It is remarkable what people in deep turmoil will tell you if you truly listen to what they are saying. More often than not, they will spill some of the pattern of repeated dark words, thoughts, and fantasies that have been spiraling in their heads so relentlessly, so furiously, that they have entered a trance that has eliminated all other thoughts. If the spiral continues without break, they will essentially talk themselves to the point where the pain of dying seems less than the pain of living.
That’s how suicide works.
Her unfocused gaze had traveled by me and out toward the crashing waves and the sea beyond; she was back in her trance again. “They’ll pin it on me. The spurned wife.” I sensed the muscles in her forearm start to tense.
“Elaine, Elaine, look at me!” I shouted, trying to break the trance. “I promise you, I am not part of any machine except justice. I promise you that I have no bias or interest in throwing you in a hole. No interest in making you rot there just to clear a case. All I’m interested in is seeing you in your daughters’ loving arms again.”
For a long moment, Christopher’s wife stayed with the gun against her head, dwelling on the ocean. Then raindrops began to fall.
“Believe me, Elaine,” I said. “If you know who I am and what I do, I am going to hear whatever you have to say without prejudice or filter. Do you understand?”
I could see the struggle in her face as the repetitive thoughts and emotions of the suicidal trance fought against this new story I was telling her. And then it came to me. Suddenly, I understood a part of the death spiral that she hadn’t yet revealed. And even though the first cut would be cruel, I used it against her.
“I know Randall didn’t want your love anymore and that made you feel destroyed inside, as if you’d never love or be loved like that again. But that is not true, Elaine. You are loved.”
She shook her head, her lower lip trembling. “No.”
“I can prove it to you,” I said. “I’ve seen the picture of you with the twins the day they left for camp. My wife did too. She said the love you have for them and the love they have for you is so powerful, it just radiates right out of the picture. I agree, Elaine. Do you see the beauty in that? In that picture, part of your heart has been broken and yet you are blooming with love for Tina and Rachel and they’re blooming with love for you. Do you really want to end something so beautiful?”
Her shoulders began to shake.
“Please, Elaine,” I said. “Put the gun down for Tina and for Rachel or they’ll never know that kind of unconditional love again, their mother’s beautiful love again, your beautiful, limitless love again.”
That broke her.
Christopher’s widow burst into gulping sobs and let go of the gun, which fell in the sand. I scrambled forward and snatched it up even as she said, weeping, “He didn’t care about me or the girls or anyone anymore. All he wanted was Kay.”
CHAPTER 23
THE RAIN CAME IN A patter that surged to a downpour after we’d put Elaine Paulson in the back seat of the car and Sampson started the drive back.
“Am I under arrest?” she said when Mahoney put handcuffs on her wrists.
“In federal custody,” Mahoney said. “Pending interrogation.”
“And psychological evaluation,” I said. “And weapon testing.”
“Why?” she said, looking at the rain splattering against the windshield.
I studied her, wondering about her mental state and her guilt or innocence. I said, “After your husband and Mrs. Willingham were murdered with a thirty-eight-caliber pistol, you ran, hid from law enforcement, and were at the brink of killing yourself with a thirty-eight-caliber pistol, Elaine. That’s why.”
“Don’t you have to read me my rights?” she asked, still not meeting our eyes.
Mahoney nodded and read them to her. “Do you understand your rights?”
Elaine nodded dully. “I do. I’m going to remain silent now because that’s what they always say to do.” She snorted with rancor. “Even Randall always said it. You talk to a lawyer first.”
As the rain drummed on the roof, she raised her head and looked at each of us in turn before shutting her ravaged eyes and sleeping the rest of the way back to DC. She woke up when we pulled into the hospital parking lot.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Elaine, we’re taking you in for evaluation, remember?”
“No. Can I leave? I mean, sign myself out?”
“No, ma’am,” Mahoney said, glancing at me. “You’re still in federal custody.”
“Oh. Have you read me my rights?”
“We have.”
“Then I want a lawyer before I go in the mental ward,” she said. “I know what they do to people in mental wards. Dope me up so I’ll waive my rights and talk to you.”
“Elaine,” I said calmly. “For your own safety, you are here for medical care by fine doctors. And a public defender will come talk to you in the morning.”
“How do I know you’re not lying to me?” she said, growing agitated and shrinking away when Sampson came around and opened her door.
“You don’t know, Elaine,” I said, gazing into her eyes. “You have to trust me. Like I said on the beach, I’m just trying to get you back to your daughters.” That got her more wound up. “Where are they? Can I see them?”
“In a few days, I’m sure,” I said.
Elaine looked at me, tears welling in her eyes. “I want to see them now.”
“I know you do. But unless you cooperate here, it could be weeks before you do.”
She got out then. We delivered her to the locked psych ward and left for our respective homes, all of us wondering about her guilt or innocence.
Bree wondered about it too as I ate leftovers and recounted my day.
“You said she was in and out of reality,” she said.
“That’s how it seemed to me,” I agreed. “Which can be caused by all sorts of traumatic states, including killing your cheating husband and his girlfriend.”
