own tongue. Why don’t you head to the General. If they’ve closed up shop cause of the accident on Main, you may need to make a house call. Find out what this Nembutal is and why Mr Miller needed enough of it to kill him.”

            “Do you suspect suicide?”

            Andy said nothing for a moment. He only considered the question. “Maybe. Far too many accidents happening now in Reedy Creek. We need something to break that monotony.”

5

The General was open. Most of the crash on northern Main was cleaned but a few stragglers remained to tell tall tales about what they’d seen and heard. Most of them hadn’t been around when it happened. Though Ned was one of them, he sometimes hated the yokels. Because they always looked for stories where there were none to tell. He wondered if any of them had the imagination to assume the old coot who’d blindsided Lazarus intended to open up a case against the scarred drifter because of the contents of his G20? He doubted it. From what Ned had heard, there was about three or four kilos of cocaine under the back seats; and marijuana, some of it already pre-rolled into blunts, stacked with an efficient catalogue in a box that was crushed upon the Tercel’s concerted effort to put the Creek through a Party Drought. You can’t fault the old guy. Hell, you’d love to put ol’ Lazarus into a set of bracelets and beat the guy bloody fuckin’ senseless until he told you who he reported to and why Andy would ever loosen the reins on a lowlife who fucked up trying to kill himself only to splatter his cheek against the wall when the shotgun recoiled? But it would be a drought, wouldn’t it? Cause the Creek is a shit hole and sometimes getting a little bud can make the boredom go away.

            He wondered if Cole would ever get high with him. He wondered if he would ever tell Cole about some of his dreams. About the girl he left because she just didn’t do it for him anymore. He figured it would take a bit of booze and a toke to loosen his own tongue, and a part of him wanted to go through the van at the impound to see if anything was missed during the initial comb through. But a guy like Cole Moore didn’t give a shit about a yokel beyond his applicability to the task at hand. He was just an errand boy. Soon Cole would move on, probably take a new name, once the mystery here was solved about the E10. And why Kramer keeps driving to Davenport with his wife.

            The General was empty. Everybody was out on the street, filling their heads with stories to share at the big BBQ the ethanol plant was throwing for the kids. It was an excuse to get drunk on the Corners’ dime, he guessed. If Andy allowed any of the on-duty officers to stop by and chat with the newcomers, he might just drop in for a brewski and listen to the gossip being peddled by the regulars. He went to the back, where there were rows of shelves with prescriptions catalogued, all beaming beneath the fluorescent lighting that gave the place an eerie veneer of illness. There was a pretty girl standing at the counter, watching him with keen interest. He recognized her. He thought she had a cute last name. Something that would be endearing at first, but become annoying over time.

            Honey? Lovey? No, those didn’t sound right. Her nametag read Sarah Darling. Eureka!

            “Hi Officer Stevenson.” She remembered his name, which could be a bonus to quicken things along.

            “Hey Sarah.”

            “You here about the crash? I didn’t see anything. Just heard a crunch and saw a few people running that-a-way.” She pushed twin strands of hair behind her ears and smiled. Ned wondered if she was flirting with him; he was often blind to those exchanges. His mother used to tell him women would throw themselves at him if he but only gave them any attention, but he figured that was only a mom’s duty to lift a boy’s confidence. He never really cared to explore its reality either way.

            “Nah, that’s been mostly taken care of.”

            “Heard it was an old guy. I mean, I love my grandpa, I do, but I don’t think I’d trust him behind the wheel. He’s got a killer case of glaucoma. Usually just sits in front of the TV and listens to Cronkite.” She laughed. He didn’t find the comment particularly funny, but as an officer you learned to play it up for the people. Make them feel special.

            “Look, is Dr Halliburton in?”

            “No, he hates evening shifts. Leaves ‘em for me or Paul. Likes to spend time with his wife and kids.”

            Damn! The last thing he wanted now was to make a house call. Especially if the guy was with his family. He knew the pharmacist had a couple kids, young enough to make a trip to the place a prolonged experience of taking the boys on his lap and letting them clink his cuffs together, all the while asking if he’d put on his sirens or flash his lights with those grating voices that would never end until he obliged.

            “Shot in the dark here, Sarah, but I’ve got a question about a drug called Nembutal.”

            “Nembutal? That’s weird.”

            “Why is that weird?”

