Текст книги "A Shock to the System "

Автор книги: Richard Stevenson

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I kept being reminded of that. I said, "You've got a point, Vernon. But Paul Haig was blackmailing someone, and then he was killed. The probability is high that the relationship between the two events is cause-and-effect."

"This may be true, but I think you need to look into Paul's life of depravity for your answers, not my life of professional integrity and Christian probity."

What a pill. I said, "How come for a while you were desperate to hire me, Vernon, to get you off the hook with the cops, and then you changed your mind?"

He blushed again. "I was acting irrationally for a period of time. I was too emotional." He blushed some more.

I said, "You were trying to buy me off. You knew Bierly was trying to sic me on you, and you knew I detested the savage things you were doing to men in your crackpot practice. So you thought that for money I could be turned into your ally instead of your adversary. But then you saw that my aim was to dig out the truth at any cost on Paul's death and Larry's shooting, and I wasn't going to care what I dredged up in the process—your going into training for sheep fucking and whatnot—and you decided you had better take your chances with mere legal representation and Norris Jackacky's chummy relations with the DA, and I could take a hike. Am I right?"

"Donald," he said mildly, "you could not be more wrong. My overture to you was sincere. I believed my best hope was to have Larry's assailant identified and charged—and Paul's, if there was one. And I believed, based on what Norris had told me, that you were the best man to do the job. The Albany Police Department is not as effective in these matters as it might be. It was as simple as that."

"Then why did you change your mind?"

"Well—on the advice of my attorney. He decided that your involvement was—redundant." He was blushing again, of all things.

I said, "I don't believe you, Vernon. Your suddenly distancing yourself from me had something to do with your night of woolly eroticism."

He shook his head. "No."

"Yes."

"No."

"What is it? There's more to the sheep story."

"No, there is not more to the sheep story."

"Anyway, how did they get up here that Thursday night? Doesn't the building have security?"

"There's no guard. I buzzed them in. Paul phoned me and feigned a mental breakdown. I was skeptical but let my compassion for a former patient whom I thought of as a lost sheep—lost soul—interfere with my better judgment. And I buzzed the door open from my office without knowing precisely who was going to arrive. It was a very great mistake that I will never, ever make again."

"Not exactly, I suppose. I think there's still a part of this you're not telling me, Vernon. Something you badly did not want me to uncover, and that's why you left a message for me on Saturday telling me to piss off."

"Absolutely not," he said, bright as a tomato on Timmy's Aunt Moira's kitchen windowsill in August.

I watched him radiate red heat and light for a quarter of a minute. Then the thing that should have been obvious all along hit me, and I said, "If Paul Haig was not blackmailing you or either of the two others involved in the allegedly unphotographed episode of amour de brebis, then he was blackmailing someone else about whom he had information that that person would consider damaging or even incriminating. Prime candidates surely are members of the therapy group. Paul presumably knew many of their most intimate secrets. Is that correct?"

"I suppose that would be true. Most members of the group,

however, tended to speak in generalities about their past unfortunate lives as sexual degenerates. So it would be hard for a blackmailer to come up with tangible or even specific evidence that could be exchanged for money."

"Were all the group members that discreet and closemouthed, or just some of them?"

"Two members of that particular group," Crockwell said, looking queasy, "were particularly graphic and loquacious on the subject of their own sexual perversions."

"Who were they?"

"You know I can't tell you that. But you can take my word for it, Donald, that for a variety of reasons neither man is a likely target in a blackmail scheme."

Moody and Stover. I said, "But some members of the group no doubt are likelier targets. And the incriminating dope Haig might have had on one of them could have come from a source other than a therapy session itself. Maybe a member wasn't succeeding in his de-queering nearly as well as he let on here, and he badly did not want that bad news to get back to—wherever. Whether or not any of that happened can be learned only by digging around extensively in the group members' lives, a project I might or might not have the time and resources to take on. I might have to leave it to the cops.

"The job can be narrowed down considerably, Vernon, if I know who in the therapy group might reasonably be expected to have the wherewithal to come up with sixty thousand dollars on short notice. If anyone knows who in that group has access to big bucks, it's you. You know who had a hard time raising the cash for treatment and who wrote a check without giving it a second thought. Are you going to help me out, or aren't you?"

