Chapter 11: The Chart

Luca fell asleep with his hand on my hip.

I lay beside him and watched the ceiling until the window went grey.

*The surgeon who killed him was called Stansfield.*

I could have said it then.

I could have turned over and said, I'm the one, and watched his face.

Instead I got up, dressed in the dark, and took the stairs down to the kitchen, where Teo was already awake and frying eggs.

He took one look at me and turned the burner off.

"Good morning, Doc."

"I need something from you, Teo."

"Name it."

"A records room at Mercy General. The old charts. Six years back."

He wiped his hands on a dish towel and studied me for a long time.

"This about the vial?"

"It's about the vial, and it's about the man who died in that hospital."

"The boss's father."

"Yes."

"You think they're the same thing."

"I think somebody wanted two Fontana men dead," I said. "The same way, by the same hand."

He did not say yes, and he did not say no.

He picked up his keys.

By noon we were walking down a service stair at Mercy General behind a records clerk who owed Teo a favor and kept her eyes on her shoes.

The records room was a cold basement with metal shelving to the ceiling.

I had last walked these halls in a white coat with my name stitched on the pocket.

My heart was going so hard that I felt it in my ears.

"Fontana, Aldo," the clerk said, and pulled a grey box from a shelf. "I wasn't ever here."

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