            “Well, it’s just not something we usually have on hand. A guy was just in here a few days ago…it was Sunday, actually. Asking for Dr Halliburton to re-fill his prescription without a doctor’s note. The doc wasn’t in. Man, I’d love his schedule.” She chuckled again, and now a part of Ned did believe she was flirting. Maybe it was his uniform. He knew girls loved a guy in uniform. He’d never really had any problems in high school scoring a date. And when he did pop his cherry, it was Sandra Jenkins’ insistence they do it in the backseat of his Camaro even though he didn’t have a condom. It was a first date, and though rumors spread pretty quickly in school, he’d never heard anything particularly crazy about her promiscuity. But he obliged. He’d enjoyed it for what it was. A three-and-a-half-minute uncomfortable pump session until the seat belt jammed into his ass and he came all over his underwear.

            “I’m not sure if you hold any sort of confidentiality claims or anything, but do you remember who the guy was?”

            “Oh yeah. A weirdo. I think he works at the plant. I figure you should know about the guy. Clayton…ummm, Miller, I think. Pretty common name, from what I remember. I can check the computer. He did have a prescription here, but he’d used it all up. Didn’t have his GP’s say-so for a refill. I sent him on his way. But he looked bad. Like, going through withdrawals or something. And he was pleading with me. I was really uncomfortable. Thought of calling the police…well, you, the moment he left. Nembutal’s a pretty strong drug, officer. It’s a pentobarbiturate. Stuff that put Marilyn Monroe in the grave. Man, I would’ve hated giving him something like that, knowing what he could do. He looked like he wanted to shoot the entire pharmacy into his arm.”

            He could kiss her. She’d saved him a trip to Halliburton’s place, and saved his lap from the doc’s boys wanting rides on either knee while the guy’s fat wife coaxed him into a slice of marzipan, or whatever dessert she’d concocted to keep on the baby weight.

            “So you didn’t give him any?”

            “No. Like I said, we wouldn’t have had any on-hand. He would have had to call in advance. Plus, Dr Halliburton would have had to fill the prescription. Why, what is this about?”

            She’s gonna find out about it the moment she reads Cole’s headline tomorrow morning over toast and coffee. Give her a little gossip for the night. Who will it hurt? “Your gut instinct was right, Sarah. Clayton Miller was found dead of an apparent overdose of the stuff.” He rattled his knuckles on the counter.

            “My God,” she said, feigning concern. She placed her hand over her mouth for a moment and then looked down, as if in thought. It was all very rehearsed.

“So if he didn’t get the stuff from you, do you figure he contacted Halliburton directly?”

            “I doubt it. He would have had to get the fill here. Like I said, I can check the records, but I don’t recall seeing Clayton, I mean, around here since Sunday. Hold on. Let me check the dailies…the receipts for pick-ups. It’s been slow this week. A lot of people are on vacation before school starts next week.” She grabbed a folder and rifled through paper. There wasn’t much. “Nothing. He never came back. Unless—”

            “Unless what?”

            She rifled through the papers again, more to keep her hands busy than anything else. Ned wondered if Lazarus kept something like Nembutal on him, but figured if such a small dose (the vial on Miller’s table was strangely non-descript and unassuming) was dangerous, he wouldn’t want to put his consumers in the cemetery; that wasn’t a good business model, even for drug dealers. “Unless his doctor…Dr Serkis had any on him. I figured, well, I don’t mean to drag his reputation through the mud here, but if Clayton was willing to beg for drugs from me, it’s not a far leap to guess he’d do the same with Norris Serkis if the mood struck him just right. And like I said, he was a mess when he came in here. I hate saying that knowing what’s happened, but it’s the truth.”

            She smiled again. She was very pretty. The sort of girl Ned expected would one day leave Reedy Creek for bigger and better things. And he smiled too. Why not? Because tonight was just a fucking great night for interesting news. Oh yes. First an old man hits Lazarus’s van on purpose, and it turns out in a series of six-degrees-of-separation coincidence that he shares a roof with the very fuckin’ mark Cole had set you out to follow. And research. Because apparently Trevor Kramer had a New York Times bestseller but now he was just a specialty councillor in a small town far from the east coast razzle-dazzle that had kept his name in the news. It was the sort of trade-off you couldn’t ignore. And Cole Moore hadn’t. And then a balding, overweight janitor overdosed on a specialty barbiturate because he had headaches, and his front door had remained unlocked, Ned could only assume, for a few days until a horny neighbor had the good sense to nudge the handle to check why there hadn’t been any knocking on the walls when he banged his girl with fiendish glee that there could be an audience of his endeavors. And all of this, all of it, was capped by a pharmacist’s assistant with a great bit of news: Clayton Miller hadn’t re-filled his Nembutal prescription at the General, not this time, because Clayton Miller was all capped out. So there was a good chance the man’s doctor did it for him. And why was that such fantastic news?

