What We Lost in the Dark Read Online Free Page B

sick kid, to “go easy” or “be careful.” Most important of all, Bonnie knew just what I thought about Garrett Tabor. She agreed with me that he was someone who made your skin crawl. Like my mother, she also knew that he’d slept with half the women at the hospital. None of that, however, proved that he was a killer.
    But I would, I silently promised Juliet. I would do that on my own or die trying.
    “Bonnie!” said Garrett Tabor with a big phony smile. “I should have known my dad wouldn’t trust his lab to anyone but the best.”
    “Thank you, Garrett,” Bonnie said evenly. “I think he trusted it to someone he knew would stay awake, because my blood is half caffeine by now.”
    “Bonnie, I happen to know you were an assistant medical examiner in Cook County, before you moved here,” Garrett Tabor said. “Not a job many women would cherish. Women are all about healing.”
    “Knowing why people die is all about healing,” Bonnie answered softly. “Hi, Allie. Have we got any guests tonight?”
    Guests.
    “Not quite a full house, but yes,” said Garrett Tabor.
    They meant bodies in the refrigerated drawers. Rubbing her hands along the arms of her long-sleeved sweatshirt,Bonnie consulted a chalkboard list. “Oh no. Alex Trayhern. Of course. I knew that. That boy was in my son Elliott’s class,” she said. “Twelve years old. Hunting accident. And Vanessa Adams. A nurse. She was a good nurse, too … Who knows why people …”
    “She was a suicide, correct?” Garrett Tabor said. “Injected herself with a syringe of air. She was about to be nailed for stealing prescription drugs, wasn’t she? Don’t nurses have the highest rates of suicide, Bonnie?”
    “I’m sure you’d know better than I would, Garrett,” she said. “You’re a nurse.”
    “Well. You just ask me for whatever you need.” He touched an imaginary hat brim.
    “Perfect gentleman,” Bonnie said, as he strolled away.
    I told her, “That’s what all the ladies say.”

4
FEARS FOR TEARS
    Time drained like a big hourglass with a fracture in the bottom, stoked by my fascination with all things terminal. The fascination, in turn, was stoked by my horrific recent past and my obsession with learning the truth about Juliet. The first time I looked up from filing reports about sudden or unusual deaths, my shift had ended.
    It was already 1 A.M . The window thermometer showed that the temperature was just a few degrees above zero. I stifled a groan. For the past couple of weeks, the weather had seesawed this way, going late-summer warm in daytime, then skidding downward at night. I hadn’t bothered with a heavy coat. But on my way out, Bonnie offered me an old parka that her younger son had left in the car that day. When I tried to refuse, she insisted.
    “I know you’ll return it. Besides, I know where you live,” she joked.
    I thanked her and bundled up.

    HURRYING OUT OF the medical examiner’s building, I could think only of joining Rob in his huge and indecently comfortable bed, smack in the middle of his bachelor “apartment” over his family’s garage. It was lucky that Rob’s passion (besides me) involved computers, music mixing, and every kind of daredevil sport aside from raising elephants … or his parents would have turned the garage into a zoo.
    Like every other XP parent except my mother, Rob’s parents gave him everything. It made sense: Rob might not live to enjoy all the rewards of adulthood. The apartment his dad had made for him was to provide the illusion of independence. Although Rob would “go” to college online in the fall, he wouldn’t really “go” anywhere. One of the agonies of a chronic illness is too much family togetherness. But my mother, convinced the research would beat XP before it beat me, saw no reason to give me anything more than a spare set of keys to her ancient Toyota minivan.
    I was barely to the bottom step of the medical examiner’s building when I heard the voice: low,