A Circumstance of Blood

by Jeannette Batz Cooperman

  “Could I borrow the Crapmobile for a few days? Mine’s in the shop.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, you may have the Crapmobile.” He returned with the keys to the battered SUV her mother insisted on keeping for dog transport.

  At the hospital she found Colin in the seventh-floor lounge, his long body slouched in a chair, his jaw slack. He looked younger. People always did when they slept; the wariness left them. She fought an urge to rest her hand against his stubbly cheek. This was the first time she’d ever seen him unshaven.

  Let him sleep, she told herself. She went to the nurses’ station, where she learned that Graham was in the middle of an EKG. When she turned she saw Morganstern coming down the hall.

  “I guess this mean he killed Philip,” Sarah blurted, hating the sound of the sentence.

  “Let’s sit down.” Morganstern steered her toward a small, empty room with a comfortable couch, probably where doctors met waiting families to give them bad news. The detective tucked one leg under her − blue jeans suited her better than skirts did − and twisted to face Sarah. “Kids his age who commit suicide are usually either depressed or having trouble with the law,” she said. “They don’t generally kill themselves because they feel guilty.”

  Sarah stared back, trying to figure out what she was saying. Was it possible Graham hadn’t done this? “Did he shoot up? Are there any old needle tracks?”

  “The paramedics didn’t see any. No punctures, no bruises. After I heard how he was behaving, I asked them to add a few tests to the usual 10-panel toxicology screen. He came back positive for scopolamine.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Street name’s The Devil’s Breath.”

  More surreal by the minute. “Whatever you do, don’t tell Father Charron.”

  Morganstern’s slight smile registered the irony. “The stuff deserves its name. It causes horrible hallucinations. It can knock you out cold. And it leaves you with no memory of what happened. Years ago they used it during childbirth. Now it’s used in patch form for motion sickness. But it’s also used by thieves − they slip it into a drink. Some even blow it in their victim’s face. As long as it hits a mucous membrane, it’ll be absorbed.”

  Sarah felt like her brain was slogging through mud. “They use it to knock you out fast?”

  “It’s also a power-of-suggestion drug.”

  She had to repeat Morganstern’s phrase before it clicked. “So he would believe whatever he was told?”

  “Exactly. It works the way people think hypnosis works.”

  “Because he kept saying, ‘I did it’ when I found him. Over and over. I wasn’t going to tell you.”

  “Why don’t you people trust me?” Morganstern exclaimed. “I have bent over backwards to keep you in the loop.”

  “It wasn’t rational. I just had such trouble believing he was guilty, and it didn’t seem fair to count half-conscious words as a confession. I am sorry. You’ve gone out on a limb trusting me, too.”

  A shrug. “We had the surveillance tape.”

  “What surveillance tape?”

  “Your apartment lobby has CCTV, and there’s only one exit. One of our rookies went through every frame for the evening Philip was murdered. You didn’t leave the building.”

  Sarah grinned. “And here I thought you were just a good judge of character. So somebody gave him the drug? How?”

  “He had alcohol in his system, too, and there was an empty beer bottle in his room. I’m guessing whoever came to see him slipped the drug in the beer.”

  Sarah thought a minute. “A while back I asked Max if Graham did drugs and he said no, Graham just liked beer. Dark, really strong ale − Max called it vile. He said Graham chilled it inside an empty orange-juice carton in his mini-frig.”

  “You’d never taste scopolamine in a dark ale.”

  “So what would The Devil’s Breath have done to him?”

  “He would have seemed high at first, or crazy, which I gather he did. And then he would have passed out so completely, he could have rolled over on a porcupine and not felt the needles.”

  “Leaving somebody a clear field if they wanted to kill him.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why didn’t they?”

  “Either they were coming back later to do so, or they just wanted a false confession.”

  “Would you have known it was false?”

  Morganstern didn’t answer right away, just drew a line in her notebook, underscoring something. “He would have come to and retracted.”

  “But you might not have believed him.”

  When she met Sarah’s eyes, her own looked troubled. “We might not.”