            Because the good man’s doctor was on the E10 council with Trevor Kramer. Bingo, we have a winner!

            Ned took Sarah’s hand in his and pumped twice. She smiled again and blushed, pushing stray hair behind her ear with her free hand. “Thank you so much, Ms Darling. You’ve been a tremendous help!”

            “Any time, Officer Stevenson. Any time.”

6

He hears the ocean crash against the bank below the cliff. From his perch on the bench it looks like the world just ends here. To the east and north the land is riddled with columns, looming towers flaying a canopy on the ground below. The place is called the Avenue of Giants for a reason. Trevor had mentioned he wanted to marry Barb in a place away from the monuments man had built for himself. These were God’s skyscrapers. These Redwoods. Though Lewis figures God is a misnomer. Mother Nature is more appropriate. Gaia. A man who worships the world in its infinite wisdom beyond the impulse of man’s desecration would not want to prolong a petty institution like marriage under a steeple, with the arcane glow of stained glass leaving a nimbus around his daughter’s face. Trevor asked her to marry him the day after the Environmental Protection Agency went into operation on December 2nd. “Nixon’s trying to combat his own evils in Vietnam with a compromise to Nature,” he remembers Trevor saying. “It’s a start. It’s not an eraser. But he must’ve read Rachel Carlson. He knows there are effects to our pride. One can only hope a federalized solution will make more people aware there’s a world beyond them.”

            Lewis is smoking. The Bed & Breakfast, a comfortable little Inn with a veneer of Victorianism, is non-smoking, so his post-coital addiction had him resorting to evening walks along the cliff, hand in hand with Betty. “I hate that we’re ushering in the 70’s with a wedding that will never give us grandkids.” Lewis had smiled at her; he’d never considered what sort of grandfather he would be. Never really pictured himself as an old man, like his own granddad. She inhaled and flicked her cigarette into the rocky slope toward the ocean, listening to the waves crash, looking out at the horizon and perhaps wondering what awaited them all. “I thought that little pissant was a goner that first night he didn’t touch my roast.”

            “Nah, you hoped. But we knew that would never be the case. Times are different now.”

            “She’s getting married in the fucking woods, Lew. The woods. I mean, it’s beautiful here, but what would your father have thought of his granddaughter saying I Do to some hippie officiant beneath a thirty-story tree. There’s no sign of God here.”

            “There’s no sign of man’s God,” Lewis offered. “God’s all around here. These trees are pointing at him.”

            “It’s not the same.”

            “I don’t suppose normal for us is normal for them. Not anymore.”

            “You’re a philosopher now, are you Lew?”

            “I just know the enemy.”

            Betty had smiled. They stopped and looked over the Pacific, the moon just a restless reflection upon its fluid surface, forever rippling with the currents of change; it was a dramatic symbol, for sure. The 60’s fucked things up with Barb, and the 70’s would foment the damage. Lewis hated the thought, but it was true. “Well, the enemy is going to be your son-in-law. You have to be nice if you expect your daughter to visit.”

            Here he is now. Listening to the ocean. Taking in the moment. Soon his daughter will no longer be his. She will have her own life. Her own convictions. It’s March, but there’s still a warm humidity in the wind, dashing in from the sea, swiping his hair off his forehead. He sees Barb coming toward him. Betty had helped her put the flowers in her hair. Some sort of wreath a local artist was selling at the market. Barb had fallen in love with it then; she would have to wear it during the ceremony. There would be no veil. She is wearing a simple white sundress, the straps loose on her shoulders. Just a brush of tan thigh showing as the pleat swishes. She’s your little girl, Lew. She always will be. No matter the change today. No matter how life ends up. She’s your baby.

            “Hi Dad.” She sits down next to him.

            “You okay, baby girl?”

            “Nervous.” She smiles. He remembers when she listened to her records in her room. Singing. She was carefree then, taking it all in as it came. He misses that time. He supposes all fathers share this sort of retrospective, afraid of change and so desperately willing to cling onto what remains. To memories. “I know this is different. Mom told me about your wedding. How scared she was. But it was in a church.”

