Live Wire

19

At two thirty A.M., Myron headed upstairs to that same childhood bedroom he’d shared with Brad, the one that still had the Tot Finder sticker on the window, and flipped on the computer.

He logged on to Skype. The screen opened on Terese’s face, and as always, he felt the heady rush and, yep, the lightness in his chest.

“God, you’re beautiful,” he said.

Terese smiled. “May I speak frankly?”

“Please.”

“You are the sexiest man I’ve ever known, and right now, just looking at you is driving me up a wall.”

Myron sat up a little taller. Talk about the perfect medicine. “I’m trying very hard not to preen,” he said. “And I’m not even sure what preening is.”

“May I continue to be frank?” she asked.

“Please.”

“I would be willing to try, uh, something via video, but I don’t quite get it, do you?”

“I confess I don’t.”

“Does that make us old-fashioned? I don’t get computer sex or phone sex or any of that.”

“I tried phone sex once,” Myron said.

“And?”

“And I never felt so self-conscious in my life. I started laughing at a particularly inopportune stage.”

“Okay, so we’re in agreement.”

“Yep.”

“You’re not just saying that? Because, you know, I mean, I know we’re far apart-”

“I’m not just saying that.”

“Good,” Terese said. “So what’s going on over there?”

“How much time do you have?” Myron asked.

“Maybe another twenty minutes.”

“How about we spend ten of it just talking like this and then I’ll tell you?”

Even through a computer monitor, Terese looked at him as though he were the only man in the world. Everything vanished. There was just the two of them. “That bad?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Okay, handsome. You lead, I will follow.”

But that didn’t work. He told her right away about Suzze. When he finished, Terese said, “So what are you going to do?”

“I want to chuck it all. I’m just so tired.”

She nodded.

“I want to come back to Angola. I want to marry you and just stay there.”

“I want that too,” she said.

“There’s a ‘but’ coming.”

“Not really, no,” Terese said. “Nothing would make me happier. I want to be with you more than you could ever know.”

“But?”

“But you can’t leave. You’re not built that way. For one, you can’t just abandon Esperanza and the business.”

“I could sell her my share.”

“No, you can’t. And even if you could, you need to learn the truth about Suzze. You need to figure out what’s going on with your brother. You need to look after your parents. You can’t just dump that all and come here.”

“And you can’t come home,” Myron said.

“Not yet, no.”

“So what does that mean?”

Terese shrugged. “We’re screwed. But just for a little while. You will find out what happened to Suzze and settle things.”

“You sound confident.”

“I know you. You’ll do all that. And then, well, when things are settled, you can come for a long visit, right?”

She arched an eyebrow and smiled at him. He smiled back. He could actually feel the muscles in his shoulders relax.

“Definitely right,” he said.

“Myron?”

“Yes.”

“Do it quickly.”

Myron called Lex in the morning. No reply. He called Buzz. Same. Chief County Investigator Loren Muse, however, answered her cell phone-Myron still had the number from their previous encounter. He persuaded her to meet him at Suzze and Lex’s high-rise, the scene of the drug overdose.

“If it will help wrap this up,” Muse said, “you’re on.”

“Thank you.”

An hour later, Muse met up with him in the front lobby. They got into the elevator and started up to the top floor.

“According to the preliminary autopsy,” Muse said, “Suzze T died of respiratory arrest caused by an overdose of heroin. I don’t know if you know much about opiate overdoses, but classically the drug just decreases the victim’s ability to breathe until it just stops. Often the victim still has a pulse and survives for several minutes without breathing. I think that’s what helped save the baby, but I’m not a doctor. There were no other drugs in her system. No one conked her on the head or anything like that-no signs of any physical altercation whatsoever.”

“In short,” Myron said, “nothing new.”

“Well, there’s one thing. I found that post you were talking about last night. On Suzze’s Facebook. The one that said, ‘Not his.’ ”

“And you think what?”

“I think,” Muse said, “that maybe it’s true.”

“Suzze swore it wasn’t.”

Muse rolled her eyes. “And, gee, no woman would ever lie about paternity. Think about it. Suppose the baby isn’t Lex Ryder’s. Maybe she felt guilty. Maybe she worried about being exposed.”

“You could always run a paternity test on the baby,” Myron said. “Find out for sure.”

“Sure I could, if I were investigating a murder. If I were investigating a murder, I might ask for a court order. But like I said, I’m not. I’m giving you a reason why a woman may have taken a drug overdose. Period, the end.”

“Maybe Lex will let you do the DNA test anyway.”

The elevator arrived as Muse said, “Well, well, well.”

“What?”

“You don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

“I thought you were Lex’s hotshot defense attorney.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, Lex is already gone with the baby,” Muse said.

“What do you mean, ‘gone’?”

“This way.” They started up the spiral staircase that led to the rooftop terrace.

“Muse?”

“As you, a shining star of a defense lawyer already know, I have no reason to hold Lex Ryder. Early this morning, against doctor’s orders, he checked his newborn son out of the hospital-as is his right. He left his pal Buzz behind and hired a pediatric nurse to accompany him.”

“Where did they go?”

“Since there’s no murder here or even suspicion of one, I had no reason to actively pursue his destination.” Muse reached the rooftop. Myron followed. She walked over to the Cleopatra-like chaise near the arch. Muse stopped, looked down, and pointed at the chair.

