Still Lives(71)

I lose my appetite as Greg starts harping on the investigation and all the new information that makes no sense to him. The medical examination added several new wrinkles to the case: Not only did the body’s state of decomposition shift the time of death to Friday, but it appeared that Kim had struggled in some confined space—some kind of wooden box—for hours or perhaps days before she perished. Splinters of wood were found beneath her bloody, cracked fingernails. And preliminary toxicology on a couple of tiny wounds in her waist suggested that her murderer had injected her with a tranquilizer.

I set my sandwich down on the dirty table and drop my napkin over it. “What kind of tranquilizer?

“Too early to know. They had a huge list, but it’s not like I recognized any of them. Amberbarbital sodium. Nembutal. Sodium therpenal. Pentobarbituate something.” He drops his own sandwich on top of mine.

“Those don’t all sound like drug names.”

Greg shakes his head. “I had a hard time listening to Cherie,” he confesses, and then tells me how unnerving it was to be riding in her car, outside in the open air, to see sunlight and billboards and molting palm trees, all while hearing the grisly facts of Kim’s examination. “My mind kept blinking in and out. Finally I just told her to stop.” Now he hunches over our pile of uneaten food. “How could someone … hate her so much?” he mumbles, and then his whole body starts quaking with silent sobs.

I don’t comfort him. I let the gap of air between us stay open. In the mounting heat of the day, I feel a cool energy thread through me. Anyone watching would think I am delivering bad news or breaking up with the man weeping beside me. Anyone watching would pity him, and wonder at the young woman sitting immobile nearby, shadows under both of their eyes.

But I’m not actually here. I’m not seeing Greg’s pain. My mind is traveling too fast over all the facts. A blow to the head. A tranquilizer. A coffin. So many stages to kill her. Not an expert, then. Or maybe someone who couldn’t kill her all at once. My concentration separates me from Greg, from everything around me: the grind and dust of traffic; the ugly, insistent birds; the eggy smell of the barely touched sandwiches. I have to know who did this. I’ve spent too much time on the what. I recall Jay Eastman’s words again: Never look for the what. Find the who. Who gets hurt. Who gains. Whose life will never be the same.

“I’m sorry,” I say finally. “About the baby, too.”

Greg’s head whips up. His face flashes with surprise, then fresh grief.

“What happened with you two on Tuesday?” I press him. “Were you fighting about Brent Patrick?”

Greg looks toward one of the stunted trees beside us, also grayed with soot. Without meeting my eyes, he tells me that on Tuesday Kim flipped out after her positive pregnancy test and wanted time to herself. “I thought she meant time with him.”

“You thought they were having an affair?”

“I didn’t know,” he says. “She insisted she was working on a show idea with him. About mentally ill women. It fits that she’d take a picture of his wife.”

It does fit. It also fits that Kim was ultra-private about her artistic process, but that she wasn’t sleeping with Brent. So what is Brent running away from? There’s a missing piece to this equation, some variable I haven’t figured out. Greg. Kim. Brent. Barbara. Four players. One possessive, one secretive, one aggressive, one utterly vulnerable. They could add up to a murder, but I am not seeing a clear chain of events. Unless Greg himself was the killer. Which I don’t think is possible. Although he sure made himself look guilty.

“When you thought Kim was breaking up with you,” I say, “you texted her seventy times?” I can’t help the ring of anger in my voice.

Greg looks ill but doesn’t answer.

Why was Kim working on her next show when Still Lives hadn’t even opened? Because she was scared of going broke? Maybe Greg was right to be suspicious. But not to stalk her.

“I could have suspected you,” he says accusingly, shading his eyes. “That note. You’d better watch out for Maggie.”

The statement hits me like a blow. “Yeah. Not to mention my expertise with coffins and sodium therpenal,” I say.

As I utter the words, I feel something unlatch in my mind, not an answer, just a flash of warning to pay attention to what I’m saying. Coffins. Or maybe not coffins. And not therpenal. Thiopental. Black text on a white background. I’ve seen it before.

I ask Greg if I can borrow his phone. He pushes it across the table. I take Hendricks’s card from my purse and call him.

“Maggie,” Hendricks says. “Where are you?”

I tell him.

“Good. Stay with him. I’m almost to your apartment.”

“In the medical examiner’s report,” I ask, “was one of the drugs sodium thiopental?” I know I’ve seen this name, and I’ve seen it at the Rocque.

Greg’s hand slides from his eyes.

“He told you about the medical examiner’s report?” says Hendricks.

I turn away from Greg. “The names of the tranquilizers,” I say. “Do you know what they were?”

“Who are you talking to?” Greg says, grabbing for my arm. Sweat and tears have soaked his forehead and temples.

“What else did Shaw tell you?” Hendricks’s voice demands.