            “Times change.”

            “Isn’t that a good thing?”

            He wants to say no but only clasps his hands. “Is he good to you?”

            “Of course, dad. I mean, I know things have been rough. I know that. I’m not blind. I can only imagine it’s a generational thing. Your beliefs versus his.”

            “That doesn’t matter. If you love him, and I mean truly love him, Barb, then how I get along with Trevor doesn’t matter. Because I’ll love him since you do.”

            She smiles. She doesn’t care much for these bromides, and often rolled her eyes when he or Betty ever expressed disappointment or approval, both borne of the same affection. “I do, dad. I love him. I see a man that will make a difference in the world. I mean, he brought us here. He brought us to northern California, because he wanted us to feel insignificant. Small. Like the fears we hold, the promise we see, it’s so tiny next to the bigger world. Just a snapshot.” She takes his hand in hers. She wears a simple band on her finger. No diamond.

            “I want you to be happy. Right now I see a girl who carries the guilt of the world’s sins. I want you to be free of what you believe is wrong with me. Wrong with mom.”

            She kneads his thumb. He remembers a time when her hand was so small in his. When she called him Daddy. When he was her hero.

            “I don’t want to talk about that. This is my wedding day, dad. I’ve dreamed about this day since I was little. This is different, but one thing’s always remained. I want you to walk me down the aisle,” she chuckles, and he sees that’s only an effort to stifle any tears. “I mean, there’s really no aisle. But I want you to walk with me. I want you to hand me off to Trevor. Then it doesn’t matter that this isn’t a church, that it’s not the same as what you and mom did, because at least I’ve kept some part of what I’ve always wanted.”

            Lewis is crying now. Crying as he listens to the ocean. He squeezes her hand. “I’m not giving you away, baby girl. You remember that. I will always be there for you. Always.”

7

Lewis knocked on the bedroom door. His heart was racing. And there were accusations. A lot of them. All in his mind, all Betty’s voice, her young face strained by tears as she stared up at him from the floor, her legs lost in a pool of dress. “We lost our baby girl,” she whimpered, “we lost our baby girl.” Over and over again. The memory was something he didn’t like to recall; it was something he’d hoped to keep trapped, but the vividness, the spectacular clarity of her face, of her tremulous voice, almost convinced him not to knock, to just turn around and go to his room. To sit on it.

            “Dad.” She sounded surprised when she opened the door. She’d just been getting ready to put Patty down. The kid was lying on the bed. Out cold, his head cocked toward Lewis, his breathing slight but regular. He was half in, half out of pajamas. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Probably something out of Japan playing with the trope of exported radiation from Nagasaki. God he loved that kid.

            “Hey baby girl.”

            “You haven’t called me that in ages.”

            He looked around the room. He didn’t come in here much. Never had any reason to. Until now. He shuddered at the thought. She looked fine. She looked healthy. He would always say she looked just like she always had. Just Betty being Betty. But that wasn’t true at all, was it? Because time was a cruel jokester, and soon, that disbelief that had prepared him to cope with her disease, a disbelief that was only a mask over denial, turned to the reality that not everything could be as it seemed. Betty was no longer full. She’d turned frail. She couldn’t stand for as long. Slept longer. And then the pain started. Oh God, that pain.

            “Everything okay?”

            Barb looked him up and down; it was the look of a skeptic, something he remembered her sharing often as a teenager. “I guess. You?”

            “It’s been an interesting couple of years.”

            “Well, I’m enjoying the change of pace. I’d assume you’ve found a hobby. Trevor and I were curious where you’ve been off to this last week.” She smiled. Still skeptical, but trying to turn the conversation, trying to control it.

            Patty mumbled something under his breath, then turned over, kicking off his pants and leaving them splayed on the comforter. “Just trying to busy myself here. It’s an interesting town. Adam’s made some good friends.”

            “That’s good. I was always worried when…well, the nightmares…I was worried he carried a lot of weight. That those memories would make him…shy. I don’t know.” She didn’t like to talk about that time.

            “He’s an alpha. Maybe what he watched his dad go through, maybe that taught him not to roll over.”

            “Is that why you’ve come? To dredge up Trevor’s mistakes?”

