“Lea was the smartest person I ever knew.”
“Then she knew you’d take her back. You didn’t kill her.”
As much as I wanted to believe that he had murdered Lea, it wasn’t true. The kid could have killed me when I was on my knees, but he couldn’t do it and he seemed genuinely heartbroken over Lea.
“Why did you hit me?”
He reached in his pocket, pulled out a plastic baggie that held a half-dozen medicine vials. “I thought you were after these.”
“Drugs?”
“Growth hormones. Muscle builders like you wouldn’t believe.”
“You deal steroids.”
His face and ears reddened but he shrugged. “You know how much I get paid for bouncing? I got to eat.”
I paid for his coffee and sent him on his way. Then I emptied the carafe into my cup, waved away the waitress’s offer for a refill or a menu, and spent a minute spinning a fantasy about the English grad student next door. Maybe she’d killed Lea in a fit of jealousy? She was a spurned lover who’d taken her revenge. But it didn’t hold water. The girl said she hadn’t been home and since she was the nearest neighbor, the cops would have checked her story. I was out of suspects and options.
I picked up my check and left a three-dollar tip. Then I headed for the Refugee Lounge.
I’d finished two beers and a shot of bourbon before Cheryl managed to get a break. When she did she headed my way.
“So?” she asked.
“Let me buy you a drink and I’ll tell you what I know.”
She climbed onto the stool and met my eyes. I tried not to wince but didn’t quite succeed. Her face was puffy, her eyes bloodshot. She looked as if she’d had her last good night’s sleep about the time they were counting hanging chads in south Florida.
When I finished lying, she snubbed her cigarette into a tin ashtray, took a deep breath, and let it out with a shudder. “That’s it.”
“That’s it.”
She blew her bangs from her eyes. “A frigging chemical imbalance?”
“That’s what the M.E. told me off the record. A biological problem. Maybe her period came early and made it worse or maybe it was related to her diet, but that’s what he thinks. A chemical imbalance led her to do what she did. Listen, he’s the best doctor I know of in the South, and he said she might have been feeling fine and then her chemicals bottomed out. She couldn’t control what she did. He said it was more common than you think.”
I held my breath, told myself I was an idiot and this was the silliest lie anyone had told since Bill Clinton claimed he hadn’t had sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky. But I had hope, hope that her desire to believe would stop her from asking questions and would blot out her judgment. Everyone says they want the truth, but no one does, not really, not when the truth is as ugly as it usually is.
“Like a disease,” she said. “Like Lea had been born with a weak blood vessel or a bad heart.”
“That’s right.”
She smiled but the smile turned into a grimace. Then the crying began. But that was okay. She needed to cry. She’d been so scared, confused, and guilty that she hadn’t taken the time to grieve for her daughter. I held her a moment. Then I kissed the top of her head and left her to her grieving.
Three days later, five one-hundred-dollar bills came in the mail. I threw away Cheryl’s note and stuffed the cash into my wallet. Money spends no matter where it comes from or how much grief is involved in its making.
But I couldn’t sleep. I spent my days chasing bail skips, working security at a couple of car shows, and following cheating spouses, wasted my nights drinking in places where I was a stranger or pacing my apartment while ESPN droned in the background. Then three weeks and two days after I’d paid my last visit to the Refugee, I woke early and skimmed the Commercial Appeal while I sipped my coffee. I snapped awake when I reached the Metro section. LaRae Rose, a twenty-year-old education major at the University of Memphis, had stuck a .22 automatic in her mouth and pulled the trigger. She hadn’t left a note, but police were certain it was a suicide because she’d been suffering from depression and had made a last, desperate call to a local suicide hotline. I made a phone call of my own and got a couple of answers. Then I left my apartment, telling myself that it had to be Freddy McFarland and that when I did more checking, the sick hunch I felt in my gut would be proved wrong.
I was waiting in her apartment when she got home. She closed the door behind her, spotted my form in her living room rocking chair, her Siamese cat in my lap, and squealed in surprise. Then her eyes adjusted to the shadows. She dropped her keys on a table by the door and gave me a shaky smile.
“I think I said call if you want, not break into my apartment.”
I shoved the cat from my lap, stood up, and crossed to the window. “You have a beautiful view,” I said. “That’s the Pyramid over there isn’t it?”
“Jesus, Charlie. You almost gave me a heart attack and you want to talk about my view?”
I turned to face her. “I want you to tell me.”
“Tell you?”
“What it was you said to Lea Washburn to make sure she committed suicide. Was it the same thing you said to the girl who shot herself last night?”
She wiped her lips on the back of her hand. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I spent the day at the library. I tracked twenty-three suicides in the last two years. Twenty-one of them called your hotline.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“I borrowed a Memphis Light, Gas, and Water uniform and ID from a friend and stopped by the Foundation while you were out. It took me awhile to find the fuse box. Then I looked in your private bathroom.”
“And?”
“Nearly all the fuses in the box are rusted except for one, the one that powers your interior lights and recorders. No rust. It looks as if it’s been taken out and put back in quite a lot over the years. The power goes off and it’s only natural that you’d be the one to check the fuse since the box is in the bathroom right behind your desk. I talked to a few of your volunteers and then checked with MLGW. The only time the power seems to go off in your building is when you’re on the phone with a caller who ends up committing suicide.”
She rolled her eyes. “And you’ve made this connection because of rust on fuses?”
“The thing is, when you take fuses in and out, they tend to blow. I’m sure if I checked around at the neighborhood hardware stores I’d find someone who remembered you buying quite a few of them. Not many places have fuse boxes anymore. Fire hazards. Someone will remember.”
“So what?”
“I did a little ransacking through your tapes. Out of the eighteen suicides that you personally talked with, fourteen have tapes that are interrupted halfway through the recording and the logs coincide with your calls to MLGW. You thought you were covering your tracks, but it’s too neat and far too convenient.”
“You’re crazy, Charlie. I’d appreciate it if you’d get out of my apartment now.”
“You catch people at their lowest moments and convince them to take their lives. I’m not sure I ever believed in evil. Not until now.”
Her face flushed and her lips tightened across her teeth in a slash. “You don’t know anything, Charlie. You’ve got no right...” Her voice broke and then she took a deep breath to regain her composure. “You just don’t know.”
“The night we met you said you sometimes resented the people you were trying to help. That made sense. But you don’t resent them. You hate them.”
“Because they’re vicious,” she said quietly. “They’re selfish and controlling and don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves. You don’t know, Charlie. You didn’t live with my mother. She used the threat of suicide like a whip against my father and brother and me. If we did something she didn’t like, she’d rage about how her life was hopeless and no one loved her. Then she’d take half a bottle of pills, wait ten minutes, and send me to get help. My whole life she did that to me. Christ, she must have ‘tried’ to kill herself a dozen times.”