‘Not so suspicious, sure, if sixty-something guy has a heart attack. But mighty convenient. Good news for his wife and kid, good news for the world. Anyway, I didn’t think any more about that at the time except, y’know, goodo. Couple of months later, I tell you bucketloads of stuff about John Santino—behind-the-scenes intel most people don’t know. About his prior assault charges, what he said on the audiotape, the drug abuse, the name of the bar he was hanging out in after the trial, the fact that he assaulted Brooke Lester so she almost lost the baby, almost bled to death. I tell you all of that and then a few days later the guy ends up dead from an overdose of a drug a doctor would have access to. And then, somehow, you seem to know other details I never told you—like the hydromorphone—and stuff I didn’t even know, like the glass table and the baby’s name … and fuck, how would you know any of that? So then I find myself thinking: maybe the first guy, the patient, maybe he just carked it in your surgery—natural causes, whatever—but then once you saw how his wife and kid were safe and happy with him dead, that put an idea in your head. It inspired you to—and then, fuck, then I started thinking about that patient from a different angle. In theory, a doctor could have done something, induced a heart attack or … I don’t know enough about the medical side. Anyway, a doctor could kill a person and make it look like—fucking hell, how wild is that thought, right? I mean, after what happened to Stacey, after some of the conversations you and me have had about killing dangerous men—those were hypothetical conversations. We were being hyperbolic, letting off steam, but now I can’t help wondering …’

Anita could hear she was blathering, speaking too fast, sounding like a demented person. But she could also hear that Paula wasn’t interjecting, wasn’t laughing at the ridiculous suggestions.

‘You’ll say I’m a nutcase,’ Anita went on. ‘I’m sure you think this is just Anita going off on one of her—Are you going to say anything?’

Paula sounded quite composed in the face of Anita’s ranting. ‘What do you want me to say?’

‘Say it’s a crazy idea. Say you didn’t kill anyone—or, fuck, say you didn’t kill two people.’

Paula stared at the table and exhaled slowly.

‘Jesus, Paula, you’re scaring me now.’

‘Do you want me to tell you what happened?’ Paula asked.

‘Do I?’

‘I don’t know. I wasn’t going to say anything to you. Not to anyone. Maybe it’s better if I don’t.’

‘Fuck, you can’t say something like that and then not finish the sentence.’

‘Maybe I do need to tell you.’