            “No. No,” he repeated, louder this time. He wanted to sit on the edge of the bed but didn’t want to disrupt what looked like a peaceful slumber. “You come to a place like this, and when you’re my age, you expect it’s the place you’ve come to…for your final days. It’s a reflective time.”

            “That’s morbid.”

            “I don’t mean it to be. But I’ve thought about mom a lot. I was never terribly nostalgic, Barb, but I’ve found myself thinking about the good ol’ days. It’s funny how people always call them that. Even if they weren’t. The past is, well, it’s preferred because there are no secrets about outcomes. A choice you made thirty years ago, you know how it panned out now, so you can remember those times without recognizing the stress that may have strangled you because of that choice. I look at pictures of myself as a young man, when you were born, and I forget the stress, I forget all about it, because I already know what’s come of it. I’ve romanticized that period. I guess some people would call that revising history. And maybe it is. But nostalgia’s nice for that reason.”

            “You sound like a riddle.”

            “And maybe that’s what I’m going for.” He chuckled, and finally did sit on the edge of the bed. He felt the mattress depress under his saggy ass, and he motioned for her to join him. She did, casually checking on Patty. “Once you start rooting around your memories, some of the shadows come back. Those things you don’t like to think about. I guess reflection works that way. You see what you want to see, but you find defects as well. It’s critical. I’ve been thinking a lot about mom. I miss her. Every day.”

            “Me too.”

            He took her hand in his the same way he once had on a bench in California, with the redwoods looming over them. Here the shadow cast was one of looming potential, something lurking just beneath her skin, something terrible. Something whose presence could spell a good amount of disbelief for some time until denial would no longer work. You did this to her. He shuddered.

            “She miscarried once. Before you were born.”

            Barb exhaled.

            “I take it mom never told you.”

            She only shook her head. “My God.”

            “It was horrible. Heart breaking. I’d never seen your mother like that. So…vulnerable. Fragile, I guess. There was nothing I could do, nothing I could say that would fix her. That would fix anything. So I got mad at God. Because that’s the easiest thing to do. You could have had an older sister. Her name would have been Rose.” He kneaded her thumb. She was silent for a moment.

            “Rose,” she said. “That’s a pretty name.”

            “I suppose it was a gesture of the times. It was my mom’s maiden name. Your mother quite liked it. But the name now carries a heavy memory, a sullen memory, so we left it with your sister. Let her keep it. Because for seven months, she was real. She was our…well, our baby girl.”

            “Why are you telling me this? Why have you waited this long?”

            “I’m not sure.” It was the only thing he knew to say. Betty had wanted to carry the secret, to bury it. She just wanted Rose to exist between him and her, to keep the memory precious, unsullied by the world she never got to experience. “I just…I guess now, ever since your mom passed, ever since I, well, ever since I saw how mean the world could be to my family.” He closed his eyes. “You need to know I love you. That I would do anything for you. I’ve told you that many times, I have, and some of those times, I’m not sure you even truly believed me. Because sometimes kids just expect to hear those things. But now that you’re a mother, you understand, right?”

            “I do. Dad, what is this about?”

            And maybe now he understood why she sounded worried. Maybe now he understood he was here to divulge something about himself. He did mention Reedy Creek would be his final resting place, or at least the context was there. And perhaps a part of him believed that was true. Maybe a part of him wanted that to be true. That there was a trade-off. He thought about that for a moment. He could tell her what Trevor had confessed; he could tell her that he knew she was in the shower one morning, and that her fingers had found a lump under her breast, and that soon there’d be a call from the specialist in Davenport about the results of a biopsy. He could watch the tears well in her eyes as she realized a certain trust she’d placed in her husband had finally broken, and she could get mad, she could scream at him and wake up Patty, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. Because he needed to know something first. It was a feeling he got, first when Lazarus spoke after he’d rammed his G20, and then when Trevor had spilled his guts about their out of town trips. Something was happening in Reedy Creek. He thought at first it was drugs, but then, then the crows fell dead from the sky. He swallowed. His throat was dry. You had the same gut feeling in Korea. A presence was near, that any moment could be your last. You prayed often, but the darkness was a persistent bitch. It wasn’t something you could shake. He knew what he was going to do. He wanted to talk to Allen Webster first; he thought he might have found a kindred spirit in the townie.

