And I'd never felt luckier in my life.
As we helped each other up, we looked back to see we were the only ones still standing. Not that we were about to linger.
"I'd high-five you, but I have no skin left on my palms," said Owen.
"Me, neither," I said. "C'mon, I know a doctor we should see."
CHAPTER 74
THERE'S ANGRY. Then there's smoldering. And then there's literally smoldering.
"What's that smell?" asked the cabdriver. "It's like something's burning."
"It's just our clothes," I said matter-of-factly. The smell was also our singed flesh, but I didn't feel the need to mention that.
Either way, that little tree-shaped air freshener hanging from the guy's rearview mirror didn't stand a chance.
We'd been burned, all right. Set up big-time.
And now it was time for a little follow-up visit with Dr. Douglas Wittmer. No appointment necessary.
He was so convincing in his kitchen. Of course he was. He was telling us the truth. The only lie was his allegiance. Who the hell did he call after we left him?
We had the taxi drop us off one block down from his town house. There was no telling if Wittmer was still alone, but first we had to see if he was there at all.
Maybe he'd gone to church for confession.
If he had, he'd walked. His black Jaguar was still there, parked in the driveway as when we'd first approached him.
Too bad he hadn't given us a second key, the one to his front door.
"How soon before a neighbor calls nine-one-one?" I whispered to Owen, only half joking as I peered inside one of the windows.
With our tattered, bloodstained clothes and shredded hands, knees, and elbows, the two of us looked like we'd just wandered off the set of The Walking Dead. At best, we were a couple of burglars. At worst, it was the zombie apocalypse.
I turned back to Owen when he didn't respond. He'd been right behind me.
Now he wasn't anywhere.
Finally, I found him back down by the street. He was staring up at a telephone pole.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Looking for the camera."
"What camera?"
"They were watching from either inside or outside. Actually, probably both," he said. "Inside, though, gave them audio."
I stood there trying to reverse engineer what he was saying. If we were being watched when we first showed up to see Wittmer, then that meant …
"Jesus, why didn't you say anything?" I asked. "We were coming here to confront him; he ratted us out."
"I never said that."
"You didn't have to. It was a given," I said. At least, I thought it was. "You mean, he didn't tip them off?"</ol>
"Highly unlikely."
"Then why are we even here?"
Owen was still staring up at the pole. "To search for more evidence," he said. "Stuff he didn't share with us."
"What, you think he's going to let us just waltz right in and take what we want?"
Finally, Owen turned to me. "We're hardly going to need his permission," he said.
Before I could ask why not, he was already halfway back to Wittmer's town house, heading up the steps.
Once again, the best I could do was try to keep up with him.
CHAPTER 75
THERE WAS zero hesitation, none whatsoever.
In fact, Owen had already taken off his T-shirt-what was left of it-and wrapped it around his hand by the time he reached the top step. I was only a few feet behind him, but I could see what was coming next a mile away.
What's a little breaking and entering among friends?
With a quick right jab, the window to the left of Wittmer's front door all but disappeared. Working clockwise, Owen knocked away the few holdout shards until we could both climb through without donating any more blood for the evening.
Just a guess, but being two pints down on a cavernously empty stomach is probably not recommended by the American Medical Association.
Owen put his T-shirt back on, entering first. I followed. And at no time did I bother asking him what he wasn't telling me. I figured I'd know soon enough.
Even sooner, as it turned out, when our arrival in Wittmer's foyer was greeted with nothing and no one. Just a dead silence.
The proverbial "bad feeling about this" was suddenly spreading fast from my gut.
"Upstairs," said Owen.
He might have just been talking to himself. I couldn't tell. Either way, there was no sign of the doctor on the first floor.
If "sparsely furnished" was the polite way of describing the downstairs of Wittmer's home, the upstairs made the first floor look like an episode of Hoarders. Of the first three bedrooms we looked into, only one actually had a bed. And by bed, I mean a queen-sized mattress on top of a box spring on top of a Harvard frame. No sheets. No pillows.
And still no Wittmer.
