The Garden of Betrayal - Lee Vance [54]
16
“I can’t believe it,” I said for the tenth or eleventh time. We were in Reggie’s car, across the street from my apartment building. All he’d been able to tell me thus far was that Alex had been found dead in his bathtub.
“It’s hard,” he said. “I’m sorry. I know he was a good friend of yours.” His phone rang and he checked the number. “This is my buddy at the Nineteenth Precinct. Give me a few seconds here.”
I opened the car door and got out, needing the air. We were on the west side of the street, adjacent to the stone wall bordering Riverside Park. I sat down on a bench and buried my head in my hands, attempting to come to grips with what had happened. I was shivering despite the winter sun on my back. I’d tried to be a friend to Alex—to advise him as best I knew how, and to do what I could to bolster his confidence. Ultimately, though, we’re all alone in the world, and there’s a limit to how much any one person can do for another. I choked back a sob, thinking of Alex as I’d first known him—the intelligence, the warmth, and the promise that had never been fulfilled. Reggie got out of the car a few minutes later and sat down next to me.
“I have some details if you want to hear them.”
“I guess.”
He took a minute to light a cigarette.
“Time of death won’t be officially established until the autopsy, but the tech on the scene makes it sometime early this morning, most likely between twelve and three. There was a half-empty fifth of vodka on the bathroom floor next to the tub and an open bottle of sleeping pills on the vanity. The immediate cause of death looks to be drowning.”
“Jesus.” I had an abrupt, vivid mental image of Alex’s face staring up at me from beneath a rippling sheet of water. I shook my head violently, trying to clear the vision. “Did he leave a note?”
“You think it was suicide?”
“I don’t know.” An accident would be easier for Walter and Alex’s mother to accept. “What do your guys think?”
“They’re withholding judgment. The apartment’s torn up pretty bad.”
“Torn up how?”
“Like someone was searching for something.”
A sudden thought jolted me upright.
“You’re not suggesting he was murdered?”
Reggie shrugged.
“No sign of violence on the body, so it seems unlikely. Maybe he searched the place himself, looking for a hidden bottle or an old love letter. Drunks rip stuff up all the time. We’ll know more when the medical examiner and the forensic guys report back.” He started to take another hit from the cigarette and then flung it away irritably. A woman passing by with a dog gave him a dirty look. “The hard drive’s missing from his computer.”
“So, someone else was with him.”
“Not necessarily.”
I glanced over at him.
“Listen.” He sighed. “A guy gets wasted and starts thinking about offing himself, maybe he begins to worry about what he’s leaving behind. These days, everybody’s secrets are on their computers. Did Alex have a technical background?”
“A master’s degree in economics and an undergraduate minor in computer science.”
“There you go. He must have known that it’s tough to completely erase things from a hard drive. The safe thing to do if you want to cover your tracks is to pop the drive and get rid of it. We’re checking trash cans in a ten-block radius.”
“What kind of secrets are you talking about?”
“What kind of secrets does any guy have? Porn’s always a good bet. He might have been into nasty stuff, like pictures of little kids.”
I flinched reflexively.
“I’m just speculating,” Reggie added quickly. “I’m just saying there might have been stuff he didn’t want his parents or friends to find out about when he was gone. You never know.”
Maybe his secret was that he’d done an under-the-table deal with a U.S. senator to help get him elected president. I rolled the notion around in my mind uneasily, unsure whether to mention it to Reggie. If Alex had been murdered, or driven to kill himself, the police needed to know everything. If he hadn’t, I didn’t want to drag his name through the mud with a lot of wild speculation. I felt as though