            “I was thinking about your wedding day, to be honest. Thinking about how odd it was to tie the knot in the woods. I thought about walking you toward Trevor, thought about how goddamn hard it was to let go of your hand. But I remembered what I told you as we were on the bench, before the ceremony. The first time I saw you in that sundress. I told you I would always be there for you. And I meant it.”

            “I know that, dad. I do.” She bit her lower lip and he knew that was her trying to be strong. Betty did the same thing. She’d bite her lip if she wanted to fight the tears. When she was first pregnant with Barb, those initial months, they were the hardest, because the first failure provided the implication that anything could happen. Her damn teeth had left crescent moon scars in her lower lip for the first two trimesters; it wasn’t until he heard Barb’s wailing cry in the delivery room that he found any semblance of peace, that he could let Rose move on.

            “Would I be here if those men hadn’t…well, if they hadn’t threatened you?”

            Barb only looked at him. The silence was enough. She was pregnant when the Low Breed showed up at the door. She’d ushered Adam into the closet; he heard those men beating his father. And the boy would dream of it. He would wake up and scream.

            “These are all blessings in disguise, I suppose.” Lewis smiled. “Had your husband not required my help, I would not be here in Reedy Creek with you. To be with my grandsons.” He touched Patty’s lithe legs and the boy muttered something. “Had you never met Trevor, I’d never pull out my mitt and toss the ball with Adam. Every little mistake, every flaw, it’s amounted to this. It’s allowed me to be with my family.”

            “Are you okay? You were never as good a liar as mom.”

            Lewis laughed. “I guess I never had any reason to be.”

            “Then you can be honest with me now.”

            She’s already set her assumption in stone: you’ve come here to confess of something when you thought you were receiving a confession. He would not watch his daughter go through what Betty did. No parent ever should.

            “I would do anything for you, baby girl. That’s the only truth that ever mattered.” He kissed her forehead and went to bed. He dreamed of crows following him in the woods. He dreamed of their raucous call, and he dreamed of their bones breaking as they fell dead from the sky.

             He used their blood to write up a contract.

8

Ned knocked on the doc’s door the next morning. It was Cole’s idea. He figured if Ned pursued Serkis on the evening the body was found, he’d undoubtedly turn the man into a person of interest, which he was, but that truth was better shared within the bounds of Ned and Cole’s little operation. Until any accusations could be realized, Ned had to toe the line with a certain aplomb that meant any questions asked were asked for the sake of cementing a timeline. Because Clayton Miller died of an overdose that, according to the Sheriff of this fine little town, could be characterized as a suicide should any pesky rubberneckers look for any reasoning behind the body bag. “And what will you write about?” Cole had only rubbed the bridge of his nose: “I’ll make the implication that drugs are in the Creek. That’s about it. People can make up their own damn minds.”

            The Post was sitting on Norris’s front step. Ned bent over to pick it up, batting his palm with it. The headline was on the front, and blatant. TREATMENT PLANT JANITOR FOUND DEAD ON SCENE. It was morbid to consider the man’s title, his job, should define and create his caricature in what would officially become his de facto obituary. “Do you think Norris stuck the needle in his arm and waited for him to die?” Cole didn’t really answer this question. And maybe he couldn’t. The unlocked front door was only a part of the mystery. Soon the image of Clayton on the front page, a man with thinning strands of hair matted to a mostly bald pate, as if in defiance of a nature that had left the son-of-a-bitch uglier than sin and carrying a bleach-stinking mop for big city chemists to ignore, would find its way onto Cole’s corkboard, and a piece of yarn would tie off to pictures of the E10 council, and this whole conspiracy would start to make more and more sense.

            Norris opened the door. The doctor was tall. And striking. It was a bold observation on Ned’s part, and he considered what that might mean, but if he was asked to make a composite of the guy, the only name that truly stuck out as a comparison was Robert Redford in The Natural. He’d seen the doc out and about, sure, but there’d never been any level of interaction between them; Ned had never felt the urge to take a bout of the sniffles to the Clinic, but maybe now a part of him wished he had.

            “G’morning Dr Serkis.” Ned handed the man his paper, front page up, as if in salutation the doctor would have the time to look down from this officer in uniform to fully take in the paper’s by-lines.

            “Officer.” Norris took the paper and folded it under his arm.

            “Hate to intrude. Considering this is the first glance you’re getting at today’s news, I can only assume you haven’t heard.” Don’t bring Sheriff Andy’s name into this. If you make the claim he put you up to this, all Serkis has to do is pick up the horn and you’re fucked. Because you said it yourself: Andy’s turning this into a suicide to protect what could be a pretty hefty crime committed by his council buddy. And that would be a no no.

