The Venus Fix

Thursday One day remaining
Seventy-One

It was still dark the next morning when I left the apartment. According to the weather report, it would be yet another day without sun. Overnight, the snow had again dusted the roof-tops, the trees, the fire hydrants and the parked cars with one more layer. The details of the landscape were long buried. The street signs were mounded with snow.

Alan Leightman’s lies were hiding the real killer of those girls the same way. No one could see past the snow. No one could see past his confession.

Kira’s doctor was waiting for me in the lobby of the hospital. We shook hands-awkwardly for me, since it was my left-exchanged a few minutes of conversation about her condition, and then proceeded upstairs.

Alan had given me permission to talk to Kira. The morning he told me he was going to confess, he’d asked me to call Dr. Harris, and if I couldn’t get him, to go and be with Kira and help her process the news.

That’s all I was doing. Just a few days later. If I was crossing a line, it was a very thin one. I had to talk to her. Someone had to figure out what was going on.

For someone so tall and broad-shouldered, Kira Rushkoff was diminished by the chair she sat in. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen anyone become so small. I had still been expecting to see the handsome woman who never appeared rattled or wrinkled. She was all of those things now. Her hair was dirty and tangled. Her hospital gown was crumpled and stained. Her fingernails were broken and the polish was chipped off. Her eyes couldn’t focus and darted around the room.

No matter who she was, I would have known that this woman had only a tenuous hold on reality. One thin, silken thread separated her from being one of the lost girls.

“How are you feeling?”

She shrugged.

“Thank you for agreeing to talk to me.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I’m not sure I want to talk to you. I think I do, and then I don’t. I’m mad at Alan. But I’m in love with my husband.”

“I understand that and-”

“What did you want to see me for?” She picked up a green plastic straw, bending it forward and back.

For a second or two, I watched the movement. “I wanted to ask you if you could tell me why Alan confessed to crimes he didn’t commit.”

“How do you know he didn’t commit them?” She squeezed the opening of the straw closed, her fingers tight on the end of it.

“Because I’ve been working with him long enough to know he is not capable of doing what he’s confessed to. The only possibility, the only thing that makes any sense to me, is that he knows, or thinks he knows, who did kill those women and would rather take the fall for it than put the perpetrator through that.”

“Noble of him, isn’t it?” Her sarcasm only lasted for a moment and then she started crying.

I shot a look at Dr. Harris. He nodded, giving me permission to keep going, and remained where he was.

Her swing from forlorn misery to bitterness to tears didn’t surprise me. I knew from Alan how betrayed she’d felt by his addiction. Of all the vices he could have engaged in, he’d chosen the one that she felt was the biggest slap in the face.

“I know how angry you are. And you’re right to be angry. Alan degraded you. He broke every promise to you that he ever made.”

I was watching her carefully. Her posture became more rigid. She bit her bottom lip, holding herself back from speaking. A few seconds went by. Then she let out a breath and started to speak in the same sarcastic tone. “He deserves to be sitting in that jail. The great and lofty judge, behind bars.” Despite the tone, her tears still flowed, a total contradiction.

“I don’t know how you stood it for as long as you did. It must have been the worst thing you ever went through in your life. Having your husband turn to the Internet, turn to those young girls, abandoning you-”

“It was terrible.”

“I know. Horrendous.”

She was staring at me, intently, not bothering to wipe away the tears dripping down her cheeks, or even noticing that her nose was running. “He didn’t realize that I loved him all along. I should have told him. I should have touched him. I should have gotten help, sooner.”

“He’s done some very bad things. Terrible things,” I added.

“But he shouldn’t be in jail,” she whispered. “I want him to suffer and pay for what he did, but he shouldn’t be in jail.”

“But he thinks he should be. Do you know why?”

She nodded.

“Why?”

She didn’t answer.

“Kira, did he confess because he thinks you killed those women and he’s protecting you?”

She looked down at the cup in her hands and moved the straw backward and forward again. I watched her movements, waiting to hear her response.

After five minutes, I realized she wasn’t going to say anything else, and so I left.

In the elevator, I was struggling to put on my one glove when my cell phone rang. There was no one else in the elevator so I answered it. Allison was calling to tell me my next appointment had canceled, in case I wanted to come in later.

Downstairs the doors opened and I walked through the lobby. I got to the door and realized that I didn’t have my glove. Had I dropped it in the elevator? Just outside? I turned to retrace my steps.

Terry Meziac was twenty feet away from me, watching me. I froze. Was he following me? Why? Or was it just a coincidence? Alan’s wife was in this hospital. Alan was in jail. Maybe Terry was watching out over Kira for the judge, not watching me at all.

I saw the glove on the ground in front of the elevator. Bent down. When I straightened up he was gone. I spun around, did a quick search of the lobby, but I didn’t see him.

Of course he was there protecting Kira Rushkoff. He was a bodyguard.

A bodyguard with a record, Noah had told me.

I hurried outside in time to catch a taxi.

After I gave the driver the address, I turned in the seat, and as we sped off I watched out the rear window, but there was nothing to see.