Free The Venus Fix by M. J. Rose Page A

was found dead in her apartment. She’d been there for days before anyone found her.”
    He turned and faced me.
    I nodded. He was talking about the case Noah had been brought in on. Noah had called me the night before and told me about it, though not much detail; he was still at work and was only taking a short break to fill me in.
    “The young woman…” Bob hesitated. “There was a picture of her…”
    In silence, he returned to the couch, sat down, clasped his hands together and leaned forward. The lines in his forehead looked as if a sculptor had deepened them over the weekend.
    “According to the newspaper, her name was Debra. I knew her as Penny. Do you understand?”
    Bob had a habit of doing this to me, trying to get me to do the hard work for him. “No, I’m not sure I do.”
    “She was someone I watched, Dr. Snow. On her Web cam. I can’t even count how many times I saw her. And now…” He was speaking softly, and I had to lean forward to catch every word.
    “There were people watching her on the night she died, the article said. Men who actually saw her getting sick online—” He broke off again. Shook his head. Closed his eyes.
    “Were you watching her?”
    Thirty seconds went by. Forty. Sixty. Then: “There werepeople actually sitting there, online, watching her, not even realizing that she was dying.” Bob didn’t sound upset so much as astonished.
    “What bothers you about that?”
    He shook his head.
    “Have you ever seen your wife ill like that?”
    “Of course.”
    “What did you do for her?”
    “I took her to the doctor. I gave her medicine. Food. Whatever.”
    “How did you know what she needed?”
    “What do you mean? It’s what anyone who’s sick would need. What I would need.”
    “How does it feel when you’re sick and your wife brings you what you need?”
    “I don’t get sick.”
    “Never? No flu? No cold?”
    “Sure, but that’s not serious.”
    “Okay, but still. Tell me. How did it make you feel, the last time you were under the weather and your wife brought you soup, or tissues?”
    “I wouldn’t let her stay home from work to wait on me. I’m a grown man.”
    “What about at night, when she came home?”
    He thought about this.
    “Didn’t she bring you anything? Not even a glass of water? Cough medicine?”
    “She has enough to do. I don’t need her ministering to me like some hausfrau. I’m not needy like that.”
    “But it’s part of a relationship. Part of being intimate.”
    He shook his head. “It’s unnecessary. I’m fine on my own.”
    “That must be lonely.”
    He looked confused. “What do you mean?”
    “Not to need her, not to be able to lean on her.”
    Because of his tinted glasses, I didn’t realize that his eyes had filled with tears until he reached up and wiped one away. Embarrassed, he cleared his throat, as if he hadn’t had an emotional reaction at all. “Of course I can lean on her.”
    We both knew he was lying. To himself as much as to me.
    And then, as if it was too much for him to bear, as if the lie chased him away, Bob stood up, and walked out of my office. Without a word of explanation. With so many questions still unanswered.

Seventeen
     
    T hat afternoon when Officer Butler got back to the station house, she read the note on her keyboard and immediately did as it asked: she proceeded directly to Jordain and Perez’s shared office. When she got there, they were both on the phone.
    Perez motioned for her to sit. After a few seconds, Butler realized they were on a conference call, talking to someone about the candidate search going on for a forensic psychologist to replace Fred Randall, who’d retired to teach at the police academy.
    While they discussed their reasons for rejecting the latest candidate, Butler inspected the scarred wooden table where she sat. Nothing in the room was in worse shape than the table, but Jordain refused to have it replaced. “It gives the room some character,” he always said