            “Heard what?” He turned the paper over and gave it a quick look. “Jesus,” he muttered. Clayton’s picture was staring up at him. It was an unfortunate shot, something Cole might have nabbed from a picture album, or something Clayton’s employers kept on file. Ned wasn’t sure, and he didn’t ask.

            “He was your patient?”

            “What happened?”

            “We found him at his place last night. I’d usually say unresponsive, but he’d been dead a few days at least. There was a needle sticking from his arm.”

            “You think he ODed?”

            “I think he took a lethal dose of something called Nembutal. Reason I’m here is to clarify if you prescribed him some when his dose was gone. I stopped by and chatted with Sarah Darling at the General last night; she specified he’d come in last Sunday with an IOU and threw out your name as collateral. She didn’t oblige him. Dr Halliburton didn’t either, at least not on the books.”

            Norris scanned the article. His house smelled like coffee. Ned would have killed for a cup, but didn’t think the doctor would invite him in. The foyer was nice. He seemed like a moneyed man. Cole had told him a few things about Norris, about his past as a Strong Arm in the SDS, which carried him into and curried favors with Project Gaia when the movement made a name for itself as an alternative to Patrick Moore’s Greenpeace. That was how he and Paul Holdren first met.

            “And you suspect I assisted him when all avenues were lost?” The man’s blue eyes pierced a hole in Ned when he looked up from the paper; he was calm, and perhaps that surprised Ned the most. He hadn’t accused him of anything, but he’d implied there was suspicion on the matter.

            “Oh, I’m only here to determine answers, sir.”

            “Mr Miller was a conflicted man. He was diagnosed with a severe form of neuralgia. It kept him from concentrating for long periods. He would get sick, get headaches; he often called me as a last resort. I can admit to that.”

            “Did he call you last Sunday?”

            “He did not. Or if he had, I would not have been home to field it.”

            “You live alone?”

            “I do.”

            “And he did not page you?” Ned looked down at the beeper clipped to Norris’s belt.

            “He did not. If you need proof of that, I can provide it.”

            “I’m just doing my job, sir.”

            “And I can appreciate that. I can, officer. You see, Sheriff Andy and I are on the city council together, so I respect what you’re doing. But at the same time I can tell you that men like Clayton Miller, they often derive satisfaction from their illness, not because of what it does to them, but because of the attention they receive; it is a rather narcissistic impulse, and you and I can both look at his image here and agree he wouldn’t be winning any prom king nominations. That is the unfairness of nature. Of genetics. Oftentimes I’ve dealt with undesirable patients, men and women who for reasons of uncivil isolation, cling to notions of hypochondria, take any cough or headache to its extreme, because the attention I afford them is to satisfy an eagerness to feel sexualized. The drugs are just a by-product. I never prescribed him Nembutal. I continued feeding Dr Harrison’s prescription, and for that I should truly apologize. Maybe I was an unwitting servant of his addiction, but his symptoms were real. If they were forced, faked, I did not see through them. But if you found him with a needle in his arm, if you found his body, then I can only guess his venturing to the pharmacy on Sunday and his needless pestering of Ms Darling was only his admitted need to interact about his illness, to receive good will from another. I can only assume the Nembutal he injected was always on his purse. He did not need to re-fill his prescription. Whether or not the overdose was a mistake I will leave to a shrink. I know he was not well. I also know he liked being seen that way; he preferred pity to loathing.”
            That’s a long stretch of bullshit. Ned wanted to say that. Wanted to blurt it with every ounce of his soul, but his dignity put up a far stronger front. This is a whack job, Ned. Just one push and he might go over the edge. Might fucking strangle you right there on the porch, pull your body into the house and leave you in the basement. Cole seems to think he’s insane. Seems to believe he’s been Holdren’s attack dog long before he showed up at the Creek. Seems to believe he has blood on his hands.

            “Noted, Dr Serkis. I do appreciate your time. It’s your contention Clayton Miller kept a backlog of his prescription?”

            “Yes. Yes it is.” Norris only nodded, still clutching to the newspaper, visibly annoyed but with an unshakeable voice that would have appeared tremulous from a man not used to speaking (lying) to the police.

            “Then you have a great day and enjoy the barbecue.”