Chapter 7: The Tox Screen
The hospital room was small and very white.
Someone had brought me water in a plastic cup, and I drank all of it in one long pull and asked for more.
My left leg was responding normally by the time they got me into the bed.
The numbness had faded to a faint tingling along my calf.
Detective Anita Soares arrived forty minutes after I did.
She was a compact woman in her fifties with short dark hair and the kind of face that gave nothing away.
She pulled a chair to the side of my bed, sat down, took out a small notebook, and looked at me.
"Mrs.
Cross.
How are you feeling?"
"Angry," I said.
"And clear."
The corner of her mouth moved.
"Good.
Both of those will help." She clicked her pen.
"Tell me everything you remember.
Start from the night before."
I told her.
All of it — the argument about the transfer, Chloe arriving with the milk, the unusual sleepiness that came on within minutes.
Waking in the coffin.
Christopher's voice.
Chloe's voice.
The insurance policy.
The house.
Rowan Fitch.
Detective Soares wrote steadily and asked very few questions.
When I finished, she looked up.
"The tox screen will take a few hours.
But based on what you've described — the speed of onset, the duration, the muscle paralysis — the lab knows what to look for."
"Will it still be in my system?"
"If it's what I think it is, yes.
These compounds don't clear quickly." She paused.
"The d3@th certificate.
Do you know which doctor signed it?"
"No.
Christopher handled everything."
"We're already pulling it." She made a note.
"Rowan Fitch left the property before the ambulance arrived.
Do you know where he might go?"
"No.
But Christopher will know."
"Christopher Cross is currently at the Milwaukee Police Department's third district.
He went voluntarily — for now." She said it without emphasis, the way you say a thing that has more meaning than it sounds.
"He thinks he can explain it away," I said.
"Most of them do." She closed her notebook.
"Mrs.
Cross, I want to be direct with you.
What you've described, if the evidence supports it, is serious.
Attempted murd3r.
Insurance fraud.
Falsifying a d3@th record.
That's multiple felonies across potentially multiple defendants."
"My sister too."
A pause.
"Yes."
I looked at the window.
The afternoon light was flat and gray.
Outside, someone was walking a dog across the parking lot, completely ordinary, completely unaware.
"She's my sister," I said.
"We grew up in the same house."
"I know."
"I'm not asking you to go easy on her." I turned back to Detective Soares.
"I'm just saying it out loud.
So I don't pretend it doesn't hurt."
The detective looked at me for a moment.
"That's a reasonable thing to say."
My mother arrived an hour later with Mason.
He walked in ahead of her, spotted me sitting up in the hospital bed, and stopped in the doorway.
"You look better," he said seriously.
"I feel better."
He came and stood beside the bed.
He didn't hug me — he just stood there, close, the way children stand when they want to be near something they were afraid of losing.
"You were very brave today," I told him.
He considered that.
"I was scared."
"That's what brave means."
He thought about it again and seemed to accept it.
Then he reached into his jacket pocket and held something out to me.
It was the cookie.
The one he had dropped when Chloe grabbed him.
He had kept it the whole time.
I took it.
I didn't eat it.
I just held it.
My mother sat in the chair Detective Soares had used and looked at me with the eyes of a woman who had spent a day swallowing everything she felt.
"The aunts are asking questions," she said.
"What are you telling them?"
"Nothing yet.
I said there was a medical situation and that you were stable."
"That's true."
"Madelyn." She leaned forward.
"Chloe called me from outside the house.
Before the police arrived."
My stomach tightened.
"What did she say?"
"She said it was Christopher's idea.
That she was forced.
That she didn't know it would go this far."
I looked at my hands on the blanket.
"What did you say to her?"
May you like
My mother was quiet for a moment.
"I told her to get a lawyer."
