Three seconds later, my phone buzzed.
Paulson came to the house within the hour.
He sat across from me at the same table where Gerald had sat, and he played the recording back through his phone speaker, and we listened to Gerald’s voice fill Frank’s kitchen — *a frightened old woman’s memory, a dying man’s letter written on painkillers* — and when it ended Paulson set the phone face-down on the table.
“He never denied being in the room,” I said.
“No.
He didn’t.” Paulson looked at his notes.
“He said he may have looked in.
He said he didn’t remember every detail.
Those are not the words of someone who wasn’t there.” He paused.
“Combined with the nurse’s formal statement — she agreed to speak with us this morning, by the way — and the medical examiner’s preliminary review of your father’s chart, we have enough to open a formal investigation.”
