Chapter 3 - The Apartment
Detective Nathan Cole arrived at one fourteen in the morning.
He was forty-six, broad-shouldered and tired-looking, with the expression of a man who had spent twenty years listening to people lie badly.
He interviewed Serena first.
Then Arthur.
Then Teresa.
Clara waited.
When Cole finally entered the private consultation room, he closed the door behind him.
“You’re Dr. Clara Emerson?”
“Haven’t used that professionally in nine years.”
“Why?”
Clara studied him.
“That relevant?”
“It might be.”
“My husband is unconscious after ingesting medication he wasn’t prescribed. Start there.”
Cole sat.
“Serena Hale says he came to her apartment because he felt sick after work.”
“She made dinner.”
“She says he barely touched it.”
“There was a broken wineglass.”
“She says he drank half a glass.”
“Take the bottle.”
“We did.”
“The food?”
“Taken.”
“The garbage?”
Cole raised an eyebrow.
“Also taken.”
Clara leaned back.
“You’re better than you look.”
“I get that a lot.”
He opened a notebook.
“Why did you go there?”
“His location.”
“You suspected an affair?”
“Yes.”
“Do you still?”
Clara paused.
“I suspect something worse.”
Cole watched her carefully.
“What?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Serena says you threatened her.”
“I told her not to touch anything after Julian collapsed.”
“She says you accused her of poisoning him.”
“I didn’t.”
Cole wrote something.
“You believe her?”
“No.”
“You believe your husband?”
Clara looked through the glass wall toward intensive care.
“I don’t know if I know my husband anymore.”
Cole closed the notebook.
“Then tell me what I don’t know.”
Clara hesitated.
She thought about the past three months.
Julian’s fatigue.
The trembling hands.
Occasional nausea.
Headaches.
Muscle cramps.
His insistence that he had been working too much.
Teresa telling him he looked thin.
Arthur accusing him of “becoming soft.”
Serena constantly bringing him drinks during meetings.
Julian joking that Serena knew his schedule better than he did.
“There may have been previous exposures,” Clara said.
Cole stopped writing.
“Previous?”
“He’s been symptomatic for weeks.”
“Did he see a doctor?”
“His family physician.”
“Name?”
“Dr. Malcolm Reeve.”
“And?”
“He said stress.”
“You disagree?”
“I wasn’t looking closely enough.”
The admission hurt more than Clara expected.
She had spent years trying not to be a doctor.
Now that choice might have almost killed Julian.
Cole rose.
“One more thing.”
“What?”
“When our team searched Serena’s apartment, we found several prescription bottles in a locked kitchen drawer.”
Clara’s heartbeat changed.
“What medications?”
“I don’t have the inventory yet.”
“Whose name?”
Cole stared at her.
“That’s the problem.”
May you like
He opened the door.
“They were prescribed to your husband’s mother.”
