Total pages in book: 183
Estimated words: 174715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 874(@200wpm)___ 699(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 174715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 874(@200wpm)___ 699(@250wpm)___ 582(@300wpm)
“You were in rehab last year.”
And there it is, bombshells starting to land. “For pain killers from an injury,” she says. “And it’s quite embarrassing.”
“If this gets out,” I tell him, “we’ll sue the department.”
He smirks. “Good luck proving that one.” In other words, he’s covered his bases.
Tara sits forward. “You little—”
Lori catches her arm. Tara inhales and sits back, never finishing her sentence.
Waller smirks. “Did you know the deceased as a drug user?”
“He smoked weed, if that counts,” she says. “I hate the skunk smell weed gives off and he kept it away from me. Even when he was writing his book, and he was all fucked up about revisiting the past, sex was his thing, not drugs.”
Lori suddenly stands up and walks to my seat, leaning down to my ear, “I’ll be right back.” Her hand is on my shoulder and she squeezes, and I get it. She thinks she knows something. She needs to check it out.
She exits the room and Waller leans toward us. “Have you ever given any drugs to the deceased?”
I don’t like this question. “State his name,” I say. “This constant reference to ‘the deceased’ could mean anyone.”
He grimaces and repeats the question. “Did you ever give David Curry drugs of any kind?”
“Advil. Maybe Excedrin. Nothing more.”
He reaches in his pocket and sets a bagged prescription bottle on the table. “We found this on his bedside table.”
Holy fuck. I reach for it before she can, reading the Vicodin label dated a year ago. “I didn’t give this to him,” she says to me. “I swear to you, Cole.” She looks at Waller. “I didn’t give this to him and I wouldn’t have even given up my pills back then. I was addicted. I wanted every one for myself.”
“We’ll let you get out of this,” he says. “We’ll make a deal. You give us your father, we’ll give you privacy and freedom.”
I laugh. “You’re a piece of work. The man took it from her. Or she dropped it. Not to mention there is no cause of death or toxicology report.”
“That’ll take weeks,” he reminds me, looking at Tara. “Weeks of bad PR, but a good amount of time for me to talk to your mother. She wouldn’t take down your father last year, but now, she’s protecting her daughter.”
Tara leans forward. “Leave my mother out of this.”
“Even if he has Vicodin in his system,” I say, “you’re going to have a hard time proving a year-old prescription was the source.”
Lori walks back into the room and kneels beside me. She holds out her phone and is showing me the cover to David Curry’s book when Waller asks, “If you didn’t give him the pills, how did he get them?”
Lori’s eyes go wide, and she says, “I know how.” She tabs through pages on her phone and then lets me read a section of the book. It takes two paragraphs for me to decide I’m really falling the fuck in love with this woman. “Read it to him,” I order.
She stands up and starts to read:
“It was a dark time in my life, like a cloud hovered just above me, waiting to rain down more and more despair. Everyone thought I was on top of the world but I was in hell.”
“What does that have to do with the damn pill bottle?” Waller grumbles.
“He was suicidal,” Lori says. “There’s every reason to believe he killed himself.”
“He never said suicidal.”
“He all but said it,” Lori argues. “A jury will see that.”
“And yet the press hasn’t said a word about it. Not even they read that as suicidal.”
“This book is two years old and it’s one paragraph,” Lori argues.
“Exactly the point,” Waller counters. “But even if he did kill himself, your client gave him the drugs to do it.”
“I didn’t give him those drugs,” Tara growls. “He had to have stolen them from me.”
“Tell a jury,” Waller says.
I stand up. “This interview is over.”
“Wait!” Lori says. “just—give me a minute.” She holds up a finger. “His own words,” she says, and reads: “I even went so far as to hoard pills. I collected them. I knew that one day, I’d need them. One day it would all be too much.”
She lowers her phone. “He took them from her.”
“Oh, thank God,” Tara says. “Or not. Damn him. Damn all of this.” Tara gets up and says, “I need air,” and leaves the room.
Waller smirks. “He didn’t say he took other people’s pills. That’s not enough to shut me down.”
“In other words,” I say, “you plan to torment her through the press, and jeopardize her career, unless she makes up a fantasy about her father to end this.”
He holds out his hands. “I just want her to tell the truth.”
I press my hands on the table, and lean toward him. “I will sue you, your boss, the city, and everyone in between if you slander her or release her private medical history. No one else has it.”