The Venus Fix

Sixty-Three

Officers Davis and Lynds escorted Alan Leightman Uptown to Bellevue Hospital and took him upstairs to his wife’s room. They were about to take him in when he asked if he could go in alone.

Not much could happen in a hospital room, Davis figured. There was only one entrance. A nurse was there. Leightman was wearing handcuffs. They could watch Leightman through the glass in the door. Afterward, he or Lynds could ask the nurse what the judge had said.

“Sure, but we’ll be right here.”

Inside, Alan stood and stared at Kira, who was lying in the hospital bed, hooked up to an IV. She looked ravaged, as if she’d been deathly ill. As if most of the life force had left her. Was she sleeping? Awake? He couldn’t tell. Her eyes were open, but she hadn’t looked at him or said a word. There’d been no response when he’d said her name. He felt his knees go weak and held on to the foot of the bed. He waited until he felt a little stronger, and then asked the nurse if she would step outside for just a moment so he could speak to his wife alone.

She didn’t mind, shrugged and got up, stretching her legs and walking slowly. He watched her leave. When the door was closed behind her, he watched one of the cops walk up to the door, station himself in front of the glass window, and look in. Alan didn’t care about being watched. It was being listened to that mattered to him.

Sitting beside Kira, Alan took her left hand, the one that wasn’t hooked up to the IV, dipped his head down and kissed her palm. How was it possible that this woman, his wife, had committed such twisted crimes?

“Kira?” he whispered.

Nothing.

It was possible because he had driven her to it with his addictions. With his lack of empathy for what she had suffered when he turned away from her and turned on the computer every night.

Reaching out, he smoothed down his wife’s hair as he whispered her name again, but there was still no response.

Who do you blame when a child commits a crime? Only the child? Or the parent also? No, he wasn’t her parent, but he was just as responsible. How many cases had he heard in his career? How many pleas? He knew how to weight both sides of every issue.

Even, and especially, this one.

His whole life was a matter of justice. And if there was going to be any justice here, it was going to have to be his to mete out. Here, now, he was sitting on the bench at their trial and while there was no question hers was the more heinous crime, his was the instigating crime. There was no way he’d ever right the wrongs he’d done to her or the wrongs she’d done to those poor women, but he could pay the penalty that he deserved.

He felt tears prick his eyes but blinked them away. What good would any of that do now?

“Kira, sweetheart, can you hear me?”

Nothing.

“Kira, please.” His voice was on the verge of breaking.

Finally, she turned her head and looked at him through a drug-induced haze.

“You’re in the hospital but you are going to be all right. Can you hear me?”

She had to be able to hear him. She had to be able to understand what he needed to tell her.

“Kira, you can hear me, right?”

She nodded.

“You don’t have to worry. I’ll never tell anyone. I love you too much. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Nothing you did will ever be discovered. I did do it, really, didn’t I? It was my fault. You only reacted. You shouldn’t be punished for reacting.”

Her eyes opened wider, in alarm. There were deep hollows under her cheekbones. Without the deep red lipstick that had been her trademark, her lips looked thin and dry.

“You can’t…” she said in a feeble voice.

He bent down, awkwardly because of the handcuffs, and kissed her forehead.

“You have to get better. And when you go home, you have to remember to destroy anything you have on paper, anything on your computer, anything at all that’s left. You have to make sure there’s nothing to tie you to all this. They won’t come looking for you. They won’t have any reason to. But you have to take care of every shred of evidence. Do you understand?”

Kira opened her mouth to say something but only a sob came out.