Philadelphia Noir - Carlin Romano [50]
“Sure, but not enough for me to give him anything for it, in my professional opinion.”
“Any idea where he might have gotten it?”
“My first guess would be from his mother. I’d be willing to bet she’s had a prescription at some point. Having a depressed son causes a lot of anxiety. If not from her, a friend’s parent, maybe.”
“Thank you, Dr. Middleton,” says the detective.
“Of course,” says Tom, “if there is anything else I can do …” He stands up.
“Actually, there is one other thing,” says Detective Hendricks. He waits for Tom to sit back down. “Now, this is sensitive information, and I’d appreciate it if you kept it confidential.”
Tom agrees.
“You see, in the autopsy, there was no water found in Seth’s lungs.”
“Excuse me?”
“Yes. There’s a thing called ‘dry drowning’ when a victim doesn’t inhale any water and eventually dies of cardiac arrest. One sees this in a very small percent of drowning victims. But normally, even if someone wants to die, there is panic before it actually happens, and they open their mouth and, well, you know the rest. So in the case of a suicide, if someone were to ‘dry drown,’ so to speak, they would have to be, excuse me for saying this, very determined.” Detective Hendricks looks Tom in the eyes, but only to prove a point. He doesn’t invite Tom to respond. “Now, in your notes, there is almost nothing about Seth being suicidal, am I right?”
“That is correct, detective,” Tom answers. “I didn’t perceive it to be a concern. However, Seth was extremely intelligent. And if he was truly determined to end his own life, then he would have deliberately kept that from me.”
“I suppose so,” says Detective Hendricks. This time, the detective stands up first.
Tom puts out his hand, and the man holds on for too long.
As soon as the detective’s car is out of sight, Tom goes down to the unfinished side of the basement. He reaches his hand behind a shelf and pulls out several sheets of white paper. He kept his notes on “Marianne” separate from all else he and Seth talked about. The moral ambiguity of his decision to keep it confidential, and the unique nature of the affair—well, that’s what he’d done anyway. It’s no crime to keep something on a separate sheet of paper.
The night that Seth died, before the police arrived, he’d gone downstairs and removed those pages. He did it almost without thinking—it was a reflex of self-preservation—and now, here they were, stuffed behind a dirty tool shelf.
Tom stands there, reads through every word, and then burns them in the utility sink with a kitchen match.
The answer he gave Detective Hendricks is technically sound. If Seth had taken a lot of Xanax it might have helped him to stay calm through the experience, more so if he’d also been drinking. He might have even passed out and fallen in. Tom should’ve said that.
It’s a decent theory, but he doesn’t want it to be true. As soon as he admits that to himself, the dam breaks, his instincts rush in, and suddenly he is swimming in them. He must see Amelia.
Tom leaves the house out the back door, the one reserved for his patients, and walks directly to Amelia’s house. He resists the urge to run so as not to attract attention.
When Amelia answers the door she is crying. She has changed into a sleeveless red dress that grazes the tops of her knees, paired with the same turquoise earrings, as if she had planned to go out.
Tom touches her face, sensitively, to see if she’ll accept his comfort. She doesn’t pull away.
He steps inside, draws her to him, and they are kissing. He’s surprised by how much he wants her; his desire has its own inertia, like a feverish fit or a drunken tirade. Amelia wants it too, he can tell, but in her own way.
“Don’t stop,” she says.
He holds her tighter. She doesn’t want him to be anything he isn’t, he reminds himself.
After, Tom is getting dressed. There is no postcoital relief. Neither wants to hold the other. Tom