I Choose Death

Prologue

Whitney Lachs stared across the table at a man that she had desperately loved once. That love had been built and evolved over twenty-two years of marriage, and they were lucky to have avoided the various extramarital adventures, condoned or not, of their friends plodding through marriages numbers two or three. The number of social obligations grew with each friend’s new foray in and out of matrimony, and the negotiations between aggrieved betrothed became tiresome after a while – the taking of sides, the strangers thrust into their lives with newfangled spousal arrangements. The Lachs had found solace in their own home, with their own children, in their own marriage. Not all of their twenty-two years included fireworks, but they offered love, ease, and a deeply abiding trust – a trust that Whitney Lachs had broken.

Her husband pushed away a stray clump of hair from his forehead and winked at her from behind wireframe glasses. The faded Nine Inch Nails concert tee still fit his taut tall frame. His rugged pockmarked face was framed by slightly thinning hair with touches of gray that had her wondering when he’d go full silver.

She looked at her son, sitting at the table on her right and trying very hard to hide that he was texting under the table. She let it go. Her daughter, who sat to Whitney’s left, and never let anything go, was arguing with her dad about the ‘construct’ of monogamy and the ‘irrelevance’ of the patriarchal nuclear family. Whitney’s husband smiled softly and blinked, the way middle-aged people do during the cavalier attempts of children to casually toss aside generations of culture. The blinking, of course, only spurred the girl to hammer a point home.

Whitney didn’t understand her daughter’s generation any more than her mother had understood her own. But, unlike her own mother, Whitney did try to understand. Not easy. The kids seemed so willing to scorch the earth, and throw out the baby with the bathwater, never realizing there was a baby in the first place. Whitney knew her daughter would grow out of it in time – if not the beliefs, then the rage that accompanied it. Whitney also knew that she wouldn’t be around to see it.

She caught her husband looking down the table at her, catching her lost in thought. His eyes and outstretched hands said, a little help?

Whitney shook her head and with a wave of her hand let him know he was on his own. She turned her attention to her son. He clutched and texted with one hand, secure in the belief that the family was too engaged with his older sister’s theatrics. With his other hand, he reached for his glass on the table, never taking his eyes off the screen.

Whitney watched her son’s glass bounce off his blindly grasping fingertips and tip. It only moved an inch before Whitney’s hand, already in position, clamped down onto the top of the glass stopping its movement and keeping the crimson juice from spraying across her favorite tablecloth. It all happened before her son could even gasp. She set the glass upright and casually wiped the juice from her palm with a napkin. The bickering at the table stopped.

“Busted….,” the girl sang softly.

She felt the vibration on her hip and reached into her own pocket. Her fingertips touched the warm buzzing glass. How could she forget? Cold dread rushed in where warmth and joy had been.

The phone. The phone is ringing, she thought.

She noticed all the faces around her turned on her.

Her husband broke the silence. “Are you going to answer that?”

His tone was light-hearted, but the furrow of his brow betrayed his concern.

With surprising effort, Whitney recovered and moved her eyes from her family’s faces to the phone that she only now realized she was holding in her hand. “NO ID” lit up the display. Dad and the kids all watched as the phone chimed in her hand.

She thought about letting it ring through to voicemail, but she knew that there would be consequences. She tapped the green circle as her daughter and son both said simultaneously in feigned exasperation, “I thought phones weren’t allowed at the dinner table?”

Whitney forced a tight smirk, “It’s your Aunt Claudia,” she offered as an explanation, standing up from her chair, backing away from the table.

“Could Auntie even live without Mom?” the girl moaned.

Whitney shushed her with a gesture and slipped out of the dining room.

Giving a final glance behind, Whitney eased onto the tight-napped carpet of the living room through to the hardwood of the den.

“Claudia, am I?” asked a filtered male voice over the phone. “You’ve had all day.”

“I know, Claudia.” Whitney answered, loud enough for the family to hear. She then closed the door behind her and dropped the caring sister routine. The clinking of silverware and soft tones of bickering disappeared. She made it only three steps into the room before easing herself down onto the edge of the area rug. Moonlight punched through the sheer curtains of the bay windows, washed over the desk beneath them, and spilled around her cross-legged form. The wood-paneled walls gave warmth to the glow of the San Francisco night. Turning on the lights hadn’t even crossed her mind.