“The weapons test will tell us one way or the other.”
“No doubt,” I said, taking my dishes to the sink. “How’s Nana Mama?”
“Better. She slept a lot, woke up, ate a lot, then went back to sleep.”
After rinsing the dishes, I turned to find Bree about three feet away, studying me.
“Can you be honest with me about something?”
“Of course.”
“You knew Kay Willingham before you knew me.”
“Back when I was between the FBI and Metro, working freelance.”
“Was it professional or personal?”
“She was an acquaintance and almost a client. I drove her home the night we met at a fundraiser because her car service was late and she’d had too much to drink. I went inside her house.”
“You went in her house?”
“She’d broken her heel as well as having too much to drink. She was alone.”
“Alone?”
“And I wanted to make sure she was okay,” I said, deciding to leave out the Kay-twirling-away-from-me part of the story. “I made sure and left. Two months later, she tried to hire me to investigate an old capital crimes case in Alabama. I declined.”
“Why?”
“The kids needed me here,” I said. “Nana Mama needed me here. It was no time to be going to Alabama for a month to look into the case of a killer her husband had helped convict and put on death row.”
“Wait, what? J. Walter? How long ago was this case?”
“I can’t remember. Before they were married.”
“So you didn’t have an affair with Kay Willingham before we met?”
I laughed. “No affair. I promise you.”
Bree chewed on that for a moment, then gave me a grudging smile. “Want to go to bed? Snuggle a little?”
“I’d like that very much.”
CHAPTER 24
BREE AND I WERE STILL snuggled up together the next morning and in a deep sleep whe
n my phone rang.
“Don’t answer it,” Bree grumbled, holding tight to my arm, which was wrapped around her waist. “I want to stay here, just us, just a little while longer.”
I ignored the ringing and hugged her tighter. The call went to voice mail, but ten seconds later my cell began to ring again.
Bree groaned.
“Life intervenes.” I moaned, kissed her on the cheek, and sat up. It was Sampson calling.
I glanced at the clock and saw it was only six fifteen. “Kind of early, partner,” I said.
I got no answer, just a choking sound.
“John?”
“I’m at the hospital,” he managed to say in a thick voice. “Billie died ten minutes ago.”
“What?” I said, feeling like I’d taken a bat to the gut. “No, John.”
My best friend began to sob. “There was nothing they could do. They tried everything but they couldn’t save her. She’s gone, Alex.”
Bree had heard the dismay in my voice and got up on her knees beside me. “What’s happened?”
I muted the phone, tears welling in my eyes. “Billie died ten minutes ago.”
The shock on her face was complete. She said nothing and started to weep.
I put the phone on speaker. John’s anguish filled the room along with our own.
“John, I’m so sorry,” Bree said. “My God, what happened?”
He sniffed and choked out, “The damage to her heart from Lyme disease. Her heart just gave out.”
“Where are you?” I said. “You shouldn’t be alone.”
“I’m still with her,” he said. “Prince George’s Hospital ER.”
“Where’s Willow?”
“Asleep,” he said. “She doesn’t get up until seven. Please, Bree, can you go there? And can you not tell her?”
“I’m on my way,” Bree said, jumping out of bed.
“I am coming to you, brother,” I said, following her.
“Thank you, Alex. I don’t know where to go or what I’m supposed to do. About anything.”
We put the phone between us as we struggled into our clothes, listening to Sampson tell us that Billie had actually been feeling stronger the day before. She’d walked two miles in the morning and done some yoga in the late afternoon.
“We got up at five this morning, just like she wanted, and she didn’t complain about anything. She took her pills, and we went out for our walk,” Sampson said. “We were about a mile out, ready to turn around, and she’d been saying how grateful she was that she’d been given a second chance at … life. And I was holding her hand, thinking that we’d finally gotten beyond the Lyme disease, when she said she felt dizzy. I held her up. She looked at me, kind of scared, and she said she loved me and Willow, and Andrew and Kari, and the whole Cross family, and then she just collapsed in my arms.”
He kept crying. “She knew, and all she wanted was to give us love before she left us.”
Bree and I both had tears streaming down our faces as he described calling 911 and starting CPR on Billie. There was a fire station not far from where they were. The ambulance and EMTs were with her in minutes.
“They worked on her, and she opened her eyes, but they wouldn’t focus,” he said.
Billie made it to the ER but coded almost immediately.
“Her heart just gave out,” he said again. “The Lyme disease did too much damage. The docs at the ER said there was nothing they could do.”
Sampson sobbed harder. “How do I do this, Alex?”
“With help,” I said, tying my shoes. “I will be there in fifteen minutes.”
CHAPTER 25
AS I DROVE TO Prince George’s Hospital, I had to fight off waves of grief that crashed over me. Billie Houston had been John Sampson’s salvation, the one who set him free, the one who unlocked his heart.
John and I had been friends since the fifth grade. He was the first kid I met on the playground after Nana Mama brought me and my brothers north after my mother died.
Within weeks John was closer to me than my own brothers. We just seemed to understand and support each other reflexively.