  *

  Sarah sat down a chair away from Colin, grabbed an old New Yorker and turned to an Adam Gopnik profile of a French chef.

  “I could use a good cartoon,” Colin mumbled, stretching.

  “I didn’t want to wake you!”

  “I sensed your presence. It made waking up easier.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You want coffee?”

  “No, but I bet you do.”

  “With powers of deduction that formidable . . .”

  “I should have solved Philip’s murder by now.” He looked at her, all teasing gone. “Graham was just a scapegoat, wasn’t he?”

  “You talked to Morganstern.”

  “No, I just thought it through. If he were a sociopath then, by definition, he wouldn’t feel guilty enough to OD.”

  Relief nearly melted her. “So all that Jesuit logic paid off,” she said lightly.

  “Tell that to my students’ parents.” He rose. “I’ll be back.” He was halfway to the men’s room when the elevator door opened and Adriana stepped out.

  He doesn’t even know what happened, Sarah remembered. Let alone why. “I’ll be right back,” she told Adriana and hurried after Colin. In the hallway outside the loo, she whispered in a rush, “Adriana quit this morning, but only because of North, so you’ve got to call him and tell him to get over here. They need to talk.” Pulling up North’s email, she scribbled his phone number and handed it to Colin, who looked dazed but had the sense not to ask any more questions. By the time he reappeared she was back with Adriana, explaining about the scopolamine. He flashed a quick thumbs-up sign.

  A nurse came toward them. “Is one of you Sarah Markham?”

  Sarah half raised her hand.

  “Graham’s asking for you.”

  Sarah followed her, thinking about the irony of Graham in a hospital room. Laurel had probably come here, too − it was one of the best hospitals in St. Louis, and it was close to their home.

  His face was pale, but no longer grey; his eyes were puffy slits, but they were open. She leaned over the cold metal safety railing and touched his shoulder. “Hey, there.”

  “I didn’t try to kill myself,” he whispered hoarsely.

  “Never thought you did.”

  His eyes opened a little wider. “How’d you know?”

  “You’d never choose such a passive method.”

  Graham managed a smile.

  “And you’d leave a note,” she added, “to get the last word.”

  He turned his head away, and she had to lean closer to make out the words − “I think I killed Philip.”

  At that her nerves sprung loose, and she burst out laughing. Graham looked hurt.

  “Sorry,” she said, sobering. “It’s just that now that I’m sure you didn’t, you keep confessing.”

  “I can barely remember anything,” he said. “Just flashes of black, and dripping blood. Maybe I repressed it until now, and something brought it back.” He pressed his face into the pillow, and its stiff vinyl cover rustled under the thin pillow slip. “Maybe I did touch that ventilator dial.”

  The sheet was crumpled in his fist. She unbent his fingers from the cloth and took his hand between hers. “Graham, somebody gave you a drug called scopolamine. It causes h
allucinations, screws up your brain. They wanted us to believe you were the killer, overcome by a guilty conscience. But, as Colin just pointed out, if you were that kind of killer, conscience would be the last thing you’d feel.”

  “McAvoy doesn’t think I did it? He thought so before.”

  “I know. But Father McAvoy, while stubborn, has a good mind. It admits of error.”

  His eyelids fell shut again, but the smile stayed on his lips. Sarah sat beside him, keeping as still as possible, and let her mind whirl. Jimmy was the one who’d run to Colin with the ‘confession’. Was he the one who’d engineered it?

  A few minutes passed before Graham’s eyelids flew open. “What are the police saying?”

  “Morganstern’s cool. I’ll do my best to find out more today.” She tilted her head and gave him a look, eyebrows raised. “As long as the vodou curse doesn’t hold.”

  “What vodou curse?” he asked, forehead scrunched.

  His pupils weren’t dilated. His breathing was even. No muscles twitched. Graham hadn’t left that doll in her bed. “Never mind. Right now, you need to sleep.” The door swung open behind her, and she felt the air move as Laurel Dennison slipped into the room and went to the other side of the bed. She didn’t speak, just took her son’s other hand and covered it with kisses, muffling a sob.