He looked thoughtful, but it didn't last. "I can't tell you that, and I'm sure you can understand why, Donald. Patient confidentiality is paramount in my profession. The ethics involved here are clear."

"Yes, I know all about your ethics, Vernon. Look, I'm not asking about anybody's manatee fixation or whatever, only about

their cash reserves, which is surely a fairly innocuous matter in the therapeutic context."

"Well, you are quite wrong about that."

"Oh. I beg your pardon. So you're not going to help me identify the person who killed Paul Haig and may have tried to kill Larry Bierly, two of your former patients?"

"No, I'm afraid that if it involves medically confidential information, I'm unable at this point in time to help you, Donald."

"Then you get no mercy from me," I said, and got up and went out.

22

My partially sleepless night and early-morning romp with T. Callahan had left me jet-lagged by late afternoon– sleeping until one hadn't helped—so I'd been pouring down extra-strength Jamaican Blue Mountain for over an hour when Timmy arrived home just after six. I didn't know then that my extra coffee consumption would turn out to be the key to an early resolution to the question of Paul Haig's murder. I just meant for it to get me through the evening without dozing off and toppling face-foreward in a public place.

I told Timmy about my meeting with Crockwell and the news of the therapist's onetime course in aversion therapy. Timmy stared at me in horror.

"Why, that's savage!"

"It is."

"You're making it up."

"No."

"But it's beastly!"

"Well, yes."

"But how could they do such a thing? Even to a man like Crockwell?"

"Two of them were enraged at him, they were under the influence of powerful drugs that break down inhibitions, and I guess they saw it as a kind of poetic justice."

"Oh, it's poetic, all right."

"Yes. Not Emily Dickinson, though. Robinson Jeffers maybe. Or Edgar Guest."

"It's poetic, but is it justice? I certainly don't think so. Crockwell's patients all went to him voluntarily, misguided as they were. But what those three did to Crockwell is assault, pure and simple. And he's not pressing charges?"

"No." I told Timmy the story of the Texan running for sheriff who wanted to accuse his opponent of fucking pigs.

Pouring himself a cup of the potent coffee, Timmy said, "That's a good joke about Texas politics, but it also illustrates why people who are victims of sex crimes often won't come forward and testify against the people who assaulted them."

"That's true, Timothy. But you also have to admit that (a) the joke is funny, and (b) it's a bit droll, too, when a man who cons people into administering electric jolts to themselves to combat their sexual natures gets a dose of his own medicine. Admit it. The image is priceless."

He poured one-percent low-fat milk into his coffee and stirred it. "But it's still assault."

"But the image is still priceless."

"But it's still assault."

"But the image is still priceless."

He conceded nothing. Though after a moment he did say, "Are there pictures?"

"No. Anyway, Crockwell maintains he never got it up for the sheep pictures. Or even for the Playboy bunny slides, would be my guess, given the circumstances."

"Well, there's that."

"Yes, think of the Polaroids showing up in the supermarket tabs. The horror."

Timmy shuddered, but I could see the images flipping along inside his head, and I suspected that they were not without entertainment value. He said, "So now you don't think Haig's blackmail scheme had anything to do with Crockwell and the sheep?"

"I'm pretty sure it didn't."

"But it's such a classic setup for blackmail."

"Not if there are no pictures or other evidence—which St. James and Crockwell both insist there couldn't have been—and

the blackmail target is ready to tell the blackmailer to go jump in the lake."

"I'm sorry, Don. I guess you're back to square one then."

"Not at all." I explained that with the Haig-Bierly-St. James (You-Don't-Want-to-Know)—Crockwell sheep incident now eliminated as the nexus of the blackmail situation, it was suddenly clear that the most likely blackmail target for Paul Haig would have been a member of the Crockwell psychotherapy group who was secretly involved in sexual escapades that would have been considered impermissible by both Crockwell and others in the man's life, and who moreover was in a position to come up with the sixty thousand dollars Haig needed to hang onto Beautiful Thingies. I said Crockwell wouldn't tell me who in the group was well-heeled and that I would have to find out independently. Meanwhile, I'd keep my appointment at eight that evening in Ballston Spa with Dr. Glen Snyder, who treated Paul Haig during the six weeks prior to Haig's death, and who I believed might have information or insights about Haig that would shed light on the blackmail or at least the circumstances surrounding it.

