Day Shift

Joe thought about any solution other than the one that had occurred to him, and he came up with nothing. He was going to have to break a promise, and it grieved him. But he felt the surge of excitement even as he felt the grief, and he knew the guilt even as he prepared for the glory.

He sat up straight and let his other nature rush in and fill him. He became more. He became much more. And his wings emerged, white and gleaming, indescribably beautiful. He caught his breath at the wave of joy that filled him, and he willed his wings to move.

He rose in the air, almost screaming with the sensation, and then he was flying. Each powerful flap made muscles in his back flex, muscles he had not used in years. Even on Halloween, when he and Chuy let their wings out for Fiji’s party, they did not fly, because they had promised each other they would not. Now he was breaking that promise, and he would pay for it, but the moment was sublime. He circled high above Midnight, looking down, once, twice, and then he saw his beloved come out on the sidewalk in the gathering gloom to look anxiously to the west. With a sharp reluctance, he knew he must land, and he came down behind the store.

Chuy must have caught a glimpse of him passing overhead, because he was there in a second, his face a mask of distress. But when he saw Joe lying on the ground, groaning, he rushed to help him. With a lot of effort, he got Joe up, and somehow they made their way up the outside stairs to their apartment as darkness fell on Midnight. They paused to rearrange themselves about halfway up. From the darkness nearby, they heart a sort of chuffing noise. It came from some large animal. And without saying a word, they moved up the remaining stairs with a speed they hadn’t thought they could achieve a minute before. They went in the door as fast as they could and locked it behind them.

Then the only light was the light of the full moon.

27

Rachel Goldthorpe was murdered,” Arthur Smith was telling Manfred, at the same time that Joe was putting on his running clothes.

Manfred sat down abruptly. “For sure? How?”

“The tox results show that she had taken six times the dosage of her blood pressure medicine. Almost certainly that wasn’t on purpose. It had been dissolved in the water bottle she carried.”

“She drank out of it while I was watching.”

“Yeah, it was your telling the Bonnet Park police that detail that let them know to look for the bottle. Somehow in the attempt to save her, it got knocked off the table and rolled under the couch. One of the cops there found it just in time. The doctor says he suspected an overdose from the first, but now it’s confirmed.”

“She said she dropped it in the lobby,” Manfred said. “She said people helped her pick up her stuff and put it back in her purse. I guess… could it have been put in there then?” He almost held his breath, waiting for the answer.

“It doesn’t seem likely,” Arthur said, and Manfred breathed again. “If someone wanted to poison her, surely they’d put the medicine in an identical water bottle and substitute that one for the one in her purse. And that would take a lot of foreknowledge. The appearance of the bottle, with all the butterfly decals on it. The type of medicine she’d been prescribed, the dosage that would kill her.”

“What kind did she take?”

“The medical examiner says she overdosed on Cardizem.”

“What exactly does that do?”

“That was her blood pressure medication.”

“But she wouldn’t have taken it like that. Crushed up and put in her water. Who would take their pills like that?”

“Some people — especially sick people, and especially elderly sick people — can forget they’ve taken a dose of their medicine and take another one. And maybe after that, they forget again. But not only was she comparatively too young and clearheaded to make such a mistake, the pills were actually ground up. Her daughters told the Bonnet Park police that she had no trouble swallowing pills the normal way. So the conclusion is, she was murdered. What was in her and what was left in the bottle was probably ten doses altogether. Enough to kill her.”

“She took that big a dose that morning?”

“Yes. Some time that morning, before she walked through your door, Rachel Goldthorpe had taken at least six times the dose of Cardizem she should have had for the day. In consequence, she went into shock and died.”

“Could her regular dosage of pills have had an unexpected effect on her because she was sick?”

“It was a deliberate overdose.” Arthur said this with finality.

“I don’t want to believe anyone would kill Rachel. Especially since it sounds like whoever did it, it had to be someone who knew her really, really well.” Manfred shook his head vehemently. “She would never have killed herself.”

“You sound pretty sure.”