12
EVA
For a change,I slept clear through the night. Fat snowflakes are falling outside, obscuring yet accentuating the mansions across the river. They are clumping up on the bare branches of the weeping willows that line the riverbank, giving them bushy white leaves. It looks like I’m inside a snow globe, safe, cozy and warm under the covers.
Then I remember what I wanted to tell Mark last night but couldn’t because I fell asleep before he got back from his meeting with Sojer. He’s still sleeping now, burrowed into the covers so only the top of his head is visible.
I do try to get up slowly and without rocking the bed too much, but in my current state, slow is the only part of that plan I manage to execute. By the time I’m up, Mark is yawning and stretching and mumblingly wishing me a good morning.
“We sure slept,” he says as he sits up. “Say what you will about Simon’s dark taste in decorating, but he can sure choose a mattress and bed stuff. This whole spread is softer than clouds, I bet.”
“We should ask him where he got it all,” I add.
“We have time,” he says and climbs out of bed. “First we need a new roof.”
He doesn’t sound as upbeat anymore, or maybe I’m just hearing it that way because I’m not anymore. What are we doing chasing a killer when we should be making sure our daughter has a place to live?
Which reminds me.
“Ana’s first suicide attempt, the one she and her boyfriend did together, well, they were found in almost the exact spot where she was killed,” I say as I follow him out of the bedroom to the kitchen.
“That’s something,” he says as he fills the electric kettle with water and puts it on.
“They were found lying in each other’s arms.”
He winces and the grimace stays on his face. “Like Romeo and Juliet.”
“And you know who found them?”
He shakes his head. “A passerby, I thought.”
Most of his words are swallowed up by the kettle coming to a boil with a loud rumbling. The blue light inside it is illuminating the roiling water, making it look like a midnight storm at sea. It turns off as he takes it off and pours it into the two mugs he prepared—instant coffee for him and an herbal tea for me.
“No,” I say and take the mug he’s offering me. “It was a priest. The one who runs the youth center. I looked him up.”
He takes a sip of his coffee and even though it’s scalding hot, it doesn’t seem to bother him at all.
“How come she survived and he died?” he asks. “Cutting your wrists across rather than up has a high survival rate.”
“I was just getting to that,” I say. “The boyfriend had also stabbed himself in the heart. According to the notes from Ana’s doctor when she was admitted to the psychiatric hospital, she believed he had done it because he thought she was dead and he was still alive. She was hysterically sad that he died and she survived.”
“So almost exactly like Romeo and Juliet,” he muses. I do wish he was more excited about this.
“Or it could be that he’s one of the victims of the killer we’re looking for,” I say. “We need to speak to this priest right away.”
“We’ll do that this morning,” he says and pops a couple of pieces of toast into the toaster that I also think has never been used until today. It fills the room with a plasticky, chemical smell as it heats up. Simon seems to not have used this kitchen at all. I found a piece of protective plastic still lodged in the oven when I was heating up the lunch leftovers last night.
I grab the butter and cheese from the fridge and take it to the table, where I sit down in one of the black plastic chairs.
“What was the psychiatrist’s name, the one who treated Ana after the suicide attempt?” he asks, just as the toast pops out.
“It wasn’t Kline, if that’s what you’re thinking,” I say.
He pops two more pieces of toast and brings me the two already done.
“It was a Dr. Robert Lap,” I say.
He nods knowingly. “That figures.”