Timmy said, "If Snyder is a well-off shrink, maybe Haig was blackmailing him and he killed Haig. He would have known about the Elavil because he prescribed it."

I poured myself another cup of coffee and thought that over. "But what could Haig have had on Snyder?"

"I don't know. Pill pushing? Fishing out of season? Maybe Snyder put the moves on Haig, and Haig went along with it and got pictures secretly taken of whatever went on between them. It could be anything."

"I don't know, Timothy. That's pretty wild. But not totally off-the-wall, and while I'm talking to Snyder I'll keep your scenario in mind. And if I'm not home by midnight, maybe you'd better phone the Ballston Spa cops and have them take a look into Snyder's office. That's where I'm meeting him."

He said, "At midnight I'll be sound asleep. Do you want me to set the alarm and check to see if you're in bed?"

"No, I have a feeling I'll be home in plenty of time to tuck you in. Or to get tucked. Though I've drunk so much coffee I may be circling the house at six thousand feet for most of the night."

He said, "I'll dream of you up there."

I said I'd try to beam friendly messages down to him.

By seven-thirty the Northway commuter traffic had thinned out and I cruised unimpeded up through the spring evening. To the commuters in Clifton Park and the other northern suburbs of Albany, I-87 was something of a daily drag. But to Timmy and me, all of its associations were happy: It was the way to summer concerts at Saratoga, camping in the Adirondacks, weekends in Montreal for jazz and blanquette de lapin. I'd have been relaxed and eager driving north that evening if I hadn't been going to see a man about a murder, and if I hadn't drunk too much coffee and needed very badly all of a sudden to urinate.

I knew there was a Northway rest area above Clifton Park, and when I came to it I pulled in. The I-87 rest areas, in keeping with the intentionally woodsy, nature-friendly character of the highway, had no restaurants or gas stations, just restrooms, lawns, picnic tables and parking.

There were plenty of cars angled along the sidewalk leading to the restroom building, and I soon became aware of why some of them were there. My gaydar was rusty, but not so out of whack that I didn't instantly appreciate that this was a busy gay cruising area. After I peed, a number of pairs of eyes followed me outside, and I noted that men were coming and going behind the rest-room building. A hole had been ripped in the wire fence at the rear of the rest-area clearing, and a path led away into the woods. In fact, this rest area had been notorious in fast-lane gay Albany for years, I remembered. And that's when it all came together.

23

The meeting with Dr. Glen Snyder was underly helpful but not a washout. He had no knowledge of any blackmail attempt by Paul Haig, he said, but he did know from his own sources that Paul's father had once been accused of trying to blackmail a state official and had barely escaped prosecution. Snyder knew too of Paul's desperation over his financial situation and his fear that he might lose his business. In fact, Snyder had prescribed the Elavil to alleviate what he called the "severe anxiety" brought about by Haig's financial crisis and the fact that his personal life was pretty much of a mess.

Snyder said the last time he'd seen Haig, Haig had seemed less stressed out. But Haig had made no mention of his money worries being over, and Snyder just thought the Elavil had begun to do its work. Snyder said he was saddened and surprised to learn in March that Haig had killed himself, and Snyder wondered at the time if either Haig hadn't gone off his medication for a reason unknown to Snyder, or some new crisis hadn't come along that sent Haig tumbling over the edge into hopelessness. The likelihood of murder came as news to Snyder.

I asked him whether Haig had ever discussed the other members of the Crockwell psychotherapy group. He said only in a general way. Haig talked about Larry Bierly, Snyder said, and how wretched Haig had been over losing Bierly, and how he attributed this loss to his alcoholism, which he feared he might never control. Snyder didn't say anything about a Haig family history of untreated alcoholism and I didn't bring it up. Snyder

said Haig's bitterness over being subjected to Vernon Crockwell's homosexuality-cure regimen was deep, but Haig's bitterness over, and inability to accept, his own unconventional sexuality ran deep too, and Snyder considered Haig a deeply damaged man.

No doubt he had been, though he needn't have died young. Paul Haig had survived AIDS, and gay bashers in high and low places, and Vernon Crockwell, and to some extent even his family. But in a moment of terrible weakness—and probably self-destructive revenge against his mother—Haig had reverted to a despicable practice his father apparently had originated in the family. The second time around, the act's consequences were even more dire than they had been the first time. Trying to blackmail a man hadn't just left an ugly cloud over Paul Haig's life; it had ended it.