Her eyes nervously traced the blue and red patterns on the rug beneath her, bold, even in the darkness of the room. A hell of a lot of money for something we’re only going to walk on, her husband had playfully protested the day they brought it home. But she had insisted on the Turkish design. Its thick wool yielded gently beneath her as she shifted. The Turkish rug, the paneled walls, and every fixture and detail of the decor in the house were an exercise in her ability to shape the world around herself and her family. These were monuments to her tastes, but, more to the point, her dogged persistence and the fatal flaw that was bringing everything down around her.

“We’re outside.” Whitney jumped at the bluntness of it. “You have sixty seconds, then we’re going to solve this ourselves.” The man’s voice was gravelly, and yet somehow the menace was hidden within the singsong rising and falling tones of a practiced professional persona.

Whitney’s throat was suddenly bone dry and her words came with tears that couldn’t be fought. “Not yet. Almost.” The air in her lungs escaped and she struggled to regain herself. She allowed a trembling finger to trace the curves in the carpet’s design. After a strong sob, the finger stopped trembling. “I’m going,” she said, rising to her feet and turning to face the door.

She dropped her chin and quickly opened the door. She hurried to the stairs, circumventing the dining room and her family. As she passed the stair-side entrance to the dining room, her husband called after her, ‘Everything all right with Claudia?’” She turned, smiled, and nodded – both weakly – while holding up a finger that said give me a minute. She charged up the stairs, slowing near the top, trying not to give it all away.

The last step led to a tiny hallway that looked down onto the living room below. She saw her husband, a look of worry and confusion. A look she wasn’t used to seeing on his face. She knew he was seeing an equally unfamiliar expression on hers. Whitney had lost hold of her pretense halfway up the stairs.

She stepped into the guest bathroom, slammed the door, and slapped at the light switch, squinting against the sudden brightness. It was cold. That bathroom was always cold. It was a problem deemed not worth solving as it was so seldom used. The clean white tile was rarely touched since each of the children had their own bathrooms. Each one a glorious mess and thankfully hidden from view – the benefits of a large and expensive house in a large and expensive life.

Today, it wasn’t large enough, and the expense was more than she could bear.

“Twenty seconds, Whitney,” dripped into her ear.

She dropped to her knees and reached into the cabinet under the glazed marble sink, frantically feeling around. She braced herself against the small countertop. Cold. But the gun against her fingertips was colder, colder than the counter, colder than the room. She pulled it from its hiding place, where it had been neatly affixed with painter’s tape. It smelled of something sweet and metallic. It’s heavy, she thought. She peeled stray strips of tape from the metal like a Band-Aid from a stinging wound. She had been told the safety would already be off, that the trigger would be her only concern.

Whitney heard the determined footsteps of her husband climbing the stairs. She moved fast, stepped into the shower and slid the frosted glass door closed behind her. The thump of the glass against the rubber stoppers was only a beat ahead of a firm knocking on the bathroom door.

“Honey, are you alright?” The doorknob jiggled, but she’d remembered to lock it.

“Ten seconds,” came the voice on the phone. “Better hurry, Whitney. We wouldn’t want him to stop you.” She could hear the smile on his smug face, the certainty that came with what he did and how well he did it. “My hand is on your front door, Whitney. I see your children are downstairs. Alone.”

Every single nerve in her body stopped quaking and turned to steel. She dropped the phone and it banged hard and loud in the closed shower stall.

“Honey?” The husband’s knocking had become pounding and the glass doors rattled beside her.

“It’s over. It’s over you fucking son of a bitch,” she said flatly. The gun under her chin, a final short breath. Her finger and the bullet did the rest.

Chapter One

Old Beginnings

I held the clock from my office wall in one hand and tapped the ticking mechanism on the back with my least chipped fingernail. The second hand hadn’t worked for years. And today was the day it bothered me enough to attempt a repair, a sad and tool-less attempt involving shaking and rapid strikes against the wall. The second hand continued to jerk in place while the minute and hour hands swung past it in slow motion.

How long till the whole thing stops? I wondered. I didn’t like being uncertain about time. I had too much of it between jobs, meaning too much time between paychecks. The clock, such as it was, went back on the wall.

My office chair whined as I settled in and swiveled back and forth while straightening piles on my desk. Beneath the sound of the chair and the papers I could hear the shuffling of feet entering the waiting room just outside my office – heavy and slow footsteps and then the low murmurs of a man talking with my assistant. I could hear lighter steps and the soft creak of the waiting room couch.

