Ben held out Rauls drink. Raul opened one eye, then the other, reached out for the glass and downed most of its contents as if he could happily chug through the whole bottle that night. Ben didnt intend to let him, not after what had happened last time.
Mind if I look around? he asked.
Raul just waved a hand at him. Ben thought he could trust him alone with the bottle for a few minutes while he had a quick reconnaissance of the apartment, sipping his whisky as he went from room to room. The kitchen was large and modern, spotless and gleaming and equipped with all the right accessories for someone who probably ate out most of the time but liked her kitchen to look the part. Ben checked the fridge and found two bottles of chilled 2011 vintage Chablis nestling on a rack inside. A couple of thin-crust pepperoni and anchovy pizzas were stacked in the freezer compartment above. Dinner was sorted, at least.
From the kitchen, he wandered down another passage to what looked like a home office, although it had to be the neatest and least-used home office in the world, entirely clutter-free and a few neat rows of abstruse-looking astrophysics and cosmology titles arrayed on the shelves. One wall displayed a blown-up framed still of Catalina pictured against the backdrop of an astonishingly resplendent Milky Way. Her face was aglow with enthusiasm, those big brown eyes as incandescent as the heavens. Ben presumed it must be an image from her TV astronomy series. Looking at it, it wasnt hard to see what her public had loved in her. He gazed at it for a moment, then went on examining the room.
According to the police report, Catalinas personal computer had been checked for suspicious emails or anything that could provide leads to contradict the suicide motive. Nothing having been found, the computer had been replaced, unplugged from the monitor on the desk. Ben was confident that the contents of drawers, her address book, phone records and general paperwork would have all been routinely examined, too, but he had a riffle through the desk just in case anything jumped out at him. It didnt, although he wasnt particularly sure what he was looking for. Sometimes you just had to go by instinct. And so far, his instincts werent feeding much back to him.
Of the three bedrooms in the big apartment, the first he looked into was a guest room with a huge empty wardrobe and a timber-framed bed piled high with silk cushions. The second was stripped bare and in the middle of being redecorated, a stepladder against one wall, paint pots, plastic sheeting on the floor. He found that potentially interesting. Suicidal people didnt tend to care much about the state of their home decor. Then again, it wasnt much to base a theory on.
The third bedroom was Catalinas, the largest of the three with Gustav Klimt on the walls and a broad expanse of glass overlooking Glockenbach district. Her bed was an antique Louis XI kind of affair the size of a Cadillac Fleetwood. Old and modern side by side, the same elegant blending of styles. Ben did a five-minute search of her wardrobe and drawers, feeling as if he was prying. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, he walked into the ensuite.
Despite his experience of domestic life with his ex-fiancée Brooke Marcel, a womans bathroom nonetheless remained a world of mystery to someone of Bens ingrained spartan ways. Automatic halogen spotlights caught him by surprise as he entered, and he could see about twenty of himself reflected from all angles in the blaze of mirrors covering every vertical surface. A thick sheepskin rug stretched over the floor near the walk-in shower. Fluffy towels draped thickly over a chrome rail. The biggest vanity unit hed ever seen held a collection of cosmetics and perfumes and creams and lotions and feminine paraphernalia that could have stocked a small pharmacy. Tools of her trade, he guessed. He had no doubt that being the worlds sexiest scientist must be hard graft.
A walk-in wardrobe led off the ensuite, a whole other room in itself. Ben stepped into it, gazing around him for clues the police might have missed, like a pair of bathroom scissors lying in a red pool on the floor, or a cryptic message daubed in blood by the kidnapper.
What he found instead, he stared at for ten long seconds and then hurried back through the apartment with to show Raul.
Chapter Nine
Raul hadnt moved from his position on the armchair, and barely glanced up as Ben walked into the room.
Whats this? Ben said, striding up to him.
Whats what?
This. Ben tossed it in Rauls lap. Raul picked it up and gazed at it.
Its fluoxetine, Ben said. Any ideas why I might have found a whole stash of it sitting on a shelf in your sisters walk-in wardrobe? He was trying to keep the anger out of his voice, but it wasnt easy. His discovery had left him feeling betrayed and made a fool of.
Raul slowly examined the small amber bottle of pills, then turned a blank expression on Ben and shrugged. I dont understand.
Theyre antidepressants, Ben said. And theyve got your sisters name on the label. And I want to know why.
Anyone can take medicine. A flare of defensiveness lit up in Rauls eyes as he said it.