Tuesday morning I called my credit-checker friend and said I would pay top dollar if she let me jump the queue in her work day and receive, at the soonest, all the financial dope she could come up with on these people: LeVon Monroe, Walter Tidlow, Eugene Cebulka, Roland Stover, Dean Moody and Grey Oliveira. I said I was most interested in Oliveira. I was told to call back in the early afternoon.

At ten a.m., I walked into Larry Bierly's room and said, "I know about the assault on Crockwell. Phyllis Haig was right when she told me you were a violent man. Paul must have told his mother some half-truths—a family custom among the Haigs whenever they weren't telling bald-faced lies to each other. It sounds like Paul made a habit of bad-mouthing you around Phyllis because that's what she liked to hear. But when he told her you had assaulted a man, he omitted the fact that he was there at the time and he was involved himself. And of course he left out the part about the electroshocks and the pictures of the Playboy bunnies and the sheep."

Bierly's little red numbers started going crazy, but he didn't call for the nurse. He looked at me big-eyed and said, "Did you tell the police?"

"No."

"Are you going to?"

"I doubt it. That's up to Crockwell, and he seems disinclined to have word of the episode bruited about the Capital District broadcast-ad market at six and eleven."

"We should never have done it. It was wrong. I know that."

"No, Larry, you should never have done it. Why did you?"

He tugged at the IV tubing leading into his arm and shifted his muscular bulk. "Drugs," he said.

"Right, the devil made you do it."

"I'm really not a violent person," Bierly said, almost plaintively. "It was some kind of bad acid or something that Steven and I got hold of. And of course Paul was drunk. He hardly knew what was going on, I have to admit. I was the one who made it all happen."

"You could serve time for it."

"I know, I know, I know."

"And that's why you tried to dump me from the case, isn't it? You suspected Crockwell had killed Paul and tried to kill you in revenge for the late-night aversion-therapy incident, but you couldn't even fill me in on Crockwell's only genuinely plausible motive, because it would have implicated you in a felonious assault. Then when I stumbled on St. James and started getting close to that unpleasant part of the truth, you wanted me out of the picture—even if it meant Crockwell would get off scot-free."

He nodded and looked away morosely.

I said, "Larry, if you thought Crockwell had killed Paul and shot you, weren't you afraid that Crockwell would go after St. James too? You didn't even warn him."

"But Crockwell didn't know who Steven was."

"Surely he knew Steven's first name from the night he met him," I said. "And I knew a man named Steven St. James was involved, and you knew I knew it, and you knew I was talking to Crockwell."

Bierly sulked guiltily. "Who told you about the—incident? Did Steven tell you?"

"No, he refused. I extracted it from Crockwell."

"Oh. So now are you going to be able to nail Crockwell?" Bierly asked, brightening a little.

"He didn't do it," I said. "Crockwell didn't kill Paul, and he didn't shoot you."

"How do you know?" He looked badly disappointed.

"Because I believe I know who did do it. I want you to think about something, Larry. After Paul died, did you mention to anyone that you thought he had been murdered and that Vernon Crockwell had done it?"

He chewed this over. "A couple of people, I guess."

"Who?"

"Dody, my assistant manager."

"Uh-huh."

"Ed Chartrand, who I have running Beautiful Thingies."

"Right."

"Probably a few others."

"What about my involvement? Did you tell anybody that I was looking into Crockwell's possible involvement? Or that the police were?"

"Just Dody. I talk to her about a lot of things."

I said, "What about a member of the Crockwell therapy group you were in? Are you in touch with any of them that you might have mentioned any of this to? Or did you run into one of them?"

"Just Grey Oliveira."

"Uh-huh."

"Grey came into Whisk 'n' Apron one night recently—it was some time soon after I had dinner with you last week, I think– and I got to fuming about Crockwell. I told him a lot of people didn't think Paul had really committed suicide, and both you and the cops were investigating Crockwell. I might have exaggerated the situation a little. Do you think Grey had something to do with Paul's death?"

"Yes, I think Grey murdered Paul. And if he had killed Paul and had learned that the cops and I were investigating Paul's death and we suspected Crockwell, he could have buttressed those suspicions of Crockwell, first by sending the cops the therapy-

session tape that shows a nasty conflict between Crockwell and you and Paul, and second by shooting you on a Thursday night, when he knew Crockwell would have no alibi, and then by planting the gun in Crockwell's dumpster."

