The Crime Writer

"Well," I said, looking to each of them, "can you tell me about Kasey?"

"Oh," Mrs. Broach said, "we can do that."

She spoke first, detailing Kasey's habits and lifestyle, but soon they were all chiming in with small memories, smiling. A box of tissue circulated. The man in 1A had been out the night of her death, but Trina Patrick had been home in 1C. She'd been watching a game show, volume up loud, augmenting the experience with a table red, and had heard nothing. I asked about Morton Frankel and brown Volvos and recent boyfriends, and we all grew politely frustrated at our inability to get traction.

Mrs. Broach leaned into her husband, and he held her. "She was a wonderful girl. Sunday school. Youth group. Some trouble in her teens, but who didn't have that? Her job worked her hard, but she still found time for outreaches, short-term missions. Always had a hand out for others. Her brother, when he was diagnosed, they run the test on family members, you know? None of us matched." Mrs. Broach waved a hand to encompass the three of them on the couch. "But Kasey did. She was Tommy's angel. She went in time after time, shots in the hip, needle this thick, never complained, not once." Her fingers were trembling, and when she spoke again, her voice cracked. "We had three children. We've still got one. We're blessed." She pressed her face to her daughter's and squeezed her hard around the shoulders. Jennifer wore an expression I'd seen once in a photo of a makeshift raft that had come apart en route to Florida. A Cuban girl bobbed among the flotsam, clinging to a tire, the sole survivor and not sure that she wanted to be.

"Do you mind if I take a look at Kasey's room?" I asked.

Mr. Broach, tending to his wife, waved his assent.

Kasey's furniture had been broken down, and maybe half of her possessions had been boxed, though there was no discernible order to the packing process. A picture of Kasey with her brother, thin and bald, was taped to the inside of her closet door so she'd see it every morning as she dressed. Her mattress leaned against the wall, the unhooked headboard and slats propped against it. I closed my eyes, imagined Morton Frankel approaching the bed through darkness, toting a canister of sevoflurane and a face mask. Kasey's brief, terrified struggle before the gas took effect. The Volvo he could've parked right out front where the U-Haul was now. I walked over and fingered down the blinds, noting the motel-style proximity of parking spaces to doorways. Five steps through darkness and he'd have had her passed-out body in the back of the wagon. It would've been easy to time so no one would notice.

On the windowsill a cluster of key chains the size of a fist pinned down a petite monthly calendar. I flipped through. It was unused, purchased, I guessed, for the cheesecloth-filtered pictures of wildlife at play. In the midst of the key chains and charms, only three keys car, apartment, mailbox.

A silver thimble hooked to the ring caught my eye.

I plucked it from the tangle, letting the other baubles swing.

A recovering alcoholic's reminder that even a thimbleful of booze counts as a slip.

The tiny bathroom had already been packed up. I searched out the box of meds and dug through it, finding little more than Aleve, Tylenol, and various antacids.

No Xanax.

A recovering alcoholic wouldn't want to mess with benzos. Yet the autopsy had revealed Xanax in Kasey's system.

I walked back out. The Broaches were doing their best to get into packing mode again, but clearly our conversation had thrown them off.

"Kasey was a recovering alcoholic?" I asked.

Mrs. Broach flushed not a favorite topic of discussion. "Well. As I said, she had some problems in her teen years, right after Jennifer was born. We got her help."

"Did she ever slip?"

"We just celebrated with a twenty-year cake."

"Do you think she would have ever taken Xanax?"

"Not a prayer of a chance. She wouldn't touch my Black Forest cake, not even with the cherry brandy cooked off."

In the kitchen Mr. Broach dropped a coffeemaker, and the pot shattered. He looked down at it blankly.

A potent three seconds passed before his wife said, "What were we going to do with it anyways?"

"I've put you behind schedule," I said. "Would you mind if I helped?"

Mr. Broach said, "We wouldn't mind that at all."

For the next hour, as the whine of traffic diminished and the kids chased each other around the street, whooping and screaming, I helped pack and load. We made decent progress.

I came out with a halogen floor lamp and a framed Matisse print to find Mrs. Broach sitting on the ground, running her thumb over a white-ribbon barrette that had fallen from a bag.

Mr. Broach paused before her, helped her to her feet.

"I think that's enough for tonight," he said.

We finished loading the stuff by the U-Haul, and he turned to shake my hand.

"Maybe they're wrong about you. With Genevieve Bertrand."

"I hope so," I said back to him.

Mrs. Broach smiled sadly at me. "You take care of yourself, Andrew."