Which only made it worse, that feeling of dread. The tightening of the chest muscles. The extra pull on the lungs with each breath.
The inescapable truth of something inevitable.
Because at no time-not for one fraction of a second-did I think there was a chance that Wittmer wasn't there in his home. The only question was where.
"Here," said Owen.
This time, he was definitely talking to me. Pointing, too. He'd turned the corner into the master bedroom.
Two steps past the doorway, I saw him. Wittmer, wearing the same clothes as when we'd left him, was lying in the bed on his back. If I hadn't known better, I'd have said he was simply asleep.
But I did know better, if only because Owen knew better.
Wittmer was never waking up.
CHAPTER 76
MEANS AND motivation. The whole story was right there in front of us, exactly as intended. Although it wasn't intended for us.
On the bed next to Wittmer, where the ghost of his wife surely slept, was a large photo album opened to a spread filled with happy, loving pictures of the two of them in Paris. They were kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower, arm in arm beneath the external Habitrail-like piping of the Centre Pompidou in Beaubourg, and playfully leaning against Louis Derbré's Le Prophète in the Jardin du Luxembourg, the golden head of the statue-and their faces-beaming in the sunshine.
Claire and I used to talk about going to Paris together. But life is ninety percent talk, isn't it?
As if connecting the dots, my eyes moved from the photo album over to the empty pill bottle, the orange-brownish variety you get from your local pharmacy. Only, there was no label on it, no indication of a prescription.
Ironically, that made the story even more convincing. Wittmer was a doctor, after all. What pills wouldn't he have access to?
It all made so much sense. Of course, that was why it was all bullshit.
I was catching on quick, all right. Certainly faster than the police would, if at all. Odds were they never would.
This was no suicide.
"Temazepam, if I had to guess," said Owen with a nod to the empty pill bottle. "Very effective for insomnia, Michael Jackson notwithstanding. One injection, probably to the carotid artery, and the coroner would never know the drug wasn't swallowed."
The image of Wittmer giving injections to the prisoners in Stare Kiejkuty flashed through my mind. Oh, the irony …
Without even thinking, I leaned in, looking at Wittmer's neck for a needle mark. I didn't know why, I just did. I felt sorry for him. He'd made his choices, but he didn't deserve this.</ol>
"Christ, we can't even call the police," I said.
Wittmer lived alone. There was no telling how long it would be before his body was discovered. The same could be said for the guy in my bathtub back in Manhattan, but I couldn't give a rat's ass about him. This was different.
"Maybe we could somehow leave an anonymous tip," I said. "What do you think?"
I was still staring at Wittmer's neck, waiting for Owen to answer. When he didn't, I turned around. Again, he was gone. I called out to him.
"In here," he responded.
I followed his voice to the only room left on the second floor we hadn't searched. Wittmer's office.
Unlike every other room, though, this one looked the part. A large, messy desk, stacked bookcases, and a well-worn leather armchair with an ottoman. There was even a rug-a faded crimson and gold Persian with tassels, some of them frayed, some of them missing altogether.
To call it a lived-in look would be an understatement. In fact, what it really was, was depressing.
This wasn't Wittmer's office. This was Wittmer. Period. In the wake of his wife's death, his life had become defined by his work. This was all he'd had.
"What are you looking at?" I asked.
"Something I shouldn't be," said Owen. "Not if they're trying to cover their tracks."
CHAPTER 77
HE WAS standing by one of the bookcases, staring long and hard at a picture in a dust-covered silver frame. It was an old photograph of Wittmer from his undergrad days at Princeton, a group shot of some members of the Cap and Gown eating club.
Of course, if it hadn't been for the engraving at the bottom of the frame saying as much, I never would've known that.
So why is Owen staring at it so intently?
I leaned in close, focusing on Wittmer. He looked so young. Happy. Alive. "What am I not seeing?" I asked.
"The whole picture," Owen said.
If I'd somehow lost the forest for the trees, there was still no finding it as I canvassed the other half dozen faces staring back at me in the photo. Owen all but expected as much, giving me a hint.
"He had a lot more hair back then," he said.