"Jesus!"

"You played into his hands with your hatred of Crockwell, which blinded you—and me."

"But, God, what would Paul have had on Grey to blackmail him with?"

"I plan to question Oliveira about just that. An excellent possibility is, he's the member of the therapy group who Paul caught in what he described to you as a wild scene in a tearoom. Paul never told you who that was, right?"

"No."

"Did he say where it was?"

"No."

"But it happened during the period Paul was traveling once a week up the Northway to his psychiatrist in Ballston Spa, if my chronology is accurate."

"That sounds right, yeah."

"That's the route Grey takes home to Saratoga every day after work. Did Oliveira have much money that you know of, Larry?"

"I have no idea," Bierly said. "I don't think he ever talked about money in the group. Grey was always just kind of polite and reasonable. He was rather sarcastic sometimes, and I got the idea once in a while he was putting us all on—especially Crockwell– and that he was just going through the motions of staying in the therapy program because for some reason he had to."

"I've spoken to Grey," I said, "and he admitted to me that that was the case. He went to and stayed with Crockwell because his wife asked him to, he told me, even though he had no hope for, or interest in, succeeding at being zapped straight. He struck me as being an extremely cynical man. In fact, I think he worked hard at portraying himself to me as a cynical and amoral man of a certain not-too-unusual type in order to keep me from suspecting him of being a hard and cynical man of another, rare type—

a man who kills people in cold blood in order to keep what he wants to have."

Bierly said, "That's absolutely horrible if it's true. Can you keep Grey from getting away with it?"

"I think so," I said. "But first I want you to get out your checkbook. Then I want you to call up Vernon Crockwell and apologize for trying to turn him on to farm animals, and tell him to get out his checkbook too. Then I want you to ring Phyllis Haig, taking care to catch her before noon, and tell her I said I want her to apologize to you for calling you a murderer and a buttfucker, and she had better get out her checkbook too."

Bierly stared at me open-mouthed for a long moment, and then he said, "If you say so."

At one-thirty my credit-check agent confirmed what I had suspected: that none of the former members of the Haig-Bierly-Crockwell psychotherapy group had any net worth to speak of, and that while Grey Oliveira's assets were proving harder to pin down, his cash flow was ample enough to suggest net worth well beyond what one might expect from a state employee who commutes to work every day.

I phoned a friend who grew up in Saratoga and still runs his family's restaurant there and asked if he knew Grey Oliveira. He said sure, Grey was a town fixture. Grey was not originally from Saratoga but had married into an old town family. Annette Dreher, Grey's wife, was a horsey-set Saratoga hostess and benefactress and an heiress of some means.

When I phoned him at his office at the State Division of Housing and Community Renewal, Oliveira flirted with me in his dry, crude way and agreed to meet me for a drink at six at the Broadway bar where we'd met the week before.

Then I dropped by Al Finnerty's office to fill him in and to ask to borrow some police equipment.

24

So, it's Albany's numero-uno private dick. Land any big ones since I last saw you, Strachey?"

"Nah. How about yourself, Grey?"

"Me? I'm not the dick, that's you. Though from where you're standing you could probably spit and have it land on a few people who think I'm kind of a prick."

"I'll bet."

He gazed at me with those eyes. "Get you a beer?"

"I could force one down."

He signaled the bartender and I asked for a Molson. Oliveira shifted on his stool as I eased onto the one next to him. He seemed to sense that something was different, but he wasn't going to act as if he was in a hurry to find out what it was.

I let him pay for my beer, and then said, "Are you still sucking every dick you can stuff in your mouth up and down the Hudson Valley, Grey?"

He froze for about half a frame before going on. "That's not a very good come-on line, Strachey. I'm not particularly romantic, as you might recall. But if I had made the first move, I would have come up with something a hell of a lot sexier than that."

"I didn't mean it as a sexual icebreaker, Grey."

"Does this mean that you're going to break my heart, Strachey?"

"You told me on Friday that you've made it a rule to have sex only with two people, your wife and your married fuck buddy, Stu. You described this situation as an AIDS-safe closed circle.

But I have the impression you make exceptions to your rule."

"On rare occasions, yes. If I believe a man to be both well-endowed and healthy, I have been known to follow my glands down whatever happy trail they may lead me."