My memory wasn’t what it had been a year ago, and it sure as hell wasn’t any better now. I re-scanned the summary of the case – a professionally assembled document that my niece-slash-assistant-slash-receptionist, Chantelle, put together for me. It was real live ink on real live paper, perfect for a man of my age and inclinations. No swiping or scrolling, just the elegant turning of pages. As nice as the file was, the case was bound to lead nowhere. The statistics bore that out. But the family had chosen to seek the truth – statistics be damned. I’d chosen to take Lachs’ money in exchange for delivering that truth, or at least give it my best effort. That made me the biggest asshole in the world, or the greatest detective San Francisco has ever known, depending on what, or whether, I delivered. The aforementioned statistics fell squarely on the side of ‘asshole.’

There was a knock on the door.

“Come.”

“Robert Lachs,” Chantelle announced as both an introduction and a merciful reminder. She held the door open as the man, tall, white, and somber, crossed the room as if leading a funeral procession. His shoulders stooped, and his pale face was pockmarked and spotted with areas his razor had missed. A stray clump of hair hung from his forehead and had stuck itself between the bridge of his nose and his glasses. Despite the failed grooming, his tan trousers and white button-down shirt were crisply pressed. A tie and jacket that likely came from Gucci, Bergdorf, or one of the higher-end boutiques on the money side of The Bay alerted everyone that this was a business meeting.

And God, did I need the business. Three years into retirement from my job as the top homicide inspector in San Francisco, my private detective agency had, then didn’t have, then had money again as my whims and my clients’ ability to pay fluttered in the Bay Area breeze. At the time, we were leaning toward dead ass broke.

“Mr. Lachs,” I said, rising and coming around the desk, my hand extended and a smile on my face. My niece still stood just inside my office door sporting emerald-green and pink dreadlocks braided thickly and elegantly along the sides of her head. The colorful strands of fabric twisted within her dreadlocks complemented her dark cocoa skin, a shade darker than my own, and the bubble-gum square-framed glasses were as bold as her makeup was subtle and ‘age appropriate.’ Her clothes told the story of a teenager learning to be a grown-up, with pristine black Doc Martens laced with pink and green peeking out from under the cuffs of slightly distressed white denim jeans. A nice button-down blouse was tucked into said jeans and covered partially by a smart black vest. A Hello Kitty wristwatch finished the look.

Chantelle mouthed the words I was supposed to remember.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” came out somber, and I dropped the smile. I felt like a fool but managed the flip in tone. He seemed too distracted to notice, took my hand, and shook it. There was strength in the man’s hand, but he chose not to use it. His handshake was a sign of surrender. I ushered him to one of the two chairs in front of my worn wooden desk. He nodded a thank you and sat down in the chair, slumping to one side and slightly forward. I took the seat beside him rather than going back around to my more comfortable office chair behind my desk. The friendly approach. This caused him to shift his slump to the other side, away from me. This guy looked like he could use a friend, and I could use his money. I just hoped my needs weren’t written on my face as obviously as his were.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Chantelle said as she turned and left the office in a swish of green and pink. The door closed smoothly behind her. Her exit was the end of any brightness or color in the intentionally drab room where two drab men sat.

There was a beat of silence. I chose to end it.

“It’s a terrible thing, Mr. Lachs. How are you and your children managing?” I asked, trying to channel my inner Oprah but coming up short.

He leaned forward and held his breath a moment, then came at me like a prizefighter just off the ropes. He told me about the family dinner, the cranberry juice and the laughter. His voice got tight when he got to the phone call. He was in tears when he told me about the stairs. I stopped him before he got to the shower.

He needed a moment to collect himself. I gave it, free of charge. When he spoke again, the pain had been replaced by determination.

“I need you to tell me why my wife killed herself, Mr. Jones. I can’t leave here until you agree to find me answers.” His face was no longer passive and drawn. His eyes held mine like a man who was used to making demands and having them met. So much for the friendly approach. Still, very polite for a man who only recently discovered the mess a gun can make of one’s true love. I took no offense, but I held his gaze for a beat. Not to challenge, just to show that I wasn’t threatened.

He accepted the invitation to take it down a notch. “Forgive me, Mr. Jones. I’ve been going round and round with the police.”

“Detectives Olsen and Stern. The SFPD inspectors working the case,” I remembered from Chantelle’s earlier briefing.

Lachs’ face soured. “Yes, yes. Idiots!” He seemed to say it louder than he’d intended and brought his hands together to steady himself before continuing. “They sent me to you. Not that that was the sign of their idiocy, you see. Once they determined that I hadn’t killed her,” that last bit came out with a touch of incredulity, “they were done. It’s just that they can’t, or won’t, do anything more for me, or for them,” he said, motioning with his head toward the door.

My loss as to whom he was gesturing must have shown on my face.

