Thread of Doubt

by Jeff Shelby

  And then I noticed the piece of paper near his hand.

  It was a single sheet, torn in half, and there were two things written on it.

  “Sorry. Patrick.”

  Both were printed in pencil, diagonal across the lines of the page.

  I turned and walked back out of the garage apartment and stood in the middle of the backyard. A bird chirped from a tree nearby. A dog barked. A UPS truck lumbered by.

  I took out my phone and called Mike.

  “Hey, it's me,” I said when he answered. I turned back toward the garage. “Yeah. I found him.”

  NINE

  Mike Lorenzo stood with his hands on his hips, an unreadable expression on his face. “What do you think?”

  I'd called the police after calling him and he showed up right after they had. We'd stayed off to the side, watching as the responding unit did their thing, and I was worried that he was in shock. But after a few minutes he'd started making phone calls and pacing, and I figured that meant he was alright for the moment.

  An officer and a detective interviewed me, just routine questions about who I was, why I was there, and how I'd found Patrick. They seemed satisfied with what I'd told them and they told me they'd be in touch if they needed more information from me. So Mike and I stood outside the house, watching the coroner's office arrive to do their job.

  “I don't know,” I said, answering Mike’s question. “Seems fairly straightforward, I guess. Just sucks.”

  “You think?” he asked, rubbing at his chin. “Straightforward?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I mean, he's an admitted user who, according to his mom, has been in and out of rehab. It had its hooks in him. And I don't want to be crass here, Mike, because he's your nephew, but the needle was in his arm and that note...” I tried to be sensitive. “It seems...self-explanatory.”

  Mike was studying the house. “Sure. I mean, sure to the addict part. But usually, when an addict dies, even if it's self-inflicted, it's accidental. It's not premeditated.”

  “Was he having depressive issues?”

  “I have no idea,” he said. “But my point is that it seems a little off to me that he would purposefully kill himself the same way he got high. Those two things don't jibe for me.”

  I watched a forensic tech check out the door I'd busted in. “Okay. But isn't it reasonable to think that the drug just got to him and he got tired of trying to fight it?”

  “Yeah,” Mike said, nodding, his eyes still fixed on the house. “But why not jump off a cliff? Hook the garden hose up to a tailpipe? Or even take some sleeping pills?” He looked at me. “Why do it by overloading on the drug you use to get high?”

  I could see his point, but I also knew that most people who were close to a suicide victim did everything they could to deny that it was suicide, especially if they could find some wiggle room, and especially when they first learned about it. It was a natural reaction; no one wanted to believe a loved one was capable of killing themselves. I wasn't disagreeing with the logic he was using, but I wasn't sure that his line of reasoning ruled out what I'd seen with my own eyes.

  “How do you explain the note then?” I asked, trying to be both gentle and practical. It was a hard line to walk. “If he wasn't planning on killing himself?”

  Mike toed the ground. “I don't know. Maybe it was a note to someone else. Maybe someone else wrote it. I have no clue.”

  “Mike.”

  “Joe.”

  I bit my bottom lip for a moment. “Look, I don't want to argue with you. I learned from you that the most obvious reason is usually the real reason. But I didn't know Patrick and clearly you did. So if you think there's something else at play here, okay.” I paused. “But you've got a kid struggling with heroin use in there with a needle in his arm and a note that suggests he took his own life or was at least thinking about it. You can't overlook those things.”

  “I'm not overlooking them,” he said. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at the ground. “I'm not. But this just feels...off.”

  I wasn't sure anything about a suicide would not feel off, but it wasn't my place to tell him that.

  “Okay,” I said, not wanting to push him. “Then wait for the tox screen and see what's there.”

  “Absolutely,” he said. He started to say something else, then stopped himself.

  “What?”

  “Can I ask another favor?”

  After finding his nephew dead of an apparent heroin overdose, there was no way I was going to say no. “We're still on the clock for the first one, so, of course.”

  He checked his phone. “Tomorrow. See if you can track down the guys in his band or whatever the hell it is. I'll get you their info tonight. But just make a pass at them and see if anything's there.” He looked at me. “You'll know. I know you. You'll know if there's something there or if I'm kidding myself.”

  “You don't wanna talk to them yourself?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No. Because I'm already filling in the blanks here and that's not good. You won't do that. You'll see what's there and nothing else. I can't do that.” He turned back to the house. His mouth was set in a firm line, and a muscle in his jaw twitched. He blinked a couple of times. “Kid was still my nephew.”

  “I'm sorry, Mike.”

  “Me, too,” he said, taking slow steps toward the house, almost as if he were bracing himself to go back inside. He glanced at me, and his eyes were a little bright, a little watery. “You can do that for me?”

  “Yeah, absolutely.”

  “Thanks,” he said, making his way toward the garage and where his dead nephew lay. “I'll call you tonight after I talk to my sister.”

  TEN

  “So you saw him?” Elizabeth said, digging her spoon into her ice cream. “You saw his body?”

  I nodded. “I did.”

