Free The Crime Writer by Gregg Hurwitz

wariness.
    “Take me through that night again?”
    “What…why?”
    “Because you’re the only one who can. Coming home, I’m trying to piece together those missing hours, but all I’ve got is this breakfast bowl and a cracked saucer—”
    “Drew, what are you talking about? The trial is over. You’re free. You should see someone, start putting this behind you. At least get some sleep. If you don’t mind me saying so, you looked better in jail.”
    “I’m hoping a few answers will help me sleep.”
    “Or they’ll lead to more questions.”
    “Right,” I said. “But at least this time they’ll be the right questions.” I waited as she studied the wall over my head. “Please, April. I won’t bother you again.”
    She drew a sharp breath. I waited for the sigh, but it didn’t come. Instead she said, “It’s like I told you in jail. You worked that day. I came over around six. We went to dinner. Fabrocini’s.”
    “Did we run into anyone we knew?”
    “No. Then we came home. We made love.”
    “Where?”
    “On the couch. With the view.”
    “Did anyone call?”
    She shook her head. “And then you had another migraine come on. Bad one. Laid down, lights out, the whole thing. I read with a booklight so I could stay beside you. But there was nothing different from any other time it’s gone like that. You went to bed normal…”
    The unspoken part of the sentence dangled. And woke up a killer.
    She uncrossed her legs, crossed them again, tugged at her knee with her laced hands. “I woke up alone in your bed at four A.M. when the cops showed up.”
    She was a deep sleeper, slow to wake. I imagined her confusion at the empty space beside her in the sheets. Maybe she’d called for me in the bathroom. The insistent second chime of the doorbell. Disorientation giving way to concern, concern to fear. Bare feet on the carpet as she felt her way through the darkness into the hall. The police lights shining through the frosted insets of my front door and rising through the open foyer, setting the second-story ceiling awash in blue and red. What a long walk that must have been down the curving stairs.
    “You don’t remember a phone ringing late at night? And I didn’t talk to you after I supposedly listened to Genevieve’s message?”
    “I don’t remember anything.”
    “I can empathize,” I said. “Thank you, April. For everything.”
    The words rushed out of her, as if they’d been pent up. “If you’d been more honest with me about the brain tumor, we could have prevented this.”
    I tried to answer, but my throat was dry, and I had to start over. “I was scared.”
    “Right. You were scared. And you chose not to tell me. So that tells you what we didn’t have.”
    I couldn’t convey how badly I wanted to take it all back, so I just nodded once, slowly. She rose, and I took the hint. I thanked her—I had much to thank her for—and she gave me a hug at the door, squeezing me tight, then turning away quickly so I couldn’t see her face. “Take care of yourself, Drew.”
    I said, “I’ll do my best.”

7
    D esperate for sleep, I lay on my bed, willing myself to doze off into another fragment of lost time. But my internal clock had decided to wake up and pay attention to the fact that it was 11:00 A.M. I went downstairs, sat at the kitchen table with my stale almonds and a glass of pomegranate juice, and took in the view. I was still acclimating to what daytime felt like when it wasn’t filtered through bars.
    After April’s, I’d gone on my first light-of-day outing—down to Whole Foods to get groceries. I’d found people surprisingly warm. An old woman with a tennis visor gave me a surreptitious thumbs-up from Dried Fruits. The clerk, shuttling my groceries into compostable bags, leaned forward as we waited for the receipt to print and said, sotto voce, “I’m glad for you.” I knew I was dealing with a skewed sample—those who didn’t think I was a drooling lunatic were more