"If you believe him to be healthy. That sounds unscientific, Grey."

He shrugged. "It might not pass muster at Oak Ridge, but of course this is Albany."

I said, "Does your boyfriend Stu also participate in high-risk unsafe-sex orgies at the Northway tearoom between Albany and Saratoga? Does your wife?"

Now he looked grim. "Have you seen me there? I've never seen you. And I'd remember you, Strachey."

"I've only stopped there once."

"And you saw me and I didn't see you? I hope I wasn't back in the woods bent over with my drawers down around my ankles."

"I didn't see you there," I said. "Paul Haig did."

He blinked, maybe because his heart jumped. "He did?"

"Yes."

"How do you know? What makes you think that?"

As the bartender passed us, Oliveira threw him a quick glance. Oliveira was aware now of all the people around us and that we were holding what he knew would be an exchange that could change his life, and it was happening in one of the most public of public places, a white-collar bar during happy hour. I wasn't crazy about the milieu either—it lacked dignity.

I said, "There are photos of you, Grey. Did you think that you got the only copies, that there weren't others?"

He blinked again, three times, and then studied my face. He said, "I'm not even recognizable in those pictures. They're dim and out of focus. Those pictures are shit."

"Then why am I here?"

He swigged from his beer. "Fucked if I know."

"Let me lay it out," I said. "Please correct me if I'm wrong in any of the details." He watched my lips form words. "Paul Haig desperately needed money," I said, "to save his business. After he

caught you in some wild scene in the Northway tearoom, he checked up on you to see how much you were worth. When he discovered that you had access to your wife's big bucks, Paul came back to the tearoom during the evening orgy hour, caught you again, and—presumably with a hidden camera—repeatedly took your picture committing lewd acts." I waited.

"There were five of us that night," Oliveira finally said conversationally. "Paul joined in part of the time. It was a hot scene and he was as big of an animal as anybody else there. The rest of the time, when he wasn't participating, he was acting as a lookout, he said. I remembered later he had a Beautiful Thingies box he was carrying, and the camera must have been mounted in that box somehow."

"That sounds plausible, Grey. Then Paul must have contacted you soon after the event—at work would be my guess—and he informed you that if you didn't cough up sixty thousand dollars, he would see to it that your wife received copies of the photos."

Wincing, Oliveira said, "He actually mailed copies of the pictures to me at my office at HCR. If my secretary hadn't been out sick on the day the envelope arrived—she probably had the rag on—she'd've opened the envelope herself probably. Luckily, I got to it first. After that, Paul called me and said it was another set of photos and the negatives that I was supposedly buying from him."

"Right. That's how a thoughtful blackmailer would handle it. So you made an appointment then to hand over the cash in return for the negatives and extra prints?"

"At Paul's apartment on Willet Street," Oliveira said casually, as if he were describing the site of a pleasant small dinner party. "Paul wanted me to deliver the money on a Wednesday night. But I said it would take me until Thursday to round up that much cash."

"Grey, I'm impressed. You were planning that far ahead– already setting Crockwell up as a suspect in case anybody saw through the 'suicide' scenario. You're quite the planner."

"That's the area of my training and expertise," he said,

nodding. "I'm not just a planner, I'm a professional planner, and a damned good one too." When I just stared at him, he added, "I know what you're thinking, Strachey. You're thinking, If only this bright young man with his darkly brooding good looks and his hypnotic gray eyes had applied his talents in the cause of good instead of evil, what a boon that would have been to him and to mankind. Isn't that what you're thinking?"

"Something like that."

"Well, 'Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been.' John Greenleaf Whittier. It's the one thing I can remember from junior high. Don, are you ready for another Molson?"

"I'm fine."

Oliveira caught the bartender's eye and signaled for another draft.

I said, "How did you get Paul Haig drunk that night, Grey?"

"Easy," he said. "I brought a bottle and opened it. I suggested we toast the successful completion of our business transaction. Paul thought that was a wonderful idea. He was extremely nervous, and I suppose he figured a good stiff drink would calm him down. And it sure did. And his second drink, and third, et cetera, made him even more loosey-goosey."

"And then you—what? Discovered the Elavil in the bathroom?"

"On the bathroom sink when I went in to take a whiz. The container was nearly full, and I thought, 'Well, my my, such a stroke of fortune. Now I won't have to shoot him."