  I'd gone home after leaving Mike at the house and it took much longer than I expected to get back because traffic on Interstate 8 was heavy nearly the whole way. I'd called Elizabeth halfway through the drive and offered to pick up Chinese food for dinner. She was excited by that and said she’d run to the store to pick up ice cream for dessert. We’d mowed through the Chinese food when I got home and minutes later, retired to the sofa with our bowls of ice cream.

  “Ugh,” she said, licking her spoon. “That's gross.”

  “And sad.” I thought about all the cases I’d looked into over the years, the kids who had never made it home.

  “Well, yeah, obviously.” She shot me a sympathetic look. “So you think he killed himself then?”

  I leaned back into the sofa and spooned out some of the ice cream. It was chocolate, with ribbons of peanut butter and fudge laced through it. “Certainly seems that way, yeah.”

  “What do the police do then?” she asked, concentrating on her bowl. “If he killed himself, why do they have to do anything?”

  “They just need to make sure,” I said. “So they'll treat it like a crime scene and then they'll run some tests on his body to confirm. They'll interview people close to him, but my guess is it will happen pretty fast and be ruled a suicide.”

  She ran her spoon carefully around the rim of her bowl. The metal clanked against the porcelain, almost like a percussion instrument. “That sucks.”

  “Yep, it does.”

  “I feel bad for Mike.”

  I stared into the bowl of melting ice cream. “Me, too.”

  She held up her spoon and licked the back of it. “So now you're done?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “With the case,” she said. “If that’s what it was.”

  It wasn’t a case, it was a favor, but I knew what she was asking. “Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly?” she repeated.

  I explained what Mike had asked me to do.

  “Why?” she said, looking up from her bowl.

  “I think he just wants some reassurance,” I said. “It's hard when someone takes their own life and it seems out of
character.”

  “I guess,” she said. She set her bowl down on the coffee table. “Did you ever think about it?”

  “About what?”

  “Suicide.”

  “Me?” I glanced up, surprised. “Why would you ask that?”

  She pulled her knees to her chest. “I don't know. You've told me how hard it was when I was gone. You said it was awful. You and Mom got a divorce. When you talk to me about it, you sound like you were sort of a psycho.” She added a rueful smile, proably as a way to soften her words.

  “I was,” I said, nodding. “Not really a violent psycho, but I was...not totally rational all the time.”

  “Right,” she said, hugging her knees. “So I just wondered. Did you ever think about it?”

  My bowl was empty now, too and I set it on the table next to hers. “No. Because if I'd killed myself, it would've meant I'd given up on finding you and that was the one thing that got me out of bed every single day.” I looked at her. “Did I get depressed? Angry? Sure. But killing myself wouldn't have solved anything for me or your mother. I never got to that point.”

  She nodded slowly, mulling that over.

  It was the truth. I'd spent many nights, alone in small hotel rooms in strange places, staring at the walls or flipping mindlessly through the TV channels. I'd cried. I'd punched holes in walls. I did plenty of irrational things. But I couldn't recall ever wanting to kill myself because I'd always believed that she was out there.

  And I'd been right.

  “I thought about it,” Elizabeth said.

  An icy knot formed in my gut. “Suicide?”

  She let go of her knees and stretched out her legs. “Yeah.”

  I shifted on the couch. “When?” I tried to keep my voice steady, even.

  She leaned her head back against the arm of the sofa. “It was some time that first year. And I know. I was too young to really go through with it or actually do anything. But I felt...helpless. I knew something was wrong, but it was like my brain and my memories were scrambled. I knew things weren't right, but I couldn't figure out why or how, and I would just cry at night when I went to bed.”

  The sharp ache that lived in my gut for all the years she'd been gone was threatening to take up residence again. I knew that I had her back, and I knew she was safe. But even taking a few moments to go back to those dark years was like taking a baseball bat to my head.

  “I'm sorry,” I said. It was the most inadequate thing in the world to say, but it was all I had.

  “I just knew it was all off,” she said. She wasn’t looking at me, and her eyes had this faraway look. “And the Corzines were great and they gave me space and all that crap. But I knew something was off, and I'd get so angry because I felt like everyone knew something I didn't and that they were trying to confuse me.”

  “They were,” I said sharply.

  “The Corzines weren't,” she said, shaking her head. “They believed the story they'd been given.”

  I grunted. “Maybe. But they knew the way that you came to them was wrong. They were kidding themselves.”

  “I guess,” she said, shrugging. The gesture irritated me, as if she didn’t believe her fake family had been capable of doing something wrong or that she thought it was simply irrelevant. “But I hated that everyone was trying to make me think something that I knew wasn't right.” She shook her head. “I pulled the pillow over myself one night, like I could suffocate myself or something.”

  The knife in my gut twisted. “I'm sorry,” I said again.

  “I know,” she said. “But it's not your fault and it's not going to change the past. And...I don’t know, sometimes I just feel like I need to spit all of this crap out.”

  “Spitting crap out is good.”

  “I guess.”

  I leaned forward on the couch. “It is. If you've got stuff you need to get out, then get it out. To me or whoever.” I looked her straight in the eye. “But get it out. Don't keep it bottled up.”

