“When you see your friend, tell him I’m sorry. I misunderstood and I didn’t let him tell me what she said. I was wrong to do that. It was my fault. I’m sorry for not listening and for everything after that. Tell him I said it.”

“It might be better coming from you.”

“I won’t be around to do it. I need to apologize to Elaine personally.” And with that Wooldridge reached into his desk, pulled out a snub-nosed revolver, put it under his chin and shot himself with it.

“Jesus!” Trimble ran to his boss, who had collapsed on the floor. From outside the office I could hear the sounds of security sprinting up the stairs. I moved toward a corner of the room and held up my hands. Langdon did the same, holding her badge in one hand.

“He’s still alive,” Trimble said from behind the desk, and looked up and over to me. “You can save him.”

I shook my head. “It’s too late.”

“You can save him!”

“He doesn’t want to be saved.”

The room swarmed with security, guns drawn.

Chapter Eight

“Well, he’s not dead,” Langdon said to me. We were at the Kenosha Medical Center, in the intensive care unit, looking at Jimmy Albert. He was unconscious, with IVs running to him.

“He’s not dead,” I agreed. “Dangerously dehydrated and physically damaged from being tied up for three days. But not dead.”

“Tell me something, because I don’t understand this.”

“What?”

Langdon motioned to Jimmy. “If he died in that soundproof bedroom, it would still be murder. He’d still reappear at home. He’d still be alive.”

“It’s not whether he’d be alive,” I said. “It’d be whether he’d stay alive.”

“Explain.”

“When you get murdered or dispatched, when you come back, your body reverts to a state a few hours before your death. For most people that’s great. When you’re murdered, whatever killed you probably did it quickly. You don’t experience trauma for that long.” I motioned to Jimmy. “But here, it’s slow. The body starves and the systems fail and if they manage to stretch out the process long enough…”

“…when you die, it means when you come back your body is still at a point near death.”

“Right. And the second time you die, you die for real because no one’s actively murdering you. It’s just your body failing all over the place.”

“So Wooldridge’s plan was to bind him up and let starvation and dehydration do the job.”

“Yes. Starvation, and dehydration and renal failure and pulmonary congestion and any other number of things that can happen to a body when you tie it up, throw it into a dark room and leave it to die.”

“It feels like a loophole. I mean, in the whole ‘if you’re murdered you get to come back’ thing.”