“Sorry.”
Aqua frowned and opened his eyes in surprise. Kat had never apologized before. He knew something was up.
Two decades ago, Aqua and Kat had been classmates at Columbia. That was where they met freshman year. Aqua was, quite simply, the most brilliant person Kat had ever known. His test scores were off the charts. His brain was revved up, worked too fast, finishing homework assignments in minutes that would take others all night. Aqua consumed knowledge like some consume fast food. He took extra classes, worked two jobs, started running track, but there was nothing that could stop the mania.
Eventually, Aqua’s engine overheated. That was the way Kat thought about it. He cracked, though in truth he was just sick. Mentally ill. It was no different, really, from having cancer or lupus or something like that. Aqua had been in and out of institutions since. Doctors had tried everything to cure him, but his mental illness, like those physical ones, was, if not terminal, chronic. Kat didn’t know where he lived now exactly. Somewhere in the park, she guessed. Sometimes Kat would bump into him away from the morning class, when his mania was at a more fevered pitch. Sometimes, Aqua would be dressed like a man. Sometimes—okay, most times—Aqua would dress like a woman. Sometimes, Aqua wouldn’t even know who Kat was.
At the end of class, when the others closed their eyes for Corpse Pose, Kat sat up and stared at Aqua. He—or she, it got very confusing when someone was a part-time transvestite—stared back, a flash of anger on his face. There were rules in this class. She was breaking one of them.
“I want you to relax your face,” Aqua said in that soothing voice. “Relax your eyes. Feel them sink down. Relax your mouth . . .”
His gaze never left hers. Eventually, Aqua acquiesced. He rose from a Lotus Position in one effortless, silent move. Kat rose too. She followed him through a back pathway heading north.
“So this is where you go after class,” Kat said.
“No.”
“No?”
“I’m not showing you where I go. What do you want?”
“I need a favor.”
Aqua kept walking. “I don’t do favors. I teach yoga.”
“I know that.”
“So why are you bothering me?” His two hands formed fists, like a little kid about to throw a tantrum. “Yoga is the routine. I’m good with routine. You calling me out, wanting to talk like this, it isn’t part of the routine. It’s not good for me, losing my routine.”
“I need your help.”
“I help by teaching yoga.”
“I know that.”
“I’m a good teacher, aren’t I?”
“The best.”
“So let me do what I do. That’s how I help. That’s how I stay centered. That’s how I contribute to society.”
Kat suddenly felt overwhelmed. They’d been friends a long time ago. Good friends. Close friends. They would sit in the library and talk about anything. The hours would fly by—he had been that kind of friend.
She had talked to Aqua about Jeff after their first date. He got it. He saw it right away. Aqua and Jeff had become close too. They became roommates, moving into off-campus housing, though Jeff ended up spending most nights at Kat’s. Looking at the bewildered look on Aqua’s face right now, she realized yet again how much she had lost. She had lost her dad. Obvious. She had lost her fiancé. Also obvious. But maybe—not so obvious—she had lost something else, something real and deep, when Aqua came apart.
“God, I miss you,” she said.
Aqua started picking up his pace. “This doesn’t help anything.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I have to go. I have things to do.”
She put her hand on his arm to slow him down. “Will you look at this first?”
He frowned, not slowing down much. She handed him the printouts from Jeff’s YouAreJustMyType profile.
“What is this?” Aqua asked.
“You tell me.”
He didn’t like it. She could see that. This whole break in his routine was agitating him. She didn’t mean to do that. She knew there was a danger in upsetting him.
“Aqua? Just take a look, okay?”
He did. He looked at the sheets of paper. She tried to read him. His expression remained perturbed, but she thought she saw something light up in his eyes.
“Aqua?”
There was fear in his voice. “Why are you showing these to me?”
“Does he look like someone you know?”
“No,” he said.
She felt her heart crash. Then Aqua started to hurry away.
“It doesn’t look like Jeff, Kat. It is Jeff.”
Chapter 9
Kat had just hung up the phone, replaying Monte Leburne’s words in her head for the umpteenth time, when the computer dinged as “YouAreJustMyType Instant Message!” popped up on her screen.
The instant message request was, she could see from the tiny profile picture, from Jeff. For a moment, she just sat there, almost afraid to move or click the READ button because this contact, this connection seemed so fragile and tenuous that any sudden act on her part could snap this thinnest of a frayed thread.
The heart icon next to his profile picture had a question mark on it, awaiting her approval to commence the conversation. For the past three hours, Kat had been working on her father’s case. The file told her nothing new and yet held all the old problems. Henry Donovan had been shot in the chest at close range with a small Smith & Wesson. This too had always bothered her. Wouldn’t you go for the head shot? Wouldn’t you come up behind him and put the gun against the back of his head and pull the trigger twice? That had been Monte Leburne’s MO. Why change it here? Why fire into the chest?
It didn’t mesh.
Neither had something Monte Leburne said to Nurse Steiner when she asked who killed Henry Donovan: “How should I know? They visited me. Day after I got arrested. They told me to take the money and the fall.”
Obvious question: Who were “they”?
But perhaps Monte had given her the answer. “They” had visited him in prison. Not only had they visited him, they had visited him the day after he got arrested.
Hmm.
Kat had grabbed the phone and called an old friend of hers, Chris Harrop, who worked for the Department of Corrections.
“Kat, nice to hear from you. What’s up?”
“I need a favor,” Kat said.
“What a surprise. I figured you were calling me for sweaty hot sex.”