But even after we’d known each other for almost three decades, there had been a big part of himself he kept closed off. He’d had a few girlfriends over the years, but the relationships had always ended badly.
He’d declared himself a confirmed bachelor shortly before we started investigating the deaths of several men who’d fought in Vietnam. One of them was the late husband of Billie Houston.
Before Sampson met Billie Houston, there was Sampson the stoic, Sampson the warrior, Sampson the best friend and partner. But with Billie, it was like John grew in new dimensions, became a whole man, and he was the better for it, happy, confident, and hopelessly in love. I adored Billie for the changes I saw in him.
Which is why I had to keep wiping at my tears on the way to the hospital. If there’d ever been a fine and selfless person on this earth, it was Billie Houston Sampson. She’d been a U.S. Army nurse, then an ER trauma nurse. She’d been part of a helicopter medevac team, too, responding again and again to crises.
It did not seem right for her to die like this. It did not seem right at all.
I pulled into the hospital parking lot, and as I headed toward the ER, I kept thinking, How do I comfort him? How do I give him the right support?
A nurse, Juan Castro, waited for me outside the trauma room. He had tears in his eyes. “Billie took shifts here all the time. We loved her too, Dr. Cross, but we’ve got two gunshots on the way in. John has to leave her now, and I can’t bear to tell him.”
“I’ll do it, Juan,” I said. “And thanks for your kindness.”
I went in and found Sampson sitting by the side of the bed, holding Billie’s lifeless hand, his head bowed, crushed by the weight of his loss.
“John,” I said.
He slowly raised his head, then turned to look at me. I saw ruin in his bloodshot eyes and knew his heart was shattered. I went over, put my arm on his shoulder, and looked at Billie’s body. “You have to let her go for now, John. There are gunshot victims on the way, and they need the room.”
Sampson sniffed hard and nodded. He rubbed her hand, so tiny in his big paw, then kissed the back of it and laid it over her heart. He got up, nodded to Billie, and let me put my hand under his elbow when he faltered as he walked toward the door.
Castro and two other nurses were standing outside.
“We’ll take care of her, John,” Castro said.
“Thank you, Juan, thanks to all of you,” Sampson said, and he didn’t look back as we walked away. “I need to be with Willow now. And call Andrew and Kari.”
“I’ll take you straight home,” I said.
Outside, leaden clouds hung low above us, and it was already hotter than it should have been. Sampson kept it together until we reached my car. Then he collapsed over the roof and sobbed while I kept a hand on his back to let him know I was there.
Sampson stayed quiet for the first part of the drive. Finally he said, “I keep seeing her. You know, like, when I saw her the first time?”
“Tell me again,” I said.
“I drove out to the Jersey shore on the Ellis Cooper case,”
he said. “Just wanted to talk to her about her late husband. It was two years after he’d been executed for a crime she said he didn’t commit, and she was house-sitting this big place on the beach.”
“I remember.”
“I’d called ahead, and there she was waiting for me, and I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t her. Little bitty thing.”
“What was she wearing?”
“Khaki shorts, T-shirt, and no shoes,” he said, smiling. “She made me roll up my pants legs and take off my shoes to go for a walk on the beach.” He laughed and shook his head. “I couldn’t take my eyes off her because she was so beautiful and so tiny, like a doll, but strong, you know?”
“Fierce,” I said.
“Yes.”
A
lthough I knew the answer, I asked, “When did you know you loved her?”
Sampson didn’t reply for a few moments; his lower lip trembled as he looked into the middle distance and smiled sadly.
“In about an hour, I liked her,” he said. “I liked her even more when she invited me to dinner that night. But I knew I loved her, head-over-heels love, when I went up there the second time, and she put on ‘One Night with You’ and we danced on the porch of that beach house. I could feel her every breath, her every heartbeat, like it was my own.”
CHAPTER 26
THE REST OF THAT DARK day came at us in waves.
Bree had been with Willow, Sampson and Billie’s seven-year-old daughter, since she woke up. Bree came out on the porch, hugged John, and told him how much she loved him and how much she had loved Billie. Then we stayed on the porch to give him space for the terrible deed he had to do.
We sat quietly on the glider Billie had had installed because she loved the one we had on our front porch. We held hands and tried not to anticipate the pain that was not long coming. Willow’s crying came in short, sharp gasps, like the fabric of her heart was ripping.
“Oh my God,” Bree said. She leaned forward and put her face in her hands.
I rubbed her back. “She’s going to need you.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m wondering if I’m up to it.”
“You have to be. We all have to be. They’re family.”
She got a tissue out and dabbed at her eyes before looking at me. “I adore you,” she said. “Desperately. I want you to know.”
I kissed her softly as Willow’s crying died down. “I can feel it. I hope you can feel my love for you.”
Bree nodded. “Always. And now I think we’re needed inside.”
She squeezed my hand, and we steeled ourselves to take as much of the burden as we could from Sampson. Bree brought Willow out to the porch and got on Billie’s glider with her and held her close while John and I went into his home office.
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