by Emily James
“You could try that argument.” Leonard crossed his legs. “But I was part of the committee that petitioned to have Michigan’s laws concerning physician-assisted suicide changed. I’d be a hypocrite if I killed my brother because he wanted to provide the same peace to our mother that I wanted to provide to others.”
His story was convincing except for one thing. “Then why weren’t you two speaking again once you found out the truth?”
“I agreed with what he did, but he should have asked me rather than doing it on his own. I should have had my chance to say goodbye too.” Leonard’s hands shifted toward each other like he wanted to crack his knuckles again. Instead his ran his fingers over his knuckles twice. “It seems stupid now that Gordon’s gone, and my last words to him were angry ones. I didn’t get to say goodbye to him either.” His hands separated, and he straightened his back. “Do you have any more questions or are we done? The hour’s almost up.”
I didn’t have any more questions. Not after that one sentence—It seems stupid now. Those were the words of someone who genuinely regretted not making up with a person they cared about before it was too late. He hadn’t killed his brother.
Which meant I now had a much bigger problem.
It was back to looking like Clement was the only one who could have murdered Gordon Albright.
“It’s possible Clement did kill Gordon,” Anderson said once we were back in my car.
It didn’t help hearing my fear repeated back to me. Clement and I had a plan for what we’d do if we felt he was guilty. I just didn’t want to execute it. I liked Clement, and I didn’t want him to be guilty. I certainly didn’t want him to have to spend his final days in prison, knowing his wife was afraid of him.
My phone vibrated in my pocket, and the Bluetooth display flashed the number for the prison where Clement was.
We had an appointment set up for visiting hours a couple of days after his psychological and medical assessments. There wasn’t a reason he’d need to call me before then. The assessments weren’t even scheduled until tomorrow.
Please God, let him not have been shanked in the shower and they’re calling to tell me he’s dead.
Or, worse, that he’d killed one of his fellow inmates. My chances of proving him innocent of Gordon’s murder would be zero if he killed another person, regardless of the reasons.
I tapped the display screen. “This is Nicole. You’re on speaker with co-counsel.”
“I need to talk to you today.” Clement’s voice crackled in and out, like the landline he was on was too old to be reliable anymore.
I opened my mouth to ask if he could tell me whatever he needed to over the phone.
“In person,” Clement said before I could. “In private.”
I dropped Anderson back off at his car and headed on. On the drive, I called the prison and made sure they’d allow me to see Clement. I wasn’t sure what the visiting hours were today, but I claimed I had to talk to him about an important element of his case that couldn’t wait.
I could only assume that was the truth. I’d pushed for a bit more information, but Clement had refused to talk about it until I arrived.
The guard brought me back into the same room I’d met Clement in before.
Clement’s skin was a healthy bronze tone, which was the opposite of what it should have been considering he’d been inside since his arrest except for the limited yard time prisoners received. His eyelids weren’t drooping anymore either, giving him a more alert look.
My body couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen from the breathes I was taking. It was all wrong. He shouldn’t have looked healthier than I’d ever seen him. Not even hope was that powerful.
I slid slowly into the chair across the table from him and waited, once again, for the guard to leave us alone. The door’s clang as it shut seemed extra loud today. And my fear was for an entirely different reason.
The slightly out of breath feeling in my chest turned into a I’ve-been-running-up-a-steep-flight-of-stairs feeling. “You’re looking much better,” I said.
Clement rubbed a hand over his beard—slow like he was trying to coax out the words he needed to say. “I’ve been sleeping.”
“How long?”
“Since I got here.”
Oh crap, was the only words my mind could grapple on to. “I’m guessing your condition wasn’t one that could spontaneously correct itself.”
“Not according to my doctor. He told me to get my affairs in order.”
Not just crap. Double crap. A whole truckload of crap-ness. If we couldn’t prove Clement had fatal insomnia, then any defense based on him not understanding his actions was gone. We were claiming the insomnia caused hallucinations. If he didn’t have fatal insomnia, he was lying about the hallucinations and sleep deprivation.
And there was a distinct possibility that I’d been played.
16
The cacophony of my own thoughts was so loud I wished my brain came with a mute button.
Clement shook his head. “I don’t understa—”
I held up a finger. “I need you to sit quietly for a second. Please.”
I examined his face. He met my gaze and didn’t flinch away, even though it must have been uncomfortable to have me staring at him. The furrows in his forehead stayed identical to the way they’d been when I walked in, as if he’d been worrying about this long before I got there and was already concerned enough that my reaction wouldn’t make it either better or worse.
Beyond all that, though, was the authenticity I’d thought I’d detected the first time we met, when I was talking to a man who loved his wife, and his job, and the history of Michigan. A man who was arrested because he was found over the body covered in blood, but who the police still hadn’t been able to produce a motive for.
Had he tricked me?
It would have required extreme planning. He’d have had to know I was a lawyer before I told him because he’d shown signs of long-standing sleep deprivation from the moment I met him.
