Ch. Four

Secrets

They sat in Lewis' gray Vauxhall a few blocks from the office. Hathaway smoked out of his passenger side window. "Now, you're going to explain what the hell you're talking about so I don't have to waste time trying to suss it out on me own." Lewis ordered.

"I'm sorry, sir. Guess I'm still sorting it out in my mind, so it's a bit hard to explain. I've had this …awful dream the past few nights." He described it briefly, keeping his voice steady by watching the city traffic instead of his partner's face. Hathaway ended with how he had awakened in terror each time, desperate for a mind-altering substance, and earned a low whistle from the inspector. "Yeah, that's a bad one. Right out of a horror movie."

The sergeant nodded nervously "Well, just now in the office, it occurred to me what it was about."

Lewis rearranged his features into a "being patient with slow-witted witness" expression. "So, are you going to tell me about that?" he asked.

"I saw that face!" Hathaway said in mock anger.

Lewis smiled briefly. "Right. I'm listening."

Hathaway flicked the cigarette butt away. "It was right after I quit seminary. I was in a rather bad way. Things were rather..…uncertain for me." He glanced at Lewis. "I didn't have any plans for my life. I withdrew from everyone—I didn't want to talk to anybody. I holed up in my room for days and just slept. I guess in psychological terms I was clinically depressed."

"Understandable. You had taken a big hit to the whatsit, the psyche."

Hathaway smiled. "Yeah, my whatsit was in bad shape. Well. I was feeling pretty low and despairing and after a couple of days of that, I did something stupid."

"Oh. I see." Lewis said, keeping his tone neutral. Hathaway leaned back, gazing up at the roof of the car so he wouldn't have to look at his boss.

"Yeah. Really stupid…. Sir, my mum doesn't know. Nobody else does, either."

"Uh huh."

"I don't want her to know."

"James, I'm not in the habit of gossiping with your mother about you. Or about anything else, for that matter."

Hathaway nodded. Lewis and his mother, Louise, had dated briefly, a horrible crime had entangled them all.* Since then there had been nothing between the two, but Hathaway had wanted to make sure. (*See WhyAye's wonderful story, Human Nature for relevant details….)

"You're stalling, sergeant."

"I know I am." He cleared his throat. "As I said, I tried something stupid."

"It didn't work."

Hathaway paused. "No, it did not."

"I'm glad. Else I'd be talking to meself right now." He noticed that his partner was not willing or able to say the word "suicide" aloud. "I guess it wasn't much like what your friend Will did, then?" Lewis asked gently.

"No, nothing that dramatic. Where would I have gotten a gun at a seminary? Besides, I'm a more low-key kind of guy. It would have to be something quiet and tidy."

"So it was pills then."

"Yeah. I took most everything I could find in the house. But I guess it wasn't enough."

"Good."

"I washed all the pills down with some wine, and I must've passed out. Next day, I woke up on the floor beside the bed. The phone rang and I answered it. I had missed some appointment. I laughed at the person on the line and hung up. Then I ran to the bathroom and spent the rest of the day worshipping at the porcelain altar."

"No fun, but at least you were alive."

"Alive, but throwing up bits of my stomach lining. Not a pleasant experience."

"That sounds bloody awful. Did you get any medical help?"

"No. I should have done, but by the time I was feeling stable enough to engage with the outside world, I had recovered. Physically, that is."

"Bloody hell."

"I told my friends I had a stomach virus, and left it at that. I think I lost a few clothing sizes that week." He gave a sardonic chuckle.

Lewis knew Hathaway now wanted to get some distance from the painful revelation. But first, he had to make sure.

"Have you ever considered anything like that since then?" Lewis kept his voice calm and even.

"No, I haven't. For one thing, police work has taught me that every violent death, even the seemingly tidy ones, create a terrible mess for the people left behind."

"That is so. But if you ever think about trying….something stupid again, you will call someone?" He looked directly at his partner, one eyebrow raised.

Hathaway met his superior's gaze steadily. "If anything like that ever occurs to me again, I will remember that there are people around who can help."

Lewis let out his breath, reassured, and sat back against the car upholstery. "Good. Now what does this have to do with our murder case?"

"Our murder case." Hathaway cleared his throat, back in detective mode. "You know how nowadays everyone knows the warning signs that someone is thinking about suicide?"

"Giving away prized possessions, dropping hints, putting things in order, that sort of thing?" Lewis asked.

"Yeah, exactly. See, even you know." He ducked an imaginary blow. "Well, I didn't do that. I didn't leave any note, I didn't hint about it to anyone. I knew the warning signs and I made sure that I didn't do anything obvious. A trained psychiatrist might have been able to figure out something, but I was able to hide it from the average person."

"Okay, let me get this straight. Our eccentric writer friend did not leave any sign of having committed suicide, so that is evidence of suicide? Oh, I can't wait till you run that past Innocent. A locked room murder that is really a suicide. Tricked out to look like a locked room murder."

"I didn't say it was suicide. I'm saying it just felt wrong for a murder."

"New book deal. Gorgeous fee-ance. Promising future. No history of depression. No weapon in the room. What, besides the lack of any sign of suicide, leads you to think it may be a suicide?"

"I can't tell you right now. It was just that something did not feel right in there."

"Of course it didn't feel right in there! As I recall, there was a man with not much of a head lying on the floor right by me left foot."

"I mean besides that. The "Secrets and Lies" movie. The exotic stuff on the shelves. Reading maths. Creating puzzles and games as a hobby. The locked room. The loud arguing and the shots. The dentist girlfriend. The Pakistani visitor." Hathaway frowned and shook his head. "It all adds up to something, and I don't think it was murder."

My dad used to say that you can put up with anything if you know when it will end. I know when this will end. I have 36 more days here. But I don't know if I can stand it that long. The heat is worse than ever. Troy, the tank guy, told me that the gauge on his weapons monitor got up to 120 degrees F today. When the guys on patrol got back to our quarters their uniforms could stand up by themselves, they were so full of dried salt and sweat.

Last night it was so hot that I couldn't sleep. Three of my so-called mates left in the middle of the night and didn't come back for at least two hours. I won't name who because of what we found out the next day. During the night there had been some kind of disturbance and a local man had gotten shot. Afterwards, he was supposedly mutilated by the guys that shot him.

We were all called into a briefing meeting where these bigwigs told us not to talk to anyone about the incident. We looked at each other and shrugged-we didn't know any more about it than the rumors that we had heard. But back in the quarters, the three who had gone out in the night showed us some photos on their digital cameras. I had to go to the head and throw up. They laughed and called me a nancy, a pillow biter and a fagboy, but this time I didn't care.