Six physicals in one day. One mononucleosis follow-up, one viral conjunctivitis, one set of stitches. One Munchausen by proxy. One epileptic not tolerating his meds. One migraine. One livewire running reception. Simone wouldn’t. Would she? My schedule is too full to allow for obsession, but even as I say, What hurts? or How’s your quality of life? and even as I tell myself I’m fine, a choir congregates in the back of my head, warming up discordant layers of unintelligible phrases: little voices rehearsing a fugue in my mind. And I’m not fine.

When you hear hoofbeats . . .

Kill ’em with kindness . . .

Shut it down . . .

Finish first . . .

[Laughter. Applause.]

Do you know who I am?

“Salt of the earth . . .”

“Dr. Hart, what did you do?”

“Investigator Walsh, please,” I tell the operator who answers the number on Zebadiah Walsh’s business card. “Dr. Robert Hart calling in regard to Nick Carpenter’s death. Yes, I’ll hold.”

If I’d handled things before they got bad, like Ray suggested, I wouldn’t have had to resort to psychological torture, and Nick wouldn’t have fulfilled his own prophecy, so I wouldn’t be in this mess. Fool me once and all that. It won’t happen again. This time, I’ll engage the preemptive strike. I won’t wait for Simone to defame me or worse.

“Walsh,” the guy says.

“Robert Hart here. Returning your call.”

“I didn’t call you,” he tells me.

“You didn’t? But—” Strategic pause. “Oh God. This is so Simone.”

“Excuse me?”

“My secretary, Simone. She told me you called for me, which didn’t make sense, and now I know why. She’s easily confused. Happens all the time. Too many names and faces, day in and day out, I guess. So sorry to bother you.”

“No bother.”

Walsh doesn’t mention the fact that he called Simone this morning. Ah, so he’s the type of guy who gets people to talk by saying nothing. I’m not falling for that, but I ask, “While I have you on the line, maybe you can tell me if you’ve heard about funeral arrangements?”

“Services won’t be until the end of the week,” Walsh says. “Up in Bovina.”

“Catskills, huh?”

“That’s right. Your boy can fill you in. Investigation should wrap up before too long.”

“Investigation?” I ask. “What’s to investigate?”

“Cause of death.”

Dumbed down by death and its dealings, I say, “Oh. We figured it was obvious he jumped off the roof.”

“Jumped or fell. Those are modes of death, though, not methods. As a doctor, you can appreciate the distinction. We need to determine specificity: whether he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol, whether he had any medical conditions that might have caused him to lose consciousness, whether he could have slipped and fallen—and then what actually did it. Head injury, cardiac arrest. You know, specifically.”