I ticked down one finger. If I got to three reasons in favor of his honesty, I’d give him the benefit of the doubt.
His timing was also terrible. If he’d been pretending, he should have kept pretending until after the psychological and medical assessments. There was no logical reason to pretend this long only to stop now. If he’d been faking, he’d been able to deceive trained professionals and should have been able to trick the ones I’d hired to assess him as well. I dropped another finger to the tabletop. That was two reasons.
Assuming he’d been telling me the truth about being diagnosed. “Will your doctor testify that you were diagnosed with fatal insomnia?”
“I can’t see why not. It should also be in writing in my medical records, and he sent those to multiple specialists.”
Okay, so then Clement would have had to be a talented actor, good enough to win an Oscar, to fool medical professionals. And he couldn’t have faked the stress signs his body would have been showing. “I’ll want you to sign a release so I can look at those records.”
“Anything you need.”
He didn’t blink or hesitate. He was confident his records would show he’d indeed been suffering from fatal insomnia. That wouldn’t be enough for the court if we couldn’t prove he still was suffering now—the assumption would be that he’d tricked the original doctors but hadn’t been able to trick the forensic specialists.
But it was enough for me.
I tapped my third finger into the desk, then tapped the three fingers together. Believing him left me in a real pickle, as my grandmother would have said.
“You said you started sleeping again after you came here.”
“Within a night. I thought it was a fluke at first so I didn’t mention it, but it’s been long enough now that I’m starting to feel like myself again.”
If something as simple as a different bed would cure fatal insomnia, doctors would have figured it out long ago. Presumably the first thing they suggest
ed to people who were struggling to sleep was to avoid caffeine, keep their room dark at night, and get a better mattress. The prison would have been noisier than his home and the mattresses probably weren’t nearly as comfortable as whatever Clement had at home. He should have slept worse, not better.
An underlying undiagnosed medical condition like restless leg syndrome or hyperthyroidism also wouldn’t have cleared up simply because he ended up in prison either.
The doctors said it wouldn’t spontaneously correct itself, though, so something must have caused the change.
I rubbed at my temples. Maybe it would work some ideas to the surface. “Can you think of anything that’s changed other than your surroundings?”
“The food’s better at home.”
I couldn’t hold back a snort-laugh. Hospital food and airline food were usually the butt of jokes, but I had to think that was only because most people had never eaten prison food. It’d be ironic if the prison food healed him instead. But the only way that was possible was if he had an allergy.
Problem was, I didn’t know if allergies could cause insomnia. I texted the question to Mark.
It’d be rare, he answered almost immediately. But possible. Gluten most common.
If it was an allergy, it’d be an undiagnosed one. “Is it the flavor that’s better at home or are you eating different types of foods here?”
Clement had his hand on his beard again. “The flavor. Everything here tastes like it came pre-packaged or they cooked it in a vat.”
Snorting wasn’t professional, so I swallowed this second one down. That’s likely exactly how the food was made. From the sounds of it, however, a food allergy wasn’t likely if he was eating the same types of things here as at home. “I’m going to request you undergo some allergy testing, but is there anything specifically you can think of that you had at home that you don’t have here.”
“Beer.” Clement jerked his shoulders up and lowered them down slowly in an awkward shrug. “But I haven’t even had any of that at home since the insomnia started. My doctor said alcohol could hinder proper sleep patterns. They have sweets here, but I don’t eat them. Darlene and I gave up desserts when the doctor told us in the spring that her sugars were borderline and my cholesterol was high.”
My spine went as straight as a table leg. High cholesterol. Like Russ. That meant he would also be taking medication the way Russ did. “Since you’ve been here, have you been receiving your cholesterol medication?”
He nodded. “The prison doc doles them out and makes sure you swallow them. I guess they don’t want people storing them up.”
My brain was slotting the pieces into place almost faster than I could get the words out. “Did you have to bring in your own medications or how does that work?”
“Darlene brought my bottle to the police station when we were waiting for the bail hearing.” His eyebrows drew down into a line level with his glasses. “Those ran out about the same time I came here, and the ones I take now come from the prison dispensary.”
I could see the moment he figured out what I was thinking. His eyebrows jumped up and dropped down.
“You think it was my medicine,” he said.
I thought it seemed like the most likely cause, but that presented us with a problem. Either his family doctor had prescribed him something that would create insomnia instead of managing his high cholesterol, or Darlene was swapping out his pills at home.
I wanted the doctor to seem more likely because it would destroy Clement to find out Darlene betrayed him and was trying to murder him. It wouldn’t have been that difficult for the doctor to do it. Not really.
A pharmacist wouldn’t know what the customer had been diagnosed with, only what they’d been prescribed. If the medication didn’t come with dangerous side effects and didn’t have potential negative interactions with something they were already taking, some pharmacists didn’t even discuss them with the patient before handing them the medication. Any time I’d picked up something at the pharmacy, Saul told me he’d put paperwork in the bag explaining the medication and all the side effects and that I should call him if I had any questions.