“My children. We have – I have a boy, Ian, and a girl, Tara. Thirteen and seventeen. They don’t understand, and I’m afraid that...” He stopped, leaned forward, and continued in a whisper, as though the thin walls might betray him. Which, they would. The walls of my office were thin enough that I could hear the comings, goings, and social interactions of everyone in my humble waiting room. I saw Lachs’ lips moving, but for the life of me I suddenly couldn’t remember why we were here, what we were discussing, or who he was.

Alzheimer’s. I was in the early stages of its firm and tightening grip. I could often feel it coming on, like a fast tide. But there were moments, like now, when I found myself neck deep without warning, struggling to find a foothold in the present. I certainly wasn’t in control of my nosedive decline, only of the lies I told to hide it from my clients, business partners, and doctors.

I looked up at the clock on the wall that was right only twice a day. The building, ‘the shithole’ as I called it, had been gifted to me and my partner rent-free by a guy whose daughter’s murder I’d solved twenty years back while on the clock for the SFPD. The building was dancing on the edge of condemnation, a lot like myself and my compatriots, all former officers looking for something to do in the time between cleaning out our desks at SFPD Headquarters and death. The other detectives in the agency held meetings away from the embarrassment of the office, usually in the more comfortable and familiar settings of clients’ homes, or in the polished surroundings of the Bay Area’s finer dining establishments. But I bucked that trend. I’d recently stopped giving a fuck what people thought about my office or anything else. I got the job done as an Army MP, I got the job done as a homicide inspector, and I would do it as a private pain in the ass. I was the best – shithole office and all.

As gloriously self-indulgent as that sounds, my office mostly made it easier to avoid being at home. I’d brought almost all the plaques, awards, commendations, framed headlines, and even some non-career-related knick-knacks and spread them around the place. It didn’t have any of the comforts of home, and that was entirely the point. Home was soft, and comfortable, and where Etta died a year prior. Home was empty and full of ghosts. My wife’s sudden passing made the house seem ten times bigger than it had been with just the two of us. All that extra room was furnished with memories and pain.

Etta and I were supposed to be happily retired, or she was supposed to be a vibrant widow living off the rewards of having been married to a cop killed on duty. Instead, it was just me in an empty house. Well, me and the voices.

“Are you even listening?” Robert Lachs asked.

I came back to Earth.

“Of course,” I said. Both of us pretended it was the truth.

“There’s more to this, Mr. Jones. There has to be. I understand that some people do just commit suicide, but not Whitney. Not this way. Not in front of them.” He jabbed a fist toward the kids in the waiting room, who likely heard every word.

“Look,” Lachs said with finality. “I’ll pay anything. I’ll give you unfettered access to my life, to my wife’s life, to our finances, our friends, our children, even. If there was an affair, anything embarrassing, I can handle it. What I can’t handle is not knowing.”

Lachs stood abruptly and wrung his hands as he paced the space between my desk and the office door.

“I can’t sleep,” he continued. “I can barely be a father to my kids. I just don’t know what to tell them.”

“I can’t help you with that. What you tell the kids is up to you. Why don’t we start with what you think happened?”

“Are you always this tactless?” Lachs was glaring at me. God and my dear Etta know that I was never a “nice” man. But I always had charm, and my superpower was the ability to turn it on and off. I could deploy it like a shield, apply it like a salve, turn it like a key to get what I wanted. That power was leaving me, a gift of my early-onset dementia. ‘Live to an old age’ they said. ‘Enjoy retirement’ they said. Fuck ‘em.

“Please have a seat, Robert,” I said, pulling my Southern charm from wherever it had been hiding. Lachs slowly stepped forward and complied. I casually leaned on my desk and looked down at him. Detective Jones was working now. Best that I ask the questions.

“In the weeks or months prior to her death, was Mrs. Lachs unhappy or particularly anxious about something?”

Lachs shook his head vigorously. “Not to my knowledge.”

There was always a “why,” and the spouses could usually see the signs, even if they didn’t want to admit it. Knowing that they saw it coming and didn’t do enough to stop it was often more than they were willing or able to bear – especially when there were kids involved. The kids would have their own theories too, about their mom’s happiness, about their parents’ marriage. A child’s observations can cut through a parent’s denial like it was butter.

“I am taking your case, Mr. Lachs. We’re going to get to the bottom of this,” I said as I allowed my eyes to casually search the top of my desk, not seeing what I was looking for. “Olsen and Stern won’t get you answers because it’s not in the job description. They’re homicide, not suicide. Once they determined that your wife wasn’t murdered, their work was done. Even if they weren’t idiots, their hands would still be tied.” I rose, walked around the desk, and attempted to open my desk drawer without drawing attention.