Fine. If her doctor put her on pills for migraine headaches or a dust allergy, that would be one thing, wouldnt it? But this is something else.
Raul said nothing. He stared at the bottle in his hand as if he could will it to change into something else.
You told me she was a happy person, Ben said. You said she loved her life and filled every room she walked into with laughter and smiles.
She did, Raul said quietly.
As long as the drugs were doing what they were supposed to do? Ben said, pointing at the bottle. And what about the rest of the time?
Raul fell silent. He closed his eyes. Maybe he thought that by shutting out the light, all his problems would vanish in the darkness. Ben glared at him, wanting to grab him by the neck and shake him.
Answer me, Raul. Did you know about the pills?
Yes! Raul burst out. I knew, all right? She went through a phase of feeling anxious and low when she was in her teens, and was on medication for it then. She was mostly fine, then every now and then shed have a relapse when there was too much stress in her life. It happened again when that whoreson Austin Keller broke her heart. It hit her hard and she needed medical help to get over it.
Ben didnt bother to ask who Austin Keller was. He shook his head in disbelief at what he was hearing. She was prone to depression and you knew about it all along, but you didnt see fit to mention it?
But it doesnt mean anything, Raul insisted. That was all in the past. She got over it. She always has.
Read the label, you idiot. Look at the date. What does it say?
Raul read it and sighed. It says July eleventh.
This year. Not last year, or the year before. It says she was prescribed this latest treatment five days before her car went over the cliff. And more than a third of them are gone. In less than a week? She must have been popping them like sweets. Ben could hear his voice getting tighter with anger. His stomach felt knotted and there was a beating in his temples that was growing into a dull ache. He took a deep breath to try to settle his pulse.
Raul waved his arms in frustration. Fine. All right. But if she was taking them, then she wasnt depressed, was she? Isnt that the whole idea of antidepressants?
Read the label, you idiot. Look at the date. What does it say?
Raul read it and sighed. It says July eleventh.
This year. Not last year, or the year before. It says she was prescribed this latest treatment five days before her car went over the cliff. And more than a third of them are gone. In less than a week? She must have been popping them like sweets. Ben could hear his voice getting tighter with anger. His stomach felt knotted and there was a beating in his temples that was growing into a dull ache. He took a deep breath to try to settle his pulse.
Raul waved his arms in frustration. Fine. All right. But if she was taking them, then she wasnt depressed, was she? Isnt that the whole idea of antidepressants?
Happy pills dont always work that way, Raul. Sometimes they take away sadness and replace it with rage and hatred and all kinds of other emotions instead. They can make a perfectly ordinary, gentle person with mild anxiety decide to take an axe to their family. Or take a jump off a high building, whichever way the brain chemistry happens to lead them. There have been thousands of proven cases. They call it the paradoxical effect. I call it mind-altering garbage that screws peoples heads up.
Raul frowned, a line appearing between his brows. How come you know so much about it?
Ben pointed again at the bottle. Because my mother was prescribed some kind of crap just like that the year after Ruth disappeared, to help her cope with the loss. Over the next few months my father and I saw her degenerate into a total stranger. One day when I was eighteen years old, she wandered like a zombie into her bedroom, locked the door, lay on the bed and swallowed a jar of sleeping pills and never woke up. Thats how I know so much about it, okay? Because I made it my business to find out what those things can do to a person.
The breathing control wasnt working. The thumping in his temples was amping up into a full-blown headache. Hed never told anyone that much about his mothers suicide before, and he didnt enjoy revisiting the feelings it raised up in him.
Raul lowered his eyes and said nothing.
Look at me, Raul. Tell me the truth. You knew Catalina was still on these drugs, didnt you? But you hid it from me, because of how I might react. Thats why you didnt show me the full copy of the police report, because her antidepressant use would have been mentioned there as corroborative evidence to back up the coroners suicide verdict. You removed those pages so I wouldnt see them.
Rauls face twitched as he stared hotly at Ben, like a child caught with its fingers in the pie. Okay, I admit it. I did know, and youre right, it was in the police report. It came out at the inquest that shed gone to her doctor not long before her disappearance, worried she was slipping back into depression, because of work-related stress and other private matters. The lawyers pulled strings to keep the details out of the media, but thats what happened. There. Ive said it. I should have known youd find those pills in her things, but my heads been so fuzzy with all this nightmare that I didnt think about it. I should have told you the truth. I screwed up. Are you satisfied now?