He took a deep breath. “We went to bed around eleven. I woke up from a nightmare that I was drowning. My head hurt and I felt like I was going to throw up. I could barely breathe. That’s when I smelled the gas. I tried to wake Bill, but he just lay there.” He mother took his hand as he paused to compose himself. “I got out of bed and called my brother Sal.”

“Why didn’t you call 911?”

“Uh, I was confused, you know, and half unconscious. I smelled the gas and Sal knows about gas, so that’s why, I guess.”

“His brother works for PG and E,” Mrs. Trejo said.

Pacific Gas and Electric, the local utility monopoly. “I see. What happened next?”

“Sal said to get out of the apartment and he would call 911. I told him Bill wasn’t moving. He said, ‘Get out of the apartment now.’”

“And did you?”

He shook his head. “I went back into the bedroom and tried to wake Bill up. I grabbed him and shook him. I shook him and shook him, but he wouldn’t wake up. I started to pass out and I knew I had to get out. So, I… I left him there and went downstairs. I made it to the porch and blacked out. The next thing I knew I was in the ambulance with Sal.”

“Your brother?”

He nodded. “Then the ambulance took me to the hospital.” He gripped his mother’s hand. “I never saw Bill again. His family came, from Illinois.”

“And locked you out of the apartment,” I said.

“Yes.”

“They’re bad people,” Mrs. Trejo said.

Nick looked at me, his eyes bright with tears. “Bill said they threw him out like a stray dog.”

I nodded. “Thank you. I know this must be hard for you.”

I scanned my checklist of questions to see if I’d forgotten anything. “Oh,” I said. “Do you know what caused the gas leak?”

Nick glanced anxiously at his mother. She responded with a nearly imperceptible nod.

“Uh-huh,” he said.

“That’s a no?” I pressed, curious about the exchange between mother and son. He looked at her again, this time even more anxiously.

“We don’t know,” she said. “Those old houses. Something’s always going wrong with them.” She smiled, insincerely. “Can I get you more coffee? Another taquito for the road?”

She was nice about it, but I was being given the bum’s rush. From years of cross-examining evasive witnesses, I had developed an acute sense of when I was being lied to. I was being lied to now on a point where a lie made no sense. I hadn’t expected Nick to know what caused the gas leak: it was a rote question required by the Western States handbook in all accidental death investigations.