The Perfect Stranger (Social Media #2)(105)

“The flight came in,” he reports. “She wasn’t on it.”

“Okay.” Landry paces, keeping an eye on the stairs. There’s been no movement from above.

“I’m going to stay here and wait for the next flight from Atlanta.”

“Okay,” she says again, staring at the sheet of rain beyond the glass.

She’s probably supposed to feel relieved. But it would have been so much simpler—it would be over—if Jenna Coeur had just walked off the damned plane.

Now they’re trapped here in limbo, waiting, waiting . . .

“How about what I told you?” she whispers to Bruce, wandering into the living room with the phone. “About Tony Kerwin?”

“Look, there are definitely drugs, like succinylcholine or potassium chloride, that can simulate a heart attack and would be metabolized in the bloodstream to appear as chemicals that would normally appear in a human body. They wouldn’t show up in an autopsy.”

“So they could have been used on Tony, to make a murder look like accidental death.”

“Theoretically, yes. You’d have to be looking for an injection site on the body in order to catch something like that, and unless the medical examiner had reason to look for it . . .”

“He’d never see it.”

“That’s right. But don’t jump to conclusions, Landry. It wouldn’t be easy for the average person to pull off something like this.”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, you can’t use over-the-counter potassium chloride pills from a drugstore. You’d have to have a liquid form and inject it. But again . . .”

“You don’t think that’s what happened.”

“I really don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because there are very few places where those drugs would even be found. Succinylcholine alone—SUX—is used in anesthesiology and it’s used along with liquid potassium chloride for—”

Hearing a creaking on the stairs, Landry freezes, and the rest of Bruce’s sentence is lost on her.

She holds her breath, poised, watching the steps, waiting for whomever it is to descend.

But nobody does.

“Landry?” Bruce is saying. “Are you there?”

“I’ll call you right back,” she blurts, and hangs up, eyes still on the vacant stairway.

Maybe it was her imagination.

Or maybe someone is up there spying, eavesdropping.

Who is it? Kay, or Elena, or . . . someone else?

Walking into the police station, Sheri keeps a tight hold on the guitar pick in her hand. She’d wrapped it in plastic, just in case.

You never know.

There might be fingerprints.

Pen in hand, the desk sergeant looks up from whatever he’s working on. Official business, she hopes. Better not be a goddamned Sudoku puzzle when her husband’s murder remains unsolved . . .

“Can I help you?”

She clears her throat. “I’m Sheri Lorton . . .”

He nods.

“Roger Lorton’s wife.”

She waits for recognition.

He waits, utterly clueless.

Okay. He doesn’t know her.

This is a big city. People die—are killed—every day. Cases go unsolved forever.

She shouldn’t take it personally.

But how do you not?

Sheri rests her hands on the desk and leans in. “My husband was murdered last week. Walking our dog. Stabbed in cold blood on the sidewalk. I think I’ve found something that might be relevant to the detectives working on his case.”

He nods, picks up the phone on the desk. “I’ll get someone to help you, Mrs. Lorton. And . . . I’m sorry for your loss.”

Just days ago, shrouded in an opaque veil of anguish, she’d thought it didn’t matter to her—the investigation. Because nothing can bring him back.

Now, though her widowed heart will ache for the rest of her life, she knows that the healing will only begin when the person who stole her husband is found—and punished.

Slow and steady . . .

Slow and steady . . .

That’s the key, though impulse decrees the polar opposite approach.

Hurry!

Do it quickly!

Just get it over with!

No.

No, that would be dangerous. Now is not the time to make a mistake.

Slow . . .

Take out the knife, the one with the tortoiseshell handle.

Think about that long ago day by the pond, when a plain old rock turned out to be a ferocious snapping turtle.

Steady . . .

Open the blade.

Slow . . .

Think about where it has to go.

Steady . . .

Think about cause and effect.

Slow . . .

But it’s time. Now. It’s time.

Steady . . .

Raise the knife . . .

Do it.

Do it!

At last . . . it’s done.

“You really believe that Elena killed Tony?” Bruce asks as Landry clutches the phone to her ear. She’s sitting inside her car in the garage, suffocatingly hot with the doors closed and the windows rolled up. But it’s the only place she could think to continue this conversation without possibly being overheard.

She did briefly consider opening the garage door so she can turn on the engine and the air-conditioning without asphyxiating herself—but her guests would hear the door go up and come to investigate.