He Will be My Ruin

She only died two weeks ago. So far, I’m not impressed with Detective Chester Childs.

With a big meaty hand, he gestures me up and around the front desk.

I trail him down a narrow, poorly lit hallway that hasn’t seen a coat of paint in far too long. It ends in a vast room of computers and desks in rows, with the low buzz of phones ringing throughout. He takes the third desk in. Dropping a heavy notepad next to the keyboard, he eases himself into the chair with a groan. “So, Celine Gonzalez.” A few keystrokes on his keyboard has a file showing up on the monitor. “The pretty girl near Mott and Kenmare.”

He’s so casual about it. “Yeah.” The pretty dead girl.

“Right. I spoke to her mother on the phone. Lovely lady. What can I do for you today, Miss Maggie Sparkes?”

I pull the picture out of my purse. “I found this in her apartment and I thought maybe it would be important.”

Detective Childs peers first at me before pulling a pair of glasses from his front pocket and slipping them on. His short, curly hair is just beginning to gray. If I had to guess, I’d peg him in his early fifties. He reminds me of a younger Morgan Freeman, and I shudder, remembering Se7en. “Handsome man,” he murmurs, appraising the picture.

I flip the picture over for him. “That’s her handwriting there.”

He pauses to read it. “And where did you say you found this again?”

“In a lockbox that I gave her years ago. It has a false bottom, for hiding things. I found almost ten thousand dollars in there with it.”

“Hmm . . . and what exactly do you think this means, Miss Sparkes?”

“I don’t know. You’re the detective. But I think it’s suspicious. Did you notice that her phone is missing?”

He refocuses his attention on the computer screen, too calm and collected for what I’m telling him. “Your friend had been taking antidepressants on and off for seven years. Treatment for depression and anxiety.”

“Mild depression and anxiety. And who isn’t?” It seemed like half the girls in college had a script for Prozac.

Dark eyes flash to me for a second before moving back to the screen. “She just renewed her prescription with her doctor and her dosage was increased. She said some things to her doctor that I can’t reveal but are clear indicators.”

I can only imagine. “Everyone says those things to get another prescription.”

“The coworker who called the police gave a statement that your friend had seemed very down lately. She had found her crying in the bathroom on several occasions.”

“Well . . . How recently? Because her mother was fighting cancer up until last January. I’d cry in the bathroom, too,” I say snippily. I did cry once. I bawled my eyes out for a good hour in my bedroom one night, after witnessing an especially bad day for Rosa, sick from the chemo.

“Recently,” Detective Childs confirms. “And we found a note with her body, in her handwriting, signed by her, saying that she was sorry.”

“Maybe she was sorry she missed a meeting. Maybe she was sorry that she was late. Who knows what she was sorry for! If someone was trying to stage her death, that’d be a handy note to use, wouldn’t it?”

“So that’s why you’re here.” He smiles sadly to himself, leaning back in his chair until it protests under his weight. “The ol’ murder theory.”

He doesn’t see what I’m getting at here. “I know Celine, Detective. She wouldn’t kill herself.”

“I’ve heard that a few times before. In my twenty-five years on the police force, I’ve never once seen it actually turn out to be the case.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s not possible. We still don’t even officially know what killed her, right? It’s just some medical examiner’s opinion.”

“And we won’t know for several more weeks.” Detective Childs begins rifling through a stack of envelopes and file folders. He holds up a sealed envelope. “But I had the lab run some tests on the glass found next to Celine’s body. Report came in this morning, while I was out.”

I watch him tear it open with leisurely fingers and scan through the page, humming to himself. I bite my lip until I can’t anymore. “Well? What does it say?”

“It says that the glass contained traces of Xanax, OxyContin, Ambien, and a wheat-based alcohol identical to the vodka found in her apartment. A bottle that she purchased early that day and drank half of, based on the receipt we also found. It’s a deadly combination, especially if the Oxy was ground up.”

“OxyContin? But that’s . . .” I frown. “She didn’t have a prescription for that, did she?”

“It’s not a hard drug to find on the street.”

I start to laugh at the absurdity of what he’s suggesting. “Celine didn’t do drugs.” She lost a high school friend to an overdose. The one time she visited me in college, she got mad at me for smoking a joint. “Someone must have forced it into her.”

“That’s a lot of pills for someone to force into her, Maggie. And no signs of a struggle. No furniture knocked over. No abrasions on her palms, no blood under her fingernails.” His tone tells me he’s already dismissed any further objections I may make.

He taps the picture. “And what is his name?”

“I don’t know. She never told me she was seeing anyone.”

“Hmmm . . .”

His hemming and hawing is beginning to irritate me. “Look, I’ve known Celine since she was four years old, and something doesn’t sit right with me. I just don’t think she was capable of suicide. She had too many plans, too many good things going for her.”

Detective Childs takes his time, folding his glasses and tucking them back in his shirt pocket. “Accepting that someone you love took their own life is very difficult. It’s easier for our minds to look for other answers. I see it all the time.”

He’s choosing his words carefully here. A very political answer that tells me this is pointless. “So, that’s it? You’re not going to do anything?”

“This city sees an average of four hundred and seventy-five suicides per year. I’m sorry, Maggie, but we can’t keep cases open unless there’s a good reason. My investigation concluded that there were absolutely no signs of foul play and there was sufficient evidence to suggest intent to cause self-harm. The investigation is over. Consider your friend’s case closed.”