through another divorce? Another marriage? There’s no way Vanessa would have let him off cheap the way his first wife, Barbara, got conned into doing.”
“Slow down,” Kim said. “You’re talking too fast.”
“Oh. Sorry. Anyway, Ryn was running the risk that if a divorce dragged on for too long, Stan would lose interest. She’d wind up with a kid and child support. Sure, that would keep her in finger paints, but it wouldn’t buy her a five-carat ring, a family estate , and a husband with the wherewithal to make her career happen.”
I was so wiped from all that talking that I actually put my head back and rested it against the chair, something I never did outside the house since Joey’s fourth-grade class’s 100-percent head lice attendance.
“Any other suspects?”
Kim was changing gears, I realized. It began with him actually moving and scratching the bottom of his short sideburn. And then, unless I’d become so nervous as to be delusional, his question wasn’t neutral. It sounded curious in a pleasant way, though it would be madness to call it playful.
I sat forward in the stiff-backed chair and rested my arm on his desk as if we were two colleagues shooting the breeze.
“I don’t know the other people in Vanessa’s life,” I told him. “Did anyone strike you as having a motive? Anyone who might have wanted to get Vanessa out of the way?”
Kim caught himself before he answered, but not before he had swiveled his head to the right, a prelude to a shake that would have told me No, no one. He was so annoyed at his lapse of control that he glanced at his watch, did a damn-I’m-late-for-a-meeting pushback from his desk.
“I really have to go. Listen, Ms. Singer, what you told me: interesting.”
He stood and inhaled to close his jacket.
“Creative. Believe it or not, there’s a lot of creativity in police work. But you have no evidence for your theory that it was a homicide. On the other hand, we have evidence—the note, people saying how depressed she was, the fact that the drug that killed her was one prescribed for her. All our evidence adds up to one thing—”
“The pills in those two cases she carried were mostly vitamins,” I said, cutting him off. “Megavitamins. Big capsules, a lot of them. Gelatin, or whatever for the outside, that dissolves in the stomach. With some of them, you can pull the two gelatin halves apart. You’ve seen that. It wouldn’t take a pharmacological genius to grind up thirty Xanax, stick the grindings into a capsule, and slip it back into her pill case. Then go out of town, or do something to give you a good alibi just in case there was an investigation. But this is the thing. Vanessa didn’t take that pill. How come? Maybe she read a squib in the Times that too much Vitamin X leads to liver disease or dry skin. Or maybe she was beside herself because she knew her husband was cheating on her, or maybe he’d actually asked for a divorce, and she stopped taking care of herself. Meanwhile, the killer is waiting for the kill. Except it doesn’t happen. So what does he or she conclude?”
“What?” Kim asked, walking me to the door, but slooowly.
“That Vanessa took it. That she probably then took one of the longest naps on record, but it didn’t kill her.”
“So how come she finally did take the pill?”
The question was tossed off casually enough, but he wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, he lounged against the doorframe.
“Maybe she read another study that said the earlier study was based on false methodology. Or maybe she was feeling better and getting back to her old health-conscious routine. The point is: the killer wasn’t going to try again because he or she got what he or she wanted.”
“Which was?”
“Vanessa let Stan go.”
He smiled, a how-amusing smile.
“Tell me, Sergeant Kim, who’s your money on?”
“What?”
The smile disappeared and he stood straight. Seeing he was about to step out into the hall, I stood in
“Slow down,” Kim said. “You’re talking too fast.”
“Oh. Sorry. Anyway, Ryn was running the risk that if a divorce dragged on for too long, Stan would lose interest. She’d wind up with a kid and child support. Sure, that would keep her in finger paints, but it wouldn’t buy her a five-carat ring, a family estate , and a husband with the wherewithal to make her career happen.”
I was so wiped from all that talking that I actually put my head back and rested it against the chair, something I never did outside the house since Joey’s fourth-grade class’s 100-percent head lice attendance.
“Any other suspects?”
Kim was changing gears, I realized. It began with him actually moving and scratching the bottom of his short sideburn. And then, unless I’d become so nervous as to be delusional, his question wasn’t neutral. It sounded curious in a pleasant way, though it would be madness to call it playful.
I sat forward in the stiff-backed chair and rested my arm on his desk as if we were two colleagues shooting the breeze.
“I don’t know the other people in Vanessa’s life,” I told him. “Did anyone strike you as having a motive? Anyone who might have wanted to get Vanessa out of the way?”
Kim caught himself before he answered, but not before he had swiveled his head to the right, a prelude to a shake that would have told me No, no one. He was so annoyed at his lapse of control that he glanced at his watch, did a damn-I’m-late-for-a-meeting pushback from his desk.
“I really have to go. Listen, Ms. Singer, what you told me: interesting.”
He stood and inhaled to close his jacket.
“Creative. Believe it or not, there’s a lot of creativity in police work. But you have no evidence for your theory that it was a homicide. On the other hand, we have evidence—the note, people saying how depressed she was, the fact that the drug that killed her was one prescribed for her. All our evidence adds up to one thing—”
“The pills in those two cases she carried were mostly vitamins,” I said, cutting him off. “Megavitamins. Big capsules, a lot of them. Gelatin, or whatever for the outside, that dissolves in the stomach. With some of them, you can pull the two gelatin halves apart. You’ve seen that. It wouldn’t take a pharmacological genius to grind up thirty Xanax, stick the grindings into a capsule, and slip it back into her pill case. Then go out of town, or do something to give you a good alibi just in case there was an investigation. But this is the thing. Vanessa didn’t take that pill. How come? Maybe she read a squib in the Times that too much Vitamin X leads to liver disease or dry skin. Or maybe she was beside herself because she knew her husband was cheating on her, or maybe he’d actually asked for a divorce, and she stopped taking care of herself. Meanwhile, the killer is waiting for the kill. Except it doesn’t happen. So what does he or she conclude?”
“What?” Kim asked, walking me to the door, but slooowly.
“That Vanessa took it. That she probably then took one of the longest naps on record, but it didn’t kill her.”
“So how come she finally did take the pill?”
The question was tossed off casually enough, but he wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, he lounged against the doorframe.
“Maybe she read another study that said the earlier study was based on false methodology. Or maybe she was feeling better and getting back to her old health-conscious routine. The point is: the killer wasn’t going to try again because he or she got what he or she wanted.”
“Which was?”
“Vanessa let Stan go.”
He smiled, a how-amusing smile.
“Tell me, Sergeant Kim, who’s your money on?”
“What?”
The smile disappeared and he stood straight. Seeing he was about to step out into the hall, I stood in
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