Her tone turned dead serious. “Here.”

Myron looked down at the smooth ivory chaise. No blood, no wrinkles, no sign of death. You would expect a chair would show something about what had taken place. “This is where they found her?”

Muse nodded. “The needle was on the floor. She was passed out, totally unresponsive. The only prints on the needle are hers.”

Myron looked out through the arch. In the distance, the Manhattan skyline beckoned. The water was still. The sky was purple and gray. He closed his eyes and traveled back two nights ago. When the wind whipped across the balcony, Myron could almost hear Suzze’s words: “Sometimes people do need help… Maybe you don’t know it, but you saved my life a hundred times.”

But not this time. This time, per Lex’s request, he had backed off, hadn’t he? He had finished up her favor-they knew who posted “Not His,” they knew where Lex was-and Myron had chosen to butt out, to leave Suzze on her own.

Myron kept his eyes on the skyline. “You said a guy with a Spanish accent made the nine-one-one call?”

“Yes. He used one of their portable phones. It was on the floor downstairs. Probably dropped it when he was running out. We checked it for prints, but everything is pretty smeared up on it. We have Lex’s and Suzze’s and that’s about it. When the paramedics got here, the door was still open. They came in and found her up here.”

Myron jammed his hands into his pockets. The breeze hit his face. “You realize that your theory about an illegal immigrant or maintenance worker makes no sense.”

“Why not?”

“A janitor or whatever walks by, happens to see-what?-the door ajar, comes all the way into the apartment, and then, I guess, goes out on the roof?”

Muse thought about that. “You have a point.”

“It is much more likely that the person who called was here with her when she shot up.”

“So?”

“What do you mean, so?”

“Like I said before, I’m in this for the crime, not curiosity. If she was shooting up with a friend and if he or she ran, I’m really not up for prosecuting that. If it was her drug dealer, okay, maybe if I can find the person and then prove he sold her the drugs, but really, that’s not what I’m trying to find out.”

“I was with her the night before, Muse.”

“I know.”

“I was right here on this very roof. She was troubled, but she wasn’t suicidal.”

“So you told me,” Muse said. “But think about it-troubled but not suicidal. That’s a pretty fine distinction. And for the record, I never said she was suicidal. But she was troubled, right? That could have led to her falling off the wagon-and maybe she just fell too hard.”

The wind kicked up again. Suzze’s voice-was this the last thing she said to him?-came with it: “We all keep secrets, Myron.”

“And here’s another thing to think about,” Muse said. “If this was a murder, it was pretty much the dumbest one I’ve ever seen. Let’s say you wanted Suzze dead. Let’s say you could even somehow get her to take the heroin on her own without physical force. Maybe you put a gun against her head, whatever. You with me?”

“Go on.”

“Well, if you want to kill her, why not just kill her? Why call nine-one-one and take the chance that she’d be alive when they got here? For that matter, with the amount of drugs she took, why not lead her under that arch and get her to fall off? Either way, what you do not do is call the paramedics or leave with the door open for a janitor or whatever. Do you see what I mean?”

“I do,” Myron said.

“Am I making sense?”

“You are.”

“Do you have anything that disputes what I said?”

“Not a thing,” Myron said, trying to sort it through in his head. “So if you’re right, she probably contacted her dealer yesterday. Any clues on who it was?”

“Not yet, no. We know that she took a drive yesterday. There was an E-ZPass hit on the Garden State Parkway near Route Two-eighty. She could have headed to Newark.”

Myron considered that. “Did you check her car?”

“Her car? No. Why?”

“Do you mind if I check it?”

“Do you have keys?”

“I do.”

She shook her head. “Agents. Go ahead. I have to get back to work.”

“One more question, Muse.”

Muse just waited.

“Why are you showing me all this after I pulled the attorneyclient card last night?”

“Because right now I have no case anyway,” she said. “And because if somehow I’m missing something-if somehow this was a murder-it doesn’t matter who you’re supposed to defend. You cared about Suzze. You wouldn’t just let her killer walk.”

They headed down the elevator in silence. Muse got off at ground level. Myron went down to the garage. He hit the remote control and listened for the beep. Suzze drove a Mercedes S63 AMG. He opened it and slipped into the driver’s seat. He got a whiff of some wildflower perfume and it made him think of Suzze. He opened the glove compartment and found the registration, insurance card, and the car manual. He searched under the seats for-he wasn’t sure what, really. Clues. All he found was loose change and two pens. Sherlock Holmes probably could have used them to figure out exactly where Suzze had gone, but Myron couldn’t.

He turned the car on, started up the dashboard GPS. He hit “previous destinations” and saw a list of spots Suzze had plugged in for directions. Sherlock Holmes, eat your heart out. The most recent destination was in Kasselton, New Jersey. Hmm. In order to get there, you’d have to take the Garden State Parkway past Exit 146 per the E-ZPass records.

The second-to-last input was an intersection in Edison, New Jersey. Myron pulled out his BlackBerry and started typing in the addresses listed. When he finished he e-mailed them to Esperanza. She could look them up online, figure out whether any of them were important. There were no dates next to inputs, so for all Myron knew, Suzze had visited these places months ago and rarely used the GPS.

Still all signs pointed to the fact that Suzze visited Kasselton recently, maybe even the day of her death. It might be worth a quick visit.