Free A Killer in the Wind by Andrew Klavan Page A

think I would see the ghost again.
    After a while, Monahan left. I needed a doctor to give me release papers so I badgered the nurses until they sent one. He was a small, serious-looking Asian man named Lee. He held a clipboard in his hand. He had a round face and big glasses. He had no expression on his face, none whatsoever.
    “You have any idea what it was you were taking?” he asked me.
    I shook my head. “The dealer called it Z.”
    “Zattera,” said Dr. Lee. “It was developed as an antianxiety medication but the FDA banned its ass because it makes you nutty as a brainless ape.” He said this deadpan. It was kind of comical. “Hallucinations, hyperaggression. Stuff’s not good for you, Detective.”
    “No kidding.”
    “Tell you what’s even worse: going off it cold. It’ll make you nuttier than the drug, plus you’ll puke your guts out. Taper off, say over the course of two weeks or so.”
    “Right,” I said. But I was lying. I was never taking that crap again. Whatever cold turkey was like, I would get through it and be done.
    “Have any good hallucinations?” asked Dr. Lee.
    “I saw a ghost. A dead kid. He followed me around.”
    “That’s pretty cool.”
    “I don’t recommend it.”
    “Wait till you try to quit. You’ll see things that look so real that reality will pale by comparison.”
    “Can’t wait.”
    “Like I said: Taper off it. Slow.”
    “Right.”
    “Right.” He studied his clipboard, expressionless. “I’d appreciate it if you could keep your mouth shut about this.”
    “The drug?”
    “I’ll lose my license if it comes out I’m covering for you.”
    “Are you covering for me?”
    “You killed a man in cold blood while doped out of your mind, Detective.”
    “Yeah. So why are you covering for me?”
    “Because you couldn’t have killed that son of a bitch dead enough to suit me.”
    “Right. Thanks.”
    “Also your friend Monahan asked me to and I’m afraid he’ll beat me up.”
    “He is big, isn’t he?”
    Dr. Lee nodded. He signed a page on his clipboard, tore it off, and handed it to me. “Give that to the front desk and they’ll set you free to do more damage to yourself and others.”
    Something happened then. Just a small thing. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but it would come back to me. It was what I guess you’d call a sort of blackout. When I went to leave the hospital, I remembered walking past the reception desk, walking toward the doors. Then the next thing I knew, I was on the train headed back to the city. I didn’t know how I got to the train station. Walked, I guess. It wasn’t far. I didn’t know how much time had passed. Maybe half an hour. It was gone completely.
    I shrugged it off. Just the drug, I figured.
    Like I said, I didn’t think much about it at the time.
    I made my way back to my apartment, the old place in Queens. I was on administrative leave until a grand jury could decide about the shooting. I wasn’t worried about that, though. The “House of Evil” was a big news story. There were pictures all over TV and the Internet. Child-sized corpses being carried in body bags from their forest graves. Fuzzy surveillance shots of the “Mystery Woman”—the Fat Woman—Aunt Jane. Long investigative portraits of Martin Emory, a Wall Street player and a serial killer who made a profit selling his victims to johns before he tortured them to death.
    There was not a grand jury anywhere on the planet that was going to charge me with wrongdoing for having blown him away.
    My only concern was to get that drug out of my system. I could still feel it working in me. It came in waves of mist and distortion. Weird little fits of distance. I kept catching glimpses of movements at the corners of my eyes. I tried not to turn toward them. I didn’t want to see whatever hallucination was standing there.
    My place was on a residential street off the main boulevard. A gray two-story clapboard house with white trim around the