  When Sarah glanced at Graham’s face, tears were streaming down his cheeks. She eased out of the room.

  “He’s doing fine,” she reported. “Colin, let’s get you some breakfast. Adriana, can you wait here for a while, just in case anything changes?”

  “Of course.”

  They went down to the hospital cafeteria, bought plastic containers of yogurt and fruit – ‘grown-up Happy Meals’ Colin called them − and sat on hard orange plastic banquettes for an hour. Sarah relayed every detail Morganstern had given her.

  When they went back upstairs Grant was sitting next to Adriana, holding her hands and making what sounded like an impassioned speech. “I’ve already lost you once,” Sarah heard.

  As the two looked up, Colin and Sarah waved and made a simultaneous U-turn. “Wait, don’t go,” Adriana called.

  “Just see that you don’t take away my best teacher,” Colin told Grant. “Sarah and I are going back to the cafeteria.”

  “Oh, goody,” Sarah said. “I was wishing I’d gotten the Danish.”

  *

  Driving the wheezing SUV away from the hospital, Sarah was thinking so hard she sailed right through a red light. Set Jimmy aside for a minute. What if it was North after all, and they’d just left Adriana with him? Luke had seen North leaving the dorm the morning Steven ran away. Maybe North and Adriana hadn’t stayed on the phone as long as Adriana thought, and he’d driven up to the school to see his son, to have it out once and for all. Maybe he’d barged in on Philip’s flashblood ritual. Sarah could imagine North’s disgust, could see him grabbing the syringe and jabbing it deep. “You want to be drugged out? Fine. Here’s more.”

  She could imagine him wiping her computer, too. But leaving a symbolic vodou doll? Using an exotic drug to force somebody else to confess? That just didn’t sound like North. Too imaginative, too dark, too weird.

  She zoomed up the highway ramp, not wanting to admit her next thought.

  It sounded like Adriana.

  She could have lied outright about North calling her, figuring she could invent some story and cajole him into backing her up. After all those hospital stays, she probably knew her way around a syringe. She’d heard Sarah talking about Haiti, so she could have planted the doll, and she had enough tech skills to wipe the laptop. But she had no motive.

  Enough thinking. Sarah owed Graham an experiment. She drove to Walmart and bought a disposable cell phone.

  O’Rourke had come through with Dennison’s cell phone log, and there were so many untraceable phone numbers, it had to mean something. He’d left the hospital as soon as he saw that Graham was in no danger, announcing that he had a court case to prepare, but he’d be back that evening to relieve his poor wife.

  Sarah didn’t trust him.

  She pulled over on a quiet, tree-lined street and dialled Dennison’s cell. Willing the birds not to chirp in the background, she made her voice husky. “I want you,” she half-whispered into the phone. “Now.”

  “You’re on somebody else’s phone, naughty girl,” he murmured, sounding delighted. “And I want you too. But I can’t today. My son’s in the hospital. What about tomorrow, right after court?”

  “Call me,” she whispered, and clicked off.

  *

  She’d counted on Dennison’s arrogance to make him careless, and he’d come through. What a class-A bastard. She drove back to school and called him again, this time from her real cell phone.

  “Mr. Dennison?” She used her perkiest, least seductive voice and stuck with his surname. He’d crave respect − he was playing with the big boys now. “It’s Sarah Markham. I know you must be worried sick about Graham, but he’s doing just fine. And I’ve got two more quick questions for you. I wondered if I could stop by.”

  “I’m preparing a big case, and I need to get back to the hospital. But for you, Ms. Markham, I can make a little time. Come now if you like. We’re in Chesterfield, about ten minutes east of the school.”

  Zipping up her black dress, she checked the mirror. She looked like the dying mother in Les Mis. Looping a fuchsia scarf around her neck only made her look paler, and the concealer she dabbed over the grey circles under her eyes blotched too peachy − the Caucasian ‘flesh’ of her childhood Crayola box. A little foundation to cover it. Kat’s eyelashes? Not for this. She spritzed on plenty of perfume, and when the curling iron hit the hair below her ear, it hissed.

