“What saved her, Mr Fossie?”

“She staggered drunk through the patio door. When it broke it activated the burglar alarm. The cops rushed her to the emergency room for a stomach pumping.”

“She’s improved?”

“Her faith saved her by giving her the strength to continue. But I think there’s not much left of her spirit, if you know what I mean. Do you have to question her?”

“We didn’t get to talk much yesterday. She was in pain. Do you know why, Doctor?”

“She said she fell down the stairs. Something about high heels.”

“Do you believe her?”

Fossie turned away.

“Sir?” I said.

“God help me, I don’t believe her. I think her husband beat her. I think he’s done it before. But all I ever got from Patricia was denial. She stumbled over a hose in the yard, tripped in the garage, walked into a door…Damn him.”

“You didn’t get along with Reverend Scaler?”

“He thinks of nutritionally oriented health as akin to New Age crystal therapy, or maybe even witchcraft. Since her, uh, incident, Patricia’s become very nutritionally oriented, part of a regimen I’ve designed to keep her body healthy. When the body’s in balance, the mind follows. Richard tolerated me because keeping Patricia healthy potentially helped him avoid embarrassment.”

“You don’t sound like a big fan of Richard Scaler.”

“Everything was his. His home. His cars. His ministry. His television network. God gave it to him for being Richard Scaler. Patricia was just an object to him.” He paused and blinked through his lenses. “Do you really have to talk to her today?”

“Yes. We’ll go as easy as possible.”

“Thank you.” Fossie walked down the hall toward the waiting room.

Harry leaned low. “You want to go in solo?” he asked. “You think that’s better?”

I did and entered the room, cleared my throat. Patricia Scaler’s head turned to me, eyes open, frightened. I re-introduced myself, said, “I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am. Did the chaplain explain a few things?” I meant the grim details of Richard Scaler’s death. “Or Mr Fossie?”

She avoided my eyes. “Both men spoke of unsavory topics, while trying to be gentle. I suspect Archie – Mr Fossie – of hiding uglier aspects of my husband’s final evening. It’s his way.”

“Then you know your husband went to Camp Sonshine after he left you. He met someone who may have been there when the heart attack occurred. Do you know who Richard might have met?”

“I have no idea. I never want to know.” She turned away, as if that would make the ugliness disappear.

“Mrs Scaler…I want to help. And I won’t go telling what you say to anyone who doesn’t absolutely need to know. They’ll keep the information tight and confined. What happened that night?”

Her eyes turned inside. The second hand swept round the clock twice before her lips moved.

“Richard was having one of his bad times.”

“Bad times?”

“The stress of his work sometimes caught up with Richard. He’d have these moments. He’d question his works, his life. The moments never lasted more than a day or two. It’s been said Mother Teresa had terrible doubt.”

“Your husband’s, uh, episodes of doubt. They were infrequent?”

“Yes. But terrible to behold and coming more often of late. It was like the Devil was spearing Richard’s soul. Richard never made sense when he was like that. One time he spent a whole night yelling about serpents, following me around like he was preaching a sermon. I hid in bed, terrified, until Richard passed out on the floor downstairs.”

“You have no children?”

“God made it impossible for me to bear children. He thinks I would be an unworthy mother.”

I nodded, unable to argue with a thought process I could not understand. I put my hand over hers. “I’m sorry, ma’am. For all that happened.”

Her other hand fell over mine as soft as a falling leaf. She started to weep. I pulled the chair as close as the bed would allow.

“We were happy once,” she said through her tears. “But for the last few years it was like we lived separate lives in the same house. The more famous and successful he became, the less I was to him. I didn’t try hard enough. It’s all…my fault. Everything.”

“It’s not your fault, Mrs Scaler. Not a bit.”

“I must have driven him to such women. Made him need such terrible things.”

“Please, Mrs Scaler, Patricia, you need to –”

“I’m no good. I should have died long ago.”

Tears continued to flow from her closed eyes. I held tight to her hand. “As a cop I’ve seen every possible kind of relationship, Mrs Scaler. I think you were trapped in a marriage that had become loveless. But I suspect you stayed because you thought leaving would hurt your husband. That’s not a failing, that’s devotion to an ideal. You performed a great kindness at a terrible price.”

Her eyes fluttered open. She stared at me for a long moment. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you so much for that.”

“May I ask for your help over the next few days, ma’am? Could you think about people you might have seen with your husband. People he didn’t usually associate with. Can you think about that for me?”

“I’ll try, sir. But I, uh…”

“But what, ma’am?”

Hands fluttered beneath the blankets. She swallowed hard. Her head turned away with shame.

“I stopped thinking a long time ago, sir. I believe it was part of my job as Mrs Richard Scaler.”

Chapter 12

Harry was waiting at the nurses’ station down the hall, talking to an intern. Fossie was on a couch outside the door, reading a book on herbal supplements. He saw me and set the book aside.

“How’s Patricia?” he asked.

“She’s feeling guilt at not being the perfect little wife. She thinks she didn’t contribute enough to holding the relationship together. What kind of life did she and her husband have, Mr Fossie?”

Fossie shook his head. “The marriage was like a play, I think. But like almost everyone, I only saw the performances, not what was happening behind the scenes.”

I nodded, started toward Harry, stopped.

“You’re a nutritionist, sir?”

“Nutritionalist is the actual term. I have a practice on the southwest side of town. And, of course, I advise several institutions.”

When I was in college I dated a woman who was studying nutrition. Some of what she said about vitamins and whatnot seemed over the top, but a lot of it made sense and, I’d noted, it had been borne out by subsequent research. My then-girlfriend had used the word holistic like a mantra, but now medical doctors used the word; score one for her.

And just maybe I needed a little holism or whatever. “Are you taking any new patients?” I asked Fossie. “Is that what they’re called?”

“Clients. And I’m actually seeing fewer and fewer clients – my glide path into retirement. Are you talking about yourself, Detective Ryder?”

“I’ve been feeling a bit off,” I confessed. “Just recently.”

He studied me for a moment, the blues eyes moving from feet to hair. He took my hands and studied my nails. Put a thumb against my neck and felt my pulse.

“Where do you live, Detective?”

“Dauphin Island.”

He smiled, clapped my shoulder. “You’re in luck. I have a private patient on the west end of the island, an invalid, we go back years. I’m due to see her this evening. How about I stop by and give you a little work-up?”

I gave him my address and he returned to Mrs Scaler’s bedside. I briefed Harry on the interview, said not to depend on much from Patricia Scaler, the woman about as beaten down as anyone I’d ever seen, except maybe for my mother. I started back to the car.

Harry said, “Gimme a couple minutes. I want to see the kid.”

“She’ll look just like she did yesterday.”

“Which is fine with me.”

I jammed my hands in my pockets and lumbered toward the PICU a few feet behind my partner. Harry nodded to the nurse at the station, a heavyset young woman with a country-singer mane of artificially red hair that needed a prettier face to pull off the rural-hip statement. She was penning information on charts, sucking a can of Mountain Dew, and nibbling from a bag of FunYums. She’d seen us there before and gave a wiggle-fingers wave.