The old drawer sliders creaked and jerked loudly. I pried it open anyway and slid my fingers along the bottom of the drawer, keeping my eyes on Lachs’. “I, on the other hand, have a different set of priorities – yours. We’ll start with a few questions–”

A knock on the door, polite but determined, interrupted my professional pep-talk.

“Come,” I barked.

Chantelle breezed into the office with polite determination and excused herself to Mr. Lachs before turning to me and holding out a folded slip of paper.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but I needed to get this to you ASAP,” she said, handing me the note. I took it, and she nodded once to each of us before exiting the office as quickly as she had come in.

“One moment,” I assured Lachs as I squinted at the large clear handwritten text in my hands.

Left breast pocket, as always.

I paused a moment, nodded to myself as though I’d been gifted Nirvana, and then re-folded the note and placed it into the inner left breast pocket of my jacket, where my fingertips brushed the smooth leather of the Moleskine notebook I used to keep track of pertinent details. I drew the notebook from my jacket like a musketeer and flipped it to the first blank page. I fixed my eyes on Robert Lachs’ eyes once more and put pen to paper.

Lachs jumped in first. “My attorney tells me that this is a waste of time and that I’d be better off spending the money on therapy for me and my children.”

“Eek,” I said, feeling, and accepting, the challenge.

“Clearly, I didn’t agree with her. I’m willing to provide whatever resources and information you need. I’ll pay you whatever you need.”

“You’re saying..?”

“I’m saying that you will have no excuse to come up dry, Mr. Jones.”

I stared at him, wondering about the saying about a fool and his money. He stared back at me, no doubt wondering if I’d picked up on the threat. I was who I was, a former Army MP, a retired homicide detective who’d been the best there ever was, at least in San Francisco, and was presently accepting a no-hitter case as a private detective. Challenges were my bread and butter, and threats had lost all meaning for me decades ago.

Mr. Lachs reached out and gestured toward my notebook, which I handed to him along with the pen. He scribbled briskly and stood, placing the notebook on my desk in front of me.

“That’s our address,” he declared, re-tucking his shirt and adjusting his jacket. From his breast pocket, he produced a key and placed it on top of the notebook. “After you’ve had a chance to speak with the police, I expect you’ll want to go by the house. We’re not staying there anymore. I can’t go back, not now, maybe not ever.”

Now, why hadn’t I thought of that?

As a final move, he took out a check, signed his name to it, set it on the desk and slid it toward me with two fingers. The amount was blank. I suddenly knew what Eve must have felt like staring at the forbidden fruit.

Lachs put out his hand and I rose from my chair and took it. There was strength in his grip this time. “I know you have questions, Mr. Jones. And I’m happy to answer any and all of them, but not now. I need to get my kids back to our hotel. Today, for me, was to make sure you would take the job. Now that I know you’re onboard, I’ll schedule a meeting with your assistant when time will not be an issue.”

“Agreed,” I said, making my way around my desk. I walked Robert Lachs out of my office. I unnecessarily instructed Chantelle to give him whatever help he needed. She was already on her feet, iPad in hand, and began the business processes that I had absolutely no interest in doing.

I looked over at the children sitting on the couch. Two kids who were still trying to accept the reality that you could be laughing and full of love one minute, and be in the deepest possible pain the next. So was Robert Lachs. So was I.

The boy, Ian, was slumped into the worn cushions, a small copy of his old man back in my office. But losing a mother at his age was incalculably worse than losing a wife. The kid seemed empty, his eyes downcast as he looked at his oversized sneakers, no doubt recently purchased by a mother who’d planned for him to grow into them.

Then I caught Tara’s eyes. The daughter stared right at me with the same look as her father’s during his more demanding moments. While the expression was her father’s, the eyes were someone else’s – her mother’s – daring me to reveal the secrets that she had left behind. Tara sat on the edge of the couch and studied us all: Chantelle, only one year older than herself; her father maintaining an air of control; and, finally, me, the one who was supposed to make this all somehow better. I looked into those eyes and felt an entire family’s loss all at once. A few seconds more than was bearable for me. I smiled weakly, nodded, and closed my door.

I went back to my desk and flopped unceremoniously into my chair. The check went into the top desk drawer. I wrestled the drawer back into place, no longer trying to be discreet. It banged shut. I sat looking at my scrawl in the black notebook and felt the tug of the gut that began with every case.

“No pressure, Sam. No fucking pressure.”