  “Okay,” she said. There was a pause, and then she asked, “So what happens if you find out it wasn't a suicide?”

  “I'm not sure I will. And nice segue.”

  She made a face. “Okay. But what if you do?”

  “If I do, I'll tell Mike,” I told her. “And he can do with that whatever he wants to.”

  She nodded slowly, then started to say something, but bit off the words.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You've talked more about helping Mike than teaching since I got home last night,” she said. “And not that I expected you to talk continuously about teaching or anything. But...I don't know.”

  “Didn't we already have this conversation?”

  She rolled her eyes. “That's not what I'm saying.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “I'm saying you seem to care about this,” she said. “I'm saying that you seem a little ambivalent to teaching right now. And I'm saying that after not investigating for a few years, maybe it's...tickling your fancy.”

  “Tickling my fancy?” I chuckled. “What century are you living in?”

  “Shut up. You know what I mean.”

  The chuckle turned into a laugh, and I was grateful for the shift in both of our moods. I did know what she meant. But I just wasn't sure how to answer her.

  “Right now, all I'm trying to do is help Mike,” I told her. “That's it. No ulterior motives or anything like that. I haven't given a whole lot of thought to teaching because I'm so far behind. So I'm not at a point to even evaluate it like that. So, I want to help my friend and I want to spend the winter break with my daughter. I probably won't be talking much about school at all.”

  She held her hands up in mock surrender. “Alright, alright. Was just asking.”

  “You're allowed to ask,” I told her. It was my turn for a segue.“Are we running again in the morning?”

  She stood and picked up the bowls from the table. “I am. Wasn't sure if your old bones would be ready to go again so soon.”

  I threw the pillow at her as she walked to the kitchen, cackling.

  ELEVEN

  My old bones weren't ready for it the way I'd hoped they'd be.

  I was stiff and sore the next morning and Elizabeth showed no mercy, treating me to intervals on the sand. I begged off halfway through and she finished her workout, smiling at me each time she jogged back to her starting spot. I tried to beat her back to the house and was ahead of her most of the way, but she sprinted easily by me at the end, giggling as she cruised past.

  I applauded myself for not tripping her.

  I showered and changed and headed back out to El Cajon.

  I'd gotten a message from Mike that he'd spoken to Cleo. He didn't give me any indication as to how she’d reacted, but he did reiterate his wish for me to take another peek to see if anything didn't look right. I wasn't exactly sure where to go but I figured the house where I’d found Patrick was as good of a starting point as any.

  It looked different when I pulled up to the curb. There were two pick-ups parked in the driveway and there was a single strand of yellow tape draped between the house and the tree that blocked off access to the backyard. A guy with bright blond hair and wearing a T-shirt and jeans was loading a couple of trash bags into the bed of one of the trucks. He was shorter than me, but broader, with shoulders that looked like they had pads on top of them. He eyed me cautiously as I came up the drive, pushing the blond hair out of his eyes to get a better look.

  “Help you?” he asked, not bothering to hide that he had no interest in doing so.

  “Maybe,” I said. “My name's Joe Tyler. Patrick's uncle is a good friend of mine. His name is Mike.”

  The guy made no move nor said anything that indicated he cared.

  “I was here yesterday,” I said. “I was the one that found him.”

  He turned toward the crime scene tape, then back to me. “Oh. Okay.”

  I nodded at the house. “You live here? With Patrick?”
r />   He adjusted the bags in the bed of the truck. “Yeah.”

  I waited but he didn't say anything.

  “I’m sorry about what happened,” I said.

  More silence.

  “You moving out?” I asked.

  He turned around to face me and folded his arms over his chest. A tattoo of a music note decorated one of his forearms. “What does it look like?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Dumb question.”

  “What's your name again?”

  “Joe Tyler.”

  “Right,” he said, his eyes suspicious. “Yeah, I'm moving out. Landlord's kicking us out.”

  “Were you in the band? With Patrick?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Why are you here? I mean, I get you found him. But why now?”

  “I'm a friend of Patrick's uncle,” I said again. “His mother hadn't heard from him for several days, so he called me to check on him. I found him yesterday. Just trying to get a handle on what happened. Nothing else.”

  “Are you a cop?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “No, but his uncle is.”

  His expression didn’t change. “So what are you then?”

  “High school teacher,” I said. “But I used to do some investigating. I can give you his uncle's number if you want to call him to verify. I understand.”

  He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No, it's fine.” He extended his hand. “I'm Ricky Brown.”

  I shook his hand. “Sorry we aren't meeting under better circumstances.”

  He shrugged. “Is what it is.”

  “You talk to the police?” I asked.

  “Nearly all night,” he said, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “So if I'm being a dick, it's because I've been up all night dealing with all of this.”

  “You're not, and I get it,” I said. “Can I ask why you're moving out now? Seems like a hassle you don't need.”

  “No shit,” he mumbled. He blew out a breath. “Our landlord's an asshole. Kind of guy who deposits the check the second he sees it, but disappears the second we need a plumber, you know? He was already kicking us out, but he showed up here last night and made it clear he wanted us out today.”