  There was no doubt in her mind that Bryan Dennison had spun that ventilator dial. Maybe on a sick impulse, maybe recognising a yearned-for opportunity. Somehow she had to get him to admit it.

  Would he figure out she’d made the other call? Maybe it would be good if he did − he’d feel busted. She wondered if she should be scared and decided against it. He’d chosen a coward’s method before. Somehow she’d mention her editor, hint that the newspaper knew where she was. As though she could even find Casper to tell him. If Nellie Bly had worked for Gateway, she’d still be locked up.

  Nerves already zinging, Sarah took winding Highway N instead of the interstate. When she downshifted on a hill, grit from the Crapmobile’s once-glossy leather knob stuck to her damp palm. All slick surfaces crumbled eventually.

  Number 472 was what Sarah called Suburban Greek Revival, with museum-scale pillars, a portico that deserved a house four times larger, and a garage attached like a barnacle, ruining the facade. Dennison waved her inside with a grand swoop, showing her to a living room that hadn’t been touched since the interior designer left. It was pretty, every detail contrived in chocolate brown or robin’s egg blue, with the watered-silk blue curtains’ deep chocolate border puddling on the pale bamboo floor. When he left to fetch coffee, Sarah pressed ‘Record’ on her phone and slid it into her bag’s outside pocket.

  “Cream? Sugar?”

  “Both,” she called back. “Which always seems like a weakness. Your home’s amazing. Have you lived here long?”

  “Twen-ty years,” he sang from the kitchen. “Ours was one of the first houses on the street.”

  How on earth had they afforded this as newlyweds? Family money must have smoothed the way, and she was willing to bet it was Laurel’s. Dennison’s charm was a little too self-conscious, and he gave off the self-satisfied air of a man who’d climbed higher than he’d started.

  “So you two have been married more than two decades,” she said, letting envy creep into her voice. “That’s so wonderful.”

  He returned with their coffee.

  “I always worry that marriage, even a good marriage, would get suffocating,” she confided. “And then what if my husband didn’t want to let me go?” The inside of
her mouth felt like somebody had swabbed it out with cotton. She didn’t even try to swallow.

  “You just have to follow your heart,” he assured her.

  “I’m not sure there would be just one perfect person for me, though.” She tilted her head, hoping it looked flirty. She’d never had the knack. “I might keep meeting men I liked. I mean, once you marry somebody you see them at their worst, right? When they’re hurling up their dinner, or they look like hell, or they’re dithering and can’t come to grips . . .”

  “Ah, but that’s what romance is for. It sails us right past those little everyday irritations.”

  “Right, but then you’re trapped for good,” she said, keeping her voice conversational. “And all you can do is wait for the person to get sick or die. Pull the plug, if it comes to that. Spin a dial. Let somebody else take responsibility.”

  The only response was a slight jerk of his head, a darkening of his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, then pressed his lips together in a tense squiggle. She’d have to amp it up. “How dare you do that to your own son, Mr. Dennison?” she said, the anger real.

  He stood. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. But I’d like you to leave immediately.”

  He must be good in court; that crisp, imperious tone left no room for argument. Which was fine, because she had no intention of arguing. Her purse and keys were at her feet, and in one motion she grabbed both and rose. Through the door, into the SUV, key in ignition, for God’s sake don’t flood it, and pulled out of the circular drive.

  Near the entrance of the subdivision, she braked and used a cul-de-sac to turn around. Every nerve in her body wanted to race back to the milkhouse or better yet her sweet little apartment, but she couldn’t stop halfway. She drove back and parked on the street parallel to Dennison’s.

  Feeling like Harriet the Spy, she cut through somebody’s back yard and snuck up underneath Dennison’s living room window. Even through all that faux leaded glass, she could hear him sobbing.

  *

  “Perfect! Got everything I need!” Kat always told nervous subjects. Their face would relax, and she’d click the shutter one last time and capture their soul.