THE FIRST DEATH
Before Daniel woke, Emily learned how he had supposedly died.
She already knew the simple version.
He collapsed at breakfast.
She called 911.
Paramedics found him barely responsive, with an abnormal rhythm and dangerously low blood pressure.
They transported him to St. Gabriel.
Emily arrived fifteen minutes later.
By then he was unconscious.
The emergency department told her they suspected a cardiac event.
Then everything accelerated.
Daniel deteriorated.
He arrested.
They resuscitated him.
He arrested again.
At some point Emily was moved from the treatment area to a family room.
Dr. Mercer eventually entered.
He sat beside her.
He removed his glasses.
He said they had done everything they could.
Emily remembered every gesture.
She had not remembered questioning any of them.
Now Detective Mara Velez from the county major-crimes unit asked her to reconstruct the morning from the beginning.
They sat in a small conference room away from Daniel's ICU.
“When was the last time your husband was completely normal?”
“Breakfast.”
“What did he eat?”
“The same thing Lily did. Eggs. Toast. Coffee.”
“Medication?”
“Nothing new.”
“Any prescriptions?”
“A cholesterol medication. That's it.”
“Drugs?”
“No.”
“Supplements?”
“No.”
“Arguments?”
Emily looked at her.
“With me?”
“With anybody.”
“Not that morning.”
“Work problems?”
Emily paused.
Daniel worked at St. Gabriel.
That fact suddenly felt important in a way it had not before.
His title was senior compliance analyst.
He was not a physician.
He reviewed procurement, vendor contracts, medication inventory discrepancies and internal reporting irregularities.
It was the sort of job that made other people's paperwork Daniel's problem.
“He'd been tense.”
“For how long?”
“A few weeks.”
“Did he say why?”
“He said he was working on an internal review.”
“What kind?”
“I don't know.”
“You never asked?”
“I did.”
Emily remembered Daniel standing at the sink one night.
His sleeves rolled.
A glass in his hand.
Don't ask me about work for a few days.
She had teased him about becoming a spy.
He had not laughed.
“He said it was better if I didn't know yet.”
Velez wrote that down.
“Was that normal?”
“No.”
“What did you think he meant?”
“I thought somebody might get fired.”
“Did he ever mention Mercer?”
Emily searched her memory.
“Yes.”
The detective stopped writing.
“When?”
“About two weeks ago.”
“What did he say?”
Emily closed her eyes.
Daniel had been sitting at the kitchen table after Lily went to bed.
A yellow legal pad lay in front of him.
He kept circling three numbers.
“What happens if your boss's boss tells you to stop looking at something?” he had asked.
Emily told him that depended on what the something was.
Daniel had smiled without humor.
“Exactly.”
“Did you ask who?”
“He said Mercer.”
Velez looked up.
“Dr. Adrian Mercer?”
“Yes.”
“What did Daniel say Mercer wanted him to stop doing?”
“He wouldn't tell me.”
“Anything else?”
Emily remembered another sentence.
At the time it had sounded like Daniel being dramatic.
Now it didn't.
“He said the numbers weren't the problem.”
“What was?”
“He said, ‘The people who should be scared aren't scared.’”
Velez put down her pen.
“When your husband is medically stable, we're going to want access to his office.”
“You think somebody at the hospital hurt him.”
“I think your husband was exposed to a medication that wasn't documented, pronounced dead under circumstances we don't understand, and then released before he was actually dead.”
Emily flinched.
Velez continued.
“I don't need to decide what that means yet.”
Emily looked through the interior window toward the ICU corridor.
“Daniel had a folder.”
“When?”
“The night before he collapsed.”
“What kind?”
“Brown. Paper. He wouldn't leave it in his work bag.”
“Where did he put it?”
Emily pictured their bedroom.
Daniel on a chair removing his shoes.
The folder in his hand.
“He put it somewhere.”
“Where?”
“I don't know.”
“Think.”
Emily did.
Daniel had gone upstairs.
Then come down without it.
Later, he asked her whether the garage door had been locked.
She assumed he was worried about tools.
“The garage.”
Velez stood.
“Don't go looking for it yourself.”
Emily looked at her.
“Why?”
“Because if your husband's collapse is connected to his work, somebody may already be looking for the same thing.”
Emily left the hospital through a side entrance after midnight.
Her sister insisted she come home.
Emily refused.
She needed clothes.
A shower.
Five minutes inside a house that still belonged to Daniel.
The first thing she noticed was that the garage door was open three inches.
Emily stopped in the driveway.
She had closed it before the funeral.
She was certain.
She called Velez.
Then she waited in the car.
Police arrived eleven minutes later.
The garage had been searched.
Not destroyed.
Searched.
Cabinet doors were open.
Daniel's workbench drawers had been disturbed.
A storage bin sat crooked on its shelf.
Velez arrived herself.
“You didn't enter?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Officers moved through the house.
Emily stood outside in the cold.
Then one called Velez from the garage.
Behind a removable panel under Daniel's workbench they found an empty space the size of a document folder.
Nothing else.
Whoever searched the garage had known where to look.