The specialists Clement saw for insomnia wouldn’t have seen his actual pills. They’d have only looked at the list of medications Clement wrote up himself. Clement would have written down the high cholesterol medication he thought he was on.
As soon as I got Clement to sign the medical release, I’d go to the pharmacy and find out from Saul exactly what Clement was prescribed. Then I’d know whether to investigate his doctor or Darlene.
I sent a text to Anderson’s secretary to fax the forms to the prison. Anderson said I could assign her administrative tasks for this case if I needed to since we were co-counsel and he’d be receiving payment for the case the same as I would.
“I’ll look into your medication. I have a couple of theories about how it might have happened if we’re right, but I don’t want to go into it right now in case I’m wrong. You need to keep this between us. Have you told Darlene your suspicion?”
Clement’s hands were stretched out on top of the table, and he was staring at them like they didn’t belong to him. He didn’t answer my question.
“Clement?”
“If we’re right, I killed Gordon.”
17
My heart did a funny, sickly flutter beat that made me feel queasy. I opened my mouth to object, but I couldn’t. He was right. If someone was trying to kill Clement by inducing fatal insomnia, they’d also indirectly killed Gordon Albright. The odds that someone had killed Gordon and tried to frame Clement for it at the same time as someone was trying to kill Clement were unreasonably slim.
Unless Gordon and Clement had both angered the same person and the same person tried to kill them both?
Clement still stared down at his hands.
I tapped the table. “Look at me, okay?”
He brought his gaze up, but red ringed his eyes.
“We have to take this one step at a time. Can you think of anyone who might have had a grudge against both of you? Or were you ever both together and witnessed something unusual?”
“No. No one. Gordon and I spent so much time together at work that we didn’t socialize on weekends. When we did, he always came to my house and it was just the three of us.” Clement brought his hands up and pressed his fingers into his forehead, right above his eyebrows. “The only people we interacted with together were patrons of the museum, and we haven’t had an altercation with anyone except for the occasional rowdy group of bored teenagers in the summers.”
I highly doubted rowdy teenagers would have the patience or resources to plan two such complex crimes.
“What about strange interactions when you purchased something for the museum? Did you use a different supplier for anything?”
“Everything’s been normal.” Clement rubbed tiny circles into his forehead. “Why would the person who wanted to kill me also try to frame me for Gordon’s death. They could have killed him and dumped him in the lake with a lot less risk of being caught.” He shook his head. “I had to have been the one who killed Gordon.”
“If we’re right, I’ll do my best to see you don’t go to prison for murder. Assuming you’re cured, you’re not a danger to anyone, and someone did this to you. That person should be punished.”
Clement gave the kind of nod that said he didn’t entirely agree with me. His fingers stayed steepled onto his face.
The person who tampered with Clement’s medicine could be charged with attempted murder at the very least, and depending on how strong a case I could make, potentially for Gordon’s murder as well.
But that still wouldn’t get Clement acquitted. Now that we were both accepting that Gordon was collateral damage, I’d have to first prove Clement’s medications had been altered, then show that alteration caused his fatal insomnia, which caused a hallucination that resulted in Gordon’s death. And, at the end of all that, hope I could find precedent for having
Clement released. Given the unusual circumstances, it’d be a long shot.
First, I had to make sure he didn’t tip off Darlene if she was involved somehow.
He hadn’t responded to my question about whether he’d told her his suspicions or not. I didn’t want to plant doubt in his mind about his wife unnecessarily. Their relationship was already going to have a hard-enough time recovering from Gordon’s murder, and Darlene might not have been involved at all in Clement’s condition.
“I think it’d be better if you didn’t tell Darlene about this for now.”
Clement twisted his gold wedding ring around on his finger. “You think she’ll find it hard to believe that I wasn’t faking this whole time? She might think I meant to kill Gordon?”
The poor man. Believing he’d killed his best friend was bad enough. Believing he might lose his wife as well could send him into a depression. There was a reason the police removed all items a person could hang themselves with in prison.
I didn’t want to be a contributing factor to Clement heading down that path. That would be as bad as planting doubts about his wife prematurely.
“I was thinking more that we don’t want to get her hopes up. It could be that this is a temporary respite from your condition and it’ll return. Maybe no one tampered with your medication at all. Give me time to look into it first, okay?”
Clement seemed to like the idea that his condition might simply be in remission better than that Darlene might believe he’d faked his disease to create an out for murdering his friend. That was love, when a man preferred death over losing his wife. At least he hadn’t guessed at my real motive for asking him not to tell Darlene. That spoke to his love for her as well.
I got his permission to enter his house and remove an old pill bottle if I needed to. From my visit to Darlene, I knew that like so many people in Fair Haven, they didn’t lock their doors. All I’d need to do was find a time when Darlene wasn’t home. Clement provided that for me too. Darlene did water aerobics three mornings a week at the Fair Haven pool, and she’d recently joined a knitting club that met once a week.