This is what he wants, I think to myself. He wants to make me crazy, he wants me chasing my own shadow, my imagination scattering in all directions.
I drop down on the carpet, woozy and nauseated. Over three hours now, and no pills. Hold out. Hold out. You think better when you’re not on those ridiculous things, those beautiful tablets, that horrible, soul-stealing medicine, those delicious, wonderful pills.
I force myself up, my muscles seizing, my stomach twisting, my skin burning. I stand in the center of my office, only a few feet from my desk, five feet from each wall. The radiator, I should check the radiator, complete with peeling paint, below my long horizontal window.
Nope. Nothing underneath, nothing shoved inside. I remove the cover and can’t put it back on.
I finally succumb to the itching and start on the backs of my hands, my knuckles, my forearms, scratching furiously, knowing that I’m only spreading it like wildfire across my skin.
“Where the hell is it?” I hiss.
Leave. Walk out of the room, get some fresh air, empty your mind and start fresh.
I try my desk again, pulling out the drawers, patting underneath. The chair. I check the chair for the first time, a burst of adrenaline for an original thought, some place I haven’t already checked, but no, no murder weapon or DNA evidence that I can find, assuming I can find it at all because I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS I’M LOOKING FOR.
Then back to the knuckles, bloody now, and my beet-red forearms. And then my calves and thighs.
“Dammit,” I say to nobody, standing straight again.
I let out a long breath. I know it’s here. I know it.
But I can’t find it.
“Hey, stranger.”
I spin around. It’s Alexa, standing in the doorway.
76
Jason
Tuesday, July 23
“What’s going on?” Alexa asks.
“Nothing,” I say instinctively, as ridiculous a claim as that is. Nothing, just thought I would empty out every file in the room, pull out every drawer, rip the front off my radiator, create an absolute tornado in my office, all in the name of a casual good time.
Joel’s words from yesterday echo between my ears, like something in a movie: She’s not just giving you an alibi. She’s giving herself one, too.
I got a bad feeling about her.
I don’t like it when you talk to pretty girls.
My one-word answer to Alexa-nothing-crashes to the floor faster than Newton’s apple. Things have been odd since I confronted her two days ago about the restraining order and her lie about being an only child, her brother living here in the suburbs. I accepted her explanation. I believed her explanation. But you don’t just brush that whole thing off and pretend like it didn’t happen. There was something accusatory in my bringing it up, there’s no way around it, and it’s hard to walk that back to normal. She’s now been the object of suspicion, like a murder suspect who beats the rap, who is found not guilty, which is different from innocent, and you always wonder what really happened; the taint never fully diminishes.
It’s so obvious that the chaos Alexa sees in my office is something-not nothing-that she can’t bring herself to quarrel with me.
“Deposition got done early?” I ask.
She nods. “I thought you might want to leave early. Looks like you don’t.”
“Right.” I look around the room and shrug.
“You think he planted something in here for the police to find?” she asks.
I nod. I don’t know why I didn’t just admit that up front; it’s pretty obvious what I’m doing. “I could see him doing something like that,” I say.
“That would make sense.” She looks about the room. “Do you want some help?”
A gut-check moment. Either I trust her or I don’t. Do I really think she’s capable of doing these things?
A better question: Am I capable of making that judgment?
“What happened to your hand?” she asks. “Oh my God, your arms.”
“Oh, I’m fine, I’m fine.” Just a little scratching. Or a lot of scratching.
“Oh, Jason.” She takes my arm, then looks up at me. “You’re doing okay?”
“Sure, sure,” I say.
She pauses, chews on her lip. “I’ll leave if you want. If you want to do this by yourself. It’s not a problem, really.”
“No, not at all,” I hear myself say. “I could use the help. But I think I’ve looked pretty much everywhere.”
She surveys the room, nodding her head and humming to herself. “You don’t know what you’re looking for, that’s part of the problem.”
“That’s the main problem, yeah.”
“Mmm-hmm.” She spins around the room. “Did you pull up the carpet?”
“First thing I did.”
“The refrigerator,” she says.
“Check.” But I’m sure I’ll recheck it.
She keeps looking around. “Looks like you checked the heater.”
Check. But will recheck.
“The couch,” she says.
“Check.” But will recheck.
“We should go through your files again, probably.”
“Probably. I looked through them all.”
“Did you check every piece of paper?” she asks.
“Every piece-no. I was looking for things that didn’t belong.”
“It could be a piece of paper,” she says. “We don’t know what it is.”
That’s true. She’s right.
“What about the diplomas and pictures on the walls?” she asks.
“The walls? No.” I shake my head, feeling a surge. Her words trigger a memory.
You played football at State, didn’t you? “James Drinker” asked me.
Yes. Yes. He was standing, admiring my ego wall when I returned from the bathroom after taking the Altoids. I remember now. What is wrong with my brain?
“Haven’t gotten that far yet,” I say. Making it sound like I was just about to head there. I probably would’ve thought of that, eventually. I’d prefer to think so.
“Let’s check those first,” she sings.
There are. . ten frames on the walls. My college and law school diplomas. Certifications from various courts to practice before those tribunals. Certificates from the public defender and county attorney offices for my work there. A picture of me cross-examining a witness, drawn by a courtroom sketch artist when I was defending Senator Almundo from federal corruption charges. And my favorite, the photograph of me, taken by one of the university photographers, my body angled while airborne, my arms outstretched, my hands closing over the football. I don’t remember if I caught the ball.
I start with that one, because that’s the one “James” specifically referenced. I lift it off its hook and look behind it. Nothing but a flat, smooth wooden frame. I balance it on my knee and twist off the levers that hold the backing in place, removing each piece of the frame, the matting, and the photo itself. He could have stuck something deep within it, after all.
Nothing. Alexa does the same thing with my college diploma.
I go next to the certificate from the county attorney’s office, my name in a thick gothic font on gold paper. If I’m right about this guy, it was my time as an assistant county attorney that brought us together. If “James” has any sense of irony, this is where it will be.
I gently lift the frame off its perch, a horizontal piece of wire resting on a nail, and turn it over.
“Well, lookee here,” I murmur.
Fastened to the back of this frame, with Scotch tape, is a hypodermic needle, the hollow tube with the syringe attached. And from what I can tell, some fluid still inside.
“He’s injecting them with something,” I say to Alexa. “That’s his signature.” And I’d bet any money that this particular needle was used to inject the first two victims, the ones already dead when the man who called himself James Drinker paid a visit to this office.