‘I killed her,’ Lance whispered again.

‘Are you afraid that will happen to anyone who loves you or whom you love? That it will happen to JC?’ Dr Nguyen was wholly unfazed.

‘I killed her!’ Lance shouted. ‘And lied to the police and destroyed evidence! What part of this do you not understand?’

Jim Bass, white with fear, was in the doorway. He’d given up waiting on FTD to cuss them out for letting Jimmy’s transactions be hacked into, once the call came in on the other line.

‘Josh. Something’s happened. You need to get to the hospital right this minute.’

‘What da fuck, man?’

It had been Justin’s turn to catch the phone. His tone was peculiarly incapable of being placed: disbelief, perplexity, horror, and affront warred in it. It was the tone rather than the words that snapped Joe’s and Chris’s heads around. They padded into the hallway to listen in.

‘It’s our lawyers,’ Justin mouthed, as he listened to the agitated gabble through the receiver. ‘Naw,’ he said into the instrument, ‘if you can’t reach him in Houston I can’t either.... Uh-huh.... Well, I don’t know nothin’ ’bout dis whole story.... ’Cause they never told me is why....’

‘Were you there when the gun went off, Lance?’

He was silent now, huddled in a fetal ball. She could barely hear his response. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You walked into her room. What did you see?’

‘I. I.... I don’t know. I can’t remember.’ He gasped for breath against the constriction of his throat. ‘Sometimes I see myself walking in, finding her in bed, thinking she’s asleep ... going around the side to wake her gently and – and – and seein’, seein’ – oh God ... but when I dream, she’s still got the pistol in her hand, she hasn’t pulled the trigger yet, I can still stop her, I yell, I beg her not to – I beg – and she, she – she puts it to her lips, the barrel, into her mouth, it’s obscene, it – and then, she, she, her finger is on the trigger –’

JC stood in the room next door, feverishly worried, gaunt with panic, having thrown up twice. He could not make out the words, not Dr Nguyen’s businesslike soothing, not Lance’s agony: but the tone was enough. He had to go throw up again.

‘They had to sedate you, Lance. You called for help, and when the police and the EMTs arrived, they had to sedate you. She was already dead before you arrived. You had done all you could in calling for help. It’s no wonder you can’t remember clearly after that, and it is not anything for which you can be blamed or for which to blame yourself.

‘Now. Lance. What evidence did you destroy? What lies did you tell the police?’

‘Just th’ow some Superman shit in a bag, man. Yo’ flight leaves in like an hour.’

‘But –’

‘Joe-bear, c’mon! Move yo’ sorry ass! Da Houston flight don’t wait for nobody. Chris! Get crackin’, elf-man! It be a long way to BWI!’

‘Why the hell am I the one gets to go to DC or wherever the fuck C’s really from?’

‘Because I ain’t sendin’ y’all’s Yankee asses to Mississippi. Dat’s a job for mah Southern ass. Move, yo!’

‘They ruled it an accident! That’s a pretty obvious fuckup, Little Miss!’

Dr Nguyen cocked an eyebrow at Lance. She knew full well already that he rarely swore (though like all Southern boys, when he swore, he swore: he didn’t mince oaths with a ‘Jesus Christ,’ he cussed a soldierly, mule-skinner’s blue streak). She knew very well indeed that Lance was not the sort to swear in front of ladies at all. Ever. Or be condescending to one – least of all to a physician.

He was clearly at the breaking point.

Good.

‘... to Baltimore. Fatone to IAH. And the Golden Boy –’

‘Prick.’

‘To Mississippi. Suddenly.’

Lou Pearlman heaved his bulk out of a chair and slammed his fat fists on the conference room table. ‘What, you didn’t hear me when I warned you they’d know in five minutes if you sent someone to – to investigate? They should be so stupid: then we wouldn’t be dealing with this chazzerei to begin with! Now they know we’re digging –’

‘Yes,’ the head lawyer said, with a shark-like grin. ‘And they’re panicking, and running scared, and going off on their own, and bound to make a mistake. Precisely as I intended them to do once the very, deliberately obvious was shoved in their faces.’

‘Gawd Almighty damn it to Hell, it ain’t that hard to figure! She left a note!’

‘And you destroyed it and let the police think it was an accident, not a suicide.’

‘Yes! Damn it! Damn you! Yes!’ Lance stopped his agitated pacing and beat his fists upon the wall.

‘Uh-huh,’ Dr Nguyen said, in a tone redolent of disbelief and some scorn. ‘Lance? One question.’

He whirled, red-faced, and stared at her through a mist of fury and loathing. ‘What?’

‘When?’

That stopped him in his tracks. ‘Wh– when, what?’

‘When did you destroy the note?’

He sank down against the wall until he was sitting on the floor. He had no answer.

‘Lance.... You could not, you physically could not, have destroyed it before the police and EMTs arrived. Not adequately. It would have been found and reconstructed even had you somehow burnt it. When they arrived, you had to be sedated. You ended up in the hospital. They had ample access to your personal effects. If there was a note –’

‘There was!’ Lance bellowed. ‘God was there ever!’

‘– Then they saw it. And for Jessie’s sake and her parents’s sake, they ruled it an accident. They meant well. But I wish they had thought about you while they were thinking about people.’

Lance slumped down still further. ‘How can you know?’

