“A forty percent raise? That’s pitiful.” She’s sitting here with my kryptonite in her back pocket, and the best she can ask for is forty percent? If her dreams max out at a forty percent increase in quality of life, she has let me down. Disappointment makes a poor bargaining chip.

She points to Bonnie’s stupid list and says, “Then don’t ask me to do two jobs.” There’s a knock at the main entrance. It should’ve been unlocked by now. The nurses will already be in the staff room—hopefully not eavesdropping on Simone’s negotiations—and I don’t have a minute to think, let alone plan an idiotic party.

“Help me with this,” I beg. “We’ll sit down and talk about the raise in depth later. I value you and want to make it right.” To ingratiate myself completely, I say, “You can add your name to the list. Elizabeth would love to have you.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

I throw my hands in the air. “I’m doing my best. Please meet me halfway.”

“I’m letting in your seven-thirty hypertension. This conversation is on hold, not over.”

“Fine.”

“Also, I said practically perjure. I know what perjury is.”

I clear one landmine just in time to make way for another, because an hour later, Mr. Walsh from the medical examiner’s office calls again. I check my voice mail over lunch, listen to his invitation to swing by the office at my earliest convenience, listen to him say, “We have a few questions concerning the death of Nick Carpenter.”

27.

It takes four days and two additional voice mails before I find time to pay Zeb Walsh a visit in a building I’ve driven by a thousand times without ever considering what transpires here. It’s enormous. Modern. Expansive. And single-purposed. The Office of the Medical Examiner. All of this, all for death. Medical examiners, deputy medical examiners, forensic medical investigators, scholars in labs. Toxicology labs, crime scene labs, serology labs. Front desks.

A receptionist takes my name and sends me upstairs to another receptionist, who tells me to have a seat and doesn’t call my name for another seventeen minutes, at which point she leads me to a windowless office crowded with a desk, two chairs, a file cabinet, a tiny couch.

“Mr. Hart.” Walsh rises from his desk to shake my hand. “I was wondering when you’d finally get here. You got my messages?”

“Doctor, actually. And yes, I did. It’s been a busy week. Took off time for the funeral.”

“How was that?”

“Sad.”

“I bet.”

“What can I do for you?”

He sorts through some papers, stores them in a drawer, redirects his attention to a computer monitor, flips to a page in his notebook, then asks, “Remind me, when was the last time you saw Nick alive?”