‘I know what the procedure is. I know it is always, but always, followed, as a matter of rote. I have dealt with more suicides than you have had hot breakfasts, Lance. And because of that, I have a pretty good idea what was in that note.’

‘You want I should just plotz? These meshugeh tactics, I need like a loch in kop.’

‘What you need like a hole in the head, Lou, is to lose this fight. Just be quiet already.’

‘Mr Chasez?’

‘Dr Nguyen –’

‘We’ll be keeping Lance overnight. He needs a mild sedative, some monitoring, and rest. What he mostly needs right now is you. He needs to talk about something. No matter what he says, stay quiet and let him finish.’

‘Karen? Um. This is Chris. Chris Kirkpatrick.’

‘Christopher – what – is something wrong with Joshua again?’

‘Oh, nah. He’s fine. Um. I’m at the airport. In Baltimore, I mean. Can I come see you guys?’

‘Baby?’ JC’s voice was soft. Hesitant. Gentle and loving.

And scared to death.

Lance nodded, but didn’t look up.

‘D– Dr Nguyen said you needed to talk with me?’

‘I killed Jessie, Josh.’

JC blinked and risked a glance at Dr Nguyen, who sat there serenely, impassively. No matter what he says, stay quiet and let him finish.

JC waited, forcing himself to look relaxed.

‘It wasn’t an accident. Her death.’ Lance looked up from under trembling lashes to see if JC had walked out of his life yet. JC just looked at him, with love and support and concern shining in his gunmetal eyes. Lance shuddered and cast his gaze again to the carpet.

‘She – she left a note. God, Josh –’ at the sound of that intimate name, JC breathed for what felt like the first time in years – ‘she meant everything to me. We were – we were one person, Josh. Like ... like you and I are?’ Lance’s voice cracked. The uncertainty Lance betrayed stabbed JC like a knife of ice. ‘She walked me through coming out, she stood behind me, she stood between me and the folks, she made them understand and love me anyway, she was always there for me and I failed her Josh I failed her she always knew when I needed something and I was so wrapped up in myself I couldn’t see she was hurting and I let her kill herself because I was too self-absorbed to see her suffering and –.’ Lance gasped, a heaving sob. ‘Fuck, Josh, she killed herself because I couldn’t love her the way she loved me and I never knew until I found her dead and she spelled it out in a fucking note, she never let anyone see the despair but it got to her at last, loving me and wanting me when, when, I couldn’t and she knew I could never – and she still helped me come out and she just finally gave up and we never saw beneath the smile – oh, God, Josh, I killed her as much as if I’d pulled that trigger myself. Loving me killed her. Josh, God, Josh, loving me is fucking fatal! Josh, don’t do it – don’t get involved with me after all, if it kills you too I won’t be able to live with myself – I’m not worth –’

‘Lance.’ Dr Nguyen’s voice sliced through the rising hysteria. ‘JC knows now. It’s okay. Let him talk.’

‘L– Lance? Baby? I ... I don’t have the words.’ Lance hung his head. But JC stumbled on. ‘There aren’t words for how much I love you. I can only show you. I love you, Lance, body and soul, no matter what. Will you – can I hold you, baby? I want to hold the good, sweet man I love, is that okay?’ And finally Lance did look up, lip trembling, face unreadable; and JC moved fluidly to where his love sat and took the unresponsive blond in his arms.

Damn Justin. Hurrying and pressing and stuff. He’d written it down but left it in Orlando, and he was blanking mentally. He’d had to just tell the cabbie at IAH, ‘Take me to where they do all the heart surgeries and stuff,’ and trust to luck. Now Joe exited the cab, paid the driver and added a tip the extravagance of which stemmed as much from embarrassment as anything, and plunged into the rabbit warren of hospitals that made up the Medical Center. Methodist. Well, they’d taken Lance to a Methodist Hospital back in Orlando. Maybe this was the place. He barged along the hallway, spotting a dour, eminent-looking man with the look and air of a crane or heron, dressed in scrubs and surrounded by acolytes: a sad-faced sort of man, Joe thought, like a swart and melancholy bird, beak and all.

‘ ’Scuse me,’ he said, still the irrepressible Fatone as always, single-minded and sure that all the world were his pals: ‘sorry – comin’ through – yo, Doc, sorry t’ innerup’, but my paisan Lansten got sent here to see the best heart guy in the world, but I forget the name, anyway, where would I find whoever that is?’

The elderly and eminent surgeon looked coolly at this apparition: a large, boisterous, St Bernard puppy of a youth, in a rumpled Superman tee-shirt, still dragging a suitcase from which a sock protruded (a cliche the surgeon had last seen in a Frank Capra movie). The ironies were delicious, and he savored them. ‘I imagine you have found whom you seek, young man. I am Michael DeBakey.’

Joe started to put out his hand to shake, and then cocked his head to one side. ‘Wait. Naw ... that wasn’t the name ... started with a D though – no, that was the first name – I got it! It was “Coolidge” or somethin’!’ He flashed a large, innocent grin, pleased with himself.

‘Oh son of a bitch,’ the Other Great Cardiologist snapped, and turned sharply on his (elevator) heel to stride away, his affronted flock bleating and tripping behind him. Faintly, an heretical resident in his crowd of worshipers stifled a giggle as he hurried to catch up.

‘Wha’? What’d I say?’ Joey asked the suddenly empty corridor.